Welcome back to New World Next Week. I'm James Corbett of CorbettReport.com
And I'm James Evan Pallado of MediaMonkey.com. Surely part of the pleasure is that sense of connection with the content creator.
We have got that fascinating story, plus Fukushima and COVID anniversaries, but first, nation's worldwide move to conserve fuel as straight-up Hormuz closure threatens global economy.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shabez Sharif announced on 9 March sweeping austerity measures to curb domestic fuel consumption after oil prices briefly reached $120 a barrel due to the disruptions caused by the U.S. real war on Iran.
The entire region is currently in a state of war. Keeping this reality in mind, the government took difficult decisions for the country's economy, Sharif said in his address.
He said oil prices already above $100 a barrel and could rise further, forcing Islamabad to conserve reserves and take quick measures to reduce the need for fuel consumption across the country.
Measures in the public sector include a four-day work week for government employees and rotating work from home arrangements for half of the public staff.
The measures also involve two weeks of school closures, online classes for higher education, cuts to official fuel use, salary reductions for ministers and lawmakers, and restrictions on foreign travel and in-person government meetings.
This sounds really familiar.
Pakistani authorities said the plan was meant to utilize the available reserves of oil in a judicious manner.
Workers in Pakistan who depend on driving for their livelihoods report that rising petrol prices are eroding incomes and driving up the costs of everyday goods.
Elsewhere in Asia, Bangladesh imposed daily fuel sale limits after what Reuters described as panic buying and stockpiling.
With state-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation saying the curbs were meant to restrain excessive demand, calm the public and keep nationwide stocks stable.
Other Asian states activated contingency plans rather than immediate rationing, including fuel price caps, efforts to stabilize petrol prices, shifts in crude purchases away from Gulf routes, and reliance on reserves or alternative supply arrangements.
Asia is the epicenter of the war-induced energy shock since it relies on the Persian Gulf for over 80% of its oil.
Unlike the U.S., which is a net exporter, Asia faces a literal energy panic, and I did have to look that up, James.
America exports most of its oil.
The United States is a net exporter of petroleum products, meaning it exports more refined oil than it imports.
In 2023, the U.S. exported about 10.15 million barrels per day of petroleum, including gas, diesel, jet fuel, making it the world's largest exporter of refined petroleum products, while the U.S. is also the largest producer of crude oil, 12.1 million barrels a day.
It exports a significant portion of its crude, particularly light, sweet crude from shale fields, of course, in Texas, North Dakota, and New Mexico, which feels like it should be a lot richer with all that oil that we provide.
It's odd how New Hexico is still very, very poor.
Is this the chart pressuring Trump toward an Iran off-ramp?
That's the question Zero Hedge asked, because it did go pretty quickly to him saying, of course, we're not at war.
Don't forget that, like Mike Johnson said, we're not at war. This is not a war.
Also, Trump suddenly wants to end it really quickly.
Iran vows to block oil shipments until U.S. real attacks end, and war with Iran becomes the world's latest economic hazard.
Trump insists the conflict will be brief, but world leaders are prepping for severe economic blowback.
James.
Yes, James, there is a lot of moving parts on the table.
There are a lot of moving parts on the table right now, so I'm sure people can appreciate all of the latest breaking news that is happening as we're recording this.
Dozens of oil tankers divert to Red Sea as Saudis reroute crude flows from Hormuz Choke Point.
We have the IEA, the International Energy Agency, to release a record 400 million barrels of oil from its stockpiles.
We have the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, striking vessels who are attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz, including a Thai-flagged dry bulk vessel, a Japan-flagged container ship, and a Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier, all hit by unidentified projectiles as they were attempting to, well, not heed the warnings not to enter the strait.
And then we also, of course, have this land mine, or sea mine, Bruha, that's taking place right now.
Apparently Iran maybe was trying to put mines in the strait maybe, and Trump threatens consequences never seen before if Iran mines the strait of Hormuz, which wasn't that that old internet meme consequences like never before.
Anyway, something like that.
Anyway.
