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Above image. Nothing quite captures the rot inside the United States today than the very foundations of New York City.
Calm cool, accurate, and easy to read. Here’s the reality as we move forward in January 2022.
From Strategic Culture…
Eamon McKinney
January 8, 2022
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In a world of chronic shortages China has realized that commodities hold more value than cash.
The current trade war with China began at the very outset of the Trump administration. Apparently alarmed at America’s dependence on Chinese goods, particularly the extent to which its defense industries are reliant on Chinese components and rare earths, Trump had a point but may have better served to speak softly about this vulnerability. He mentioned only two dependencies, there are thousands of products that America relies on China exclusively for.
In moves that were simply anti-competitive practices he then launched in a “tech war” with China. Banning the sale of chips and semi-conductors, along with bans on Chinese 5G and Huawei the global leader in particular. Not content with that the U.S. launched a global push to pressure its “allies’ to also ban Huawei and its state of the art 5G technology. Not to be taken in isolation, the tech war was just part of an overall strategy to damage and restrain China’s economy. “Decoupling” had arrived into the general lexicon.
To an extent the measures worked, the chip shortage caused a slowdown among many tech dependent sectors, but not for long. China has developed its domestic production at a pace not possible anywhere else. It has also convinced China that it needed to greatly accelerate its self-sufficiency across all sectors.
As it stands today, America has nothing that China needs that it can’t make or buy elsewhere. America conversely needs China desperately, without China’s goods the American economy grinds to a halt. The extent of that dependency has been highlighted by Americaэs ongoing supply chain chaos. Manufacturing, retail, construction and countless other industry sectors have stalled without Chinese goods. No country in the world is as dependent on imports as the U.S. Attempts to find alternatives to China are fruitless, no other country can match the efficiency, infrastructure, economies of scale and cost that China can. American manufacturing only accounts for 20% of the American economy, self-sufficiency for Americans is a fantasy, even in the best case scenario, it is generations away.
Long spoken of is “China’s nuclear option”, dumping its dollar holdings and rendering the dollar worthless. China doesn’t want to do that. Firstly the loss of a trillion of its own dollar holdings is not to be taken lightly, and it would also damage the holdings and economies of its other trading partners around the world. Such a move would be an absolute last resort. China’s real nuclear option is the withholding of essential goods to America.
China has all but monopolised the rare earth industries, now accounting for more than 85% of global production. Without rare earths Americas tech and defence sectors would be paralysed.
Curious how President Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, makgin American purchases of anything out of Xinjiang illegal.
Funny thing though... all of the Chiense "rare earth" minerals come from Xinjiang and are mostly mined by Uighurs.
Uh oh! (Head slap!)
All the seventeen critical rare earths are mined and refined in China in high volume. Some are mined in other countries in smaller volumes: developing alternative sources to China would a very lengthy process. For the foreseeable future, China decides who gets rare earths, and who doesn’t.
Unknown to many Americans the pharmaceutical industry is among the most heavily dependent of China. 80-85% of its products and precursors come from China, and there are currently few alternatives. I leave it to the reader’s imagination to visualize an America without medications, think Zombie apocalypse.
Some recent developments in China have given us a glimpse of the future. China is stockpiling food and other commodities at unprecedented levels. It is believed to hold more than half the world’s grain and maize already, other essential food stuffs are also being stockpiled at similar levels.
Iron ore, steel and other industrial raw materials are also being hoarded in previously unforeseen quantities. In a world of chronic shortages China has realised that commodities hold more value than cash.
More significantly, China just published a Governmental “White Paper.” It emphasises the need to conserve natural, finite resources (again think rare earths.) It also addresses the paradox that Trump was concerned about, why is China supplying parts to the U.S. military contractors? These among many other sectors will now require a “special export licence”. Read between the lines. China can apply these principles across any exported product it chooses. If they don’t like where it is headed, or what it will be used for, it isn’t going. Fertilisers, for which China accounts for about 30% of the world’s production are already banned from export. This is already forcing American many American farmers to switch from wheat to less fertiliser-intensive crops like soybeans.
China didn’t start or want this trade war, to date it is has been a one-sided assault on the Chinese economy by an increasingly desperate American government. China has not retaliated or employed any of the measures it could have in response, until now.
America now truly has its trade war, and more decoupling will follow, but from here on in, it will be on China’s terms.
Re–shoringmakesgoodeconomicsense,becauseitispossiblethatinthenearfuture,theonlypeoplewhowillacceptthe US dollararelikelyto only beotherAmericancompanies.
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Conclusion
You will not read about the collapse, the SHTF, or the various wars and brush fights in the American Government controlled media. But they are still going on. Here’s an insight as to what is going on.
Finance folk, bankers, accountants, and other FIRE industries have looted the United States, and gutted American society. It’s a big boated crusty shell with nothing but dust on the inside. Soon, very soon, there is going to be a mass realization of this reality.
It could be harsh, brash and catastrophic.
Or, it could be a serious of controlled implosions.
But it WILL HAPPEN.
There is no way out of this mess. None. The only thing that a person can do is hunker down in a smaller community away from the larger clusters of dependent citizenry, become active and involved in your respective communities, and be the Rufus; help others will no concern for personal profit.
I will advise you all to use all of the techniques provided on MM here to center your consciousness, and prepare.
Here’s a quick review…
Affirmation prayer campaigns.
Perform your Fate Forecasting, and monitor it closely.
Center your consciousness using Hemi-sync.
Conduct world-line travel and slides as necessary.
Be part of your community.
Be able to provide a service, or volunteer in your community.
Tune out the bullshit propaganda off the “news”.
Stock up your food larder. Have a garden.
Trade and barter with neighbors.
Ride a bicycle more often. Use the car less.
Surround yourself with cats, or dogs, or other animals.
Be kind. Be calm. Be neighborly.
Make your little area a bubble of kind softness. That way, no matter what changes hits your world, your little area will be mostly immune to them. Be great; be the Rufus.
I believe in you.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
For those of you who worry about Taiwan, and the collapsing US Empire taking over or suppressing integrated chip manufacture. Take note.
China already holds the undisputed leadership in quantum supremacy with not one, but two complete separate computers. One using light and the other superconducting circuits, performing computational feats unattainable for traditional computing.
China has developed two different quantum computers, one that uses light and the other superconducting circuits, and obtained a computing power unattainable for traditional computing, as explained in two articles published in Physical Review Letters.
That means that this dual system of quantum computing gives China the ability to solve practical problems that can not be implemented on conventional computers, stands to respect PhysicsWorld.
With this result, China is already much more than an economic power: together with its energy developments with the artificial sun, it has also entered the “space race” of the 21st century with force, with different projects oriented to Mars and the Moon.
Except... that it is the ONLY nation in this race. The rest of the world are arguing whether to drive to the racetrack or walk.
Pioneers in quantum information
The new quantum computers have been developed by two groups from the Hefei National Laboratory of Physical Sciences, China University of Science and Technology, led by Professor Jian-Wei Pan, whose work has been highlighted in the past, both by the journal Nature and Science, as a pioneer in experimental quantum information science.
The National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory is one of two national labs at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province, July 11, 2019. [Photo by XU MINHAO/FOR CHINA DAILY]Last July, China announced that it had achieved quantum supremacy with a supercomputer called the Zuchongzhi, capable of performing operations much, much, MUCH faster than Google’s quantum computer.
Zuchongzhi completed a complex calculation in just over an hour, doing it about 60,000 times faster than a classic computer: Using 56 qubits, he solved in just 1.2 hours a task that would take a classic supercomputer eight years.
China leads in quantum supercomputer design, technology, manufacturing, research, applications, components, robotics and AI controls .
Two new quantum computers
China now emerges with a new quantum computer, which it calls Zuchongzhi 2.1 , which uses 66 qubits and is 10 million times faster than the current fastest supercomputer: its computational complexity is more than 1 million times greater than the Sycamore processor. of Google.
It also emerges with another quantum supercomputer, which it calls Jiuzhang 2.0 , that uses light to process information, rather than the superconducting circuits that underpin Zuchongzhi 2.1. “Jiuzhang 2.0”, with 113 photons transmitting qubits, is a septillion times more powerful: it can solve in a millisecond an operation that the fastest computer in the world would take 30 billion years.
This second development also represents quite a feat over the previous version of this same quantum computing system based on light, the “Jiuzhang”, presented at the end of 2020 and with which 76 qubit transmitting photons were used.
Quantum supremacy
With these developments, China consolidates its global quantum advantage and confirms that quantum computers are much more powerful and efficient than classical computers in solving critical problems.
Classical computers are based on the binary system, in which each symbol constitutes a bit, the minimum unit of information in this system, which can only have two values (zero or one).
Binary Computer.
These classic computers have managed to increase their power through supercomputers, which appeared in the 70s of the last century.
These supercomputers, better known as high-performance computers , base their extraordinary capabilities (measured in petaflops) on the sum of powerful binary computers linked together to increase their working power and performance.
Another universe
Quantum computing belongs to another universe: it uses a completely different and superior basic unit of information called the qubit.
The qubit, unlike the bit, can take several values at the same time, that is, it manifests a quantum system with two simultaneous eigen states.
The qubit with two simultaneous eigen states.
While the bit takes on values of 0 or 1 in groups of 8,16,32 or 64 bits, the measurement in qubits can be in both states of 0 and 1 simultaneously, giving you the ability to perform unreachable operations to binary computing.
Quantum supremacy is achieved when it is shown that a qubit-based computer can solve something that is not available to binary computers, even if they are very sophisticated.
Double supremacy
Although it has been claimed in the past that quantum supremacy has already been achieved, and became a battleground between IBM and Google, China has overtaken both with far more powerful developments that, according to Physics magazine, give it no place. to doubt the real and verified quantum supremacy.
And not only that, but it has achieved it by following two different and parallel paths that fortify its supremacy: that of light and that of superconducting circuits.
Physics highlights that it is very difficult for classical algorithms and computers to improve China’s quantum advantages, so we can say that the debate on whether quantum supremacy really exists has concluded.
Useful Supremacy?
And the magazine concludes: Given that quantum machines solve such large and impressive problems in a way that far surpasses classical simulators, could we use these quantum computers to solve useful computational problems?
Researchers have claimed that these quantum computers can tackle important problems, particularly in the field of quantum chemistry, but no convincing experimental demonstration has yet been reported in the West.
You can rest assured that it is ongoing, or has already been conduced, inside of China.
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Yeah. I cannot deny it any longer. There is no question that America is ready to launch a war. Well, I tried. But you know, you all can’t stop a stampede of buffalo. Sigh. Let’s just document some of the evidence. Where even the most hopeful and optimistic must sigh resigned.
The evidence is everywhere. America is on a war-footing.
Yahoo!
Well, Yahoo! disentangled. Not that it mattered to me that much. But, you know, it’s pretty fucking selective. No problem with Cameroon, Kenya, Zambia, or Bolivia. Of the entire world, ONLY China is excluded.
Here’s what you get when you try to access Yahoo inside of China…
Yahoo splash screen.
LinkedIN
Now, LinkedIN is another story all together. I use that platform to connect with industry and colleagues and look for business opportunities. Even though I am an American, accessing it from inside of China throws me into the most lame version I have ever seen.
LinkedIN splash.
And then what happens when I sign in?
Why I get a PDF version of my profile. That’s it. No connections. No access to services. No way for me to recruit for careers. Zilch. It’s just a big nothing.
Of course…
Let’s keep it real. Companies can do whatever they want to do, and it they want to disentangle from the Asian market, it is their choice.
China prevented Google, and Facebook; both mega-software internet companies for working inside of China because they routinely violated the Chinese privacy laws.
But this is different.
You see, let’s put it in simple terms; money and market.
The following is from the United States own government (and propaganda) outlets. Which means that it is biased towards making the USA look good. Even when trying to make America look better, it looks like shit compared to China.
Comparison.
Obviously, no matter how you spin it, Chinese economy is climbing and the Chinese consumer market is exploding!
So why turn your back on it?
What’s going on?
By every metric, China is superior and surpassing the West…
It’s not just readership. It’s not just technology. It’s not just manufacturing. It’s everything.
Education; best universities
Disposable income
Manufacturing
America in 2021 is somewhere around tenth in global manufacturing.
e-commerce
America has Amazon. In China, everything is e-commerce.
Again, keeping it real…
America’s population is 330 million people. Of that, (at best) 40% are middle class = 132 million people, plus the 5% of the wealthy = market of 148.5 million people.
China’s population is 1.6 billion people. (1600 million). Of that, 85% are middle class with the wealthy being around 6% = market is 1456 million people.
USA consumer market = 148 million people.
China consumer market = 1460 million people.
The Chinese market is roughly TEN TIMES the market of America.
Anyone desirous of cutting off this market is NOT doing so because of opportunity, profits, industry, commerce or fiance. They are doing so because of politics. It’s obvious.
Know your history.
And history shows us that politically driven decisions end up being disastrous for the people, the companies, and the nations so involved. Don’t go down that dark and scary road.
Of Course… the situation is eroding fast
America is in a tail-spin. Not just collapsing, but collapsing in every which way possible, and the only way out is to throw themselves in front of the policeman and get shot to death.
The government funded media (and they ARE funded to the tune of $330 million dollars every year) are propping up the illusion that America is still great.
Like by using the GDP instead of PPP.
Which, as I have said before is just a big lie.
Sally has one dollar and can buy two apples with it.
Joe has ten dollars but can only buy one apple with it.
GDP says that “Joe” is doing better.
PPP says that “Sally” is doing better.
In my mind, of course, Sally is doing better. She has a full stomach. While Joe is left wanting.
Yeah. Sigh.
And here is a typical propaganda piece being doled out to the clueless inside of America. I swear it looks more and more like George Orwell’s 1984 than anything else in history.
“She had become a physical necessity, something that he not only wanted but felt he had the right to,” ― George Orwell
Ah. Looks so professional, and clear. But that is the illusion. They are using a false metric. Using GDP is an economic “measurement”. What a big lie and what a big farce, and shame on all of you for believing it.
American echo chamber.
Heritage is a neocon operation inside of the USA.
It is purposeful distortions to keep Americans (the West) ignorant.
Here’s an interview with a VOA journalist. VOA is the US governments main propaganda arm that oversees most all “news”. It is funded by the NED, which is turn is funded out of the CIA. Listen and learn. video 60MB
A Sanity Check
Please do a sanity check.
If China’s unemployment is 27%, and America’s is a mere 14%, then where are all those Chinese tent cities, Chinese crime, and Chinese starvation that you can see all over the inside of the USA.
If America was really, REALLY, doing that well, then there wouldn’t be so much unemployment, tent cities, and crime.
Funny. All Chinese eat healthy. It’s part of their culture. There’s no “shake up”. Jeeze!
And check out the picture that they use…
No one in China uses paper money any more. They haven’t for at least a decade.
Why do I say this is fake?
No one in China uses paper money any more. They haven’t for at least a decade. It is available. But usually, it is the poor and the elderly that use it. The vast number of transactions are done electronically. It’s call “QR scanning”. It’s the norm in China, and has been so for the last decade.
Here’s another example…
Can you spot what’s wrong with this picture?
What’s wrong with this picture?
No one in China eats “just plain” noodles.
They eat delicious dishes. Sometimes it’s noodles, but if it’s noodles, you can be guaranteed that there is a meat and a vegetable with it. Fast food noodles are popular as a snack only. And starving students, and hard workers (trying to save money) will resort to them. But it is NOT NOT NOT what the Chinese people eat for lunch.
This is what they really eat for lunch.
A real Chinese lunch.
I’m surprised at the gullibility of Americans. Hasn’t anyone ever been to a Chinese-American restaurant? Sheech!
And this…
A real Chinese lunch.
And this…
A real Chinese lunch.
And this…
A real Chinese lunch.
And yes, you can get noodles to eat.
It’s a quick SNACK.
A snack.
It’s NOT a lunch meal. Jeeze!
You all need to avoid echo chambers, and America is doubling down and latching the hatches turning the American echo chamber into an echo pressure cooker.
