The first presentation above lays out the plans behind the data centre build out. They are comprehensive and there is certainly a financial logic to them that’s obscured by distractions and AI hype. The question becomes whether or not that financial logic can be implemented in the real world, and the second presentation discusses the many reasons why this is somewhere between unlikely and impossible.

Globally the rise of debt is rapidly outpacing the ability to service it. The debt was traditionally backed by government ability to tax workers’ incomes and a share of corporate profits, but demographics and austerity have limited the tax base and incomes. Labour participation is at a record low, hence debt per employed worker is skyrocketing. Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy have greatly limited that aspect as well. The collateral backing the debt is already inadequate, in fact far more inadequate than generally perceived. Potential buyers are already questioning the risk associated with sovereign debt, and demanding higher interest rate risk premiums as a result. This is verging on creating an exploding debt scenario.

The system is structured as a ponzi scheme, and those must continue to grow or they will implode. For financial expansion to continue, huge amounts of money must be ‘printed’ (electronically rather than physically) and for that to happen excuses must be found and available collateral expanded. When the repo crisis threatened the financial system in late 2019, covid appeared shortly after a coronavirus pandemic was wargamed in detail in Event 201. This was not a coincidence. Covid, which was manufactured through gain of function research begun in the US and outsourced to China, provided an excuse to print trillions of dollars. Increases in the money supply relative to available good and services naturally cause prices to increase as a lagging indicator, hence the substantial rise in the cost of living since then. The system is teetering on the brink again, and now war provides an excuse, but a collateral expansion is still necessary, and the data centre build out is a key aspect of this.

Wealth held by households is considerable – $175 trillion in the US compared to $40 trillion in national debt, although the quoted debt figure does not include unfunded obligations that would make the figure very much larger. Household wealth includes land, home equity, pensions, securities, businesses, precious metals etc. However, it’s currently not available for use by the financial elites and much of it is illiquid. There are plans to address both of these issues through monetisation and confiscation. The Great Taking, as explained by former hedgefund manager David Rogers Webb on the website of the same name, details the legal changes made across the West to grant priority in bankruptcy to holders of derivatives contracts. Derivatives are simply bets on the price movements of underlying assets, unconnected to ownerships of the assets themselves, however the legal system has been altered in order to create a connection. It’s essentially a perversion of trust law, whereby financial assets can be confiscated by financial elites when the clearing houses that hold them in trust are deliberately bankrupted. You only think you own financial securities. They will be confiscated when the plug is finally pulled on the financial system. In a crisis, ownership will simply default to the financial elite

As for illiquidity, this is to be addressed through tokenisation of all assets on a single ledger held by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which is the central bankers’ central bank. Tokenised/monetised assets can be traded fractionally and instantaneously. You will be encouraged to ‘liberate’ equity you hold in these assets in order to generate taxable economic activity, and fines can be levied against a fraction of an asset, for instance your home. Ownership of physical assets becomes a privilege rather than a right, and is to be subject to your compliance with the demands of the system, whatever those may be.

As Miles Harris explains above, the data centre build out has the theoretical potential to create an entire ecosystem of financeable assets, including land, buildings, electrical infrastructure, grid connections, power contracts, cooling systems, and resource consents in resource-constrained areas. Your assets are earmarked for funding it. By fully digitalising finance, for which digital ID would be required, more collateral becomes available and the speed at which it can be deployed to support the debt ponzi would be greatly increased, allowing it to do more work. The availability of granular data processed by AI would allow for lower risk margins, so that a greater proportion of the asset value could be lent against. Value fluctuations could be monitored continuously, ownership would be fully verified in real time, transaction costs would be greatly reduced, and enforcement would be rapid and unavoidable. Faster transactions support the velocity of money, and stronger enforcement can allow for ownership to be stripped away quickly and efficiently. The result would be a great deal more money creation to keep the ponzi scheme inflating. This potential is the real value of data centres to the system. Miles Harris describes AI as a loss leader, but a force multiplier over the longer term. Governments are reinforcing the trend towards continuous revaluation by shifting their borrowing to the short end of the curve.

Parasitic debt has become an increasingly dominant feature, with everything being fed into it to stave off implosion. However, ponzi schemes all end the same way, and implosion is inevitable. It can be delayed, but not prevented. This approach is just another attempt to kick the can down the road. It may fail long before the plan can be fully implemented. Data centres are extremely energy and resource intensive, and the ability to deliver both energy and other essential resources is currently being heavily compromised. The wars have taken a large percentage of global energy supply off the market, and a lot of critical infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, meaning that restoring supply will take years, and it may never be fully restored. A shortage of refined products is looming, with diesel of particular importance, although aviation fuel and bunker fuel will also be in short supply. This is a result of the loss of heavier crudes with longer chain hydrocarbons, and also the destruction of refineries around the world, either due to war or mysterious ‘accidents’.

