(The Economic Collapse Blog)—All over the globe, the digital control grid that we are all living in just continues to get even tighter. They are using facial recognition technology to scan our faces, they are using license plate readers to track where we travel, they are systematically monitoring the conversations that we are having on our phones, and they are watching literally everything that we post on social media. At this stage, many of us just assume that nothing that we do or say is ever truly private. We really do live in a “Big Brother society”, and the potential for tyranny is off the charts. In fact, people are already getting arrested for “thought crimes” all over the world. If we do not take a stand now, someday soon we could wake up in a world where there is essentially no freedom left at all.
The exponential growth of AI technology is allowing authorities to watch, track, monitor and control us like never before. If you are not alarmed by this, you might want to check if you are still alive. The following are 11 signs that our world is rapidly becoming a lot more Orwellian…
#1 UK authorities are rolling out “a country-wide facial recognition system” that will use AI facial recognition cameras to watch the entire population…
On Thursday, officials in the UK pledged to roll out a country-wide facial recognition system to help police track down criminals. The country’s ministers have launched a 10-week consultation to analyze the regulatory and privacy framework of their AI-powered surveillance panopticon — but one way or another, the all-seeing eye is on its way.
There’s just one tiny wrinkle: the AI facial recognition cameras have a tendency to misidentify non-white people.
New reporting by The Guardian notes that testing of the AI tech conducted by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) found that it‘s “more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results” — specifically Black and Asian people.
#2 Of course the control freaks in the UK also monitor everything that gets posted on social media. One British man recently found this out the hard way when he was arrested for posing with a legally-owned gun in the United States…
A Yorkshire man was arrested over a photo he posted on social media featuring him holding a legally owned gun in the US.
Jon Richelieu-Booth posted a photo of himself in August holding a gun on LinkedIn while he was on a holiday in Florida.
He said he held the firearm lawfully, on private land and with full permission from its owner.
#3 If you do not believe that “thought crime” is real, just consider this next example. 11 police officers recently barged in and arrested a 34-year-old woman that was sitting naked in her own bathtub because she used offensive words while texting another woman on her phone…
The United Kingdom has become an authoritarian nightmare, and the United States must remain vigilant if it does not want to go down the same course.
Elizabeth Kinney, a 34-year-old care assistant, was naked in the bathtub when 11 police officers barged into her home to arrest her.
Her crime was sending insults to another woman via text.
How would you feel if 11 police officers were staring at you while you were naked?
As she was being informed that she had engaged in “malicious communications”, tears started flowing from Kinney’s eyes…
Kinney burst into tears as male officers denied her any privacy, and a female officer informed her that she was being arrested for “malicious communications and hate crime.” “The Crown place this offense in the highest category of its type due to the effect related to sexual orientation and the greater harm because it had moderate impact,” prosecutors insisted. Kinney faced ten years in prison, but her attorney begged for leniency. She has been ordered to perform seventy-two hours of community service, attend ten days of rehabilitation, and pay a fine of several hundred pounds.
#4 French President Emmanuel Macron wants the power to determine which media outlets will be allowed to speak to the public and which media outlets will be silenced…
Macron has in the last weeks intensified warnings on the risks of disinformation, on Friday calling for changes to French legislation that would allow “false information” online to be urgently blocked.
He has also called for “professional certification” of outlets to distinguish sites and networks that provide reliable information according to ethical rules from others that do not.
But at the weekend, the Journal du Dimanche Sunday newspaper, part of the influential media stable of right-wing tycoon Vincent Bollore, accused Macron in a front-page story of a “totalitarian drift” on the issue.
#5 Because he is a champion of free speech, the EU has been coming after Elon Musk for years. So it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the European Commission just fined his company 140 million dollars for supposed violations of the Digital Services Act…
The European Commission has issued a $140 million fine to Elon Musk’s X for violating the EU’s controversial Digital Services Act (DSA). The fine is likely to escalate tensions between the EU and America over free speech online.
Bloomberg reports that the European Commission has imposed a €120 million ($140 million) fine on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, for breaching the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). This marks the first penalty issued under the new censorship law, which aims to regulate online platforms and “protect” users from illegal content and disinformation.
#6 In recent years, we have seen so many controversial voices suddenly have their bank accounts shut down. Shockingly, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is now publicly admitting that his company does “debank” people…
As JPMorgan Chase Bank is under investigation by the state of Florida for alleged coordination with the Biden Department of Justice and Operation Arctic Frost, the chairman of the company is admitting to debanking certain customers, but says it has nothing to do with their political or religious affiliations.
