Category: World

South America / United States / Venezuela

 by Jaffa Levy

After Maduro’s capture, the U.S. tightens what officials call an “oil blockade” and Venezuela’s poor take the first blow

Venezuela is poor because sanctions and enforcement fear strip oil revenue and choke finance. After Nicolás Maduro’s capture, that squeeze has tightened. Tankers hesitate, insurers retreat, payments jam, and crude backs up into storage until output is cut. Ports stay open, yet trade slows to a crawl. Humanitarian exemptions exist on paper, but banks often refuse the transactions. Venezuela’s poor take the first hit.

South America / United States / Venezuela

 by Jaffa Levy

Venezuela Under Siege After Maduro Capture Claim: Why Washington Saying It Will Run Things Is the Real Escalation

Venezuela under siege after the Maduro capture claim is not just a military story. It is a governance problem. Washington says it will run things, yet Caracas institutions appear intact and defiant. This briefing maps what control would actually require, why decapitation was a gamble, and what the next seventy two hours reveal about occupation, proxy rule, or stalemate.

South America / Venezuela

 by Jaffa Levy

If Law Dies in Caracas, Maduro’s Capture Will Have Broken the Post War Order

The United States claims it has seized Venezuela’s president by force. If true, this is not merely a crisis in Caracas but a rupture in international law itself. When powerful states abduct the leaders of weaker ones, sovereignty becomes optional and rules collapse into permission. What happens next will decide whether law still restrains power or whether force has replaced it.

Defence / Europe / Russia / Ukraine / United States

 by Jaffa Levy

Ukraine in 2026: Is the War Entering Its Endgame

As 2026 opens, the war in Ukraine is no longer defined by headlines or symbolic victories. It is being shaped by attrition on the battlefield, mounting financial strain in Europe, and institutional contradictions in the West. This long read examines how those pressures are converging — and whether they point toward an endgame, or a more dangerous phase ahead.

France / Economics / World

 by Jaffa Levy

The Year 2026 Began in Paris With Exhaustion, Not Celebration

Paris on New Year 2026 did not feel like revolution. It felt like the precondition for it: exhaustion mixed with contempt, and a growing conviction that the centre cannot hold. From one Paris living room, a blunt forecast emerges: welfare promises collide with war spending, industry with energy reality, sovereignty with American dependence, and fear replaces consent as Europe’s governing tool.

United States / Opinion

 by Jaffa Levy

Mamdani Takes Office with One Promise: Make New York Livable Again

Zohran Mamdani began his mayoralty just after midnight in the old City Hall subway station, tying his first act of power to the systems New Yorkers rely on. The ceremony was short. The mandate is not. He has staked legitimacy on affordability measured in outcomes, not speeches: rents, childcare access, commute costs, staffing, and civic trust. Delivery will decide everything.

Finance / Britain / Economics

 by Jaffa Levy

London Is Becoming an Industrial Disassembly Market and 2026 Will Accelerate It

London is quietly rewarding a single move: simplify, sell, and pay out. Smiths and DCC show how activists, buybacks, and private buyers turn “unlocking value” into a repeatable script. The result is not just fewer conglomerates. It is a shift in where complex industrial capacity sits, who governs it, and how long term investment survives when public markets punish complexity.

Economics / Britain / Finance

 by Jaffa Levy

Britain’s Pressure Economy: Why 2026 Will Test Housing, Bills, and Social Order

Britain is not heading for sudden collapse, but for something more dangerous: a steady mismatch between wages, housing costs, and bills. This companion analysis tracks twelve concrete indicators shaping the pressure economy beneath policing and payment systems. By 2026, the risk is not chaos, but a country where arrears, eviction, and enforcement become everyday features of life.

Economics / Britain / Finance

 by Jaffa Levy

Britain’s Quiet Crackdown: How Insurance, Courts, and Banks Are Building the 2026 Order

Britain’s domestic order is being rebuilt quietly through insurance wordings, fast court processing, data pipelines, and payment rules. By 2026 the system is likely to assume more protest and disorder, then respond not with dramatic bans but with standardised friction: higher costs for organisers, faster consequences for offenders, and more payment holds for everyone. The country changes before anyone votes on it.

Finance / Economics / Europe / United States

 by Jaffa Levy

The Shadow Bank That Wants Your Savings

Private credit is no longer a niche market for institutions. It is being repackaged for pensions and retail investors, changing how losses surface and turning opacity into political risk. This is how the next financial crisis could form quietly, far from public view

Defence / Britain / Europe / Middle East / Opinion / Russia / The Future / Ukraine

 by Jaffa Levy

If You Want to See What Comes Next in 2026, Watch the Insurance Market

War is no longer disrupting global trade. It is being written into the contracts and insurance frameworks that make trade possible. As war risk pricing, listed areas, and standard charterparty clauses harden into routine procedure, conflict becomes a toll. Watch the insurance market, not the speeches. It signals what the world is normalising.