Already the Americans want war. They desire it. There’s raw hate there. It’s not as Biden says “a competition”, the American media machine and the funding efforts are all directed towards war. DO NOT WISH FOR THAT. YOU ALL HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THAT WILL MEAN.
Now… good news and bad news
As I have stated previously, America has passed the point where there would be a position of military superiority. Amy war would be an absolute bloodbath fiasco on American soil, and so all the hate China bullshit can hate all you want. It’s just going to make the collapse and fall of “the great experiment” so much more painful.
Russia and China are watching the collapse in real-time.
Americans, and their “leadership”, are all in caged “echo chambers”. Delirious of their own notions of power and ability, and ignorant of the rest of the world. It’s a true shame. It really is. But that’s what’s going on.
I could show you about the Chinese military, and how they are nothing like what is being portrayed in the American media. But that’s all so 2019. Today, we are going to do something a little bit different.
We are going to talk about YOU, and what YOU can do while the rest of the world around you spins down the anus of madness.
We start with this funny little piece to lighten up the mood.
Chinese old movie with English voice over by an Urban Ethnic American
Yeah. The United States can do what ever it wants.
I can tell you that I am in the safest nation on the planet, and that’s a FACT.
And whatever caldron is brewing inside of America right now, know that it is not reality. It is a big illusion and soon its going to boil over and make a big mess in the kitchen. I am here to tell you that YOU NEED NOT WORRY about that. The fear is greater than the reality.
It is NOT going to happen like anyone thinks.
It will be quite different. Say! How John Boltons’ Bio-Warfare effort against China working out? Not what he planned, eh?
Instead concentrate on yourself.
Concentrate on your life. Concentrate on your family.
Yah. You have heard that all before. But it is true. Start walking the steps of being a Rufus. Act a little bit nicer. smile more. Be the best that you can be. Do great things.
Stop over thinking every fucking thing. Start accepting things as they are. Not as you want them to be. Accept the situations that are in front of you.
In the movie “Bronco Billy”, Gunny Holiday had his squad adapt to the situation with the tee-shits. Every day they would have to adapt to the tee-shirts that the DI wore. Eventually they got it worked out. And they adapted.
This means everything. Especially in your relationships. You know, the biggest influence on your life is the person whom you spend the most time with. They will influence your life the most. Treat them properly, and they should treat you properly back. If they do not, then find someone else.
Be patient. There is something that I have learned. Affirmations take time. Stop thinking in terms of the nonsense generated out of Hollywood. It’s not real. It’s a fiction. Things. Take. Time.
It’s how much you know. Nor is it how much money you have. It’s not the grades you had in school, or the friends you have now. It’s not where you live or the kind of car that you drive. It’s all about how long you can take the hits and keep on going.
No one can and should tell you who you are or how you should act. You define what your life is. No one else does. But others can show you what worked for them, and then you can decide to copy it or ignore it.
Is being the best boxer the one who can hit the hardest? Is it the one that can stay in the ring the longest? Is it the one who can endure hit after hit after hit. Or is it a combination of all three. Find your niche.
Realize that America has become a character; a joke
It’s not what America is, but the actions of it’s crazed government, and the behaviors of many of it’s citizenry clearly point towards humor. But you are not what other people(s) think. You are unique. Be the best that you can be and let the rest of the world howl.
Remember, everything concerning you is YOUR responsibility
It’s not the governments. It’s not your spouse. It’s not your parents. It’s not your school. It’s not your job, or your carrier. It’s your responsibility, and yours alone. It is all up to YOU.
Stop looking in the rear view mirror. Realize that America is spending trillions of dollars on wars, public opinion to create wars, fears to control the citizenry and bribes to selected minority groups. It’s all a big black hole that sucks in the money and lays waste to those around it.
Meanwhile the rest of the world is moving on.
Be the best you can be. Inspires others, and have a great life together. You choose your life. You define what it will be, you plan to make that life happen and you direct ALL of your energies in that direction. Live the MM lifestyle.
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
Lately I have been musing about the mandatory mRNA vaccinations that are now required all over the West. What was considered radical just a few months ago has been normalized by a massive propaganda campaign and mandated by executive order an law.
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While I don’t want to join the fray and armies of the anti-Vaxx people, I do want to throw some of my opinions into this mix.
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As you all know, I live in China and everyone is getting their vaccination injections. It’s free, and no one is raising any concern. The reason is, of course, that [1] everyone trusts the Chinese government, and [2] the vaccine is based on a “dead host” which is the well known, well documented, “tried and true” method of inoculating people from virus strains. And, of course, [3] the Coronavirus is a rapidly mutating bio-weapon thrown at China in 2019 CNY by Trump / Bolton. Being in China, you see how serious all of this is.
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Now, I do not know why America and the rest of the West are so adamant in everyone getting an “experimental” mRNA vaccination instead of a traditional “dead host” vaccine. It seems all to “hush hush”. And I have long learned never to trust the United States government. So it is worrisome.
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When the USA government makes a law, drums up a media narrative for it, and then suppresses alternative viewpoints, every alarm bell should be going off in your head.
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I have speculated that all of this is because they want to “piggy back” some other system with the vaccine. Maybe [1] an inoculation about a bio-weapon that the USA has yet to launch. Or perhaps [2], a way of countering radiation from a nuclear war. Or, [3] even such things as mind control and tracking nano-chips are in the list of “anything is possible”. But the truth is I, and no-one else knows.
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But that is not what this article is about. This is about something else.
The need for mRNA booster injections
By most accounts, this mRNA vaccine is part of a system of never-ending yearly or quarterly injections. These injections will suppress whatever mutation of Coronavirus might arise, as well as perhaps other systems that emerge over time. And on paper it might look ok.
[1] The stockholders in big-pharma would be happy to have a captive audience that needs to pay for yearly or quarterly booster injections or suffer government mandated obsolesce.
[2] With everything taking these yearly (or quarterly) boosters, it will become normal and expected. Just like the American Federal Income Tax forms are every April. And once the cattle people become accustomed to it, changes can be made to the ingredients, and alterations can be made for other purposes.
But let me suggest a downside.
The Big Assumptions
There are assumptions made, and these assumption assume a very steady-state non-changing reality. And that simply is not true. History tells us otherwise.
The big assumptions are…
That the (various) government will enforce mandatory booster injections.
That the factories can easily adapt to a changing viral environment and create boosters based on the mRNA models faster and better than the “dead host” model.
That people will comply with getting the boosters.
So far, all of these assumptions are given in every discussion about the benefits of the mRNA vaccination.
That the mRNA boosters, working with mass inoculations will create a herd immunity against any virus strains that the government deems threatening.
That the government can pay for the boosters, the R&D, and all the support systems necessary.
These two points are always assumed, and taken as “givens”. But they shouldn’t really be.
That over time, people will elect to pay for the boosters out of their own pockets.
This assumption is based on the Federal Income Tax model; also known as the “boiling frog technique” to manage sheeple compliance.
That the companies will always have factories to produce these boosters without interruption….
The last point is what I find frightening
No one is talking about this.
And they SHOULD.
Stocks plummeted this week.
Investors are terrified.
And Morgan Stanley just announced that a “20% drop in the S&P 500” could happen any moment.
If you're a student of history, you likely recognize the signs.
And it's time to prepare for a market moment that could define your wealth for the next decade.
A small group of U.S. investors are in line to receive advance notice of the exact day of the next market crash.
Regards,
Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith
I get these doom and gloom email notices all the time. After a while you shut them off. I mean you can only take the bullshit so long.
But you know…
The USA national debt is fucking enormous. That’s what happens when you make and earn money from nothing. It has become a big mountain of nothing. Yah. It’s hollow inside, but everyone is living off this mountain, and it will pop. It really will. Nothing lasts forever.
But there are other things going on as well.
Suppose that America has finally done “it”. Whether they “false flag” an event, launch a provocation, or just implement a full on nuclear WMD on China,, the results will be the same. They will royally piss off both Russia and China, and a full-scale WMD holocaust will be unleashed in the United States.
It will not be pretty.
A destroyed America.
We will have cites destroyed. Electrical systems destroyed. EMP bursts that render all computers, and internet, not to mentions all vehicles into slag. And in the middle of this, when starvation begins to beset the land, and crime is rampant and it’s every man for himself…
… how in God’s name are the booster injections going to be made, distributed and paid for?
How?
And when those people in a SHTF situation, hiding in their houses, and trying to figure out how get some food…
Food will be difficult to get.
…suddenly find themselves with a really bad chest cold. Not a flu. Not a Coronavirus, but a Covid Zelda variant.
What then?
People!
War is not something that you watch on television or check your news feed over. It’s not going to be fought in a “far away” land like the South China Sea, or Australia. Or Japan, or Korea.
Everyone inside the United States will experience it.
Just like they are experiencing the blow-back from the John Bolton / Donald Trump launch of three bio-weapons WMD on the busiest holiday in China. Who’s fucking laughing now, dipshits?
If the USA instigates a war, whether it is with China or Russia, the battlefield will be on American soil.
Not in Taiwan.
Not in the South China Sea.
Not on Australian soil
It will be in America…
Dog eat dog world.
Oh. Some battles will be on, near and on the territories of the USA proxies, but both Russia and China are not, NOT stupid. They are not going to waste their times and effort on the pawns. They will go after the Kings and Queens and will attempt a very quick checkmate.
How many destroyed cities will it takes before the USA surrenders?
One? Five? ten?
Twenty?
Forty?
Fifty?
I’m betting that it will be around 35.
And with America a blaze in a nuclear winter… So tell me, what’s going to happen to those who need mRNA boosters? Are they going to run off to the local hospitals for a booster?
A crushed America.
And just where are the boosters going to be made with the vast majority of the pharmacy supply sources inside the biggest cities? And even if a city was spared, how are the medicines going to be made without power, electricity and every single computer system fired into slag?
Of course, it’s important (for the oligarchy) that you do not see the entire picture…
Back in 2012, living in China, I was also such a (western) “News” addict.
I then did an experiment:
During > 2 months, I deliberately didn’t watch western TV, didn’t went to any western news website, didn’t listened to western radio stations.
I only watched Chinese TV (various TV stations) only read Chinese newspapers and Chinese online news sources
What a revelation ! What a relief that was ! What a peaceful, healthy life !
-[Redacted]
Right? So there is a major media push to keep the “rabble” (that’s me and you, bub) in line. Don’t question anything. If you do, you will be censored. You know… for “a matter of national security”. And so on and so forth.
Let me tell you a few things about the media…
See below. All credit to the author who shall remain anonymous. You know who you are, don't you? It's a great piece.
Here is a thought- provoking dialogue between the gorgeous Li JingJing & the awesome Vijay Prashad. I would like also to name Michel Collon, a French-speaking Belgian reporter & geopolitical analyst having written on the 5 principles of war propaganda.
Coined by others, not by me, an acronym to remember them easily : M.E.D.I.A.
MONOPOLIZE
“M” as in MONOPOLIZE THE DEBATE.
This can be done by saturating the media landscape (written, cable TV, online) with presstitutes.
Also by restricting the allowed topics and last but not least, by restricting the range of permissible or legit answers (You all know the Overton window) Here some structural factors of the human nature help tremendously the manipulators.
Stages 1 & 2 of the Maslow Pyramid are basic needs (survival) and physical safety.
The third stage being psychological safety or to state things clearly, the need to belong to a group but not only that, to a group perceived as shining, desirable & prestigious…
To free oneself relatively from this emotional need, at least to the extent to be capable to have a space between that need and the awareness of other’ people own gratifying images of themselves, if I still want to use Maslow’s concept, it would be the work on one’s one mind called self-realization, a quite unpopular task.
Most people believe what they want (consciously/subconsciously/unconsciously) to believe to preserve their belonging to a prestigious group (or so they think…)
So in the West, it’s always much much easier for the governments to promote a narrative with at its core the key message being ” it’s China/Russia/Iran/the Other’s fault ”
The bigger (China/Russia/Iran) the boogeyman is, the better…
ENSNARE
“E” as in ENSNARE.
ENSNARE the people’s minds with irrelevant fantasies, thus avoiding to tackle seriously what is at stake economically, diplomatically, militarily or geopolitically in a given event or situation, at home or abroad.
The dumbing down process going on during the last 50 years and keeping on is facilitating this diversion tactic (red herrings galore).
You are most probably familiar with Charlotte Yserbit’s work.
For me, the uber Structural Red Herring in the West the last 50 years has been the displacement of the focus from socio-economic struggles to so-called woke issues (what in French is called the opposition between the two concepts of “social”,understand real socio-economic struggles and “sociétal”, understand woke)
One amusing survey that can be done is to ask 100 French citizens what they think of ” Mai 68″ first and then ask what is their understanding of a color revolution and last what about “Mai 68” as a color revolution ?
I bet most of them would be flabbergasted to learn that “Mai 68” was a color revolution set to get rid of Charles de Gaulle and to strengthen the Anglo-American Establishment’s grip on France. “Mai 68” & “June 89″ (2 decades later in Beijing) were essentially of the same nature if the ” color revolution ” concept is used, Ho! Ho! Ho !…
Let”s remind that the US ambassador to France was in the streets with the students in 1968 as James Lilley, US ambassador to China & CIA agent, was in the streets with the students in 1989…
The vital difference is that “Mai 68” succeeded beyond expectations & “June 89″ failed miserably on the essential goal of regime change but is successful as a smearing operation against China, as we are reminded on June 4 each year with the China-bashing in relation to the so-called ” Tian An Men Massacre ”
Concerning the process of dumbing down, another name to remember is Eugene Michael Jones, alive & in his seventies.
His 1992 book is a masterpiece of philosophy, psychology and politics : Modern degenerates, modernity as rationalization for sexual misbehavior.
His 2000 book is the natural completion of the 1992’s one : Libido Dominandi, sexual liberation & political control.
His intellectual adventure began when he lost his teaching position in the 70s because he stated at work that he is against abortion, he was utterly flummoxed since he taught in a Catholic school for girls…
This personal mishap has awaken his curiosity, investigative endeavor & meditation since then.
DEHUMANIZE/DEMONIZE.
“D” as in DEHUMANIZE/DEMONIZE.
DEHUMANIZE/DEMONIZE the Other in all dimensions : ugly physical appearance, defective psychological construct, spiritual emptiness is the norm obviously, rigid or primitive social organization, twisted historical development, warped anthropological foundations, evil religious practices…
The Other cannot be motivated by good intentions, all words uttered must be scrutinized because ignorance or perfidy must be expected.
All actions are driven by greed and fear, needless to say since Truth, Goodness and Beauty are not granted to the Other.
Some people definitely need a mirror, not only for the Body but also for the Mind & the Soul.
INVERSION
“I” as in INVERSION.
INVERSION of identity between the aggressor & the victim of the. aggression. Examples are numerous but I simply mention the category of false flag operations, an egregious chapter by itself.
ABSENCE
“A” as in ABSENCE.
ABSENCE of a quality historical understanding offered to the public in order to truly contextualize the event or the situation, at home or abroad.
A sound chronology of the events is either absent or the chronology presented is biased, oriented by a specific agenda.
Conclusion
The trouble is, in Australia, i listen to news while driving, listen to radio news while custom made frames, and I have no alternative news sources beyond Australian fake news.
whenever I internet search China development news, even in Chinese language, the news that appear at the first page are usually BBC Chinese, CNN Chinese, DW Chinese, Epoch Times Chinese....
Dam!
(All the Western propaganda outlets printed in the Chinese language.)
Yes, CCTV news focus on China developments and policies, full of positive energy. They make me happy.
The Chinese Gov don't talk about poor people as lazy, they talk about how to give them a vision, incentive, conditions, and motivate them to work hard to help themselves out of poverty.
The Hong Kong TVB recently visited 10 poorest region across China, and was touched by how much the government quietly doing so much for those remote region residents.