In addition to energy issues, data centres also obviously require a lot of computer chips, and these in turn require helium and LNG, the supply of both of which have been greatly reduced due to the war in the Gulf. Data centres also require copper and silver in large quantities. Silver has been in relatively short supply for a long time, and copper extraction requires sulphur, but sulphur supply has also been heavily impacted by the war in the Gulf. The chips have a limited lifespan of 2-3 years, meaning that there would be demand for them in perpetuity, but the necessary resources may well be unavailable. Data centres also require huge amounts of cooling water, but are frequently being built in arid regions. Even if people living in these areas are deprived of water in order to service the data centre, the supply may not be sufficient. Cooling water would be contaminated with biocides and other chemicals, leading to major environmental impact.

Opposition to data centres is growing rapidly, as the continuous light, noise, and fumes make living next to them unbearable, and this in turn destroys property values within a significant radius. Infrasound is particularly harmful to health. Farming with animals anywhere near such an installation may not be a viable option. In places where the adverse impacts are well understood, opposition has been sufficient to see some proposed projects scaled back or even cancelled. The movement to stop the build out is growing. Combined with resource shortages and the likely collapse of the circular financing model of AI (which amounts to financial fraud), this could bring an end to the plans of the financial elite. The questions are how quickly those plans could unravel, and what the impact would be of the financial collapse that would inevitably follow as a debt ponzi unable to maintain expansion would rapidly implode. It’s possible we may not have to wait too long to find out.

Despite it being obvious to anyone paying attention that the US has lost the war with Iran, Trump is now demanding that Iran “wave the white flag of surrender”. He also threatened to “bomb the shit” out of Oman if the country didn’t coooperate with the US in attempting to prevent Iran from controlling the strait of Hormuz. Apparently the US has already frozen Omani assets as a means of pressuring them – mafia style of course. Oman is supposed to be an ally, but as has been previously pointed out, “to be America’s enemy is dangerous, but to be its friend is fatal”. Fortunately, the world is waking up to the reality of the US empire’s decline, made much more stark than before by the demented occupant of the Oval Office. The empire has a ‘Wizard of Oz’ problem, where instead of being all-powerful, it’s looking increasingly like a little man behind the curtain. Reality cannot match up to the overblown rhetoric.

Although less obvious than the energy and other commodity issues arising from the war in the Gulf, the financial consequences of the end of a debt cycle are equally vital. The empire’s financial regulators long ago lost any semblance of control over the money supply and the extent of leverage within it, as shadow banks, private credit, and derivatives have ballooned in terms of credit creation, none of which are regulated and all of which are over-extended and close to hitting a wall. Financial securities, notably sovereign bonds, have been the backbone of the collateral necessary for credit expansion and therefore economic growth, but there are cracks in this system too, reflected in rising bond yields. Bond yields represent the risk premium demanded by purchasers, but as perceived risk rises, more of a premium is demanded. This increases the interest burden on sovereign debtors, and where the interest rises above the rate of economic growth, an exploding debt scenario has been created.

The US debt currently stands at $40trillion, and trillions must be rolled over this year at higher rates. 5% on the ten year bond appears to be the critical limit for avoiding a debt doom loop. Japan’s massive debt and the long standing yen carry trade, which had been providing global liquidity for decades, are also reaching limits. Gulf countries deprived of oil revenues, and with their assets held hostage by the US, are also in trouble. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s tool box of financial alchemy cannot prevent any of the engines of growth reaching the end of the line, although he’s attempting to do so. Countries on the verge of being forced to sell US treasuries to raise dollars are being offered swap lines instead, in an attempt to minimise treasury selling, as this is exactly what would push US interest rates over the edge. It will not be possible to, prevent the unwinding if the yen carry trade or the end of the petrodollar, both of which will propagate contagion around the global financial system.

The US economy is increasingly synonymous with the AI bubble, but the bubble inturn relies on fraudulent circular financing. The impending financial upheaval is very likely to burst this bubble, likely taking the stock market down with it. This in turn could sink the current regime that has staked its reputation to the fortunes of AI and the stock market. The leverage in the system is vast, but unquantifiable. As it begins to unwind, a volley of margin calls will occur, sparking off a downward spiral. There’s no telling how deep the damage would go, but it would be devastating. If this dynamic sets off before the plans for extreme centralisation of the financial system under digitisation and tokenisation, the latter plans may fall by the wayside in the ensuing chaos. One way or another, a financial reset is coming.

