Category: World

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.

World / Geopolitics

 by Jaffa Levy

Power Has Moved to Chokepoints. That Is Where the Next Conflicts Will Be Fought

Power no longer flows from persuasion or values alone. In 2025, leverage sits in chokepoints: energy routes, chip supply chains, payment rails, shipping corridors, platforms, and custody systems. States that control bottlenecks can still force outcomes. States that cannot are left issuing statements while power moves elsewhere

World / Britain / Europe

 by Jaffa Levy

The West Still Talks About Values. Power Now Belongs to Systems That Can Execute

Europe and Britain are discovering a hard truth: money and slogans do not manufacture shells, fix rail networks, or deliver armoured vehicles on time. In 2025, power is drifting toward systems that can execute, not those that can only announce. Values still matter, but without institutional delivery they turn into rhetoric and publics stop believing

Technology / China

 by Jaffa Levy

China’s Space Yearender Is Not About Space. It Is About Industrial Sovereignty

Xinhua’s space yearender reads like a science roundup, but it is really a capability statement. Space is the cleanest theatre for showing state capacity because reality does not accept spin. The signal is industrial sovereignty: build, test, fail, fix, repeat. Reusable rockets and deep space missions are not romance. They are proof of institutions that can plan beyond the next cycle

Economics / Britain

 by Jaffa Levy

What the City’s Debt Debate Forgets: Ordinary People Have Savings Too

A City-facing broadsheet warns that rising public debt will soon meet “market discipline”. What it ignores is a simple truth: ordinary people have savings too. When governments avoid hard fiscal choices, the costs are shifted quietly through inflation, fiscal drag, and repression. Debt sustainability is not arithmetic. It is about who pays, how visibly, and when.

Sweden / Norway / World

 by Jaffa Levy

Assange Challenges Nobel Peace Prize Payment in Swedish Legal Filing

Julian Assange has filed a criminal complaint in Sweden seeking to freeze the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize payment, arguing that Swedish administrators have fiduciary duties independent of the Norwegian selection process. While authorities have signalled reluctance, the filing raises a deeper institutional question: whether a prize created to restrain war can lawfully be disbursed in ways alleged to reward escalation.

Technology / China

 by Jaffa Levy

What Western Headlines Get Wrong About China’s “Bypass” of Chip Export Controls

Western headlines claim China is bypassing chip export controls. A close reading of Chinese and Taiwanese sources tells a different story: slow progress, rising costs, and no proven evidence of illicit upgrades. This analysis separates verifiable fact from allegation and explains what China’s DUV based strategy actually achieves.

World / Europe

 by Jaffa Levy

Europe’s War Bet Is Coming Due

Europe’s Ukraine strategy was built on assumptions that no longer hold. As guarantees become conditional and financial improvisation replaces certainty, the risks are shifting from the battlefield to Europe’s own balance sheets.