These days it seems all quiet on the West Asian front. Just the quiet, ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and the usual affronts. However, if you look at a map, the White Empire is getting choked out, and if you look at their markets, it's starting to hurt.

The Empire has lost control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran and now the Bab el-Mandeb to Yemen. This is America's equivalent of Britain's Suez Crisis, it marks the nadir of their power and their collapse as an imperial power. You can already see the imps cowering and running for cover. The South Korean stock market has collapsed and the Japanese yen has to be stabilized with euros. None of this will hold, none of this can hold, without holding onto the trade routes, which the Empire cannot hold. America is returning to its natural position, 10,000 kilometers away, with nothing to do with it. It's taking time, but look, it's already begun. The quiet is the storm.

Bab el-Mandeb

The Strait of Hormuz is where a lot of stuff comes from, but through the Bab el-Mandeb is where even more stuff must go. Iran took the Strait of Hormuz months ago and has imposed a new security architecture on the region, which they marked by breaking the siege on Yemen, imposed by the American proxy, the Saudis. The Saudis harried the civilian planes Iran was sending, and in response to that Yemen retaliated in force.

Yemen has imposed a maritime blockade on the Saudis since July 22nd. As of August 5th, they have targeted eight tankers and turned back 29 (see Yayha Saree, who's never lied to me). Saree has called this 'a blockade for a blockade' and a 'siege for a siege'. After decades of starving and attacking Yemen, you can't say that the Saudis don't deserve it. And now the pressure on the White Empire behind them has been doubled.

Yemen hit Aramco facilities in Jazan and Yanbu, taking Jazan (and 400,000 barrels per day) offline entirely. The Saudis say they're going to 'tentatively' reopen by August 15th, with Oil Price saying "Tentatively is doing some fairly heroic work there." Saudis, of course, are anything but heroic and are trying to blame (and bomb Iraq) to save face. Meanwhile, they're using proxies on the ground to attack Yemen, which is not going well. Saree reports "the death and injury of hundreds of Saudi mercenaries."

When your proxy needs a proxy, and they get sent back in boxes, things are not going well. Things are not going well for the White Empire here. After losing the Persian Gulf, they have retreated to the Red Sea, where Yemen already defeated them. The Empire has been surviving by the grace of China, really, and also by pipelines and shipping through the Red Sea. But now Yemen has cut off their retreat.

The Persian Gulf

What are they retreating from? The Persian Gulf, where they took a beating and lost all their bases. Before the war they started, the United States controlled the Persian Gulf by default. They always knew that their Gulf bases were indefensible in the case of hot war with Iran, but the status quo held as long as America didn't go to war with Iran. But that's over now, as is their control of the Persian Gulf. We are witnessing a process that Amerikanets calls 'debasification'. Distant America held the water of Hormuz because they held land tribute from satraps like Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait, but now that's all gone.

The US Fifth Fleet was based in Bahrain, but they withdrew all vessels in February and, chaotically, at least 1,500 colonizers shortly afterwards. Now they're back in Tampa, Florida where they belong (until land back, inshallah). This debasification has happened all across the region. As American state media reports, "there have been evacuations at other U.S. military bases in the region, though the exact details are unknown at this point." What is, increasingly, known is the satellite footage. These bases are blown.

As predicted in their own report, called the 'tyranny of geography', Iran is just too powerful in Iran. The indefensible White line across the Persian Gulf has been rolled back, and even their retreat to Jordan and Saudi has been cut off. None of these bases are safe, and Iran is increasingly targeting troop barracks to make the message plain. As Nasrallah said, when American troops enter vertically and horizontally, the Americans will leave the region, and then they may not even have to take Jerusalem, inshallah.

I return to the geographical point, which is that the United States is 10,000 kilometers away on another continent and has no business in the Middle East, or even in America, honestly. America can only stand athwart geography yelling 'stop!' if it has a foothold, and now it does not. Just two feet in the ass, showing it the way out.