As for the war the US was lied into it on the understanding that it would be short and sharp, lasting about four days. The Iranian government was supposed to fall after decapitation and foreign-inspired insurrgency, but months later there is much greater unity and strength that before the war. The US went to war without a plan or any form of strategic thinking, and as a result failed to assess its own capacities or ensure logistics. It is now critically short of ammunition, and is failing to feed its own people on entended deployment. Having grossly underestimated its adversary, it never ensured that its bases in the region were constructed in such as way as to protect troops stationed there. What has unfolded over the last several months is a litany of conflicting statements designed to manipulate the markets, generate huge profits by insider traders, and suppress the price of crude oil in order to hide the true impact of the war.

Expect the US to be driven from the region, with no ability to rebuild its infrastructure there. It will not longer have access to the Persian Gulf, and its erstwhile allies in the area have woken up to the protection racket that was being run against them. They were hosting bases that were for the protection of Israel, and that made them targets in their own right rather than doing anything to protect them. Their financial assets are under US control, and both their physical assets and their means of generating income through exports are under extreme threat. Their governments are also corrupt and unpopular, meaning a wholesale restructuring of the power dynamics in the region is likely underway.

The US and Israel are not currently seeing eye to eye on aspects of the war. The US cannot make Israel withdraw from Lebanon, nor can it convince Israel to allow an international force into Gaza in preparation for turning it into an upscale resort, as Jared Kushner is determined to do. Israel doesn’t want outside observers seeing the horror it’s inflicted, and continues to inflict, there. Israeli security minister Ben Gvir is on the record as saying that Israel must kill 30-40 Palestinians a day, and that they are not human and don’t deserve to live. The US lacks the capacity to restart the war, but Israel is determined to see Iran completely destroyed, and it may bomb Iran itself with a view to dragging the US back in to the conflict. Mossad (controlled by Netanyahu) supports the war, but the IDF (not controlled by Netanyahu) does not, meaning that Israel may descend into civil war. This whole tinderbox scenario is becoming a disaster for all concerned, although so far less of one for Iran than for the belligerents.

The wildcard is the potential for either the US or Israel to use nuclear weapons, since they’ve reached a dead end with conventional options. Unfortunately the possibility is all too real. Trump and Netanyahu are both malignant narcissists desperate to cling to power and never admit defeat, even if the price could easily be mutually assured destruction. The US seems determined to bomb locations where it thinks Iran’s nuclear material is concealed, although even nuclear weapons are not going to destroy the mountains that the material will be underneath. What such an attack would do is destroy the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and quite possibly result in spreading nuclear retaliation. This is the most dangerous period in living memory.

The expression ‘garbage time’ refers to the latter part of a game, once the outcome is already inevitable and the rest is simply going through the motions. The notion can also be applied to national economies in the grip of bubbles, once they’ve passed the point of no return. There are many states that this could currently be applied to, notably most of the Anglo-sphere and other European countries. Few commentators would apply it to China, but this merely indicates that they haven’t looked below the shiny façade to see the reality beneath. Of course China remains a manufacturing powerhouse, but its spectacular rise involved a great deal of bad debt, compounded by extensive corruption. It’s now experiencing capital flight, as wealthy individuals seek to leave the country before a government set on extracting resources from wherever it can takes what they’ve earned. There has been a major crackdown on enterprises deemed to be too independent of the CCP, with potentially severe consequences for successful entrepreneurs. Attempts to prevent the exodus, such as confiscating passports, have not entirely prevented the outflow.

State-directed infrastructure build out was conducted with little thought as to whether or not the investment would be useful or productive, hence malinvestment was rife. Political considerations often clouded common sense. In addition, so-called ‘tofu-dreg’ construction is common, with substandard building materials and corners cut wherever possible due to corruption, so that buildings may be disintegrating after a very few years. Major developers are now going bankrupt as the real estate market, structured as a ponzi scheme, collapses. Local governments were required to fund themselves through land sales and development fees, and therefore had every incentive to encourage rapid build out with no regard for quality. Little to no consideration is given to aspects such as drainage, so extensive flooding is very common. Many local tragedies have occured as a result, but these are never reported. No news of adverse events of any kind is allowed to propagate, even when casuality figures are very high. The true impact is never admitted to, because social stability is priority number one. The government is concerned about a superstition around ‘losing the mandate of heaven’ due to not being able to protect people from disasters. Since it cannot, or doesn’t care to, protect people, it needs to conceal its failures.