“We do debank them,” said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon who appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox News Channel.
“People have to grow up here and stop making up things and stuff like that. I can’t talk about an individual account.
#7 India wants to require that phone location services are always on so that the government can track people through their phones wherever they go…
You know what they say: If at first you don’t succeed at mass government surveillance, try, try again. Only two days after India backpedaled on its plan to force smartphone makers to preinstall a state-run “cybersecurity” app, Reuters reports that the country is back at it. It’s said to be considering a telecom industry proposal with another draconian requirement. This one would require smartphone makers to enable always-on satellite-based location tracking (Assisted GPS).
The measure would require location services to remain on at all times, with no option to switch them off. The telecom industry also wants phone makers to disable notifications that alert users when their carriers have accessed their location. According to Reuters, India’s home ministry was set to meet with smartphone industry executives on Friday, but the meeting was postponed.
#8 A journalist in the Netherlands has tested AI-powered glasses “that can instantly identify strangers on the street”…
A Dutch journalist just tested a pair of AI-powered glasses that can instantly identify strangers on the street.
No government database. No police system. Just public data and off-the-shelf AI.
You look at someone and in seconds, their name, LinkedIn, and background appear before your eyes.
The scariest part? You can’t really stop it.
You can ban it, regulate it, add blinking red lights… but once tech like this exists, someone will always find a way to use it.
Once these sorts of devices become widely available, there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
#9 A nationwide digital ID is being introduced in the UK, and soon you will not be able to get a new job without one…
Once introduced, digital ID will be used to verify a person’s right to live and work in the UK.
It will take the form of an app-based system, stored on smartphones in a similar way to the NHS App or digital bank cards.
The ID will include information on the holders’ residency status, name, date of birth, nationality and their photo.
When he first announced the scheme, Sir Keir said: “You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It’s as simple as that.”
#10 The digital ID program in France “is moving from pilot to scale”…
France’s national digital identity app, France Identité, has enabled the creation of more than 3.2 million digital IDs, according to new figures.
Among these, approximately 525,000 identities have been fully certified, meaning that users have completed an in-person verification process at their local town halls. This means that more than half a million French digital IDs are ready for the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet, according to Joerg Lenz, head of marketing at Namirial Group.
“France Identité is moving from pilot to scale,” Lenz wrote on LinkedIn, following the TRUSTECH Event held in Paris on Wednesday.
#11 In Illinois, there is such overwhelming demand for digital IDs that some people are being forced to wait…
Mobile IDs became available in Illinois on Wednesday, but due to the high demand, some residents are finding themselves waiting a little bit longer.
A number of residents trying to download the digital ID to their Apple wallet received the following message: “Due to the high volume, your state’s service is currently busy.”
Users can then answer the question, “Do you want to be notified when it becomes available?”
This is where the entire world is heading.
As the Big Brother control grid gets tighter and tighter, the stage is being set for unprecedented tyranny on a global scale.
Tyrants of the past could only dream of having the sort of AI-powered tools that we possess today.
If you do not submit to the digital gulag that is being constructed all around us, eventually you may not be able to buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without proper digital identification.
What would you do then?
You might want to start thinking about that, because things are only going to get crazier from here.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
- Hand-curated links from conservative and Christian sites — NO legacy media garbage links. Patriots get their news every day at JDRucker.com
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
You can’t talk about that! Especially white people. So paranoid, so racist./sarc
The problem is the mouth of the politician linked to their n’Farcers. The police, who should have NEVER went to arrest that woman in the bathtub. They should have denied that order from mentally ill people. This means the police cannot be trusted and that means you are on your own in EU. Good luck….
On a brighter note, I place full trust in the history of humankind. When pushed, poked, beaten, arrested, imprisoned, murdered … all in the name of the tyrannical regime – the masses WILL rise up and brutally eradicate all those affiliated with the tyranny. The carnage will be a beautiful thing to behold. It always is.
Roll out the guillotines en masse. They will busy soon enough
The irony is hilarious. 👏🏻🤣😂
Women ALWAYS vote for big daddy government. Now, you have it. 😂
Women in politics is ALWAYS a disaster.
Repeal the 19th amendment before it’s too late for America.
Police in UK know they won’t encounter armed citizens in their homes. NOT a coincidence.
The 1st Amendment is enforced by the 2nd Amendment.