France has been in a long decline. Money is constantly shifted the rich and to pay for it austerity is pushed. Most recently the French government wanted to, again, increase the pension age. This decline shows up in stats that most people ignore, for example, food consumption per capita:
As usual, France systematically understates inflation, so you can safely assume that the line hasn’t gone flat since 2004 or so, but continued to decline.
The war with Iran and Russia, meanwhile, has lead to increasing fuel shortages:
There are currently widespread riots in France. The triggering event was police brutality:
A high school student protested that the public school’s toilet was leaking and full of rats.
The protesting kid got beaten by the police until their mouth was bleeding, and even got shot right in front of their face. x.com/melenchon4ever
Several kids also ended up with their hands mutilated by the police. x.com/neruda57/statu
The peak of it was a kid getting drowned by the Police. x.com/alertesinfos/s
This police brutality awakened class consciousness among all the high school students in France.
> Intel started infiltrating. Some tried to deflect by pushing the narrative that this protest was caused by Muslim immigrants to scapegoat them for the unrest. x.com/abdoulafar7631
Rioting then spread to Spain and Belgium. Meanwhile there are massive protests in Albania, originally triggered by Kushner wanting to buy up a huge chunk of Albania’s seashore. This is so serious that when the Supreme Court ruled for Kushner, the protestors burned it down:
The Supreme Court burns to the ground in Albania, Parliament and the Department of Education has been stormed, the Prime Minister is in hiding and the country is effectively in the hands of the rebels.
Albania rejects blatant corruption and their country being sold. https://t.co/EH22FBySId
— BladeoftheSun (@BladeoftheS) October 18, 2026
In India there are massive student protests. The government moved 50,000 troops and militarized police into Delhi and set up massive roadblocks. That didn’t stop the protesters, who used the roadblocks against the police and systematically slashed police vehicle tires. The roadblocks wound up actually slowing the police and military down.
The key thing to understand is that provocations happen all the time, the French police have never not been brutal bastards. Like a spark in a forest, it’s only dangerous if there’s plenty of dry tinder: people who are on the edge of rioting anyway because they’re unhappy with their lives.
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This is the start of a LOT more civil unrest unless the US and Israel end the Iran war. Fuel shortages will increase, food prices will jump this year and even more next year, and people who feel like they have little to lose will take to the streets. There isn’t a lot of trust left in the system: majorities believe that the people ruling them don’t care about them, and they’re right. If people believed in their rulers, this wouldn’t be happening, at least not yet.
So all of this will spread. In India I expect that there will be serious farmer riots in the next year, something that India is prone to anyway. In Europe, even after these protests are suppressed, there will be re-occurrences and they will become more serious and more widespread.
It’s always difficult to predict Trump, but the most likely scenario, supported by massive movement of ships, planes and troops, is that after the mid-terms the war will start up seriously again. The US and Israel WILL lose: they don’t have enough interceptors and munitions to win and the idea of invading Iran successfully is ludicrously stupid: it will not happen, and if it is tried, it will be a catastrophe.
But the Iranians have been warning that if there is an escalation, they will hit hard this time, and given how much they’ve increased attacks on tankers, their words are supported by their actions.
Meanwhile the Sauds are getting ripped up by Ansar-Allah. They are completely unable to defend anything from missiles and they’re doing badly on the ground. Egypt has said they’ll send troops, but for “defense only” and I doubt it will make a serious difference. So oil, fertilizer, helium and other resources from Saudi Arabia that aren’t already offline are at risk and there’s no reasonable possibility of fixing infrastructure, since Yemen can just blow it up again.
At the same time China keeps adding new items to its export bans. They’re particularly targeting Japan, but Europe and America are getting hit as well.
All of which is to say, this is just the start. Expect more civil unrest in more countries, possibly including your country. This entire mess has been handled very badly, with an emphasis on keeping oil prices artificially low and not in conserving inventories or making sure that affordable oil and fertilizer get to important sectors like farming. So fuel will go up, food will go up, prices in general will go up, there will be more unemployment and people will be angrier and angrier with less and less to lose.