The title of the documentary series is 无穷之路，the road to no poverty. Below is chapter 1:
https://youtu.be/dcF_WB--P0U
You no need to know the language, just see how remote these villages located, and what the government did to improve their lives and you will understand they are wealthier than the working poor in America who can afford to pay rent and become homeless.
-[Redacted]
Sometimes I hate being right.
If you have something that works (the traditional “dead host” vaccination methodology) but instead [1] elect to move forward with untested, unproved, unestablished technology.
Then [2] you mandate forced compliance.
Coupled with [3] forbidding anyone from using the traditional methods for vaccination, that should set off every alert in you head.
And knowing what I do about China and Russia, they already probably know the TRUE and REAL reason why the mRNA vaccination is being so aggressively promoted inside the USA today. And if I were them, and I knew that the United States is building up towards a massive world war against us, I would figure out a way to use this mRNA system against the aggressors.
.
It’s called logic.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I have written about this many times before, and I tire of rehashing the basics to people who have been kept in the dark living like mushrooms for most of their lives. But this article, and in this article, I want to discuss the differences between the political nincompoops that are driving America towards war, and the generals that will have to fight it for them. Followed by the sitrep realities of fucking around with China.
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It’s a battle between the “pinky in the air” political neocon moron-coops…
Bloomberg OWNS most Americans and has a zillion little mechanisms to extract your wealth.
… and the tanned-leather, chew on nails, or die, military.
Shortly afterwards, he turned to his other generals and asked them point blank if they would obey his orders if he asked them to provoke China, or Russia. And there’s all sort of articles about that. Just look up the controversy regarding General Miley.
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Firstly, Let’s talk about what the differences are between a political neocon and a career general.
A political neocon
Neoconservatism is a political movement born in the United States during the 1960s among “war-hawks” who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party.
They were also upset with the “New Left” and counterculture of the 1960s, particularly the Vietnam protests.
Some also began to question their liberal beliefs regarding domestic policies such as the Great Society.
Neoconservatives advocate the promotion of American-style democracy and forced American interventionism in international affairs.
This includes such buzz words as “peace through strength”. They are known for their rabid hatred of anything regarding Socialism, Marxism or Communism, and many believe that the creation of wars are necessary to maintain American global leadership.
In short, they believe that they are the best, and that their systems are the best, and that they have the right to destroy anyone else who challenges their systems, no matter what or who they are.
The Military
The military is a merit driven hierarchical organization. This is true in every nation, and in every country. In America they are subservient and report to the President of the United States. Who is, I should remind you all, a political figurehead.
But the military, are not political tools. No matter what the politicians believe. They are a merit driven organization, and they are the ones putting their lives on the line.
And every day things are closer and closer, nose to nose, neocon to the actual generals. Such as this…
“US has already lost #AI fight to China, says ex-Pentagon software chief”
An astounding headline as cracks appear in the façade of America’s AI supremacy. Nicolas Chaillan, the Pentagon’s first chief software officer says things may not be as rosy as reported.
Mr. Chaillan recently resigned from his job at the Pentagon in protest to the slow pace of technological change in the Pentagon and his statement is a shocker:
“We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion,” he said, adding there was “good reason to be angry”.
Just to ensure that you don’t consider Mr. Chaillan a malcontent, here’s what the US National Security Commission on AI headed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in March:
“China is already an AI peer, and it is more technically advanced in some applications. Within the next decade, China could surpass the US as the world’s AI superpower.”
The sky is not falling and AI will not be the sole determining factor in the fate of nations. So there’s no need to be upset.
What you must take away from this is that those who tell you that “everything is fine and that there is nothing to worry about” are perhaps less forthcoming than you may think.
This pertains not just to AI, but to automated ports, smart cities, chip development, #5G and a host of other technologies. And as I have warned repeatedly, #CBDCs. Each of these technologies represents a slow imperceptible dripping away of the US's technological lead.
For each of these technologies, we have all read articles by pundits who simply shrug their shoulders and say that it doesn’t matter and that the US’s technological supremacy is secure. Smug in a belief that the US’s open society has a natural advantage and that it is inconceivable that China might overtake the US.
A mere three days ago I used this astounding quote from an article by David P. Goldman who had this to say to these pundits:
"These are self-consoling illusions of a lazy elite that has allowed America’s manufacturing, technological and education advantages to erode over the past 20 years – an elite that has nothing to say about reversing the decline."
To which my comments from a mere three days ago seems prophetic and worthy of repeat:
And the problem is that he’s right. The elites that are telling you not to worry because the US is miles ahead in Chips and AI, or that China is going to fail are flat out wrong.
They are falling back on prejudices about China from another era, or are so caught up in loathing of China’s political system that they fail to see what’s happening.
When it comes to tech the US is bringing a knife to a gunfight.
-Richard Turrin
1 October 1990 – Air Force General and VP candidate Curtis E. LeMay died at March Air Force Base, California, at age 83. General Curtis Emerson Lemay was the “Father of the Strategic Air Command.” When he took over as its commander in 1948, it consisted of little more than a few understaffed and untrained B-29 groups left over from World War II.
Less than half its aircraft were operational and the crews were next to worthless. He ordered a mock bombing raid on Dayton, Ohio, and most of the bombers missed their targets by one to two miles.
That was unacceptable.
He subjected his men to vigorous training and long hours of hard work, but fought for additional pay and better housing to make their demanding lives more tolerable. He obtained vast fleets of new bombers, established a vast aerial refueling system, started many new units and bases, began missile development, and established a strict command and control system. When he left the command in 1957 to assume his new job as Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, SAC was the most powerful military force the world had ever seen.
But that was only one of his many accomplishments. He was the outstanding air combat leader of World War II. He developed the bombardment tactics and strategies that left Nazi Germany in rubble. He was transferred to the Pacific theater, where he took over command of the B-29’s and led the air war against Japan.
He incinerated every major Japanese city and oversaw the dropping of the atomic bombs. He believed that, “if you are going to use military force, then you ought to use overwhelming military force.
Use too much and deliberately use too much.. you’ll save lives, not only your own, but the enemy’s too". But he could be a humanitarian, and after the war he organized he famous Berlin Air Lift.
He often demonstrated his courage by personally leading his bombers on the dangerous missions, including what many regard as the most dangerous mission ever flown – the attack on Regensberg, Germany. The Army Air Forces lost half of the 1,000 planes launched that day, which has gone down in Air Force history as “Black Thursday.”
If his crews weren’t flying missions, then they were subjected to his relentless training.They called him “Iron Ass” because he demanded so much, but they respected him immensely. A popular story that was widely circulated in SAC is that he approached a fully-fueled bomber with his ever-present cigar stuck firmly between his lips. A guard asked him to put it out, as it might blow up the aircraft. Lemay replied, “It wouldn’t dare.”
He is buried in the United States Air Force Academy Cemetery at Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Air Force General and VP candidate Curtis E. LeMay
Generals who are up front and who will have THEIR ASS on the front lines take a far different world view than the coddled wealthy political appointees who think that they are better than everyone else.’
General – I’d die for my Country, but this leader is a moron. My job is to protect the country. War is an avenue of last resort. But this is not a last resort situation.
Political Neocon – I have a plan, and since I am smarter, wealthier, and better than everyone else, and I have God, history, and “greatness” on my side, I just cannot possibly be wrong. It’s inconceivable!
Never the less, the political elite in America are sleepwalking towards Armageddon.
The following is brilliant, and the author is so in tune with my feelings and beliefs on this issue that I must reprint these entire two articles. Just brilliant! The author is Chris Faure. He is exceptional.
China will not be conquered again, even if every last Chinese has to join the fight.
In the past four days, China has sent first 28, then 29 fighters and bombers near Taiwan. (Taiwan itself reports different numbers). Then, the US announced on Sunday that this is provocative. So, China called the statement irresponsible and sent a massive number of 59 fighters and bombers near Taiwan in a ‘take that!’ move.
But first, why would China militarily get involved in Taiwan, as it is their own territory under the 1992 Consensus for “one-China”? Taiwan is clearly China’s internal affair. What are their red lines?
Taiwan declaring a flash independence (they cannot really because they are umbilically connected to the mainland)
Internal turmoil inside Taiwan as we saw in Hong Kong
Taiwan may make a non-legal military alliance with another country
And any violation of the 1992 consensus.
None of these conditions are currently present, but we will need expert advice on the 1992 consensus. I do not know de jure how close Taiwan is to that red line. De facto the Taiwan announcement that they are preparing for war is completely provocative.
Currently China is not threatening.
She is using her air force to deliver very strong warnings that the conditions are approaching red lines.
Lets look at Global Times. Bear in mind that the Global Times is not a bullhorn for Chinese people. It is for the dissemination of information to western people. That is its function. ‘
– Time to warn Taiwan secessionists and their fomenters: war is real:
“The secessionist forces on the island will never be allowed to secede Taiwan from China under whatever names or by whatever means...... and, the island will not be allowed to act as an outpost of the US’ strategic containment against China. “
“The strategic collusion between the US and Japan and the DPP authorities is becoming more audacious...... and the situation across the Taiwan Straits has almost lost any room for maneuver teetering on the edge of a face-off, creating a sense of urgency that the war maybe triggered at any time.”
Sunday, further Global times writing appeared, by a GT voice, warning the EU (GT voice should indicate to us that this is unified among the Chinese people).
EU warned not to play with fire on Taiwan question.
– China will reconsider the European trade agreement.
“If the EU simply wants to develop normal economic and trade relations with the Taiwan island, its unusual emphasis on the latter’s role in its Indo-Pacific strategy should be viewed with suspicion.
Some European politicians may think that playing the “Taiwan card” will draw more attention and could help pressure the mainland to make more concessions.
But confusing the right and the wrong on China’s bottom line is a dead end.The Chinese mainland’s position on the Taiwan question remains clear and resolute.
All exchanges with the island must be handled in strict accordance with the one-China principle. They cannot exceed the scope of normal nonofficial cooperation and exchange.”
So, this is where we stand in this face-off and more analysis will follow.
Escalation? Continuation of “Sitrep : China. Is. Dead. Serious.”
Continuation of “Sitrep : China. Is. Dead. Serious.”
Let’s take a look at what China overcame in our near history.
The NED and similar organizations’ sponsored “Color Revolutions” in Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang all collapsed. We can also be sure that this escalation that we see now is not really about Taiwan. Taiwan is playing its role, like the dissidents in Hong Kong did.
The Trump Trade War collapsed and his focus on tariffs is now taking a tremendous toll on the US West Coast Ports.
The western propaganda war on China is collapsing because of the efforts of blogs like The Saker Blog and many others that took up writing about this.
The economic war is collapsing. For this, we have to follow Michael Hudson who details the butt-hurt Soros types who cannot make China dance to their tune. China has done massive work so that they do not have monopolies and internal destabilization by ‘too big to fail types’.
The return of Meng Wanzhou as a figure of national pride, which was a very delicate operation if one follows all of the plane routes during the sensitive exchange. Meng was exchanged for two worthless Canadian spies. There is another theory and this is that Canada tumbled to pay back the US for not including them in AUKUS.
The idea that the Chinese are not soldiers. They are that now because they have to be. * More about this following.
Let’s see what China gained in our near history
The pride, persistence, and trust of the citizens.
Major developments in space, like their own space station (slated to be a launching platform for? For what really? I do not know but the west has declared space a warfighting domain.) Most nations are welcome to come and hook up their own module, but the western world is not. This is a little payback for not allowing Chinese astronauts on the international space station.
A top US general, Milley, is so fearful of China that he called his counterpart in the late days of the Trump administration and told them that the US will not attack. (General Miley called to deliver a madman message–we have a madman at the helm and he may send nukes your way, so don’t do anything to give him an excuse. The poor general also had to deliver a contradicting message–at the same time, America is not falling apart; everything is hunky-dory and the well-oiled machine is running smoothly. ) (I know this has been taken out of perspective by almost everyone, but I am thankful, no matter that he may be a sniveling idiot. He did the rest of the world a favor).
China is in the process of destroying the dollar hegemony slowly but surely with Russia already having done its part and divesting from the dollar in their sovereign wealth fund. This deserves an analysis all by itself. Needless to say, China is launching its digital Renminbi, or Digital Currency Electronic Payment, commonly referred to as E-CNY, a central bank digital currency issued by China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China. It is the first digital currency to be issued by a major economy. The digital RMB is legal tender and has equivalent value with other forms of CNY, such as bills and coins.
The fight against a virus called Covid.
China is now exceeding the US in almost all economic metrics, although they still refer to themselves as the 2nd major economy.
And at this stage, China makes major military flights near Taiwan.
A few statements:
China has no interest in military action against Taiwan
Taiwan has no real desire for military action against China (it would be somewhat like swatting a fly for China and will be over in an hour whichever method China chooses).
Here is Taiwanese Foreign Minister warning that his country is preparing for war with China. He asks Australia for help and Australia’s 60 minutes distributes the war propaganda.
Is the US interested in a war against China over Taiwan? We simply do not know.
What do we know?
Taiwan is a smaller copy of the economic miracle of China and there is no question of its economic success and high tech ability. But China mainland purchases over 40% of Taiwan’s production in both high-tech and agricultural products.
By studying Taiwan’s financial reports, MintPress has ascertained that the semi-autonomous island of 23 million people has, in recent years, given out millions of dollars to many of the largest and most influential think tanks in the United States.
It is then easy to conclude that with this revolving door, the US decided that Taiwan is an easy ingress to their hope for regime change in China itself (stated publicly by Mike Pompeo) and the AUKUS deal started the new range of increased provocations: It looks like any of the old color revolution tactics or initiatives, just now with an added threat.
This one, could end up in a hot war with both Russia and China.
Taiwan will not have a referendum for independence, because independence is not a done deal for the Taiwanese people. The ruling class fears that such a referendum will not be successful.
We all know the ‘call to democracy’ and we all know that this is invoked over and over by hegemonic powers to justify their own excesses. Well today, Taiwan’s Tsai is invoking ‘a call to democracy’ via an article in Foreign Affairs Magazine.
China is not impressed as she knows as well as you and I, what that really means.
China’s interest is peace and security in the region, which is now being called Indo-Pacific. Martyanov says this terminology is hegemon speak, and I’m inclined to agree with him.
It used to be Asia Pacific.
I so hope someone can draw me the borders (even a dash line) where the Indo pacific and the Asia Pacific exists. Wikipedia, instead of being obscurantist as usual, this time gives the plot away.
The term first appeared in academic use in oceanography and geopolitics. Scholarship has shown that the “Indo-Pacific” concept circulated in Weimar Germany, and spread to interwar Japan. German political oceanographers envisioned an “Indo-Pacific” comprising anticolonial India and republican China, as German allies, against “Euro-America”.
[2] Since 2010s, the term “Indo-Pacific” has been increasingly used in geopolitical discourse. It also has “symbiotic link” with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad”, an informal grouping of in the region, comprising Australia, Japan, India, and the United States. It has been argued that the concept may lead to a change in popular “mental maps” of how the world is understood in strategic terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pacific
Martyanov says that the US has clear dominance in submarine capability and he also says that escalation is something that is very hard to predict. Here we see escalation toward war, with the US using probably the only card that they have to play, trying to kick off an ocean-wide domination conflict on the shipping lanes of communications, with probably the only weapon that they have left, submarines to try and consolidate at least something of US economy and influence across the world.
Right here the issue of escalation becomes complex.
Russia will not stand out of this and what happens when the Zircons start flying? How soon until Japan, Australia and Taiwan are demolished? We will leave this here for professional analysts to opine.
With that as a backdrop, let’s return to China, specifically the general belief that the Chinese are not born soldiers.
That is true, yet the difference is that they prefer to solve problems non-kinetically. (Which is 100% fine with me!) But, they have other abilities, one of which is that they do not give up. The Saker has often said that morale is the greatest weapon of a military force. In this case, I would add to that: preparedness. Again Martyanov said that this thinking on the dominance of sea-lanes is not new. Well, China knows that as well, and they have prepared.
