Editor’s Note: I do not agree with the anti-American tone of this article by Jeff Thomas, but I cannot argue that he’s wrong. The analysis is mostly accurate even if the sentiment is far too negative. But then again, perhaps the arrogance and “too big to fail” mentality of our government driven by Deep State goals really has brought this great nation to a point that a turnaround is unlikely. It’s a sobering notion. Here’s Thomas…
(International Man)—We’ve grown accustomed to regarding the US as the most powerful country on earth.
Since the end of World War II, it’s been the economic powerhouse that’s dictated terms to the rest of the world. War production created the world’s most modern factories, allowing for a postwar boom in manufacturing goods of every description. The fact that the US held two-thirds of the world’s gold by the end of the war enabled it to dictate that the US dollar would be the default currency for trade.
And later on, the creation of OPEC ensured that all gas and oil would be settled in the petrodollar.
The resultant overwhelming economic power enabled the US to assume the role of the world’s policeman, with a defense budget that equaled that of the next ten most powerful countries combined.
But all that power led the leaders of the US empire to assume that it was omnipotent. In 1971, they went off the gold standard, and over the ensuing decades, the US went from being the world’s largest creditor nation to its largest debtor nation.
The US can no longer produce goods, as its ever-increasing union labour costs have priced it out of the market, even for local consumption. It’s now dependent upon China, Mexico, and other countries for virtually all goods. And yet, the US is threatening those countries with controls.
With help from the FATF and OECD, the US has become an economic ball and chain to the economies of the First World and, to a lesser extent, beyond.
The US is now a hollowed-out empire. By any measure, it’s a goliath that’s likely to fall in the near future.
But recently, the above conditions have been exacerbated to a degree that’s unprecedented in the post-war world.
In March of 2021, the US made the fatal mistake of confiscating privately-held assets of the Russian people. Although this was seen by Americans as just punishment for Russia’s invasion of the Donbas, the rest of the world saw it differently. The leaders of even small countries took note, realizing that the rulebook had just been tossed out the window. If the US could seize foreign privately-owned assets in Russia… they could do it anywhere.
Although almost no one in the US noticed it at the time, more than two-thirds of the world’s countries quietly began to create treaties with China and Russia – seeking to build a new alternative to the robber empire. Although this still appears to be insignificant to Americans, the change has taken place quickly and substantially. Scores of new treaties are now in place, and more are on the way. The world is now “rent in twain.”
Saudi Arabia moved decisively to shift its loyalty to China, along with other OPEC nations, assuring that the petrodollar will soon be no more.
New treaties have been inked to allow the world’s countries to trade in their own countries, bypassing the dollar, assuring that the US dollar as the reserve currency is also on its way out.
An entirely new global paradigm is underway – one that’s not even on the news in the US. Americans are blissfully unaware that their country is now a house of cards, looking for a strong wind.
That strong wind has come up in the Middle East in the form of a war that promises to break the bank of the US. The US pours $830 billion into the Military Industrial Complex annually for weaponry that has been outmoded, in some cases, for decades, while other powers have continued to advance and, today, far outweigh the US militarily.
Add to this the astonishing stupidity of American leaders to choose this time to emasculate their own military. (No matter how supportive a country may be of gay rights, a de-emphasis on masculinity in the armed forces creates a military that no red-blooded man wants to be a part of. The US armed forces are gutted.
Be assured: this is not simply a country experiencing a downturn. It’s an empire in its death throes.
To wit:
- The most prosperous cities in America are in dramatic decline. Downtown areas are filled with the homeless and the drug-addicted.
- Those who loot stores are not prosecuted, leading to a crime epidemic that’s closing entire blocks of previously-successful shops.
- Entire downtown areas are unable to support commerce, leading to an emptying out of cities.
- Banks are laying off tens of thousands of staff.
- Competent workers cannot be found. They may have credentials but can’t finish tasks. They maximise sick days and otherwise fail to show up for work.
- Simple business tasks fail to be performed. Deadlines can’t be met. Retiring older workers cannot be replaced with motivated replacements.
- Businesses are chronically understaffed – restaurants cannot serve customers; mechanics leave cars unrepaired; trash isn’t removed; flights are cancelled due to airline staff failing to turn up.
- Most countries recovered from lockdown mode, but in the US, literally millions of people have chosen not to return to the workplace.