The correct action would be to admit defeat and end the war, but until the US is under much more stress, that seems unlikely.
Brace yourselves.
Eric Anderson
All we need is a major ice shelf to slide into the ocean and we’ll be spot on KSR’s Red Mars polycrisis timeline.
elkern
Seems to me that student protests are common in springtime (for endocrine reasons) but rare in fall. Probably less true in (Tropical) India, but seems like a strong pattern in (North Temperate) US & Europe. So, this isn’t just young people getting frisky.
Feral Finster
As long as the police and army will shoot when ordered, the rulers will sleep soundly in their beds and even can take time off to dance at Celine Dion concerts
Of course, the goal is to get robot soldiers that will have no qualms about shooting civilians, children, etc. when and as ordered.
Besides, what do you think the data centers are for? The oligarchs can see that 1984 is within their grasp, and they will let nothing get in their way.
Dan Lynch
Agree with Ian’s assessment of our situation. I feel like we have a front row seat to watch earth shattering political changes unfold, but I don’t know how the story will end. I’m sympathetic to the protesters, but protests and riots seldom lead to change, and when they do lead to change, it’s not necessarily the kind of change the protesters had in mind. For example, instability and insecurity may lead to more support for a “strong man” to restore order.
The maddening thing is that many of our problems were self-inflicted and avoidable. It makes one lose faith in our systems.
Mark Level
Glad to see your timely coverage again, Ian, no doubt the Globalist Class has pushed “The beatings will continue until morale improves” in numerous countries, and things are truly starting to come to a head now.
No surprise that the French lead the way, an “avant-garde” given their history. The stupid, authority dependent British public suffers worse Austerity and abuse than the French in many areas, but the main mass demonstrations one hears about their are Right-Wing, “Tommy Robinson” (sic, not his real name) bankrolled by Elon calling for the mass killing, beating and expulstion of Muslims and brown people. During which the crowds buy their schwarma cuisine as the local Brit cuisine is shite, stuff from Pakistan and elsewhere in the former Empire is far tastier.
“The war with Iran and Russia”= Fuel shortages, but the Elites like Macron continue flushing tax revenues, Hell the entire EU does, down the Ukraine War crapper when that gambit has clearly failed, no wonder the public is restive and has abandoned the fake Middle/Consensus narrative, the Media promotes anything but full submission as insane, “Far Right” & “Far Left”, lazy smears from complacent bourgeois pigs. Macron fleeing to “the middle East” after attending a Celine Dion concert with his macho “wife” on the 2nd day of rioting, 4 days pretending to do his “foreign policy” duties in “the region”, burn down his credibility even faster. It’s surreal.
Just skipping around to various sites to see who has the worst take. The MAGA CHUD ZeroHedge “investment site” wins, their sock-puppet correspondent “Tyler Durden” of Fight Club opines a Let-Them-Eat-Welfare screed, alongside a more subtle (for him) blame-the-darkies/ immigrants side-hustle: Does a listing of the paradisacal “benefits” given so “generously” to the Cheese-Eaters, 35 hour work week, “early” Retirement cut shorter under the last 3 leaders, Macron, the pretend-“Socialist” Hollande and the diminutive pimp and bribe-seeker Sarkozy, who actually went to jail for corruption and wrote a book about his suffering, the injustice!! Some facts “Durden” never heard of.
The idea that the plebs ought to suck it up, enjoy having no school desks and dodging rat bites while the Globalists ride to Ukraine to continue their folly grows more unsustainable daily.