Every school child and university student in China now goes through military training. For the school kids, it is part of the initiative by the Chinese leaders to relieve the school kids from absurd requirements for STEM learning and to get them outside to take part in healthy play and strengthen them physically.
Every city has a local militia and they are armed to the teeth and drill and practice continually. This alone is estimated at 1 million feet on the ground (from Chinese sources).
If kinetic action breaks out in their own backyard, they have the numbers and home team advantage.
Following are some comments from our China correspondents. I don’t have the necessary 2 sources plus another for these, but I put them here to give you an idea of the chat.
China is known to be able to set together production lines very quickly. In these comments, this one is comical and says that…
China is mass producing nuclear warheads like they crank out paper lanterns. The only thing on earth that is faster is the US money machine.
It may be a comical comment, but the underlying issue here is that the average Chinese person has no doubt that China will, and is able to build whatever is necessary, any war materiel of any kind, to withstand kinetic action.
Is this meaningful in discussing this escalation? I would say yes.
More comments:
If you think a war against China (and Russia – we have to call in Russia at this stage) will be a perpetual war, kindly think again. This is not a win or a lose – it is total destruction of the one that fires the first shot or shoots the first missile or positions the first submarine to destabilize sea-lanes.
Here's a hint; Destabilization of the sea shipping lanes will, by it's self create a near (if not total) collapse of the economies of the Western nations. Which, is, by the way, why the United States cannot fight a war with China.
This represents the average Chinese and their chat and it is not the type of barroom soldier chat. These are ordinary people.
China is a merit nation and very serious.
One can expect precision and ruthlessness.
You may want to believe that the Chinese are not born warriors or you may want to believe that they cannot innovate. You can believe what you want, but take a look at these comments:
They do not believe in surgical strikes should anyone attack them. They believe in pounding the source of the attack and whatever is around it, into oblivion. They have their own history as a template.
This is a point that I have been trying to pound into the brain-dead West for years now. So many article praising American precision munitions and "surgical strikes" are meaningless.
China does not play.
They will see an guy running in a field and cluster nuke that field into radioactive glass. They just don't give a fuck. Caprice?
Btw, does this remind you of the Russians, who said that any strike on Russia will not only take out the strike, but also the platform where the strike comes from? The interaction between Russia and China militarily has grown tremendously as well, but again, this is another analysis.
I expect full-on military readiness as the Chinese military has been on a readiness footing for about a year now.
An outstanding question is how unified Asia is around China. Again we come up against Martyanov’s principle of escalation and this is really difficult to predict.
There is the old saying that goes like this:
Do not march on Moscow!.
We need to add one.
Do not militarily threaten Baba Beijing!.
It does not matter how for how long, they do not count their own possible dead, but they will stay the course.
Can we hope for level heads in Washington DC? Realism tells us that we have to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
China is doing that.
Oh, but what about Russia; the bear?
You all think that Russia will sit this one out? Are you fucking delusional? Maybe you haven’t noticed by the Chinese and Russian military cross-trains together. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but both military’s have their leadership in both HQ command centers. Maybe you haven’t’ noticed but immediately after the Australian submarine nuclear basing deal, the Russians and the Chinese held very long and serious “emergency” meetings of their top military leaders.
You haven’t noticed.
I’ll bet that you watch FOX “news”. CNN “news” or The Drudge Report “news”.
China and Russia are the pissed off nerds that are building “death rays” in their basements. China and Russia are the shunned, betrayed, and kicked upon wimps that stood tall while they were abused year after year. China and Russia are not going to play “ball”. No sure-ee. They are going to fucking devastate the playing field and what ever remains will be turned into mulch and used to fertilize their septic tanks.
Do you fucking think that Japan doesn’t know this? You should study some God damn history. Japan tries anything, anything, and it’ll be a radioactive series of ocean filled craters. Craters, mind you, that will have navigation warnings (in Chinese) for future shipping hazards.
Taiwan (and Japan) are islands.
Islands.
Islands, with densely populated zones and densely concentrated industrial zones.
Which means that if China or Russia are ever attacked by, or from, these islands all they need to do is lob just a few well aimed missiles at a few critical nodes to create not only total chaos, but also cripple the WORLD high tech industry (this is also true for the ROK, by the way, were one specific facility can be easily destroyed and create total chaos worldwide.
Which means that those who in the Anglosphere think of their Japanese or Taiwanese “allies” as canon fodder are kidding themselves. Just 24 hours after any attack on the DPRK, the PRC or Russia the world economy will violently crash just from the sheer panic induced by such missile strikes.
As for the people living on Taiwan, the ROK or Japan, they will deal with such industrial pollution and chaos that warfighting will be the last thing on their minds.
And, if they don’t fully surrender at that point, both Russia and China can turn their small islands into wastelands.
By the way, the US force planners all know that.
This was first taught to me by a *very* experienced US force planner in a class he called “why Japan cannot fight any war”. I am just adding the ROK and Taiwan to the list.
Finally, I think that most people in the region, at least in the ROK and Taiwan are aware of that.
-Anonymous
Do you have any idea how quickly South Korea will exit any alliance with the United States? Or haven’t you looked at a God damn map lately?
Korea is an a very, VERY bad location if it wants to support anti-China and anti-Russia activities.
America, Britain, and Australia has never experienced the receiving end of conquest. And it will be fucking nasty. Nasty.
China and Russia are going to go ‘Bronze age on your asses.”.
How about being forbidden to speak English. Being forbidden to have children. How about being forbidden to drive a car, ride a bicycle or suffer the penalty of death? How about being forbidden to wear shoes. How about slave markets, and not being able to use currency or have access to a bank?
Yeah. Conquest is like that.
What? You think that it can’t happen?
YOU ALL HAVE IDIOTS IN CHARGE OF YOUR WESTERN NATIONS. Get God-damn serious (for a change) and face the reality.
American “leaders”.
You, yes you, need to start changing things before all Hell breaks out.
China forgives, but never forgets. You all better stop kicking Asia, or it is going to unleash bloody fucking fury on your asses. Just remember you DO NOT WANT TO BE ON PAYBACK side…
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I have often commented that American (today) is a land of a million tiny hands in your wallet. Being an American you don’t realize just how bad it is until you step outside of America and see what other nations are like. And there you see that there is something seriously wrong when the basic necessities of life, many which are basically pretty cheap, are taxed, regulated, and siphoned from by others who use it as a model to extract money.
Indeed, today, everything in America is a money-generating mechanism.
From removing public water fountains, and replacing it with water / soda vending machines, to requiring a person register with the county (or city) to be able to cut someone’s hair. To updating your driver license, to updating your vehicle license, to getting a pet license, to paying a fee to use an ATM. It’s all, every bit of it, a money-generating mechanism for the top 0.001% in society.
Why do you need to pay for a fishing license? Why do you need to renew your license plate? Why do you need to pay for a study on the lifestyles of migrant sparrows in your county?
Why? Why? Why?
Why? Because it is a way to generate money.
Not for you. Not for your family. Not even for your community. It’s for others, in far away towns, cities, and communities to get wealthy from.
Bloomberg OWNS most Americans and has a zillion little mechanisms to extract your wealth.
Which is why I, and many others, refer to Americans as “debit serfs”.
Well, actually the serfs from the Middle ages had it much, much better than American do today. At a top tax of 10%. No fees. Nor regulations. No laws except those regarding a victim. And a full 100 days off a year in holidays, and a four day work week. A six hour long work day. Yeah. They had it much better than Americans do today.
Anyways, today we have two worlds;
A uni-polar worldwhere the United States 0.001% oligarchy rules.
A multi-polar world where individual nations manage either societies as they see fit.
The United States is having a complete fit, and is literally fit to be tied, and is willing to destroy the rest of the world if that is what it takes to be the massive God-over-all. Have your read the George Soros tantrum articles? The Bloomberg articles? Jeeze!
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is moving on regardless.
Here is a most fantastic article that describes my vision of “America being the land of a million tiny hands in your wallet”. It’s brilliant. I only with that I was as good of a word-smith as these folk. I do hope that you enjoy it.
The article is below. All credit, yada, yada, yada.
Ross Welcome to Renegade Inc. With China’s increasing wealth, Western investors want some of the action. One of those investors is a bullish gentleman called George Soros. However, the Chinese are acutely aware that with Western investment comes inequality. So as Beijing begins to rethink how to do proper economic growth, we ask, will China learn from Western mistakes?
Ross Michael Hudson, always great to have you back on Renegade Inc.
Michael Hudson It’s good to be back here. Thanks for having me.
Ross Michael, we join you at a time where a lot of people think the unipolar world could have maintained its supremacy. Turns out it hasn’t. Multipolar world is here to stay. You of late have been quite vocal about George Soros, no less. Mr. Soros has been casting aspersions about various things, but one of them is talking about the Chinese economy and why Black Rock, amongst others, should be allowed to invest there, because ultimately it’s going to undo American interests. Can you unpack that for us because it seems very complicated?
Michael Hudson Well, George Soros’ dream is that China would do what Yeltsin did to Russia – that it would privatise the economy, really carve it up and let US investors buy control of the most profitable heights. In that way, the foreign investors would be able to sort of get the profits of Chinese industry, Chinese labour, and it would become the darling stock market of the world, just like Russia’s stock market was the leading booming stock market of 1994-96. China would be run to benefit US investment bankers. Soros is furious that China is not following the neoliberal policy that the United States is following. It’s following a socialist policy wanting to keep its economic surplus at home to benefit its own citizens, not American financial investors. For Soros, this is a clash of civilisations. His proposed strategy is to stifle the Chinese economy by putting sanctions against it, to stop investing in it so as to force it to do to itself what Yeltsin did to Russia.
Ross Let’s hear it in his words. He says: ‘The BlackRock initiative imperils the national security interests of the US and other democracies because the money invested in China will help prop up President Xi’s regime, which is repressive at home and aggressive abroad. Congress should pass legislation empowering the Securities and Exchange Commission to limit the flow of funds to China. The effort ought to enjoy bipartisan support’. He’s not mincing his words, is he?
Michael Hudson He thinks that China actually needs American dollars to build its factories and invest. He thinks that somehow China’s balance of payments is going to fall apart without the US market, without US investors telling President Xi what to do. The Chinese government won’t have a clue as to what to invest in and how to let the ‘free market’, meaning George Soros and BlackRock and other companies, operate. So he’s living in a dream world where other people need us. It’s like a guy who doesn’t realise his girlfriend doesn’t need him anymore.
Ross There seems to me to be a distinction here that the Chinese are acutely aware of, and it’s between the classical economists and the neoclassical economists. The classical economists have understood the idea of unearned wealth, unearned income. The neoclassical economists actively chase unearned wealth, unearned income, because that is central to their playbook. Can you just expand on those two ideas? And is it the case that that’s why you talk about a clash of civilisations?
Michael Hudson Well, you put your finger on it, Ross. People think that China’s advantage is its abundant, low priced labour force, or the government building infrastructure. But what’s guiding this is an understanding of the kind of economics that goes back even beyond Marx, to Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill and the other classical economists. They realise that there’s a difference between earning income and creating wealth by employing labour to produce goods, to sell at a profit and then reinvest these profits and more capital formation, in contrast to simply buying a rent-yielding property, buying land and letting it rise in price without the landlord doing anything, buying a monopoly and just raising the price – charging monopoly prices like the US pharmaceutical companies are doing. China understands the difference between earned income and unearned income, between productive investment and unproductive investment.
In the United States, if they do recognise this difference, they realise that via unearned income you can make wealth by parasitically much quicker than you can actually create real wealth. It’s cheaper to be a parasite than a host. And so most of the financial strategy of Wall Street involves how to get something for nothing. How can we get a free lunch? Well, to do that as a major policy, we have to begin by telling people what Milton Friedman said: There is no such thing as a free lunch. But the whole of Wall Street is looking for a free lunch. They’re looking to grab Chinese assets on the cheap, like Soros has grabbed post-Soviet assets. They’re looking for monopoly rights. They’re looking for lending money and letting China do the work, to pay the interest to the Americans that are going to be providing it with money that the Federal Reserve ends up creating on its computers, or that George Soros already has saved largely by how he got the free lunch from the Bank of England betting against that and driving Sterling down.
Ross Some people call it the free world. Others call it a democracy. Others, for America, call it an advanced oligarchy. Do you think that the Chinese have looked at America and the wider West, understood that privatising all that rent has ultimately led to societal decline?
Michael Hudson They’re beginning to look at it that way. Most Chinese Marxists focused on Volume 1 of Capital, which is about employers hiring workers and putting them to work and making a profit off the mark-up. Only in the last couple of years have Volumes 2 and Volume 3 of Capital moved into central discussion in China. And it’s Volumes 2 and 3 that talk about economic rent. And so China has come to realise tha the United States is not an industrial economy. We’re not going to understand what’s happening in the United States, in England or Europe by looking only at what Marx wrote in Volume 1 of Capital, because they’re not making money industrially anymore. They’re making money by being a rentier economy, by landlordism, by monopolies and by bank credit, which Marx discussed in Volume 2 and 3.
So they’re now broadening the discussion. For the first time, you’re having, especially in the last month, China asking, “Do we want to let Chinese investors make money, financially, by buying housing, becoming absentee landlords and hoping that there is going to be a housing price inflation like you have in the United States? Or, do we want to keep housing low priced and not to bid it up by credit creation and finance?” They’re now realising that to keep China’s cost of living low, you have to keep the price of housing low. That means that you don’t want housing to become a commodity, an investment vehicle for absentee owners and landlords to make money. You want housing to be for Chinese people to live in. That means low-priced housing, not debt-leveraged housing as they’re seeing in the United States.
Ross I know somebody who works on the life boat on the Thames and they get a view each night that no one else would ever get. And they go up and down the Thames and they see all these high rises, which are oversupply of property, real estate. And there isn’t one light on in any of them. The reason, foreign investors, predominately the Chinese, have come bought them, clingfilmed the whole place, locked the door and then they chip off back to China – sit and wait, basically allow that land value to go up and cash out 10 years later. You can see what that does to local communities, schools, shops, infrastructure, services and all the rest of it – this absenteeism. Do you think that those foreign investors, the leadership in Beijing, has seen this model around the world and thought, yep, fine, we can do it over there, and yet we need to repatriate some money because of some of the liquidity issues that we’ve got over here. But we’re not having that as a central business model or a central economic model to our economies? Do you think that that light has gone on?
Michael Hudson Well, they’ve been discussing this regarding Hong Kong for the last 10 years. Hong Kong is the typical example of multi, multi-billionaires in real estate. They think that a socialist economy is not one that gets rich by creating absentee landlords. There’s been a large outflow of Chinese investment to the West. You have it in New York City on the west side, all very dark apartments with no lights on at night because they’re absentee-owned. Thorstein Veblen in 1923 wrote a book, Absentee Ownership, saying that housing should really be for living, not a speculative vehicle. But in America, real estate is all about civic development. It’s about how to increase real estate prices and create a bubble for speculators to find someone to flip the property to. I’m not sure it’s going to happen much longer and in London now that Brexit has occurred. But I think that what China is trying to do is asking how to create a domestic economy where Chinese people make money productively. They can not only afford a house of their own, but if they invest, they can invest in making China richer, not in buying income-yielding, rent-yielding, assets in America, England or Europe.
Ross Do you think that the pictures that we’ve recently seen on social media of the huge tower blocks that haven’t been finished, residential, that haven’t been finished for eight years and now they’ve just put semtex under them and raised the whole thing to the ground? Do you think that’s a real world example of the scar tissue, if you like, that private debt creates and in another sense, a Minsky moment? Blowing all these things up means that you get rid of all of that oversupply, which means that that inventory isn’t in the market and isn’t their to be flipped and speculated on.
