UKRAINE - WHY THE WEST CANNOT WALK AWAY

30 September 2025

- Why The West Cannot Stop Fighting the War in Ukraine 

- Why the West has No Reverse Gear 

- Why the only option is to Double Down On Failure.

Here are six fundamental reasons.

1. Liquidity Pipeline – European privatisations and savings poured into U.S. equity markets from the privatisations of the 1990s and early 2000s. That capital, recycled through Wall Street and shadow banking, demands returns from Eastern Europe, especially Ukraine. The banks want their pound of flesh.

• 2002 Germany: Schröder’s tax reform let firms sell cross-holdings tax-free, releasing billions for investment into U.S. dollars in stocks and bonds.

• France (1990s–2000s): Privatisations of France Télécom, Air France and Renault freed more capital, that flowed to Wall Street.

• Italy (Prodi–Berlusconi era): Sales of ENI, Telecom Italia and Autostrade drove Italian savings, this time, into U.S. Treasuries.

• Post-2008 GFC: Europe’s tighter bank rules pushed investment out of this regulated sector and into U.S. hedge funds and private equity - the “shadow-banking” boom, as it's called.

Reason 1 : - Finance demands a return on investment

2. Productivity Crisis – Falling productivity these last 40 years across the West pressures profits. Access to cheap resources, labour, and new markets is vital. Russia blocks this. War becomes a way to prise open frontiers of profit.

Lower productivity → thinner margins → pressure to cut costs and find new revenue streams. That pressure expresses itself in four ways:

• Reducing input costs (energy, minerals, resources)

• Reducing labour costs (off-shoring, precarious work, gig economy, WFH, wage stagnation)

• Rationalising production (Six Sigma, automation, AI)

• Opening new sales markets.

Reason 2 : - Restore profitability to stave off a crisis of capitalism

3. Digital Capitalism – Tech and defence firms thrive on dual-use (military / civilian) innovations: AI, satellites, surveillance. For them, a “forever war” means a forever revenue stream, regardless of who's winning on the ground. This is a big source of revenues for the donor class.

Examples:

• Amazon AWS & Microsoft Azure host Pentagon and CIA data.

• Google builds AI for drone targeting.

• Palantir sells battlefield analytics to Ukraine.

• SpaceX Starlink provides frontline ISR communications under Pentagon funding

• Buying up influencers and their social media platforms - eg twitter, tiktok - and correcting the algorithms to support the sponsor class and obtain future leaders' alignment.

Exposing oligarchs

The £1m donation

This “digital war machine” thrives on ongoing conflict, it doesn’t really need victory, indeed victory may end its revenue streams. For venture capitalists and contractors, a forever war is a forever market. Whether Ukraine wins or loses matters less than the continuation of DoD contracts, subsidies, and data monopolies.

Reason 3 : - A forever war means a forever revenue stream for Big Tech

4. Avoiding Failure in Europe – Sanctions have backfired, confiscations only further reduce credibility, leaving Europe weaker, indebted, and angry. Ending the war now would expose elite mismanagement and the continued existence of the EU; war keeps the parties united against a common enemy.

• What values or morals do our elite leaders really have? Don't they align with Washington to further their interests and power rather than represent the people who elected them?

• Just consider what has happened to the democratic process or how the people's freedoms are increasingly frustrated. 

• Continuation of the war postpones the eventual day of  reckoning for these people.... who or how can we stop this killing which profits the few at the top?

Reason 4 : - To stop now would mean bringing the culprits to Justice - how to do this?

5. The Endgame – Victory for the West against Russia would pin Russia in place geopolitically, secure Ukraine’s resources for central bank balance sheets, and free America to pivot to China. Defeat risks NATO’s collapse, euro / EU instability and implosion, and even escalation to World War Three, never mind the power, futures and wealth of existing elites.

Reason 5 : - Victory would deliver geopolitical defeat over Russia and open up access to Ukraine's resources. Defeat would be a defeat of The West, its credibility and institutions.

Here is an expanded paragraph in your style — same tone, same cadence — with sharper emphasis on soft-power perks, lifestyle privileges, and the personal incentives that bind the EU–Atlantic elite to the system:

6. Fingers in Pie - Europe’s elite defend Ukraine not out of principle or moral rectitude, but because their own privileges, perks and soft-power networks depend on keeping the system alive.

Behind all this economic and corporate interest sits the soft-power ecosystem that keeps the whole elite structure obedient and aligned. 

The top brass who run the EU and its satellite institutions enjoy a lifestyle that depends on never rocking the boat: children in international schools with fees "absorbed"; endless “conferences” in Davos, Brussels, Singapore, Dubai - week-long holidays disguised as policy forums; salaries, working week and pensions that no normal European could ever dream of; diplomatic immunities, expense allowances and tax exemptions that insulate them from the economic pain they inflict on others. 