Spanish rioting is over housing costs, spark that triggered it per Galloway was the State violently rousting an 80+ year old woman from her apartment in order to gentrify. The Dutch!! They used to have an actual generous & libertine state that attracted all the Europeans from the cold, shitty countries like Britain to smoke hash, party down, try to get laid. Yves Smith notes the “thinking” by the Elites for the Die Quietly, Peasant Filth push from the Elites: “1 Because Markets”, “#2, Go Die!”
Police can brutally mutilate students, I assume they have impunity. Pepe Escobar on Nima today notes he spoke French since childhood and had a French wife, when he lived in Paris decades ago it was still very difficult for him to mix socially due to the snobbery and clanishness of the culture. He notes that a minority of immigrants who bust their ass in school advance socially, “natural” segregation is practiced from the top, people on the bottom stuck in ghettos.
“The French police have never not been brutal bastards”. A colonial holdover, obviously.
French farmers dying by suicide also mentioned by Pepe. That leads to Ian’s transition to India. It’s a system, obviously, and creates the same awful conditions from most in widely disparate societies.
Yes, Trump will blunder further into failed Quagmires, he and the predator class around him are (a) all blackmailed by Israel, and (b) deeply stupid and idiotic, their arrogance makes them overreach wildly. See MBS and the Saudis. Larry Wilkerson notes that MBS fucked up from the first time he got into power as “Defense” Minister, pushed the first genocide of Yemenis, but Andrew Cockburn in Harper’s covered well how Ansar Al-Allah not only beat the failed Saudis on the ground immediately, and despite a famine years later started taking out Saudi Oil installations with drones and made MBS et al tap out. And now their taking territory, as is Russia.
Then the Biden Admin failed against “the Houthis” under Trump earlier, even he is not stupid enough to throw resources away on another failed attempt. Nor even was brain-bleed Joe, who bombed the crap out of them, killing scores of civilians but achieving no military success. A reporter asked Joe, Are we succeeding? No!! Will we stop then? No!!
The alliance of the non-West, the economic titan China, the military titan, Russia, and the rising power, Iran, facing existential threats, behaved more cautiously and with more wisdom than late Imperial U$A, where war is a Cash Cow for the Government and Armaments MICs, but a loser out in the field. I’d like to see the success that Ian foresees for the “desperate” with little or nothing to use. I’d expect that many countries with some remaining social solidarity could and hopefully will do this. Will the USA do this? Not a chance!! Europe the same, it is doomed.
I hope Mexico continues to sit it out. No gas shortages nor food shortages here. If you let the Looters dominate, you are doomed, and that’s whose been in the driver’s seat in USA since the Powell Memo, Jimmy Carter and the rise of the Clintons. The outcome is obvious.
Carborundum
Related, the UK is deploying RAF Typhoons to Saudi: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/20/uk-to-deploy-raf-fighter-jets-to-defend-saudi-arabia-from-houthi-attacks
For context, the Saudis already operate 72 Typhoons, somewhat more GR.4s, and a bit over 200 F15s of various types. As in, it ain’t the extra airframes they’re needing…
Carborundum
Ah, I understand now. The RAF has integrated the APKWS which has been doing most of the heavy lifting against the Shahed threat:
https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles/raf-enhances-combat-air-capability-with-low-cost-precision-weapon/
Jessica Rooney
The best I can tell, the protests in France are following a pattern also seen during the Floyd George Black Lives Matter wave of protests. Each protest starts out peaceful, even parents with kids, then after most folks have left, they turn violent. I assume that some of the violence is organic and some is organized by agents provocateur.
Ian is correct that this is just the beginning.
For me, it feels like when someone close dies or something else awful happens and one wakes up every morning hoping that that awful thing was just a bad dream and it isn’t real, but it is.
OK, the elites across the West are too far gone to pull the plane out of its downward dive. I would feel more sanguine if the left wasn’t so poisoned with PMC nonsense. The process of getting to where reconstruction can start figures to be sanguinary.
StewartM
The correct action would be to admit defeat and end the war, but until the US is under much more stress, that seems unlikely.