Michael Hudson These are buildings where they wanted to pre-plan for what they thought was going to be a rural exodus, but the rural exodus didn’t occur into these cities. Right now, China is focusing, I think for the first time in quite a few years, much more on rural development. China is primarily a still a rural economy, a village economy. Most people don’t realise that. When you think of China, you think of Shanghai and Shenzhen and Beijing and even Wuhan. But the fact is that much of China’s rural and there can’t really be a rural exodus to the cities because you have a kind of passport plan in China. In order to live in Beijing, you have to have a permit to live in Beijing so the city won’t become even more overcrowded than it is now. They’re having to re-focus development much more on the rural areas that have not kept pace with the heavy industrial factory areas that have occurred. So they wanted to do a lot of building, not only to employ labour and to do construction, but to think just in case they needed this housing for the rural exodus, they needed it in place. Now they realise, OK, we’re not following that particular central planning idea.
Central planning really is very hard. It’s very hard to build whole small cities in advance with nobody there. It’s much easier to wait until they’re actually economic forces leading you to develop. So in that sense, China’s becoming more market oriented in its planning. But at the same time, it shapes the market, increasingly, to create domestic prosperity and earning opportunities, not unearned rent-extracting opportunities, but productive earning opportunities. This is an ongoing process of re-evaluating, restructuring, fixing up and improving the economy.
Ross Michael Hudson, welcome back. Great to have you for the second half.
Michael Hudson Thanks.
Ross Michael, we said right at the top of this programme that there is, let’s say, a tug of war between the unipolar and the multipolar. China have looked at the West and they must conclude now, the Russians also, must conclude, that the Western economic model is fatally flawed. In many ways, what you’ve got in America is an advanced oligarchy. Across Europe, you’ve got a zombie banking system. And basically the model for the last certainly 30, 40 years has been to extract as much rent as possible and pass it off as an economic miracle. To avoid all that, this fork in the road has crystallised. What do you think will be the decisions coming out of Beijing when they look at the economy in a more holistic way and they realise that they want to better the lot of the average Chinese citizen?
Michael Hudson Well, as I pointed out, their concept of the economy realises the distinction between earned income and unearned income, between rent and profits. It wants to make profits, not economic rents. And it also sees that the United States is trying to prevent it from going along this socialist road, and that’s really the new Cold War. You mentioned unipolar versus multipolar. It’s actually not so much that China, Russia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, along with Kazakhstan and Iran and now the other groups are pulling away. It’s the United States that’s trying to force them to follow the US neoliberal model by imposing sanctions and special penalties and military threats, not to mention ISIS terrorism. The United States is driving Europe, Asia and now Africa as well, into a unified, consolidated unit outside of itself. It’s very self-destructive. It thinks like George Soros, that if we stop investing in Asia and other countries, that will force them to knuckle under to the US. But what it’s doing is it’s driving them altogether into the Belt and Road Initiative.
What China’s doing is creating a precondition for a profitable industrial economy over a large area to benefit from. It’s participants are going to need transportation. You’re going to need ports. You’re going to need roads. You’re going to need pipelines and is focusing on the interconnections, on the infrastructure.
America doesn’t build infrastructure these days unless it’s monopolised. This is the political fight going on in the United States now. President Biden has a infrastructure plan that he’s scaled down from six and a half trillion to three and a half trillion. And essentially the bulk of the Democratic and Republican Party said if we can’t privatise infrastructure and make it a rent-extracting monopoly, we’re not going to do it, and we’re going to block the government from doing it.
So in the United States, they’re going to have high priced infrastructure, high-priced health care and high-priced education while China is going to have low-priced transportation, low-cost infrastructure, free education, public health care.
And you’re going to have a very high-cost United States unable to compete with the rest of the world.
All it can do is make military threats or financial threats. If it tries to impose sanctions as it’s imposed on Russia, China and other countries, these are going to serve as protective tariffs for foreign countries.
When President Trump put sanctions on agricultural exports to Russia, it was a windfall for Russia. They developed their own agriculture and Russia is now the largest grain exporter in the world. Senator McCain characterised Russia as a gas station of atom bombs, but it’s a gas station with the largest farm sector in the world, and is developing an industrial integration with China and the rest of Asia. It’s a Eurasian world island as Mackinder called it a century ago, and it is becoming the economic focus of the world, leaving the United States as the high cost economy with no visible means of support, because we’re not doing our own industry anymore. We’re not competing with China. We’re letting China do all of the industry, and all of a sudden we’re dependent on it. This does not bode good for prosperity in the United States or Europe and other areas that are satellites of the US economy.
Ross What is the probability of the West going, hang on, we have taken a detour here, we need to do something differently?
Michael Hudson I’d say maybe between one and two percent. In order to understand that you’re taking a wrong detour, you have to understand what the right path is, and why China’s doing it right. They can’t acknowledge that, because that’s called socialism. And when everyone points out that instead of having health care absorbing 18 percent of the American GDP, you could provide public health care and lower the cost of living in the United States. That’s a precondition for making labour more competitive.
Well, the employers are going to argue that if you make health care public, then you’re going to lose the ability to lock-in labour to its employers. Right now in the United States, especially during the pandemic, if you work for an employer for a living, you’re afraid of being fired because you lose your health insurance and that is a threat of bankruptcy.
If you complain about your job, you might be fired. That’s a danger. So having private health care paid for by the employers locks labour into dependency. They’re afraid to ask for higher wages. They’re afraid to ask for pensions. Privatized employer-based health care has become part of the class war here, and it is succeeding in impoverishing labour. Same thing with privatized education costs financed on credit at fairly high interest rates, without any bankruptcy recourse to wipe them out..
President Biden promised that he was going to wipe out student debt. If you have students paying 40 to 50 thousand dollars a year to have a college education and a college diploma is a precondition for getting a job like a union card used to be, then you’re going to have that added to the cost of living. When you have all of these privatised – education, health care, not to mention housing and other factors – when you have all these rent-extracting exploitative sectors you cannot be a competitive economy. You can only get money by conquering and exploiting other countries, by owning their own rent-extracting sectors and monopoly-profit sectors.
But there’s no one to conquer anymore. America couldn’t even conquer Afghanistan. Every economy for the last 5,000 years has two parts. There’s the real economy of producing and consuming and paying taxes and government services. And then there’s the debt and financial overhead.
All economies operate on credit. The problem is that credit cost money, and creditor claims accumulate at compound interest. if you look at the compound interest for anybody’s savings – take the wealth of the One Percent and all the trillions of dollars they have – if you leave your money to accumulate compound interest, it grows exponentially. But economies don’t grow exponentially.
They grow in an S-curve, and sometimes there’s an interruption. Sometimes there’s a disease like Covid. Sometimes there’s bad weather and a environmental disaster or there’s a war. And once there’s an interruption, what do you do with the fact that the finance sector grows faster?
Well, this goes way back to Babylonia. It occurred in Greece and Rome. Ultimately the tendency is for the financial sector to take over and to use the financial returns to take over real estate. And so there’s a symbiosis between real estate and finance. That’s occurred in every economy for the last 2,000 years since Greece and Rome.
It certainly characterises where most money and most wealth is made today.
In the universities, you take a course and they say, well, you accumulate wealth by saving up the wages and saving up the profits you made. But that’s not how the wealthy classes got money. That’s not how the One Percent have made money. They have made money either by taking property from the public domain by privatisation, or it’s made today by the central banks, lowering interest rates, flooding the market with credit, enough credit to push up real estate prices 20 percent in the United States in the last year. Housing prices have gone way up to unaffordable levels, pushing up education prices – and education is priced at whatever a bank or the government will lend you to pay with a student loan. It’s all financialization.
It turns out that what people thought was industrial capitalism has turned out to be finance capitalism instead.
So what China is doing is saying that it’s not going to let our industrial capitalism evolve into finance capitalism. It’s going to evolve into socialism, because they’re a socialist government.
Ross Just say the Chinese, the penny’s dropped and they’ve understood how badly wrong the West got it. What does the Chinese economy, and as importantly, society look like 10, 20 years from today?
Michael Hudson It’ll be a more balanced, less polarised economy. It will still let people make fortunes, but not gigantic fortunes large enough for an independent oligarchy to develop, to become a rival to government and try to replace government. In the West, you’ve had a financial oligarchy evolve and take over planning from elected government. So we don’t have democracy now.
It means a free market where you leave everything to Wall Street as your central planner.
So China is going to leave its planning spontaneously to individuals to innovate, to develop, where America is becoming, and England, are centrally planned economies planned by Wall Street, not to create prosperity, but to create rent-extracting opportunities for Wall Street stocks and bonds and absentee real estate.
So you’re going to have a rentier economy – let’s call it neofeudalism – while the rest of the world goes forward into what industrial capitalism was meant to be a century ago before it was sidetracked in the West.
Much of Eurasia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will evolve into socialism, as most expected would happen in the West a century ago.
Ross You talk about Super Decadence. Is the irony lost on you that one of your politicians recently attended a 35,000 dollar gala event dressed in an expensive dress with the words ‘tax the rich’ embroidered all over the back of it?
Michael Hudson That perception of inequality has become so popular that you can almost make fun of it. There’s something called neurolinguistic programming, that says that if you have a problem, a headache or something, if you can imagine your headache or your problem being very far away and then expanding and expanding and finally, poof, it all dissolves and goes away.
They think that they can say “Tax the rich” and just make it into a phrase that’s so popular, it doesn’t really mean tax the rich any more.
It means that you accept inequality, but realize that it’s just become part of the system – and wouldn’t it be nice if there were a parallel universe in which we could indeed tax the rich. But of course, that’s just a nice fantasy.
Ross Michael, always entertaining. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.
Michael Hudson It’s wonderful to be here, Ross. Thanks for having me on your show.
POSTSCRIPT:
Right after this interview, China did on its own just what George Soros was asking U.S. money managers to do: Stop lending money to China. So China itself made an about-face and turned down the BlackRock’s plans to buy a large Chinese real estate company, and it did not pay foreign holders of its Evergrande bonds on September 23.
Diplomatically, China had expected Wall Street firms to lobby to stop America’s anti-China policy. And indeed, many Wall Street executives did point out to the U.S. government that China offered many opportunities for America to make money, and urged not to treat it as an enemy. But the military-industrial complex (MIC) has its own agenda, along with the neocon and neoliberal advocates of unique U.S. unilateralism.
I think that ever since China’s officials met in Alaska with Mr. Blinken earlier this year, they see the handwriting on the wall, as have Russia and other SCO members. The’ve accepted that the world economy is fracturing between the U.S.-centered “free world” (central planning by Wall Street and unilateral diplomacy from Washington) and the multilateralizing rest of the world.
MH
Conclusions
Cut out the different terms, and you discover that these fellows are talking about something that I have noticed for a long, long time. And this is one of the primary reasons why you feel so free once you step outside of the American gulag-state.
Granted, the way that I speak and talk will just be considered too “colonial” for these kinds of people, but the fact still remains, no matter what you call it.
America is a nation that does not make anything.
Instead, it is a nation of the oligarchy that act as leeches, feeding of the most basic needs of the American people.
And as the people get sick and tired of this situation, and they start to revolt and fight back, the oligarchy has but one remaining trick… distraction. And the distraction is a major war with a major power.
They chose China.
Way back in 2004 – 2005 as they believed that it was the weaker of the two (China and Russia) And they are still playing that game, still following though the plans, even though things have changed substantially in China since then.
The one to tame this monster of a beast, my gut feeling is, will not be China. It will be Russia. And that is for another discussion at another time.
…
For all that talk about how great America is, just pales in comparison to China. And that is simply because NOW (at this time… subject to change, of course) that the Chinese government serves the people. And the United States does not.
And, rather than go one and on about it, and angering my American friends, here’s a comparison…
If you go down the list you can easy see how true it is.
Regulations. Well, in America you had best comply with a EPA study to see if your local spangled wombat spider isn’t going to be affected when you add a pool to your back yard. That will cost money. Who will get the money? Well, it’s “the regulators”. How do you become a state regulator? Come on, boys and girls, you know that you can apply all you want but only the select few get state jobs.They are the friends of those already in power. Don’t believe me? Apply for a state job that pays a decent wage.
Laws. Oh, yeah. Tell me about it. There’s two sets in America. One for us, and one for the wealthy. That’s it. Argument over.
Domestic Policy. In America nothing is done domestically unless some oligarch can profit from it. That’s the way it is Jack, and the 7 trillion dollars that President Biden is proposing isn’t going anywhere except into the wallets of the wealthy.
This is the difference between a people’s government and a billionaires democracy.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
I have been thinking a lot of the Deagel Forecast for 2025 lately. More so, much more so than before. The reason being the new Australia-USA nuclear “submarine” agreement forged earlier this month. And you know, of course I am thinking about this. This singular deal does many, many dangerous things. But perhaps the most dangerous is makes it far easier for a major nuclear conflict with China. And since I live in China, that pisses the Hell out of me.
It’s a major assertive military aggression on the part of the United States.
As well as pointing out the obvious; that Australia is not a “democracy”. After all, a democracy would have the legislature making those decisions, not the Head of State. So in truth, Australia is but a “tin horn” dictatorship, bought sold, and owned by the United States. It’s pretty brazen, but then again, these fucking jokers don’t really give a damn any longer about what people think.
And to confirm how brain-dead the Australian citizenry is, they are not even noticing that the decisions on tariffs, embargoes, trade with China, military alignments with the United States are not going through the proper channels. It’s all being done in “smoky” back-rooms with “shadowy figures”, and the only time that any citizen finds out about it is after the fact.
Yup.
Third-world, banana republic, dictatorship. That’s Australia today.
For those of you who are unaware, Australia has agreed to build bases, staffed by American military, to service American (and British) nuclear submarines until (or well past) 2040 when the Australian versions of those submarines will be manufactured.
The reason is the same old, same old, “secure international maritime law”, “uphold human rights”, and secure “global democratic values”, maintain the American “rules based order”. (As opposed to the UN maritime law.)
Bla. Bla. Bla.
Yada. Yada. Yada.
The thing is ALL American nuclear submarines carry nuclear missiles. Both the SLBM’s for targeted destruction of cities, and nuclear torpedoes for the destruction of submarines and entire fleets.
Though, any thinking person might stop and wonder what does placing nuclear ICBM’s off the Chinese coast have to do with “upholding human rights”, “free navigational passage” or “democratic values”.
And the reason is, that it doesn’t.
Bla. Bla. Bla.
Yada. Yada. Yada.
It’s placing very serious offensive weapons off the coast of China.
And the real reason is…?
…
…
So that the fishing rights of Vietnamese fishermen next to Indonesian waters will be policed, and secured? Is that what we are supposed to believe?
…
…
Bla. Bla. Bla.
Yada. Yada. Yada.
This move has shocked the world. Though not so much the dumbed-down Americans who say…
"Oh, well. It's way off somewhere at the other end of the world. Who cares. We have more important things to worry about like Trans injecting booster Vaxx. And being forced to wear masks! 'Merica! 'Merica! 'Merica!"
But don’t worry. The Chinese Leadership got the telegraphed message loud and clear.
The global appeal for peace comes as a top Chinese diplomat warned his country to re-examine their promise to only use nukes in retaliation, in response to the new alliances forming in the region.
Beijing’s former ambassador to the UN, Sha Zukang said China must make the first nuclear strike against the US if Joe Biden continues to defend Taiwan.
He said:
"The unconditional no first use is not suitable . . .
...unless China-US negotiations agree that neither side would use [nuclear weapons] first...
..., or the US will no longer take any passive measures to undermine the effectiveness of China’s strategic forces.
The strategic pressure on China is intensifying as (the US) has built new military alliances and as it increases its military presence in our neighborhood."
The threat came ahead of a meeting between the US, India, Japan and Australia – dubbed the Quad, in Washington, host by Joe Biden.
During a meeting of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association in Beijing last week he said:
"The policy not to be the first to use nuclear weapons unconditionally has given China the moral high ground internationally.
But for some time in the future, the US will see China as its main competitor and even its enemy.
Can this policy be re- examined and fine-tuned?"
It has already happened.
Right after the announcement, all the SEO generals met in Russia for “discussions”.
First off, SEO stands for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. And it is the de facto unified Asia. And yes. Right after the announcement about the new ICBM submarine deal, all the SEO military chiefs called a meeting to discuss things.