This is the real glue of the system, the comfortable capture of a managerial class - maybe two or three million members of the elite, banking and corporate governance, government, MSM - whose personal incentives are perfectly aligned with Washington, global finance and the shadow-banking world. 

Once you see how these perks function as a form of soft coercion, you understand why none of these people will ever argue for peace, restraint, sovereignty or strategic independence. Their lives depend on the opposite.

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Some further light reading

European economic collapse and democratic despotism with Glen Diesen and Alex Krainer.

Why won't Europe exit the war? The answer is alarming

[END]

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HISTORY RHYMES - FROM ALEXANDER TO AMERICA

28 September 2025

History Rhymes - From Alexander to America

1. The Rise of Macedon

Alexander the Great took a small Balkan kingdom and turned it into the largest empire the world had yet seen.

In little more than a decade, his armies swept through Persia, Egypt, and deep into Asia.

It was dazzling... but fragile - built on one man’s genius, charisma, and willpower.

2. The Fall of Macedon

Alexander died suddenly in 323 BC.

With no strong institutions to hold his empire together, his generals (the Diadochi) carved up the empire.

What was unity became patchwork: Macedonia, Egypt, Seleucid Asia, each fighting for supremacy.

The legacy was cultural, not political: Hellenistic civilisation spread, but the empire itself shattered.

3. The Rise of America

From 1945, the United States inherited global leadership.

Its reach was unmatched: military bases worldwide, the dollar as reserve currency, technology dominance and culture as soft power.

After 1991, America enjoyed its “unipolar moment”, the sole and unrivaled superpower, right through to the serious rise of China in from about 2017.

4. The Strains of Empire

Overreach followed: endless wars in the Middle East for control of the energy supply, twin spiralling debts, a semi delusional ideology of exceptionalism and a belief that one country could police the globe.

But like Macedon, the empire stretched further than its base could sustain.

The façade of invincibility cracked.

5. The Fragmentation Today

Under Biden and Trump, America is no longer a unifying empire - unless you say that it is unifying the global South against itself. It is faltering.

Retreat from Europe, repositioning out to the second island ring in East Asia, and chaos in West Asia... all point to withdrawal.

Allies, once loyal clients, are hedging their bets: Europe submits and clings to America’s coattails, Israel defies (as usual), Asia balances between Washington and Beijing.

What remains looks like Alexander’s world after his death — a multi-polar patchwork of rival powers.

6. The Rhyme of History

One-man dependency: Alexander then, is this what Trump is trying to create now?

Overstretch: the usual disease of empire.

Fragmentation: Alexander’s generals then, America’s vassal states / the EU and Britain today.

Legacy: Western civilisation and influence may remain for 500 more years, but the empire itself is disintegrating.

Conclusion

“History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes”. (Supposedly Mark Twain.)

Alexander’s empire rose dazzlingly fast and collapsed just as suddenly.

The American empire, handed over by Britain after the last world war, and extended in the typically excessive pride of emperors, is now showing its age in the same patterns of exhaustion and fracture.

How the wheel turns, break up from within, ordinary people finally pushing back against their elites.

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3/3 GLOBALISATION AND RICARDIAN ECONOMICS : THE NEO LIBERAL TRAP

26 September 2025

Trilogy:

1. The Collapse of the American Empire (1/3).
2. Singapore: How to Avoid the Same Fate (2/3).
3. Globalisation and Neoliberalism: The Ricardian Trap (here and now 3/3).

Globalisation and Neoliberalism: The Ricardian Trap

1. The Promise of Ricardo
The theory of comparative advantage says each country should specialise in what it does best (this is not dissimilar to OTOP : one tambon one product) then trade freely across borders. Everyone doing what their best at was supposed to make everyone richer, creating efficiency, innovation, and cheaper goods for all of us.

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2. From Promise to Practice
However, in practice, globalisation and neoliberalism took Ricardo’s idea and ran with them just a bit too far.

• Capital, goods, and people flowed without restraint. Take people. Immigration is a great answer to shortages of labour. Labour shortest years might arrives for demographic reasons or simply because there is a growing demand that the producer can no longer meet. But hey wait a moment, what do the native peoples, the Host population, think of this? What do they think of piling up foreign cultures religions languages ... different cultures ... all into their living space?
• What happens if manufacturing jobs are shut down in a rich country because it's cheaper to ship the work abroad to low cost labor countries what happens to the work traditionally done by local people?
• And what happens to the wages of local people if they're now in competition with migrants? Wages stagnate
• Look at capital flows the work has gone abroad and with it the prophets but the reserve currency is a reserve currency used for international trade where will a foreign company or government store it's wealth maybe not in its local currency which is depreciating against the dollar they will want to store it in us treasuries that added demand is going to raise the price on us treasuries and asset values generally. So foreign demand for treasuries, corporate bonds, equities, real estate... raises asset prices eg the cost of a home goes up beyond a a price local people can afford. Those lucky enough to already own assets see those values go up while those without have only debt increasing debt.
• Deficits widen, debt balloons, and societies became more unequal - it was so easy to borrow or print so much easier than raising taxes.

