If you ever feel useless, remember it took 20 years, trillions of dollars and 4 US Presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban” (Norman Finkelstein)

Of course, the above quotation should be corrected: for the US and its Western stooges, those actions were far from futile. The two decades dedicated to destroying countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and slaughtering their people, were not only lucrative for major financial institutions and the military-industrial complex; more importantly, they provided a crucial geopolitical-ideological lever to delay the impending collapse of a system that suffered a first major spasm with the 2007-08 financial crisis. Ultimately, the decisive impetus behind those military offensives, and now the proxy conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and Syria, is rooted in fear and denial – the unwillingness, in other words, to confront the consequences of a declining hegemony; the ageing of a debt-driven brand of simulated, hyper-financialised capitalism. Although the collective West has not exhausted the potential for its depravity, it has nonetheless fallen so low that one does not dare to fathom what it is capable to do next.

So what has 2025 in store for us? For sure, the future is rapidly disappearing from sight, making it difficult for us to even imagine a way out of a predicament that relies on heavy manipulation across the board – from economic data to false flag operations. Every “event” today is framed within the exploitative rationale of “crisis capitalism”, which remains stubbornly reliant upon the creation of credit to inflate financial bubbles. As a consequence, the horizon of our world is folding in upon itself. The feedback loop of debt, finance, residual imperialist frenzy, economic downturn, and ideological perception management is set to continue for years to come, clouding our critical judgment and sapping our imaginary capacities. Unable to face its terminal sickness, the West won’t stop unleashing its rage upon all those convenient enemies it uses as geopolitical leverage. There is no longer even any genuine effort to disguise this criminal strategy under the guise of moral imperatives such as “exporting democracy” or “defending human rights.” The violence is now revealed for what it always was: the unrestrained brutality of an aggressive civilization that refuses to acknowledge its decay and finitude. This is emphatically confirmed by the extermination of Palestinian children, which continued unabated even during the festive period, with the support and complicity of our political class.

The question, therefore, is not if there will be a new global emergency, but how soon it is going to occur. In geopolitical terms, Iran – a country already struggling with high inflation, energy shortages and rising unemployment – is the obvious candidate for the next crisis. The dismantling of the Islamic Republic of Iran, just like the ongoing mutilation of Syria, would appear to be as urgent an objective as the dismemberment of Iraq once was. Again, the pressure of war is an inherently psychotic defence mechanism against systemic introspection. It shields the West from facing the implosion of an uber-financialised and uber-indebted mode of socioeconomic reproduction that has grown sterile, dysfunctional, and socially destructive. Fanning the flames of chaos at the edge of Empire requires, among other things, the maintenance of the Zionist entity. In this respect, Donald Trump, together with Israel, is poised to play a decisive role in intensifying pressure on Tehran. A large-scale attack on Iran, a member of the BRICS alliance, would be aimed at delaying the process of de-dollarisation (thus protecting the perceived sustainability of the US’s skyrocketing national debt) while also precipitating an international economic crisis that would justify further monetary expansion and lower interest rates in support of the financial sector.

much more here

https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/wargames-and-fartcoins-brace-yourselves-for-an-explosive-start-to-2025/