The long-standing one child policy has crippled China demographically, so that in a state with 15-20% youth unemployment, every young person is expected to support four grandparents when they can barely support themselves, let alone afford to marry or start a family of their own. Young men are expected to pay a bride price, which can be very substantial, for instance perhaps purchasing a home for the bride’s parents. Many women, especially those that are highly educated, often have unrealistic expectations in this regard, and may refuse to settle for less, choosing to remain single instead. In a country with a highly skewed sex ratio, due to a preference for boys under the one child policy, many women remain unattached, leaving an even larger number of young men with neither a partner nor employment. Even though the one child policy has been reversed, its effects remain ingrained psychologically. China has fewer births now than it did in the 1950s, and more and more young people are opting out of society, choosing to ‘lay flat’ as the expression goes in China.

China is an extremly authoritarian country, with mass surveillance in cities, swift and brutal crackdowns on dissent, and a system of social credit scores measuring compliance that are used to control the population by controlling access to everything including own’s own money. The country lacks a means to seek redress for governance failures, social safety net, and also a system for mental health support. As the country’s real estate market, previously 30% of GDP, implodes, and is dragging the much of the rest of the economy down with it, workers are increasingly not being paid. Life savings, and sometimes generational wealth, lost in real estate, compounded by non-payment of wages owed is creating a desperate situation. The combination of all these factors has broken many of its people, creating a low-trust and entirely transactional society, where beggar-thy-neighbour is common. A major response to this has been revenge against society attacks, where distressed people are finally pushed over the edge. The most common forms are unpaid employees burning down their factories, knife attacks against young children, and mass vehicular manslaughter.

China is already mired in an economic depression, with an increasing proportion of its population feeling desperate and lacking any kind of support. China never lifted hundreds of millions from poverty – that was propaganda. In reality the average income is roughly $6000/year, distorted by urban high earners, meaning that the average for a majority of the population is lower. Rural people are typically very poor, but even in urban areas homelessness has increased dramatically, and people with PhDs are reduced to becoming delivery drivers for what amounts to pennies per day. Now there are so many delivery drivers that the market is over-crowded, meaning that income is suppressed even further. The system cannot course-correct, as entrenched incentives punish any attempt to do so, meaning that the system is destined to break, probably violently. Extreme centralisation, such as exists under Xi, never lasts for long. It typically leads to a schlerotic and self-serving bureaucracy, factionalism among the elites, fiscal exhaustion, over-emphasis on wealth extraction from the public, and military over-reach. These factors erode political legitimacy until the people finally revolt. Efforts made to prevent this become ever more intrusive and controlling, and in turn more expensive to maintain. Society becomes ever more brittle, as China already is today.

To ride out such a time, resilience is essential. The centralised systems will eventually break down, including those that act as life support. People will need to build parallel systems to provide for essential functions, and they must act together. In doing so they build relstionships of trust and a sense of community. Knowledge must be preserved through the contractionary time, so as to have a solid foundation for rebuilding. Operating as close to human scale as possible is the best way forward. Dynamism can be restored once the authoritarian shakles have disintegrated, but the transition will be very difficult, not only for China, but internationally considering how many foreign countries dependent on China as a reliable trading partner. The coming depression will be global. It won’t be the end of the world, but it will be the end of the world as we’ve known it. Being psychologically prepared is half the battle.

Donald Trump has never been a brave man. He enjoys inflicting pain and suffering, but from a safe distance, or against someone who cannot fight back. His cowardice was on full display on his way back from Ankara. He’d received a message from the Israelis about a potential threat to bring down airforce one, although his own intelligence services had deemed the threat not credible. Trump’s response was to believe the Israelis and arrange to escape from airforce one in a catering container to be taken to a different plane. He took a few people with him, including Hegseth and his personal devotee Natalie Harp, while leaving the rest on airforce one to continue on the journey with no idea the president had jumped ship. Essentially, those left on the original plane were being used as expendable decoys, in case an attack did occur. They included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, his Chief of Staff Suzy Wiles, immigration policy architect Stephen Miller, press secretary Karoline Leavitt and the entire press pool. These people now know their lives were not considered worth protecting from a threat the Trump took seriously. Karoline Leavitt has already quit as a result. This is dishonourable conduct unbecoming of a commander in chief.