The winners were global corporations, financiers, and the very small proportion of the population who seriously owned assets. The losers were the workers in industrial economies who saw their purchasing power drop decade after decade.

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3. The American Collapse
The US embraced this model most fully. You can see how it shifted from production to consumption, and from industry to finance - I would call this papering over the debts Twin deficits (trade and budget) became structural, debt piled up, and the reserve currency status only encouraged fiscal and monitoring irresponsibility. What began as Ricardo’s elegant logic ended in de-industrialisation and imperial overreach.

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4. Singapore’s Escape Route
Singapore is at an early stage of the debt cycle. It could follow the US path — financialisation, overvaluation, complacency, hubris — or it could chart a smarter course.

• Protect industrial capacity.
• Invest in productivity and innovation.
• Resist easy debt and speculative bubbles.
• Stay neutral in geopolitics.

This means basically pursuing cooperation in a spirit of respect with your neighbours and certainly don't get involved in any military adventurism - that would be a route that leads to debt, death and immiseration even if it might plump up the assets of the elite before the finish.

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Conclusion
Globalisation promised prosperity through Ricardo’s "comparative advantage". Neoliberalism turned that promise into a trap. America fell into it. Britain before it too. Singapore now faces the same choice: repeat the cycle, or stay small, stay smart, stay productive.

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2/3 CAN SINGAPORE AVOID THE RESERVE CURRENCY CURSE

26 September 2025

How Singapore could avoid the "exhorbitant priviledges of being a Local Reserve Currency Hub 

Early in the Debt Cycle

Singapore’s position today resembles the U.S.’s back in the early post-WWII decades: a trusted, stable, export-driven economy that others are happy to hold their monetary reserves in. But if it follows the same path unchecked, it risks repeating the late-stage debt cycle consequences we saw in Britain in1949 and now see in America.

Here’s what Singapore might be considering 

To avoid the pitfalls of being a local reserve currency, Singapore could:

1. Maintain Trade Surpluses and Real-World Competitiveness

• Singapore wants to resist the temptation to let its currency over-appreciate purely to meet reserve currency demand - not for trade / transactional reasons. All that this excess demand would do is to push-up asset prices. And this would favor those who have assets and not the majority who have mostly debt - thus exacerbating inequality and creating mounting social instability.

Singapore doesn't want this.

• Continue investing in high-value exports, 

Like advanced manufacturing, biotech, and green technologies, 

• And limit foreign purely speculative investment flows into government treasuries 

or corporate bonds, or stocks and shares, or its real estate.

• Gear industrial policy towards productivity and innovation

Taking care to avoid asset price inflation – ie controls to stop capital being disinvested from industrial and revested into financial assets. This is the planning and regulation behind sensible industrial policy, where the state focuses on the sectors of the economy it wishes to  promote. 

2. Lesson from the U.S

America shifted from manufacturing to services too early and too aggressively. Why? 

Ricardian economics

Globalisation / neoliberalism, it's about the free movement of capital, goods and services, and people, each country specialises in what it produces most efficiently, and trades with the others without respect for borders, in the interests of efficiency.

While the larger markets so created, offer economies of scale, innovation and finally cheaper goods for consumers.

Globalisation. In pracrise, this meant outsourcing manufacturing jobs to countries where labour was cheaper

Growing twin deficits as America began to run a trade deficit, importing the things it no longer made at home; the profits generated by surplus countries were sent back into American treasuries for safety; it now became so easy for America to borrow and live on debt; this trade deficit was followed by "fiscal irresponsibility" is it with so much easier to borrow and print if necessary when you are the reserve currency rather than balance the books. This is what is bankrupting America.

Singapore doesn't want this either.

2. Control Financialisation and Protect the Real Economy

• Prevent the financial sector from becoming too large relative to GDP, a common symptom of reserve currency status

• Regulate speculative capital inflows and real estate bubbles as above – don’t let asset prices overtake wage growth, at the risk of loss of purchasing power inequality and in stage revolt by the people. 

Inflation is mostly the result of monetary expansion. Pegging the currency in some way to the price of gold or a basket of commodities wood restrain money printing because each dollar note is a promise to pay and that means it can be exchanged for gold but if you print there won't be enough gold in the Vault and ultimately you will have to dealing as Nixon did in 1971.

