UK prime Minister Andy Burnham's call for British citizens to stock up on emergency supplies including canned food and bottled water should not come as a surprise. His justifications seem to be possible cyberattacks with consequent service disruptions, inflation and the possibility of war. The possibility of war only arises because Boris Johnson scuttled the 2022 ceasefire negotiated between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul, and because of the UK joining Europe in baiting Russia to launch an attack on a NATO ally (and to be clear, I'm no fan of Russia's leadership either). Alternatively, the UK might voluntarily join the Middle East conflict as an ally of Saudi Arabia against Yemen; it has long been assisting Israel and the US in the region. The fact of the matter is that the UK is in a parlous economic state. It does not have the military capacity to fight, or funds to finance, a war, but broadcasting threats of war or other disasters gives the Government an excuse for imposing personal restrictions and material shortages, cutting spending on things like social services, hospitals and schools and other 'non-critical' infrastructure (as gauged by the 'war effort' sacrifice requirements), and clamping down socially by repressing countervailing narratives and dissent. An impoverished and immiserated populace is much more likely to accept these imposts without the open revolt they would normally cause. The situation will only worsen with the fuel shortages consequent upon the US-Israel attacks on Iran and the Saudi attack on Yemen, all having backfired spectacularly. The situation in Australia is a little better because we have things we can dig up and export, but beyond that we are in a similar position. There is no threat of war unless our Government is stupid enough to get itself involved with the colonial adventurism of our 'closest allies', but we are facing inflation caused by factors neither the Government nor Reserve Bank can control and we are facing a bracing economic shock when the supplies of fuel and fertiliser and other petrochemical products becoming increasingly restricted or dry up entirely. We have already seen fascistic clampdowns on free speech and freedom of assembly and the loss of independence and privacy resulting from a digitised surveillance economy and state. Across the Western world anyone can see the disasters coming - the climate catastrophe, widespread financial collapse, worldwide shortages of products essential to modern life, the mass unemployment AI will cause and the US warmongering in its attempt to maintain a hegemony that no longer exists. Increasing numbers of Australians are living in poverty or precarity and with this bleak future we can only expect things to get much worse in the immediate future. #auspol #ukpol #AUKUS bbc.com/news/articles/ckr5yz…