So a lot of breaking news, but I guess, Brock, please put the temporal disclaimer, the New World Next Week temporal disclaimer on screen.
Whatever happens in the 24 hours between the time we're recording this and the time that you actually see this, we don't know about, so we can't give you the latest up to the second breaking news.
But I can attest to that Asian panic right now because, of course, in Japan we're starting to begin to feel the beginning of this.
Gas gas prices already rising.
And of course, it was a top story on the news last night, what how high will they go essentially.
And, of course, I've I've read about Thailand and Malaysia and Pakistan and other places taking emergency measures and cutting office hours and all sorts of things to try to conserve oil at this point.
And we'll see what eventuates from here.
And I realize, look, I am fully, fully cognizant that, oh my God, won't someone think of the price of gas is not necessarily the most important moral calculation we could be making as, you know, bombs are dropping on schools full of school girls and that sort of thing.
But it is the one that might that might impact those people who are still cheering this on.
Yay, we got to get those damn terrorists and bring freedom to the Middle East or something that when has that ever gone wrong.
But at the very least, once it starts affecting people in the pocketbook, it will start getting people to rethink their blind support for the US real war that's going on right now for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
And as you say, you could be there even in the heart of oil country in New Mexico, but it's not like it's not like you're reaping any of the benefits and I bet you gas prices are starting to creep up there as well.
It's funny how this knocks on and goes around.
So excuse me, I'm so excited I'm choking on my own spit.
So there are many things to say about this war and what's taking place right now.
I would just say that the 2D summary of what's going on the these nation states against nation states, perhaps the best one I saw.
I saw a Twitter post that was embedded in some article I was reading.
It took the US 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, but only nine days to replace common A with common A.
So that's progress, isn't it?
So that's a funny way of putting what essentially what has taken place on the 2D geopolitical chessboard.
But as as we all know, it's a 3D chessboard and there are people puppeteering both sides of this.
And we should not forget that Iran was complicit in the covid scandemic nonsense like every other nation on the globe.
And they played at their part in all of this phony nonsense of the axes of resistance against NATO slash Israel.
It is a stage play and we should be careful not to investor identities in any of these fake teams.
James, I saw a really interesting compare and contrast of two different New York Times headlines.
Where the first one says Iran claims a missile hit one of their schools and kids or whatever.
And then the next article is strike in Israel kills from Iranian missile.
It's like everything Israel says is taken at face value.
Anything Iran says is like, ah, these liars made a claim that we're all blowing up schools and killing little kids.
So again, fantastic job from the liars in the press.
And James, it's I mean, it's the same thing in West Virginia.
Out of state exploiters using the state's resources to dig all that coal and well there pump all that oil.
And it goes of course to out of state.
The insurance companies embargo thing is kind of huge on this as well.
James, I got a few people send me the article and in some ways it does go over again my economic head.
What role did Marine insurers play in halting Hormuz traffic?
Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz declined by 80% within 24 hours of strikes being launched on Iran as ship owners and charters weighed whether to proceed with voyages.
The insurance companies are saying we ain't insured that because we'd have to pay out.
They don't get where they are paying out a bunch of payments to folks.
James you're coughing. I'm banging into my microphone this past week.
I guess this is what passes for a slow news week.
We're actually able to take a moment and kind of assess what has been going on at a pretty quick rate.
Pretty fascinating story for our second story.
UK Society of Authors launched logo to identify books written by humans not AI.
The Society of Authors has launched a scheme to help identify works written by humans in a market increasingly flooded by AI generated books.
The scheme is the first of its kind launched by a UK trade association and allows authors to register their books and download a human authored logo to display on their back cover.
No way anybody will steal that logo and put it on their AI slot.
The SOA said the absence of any government measure please government save us to compel tech companies to label AI generated output meant readers were struggling to distinguish between books written by a human
and machine generated works based on AI models trained on copy written works without permission or payments.
It mirrors a similar scheme launched by the author's guild in the US at the beginning of 2025.
Mary Beard the classicist that is Brit speak for ancient literature expert one of several high profile authors who have backed the scheme and plan to register their works on the human authored website.