In other news, notable incidents have been escalating on the USS Abraham Lincoln, with several navy personnel having apparently attempted suicide by jumping overboard and finally a serious knife brawl apparently resulting in seven deaths. The ships has been at sea, with no strategic vision to explain to the crew as to their role, for 38 straight weeks, with less and less food available and of worse and worse quality. There is zero privacy onboard, with sleeping quarters open to passageways. The crew has become increasingly aware that they’re being placed in harm’s way not to defend their own country, but at the behest of Israel. Their actions in attempting to blockade the sea outside of the strait of Hormuz are continuing to damage the global economy while achieving nothing of value to anyone. This has to be toxic to morale, and the actions of the crew are an obvious consequence. The ship has been described as “a tinderbox of rage”. The carrier is now being sent back to port to be replaced by the USS George Washington. The bloackade they’re attempting to create is largely ineffective anyway, as the US has far too few naval assets to police it, and those they have cannot get close to the Iranian coast or they would be sunk by Iranian missiles.

The war is expanding in complexity, with Saudi Arabia at the centre, wondering which way to turn. They must recognise by now that hosting US bases on their soil and following American orders has been a disaster. The bases, used to attack Iran, have made the country a target. Their attack on Yemen, with US encouragement, has led to very effective attacks on their vulnerable infrastructure, all of which was in easy range of Ansar Allah (the Houthis) weaponry. They’re controlled by the US through the financial system, since they operate in the dollar sphere, and their sovereign wealth fund lives in the US. They know perfectly well that the US can shut of access to their funds at any time. This is likely the reason for them signing a military pact with both Turkey and Pakistan, both of which have substantial militaries capable of potentially protecting them should American presence in the region disappear, as seems predictable. Saudi Arabia itself has no effective military, even though they have the outward appearance of an army. Their contribution to the pact is likely financial. They could also be attempting to reclaim some assets held in the US by overpaying Turkey and Pakistan for protection in order to launder some funds back to themselves to hold in their own custody.

As a military pact, the proposed alliance remains largely conceptual, without the ability to coordinate actions effectively. They have no unified military doctrine, their units are not interoperable, they wouldn’t yet be able to coordinate logistics, and they don’t share a common language. The pact isn’t supposed to supercede other agreements, but Turkey is a member of NATO, there’s the Gulf Cooperation Council alliance, and the US has financial influence over both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, having recently dangled an $18 billion stabilisation fund for the Pakistani rupee. Meanwhile Pakistan is attempting to act as a neutral mediator between the US and Iran. Although ostensibly an attack on one is meant to be an attack on all, as with NATO article 5, so far neither Turkey nor Pakistan has attacked Yemen for its damage to Saudi refineries, pipelines, and ports. Neither will they likely help the Saudis against the Iraqi resistance, which may have been responsible for the attack on the critical Abqaiq installation. It remains to be seen if this overtly (Sunni) Muslim alliance, surrounding but not yet incorporating Iran, becomes an effective force in the future.

This is the first war where the US has been soundly beaten, as opposed to getting bored, declaring victory, and simply leaving, as they did in Vietnam and Afghanistan for instance. This has been the result of drastic under-estimation of Iran’s capacilities, both offensive and defensive, and willingness to absorb adversity for the sake of a larger goal. Iran is politically unified as never before, the country is a natural defensive fortress, and its people have had decades to prepare for this war. The days of American military supremacy are over. The empire is no longer capable of fighting a long war, or one against an adversary that can both defend itself and fight back. US presence in the Gulf regions is likely to end, much to the dismay of Israel, which cannot subdue its neighbours alone, and these days cannot do so with American help either. The Israeli state is unlikely to survive in its current form after having destabilised the region for decades and recently starting a seven front war against all its neighbours. The mass formation the country is currently in the grip of will break at some point, then Israelis will have to come to terms with what they’ve done, as did the Germans after WW2.

The entire region is in flux, with violence spreading and economic catastrophy looming. Trump has backed down yet again from his apocalyptic threats, possibly after having been informed by the US military that there is no path to victory. He has indicated a willingness, likely deceptively as before, to return to negotiations, but the only option is the MOU he previously signed which amounted to an American surrender. He’s caught between a rock and a hard place, because the terms of the MOU are completely unacceptable domestically, but Iran holds all the leverage, so he cannot force any kind of settlement on his terms. He can attempt to maintain his blockade, which is only effective in the sense that it raises perceived risk, and therefore the cost of insurance. The US lacks the naval assets to mount a militarily effective blockade. If the ships it does have get closer to the strait in order to improve the effectiveness, they would be within range of Iranian missiles.

Netanyahu doesn’t intend to let the US abandon the fight, since his political future, and ultimately his liberty, depend on winning the next Israeli election. The Israeli population wants to see Iran completely destroyed, but a large majority believes the war has been lost, so Netanyahu’s chances in the election are looking slim. If he loses, his most likely successors will be even more genocidal, but also therefore even more likely to get their own country obliterated. In his desperation, Netanyahu is threatening that Israel can attack Iran itself, the idea being that such a move would force the US back into the conflict to protect Israel. The odds are that this strategy would work, given the power of the Israeli lobby in the US, and the fact that the US and Israeli militaries and intelligence services are about to formally merge. This is widely regarded as treasonous, for good reason.

