Welcome back to New World Next Week. I'm James Corbett of CorbettReport.com.
And I'm James Evan Pilato of MediaMonarchy.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, nations worldwide move to conserve fuel as Strait of Hormuz closure
threatens global economy.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shabazz 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 are 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 cost 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 Chokepoint.
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 landmine or sea mine.
Brouhaha, 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 prices already rising. And of course, it was a top story on the news last
night. How high will they go, essentially?
And of course, 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.
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 U.S.
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 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 U.S. 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban,
but only nine days to replace Khamenei with Khamenei.
Yay so that's progress isn't it um so
that's a funny way of putting what essentially what has taken place on
the 2d geopolitical chess board but as as we
all know it's a 3d chess board 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 their part in all of this phony nonsense of the axes of resistance
against nato is slash Israel it is a stage play and we should be careful not
to invest our 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 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 the same thing in West Virginia.
Out-of-state exploiters using the state's resources to dig all that coal and
pump all that oil. And it goes, of course, to out-of-state.
The insurance company's embargo thing is kind of huge on this as well, James.
I got a few people sending 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 insuring 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 slop.
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 copywritten works
without permission or payment.
It mirrors a similar scheme launched by the Authors Guild in the U.S.
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. night.
It's only going to be human authored books on my desert island, she said.
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,
you know, slap this on their AI slop and, you know, 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 way I used in the creation of that book.
So let's see what, yeah, maybe I'll do that and make a little video about it.
Like what is the process and how does it work?
But yeah, you know, again, what is the standard?
Who is creating this standard? What does it mean? Like, oh, what if somebody does AI research?
I asked Rock and it told me this. And then I wrote a story about it.
Like, 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 the, what I think is one of the greater fears of all of this.
It's not that AI is going to, you know, 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 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's still just doesn't seem real and it 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 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 6 41 p.m
march 11th 2026 as i talk 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 elusive
covid justice after six years.
Where are the prosecutions? A year and change into the golden age,
a deep and thus far unquenched thirst for justice among a huge portion of the
massive MAGA base notwithstanding.
The administration has prosecuted zero COVID criminals.
What's more, the Department of Justice, of course, with Pam Bondi 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 Daszczyk,
Deborah Birx, Peter Moritz, Francis Collins, Rachel Walensky,
and I forgot about Mandy Cohen.
Walensky's replacement shone on camera gleefully explaining how she arbitrarily
enforced COVID lockdowns on the public with no scientific basis.
None of these people, for the record, benefited 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
Maha's in the ascendant.
The prosecutions are about to start. No, 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 this
Robber Us 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 that the, uh, 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, 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 MAGA jabs.
We run newworldnextweek.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 you 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/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 covering whatever craziness
is happening there. 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.