It's only going to be human authored books on my desert island.
Mallory Blackman children's author said the scheme seeks to highlight the imagination, commitment, craft and care taken to produce stories and books which can be enjoyed by everyone.
Any creative endeavor requires time, effort, a willingness to learn from mistakes and a determination to persevere lifelong essential skills which cannot be learned and honed by allowing AI to do all of our creative thinking and production for us.
Surely part of the pleasure of reading, listening to songs, watching films and dramas, looking at an artwork and in fact sharing any creative endeavor is that sense of connection with the content creator.
That feeling that they are speaking to you on some deep emotional level that is entirely absent when the work has been produced by AI.
James the smartest, pithiest thing I could think of. This is basically the non GMO project for books.
Yes, and I share your skepticism on this. Yeah, as if they won't just slap this on their AI slop and call it a date.
I mean, I don't know how you enforce this or what kind of standards there are, how they check.
Maybe I'll find out because maybe I should get reportage listed as a human authored book because it was no AI used in the creation of that book.
Yeah, maybe I'll do that and make a little video about it. What is the process and how does it work?
That's great.
Again, what is the standard? Who is creating this standard? What does it mean? What if somebody does AI research?
I asked rock and it told me this and then I wrote a story about it. I don't know. Again, where do you draw the lines with this?
But having said that, I'm not against the idea. I think it's a good idea to at least be able to identify human created content over AI generated slop.
And my concern of it, once you drill into this article and the associated articles that they're linking to about this subject,
you'll find a lot of the authors are protesting because intellectual property.
And they're concerned, oh, you know, AI is fed and trained on our copyrighted material and thus it's taking our work and stealing it.
Well, as people know, I'm not a big fan of the concept of intellectual property itself.
So my inclination against the AI generated work is not so much on that regard.
It is more to do with what I think is one of the greater fears of all of this.
It's not that AI is going to kill us or replace us or something like that.
It's that we are going to essentially become like the AI because we will give over our thinking and our creative processes to it.
And yeah, I really don't know what the point of consuming an AI generated novel would be.
What what is the point of that?
Even just theoretically conceptually, even if it tickles your funny bone or it makes you interested or whatever it is,
it still just doesn't seem real and seems pointless.
And it was just something that was generated from a machine.
I don't know. Personally, I'm against that.
And thus I'm going to find out what's involved with this label and whether or not someone like myself can get it slapped on my work.
It's really fascinating.
And again, as we've talked about for decades, it's the idea that's the powerful thing.
It's not Airbnb or what.
It's the idea that, hey, you're a free human being and you can share your car out to somebody or rent out a room in your place
or say that your books are written by humans.
James, I mean, it's a little bit like the AI pop songs.
I like knowing what I'm in for.
And I know that it's an outlet that says we do comedic satirical AI songs.
It's when it's the tricks when people have tried to pass off things.
I believe you and I talked maybe off mic about that new country song that was breaking up the charts.
That was that was all completely AI doing it surreptitiously.
Again, as I talked about on New World next year, 2026, I think it's some of those channels like
almost vinyl that are very open and very sort of open about what they do.
I guess I don't have the misgivings about that that I would in other areas,
whether that's GMO foods or AI media, I suppose.
And it is 641 PM, March 11th, 2026.
As I talked to you right now, six years ago today on March 11th, 2020,
the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic.
And two days later on Friday, the 13th, Orange Man dutifully bent the knee
and instituted all the mandates and lockdowns.
Illusive COVID justice after six years.
Where are the prosecutions?
A year in change into the golden age, a deep and thus far unquench thirst for justice
among a huge portion of the massive MAGA base notwithstanding
the administration has prosecuted precise zero COVID criminals.
What's more, the Department of Justice, of course, with Pam Bondy Beach,
isn't promising to prosecute Americans for hate speech
or rolling out new schemes to cover up all their involvement in Epstein.
Hasn't scrounged up any time to bother investigating any of them.
No prosecutions, no investigations, no press releases, nothing but radio silence.