• Encourage long-term investment in productive enterprises, companies that make real things that people want - these will keep pace with any inflation because demand are in and supply are in balance ie not just paper assets - these are speculative such as derivatives options even the secondary market what do they add to the quality of life for real people?

This is where an industrial policy with tax and subsidy incentives, possibly even tariffs, could provide an answer.

Lesson from the UK

The City of London gained power at the expense of the Midlands and North - a cautionary tale. Watch the video linked above.

3. Strengthen Fiscal Discipline Without Falling Into Austerity

• Avoid easy borrowing just because foreign investors are eager to hold SGD or Singaporean bonds 

• Use surpluses and sovereign wealth (e.g. GIC and Temasek) strategically - means invest counter-cyclically, let the government support innovation, and cushion downturns using money saved during upturns

• Maintain low public debt levels to ensure flexibility in crises and especially at times of Higher interest rates avoiding interest eating into government Revenue. Singapore's debt is mostly non-tradable and domestic, which is a good non speculative buffer.

4. Promote Regional Multipolarity, Not Dominance

• As a local reserve currency in Southeast Asia, Singapore would be best off facilitating balanced trade, not dominating it.

• Work with ASEAN, China, and India to create a resilient multi-currency, multi-polar region.

• Encourage the use of local currency settlement mechanisms such as QRIS, rather than forcing all flows through SGD.

Reserve status breeds resentment if it becomes coercive. Singapore wants cooperative credibility - peace and prosperity matter more than dominance.

5. Build Financial Firewalls: Capital Controls and Macroprudential Tools

• Stay alert to hot money inflows and be ready to impose temporary capital controls or taxes on speculative flows. Speculators will run a mile at the thought of capital controls locking in their money.

• Maintain counter-cyclical buffers (like MAS’s policy tools) to dampen boom-bust cycles.

• Enforce strict property lending and banking regulation to avoid credit excess.

Singapore's history of pre-emptive tightening (e.g. cooling property markets) is a model to stick to.

6. Avoid U.S.-Style Geopolitical Overreach

• One of the reasons the U.S. mismanaged its reserve status is imperial overreach: policing the world for dominance and to control the flow of resources by coercion rather than Commerce. This kind of overreach means neglecting its domestic base.

• Singapore must resist aligning too closely with any one great power and especially avoid militarising its regional role these two are not in contradiction necessarily.

So best to stay a neutral, rules-based trading hub, not a junior partner in someone else’s hegemonic rivalry.... and that's what Singapore is doing.

Conclusion

Singapore can enjoy the benefits of regional reserve currency status without the late-stage downsides seen in the U.S., if it avoids the traps of over-financialisation ie finance overtaking manufacturing as a percent of GDP), currency overvaluation (from trade deficits where foreign profits are invested in deep and safe Singapore assets) and especially avoid the intangible geopolitical hubris that makes you think you're always right and deaf to the criticism of others.

It should aim to be a stable, modest, industrial-financial hybrid, not a financialised empire. In short:

Stay small, stay smart, stay productive

That’s how Singapore could outlast the cycle that for America is ending in the fourth turning.

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PALESTINE - A GOVERNMENT IN EXILE IN ITS OWN COUNTRY

24 September 2025

Short polemical post on an absurd injustice created by colonial hypocrisy where land was promised by people who didn't own it and given or rather taken by another who weren't living rhere, without any regard for the native people who actually inhabited the region.

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A Government in Exile in Its Own Country

Recognition of Palestine by Britain, France and others has created one of the strangest paradoxes in modern politics. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is now the recognised government of Palestine. But in reality, Hamas controls Gaza, running the streets, the police, and the ministries with near 100% support from the citizens of this newly-created state.

Normally, a government-in-exile rules from abroad: the Free French in London, the Poles during the war, Tibet in India, the Kuomintang (Republic of China) in Formosa. 

But here is something new. Hamas is not abroad. It is on its own land and it holds territory, it commands loyalty and it exercises power, but it has no legitimacy in the eyes of the international system and is condemned as a terrorist state. 

And while the West recognises Palestine (rather late in the day) yet it still continues to supply arms to Palestine's adversary, bent on its destruction. That's rather more than irony, that is a cruel and murderous hypocrisy.

Meanwhile, the PA has the opposite problem: it enjoys recognition, has seats at the UN, and gets assistance from European chancelleries, but has little control or legitimacy on the ground.

This must be a first in world history:

- a government-in-exile that never left home

- a state that gets recognition from the West who nonetheless is focused on its destruction.

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Which of the following best sum up the situation?:

• “A land without a people for a people without a land".