The Map

Let's look at the map again, but differently. This is a Spilhaus projection which is fun because it turns the world into a Mediterranean world. You can see the world as one big ocean with land on the sides, which is kinda true, especially if you're a boat. As a boat sees it, the ocean is really one big road going from Panama to Malacca, with a toll booth in the middle (east).

As Port Economics, Management and Policy puts it, "the configuration of the global maritime shipping system is relatively simple. The central axis is a circum-equatorial corridor linking North America, Europe, and Pacific Asia through the Suez Canal, the Strait of Malacca, and the Panama Canal."

The Suez Canal is the choke point that broke the British Empire and the Bab el-Mandeb/Strait of Hormuz is the same choke point moved over. This is what breaks the American Empire now (it's all one White Empire to us on the bottom). 'Americans' will be like 'we don't need the Middle East, we've got our own genocided continent, we're just genociding abroad recreationally.' Which is true. America can survive without this shipping lane, but American Empire cannot. And in that Empire is where they're feeling the pain.

The Imps of Imperialism

White Empire has always been a financial proposition, the wallet is the only place they feel anything. After World War II, America inherited the empire from Britain, with occupied Europe and Japan as spoils of war. It still holds European euros and Japanese yen on its books as, effectively, stabilizers.

But now we are describing the point described by Marx in relation to Britain/India, but it applies as well to America and its conquered territory in Europe and Japan. He said, "These systems have in common the relinquishment, by the native States of the right to self-defence [NATO], of maintaining diplomatic relations, and of settling the disputes among themselves without the interference of the Governor-General. All of them have to pay a tribute, either in hard cash, or in a contigent of armed forces, commanded by British officers." Does this not describe the situation of Europe, Japan, and South Korea? It's the same phenomenon, it's one White Empire, as I keep going on and on. As Marx said,"'It was,' says an English writer, 'a system of fattening allies, as we fatten oxen, till they were worthy of being devoured.'"

That is what's happening now. As pressure from the choking in the Middle East builds up, 'America's' is using its colonies to delay consequences. The US Treasury is selling euros to buy yen. But they cannot avoid consequences, only delay them. They're robbing Peter to pay Paul.

America is doing a 'joint intervention' in the yen, pretending both that Japan is a real country and that this isn't just market manipulation. They're doing this because Japan would otherwise sell US Treasuries and impact them. So they're dumping euros instead. They're jumping from one colonial foot to another, while the ground is shifting beneath them.

The man doing this certainly knows something about currency manipulation. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was George Soros's hatchet man, tanking various currencies, from Asia to Great Britain. Putting him in charge is like appointing an Al-Qaeda guy as a flight attendant, I don't think he can help himself. He might pretend to fly for a while, but he's going to crash the whole thing. Bessent described the recent joint manipulation, saying,

Intervention is a signaling mechanism. And the US wanted to signal that we have confidence in the Japanese policies so we will need to see follow through from the Japanese policies. But I do believe that part of the inflation uptick in Japan was a result of the weak yen and also the energy prices. I think we will get to the other side of the Iranian conflict, energy will come down, and then as we no longer have excess yen weakness, that that will also contribute to inflation coming down and that Japan and the yen can go into a virtuous cycle.

The yen, of course, has only been trending upwards, the country is, on average, 400 years old and has -3 children, there is no virtuous economic cycle incoming. And Japan, of course, has no real policy control. It's a colony, America made them seppuku their economy in the Plaza Accords. There was nothing they could do about it then and there's nothing they're going to do now. Japan is just downstream of America's misadventures in the Middle East and they'll be first to drown. The crash has already come to South Korea, their stock market is down over a third, but it's the same imperial bubble.

Bessent talks about this being a temporary intervention like Trump talked about Iran being a temporary war. It's nothing of the sort. There is no 'other side' of the Iranian conflict in sight and the pressure building up will hit the imperial core soon. For many people, it has hit them already. A lot of signals are flashing like 1929, and a Greatest Depression is incoming. You can look at the relative quiet on the homefront and think that they have somehow avoided consequences but the quiet is the storm. They have lost the map, they are losing the markets and soon – though not soon enough for the people of Palestine – they will reap the whirlwind.