Defence / China / Geopolitics / Technology

 by Jaffa Levy

Jiutian and the Geometry of Reach: China’s High Altitude Drone Carrier Across the Himalayas and the Pacific

China’s Jiutian high-altitude unmanned aircraft is not a superweapon, but it alters the geometry of airpower. By operating above terrain and distance constraints, it pressures two theatres at once: the Himalayan frontier and the Western Pacific. The real issue is not penetration, but cost, persistence, and defensive arithmetic.

Law / Britain / Europe

 by Jaffa Levy

Jack Baud and the New Meaning of ‘Propaganda’: Sanctions, Speech and Power in Peacetime Europe

This article examines the EU sanctions imposed on Jack Baud, a former Swiss Army colonel, and compares them with the UK sanctions case of Graham Phillips. It argues that modern sanctions regimes increasingly classify speech as “propaganda” based on executive alignment rather than falsity or criminality, creating domestic coercive effects in peacetime and raising fundamental constitutional concerns about free expression, property rights and procedural safeguards.

Opinion / Geopolitics / History

 by Jaffa Levy

The Decay of America Is Not a Moral Story. It Is a Policy Story

Empires do not collapse because their populations weaken. They collapse because elites refuse to repair the conditions that caused that weakness. History shows a familiar progression: neglect gives way to moral panic, panic hardens into discipline, discipline escalates into militarism, and militarism ends in war. Edwardian Britain followed this path to catastrophe. America is now walking it again.

Housing / Economics / United States

 by Jaffa Levy

New York Is Being Priced Out of Itself and Mamdani Is the Answer the City Chose

New York’s housing crisis is no longer a policy problem. It is a pressure system that turns scarcity into leverage and leverage into misery. With vacancy near collapse and lower cost homes disappearing, the city is bleeding out its working life. Singapore shows there is a way out: build a pipeline, discipline speculation, and treat housing as infrastructure.

Technology / China / World

 by Jaffa Levy

China Is Not Building Ports Now It Is Building the Rules

China’s next Silk Road is not concrete but code. By shaping global standards in 6G, digital payments and satellite connectivity, Beijing is embedding sovereignty at the protocol level creating power that is harder to sanction, harder to unwind, and already in place before crises erupt.

World / China / Economics / Geopolitics / India / Japan / South Asia / South East Asia

 by Jaffa Levy

The Economic Tripwires Shaping Asia-Pacific Security in 2026

Asia Pacific is entering a new phase where security policy and economic policy have fused into a single bargaining system. Defence budgets, trade law, sanctions, logistics, and digital standards are now instruments of leverage. As 2026 approaches, the next global shock is more likely to arrive through prices, compliance, and supply chains than through open war.

Culture / Britain

 by Jaffa Levy

Fifth Floor, Christmas Day

The heating had been on long enough. Long enough to warm the walls. He switched it off and put his coat on. Outside, the cold was bitter

Uncategorized / Europe / Geopolitics / United States

 by Jaffa Levy

The Visa Weapon: America’s Answer to Europe’s Digital Empire

The United States has begun sanctioning Europe not with tariffs or lawsuits, but with visa bans. By targeting EU regulators and aligned civil society actors, Washington is signalling that digital sovereignty now carries personal costs. Europe insists this is coercion. But years of regulatory overreach, rhetorical hubris, and blurred lines between platform enforcement and democratic legitimacy have made retaliation politically inevitable.

China / Technology / United States

 by Jaffa Levy

America Is Fighting an AI Race That China Is Not Running

Washington increasingly frames artificial intelligence as a single decisive race toward general intelligence. China’s strategy points elsewhere. The danger is not building AI, but locking policy into a worst case narrative that turns uncertainty into irreversible escalation.

Law / Britain / United States

 by Jaffa Levy

What Losing Both Legs Is Worth Depends on Which Side of the Atlantic You’re On

Two construction workers suffer the same catastrophic accident and lose both legs. One is in Seattle, inside Washington State’s workers compensation system. The other is in Manchester, under Britain’s dual track of state benefits and civil liability. The difference is not sentiment or severity. It is legal design. One system buys certainty. The other prices fault.

Law / China / Venezuela

 by Jaffa Levy

When Sanctions Become Seizure: The Law of the Sea on Trial

The US boarding of a Panama flagged tanker carrying Venezuelan oil tests a fundamental question of international law. Can sanctions be enforced at sea without UN authority, or does this cross into unlawful interference with freedom of navigation?

Law / China / Diplomacy / India / Nepal

 by Jaffa Levy

When Borders Move on Paper Before They Move on the Ground

Border conflict rarely begins with soldiers. It begins with passports, currency, maps, and iconography that harden claims before diplomacy can unwind them. From a woman stopped in Shanghai over her passport to Nepali Banknote with disputed borders, South Asia shows how nationalism now advances through paperwork long before blood is shed.