The guy running HHS, RFK Jr. wrote a big, beautiful book,
elaborately detailing the rampant criminality of Fauci and many more
of his co-conspirators, and yet crickets, nothing.
Criminal conspiracy, which these people provably engaged in,
typically has a five-year statute of limitations.
Now, this is interesting. The key provision, though, is that the clock
on the five-year statute of limitations window for criminal conspiracy
only commences once the conspiracy has concluded.
As the conspiracy, the shot mandates, the forced masking, the business closures,
continued deep into 2023 and arguably beyond,
we are still well within the five-year window for conspiracy prosecution.
A short but wildly incomplete list, Anthony Fauci, Peter Daschek,
Deborah Birx, Peter Moran, Francis Collins, Rachel Walensky,
and I forgot about Mandy Cohen. Walensky's replacement,
shown on camera, gleefully explaining how she arbitrarily enforced
COVID lockdowns on the public with no scientific basis.
None of these people, for the record, benefitted from the flurry
of pardons issued by whoever Biden was in the auto pen on his way
out the door, of course, with the exception of Anthony Fauci.
And if Fauci's pardon, indeed, if it was signed by an auto pen,
as it probably was, also highly suspect.
Other anniversaries on this date, James, as Fukushima memories fade,
Japan embraces nuclear-powered future,
and to, I suppose, come full circle, like the snake eating its tail
on this new world next week, Vietnam urges people to work from home
to save fuel as Iran war disrupts supplies.
It's just all right there.
Yeah, it is all right there.
And yes, on the COVID note, yeah, I mean, I want to say no surprise
that, of course, no prosecutions have happened.
But remember, remember, guys, Trump is coming back in
and Bobby's there and Mahas in the ascendant,
the prosecutions are about to start.
No, they are not. There is no justice.
There is only just us, as has been observed.
And on the Fukushima note, just to put the capper,
or is it the shoes on the robberous snake episode?
Yeah, it has been a remarkable thing to watch.
I remember 15 years ago when obviously the events of Fukushima
ignited a huge anti-nuclear movement here,
and people were out literally out on the streets protesting.
I covered some of that.
And what has resulted, well, now 15 years later,
it's like, no, we definitely need energy,
and we're importing too much of it,
start throwing the new plants back on.
And that is exactly what's happening.
So it's been a remarkable thing to witness,
and we'll see where it goes from here.
Hard to believe that was 15 years ago, but here we are.
Here we are.
And 311 is no shortage of other interesting,
giant anniversaries.
Is it the Madrid bombings and others?
The only people, James,
the only people we've seen prosecuted because of COVID
were the people busted,
scamming the scam money that they were doling out to everybody.
You hear these little regional conspiracies.
Someone misspent all the COVID money they got.
Which, again, it's a scam,
so everything downhill from it was a scam as well.
But let's not forget the other people prosecuted,
of course, those handful of heroes we heard about
giving out saline shots instead of the deadly MAGAJABs.
We run New World Next Week dot com
for monarchy gear, for Corbett gear,
for DVDs, James.
I've been watching a lot of World War documentaries,
and so even what you say there about Japan
to look now in 2026 is like,
holy moly, it's as sad as it is to say,
World War history is kind of
the history of the world,
or at least for the last 100,
maybe 200 or so years, really fascinating things
may live in interesting times they threatened us with.
And I also get the exclusive audio
of these New World Next Week episodes.
I play them on my monarchy radio
before they are published anywhere,
and you can access that at mediamonarchy.com
slash listen, James, that is New World Next Week
episode 622, buddy.
Awesome. Thank you for that,
and thank you for reminding people about the story.
I hope they will go to newworldnextweek.com
buy some of the swag.
It supports both of our work and keeps it going.
We've been here for over 15 years,
and so we were here covering Fukushima
as it happened as the long timers in the crowd will remember.
And we're going to be here hopefully another 15 years,
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So please support the work.
It's what makes it possible.
On that note, let's wrap it up here.
James, thank you for the three stories.
Thanks so much, buddy. Take care.