• "A land promised by those who did not own it, to those who did not live in it, taken from those who inhabited it".

• Palestine today is ruled by a government with territory but no recognition, and another with recognition but no territory.

• With one hand they recognise Palestine and with the other they destroy it.

• A government in exile in its own country.

[End]

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1/3 TRIFFIN’S DILEMMA

24 September 2025

TRIFFIN’S DILEMMA

Contents

• Dollar as domestic currency vs dollar as global currency

• Triffin’s Dilemma

• Fiscal deficits

• Dollar Milkshake Theory

• Gold

• Liquidity vs credit vs capital

• Lessons from history

The Dollar Trap

Why America Can’t Stop Feeding the World with Its Own Debt

Let’s start with a simple observation: the dollar is both America’s national currency and the world’s reserve currency. That double role sounds glorious, but it is also the root cause of the mess we’re in today.

Back in 1944, at Bretton Woods, Keynes proposed a neutral global currency, the Bancor. America refused it. Fresh from the war, owning half the world’s gold and producing half its GDP, Washington seized the opportunity for global power and insisted on making the US dollar the centre of global trade. The dollar carried the glory, the prestige... and the burden.

America refused with good reason - after all, if the world adopted the bancor, it would mean the participating countries losing some of their sovereignty over monetary policy since they would have to adjust their currencies to trade imbalances. This would not just take away their sovereignty but would also - impractical terms - be a slow cumbersome bureaucratic and expensive new institution with all its rules.

So America rejected this suggestion for political economic and practical reasons and chose to insist on the dollar as the world’s reserve currency for the exorbitant priviledge of power it would give America over other nations.

However ...

Triffin’s Dilemma

Enter Robert Triffin, an economist writing in 1960. He spotted the contradiction.

For the world to have enough dollars for trade and reserves, America would have to run deficits, buying more from abroad than it sold, and issuing mountains of Treasuries for foreigners to hold. That supplied liquidity to the world, but gradually eviscerated America’s own economy.

Deficits mean debt

Debt means ever more borrowing.

And ever more borrowing ultimately undermines faith in the dollar itself.

It’s a treadmill: the US can’t stop running deficits without starving the world of dollars. But running deficits forever makes the whole system fragile.... look at where Britain finished in 1949, and America is following exactly the same path:

The Debt crisis that ended Great Britain's Empire

Dollars at Home, Dollars Abroad

Here’s the contradiction. When America spends more than it earns, it looks reckless at home — “fiscal irresponsibility”. Abroad, though, those deficits are welcomed, because they’re the only way the world gets the dollars it needs for trade, savings, and foreign reserves.

So every dollar of US debt is both:

• A domestic liability, and

• A global asset.

That’s the contradiction of being the issuer of the reserve currency.

Capital, Credit, Liquidity

It helps to distinguish three key items:

• Capital: the wealth itself - factories, land, savings.

• Credit: borrowed money - IOUs, loans, bonds.

• Liquidity: how quickly something can be turned into cash without materially affecting the open market price.

Most of what we call “money” today is really credit: promises to pay in the future. Gold is different. As J.P. Morgan said in 1912: “Gold is money. Everything else is credit”. With gold there’s no counterparty and so no counterparty risk

That’s why in ancient Rome, a senator’s fine toga cost about an ounce of gold - and today, a US senator’s fine suit costs the same. Gold has preserved value across two thousand years - it's the other credit Fiat currencies that have lost their purchasing power, their value.

The Dollar Milkshake

Now enter Brent Johnson’s colourful metaphor. Think of the global financial system as a milkshake that is full of capital, credit and liquidity. The straw is the US dollar.

When crisis hits, investors suck dollars out of the system:

• Because $13 trillion of offshore debts were borrowed in dollars and must be repaid in dollars

• Because US Treasuries are (were) the ultimate safe haven

• Because in panic, everyone wants what everyone else will accept.

This demand drives the dollar up, sometimes violently. The DXY index could soar to 120–122 ( it’s at 97 - 98 today). In that moment, even gold can collapse — sold off to raise dollars.

But that spike is unsustainable. Once the Fed intervenes by having to vastly expand the money supply M2 (with rate cuts, QE, debt monetisation, operation twist ...), trust in the dollar cracks, and investors switch to the one money with no counterparty risk: gold. That’s when gold rallies explosively.

So both arguments are right: the dollar soars first, then collapses — and gold wins in the end.

The Cost of Being the World’s Banker

Why does this matter now? Because America’s deficits are swelling and have been on and off since it abandoned the gold standard. Lawmakers don’t have to run deficits, but the system almost compels it:

• The world demands US treasuries

• Wall Street demands collateral for loans

• And politicians find deficits more palatable than tax hikes.