And right now, this is what it looks like…
(The big news, not well reported in “the West”, is how Iran just joined the SCO (this month). This is big news. This is a unified Asia.)
SCO chiefs of general staff meeting held in Russia
General Li Zuocheng (2nd L, front), member of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and chief of the Joint Staff Department under the CMC, attends the meeting of chiefs of general staff of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states in Orenburg Oblast, Russia on September 23, 2021. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)
ORENBURG, Russia, Sept. 24 — The Chiefs of General Staff of the armed forces of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states held a meeting at the Donguz training range in Orenburg Oblast, Russia on September 23. General Li Zuocheng, member of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and chief of the Joint Staff Department under the CMC, attended the meeting.
The Peace Mission-2021 joint anti-terrorist military exercise held by the armed forces of the SCO member states is also going on at the Donguz training range.
Chiefs of General Staff of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states including General Li Zuocheng (3rd L, front), member of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and chief of the Joint Staff Department under the CMC, observe the Peace Mission-2021 joint anti-terrorist military exercise in Orenburg Oblast, Russia on September 23, 2021. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)
Since its establishment in 2001, by upholding the banner of “Shanghai spirit” of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and pursuit of common development, the SCO has played an important role in promoting regional development, security and stability in the past two decades.
Participants of the meeting exchanged views on the current international and regional situations, security challenges and further cooperation of military security.
General Valery Gerasimov, chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, awards the medal of “Friendship and Cooperation” to representatives of the Chinese participating troops with outstanding performance in the SCO Peace Mission-2021 joint anti-terrorist military exercise at the Donguz training range in Orenburg Oblast, Russia on September 23, 2021. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)
They also expressed concern about the new risks in the situation of Afghanistan posed by the hasty withdrawal of foreign troops from the country, and signed jointly the minutes of the meeting of chiefs of general staff of the SCO member states.
In addition, participants of the meeting observed the Peace Mission-2021 joint anti-terrorist military exercise and all agreed that this exercise has improved the coordination capacity of the militaries of the SCO members in fighting against the international terrorist forces.
On the same day, Chinese General Li Zuocheng met with Russia’s Chief of General Staff General Valery Gerasimov in a separate closed door meeting. Photo below…
General Li Zuocheng (3rd L), member of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and chief of the Joint Staff Department under the CMC, meets with General Valery Gerasimov (3rd R), chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Orenburg Oblast, Russia on September 23, 2021. General Li is in Orenburg to attend the meeting of chiefs of general staff of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states. (Photo by Li Xiaowei)
You all think that this is nothing and that it is going to “blow over”?
Hardly. But there’s not a peep in the Western press about any of this.
Drudge Report 28SEP21.
But like I’ve been saying all along, the cattle don’t need to know what the farmer is planning on having for dinner.
Let’s get into some details why the Russians and Chinese are mobilizing their military forces.
American Nuclear Submarines to be serviced in Australia
The United States submarine force consists of four operational classes – Ohio, Los Angeles, Seawolf, and Virginia – all of which are nuclear-powered.
[1] The 14 Ohio-class SSBNs serve as the sea-based leg of the U.S. strategic triad. [2] An additional four Ohio-class submarines are configured as SSGNs that possess both strike and Special Forces insertion capabilities. The three classes of U.S. attack submarines — Virginia, Seawolf and Los Angeles – are tasked with engaging and destroying enemy vessels; supporting on-shore operations and carrier groups; and carrying out surveillance.
Capabilities at a Glance
Total Submarines in Fleet: 70
Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBNs): 14
Special forces / Black Ops Submarines (SSGNs): 4
Nuclear-Powered attack submarines (SSNs): 52
British Submarines to be serviced in Australia
The UK have four nuclear powered submarines that will be cruising off the Chinese coast. They will be the four Vanguard-class submarines: Vanguard (commissioned in 1993), Victorious (1995), Vigilant (1996) and Vengeance (1999).
All carry American nuclear SLBMs.
The United Kingdom has deployed Vanguard-class submarines with American manufactured Trident II nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) leased from the United States under arrangements negotiated with the Reagan administration in 1982.
So what?
Imagine if Russia started parking it’s nuclear submarines in Cuba, and if China started parking it’s nuclear submarines in Vancouver, BC. What if China started placing nuclear armed ICBM’s in Indonesia and Tasmania targeting “freedom of maritime passage” in Australia?
It’s a BIG FUCKING DEAL.
Which makes me want to take another look at the Deagel Report.
Boiler-plate Introduction
Who is the Deagel Report, what is it?
The Deagel corporation is a minor branch of US military intelligence, one of the many secretive organizations which collects data for high-level decision-making purposes and prepares confidential briefing documents for agencies like the National Security Agency, the United Nations, and the World Bank.
Deagel Report.
It is known, for example, to have contributed to a Stratfor report on North Korea. With this kind of pedigree, Deagel should be seen as a legitimate player in the intelligence community and not merely a disinformation asset.
If so, then it must be assumed that its population predictions for 2025, as well as its industrial output predictions on a nation-by-nation basis, are based on strategic assumptions which are shared and well understood by other players in the intelligence community.
Until the start of the Covid ‘pandemic’ many commentators were perplexed by the Deagel spreadsheets.
Perhaps they were part of a psychological operation?
However, in light of recent events, we are obliged to consider a possible connection between the projected massive reduction in the population of certain countries, forecast by Deagel, and other trends going on right now.
Trends?
What trends?
Devaluation of the Dollar with an out of control American Congress.
A fake American GDP.
Strange insistence in using a mRNA vaccine instead of a traditional “dead host” vaccine.
A global pandemic that America is just fucking up royally.
Desire for a war with China.
Desire for a war with Russia.
Desire for a war with Iran.
China, Russia and Iran forming a unified Asian block.
Race war in the United States.
Progressive onslaught and control of all electronic media.
Looming bubbles in just about every facet of American life.
But mostly the latest decisions by the Untied States to create a QUAD alliance, armed with nuclear weapons, and threaten China, or if that fails, to launch a “first strike” nuclear salvo against China to destroy it once and for all.
For “democracy” and “freedom“.
Don’t you know.
The Deagel scenario
The Deagel corporation was asked to explain the thinking behind its strange set of population and output figures. While we cannot take its response at face value, it nonetheless paints a picture that is very similar to the world we now see. And this is not an exaggeration at all.
World-wide bio-weapon pandemic
Massive domestic discord
Financial collapse preceded by inflation
Broken American government systems on all levels.
The United States trying to distract domestic discord through war
They updated their report last year (exactly last year 25SEP20) to compensate for the changes in the Geo-political environment since President Obama in 2012. This is what they said…
Deagel 2020 revision to the original 2012 Deagel Forecast
BlueNarwhal:
Forecast disclaimer revision in 2020:
In 2014 we published a disclaimer about the forecast. In six years the scenario has changed dramatically. This new disclaimer is meant to single out the situation from 2020 on-wards.
Talking about the United States and the European Union as separated entities no longer makes sense. Both are the Western block, keep printing money and will share the same fate.
After COVID we can draw two major conclusions:
The Western world (success model) has been built over societies with no resilience. They can barely withstand any hardship, even a low intensity one. It was assumed but now we’ve got the full hard confirmation beyond any doubt. They are weak to the point of a decapitated cripple.
The COVID crisis will be used to extend the life of this dying economic system through the so called “Great Reset.”
The Great Reset; like the climate change, extinction rebellion, planetary crisis, green revolution, shale oil (…) hoaxes promoted by the system; is another attempt to slow down dramatically the consumption of natural resources and therefore extend the lifetime of the current system.
It can be effective for awhile but finally won’t address the bottom-line problem and will only delay the inevitable. The core ruling elites hope to stay in power which is in effect the only thing that really worries them.
Collapse of the USD Financial Banking System
The collapse of the Western financial system – and ultimately the Western civilization – has been the major driver in the 2012 forecast along with a confluence of crisis with a devastating outcome.
Progressive Multiculturalism failures
As COVID has proven Western societies embracing multiculturalism and extreme liberalism are unable to deal with any real hardship.
Coronavirus Pandemic
The Spanish flu one century ago represented the death of 40-50 million people. Today the world’s population is four times greater with air travel in full swing which is by definition a super spreader. The death casualties in today’s World would represent 160 to 200 million in relative terms but more likely 300-400 million taking into consideration the air travel factor that did not exist one century ago. So far, COVID death toll is roughly 1 million people.
Economic crisis due to forced lock-downs
It is quite likely that the economic crisis due to the lock-downs will cause more deaths than the virus worldwide. The Soviet system was less able to deliver goodies to the people than the Western one. Nevertheless Soviet society was more compact and resilient under an authoritarian regime. That in mind, the collapse of the Soviet system wiped out 10 percent of the population.
The stark reality of diverse and multicultural Western societies is that a collapse will have a toll of 50 to 80 percent depending on several factors. But in general terms the most diverse, multicultural, indebted and wealthy (highest standard of living) will suffer the highest toll.
Life-Support Systems
The only glue that keeps united such aberrant collage from falling apart is over-consumption with heavy doses of bottomless degeneracy disguised as virtue. Nevertheless the widespread censorship, hate laws and contradictory signals mean that even that glue is not working any more.
The Predictions
Not everybody has to die. Migration (out from America, the West, etc.) can also play a positive role in this.
Second and Third World Nations
The formerly (known as) second and third world nations are an unknown at this point. Their fate will depend upon the decisions they take in the future.
Western powers are not going to take over them as they did in the past because these (Western) countries won’t be able to control their very own cities let alone those countries that are far away.
If they remain tied to the former World Order they will go down along with the Western powers. However, they won’t experience the same kind of brutal decline that the Western powers will experience so brazenly. This is partially because they are poorer and (obviously) not diverse enough. Instead they are stronger than the Western powers because they are actually quite homogeneous. This is their advantage. And that they are used to deal with some sort of hardship. Though, not precisely the one that is coming.
If they switch to China they can get a chance to stabilize but will need to depend upon the management of their own resources. We expected this situation to unfold and actually is unfolding right now.
American Election Consequences
With the November election triggering a major bomb if Trump is re-elected. (Did not happen.) If Biden is elected there will very bad consequences as well.
There is a lot of bad blood in the Western societies and the protests, demonstrations, rioting and looting are only the first symptoms of what is coming.
Geo-Political Changes
However a new trend is taking place overshadowing this one. The situation between the three great powers has changed dramatically.
The only relevant achievement of the Western powers during the past decade has been the formation of a strategic alliance, both military and economic, between Russia and China.
Russia and China are a united Asia.
Right now the potential partnership between Russia and the European Union (EU) is dead with Russia turning definitively towards China. That was from the beginning the most likely outcome.
The European Union is on it’s own.
Airbus never tried to establish a real partnership but rather a strategy to fade away the Russian aerospace industry. Actually Russia and China have formed a new alliance to build a long haul airliner.
Western Europe (not to mention the United States) was never interested in the development of Russia or forming anything other than a master slave relationship with Russia providing raw materials and toeing the line of the West.
It was clear then and today is a fact.
Preparations for war
Russia has been preparing for a major war since 2008 and China has been increasing her military capabilities for the last 20 years. Today China is not a second tier power compared with the United States. Both in military and economic terms China is at the same level and in some specific areas are far ahead.
Chinese Technology is state of the art.
In the domain of high-tech 5G has been a success in the commercial realm but the Type 055 destroyer is also another breakthrough with the US gaining a similar capability (DDG 51 Flight IIII) by mid of this decade (more likely by 2030).
Nanchang, the lead ship of the Type 055 class, was commissioned amid the pandemic and lock down in China.
Potential for open war hostilities
Six years ago the likelihood of a major war was tiny.
Since then it has grown steadily and dramatically and today is by far the most likely major event in the 2020s.
The ultimate conflict can come from two ways.
[1] A conventional conflict involving at least two major powers that escalates into an open nuclear war. Most likely initiated by the United States, with a nuclear retaliatory salvo of impressive destructive magnitude.
[2] A second scenario is possible in the 2025-2030 time-frame. A Russian (with possibly China) sneak first strike against the United States and its allies with the new S-500, strategic missile defenses, Yasen-M submarines, INF Zircon and Kalibr missiles and some new space asset playing the key role.
The sneaky first strike would involve all Russian missile strategic forces branches (bombers and ground-based missiles) at the different stages of such attack that would be strategic translation of what was seen in Syria in November 2015.
Massive failures in Western Intelligence Agencies
There was no report that the Russian had such a capability of launching a high precision, multiple, combined arms attack at targets 2,000+ kilometers away.
Western intelligence had no clue.
Brainwashed Moral Superiority
The irony is that since the end of the Cold War the United States has been maneuvering through NATO to achieve a position to be able to execute a first strike (nuclear) over Russia and now it seems that the first strike may still occur but the country finished would be the United States.
Another particularity of the Western system is that its individuals have been brainwashed to the point that the majority accept their moral high ground and technological edge as a given. This has given the rise of the supremacy of the emotional arguments over the rational ones which are ignored or deprecated.
That mindset can play a key role in the upcoming catastrophic events.
At least in the Soviet system the silent majority of the people were aware of the fallacies they were fed up.
We can see the United States claims about 5G being stolen from them by China or hypersonic technology being stolen by Russia as the evidence that the Western elites are also infected by that hubris. Over the next decade it will become obvious that the West is falling behind the Russia-China block and the malaise might grow into desperation.
Why go to war?
Going to war might seem a quick and easy solution to restore the lost hegemony to finally find them into a France 1940 moment. Back then France did not have nuclear weapons to turn a defeat into a victory. The West might try that swap because the unpleasant prospect of not being Mars and Venus but rather a bully and his dirty bitch running away in fear while the rest of the world is laughing at them.
If there is not a dramatic change of course the world is going to witness the first nuclear war.
The Western block collapse may come before, during or after the war. It does not matter. The West will completely collapse. It is fragile. It will be unable to recover from even the slightest societal disruption.
A nuclear war is a game with billions of casualties and the collapse plays in the hundreds of millions.
He Concludes…
This website is non-profit, built on spare time and we provide our information and services AS IS without further explanations and/or guarantees. We are not linked to any government. Take into account that the forecast is nothing more than a game of numbers whether flawed or correct based upon some speculative assumptions. - Friday, September 25th, 2020
So much for the introductory portion. Now the meat of this article…
Realize the following truths, before we proceed.
China possesses skilled leadership.
Russia and China are aligned militarily.
The United States government is a cluster fuck.
America is balkanized, isolated, and it’s every man for himself.
Handguns, and weapons are all over America.
COVID is raging inside of America.
If you think it is bad now, imagine what happens when a roll of toilet paper costs $20, A hamburger cost $100, no one is getting cost-of-living increases, there’s hardly any gasoline. And a new round of COVID is forcing everyone into lock-downs again. And the police start to selectively deploy.
The shootings will not be televised.
And in the midst of all this unreported turmoil will be the grand American military strategy. That is to “suppress China”, that far-away nation. To “project” a American rules “based order” on the Chinese coast. So that the miserable ‘Mericans can blame their frustration on those evil vile Communists. Instead of on their government.
The Good News
The good news is that the war will be short lived. Over very quickly. In fact, it might as well happen, million of people die, and then be over before anything is actually reported. Countries might break up after a few short meetings and that will be that.
With banks gone, communication down, any balkanized nations will go tribal in hours. And people, the USA is very balkanized. Or haven’t you been watching the videos out of America today? Crime is open and brazen. Shootings are the norm.
The bad news…
…well.
People are going to die. Entire societies will be disrupted. nation-states will collapse, restructure and reform. There will be internal discord, and SHTF on a local level will emerge in the worst hit areas.
Most Western nations will become a Hellish fiasco of “zombie movie” proportions.
The countries that will suffer the greatest reduction in population, according to Deagel (as per 2014), are:
Worst hit nations.
That’s pretty darn specific. Don’t you know. And the top nations are the most “Western” nations in society, governance, and banking.
