Editor’s Note: Commenters often hit Michael Snyder for being a “fearmonger” and even write me to stop allowing his articles on the site. Here’s the thing. His writing definitely acts as a warning bell and while he tends to lean toward being overly concerned sometimes, his research is strong. I continue to publish his “fearmongering” articles because I believe our readers are capable of thinking for themselves. Take the important information he provides, assess it with your own discernment, and act accordingly. You can disagree with his conclusions but the data he provides is unmatched.
(End of the American Dream)—In recent months, quite a few pundits have been openly warning us that World War III has begun. Sadly, those pundits are quite correct. Right now, a historic global struggle is being waged by two very powerful alliances. The “western alliance” made up of the United States, Europe, Israel and their allies is engaged in a battle for supremacy with the “eastern alliance” made up of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Syria and their allies.
Over the past week, this battle for supremacy has erupted on a couple of new fronts, but most Americans have no idea what is really going on.
Just look at what is happening in Syria. Most Americans have no idea that radical Sunni Muslims backed by the western alliance just conducted a highly successful offensive on Syria’s second largest city and are threatening to overthrow the Assad regime once and for all…
The Syrian military and its ally Russia conducted deadly joint air raids Monday on areas that Islamist-led rebels seized control of over the weekend. The strikes were a response to a lightning offensive by the rebels that saw them wrest control of swathes of northwest Syria from government forces.
The conflict that started more than a decade ago took a significant turn several days ago, catching many — including, it seems, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his Russian backers — by surprise. On Saturday, rebels, including many with the U.S.-designated Islamic terrorist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), took control of the major city of Aleppo in northern Syria.
The rebels seized Aleppo’s airport and started pushing into towns and villages in the countryside around the city on Sunday after leaving piles of dead government soldiers in the streets. Observers said the rebel forces were often met with little to no resistance by regime forces, but by Monday the pace of the surprise offensive appeared to have slowed, with Assad and his Russian backers ramping-up their response.
While she served as Secretary of State during the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton was instrumental in starting the civil war in Syria. That civil war caused a massive refugee crisis that western Europe is still wrestling with to this day.
Now the civil war in Syria has freshly erupted, and if Assad gets toppled that will be a major victory for the western alliance.
Of course the eastern alliance does not plan to go down without a fight. Over the weekend, Iraqi militia groups that are backed by Iran “have been pouring across the border into eastern Syria”…
Widespread reports, including observers on the ground, have indicated that Iran-backed Iraqi militias have been pouring across the border into eastern Syria to assist Damascus in repelling the Islamist militant advance after Al Qaeda splinter group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham took over Aleppo this weekend.
A Syrian army officer has told Reuters that Iraqi militia forces crossing the border are “fresh reinforcements being sent to aid our comrades on the frontlines in the north.”
Many of the fighters have been identified as belonging to the Kataib Hezbollah and Fatemiyoun groups. The US has long been in an internecine conflict with Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, with over the years periodic rocket fire even targeting the US Embassy in Baghdad, as well as various bases which host remaining American troops.
And it appears that Iranian military forces could be on the verge of intervening directly in the conflict…
Boroujerdi told a news conference in Damascus that Iran was ready to render military assistance to Syria. “Iran’s military aid will be provided as soon as Tehran receives a request from the Syrian government. We are going to announce it immediately,” the Iranian deputy said.
Boroujerdi, who is heading an Iranian delegation, arrived in Damascus on Wednesday for talks with Syrian Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is expected to meet Boroujerdi on Thursday.
The Iranian deputy stressed the importance of the four-sided coordination of efforts by Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria in fighting terrorism.
Iran normally prefers to fight their wars using proxy forces.
But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Meanwhile, Israel’s ceasefire with Hezbollah seems to be breaking down already…
The ceasefire in Lebanon, barely five days old, is near collapse as of Monday after Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel, following the Biden-Harris administration’s erroneous claim that Israeli surveillance drones violated the agreement.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported Monday that two Hezbollah rockets had been fired at Har (Mount) Dov, a strategic mountain that Breitbart News visited last Thursday and which Hezbollah claims, wrongly, is Lebanese.
If Hezbollah is forced to keep their forces in Lebanon in order to contend with the IDF, they won’t be able to intervene in the conflict in Syria. Ultimately, so many of these conflicts are interrelated.
Ukraine is hoping that at least some Russian forces get diverted to Syria to help the Assad regime, because last month the Ukrainians lost a great deal of territory…
Ukraine has endured a tough three months in which Russian forces made gains across the front, which are likely continue over winter, a military analyst has said.