It works — until it doesn’t. Debt piles up, interest costs balloon, inequality widens, manufacturing shrinks, and American middle class voters feel poorer. The dollar’s glory abroad translates into populism at home.

The Lesson

Keynes foresaw the trap. Triffin diagnosed it. And today we live inside it.

The US dollar is a lifeline to international trade but at the same time, a time bomb:

• Lifeline, because the world runs on it

• Time bomb, because the very deficits that supply dollars abroad undermine the system’s foundations.

And as history shows, all empires eventually stumble and fall when their financial contradictions overwhelm them.

The toga, the suit, and the ounce of gold remind us that mere promises to pay are fragile. Money that stands on its own - gold - sees empires come and go.

Next: how to avoid Triffin's Dilemma - the case of Singapore.

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THE STATE OF THE EMPIRE

22 September 2025

This article discusses the increasingly strident communications across different media - independent media and more and more mainstream too - on the state of the The Western Alliance, or "The Empire" if you prefer, ie America, Europe, The West broadly and the UK specifically.

1. Economic Exhaustion

The system is showing its age. Debt piles grow ever higher, competitiveness drains away, growth is minimal and zero in real terms, inflation threatens, new technologies are emerging elsewhere. What was once a confident, industrial manufacturing economy now seems tired and sluggish, once foreigners bought up its assets to safely store their wealth - government and corporate bonds, equities, quality real estate - but now governments and investors are losing confidence in western economies and currencies. Meanwhile, other nations outside the West are coordinating and leaping forward.

2. Social Strain

Inequalities deepen. Ordinary people feel left behind. Neighbours are on the streets, either in protest or in poverty. Immigration adds further pressure, feeding the breakdown in cohesion and pushing voters into the arms of populist parties considered extreme by mainstream politicians. The social contract is fraying and near breaking point.

3. Political Instability

Leadership changes come thick and fast. Prime ministers come and go amongst derision from the people as they fail in their missions. Public trust ebbs away. And behind it all, financial markets - the “bond vigilantes” - dictate terms, forcing governments to cut and retrench. We wonder who is really in charge, who is pushing for war and preventing global issues from being resolved?

4. Geopolitical Weakness

Across the globe, Western nations and the Empire appear diminished. In Ukraine, a nuclear superpower checks the West's eastward  expansion, in the Middle East America and Israel cannot control the fires they have started, in East Asia America is considering advice to withdraw to the second island ring whilst simultaneously planning for a war over Taiwan in 2027. Meanwhile members of the global South / BRICS are working together on their futures. 

Globalisation is reversing, the West is withdrawing, abandoning efficiency and integration, looking instead for security and resilience at home. Across the Atlantic, Washington lords it over its allies, Britain humiliatingly obeys, a client state in all but name. The people know that their leaders no longer serve national interests. Across the Channel, the UK’s economic ties still bind it to Europe, yet it has no voice at the table.

5. The Loss of Liberty

Here lies the most bitter irony. As citizens grow restless, taking to the streets to voice their anger, governments respond with careless force. Police patrol not only public squares but the private spaces of digital life. Social media posts are monitored, words are policed, and freedoms once taken for granted are curbed in the name of order and security. The state strengthens itself while weakening the liberty of those it claims to protect. They seem pre-programmed, these LPMs - Large Policing Models - trained on decades of demonstrations since the 1960s. Case in point - these two young police women seem lifeless, inhuman, critically un self-aware robotic:

https://x.com/DonnaLouise1212/status/1969655755969347916

6. The Fourth Turning Mood

The result is a society adrift: tired in economy, divided in society, unstable in politics, in retreat abroad, and ever more heavy-handed at home. The rule of law is disrespected by governments themselves, institutions are creaking, trust collapsing. Citizens mock and despise those who rule them but who can no longer protect them. This is what Strauss and Howe called the Fourth Turning - a moment of reckoning when the old globalist order can no longer hold out against the demands of its citizens for national sovereignty and personal freedom - leaders who will defend our nation are identity and our culture.

7. How will it all end - Reform, Revolution or War

If the state is unable to reform itself to reflect changes in the world around it (there are multiple centres of power rising these days, you cannot wacamole them all, progress will be through negotiation abroad and respect for one's own citizens at home) then the citizens will eventually step in to remove them from power; or the risk is that the state puts its country and its citizens into war with its neighbours, to distract from the mess at home for which it is responsible but for which it is unable to execute a strategy of reform.

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OUR POLICE ARE CHECKING FACEBOOK ACCOUNTS FOR HATE SPEECH

19 September 2025

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/18/police-tell-cancer-patient-apologise-social-media-post/

How did we get to this point where our police are policing Facebook posts?