So what is driving this entire event sequence?
The AUKUS
Thenew security alliance of Australia, Great Britain and the USA, namedAUKUS, is now about which arms companies can expand their business. Britain’snuclear submarines are being built under the direction of Europe’s largestarmscompany, BAE Systems, with Rolls-Royce providing the propulsion.
-Archyde
The sole purpose of the AUKUS is to…
Unite the military systems of the USA, the UK and Australia.
Provide bases, fuel depots and maintenance facilities for nuclear submarines.
Provide nuclear basing and deployment options for second-strike nuclear SLBM systems.
The members of the AUKUS and their Deagel casualty figures.
Here’s the 2025 Deagel casualty figures for the three “mighty” members of AUKUS.
Keep in mind that the American Civil War which devastated the Southern States had a 6-8% of the population killed.
Since the casualty figures include Australia, which has been (up until four years ago) neutral, we can assume that China would be involved.
And, since Great Britain (UK) would be so seriously destroyed, we must assume that Russia would be involved.
These two facts point to the realization that both Russia and China would fight in a World War III scenario, and that given the current Geo-political alignments at this time that they would fight on the same side for the same interests.
Changes in South America
Population will increase in many nations in South America. Which is very strange. Deagel predicts that this might be due to migration way from the heavily populated Northern American nations Southward. With Brazil being one of the target destinations…
Brazil 2025.
But then…
We have Argentina that also has a decrease in population. The decrease is around 7%.
Argentina 2025.
The Members of the unified ShanghaiCooperationOrganization and their Deagel Casualty figures…
From what I can gather, most of the SEO nations fare pretty well, all things considered.
All have projected population decreases under 2%, with both India and Pakistan having growth in population.
My guess is that Asia doesn’t play.
A complete breakdown
The data was taken down from Deagel when the website hit the blogosphere, and that is the kind of publicity that no one wants. Like MM, they do not host advertisements or anything like that. The site is a grey-web site like MM. It is not a for-profit venue.
Never the less, here is the complete tabulated data in a nice convenient PDF for you to download. You all can thank me later.
A look on the bright side?
How can there be a “bright side” to any of this? Well, you see, perhaps we are all looking at this wrong. We are making the assumption that the nations themselves will not geographically change.
What if, in 2025, the United States says (after the elections of 2024) to Hell with the Federal government and the nation crumbles apart. It could very well resemble something like this…
In this scenario, the United States breaks up into four separate nation-states. An only one of them remains “The United States”. That simple Geo-political change produces the exact same results as described above.
The four new nation states…
Map
Here’s a map showing the predictions made in the forecast. You see that Asia is unscathed, while America and the West suffer horribly.
Japan will lose 1/5th of it’s population!
Australia will lose a full 1/3rd of it’s population!
Canada will lose 1/4th of it’s population!
The United States will lose almost 3/4ths of it’s population!
An American centered fiasco
Keep in mind that the largest drop in population are in “Western nations”, and those that have adopted American governance suffered the worst causality figures.
Based on historical precedents, and the Deagel predictions, these kinds of numbers and figures can only be associated with an American centered disaster. Not really a global one. Because if it was a global disaster, then the causality figures would be more uniform.
.
For instance, here is Israel…
The closer the nation is aligned with the United States, the more damage or death toll that is has.
What’s the gig?
There are all sorts of people slicing and dicing these figures. Here’s one that claims that 2025 will be a war on Christians. That it’s the Vaxx that’s going to kill all the Christians off, and that it is a master plan by those devious Chinese to steal our precious freedoms and liberties all for Communism!
(sigh)
That it must be due to religion, as that is what the Book of Revelation says, and therefore the “Four horsemen” are going to spring out from deep inside of China and unleash their terrors to the world.
I exaggerate. Sure. But it’s not that far off.
Well, if that is so, then if you read the book of revelation, then you know that the real believers will be spared, and the condemned will be the ones who will end up suffering. There will be this thing called the rapture and the unworthy will perish in what will become Hell on Earth. Where will that Hell be?
The United States.
Let’s look at the unified Asia…
The charts truly show that it is the Chinese and the Russians that will be spared. Not those in the West. So please give me a break.
What ever your personal beliefs, I do not think that any of this has anything to do with religion, philosophy or social behavior. It has to do with the collapse of the United States Empire, and the desire of the ruling oligarchy to hold on while it goes down the tubes.
(Sigh)
Never the less…
They do point out something interesting. That there is a direct correlation between the nations that are giving mRNA vaccinations, and those that do not.
The ones that insist on mRNA vaccinations…
The ones that give “dead host” traditional vaccinations…
And this is their conclusion…
That the Deagel projections have a strategic military purpose and should be taken seriously;
That the sharp division between Table A+B and Table C has a strategic military purpose;
That the worldwide Covid vaccine program is a cover to deliver a fatal or harmful vaccine to the population of a selected list of countries (those in Table A+B);
That the countries in Table C will become the new axis of the world economy, centered on the Belt & Road Initiative, which has been under development for at least 20 years;
That the vaccines produced by the Big Four are especially dangerous and should be avoided. (We are not suggesting that the other 17 are safe.)
So maybe they are making a good POINT.
Comment from Memory Loss
This came in this morning just before I published this article…
MM, looks like there is starting to be speculation about the mRNA vaccines. And you got the military aspect correct.
20% of the pfizer vaccine contains material which is redacted on the list of ingredients. The redactions fall under b(4) which appears to be code for state of the art military stuff.
So it looks like the ungodly haste is to complete the installation of a state of the art military system into the general population. The US is getting ready for use of nuclear weapons in a strike against China it would seem. Your theory of genetic modifications for subjects to survive a nuclear war is looks really plausible.
The US is getting ready for use of nuclear weapons in a strike against China it would seem. Now why would they do that?
(P.S: I am speculating that the thoughts you have been having recently may actually be glimpses into possible future time lines. If you understand my references to Swedenborg previously, you might get my drift. So it looks like we may have to enlist as irregulars ASAP lol, )
As leaders from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States unveiled their new trilateral security partnership for advanced defense-tech sharing on Wednesday, it was also revealed that the first initiative of the endeavor would be the delivery of Australia’s first nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison returned to his Canberra podium Thursday afternoon to divulge that the country should expect more than just a costly nuclear submarine fleet within the next several years.
"[W]e will be enhancing our long-range strike capability including hawk and tomahawk cruise missiles and extended missile range for our capabilities," Morrison said, highlighting the goal of a "stable and secure region."
The acquisition of Australia’s new capabilities will come as part of the country’s 2024 structure plan, and the missiles will be fitted on Australia’s Collins-class submarine fleet.
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As for the nuclear submarine fleet, Morrison projected that the country should have a portion of the submarines “in the water” before 2030.
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“When it comes to the delivery of this program, I indicated that we anticipate being able to commence build this year and the first of those submarines would be in the water, we believe, before the end of next decade and all partners will be working to ensure that that is achieved at a date as soon as is possible to achieve,” he said.
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Morrison rejected claims that Australia “wasted” some $2.4 billion that was already funneled to France’s Naval Group as part of a $90 billion submarine contract — a deal that was rendered defunct following Wednesday’s announcement.
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"We’ve invested $2.4 billion in the attack class program and I say all of that investment, I believe, has further built our capability," he proclaimed, "and that is consistent with the decision that was taken back in 2016 for all the right reasons to protect Australia’s national security interests and has served that purpose."
The Australian prime minister went on to issue a public apology to Naval Group, the French government and French President Emmanuel Macron.
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President Biden delivers remark on National Security at the White House
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"There is few if any other country around the world that understands the importance of the Pacific and has been as committed to the Pacific as France," he said.
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"We share a deep passion for our Pacific family and a deep commitment to them, and I look forward and I hope to see us continue once we move past what is obviously a very difficult and disappointing decision for France."
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China also took issue with the AUKUS announcement, which was viewed as another example of the participating nations’ “Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice,” according to a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
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"There’s an open invitation for President Xi to discuss other matters," Morrison said to a reporter asking about potential economic trade sanctions from China. "That has always been there. Australia is open to discuss issues important to the Indo-Pacific."
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Morrison also stressed to the global community that Australia is not looking to become a nuclear power, or superpower, through AUKUS.
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“This is about propulsion. This is not about acquiring nuclear weapons,” he said, pledging continued adherence to obligations under the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
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US President Joe Biden previously clarified that Australia’s submarine fleet would be powered by nuclear reactors, but “conventionally-armed” when it comes to weaponry.
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Comments from the article…
It’s not just that…
The United States is on a buying ordering spree of large conventional weapons and munitions designed to borrow deep into the earth and destroy things, huge systems to take out entire cities, and a massive construction program for missiles.
But the USA only wants peace…
US Air Force Orders GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators Through 2026
The Boeing Corp., St. Louis, Missouri, has been awarded a $70,000,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators. This contract provides for the procurement via delivery order of GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator carriage and release equipment. The location of performance is Saint Charles, Missouri, and work is expected to be completed by April 30, 2026. This award is the result of a sole source acquisition. Fiscal 2019 3011 (production) funds in the amount of $18,025,770 are being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity (FA8681-19-D-0008).
US Air Force to Repair Minuteman III nuclear ICBM Missiles Guidance System Through 2039
The Boeing Co., Newark, Ohio, has been awarded a $1,620,707,490 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for missile guidance repair. This contract will repair the Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) missile guidance set. Work will be performed in Newark, Ohio, and is expected to be completed by Sept. 27, 2039. This award is the result of a sole-source acquisition. Fiscal 2021 operation and maintenance funds in the amount of $32,486,160 are being obligated at the time of award. The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is the contracting activity (FA821421D0003).
Etc. Etc. Etc.
The Deagel Forecast is removed from the website.
On 4/20/21, Deagel.com, a military intelligence agency, has deleted their mysterious 2025 forecast spreadsheet that predicted a major collapse of the western countries.
The forecast used to exist at [link to deagel.com (secure)] and now that page just redirects to the home page. This forecast was on their website since 2014.
The spreadsheet predicted a major drop in the US population from 332 million in 2019 to only 99 million in 2025 (-70%).
I find it an interesting coincidence that this deletion was made within 24 hours of every American over the age of 16 qualifying for their mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
You all do know what I think about coincidences...
-MM
Do not get caught up.
The world seems to be going into a tail spin. But it is just an illusion. It’s not. It’s just that the potential futures are frightening. Do not get caught up. VIDEO.
Video
Some final thoughts
I really hope that this does not come to pass. I really want all this nonsense to go away and not happen. Seriously I really do.
Those that predict the future are often wrong. Sometimes frighteningly so.
However, if the Deagel forecast is based on remote viewed data with an extrapolation of current events, it really does look like it’s going to happen.
Keep in mind that the Deagel remote viewed the future correctly. They printed their results in 2012.
They PREDICTED a bio-warfare induced pandemic.
They PREDICTED an Australian alliance with the United States.
They PREDICTED that America would start entering a period of "popping" of the various economic bubbles.
All of which came true by 2020.
Deagel did NOT change their forecast for 2025. It still stands. They just changed their thinking on how it would come about.
They remote viewed 2025 in great detail.
There will be [1] a massive die off of people in America, and Australia. The rest of the world will fare much better. And, most importantly, a [2] bio-weapon or pandemic figured predominantly in their calculus.
In 2012, they believed that there would be some kind of bio-weapon or pandemic that would kill off so many Americans. But they couldn’t (for the life of them) answer why Australia of all places would also have a large die off. At that time they never could of imagined the QUAD set up by Mike Pompeo, and that the Morrison government would wholeheartedly want to declare war on China. Instead, they figured that it must be a very serious pandemic with some other mystery event that complicated things in a negative manner.
In 2020, in the midst of the (three agent) bio-weapon attacks on China, and the absolute failure of America in securing it’s homeland, as well as the strong alignment of the Australian Morrison government to the war-loving neocons in Washington DC, the revised reasoning became one of nuclear war. Thus they reasoned that since the 2020 pandemic wasn’t that bad, and the drums of war were beating so loudly, that it must be nuclear war and bio-weapons used simultaneously.
Whether there is a nuclear event, or a bio-weapon event, no matter who caused it, or who instigated it, America will be absolutely and totally devastated. A 70% kill off implies that America would indeed be thrown back to the bronze age.
My advice?
Take your loved ones out for a nice meal. Right now. Enjoy the time that you have with them. Whether or not this will happen, the fact is that it’s not happening right now.
You are.
And what ever your situation, rich, poor, work tomorrow, day off, tired, or bored, do something special now. Live life, and don’t live in fear of an uncertain future.
Just call up your grandparent.
Or call your mom. Say hi.
Too much work, eh?
I dare you. I double-dog dare you. Call them right now.
Just say “Hi. I was thinking of you and just wanted to call. I hope that it is not a bad time.”
You will make their day.
And…
…if you are old (like me) and your parents and grandparents are gone, then call up a brother, sister or cousin. Talk about a television show you used to watch, a movie, a music band, a shared memory and say that you were thinking about them.
It will be a trip down “memory lane”.
But…
…if you have no family, and you don’t want to call up a friend or two to go out and grab a beer…just because. Then take your loved one to a movie. It doesn’t matter what the movie is. Just go.
Go. Let them choose the movie. It doesn’t matter what it is. Don’t quibble. Their choice. Their night out. You just make it happen.
You will be a better person for it.
So enjoy the moment now.
If you watched the movie Idiocracity, you’d get the joke.
Spend time with your loved ones.
Time will pass you by… do something TODAY.
Make a difference.
Be the best you that YOU can be.
And always, be the Rufus.
Be the Rufus.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
How’s that for a “mouth full” headline. Nah. Not the kind of stuff that you were expecting from ol’ MM was it. But (I am so sorry) I am being “pestered” to draft this up. And it truly is “pestering”, and I don’t like it ok? And don’t bother asking why I am publishing this article now, of all times. I haven’t a clue.
And that’s the way it works, don’t you know. So just enjoy the read, and if this article resonates with you, then great for you! Otherwise, just get some wine, a fine companion, and eat some delicious tasty food… stuff that you can savor and smell.
Oh, and one more thing.
In this analysis we are going to entertain a professional Remote Viewer for his comments on the Deagel Forecast. And given that I am being so insanely driven to push this article out (for God know what reason), I am including the entire conversation with him.
And it goes everywhere.
So buckle up. Some of it might be important to some people, and some of it might not be to others. So just relax and take from this article what is important to you, and ignore the rest.
OK?
Introduction
The Deagel corporation is a minor branch of US military intelligence, one of the many secretive organizations which collects data for high-level decision-making purposes and prepares confidential briefing documents for agencies like the National Security Agency, the United Nations, and the World Bank.
It’s a work of “love” from some retired intelligence assets, and like most of us ex-spooks, it’s hosted outside of the United States. Just like MM here. We have VERY good reasons to do so. Reasons that are far too complex to get involved in right this moment. But we DO KNOW what we are doing. Never doubt that.
Deagel is known, for example, to have contributed to a Stratfor report on North Korea. With this kind of pedigree, Deagel should be seen as a legitimate player in the intelligence community and not merely a disinformation asset.
If so, then it must be assumed that its population predictions for 2025, as well as its industrial output predictions on a nation-by-nation basis, are based on strategic assumptions which are shared and well understood by other players in the intelligence community.
Deagel predictions.
Until the start of the Covid ‘pandemic’ many commentators were perplexed by the Deagel spreadsheets.
Perhaps they were part of a psychological operation?
However, in light of recent events, we are obliged to consider a possible connection between the projected massive reduction in the population of certain countries, forecast by Deagel, and other trends going on right now.
Trends?
What trends?
Devaluation of the Dollar with an out of control American Congress.
Strange insistence in using a mRNA vaccine instead of a traditional “dead host” vaccine.
A global pandemic that America is just fucking up royally.
Desire for a war with China.
Desire for a war with Russia.
Desire for a war with Iran.
China, Russia and Iran forming a unified Asian block.
Race war in the United States.
Progressive onslaught and control of all electronic media.