Elsewhere in the world, the opposite is occurring. In Asia, in particular, there’s tremendous enthusiasm for new growth. New businesses are being created. Even in “communist” countries like Vietnam, it’s possible to stand on a street corner and see countless peasants setting up shop on the pavement each day: capitalism in the making.
None of this is a random occurrence. Countries have a life cycle. Empires have a life cycle.
The level of prosperity a country achieves at its height is directly proportional to the severity of its eventual collapse.
The First World, particularly the US, is indeed running on empty and can be expected to go down, literally, in flames. From inside the US, it’s difficult to understand that the remainder of the world began its consolidation and rise eighteen months ago and that the new dominant power is rising rapidly. The non-First world recognizes that this is not the end of the world but a global shift in predominance.
We’re presently witnessing the early stages of the collapse of the world’s greatest empire. That’s difficult to even conceive of, let alone picture. Yet, the early events are unfolding and are in evidence before us. If we bother to read the tea leaves, we’ll see that the larger events are about to play out. It’s entirely possible that, by 2030, we’ll be watching the dust settle on the past empire.
But history advises us that dying empires do not go quietly. In every case, they attempt to hold onto their dying power through warfare. If no war is needed, one is invented. The excuse for the war is unimportant. What matters is that there is conflict sufficient enough to subjugate the people of the empire into sacrificing their rights in favour of their country in its hour of need.
And it’s also true that even a dying power can do massive damage on its way out.
Whether the reader lives in the US, another First World nation, or an outlying nation that’s likely to be less affected by the unfolding conflict, it would be wise to distance oneself from the fray.
A dying lion is a dangerous beast.
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- 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.
The editor is confusing “Anti-American Tone” with TRUTH.
EXACTLY!! The editor would be well advised to peruse the declassified meeting minutes between Nixon/Kissinger and Mao Zedong/Zhou Enlai (National Archives) during their get–togethers in China in the early 1970s when Nixon and Kissinger flew there on Air Force One, accompanied by their master, David Rockefeller, who did the deal with the Bank of China, establishing a partnership between them and Chase Bank (today JPMorganChase)! This deal was to control the macro labor/capital markets be leading the planet as the two eventual top economies — supposedly China is #2, but in reality they are either tied with Japan or ranked below Japan by true economic measures!
David Rockefeller later gushed and gushed and gushed about Mao’s bloody Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976) and the Rockefeller Plan (eventually forming a Chimerica to lead to a totalitarian world order, pretty much the case today) was rebranded as The Great Reset! Nixon’s mission, stymied by the clever presidential win by JFK in 1960 so the bankers would have to wait 13 more years, was to usher in that deal for the Rockefeller brothers and Wall Street, which he did★, along with moving the USD from the gold standard to the oil/energy standard and when that happened the oil embargoes took place, pumping up the price of oil (of course) and Nixon established the EPA, ostensibly to get along, but in actuality the actions by the EPA would further work in raising energy prices!
★ Nixon had promised Mao to withdraw ALL US military presence from Asia by the end of his second term, which he never completed, of course, as he was Watergated – the actual reality was that both the few good guys or patriots still at the CIA were gunning for Nixon for that reason, and the bad guys, or Rockefeller minions were also gunning for Nixon as they never intended Nxon to honor that deal – only former NIS officer (today the NCIS) Bob Woodward, or Kissinger, actually qualified as “Deep Throat” — the sham “Deep Throat” Felt was just that, a sham! (Matt Pottinger’s daddy was the first to suggest or “leak” Mark Felt as “Deep Throat” and what was Pottinger’s first action when he left the Trump Administration? Pottinger joined the Bilderberg Group, which originally gave the world the WEF, the World Economic Forum)!
The great socioeconomic anthropologist, Joseph Tainter, in one of his papers gives a short and concise economic explanation for the Fall of the Roman Empire (sure to annoy Gibbons fans) — while a bit boring to listen to, Prof. Tainter is a brilliant guy and he cut to the chase and as we still see today, it is always about ” following the money”!
I have been watching the dumb shirt (- the R) the U.S. has been doing for over 50 years and expecting a crash anytime. Maybe this is it. I can’t say that I have ever seen so much turmoil all at one time. If I were king, I would fix some of it but, alas, I am fodder for those in power.