How We Got Here

It did not happen overnight. The policing of online posts is the result of long shifts in our politics, our economies, and technologies.

First came the rise of mass communication. From the printing press to television, each new medium expanded the reach of public opinion. With social media, the effect became exponential: billions of voices, instant reach, and no filter. Governments suddenly faced the problem of unrest moving at the speed of a click.

Second came the erosion of trust in institutions. Post-war prosperity gave way to oil shocks, de-industrialisation, and stagnanting wages (measured in purchasing power). Scandals - from Watergate to the banking crisis - chipped away at confidence. Citizens no longer trusted governments to be honest; governments no longer trusted citizens to be loyal.

Third came globalisation. Borders opened, industries relocated out, migration surged. Elites prospered while working families lost their well paid jobs in manufacturing, more and more struggled. People saw governments more responsive to "donors" and supranational bodies, than to voters. The gap between rulers and ruled widened.

Finally, came the security reflex. Since 9/11, states have framed speech itself as a threat: extremism, radicalisation, disinformation. Laws designed for safety crept into everyday life. What began as counter-terrorism has morphed into the policing of online words.

The answer, then, is clear. We got here because governments lost legitimacy and chose control instead of trust. Citizens, in turn, lost faith and took their protests to the streets - and now, even their posts are seen as dangerous.

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The Fourth Turning Context

History teaches that every few generations, societies face a crisis point. Old institutions lose legitimacy, citizens lose patience, and the social contract frays. Strauss and Howe called this the Fourth Turning: a period when the future cannot be built on the institutions of the past.

That is where we are today. The guarantees of republicanism, democracy, and checks and balances have thinned to shadows. Governments that once claimed to defend freedom now police speech. Citizens who once trusted in gradual reform now turn to the streets.

The danger is obvious: when rulers cling to control and people lose faith, societies tip toward rupture. Reform becomes unlikely, leaving only two doors open: revolution or war.

The choice, then, is stark. Either rebuild legitimacy by restoring trust, or face the consequences of its collapse. That is the lesson of history - and the meaning of our present Fourth Turning.

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WHAT SHOULD DEVELOPERS BE THINKING ABOUT IN THE AGE OF AI

19 September 2025

What Should Developers Be Thinking About in the Age of AI?

As tools like Replit, GitHub Copilot, and Cursor advance rapidly, writing code is becoming increasingly automated. These AI platforms can generate boilerplate, suggest completions, and scaffold entire applications. But if machines can write the code, what remains for human developers?

The answer: everything that matters most

Beyond Code: The New Developer Skillset

The developers who will thrive bring architectural thinking - making clean, scalable design decisions that serve long-term project health. They weigh tradeoffs between monolithic and microservice architectures, plan for extensibility, and spot performance issues before they emerge.

They also possess product sense. Great developers don't just deliver what's in the ticket - they challenge it. They understand users and the business needs, about UX, and help shape better features through collaboration with designers and stakeholders. AI can mock up a UI, but it can't feel user friction or spot dead ends in a user journey.

Where AI Falls Short

What strikes me most about AI's limitations is its inability to handle ongoing real-world complexity. Most systems aren't clean slates - they involve legacy APIs, undocumented logic, and client-specific workarounds. These messy, ambiguous environments are where experienced developers excel, making sense of contradictions and bringing order out of chaos.

AI also can't coordinate people and teams. It's an algorithm trained on past experiences, not a person who can prioritise, understand real-world needs, or manage collaboration across teams. There's always a veil of reality between you and The Computer.

The Human Advantage

A good development team isn't just typing code - they're translating messy, evolving business needs into elegant, scalable, secure, trustworthy systems. They build for failure with proper logging, tracing, and testing. They review code, mentor juniors, and make tough decisions calmly, often under pressure.

AI can assist with all this, but it can't replace the depth of thinking needed when quality directly affects user trust and long-term success - like scaling to a million users or iterating / continuous improvement based on real customer feedback.

The New Reality

If you picture software development as a high-rise building, AI has essentially emptied the first half-dozen floors of workers and given you a fast lift to the higher levels of thinking.

The future belongs to developers who embrace this shift - those who focus on architecture, product understanding, team leadership and personnel coordination, and navigating real-world complexity. Coding was always very intellectually demanding, stressful even. Deciding what to build, how to build it, getting everyone on board, and ensuring what's being built serves real users - that's the new frontier.

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BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE - EPSTEIN ISNT THERE

10 September 2025

Daily Telegraph, 10 September 2025

The Telegraph piece shows Epstein involved in a £1bn banking deal with Mandelson and JP Morgan, *after* his conviction. 

Far as I understand things, the law does not prevent convicted sex offenders from participating in business or lobbying (except if the conviction is directly linked to financial crime).