In response to the toxic situation in the region, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey have formed a mutual defence pact, which has been described as a Sunni NATO. In the second video above, Nima Alkhorshid provides maps and detailed analysis of the players and alliances at the sub-nation state level. The pact is problematic, as it compromises Pakistan’s role as a neutral mediator in the war. Saudi Arabia attacked Yemen at the behest of the US, and Yemen has responded by bombing critical Saudi energy infrastructure, futher restricting oil supply from the region. Yemen is an ally of Iran. If Pakistan were to defend Saudi Arabia against Yemen, it would no longer be neutral.

The countries of the region have realised that the US not only cannot protect them, it never had any desire to do so. The bases in their various countries were not for their protection, but to allow the US to project power and to defend Israel. Those bases made these vassal states targets, and they compounded this by allowing the bases to be used in attacks on Iran. They were also complicit in that they funded the war effort. The various Gulf monarchies are artifical constructs of the British empire, and they are corrupt, politically fragile, and physically vulnerable. They share a critical dependency on water desalination, which is also a major Israeli vulnerability. The monarchs rule over restive populations and enjoy little political legitimacy among their people. With the war spreading and critical infrastructure being destroyed or blockaded, it’s possible that the entire region may go up in flames.

The probability that either the US or Israel may resort to using nuclear weapons against Iran is uncomfortably high. Neither party has any conventional path to victory, and neither will go down without taking the rest of the world with them. In Israel this is called the Samson option. The US may well have a version of this as well, especially while Trump is president, since he’s psychologically incapable of admiting defeat due to his extreme narcissism. He cares only about himself, and he must know he’s dying, so why should he care if he takes the whole world down. The American strategy appears to be to wreck the global economy and degrade everyone else, in hope of being the least worst affected by the coming polycrisis that will result from the war. The shortages of energy, fertiliser, and other critical commodities from the Gulf are going to cripple the economy. The damage is already done. This will create a population bottleneck, even if no one resorts to nuclear weapons. Most people have no idea what’s about to happen, so it will come as an abrupt rug-pull. The worst people have been leading the empire into disaster. They represent psychopathy writ large.

The Epstein network is alive and well, and still expanding its influence. The man himself was simply middle management – a self-admitted agent of the Rothschilds. Those he served have continued to accumulate wealth, power, and control, and are now co-opting the machinery of government. Les Wexner was Epstein’s benefactor, and Wexner is still an important node in the network. Wexner has never been questioned about his role, and has continued to expand his activities while retaining connections to organised crime and to the Greater Israel project, where the ends are said to justify the dreadful means. At the same time he sits at the interface between Big Tech and the national security state.

Wexner’s New Albany Company has essentially privatised the local government of New Albany, Ohio, through a public private partnership, where the public aspect is very much the junior partner. His company can now tax local residents and issue bonds, which is unprecedented. The ostensible partnership is extremely pro-development, particularly of data centres. New Albany is now home to a major cluster of them, and is intended to become a model for smart cities by beta testing the necessary technology and programmes. Ohio in general has more data centres than almost any other state, and the New Albany area has more than anywhere else in the state. The company makes generous political donations, ensuring that their applications are fast-tracked and that lucrative incentives are offered. The eventual number of jobs promised in no way justifies the incentives given, especially considering the negative impact of these installations on local residents. Data centres are a creeping menace, gradually co-opting land, water and power, and for the purpose of controlling the newly dispossessed population. Computing power over people is their mantra.

Besides Wexner, other billionaire techbros with their own connections to the Epstein network are also intimately connected with these projects, and with political power. The most obvious is Peter Thiel, who created and financed JD Vance’s career from beginning to end, buying him an Ohio Senate seat and then arranging for him to take the Vice Presidency. If Trump cannot finish his term, which is looking increasingly likely due to his health, Vance will take the Presidency and the techbro takover of politics at the federal level will have moved into high gear.

The privatisation of New Albany is just the beginning. The model is meant to be extended to the whole country, and the whole empire, with vassal states potentially having little say in the matter. Public private partnerships are increasing rapidly, and the public aspect is being relegated to simply being a front for private interests, and a more superficially acceptable means of extracting wealth from the citizenry. The ideal, from the techbro point of view, is to follow the notions of Curtis Yarvin, who thinks the country should be run as a business dictatorship, with a CEO in sole charge. Already there are plans for this model on a small scale, beginning with single cities. Peter Thiel had even been considering Greenland as a potential location, although he probably hadn’t entirely thought through what that would involve. His recent move to Argentina makes sense in light of the fact that President Javier Milei is very much part of the network, and is already implementing the model of feudalism enforced by technology in his country.

There are many connections with the Israeli military industrial complex, which specialises in all manner of surveillance and control tech marketed to authoritarian governments around the world. One of the techbro oligarchs, Paul Singer, has been encouraging American companies to purchase Israeli tech start ups, so fronts for Israeli intelligence can be deeply embedded into large US companies, particularly those involving national security. This fits with a current federal bill to formally merge the American and Israeli militaries. The oligarchs appear to have an almost religious devotion to the idea of transhumanism – merging humans with AI with neural implants – as well as a determination to micro-manage humanity. The technology for all of this is being pioneered in Israel and tested in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East, along with technology for indiscriminate violence, such as the exploding pagers that maimed and killed many people, including children.

The hubris involved in all of this is off the charts. The Epstein network, which spans the globe, is aware that the financial system is at the end of a debt cycle and that control over critical resources confers power over people. They’re aiming for a controlled demolition of global society, devolving it into a plutocracy ruling over a huge proletariate with no rights or privacy. Whitney Webb describes it as going from a model contrasting the exploited and the unexploited, to a model where the contrast is between the exploited and the expendable. Human livestock is supposed to be able to prove its worth to the plutocrats in exchange for the privilige of continued existence. What the oligarchs fail to recognise is that large scale contractions, especially when war is involved, are very likely to take on a life of their own and become completely uncontrollable. Therefore the odds are that these initiatives will ultimately fail, although they’re likely to do substantial damage in the attempt. Humanity will need to cope with a period of considerable chaos, making resilience, community and relationships of trust absolutely vital. The sooner people recognise this and act on it, the better the outcome can be.

For the 20th time, Trump made increasingly lurid threats against Iran and then backed down, in time with market opens and closings of course, so his hangers on could profit enormously. The US military has told him that there’s no path to victory , and the Gulf states have asked him not to assure their destruction, given that Iran has threatened to retaliate disproportionally against them if its civilian infrastructure is attacked. Trump appears to be buying time to prepare for another attack, but may well lack the capacity even after a delay. He’s desperately trying to avoid the inevitable loss, which Patrick Henningsen rightly says will be humiliating and historic, while insisting that Iran surrender to him or he will inflict “military terror” (a war crime of course). To Trump, every deal must be win-lose, strictly on his terms. Every deal must equal surrender by the other side, and this is not going to happen. His every accusation or claim is either a confession or confabulation, the latter being characteristic of frontotemporal dementia, where the afflicted tries to create their own reality by speaking it into existence.

Iran is not begging for a deal. They are not speaking to the US at all, because they recognise that Trump’s word means nothing, and that the US is agreement incapable. The US navy is not successfully blockading Hormuz. Iran has closed it, and has said it will remain closed until the war ends. There’s nothing the US can do to prevent this, and the US, and Trump specifically, will be blamed for the global consequences. It is the US empire, including its Israeli attack-dog, that has been destabilising and brutalising the region for decades, and is the largest state sponsor of terrorism, not Iran. US warships will never again be allowed into the Persian Gulf, and their bases there will never be rebuilt.

The US is using the Gulf states as a shield around Israel, while running a protection racket – extorting them while offering no actual protection. American bases on their territory not only offer no protection, but make them active targets. The monarchies are controlled by the US because their funds are in dollars, often in US banks. They could be financially destroyed on a whim, and the US is using this leverage against them to make them act against their own interests. Kuwait and Bahrain are being used to strike Iran and are paying a terrible price for it. Saudi Arabia was ‘encouraged’ to attack Yemen and Iraq. Its leader, MBS, is compromised due to his close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, as well as being financially comtrolled by Washington. Now its oil exports are blocked to the south and tankers are being told not to load at Saudi ports on pain of attack. It’s pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu has been damaged, as has its flagship refinery at Jazan and other important infrastructure in the country. If the Gulf states refused to comply, the US could simply arrange a military coup against their fragile sutocracies and install a compliant puppet regime, allowing them to control Gulf oil directly.

Israel has recently been staying out of the conflict while the US bleeds for it. Iran has not targeted Israel either. There are several reasons for this. Israel is in political and economic turmoil, and Iran might be choosing to let that play out without having to risk the Samsom option. Also, the US is withdrawing its troops from Gulf bases and concentrating them in Israel. Iran could in effect be herding US troops there in order for them to present a concentrated, target-rich environment later. Retired Israeli Major General Itzhak Brik has recently been warning in Haaretz that Israel’s military entanglements could result in the destruction of the country, but Netanyahu is focused only on his own electoral prospects and staying out of jail. Brik has said that Israel had no strategic intelligence and no cultural understanding of Iran. The country may eventually pay an enormous price for its acquisitiveness and bloodlust.