It is unlikely, as Operation Israel Uber Alles and Operation Epstein Blackmail must continue, unabated, for the greater glory of their respective rulers!
Mark Level: I think you fail to appreciate how much our intelligence and foreign policy “expertise” has been corrupted during the past four decades. Most presidents (save possibly Trump) listen to their “experts” on these matters, and the problem is our “experts” aren’t that good. If they had been good, we wouldn’t have built the Cap Weinberger pricey “shock and awe” military that can’t sustain itself over prolonged operations, can’t replace its losses, and can’t occupy and hold ground (too few “boots on the ground”).
The very reason we DID build that military was to have our Vietnams without the mass conscription and body bags of Vietnam, and the resulting domestic backlash. It was only a change of tactics, not a change of heart or essential policy.
mago
Well yeah, it’s about time they’re taking it to the streets. Will it endure with positive outcomes? Probably not, but at least there are rumblings and tremors with explosions here and there.
The plebes overwhelmingly outnumber the elites who have the enforcers on their payroll, although they can’t seem to understand whose side they should really stand with. The stupid is universal, and you can’t fix it.
Strike a spark light a fire, illuminate the darkness and burn it down. Not gonna happen, although it sounds good.
As for resurrection in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, it’s all braggadocio and limp dick no matter how many guns you own and how much you hate on the internet. Self absorbed priorities however they may be defined take precedence.
No matter. When the shit flies everybody’s splattered.
Anthony Burgess’s dystopian 60’s novel frequently comes to mind when scanning the gestalt. Your droogs will drop you in a heartbeat and inflict that ultraviolence on you. Forget about the old in out in out. That’s what you’re going to take up the backside.
mago
A Clockwork Orange is the novel referred to.
spud
the riots may well peter out for a while. but meanwhile, really knowledgeable types will secretly organize, and many of those will be very tech savvy, and many will be military types, who know what to do.
if this happens, and it looks like its going that way, technology and military tactics are a two way street.
the cops are a elite drunk with god like power, immune from their crimes, with total contempt for the average citizen, and if your a child, dog, minority, or the elderly, watch out for them. which means most are bullies, cowards and psychopaths.
getting to them will be easy, and they might all end up with their families in government protected barracks.
again easy targets for the tech savvy types.
the rich came so close again to world conquest, i do not see them letting this go. and their every move will only weaken their grip on power. they simply cannot help themselves.
Bob
I don’t know if people who go – whoop whoop the revolution is upon us, when stuff like this happens, ever stop to try to imagine what sort of developments could lead somehow to the masses seizing state institutions and taking over.
The state isn’t even the locus of power. The revolutionary teens would quickly find themselves eliminated by “intelligence” services, corporate power, dark forces and whatnot.
Alternatively, the machine itself, abstract and unnamed as it might be, might just wait until the new operators become absorbed into its necessary culture and obligations.
Or what is it they think can happen?
Mark Level
StewartM, I am aware at how much the US Military is and has been effectively decimated and is an understaffed, failed institution, like every other thing that Trump touches. See recent posts from me.
I will point out that about 3 weeks back when Trump demanded renewed attacks on Iran, especially the failed attempt to “blockade” the Hormuz State, several upper DoD staff objected and said truthfully it would fail and achieve nothing. Scotty Besent goes online and lies blatantly that the Trump clowns are taking out 90% of what they were on Feb. 27, but next to nobody believes him, and the Brent crude prices I’ve seen reported are at least $130 per barrel + extra surcharges for “delivery” as many (MacGregor, et al) note. Besent also lies that “Iran can/is getting NO oil out, absurd.
Many sources note that Caspian Sea trade between Russia and Iran has doubled recently, I guess the Trump morons are unaware there is an entity called the Caspian Sea, since it hasn’t been renamed the Trump Sea yet.
mago, yeah, you called it. It was obvious you were referencing A Clockwork Orange. That’s USA, baby.