“The trend is very worrying, and there’s no reason to expect the situation to calm down in December either,” Emil Kastehelmi, from the Finnish-based Black Bird Group, told Newsweek.
In an X, formerly Twitter, thread, the OSINT analyst said that, in the three months to December, Moscow’s troops had captured around 617 square miles in Ukraine and 190 in Russia’s Kursk oblast, where Ukrainian forces had staged an incursion but where they have lost the western flank, as well as positions in the Donbas region.
Ukraine is the one place where the western alliance is losing badly, and western politicians are extremely determined to turn things around.
But the truth is that unless NATO gets directly involved, Ukraine will definitely lose.
As the war drags on, Ukrainian soldiers are deserting from their posts in staggering numbers…
More than twice as many Ukrainian soldiers have been charged with desertion this year than in 2022 and 2023 combined, the Financial Times has reported. The spike in desertions has hampered Kiev’s ability to replenish its thinned-out ranks.
Ukrainian prosecutors opened 60,000 cases against deserters between January and October of this year, the British newspaper reported on Saturday, noting that those convicted face prison terms of up to 12 years.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have already died on the killing fields of eastern Ukraine.
Let us hope for an agreement that will bring the endless slaughter to an end.
Before I conclude this article, I want to mention one more nation where the great battle between east and west has suddenly erupted.
In Georgia, angry protesters that are being backed by the western alliance have been clashing violently with the police for days. Just like we witnessed in Ukraine in 2014, it appears that this could be an attempt to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Georgia…
Days of protests have rocked Georgia following the government’s controversial decision to delay the former Soviet country’s bid to join the European Union.
Tensions have been brewing for months in the South Caucasus nation of 3.7 million people, where critics accuse the ruling Georgian Dream party of following increasingly authoritarian, pro-Russia policies in a turn away from the West that has tempered hopes for Georgia’s long-promised path to EU membership.
The protests have been met with a violent police crackdown as the ruling party and thousands of protesters become locked in a deepening battle over the country’s future and whether Georgia should forge closer ties with Russia or Europe.
The U.S. and Europe would love to see a “color revolution” that removes the Georgian Dream party from power.
Of course the Russians and other eastern alliance nations would very much like to avert such an outcome.
I just wish that every country would be allowed to do what they want without outside interference.
But that isn’t going to happen, is it?
Sadly, the great struggle between east and west that we are witnessing is just going to continue to intensify, and at this stage it should be obvious to everyone that it is not going to have a happy ending.
We live in such perilous times, and if you have not been paying much attention to what is going on around the world now would be a great time to start.
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
Not surprising. The late Billy Mitchell predicted Pearl Harbor over a decade before it happened in a congressional hearing, but those Americans could not conceive Asians capable of such an act. Americans today can not conceive any nation capable of starting a nuclear war ending in the destruction of civilization. Yet here we are. War is hell. Pray for Peace. America First! ULTRAMAGA!
Same scum, different era.
A Word from the Lord/Amanda Grace 11/26/2024 (excerpt)
HOWEVER says the Lord, I THE LORD GOD SAY THIS DAY ENOUGH ENOUGH OF THIS FOOLISHNESS ENOUGH OF THE DESTRUCTION YOU ATTEMPT TO START A WORLD WAR OH YOU ATTEMPT AS THE LEADERS IN THE US AND EUROPE DIRECT YOU TO DO SUCH AND I THE LORD THY GOD SHALL PUT A SUDDEN END TO SUCH,
…’There will be wars and threats of war’…( this will be just the beginning of the ‘End of Times’ )…yes, we have had many wars throughout human history…but never to this platitude of sufficient destruction world wide…no one knows what the potential destruction of our natural resources ( air/water )…no one knows what a famine would look like if our soils were contaminated with severe radiation exposure…no one knows how medical facilities would function if billions-and-billions of humans where in need of exponential treatment…no one knows the effect to our platonic plates of our planet would be and how they would react to massive incursion and stress under sustained explosions…Biblical Prophecy indicate such a time will happen and we all need to be ready for the ‘Day of Judgement’ because there is no escaping this final event whether you believe it or not…many will perish…perhaps a few will survive…only God knows…
This guy should just pick one website. Be easier to avoid.
zzzzzz ZZZZZZZ…BURP ! zzzzzzzz…..
Have seen (and ignored) these guys before. It’s a grift. Opening paragraph unequivocally states it’s the End Times™’, no ands, ifs or buts, then proceeds with a laundry list of random headlines from that week. There is ZERO tying of the assertion and the laundry list of “Oooo, SCAAAWY!” with actual EVENTS TO COME IN REVELATION. It’s lame, it’s lazy, it’s facile.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn……