I read an essay this morning about the end of the American-led world. Its argument stayed with me because it gave a larger shape to things that can look like separate stories in the news: tariffs, hostility to immigration, demands to bring factories home, arguments over energy, rearmament and the growing distrust between allies.

In 2023, Germany’s GDP contracted by 0.9%. In 2024 it contracted by 0.5% and barely grew in 2025 when GDP expanded by 0.2%. The German economy has spent three years in contraction and stagnation.

Saturday. 28 February 2026. It was Ramadan and the start of an ordinary school day in Mināb. Clear skies. Boys and girls made their way to school.

OPEC+ can raise oil quotas, but it cannot reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump, Iran, war and shipping routes determine whether oil reaches households—and at what price across the world.

SpaceX’s own filings reveal a private company deeply embedded in US military, intelligence and government infrastructure through satellite launches, secure communications, surveillance, sensing, targeting and long-term public contracts and programmes.

On Thursday, 6 August, about 911.5 million SpaceX shares held by employees and early investors will become eligible for sale.

America's war with Iran has evolved into a struggle over energy control. This essay examines Hormuz, sanctions, pipelines and how power comes from shaping global oil flows, not ownership alone.

Bernie Sanders wants Americans to own half of major AI companies, but global knowledge complicates national claims and raises deeper questions about ownership, public wealth, borders, and power in technology.

Argentina can raise up to $2 billion from commercial banks through World Bank and MIGA guarantees, lowering near-term costs while leaving the country responsible for repaying the debt over time.

Countries can work with a president they dislike. They cannot organise defence, trade, finance and diplomacy around a government whose commitments may change without warning.

AI draws on centuries of global knowledge, yet American firms and politicians treat its wealth as a national asset, leaving most of humanity outside the settlement they invoke for themselves.

Argentina paid its foreign bondholders without issuing new debt abroad, but the government still relies on loans, local bonds and asset sales to meet larger bills due in 2027 alone.

The EU’s proposed sanctions list brings asset freezes and travel bans into migration control, extending state power across banks and borders before courts have tested the evidence against named suspects.

An elderly priest’s arrest exposed a power long embedded in British law. The statute remained unchanged. Only the decision to use it shifted, redrawing the boundary between protest and terrorism.

America’s 250th anniversary speech shows how old anti-communist language can return to public life, narrowing political disagreement and turning opponents into internal enemies.

Iran’s state funeral for Ayatollah Khamenei reveals how political power uses ritual, mourning, and public ceremony to project continuity, legitimacy, and authority after war, succession, and uncertainty.

A Federal Reserve wealth chart shows the bottom half of America almost disappearing, not because the economy failed to grow, but because ownership concentrated as growth expanded over recent decades.

A note on Gaza, shelter, and the politics of blocked materials, where clay, rubble, ash, and glass show what it means to live below the level of infrastructure.

America’s weak center is giving way to energized populist edges, as Trump nationalism and Mamdani-style left politics expose a deeper collapse of trust in the old political machinery.

Drone strikes and U.S. retaliation expose how the Strait of Hormuz’s reopening did not restore normal shipping; it created contested passage, reshaping shipping risks, geopolitical power, and global oil security.