Former Israeli general: War with Hezbollah will destroy Israel

Retired Israeli Major-General Itzhak Brik says potential escalation with Lebanon’s Hezbollah in the north of the country may lead to “a full-scale regional war and the destruction of our country”.

The US is determined to prevent the development of a Russia-Iran-India corridor, as well as acting to disrupt China’s Belt-and-Road initiative, as both of these represents building blocks in the formation of land-based Eurasian dominance, which is poised to eclipse the maritime powers that have been dominant for centuries. It will use all manner of financial leverage, physical threats, dirty tricks and mafia tactics to achieve this, but it will ultimately fail, as all empire trying to regain lost supremacy eventually do.

Trump had been making a series of increasingly lurid threats against Iran, following its attacks on American bases in Jordan and Kuwait. He had been threatening to terrorise the population and destroy civilian infrastructure, specifically power generation, which is a war crime. The attack had been proposed for this weekend, and over in time to avoid disturbing the stock market. This has been a consistent pattern of market manipulation with both Trump’s statements and attacks. This time the attack didn’t come as expected, despite American embassies in the region having warned their compatriots that they may need to leave in a hurry and that air travel may be disrupted. Trump is now saying that Iran asked him not to attack and that a deal is now close. This is another one of Trump’s fantasies. Iran has never asked Trump to make a deal, and in fact is refusing to negotiate at all after the US reneged on every aspect of the MOU deal it signed. Trump’s signature is worthless, as he changes his mind constantly and never keeps his word. The only deal Trump would accept is a complete capitulation by Iran, including giving up their control over the strait of Hormuz, but Iran has no intention of agreeing to surrender. Why would they when they’re winning?

Iran knows it cannot prevent being struck by US missiles, so long as the US has missiles to fire, but it does have sufficient air defence to threaten American planes. The US is running low on long range missiles, and its short range ones must be carried by its aircraft, bringing them into range of Iran’s air defence. The military has apparently made this clear to Trump, which may be the real reason for the latest TACO. Iran has specialised in second strike capability, meaning that whatever damage they take, they will always be able to strike back. They achieved this by burying their military infrastructure deep below the mountains, where it cannot be taken out, likely not even with a nuclear weapon. They also created a highly decentralised and resilient command structure, making them impervious to the decapitation strikes the US and Israel so often use.

This capacity to resist American aggression and retain the capacity to retaliate may well be what deterred the US military, given that Iran had threatened to cripple the Gulf monarchies if Trump carried through on his promised attack. Unlike Iran, which has sufficient water, the Gulf states and Israel rely heavily on desalination plants for drinking water. These plants in turn rely on energy supply, and it’s the energy supply that Iran had threatened to take out if the US attacked its energy infrastructure. This would render these states uninhabitable at the height of summer heat.

Iran has had decades to prepare for this war, which it knew would eventually come. The US has not prepared. It has, or at least had, many bases in the region, but these were acutely vulnerable to missile and drone attacks. Nothing was underground or sufficiently protected by air defence. US air defence has proven to be ineffective, with the PAC3 patriot interceptor having perhaps a 2-3% success rate. Iran was able to take out the extremely expensive radars on these bases with drones, leaving the base blind to incoming missiles. Further retaliatory strikes have since rendered the bases inoperable and uninhabitable. The US has been lying about the resulting casualties.

The US always underestimates the capabilities of its adversaries, generally after thoroughly dehumanising them. One only has to look at Afghanistan, where the US fought an assymmetical war for twenty years that resulted in replacing the Taliban with the Taliban. Now it’s attempting to fight a peer competitor – Russia (albeit indirectly through proxies) – and a near-peer competitor in Iran. In both cases it’s losing because it failed to understand its opponent’s military capacity and drive to defend themselves in an existential battle. Yet American warhawks still somehow think they can take on China in the future.

We are watching a failing empire, deeply indebted and over-extended militarily, embed itself in Thucydides Trap. It’s elected a mob-connected malignant narcissist with delusions of grandeur, but no knowledge about how anything works. Bullying, extortion, and perfidiousness are his modus operandi, and this fails to impress other world leaders. The US is now hated globally almost as much as the genocidal state of Israel. The regime believes, in its hubris, that it can revive its unipolar moment and rule the world in perpetuity, but that moment is decisively over.

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.