So what is so striking here is not the legality issue but the willingness of these very senior figures - Mandelson, Jes Staley, JP Morgan - to continue to deal with Epstein after his conviction. I mean, normally reputational risk alone would surely make politicians and bankers run a mile. It's incomprehensible.

So this fits in with the theory I've held from the beginning. He wasn’t a financial genius, just a conduit, a fixer, a useful idiot, someone useful to very powerful people. 

He organised sex parties along the way, but really he wasn't bringing people together for that - his main job was a conduit bringing together people from western intelligence services for special ops. 

This is how he became a billionaire on paper at least: the payments made and received for many special ops services went through his account. His own background would have given no clues to his brilliant career to come. 

The sex scandals may have been real, but they are a diversion. The real story is how politics, finance, and intelligence networks will linked through Epstein and his account, has told him it's Daily Telegraph article, and this is the reason for the cover up.

This explains the otherwise incomprehensible: how a man with no academic brilliance and no clear career track could broker billion-pound banking deals with ministers and Wall Street executives even after being convicted.

It's the usual old shell game on a street corner, the Epstein scandal makes you guess under the wrong cup. The sex is the show while the pea is the power and the real purpose.

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THREE PROBLEMS HAUNTING THE WEST

6 September 2025

The root causes of our end of empire and civilisational decline.

The West faces a three-cornered crisis: an economy hollowed out by globalism and consumption, societies strained by mass immigration, and sovereignty eroded through vassalisation and endless foreign wars. 

These are not isolated issues but parts of the same “three-cornered hat” - distinct yet inseparable, and together they define our decline. Strategy begins with diagnosis, and we need to face these three root causes if our strategy for renewal is to succeed.

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Strategic Logic and the Three-Cornered Hat

1. Introduction

• Strategy, in its simplest sense, is how you best use your resources to move from where you are to where you want to be
• That’s all it is. A roadmap. A bridge. A way forward. A program of works.
• Maganomics is one example Maganomics is an attempt at strategy on a grand scale
• But before you can decide where you want to go, you must first know where you are, and diagnose the problems.

Diagnosis before direction: you can’t have strategy without first knowing your condition.

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2. The Three-Cornered Hat

• A good place to start to design the new system is to make a problems / requirements list
• If we do the same with the West today, we can sort our problems into three groups
• It’s like a three-cornered hat: three distinct points, but one hat.

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3. Corner One - Economic Transformation

• We changed our economic model. We opened our markets. The globalists took over
• We outsourced manufacturing and jobs down long supply chains
• In return, we filled our supermarkets with cheap goods
• Instead of production and hard work, we built an economy of consumption and entitlement
• Foreign companies (China) worked for us, their economies became export-led, they lent us their profits so we could keep afloat our hedonistic lifestyle.

We are a consumption economy, living a relative high life on debt, the work of others abroad and subsidies at home.

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4. Corner Two - Mass Immigration

• Globalisation means open borders
• Along with goods and capital, we accepted people - by the plane load, by the boat load
• We lost high-value manufacturing jobs, and gained low-skilled workers, suited to what work was left, the Macdo economy for most
• Wages failed to keep up with inflation. GDP per capita fell. Pressure on housing, health, and welfare mounted. The economy - inflation, employment - began to fail. Inequality and resentment is on the rise. Peoples take to the streets in protest at global injustice and the failures of the state at home
• The state responds by stepping in with heavy boots: curbing speech, restricting assembly, banning some flags, censoring... infringing the liberties we had fought for since Magna Carta.

In the name of public order, freedom is sacrificed.

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5. Corner Three - Loss of Agency, Vassalisation, Imperial Overstretch

• The UK has lost its agency in the world. Sovereignty has been slipping away.
• We escaped the yoke of Brussels, but we have fallen under the wheels of Washington.
• Dependency - on America's middle class export market, on America's NATO defense provision for Europe - brings entanglement: endless forever wars fought for strategic agendas not our own, tythe obligations
• Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, each war drains our treasury, divides our people, and locks us deeper into dependency and the Emoites enemies into misery and death
• Historians call this imperial overstretch: when an empire extends itself militarily beyond its economic and social capacity
• Britain once ruled half the world. Now it joins wars designed in Washington, but paid for in London, Paris, and Berlin.
• A vassal state fights vassal wars, while its own foundations crumble.

Imperial overstretch destroys empires... and their satellites.

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6. Conclusion

• Strategy begins with diagnosis.
• And the diagnosis is stark: economic hollowing, mass immigration, loss of sovereignty.
• Three corners, one hat.
• Until these problems are faced honestly, no strategy - Maganomics or otherwise - can hope to succeed.

Three corners, one hat: economic, social and geopolitical

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