Looming bubbles in just about every facet of American life.
And so on and so forth…
The Deagel scenario
The Deagel corporation was asked to explain the thinking behind its strange set of population and output figures. While we cannot take its response at face value, it nonetheless paints a picture that is very similar to the world we now see. And this is not an exaggeration at all.
Consider…
[1] A fake American GDP
In short, they argued that the US government has greatly over-stated the real level of US GDP. This means the country will be fatally exposed when the next economic crisis strikes.
They also take into account a “pandemic scenario” – their term – caused by Ebola or a similar pathogen. This, they say, would cause an exceptionally high death rate, placing extreme pressure on healthcare providers across America and greatly reducing economic output.
[3] A financial crisis with the US Dollar
This pandemic could quickly spiral out of control and create an international financial crisis:
“The collapse of the Western financial system will wipe out the standard of living of its population while ending Ponzi schemes such as the Stock Exchange and the pension funds.”
Trying to figure it out…
They try to explain the predicted dramatic fall in the population of the US by reference to a massive outward migration of millions of Americans seeking economic relief in other countries, but this is unconvincing.
They seem to concede this themselves when they add a further explanatory factor – widespread suicide in response to economic distress. But this too is unsatisfactory.
Their primary reason for predicting a colossal drop in the population of the US by 2025 – a fall of up to 70 percent – is the scale and severity of the alleged pandemic.
As they put it,
“the death toll will be horrible.”
Map
Here’s a map showing the predictions made in the forecast. You see that Asia is unscathed, while America and the West suffer horribly.
Japan will lose 1/5th of it’s population!
Australia will lose a full 1/3rd of it’s population!
Canada will lose 1/4th of it’s population!
The United States will lose almost 3/4ths of it’s population!
Timing
By all accounts, historically, the massive drop in population at this time is validated by the “Fourth Turning” predictions. The date and timing all agree with the Strauss and Howe model for America.
This model is United States centrist, and acknowledges that different societies and different cultures have different “turnings” and generational changes.
Casualty Figures
The casualty figures are gargantuan. They are over and above what one would associate with such things as…
Civil War = 2% to 10%.
Genocide = from 25% to 99% of the population.
For example; 77.0% of the Tutsi population of Rwanda. 85 percent of the population in the Hutu ethnic group. In Cambodia, 70% of the total Cham population, were exterminated.
World War = 6% to 9% of the population (World War II).
Global Military Empire = 11%
GenghisKhan’slegacyisoneofaruthless warrior who dominated unimaginable amounts of territory. He slaughtered about 40 million people and reduced the populationofEarthby 11 percent.
Pandemic = 15% to 60%
The Bubonic plague was a deadly pandemic that wiped out a massive chunk of population in the World during the mid-1300s. In Europe alone the plague wiped out nearly 50% of Europe’s population.
Nuclear War = 30% to 85%
Economic Collapse = 1% to 30%
An American centered fiasco
Based on historical precedents, and the Deagel predictions, these kinds of numbers and figures can only be associated with an American centered disaster. Not really a global one. Because if it was a global disaster, then the causality figures would be more uniform.
.
The most likely candidate is a combination of two (or possibly more) contributors listed above. Which are…
Candidate disaster combinations
Here are some of my suggested candidate combinations that allow us to better understand how those enormous population causality figures could be reached…
Global pandemic, AND genocide.
Global pandemic, AND civil war WITH genocide.
Global pandemic, AND collapsing Military Empire, WITH war.
Global Military Empire AND Nuclear War WITH Global pandemic.
So, in my mind, as I understand things, the ONLY way that the kinds of predictions (as determined by the forecast) can manifest is through a combination of some very horrific events that happens in one centered geographic area.
So how did they come up with these numbers?
Indeed, these are truly shocking numbers and values. So shocking, that it’s simply not an extrapolation of trends. As an extrapolation of trends show things either moving towards “infinity” or falling into a “black hole”. But there is no way to be able to quantify that data into numbers.
So, how the heck did they come up with these values that they are using? And they have come up with specific values and specific data. And it is all very, highly specific. Such as this…
Specific Data and values
Here’s some of the very specific data that they have come up with…
The countries that will suffer the greatest reduction in population, according to Deagel (as per 2014), are:
That’s pretty darn specific. Don’t you know.
Remote Viewing
Remote viewing is defined as the ability to acquire accurate information about a distant or non-local place, person or event without using your physical senses or any other obvious means.
It’s associated with the idea of clairvoyance, seemingly being able to spontaneously know something without actually knowing how you got the information.
It is also sometimes called “anomalous cognition” or “second sight.”
Many of us experience this from time to time as an intuitive flash of insight that turns out to be correct.
Many well-known entrepreneurs and business people, like George Soros, Conrad Hilton, Thomas Alva Edison and Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, have attributed their business success to this ability.
Remote Viewing Sketch.
And (of course) we’ve all seen natural psychics perform seemingly amazing feats of mental skill on TV.
The difference between natural psychic receptivity and remote viewing is that the latter is a trained skill, a controlled process, that the average person can learn to do, to some degree or another.
History of the Remote Viewing Program
Remote viewing in modern times originates from the U.S. Government’s interests in psychic espionage during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Back during World War II, the Soviets had heard rumors that the U.S. Military were using psychic communications at sea.
While it’s not clear now whether this was really true, the Soviets believed it. And that is, after all, all that matters.
They started their own psychic training within their military and intelligence agencies many decades ago.
The U.S. Government learned of this program and, in the early 1970’s, decided to create their own remote viewing CIA training program.
Stanford Research Institute Remote Viewing Tests
Money and resources (from the Federal government, and buried in the R&D section of the government) were given by the Central Intelligence Agency to Stanford Research Institute (SRI).
That that time, they were located on the campus of Stanford University. And their charter was to test the possibility of remote viewing.
The goal was to disprove that psychic functioning was real.
No one wanted it to exist.
It was the last thing that the military establishment wanted to worry about, especially if it was a new Soviet threat.
Physicists Russell Targ and Hal Putoff working at SRI were tasked with determining whether Extrasensory Perception (ESP) and related phenomena were real or not.
Physicists Russell Targ and Hal Putoff.
So they set about to locate some natural psychics and test them.
Their first subject was artist, psychic and scientist Ingo Swann of New York City. He had demonstrated an ability to accurately “remote view” weather in various American cities.
Ingo Swann.
He had published some articles about ESP and psychokinesis (the ability to mentally affect distant objects) when he worked with researcher Gertrude Schmeidler of City College, New York (and the American Society for Psychical Research.)
Working with Schmeidler, Swann had demonstrated that he could affect the temperature of thermistors sealed in insulated thermos canisters twenty-five feet away from him. Which (of course) was an amazing feat.
At a friend’s request, Swann sent his published findings to Putoff.
Upon reviewing them, Putoff asked Swann to come to SRI and demonstrate his abilities.
The first thing they had Swann do was to see if he could affect a super sensitive, (electromagnetically shielded) quark-detector buried five feet underground in a cement floor.
Every time Putoff asked Swann to think about the detector (used to detect subatomic particles), the readings from the device would noticeably deviate from the baseline readings.
Putoff was convinced that Swann had special abilities and so the program to test and develop remote viewing began.
Expanded Scope
At first they had Swann view objects in a box: this was a practice he was good at but quickly became bored with.
Swann said to them:
“I can view anything in the universe, this is a trivialization of my abilities.”
A few days later he came up with a new way to do remote viewing: viewing map coordinates.
Targ and Putoff went out and bought the biggest atlas they could find at the local book store.And so they started taking coordinates from the map, putting the coordinates in individual blank envelopes, and had Swann image the places at those coordinates at random.
Global Atlas.
Swann’s coordinate map viewing turned out to be a big success.
But, of course, critics were everywhere. No one in the military, or the government wanted to believe the findings. Indeed, a critic at the Central Intelligence Agency suggested that maybe he had memorized the entire global map.
Swann went on to use randomly chosen numerical coordinates to view randomly selected events, people and structures around the planet. He performed equally well using this coordinate-based viewing system.
Overview
Some quick notes on Remote Viewing.
Remote Viewing occurs in a sterile workspace. Most reports of paranormal events come from outside the science lab, and when research is done on these cousins of RV, it is somewhat like examining the natural history of some specimen brought in from the wild. When clairvoyance (RV’s closest relative) was done under controlled conditions for research purposes, it was generally targeted at such things as cards or colors, since these sorts of targets allowed easy scoring of experimental results. Remote viewing, on the other hand, was actually developed and first explored in a research setting . And the sorts of targets used for RV research differed from those typically used in other psi research. Targets chosen for “viewing” include geographic locations, hidden objects, and even such things as archaeological sites and space objects about which it was expected that ground truth would eventually become known, so that the viewer’s accuracy could be checked.
Remote Viewing is a combination of observed sensings. Unlike most other psi disciplines, remote viewing is not precisely one thing, but rather an integrated “cocktail” of various phenomena. Despite the “viewing” part of the term, remote viewing is only partly about experiences associated with what might be visible about a target. It also involves mental impressions pertaining to the other senses, such as sounds, tastes, smells, and textures, as well as limited telepathy-like effects, and in some cases just plain intuitive “knowing.” RV owes some of these qualities to the fact that lessons learned from research in clairvoyance, telepathy, and even out-of-body experiences — traditionally considered separate disciplines — played a role in its development. In remote viewing, the viewer not only verbalizes what he or she is perceiving, but usually also records in writing, in sketches, and sometimes even in three-dimensional modeling the results of the remote viewing episode, or “session.”
Remote Viewing is Structured. Remote viewing tends to be more structured than other psi disciplines. In some important varieties of remote viewing, viewers follow specific scripted formats. These formats are designed to enhance the viewer’s performance in various ways, such as to better deal with mental “noise” (stray thoughts, imaginings, analysis, etc. that degrades the “psychic signal”) or to allow incoming data to be better managed. Some of these structural methodologies are widely used. Other methods are more personal. An individual remote viewer, for example, might through trial and error develop his or her own customized approach.
Strict science-based protocol. Proper remote viewing is done within a strict science-based protocol. As mentioned, the remote viewer is kept unwitting of either the nature or identity of the target until after the session is completed. Except in training situations, the monitor (a sort of remote viewing “guide” or facilitator that may assist the viewer during the session) is also unwitting, and external clues or data about the target are carefully excluded. Sessions are conducted in a setting that prevents knowledge of the target “leaking” to the viewer. These measures are important to insure that the viewer does not receive hints or clues about the target in any way other than what would be considered “psychic.”
What is Remote Viewing?
Swann coined to term “remote viewing” to describe the process though you can question whether the information is actually remote to the viewer or whether the process is entirely visual.
Some people are more sensitive to auditory, kinesthetic or other types of sensory information and few viewers actually “see” the target very clearly.
Nonetheless, the name stuck and was sufficient to convince the intelligence agencies to fund the project.
Other viewers were also tasked to help Targ and Putoff understand remote viewing.
Pat Price, a former police commissioner from Burbank, CA also proved to be an excellent viewer. Price used his own system to view where he actually imagined that he was at the distant target site.
Pat Price.
His results were so good that the Central Intelligence Agency hired him to work for them directly.
Back East, another natural viewer Joe McMoneagle, also known as “Remote Viewer No. 1,” worked directly with the U.S. Army and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Joe McMoneagle.
He was also tested and found to have amazing abilities to describe and sketch distant locations. Upon retirement, McMoneagle was awarded a Legion of Merit award, in part, for his five years of remote viewing missions for the military and various government agencies.
Coordinate Remote Viewing
However, Swann was able to describe, with great precision, what he was doing with his mind and attention as he was viewing, an ability other viewers did not have.
This allowed him to come up with a 6-stage system that could be taught to anyone, including you or me. It became known as CRV: Coordinate (or Controlled) Remote Viewing.
Swann’s CRV system is based on separating out signal from noise in your mind as you are viewing.
All the information is recorded during a session, but the viewer puts the noise in a different place on the paper than the signal.
At the end of the session, you can separate them from one another.
The method became the basis of the remote viewing protocols that the U.S. army taught to several groups of viewers.
The program lasted until 1995 when it was declassified; about $20 million was spent over the two decades. It is now part of "deep black" SAP programs and commercial programs for profit.
Princeton’s Random Number Generator Research
During this time, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR) at Princeton University, run by Bob Jahn and Brenda Dunn, also conducted twenty years of research into remote viewing.
They referred to this as the so-called “micro-psychokinesis”.
They conducted experiments on the effect of human intention on Random Number Generators (RNGs).
They found that, looking at the cumulative results of hundreds of thousands of trials, that their subjects could influence about 2 or 3 events per 10,000 random coin flip.
Thus being able to move the device away from true randomness by thought alone.
The odds of these results being by chance were an astonishing 375 trillion to one.
Open the Aperture of Your Perception
When someone asks you to describe something, you normally proceed to name what you’re perceiving using nouns and symbols.
"I see a man holding a dog". He is on a bench. He is in a park. The dog is hungry and barking at the food in the stall nearby.
Remote viewing is just the opposite.
You begin by describing your perceptions without trying to identify anything about what they mean or what the larger picture is.
Natural.
Noise.
Hungry feeling.
Green.
Resting.
You begin with basic gestalts: fundamental, general components of the target site like whether it’s manmade or living or natural. You then proceed to basic colors, smells, temperatures, shapes and sizes.
Only after you’ve been describing the target for a while can you proceed to more specific ideas and possibly names, nouns and more analytical types of information.
Follow the Ambiguity
Our minds are always attempting to draw conclusions from what we’ve perceiving at any given moment.
But this isn’t really desirable in a Remote Viewing exercise.
If you try to do this, you will always likely to be wrong. Which brings us to one of the great paradoxes of RV: the fainter the perception, the more likely it is to be accurate and the less likely you are to feel confident in that perception.
In other words, the more confident you are about your psychic perceptions during the session, the less likely those perceptions are to be correct!
And the less confident you feel, the more likely it is that your perceptions are right on. How’s that for a paradox?
Someone familiar with the military viewing program once told me that if a viewer finished a session and said with confidence “I nailed it!,” that viewer’s session would be thrown in the garbage. A good session is one in which the viewer has no idea what they’ve been doing or whether it’s accurate or not.
This is very different from the way our educational system, which stresses linear and rational thinking, trains us to deal with acquiring and processing information.
Eventually, you see the benefits: you learn to trust your intuition more and don’t necessarily need to rationalize everything before you take action. You become more spontaneous which can often be a good thing if you’re used to over-thinking things in your life.
Scientific Analysis of the Remote Viewing Program
When the RV program was declassified, one of the two people asked to evaluate the program was statistician Jessica Utts, the head of the American Statistical Association.
She concluded:
“Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted.Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC (another government sponsored think tank) have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud.”
And researcher Dean Radin, doing very complex meta-analyses using the results of many studies about psychic perception over many decades, came to the same conclusion.
Looking at the entire population, not just trained viewers, RV is a weak effect, about four to eight percent higher than expected if we were only using our physical senses to gather information: yet, it’s consistently there in everyone.
How Does Remote Viewing Work?
So RV is scientifically proven to work.
But how?
What’s going inside the viewer’s body and mind? How do they access far away information with such great accuracy?
You can pick your favorite explanation but the truth is, no one knows for sure. But my feeling is that it has something to do with resonance, vibration and frequency on the quantum level. And to this end I have generated explanatory template maps for the MWI.
Right brain thinking tends to be free flowing, intuitive and descriptive while left brain thinking is more analytical, linear and symbolic.
Good remote viewers learn to distinguish their own left and right-brain thinking.
They’re good at discerning the difference between the two and can separate signal from noise. Remote viewing tends to be more more accessible to the right-brain type.
Picking Up Signals Through Vibrational Resonance
Where does the information come from?
Well, if you look around the space wherever you are at the moment, the air will seem empty: you can’t see the air with your eyes. But you also know that it’s filled with electromagnetic information from cell phone signals, radio waves, TV signals, etc. So empty space can be filled with information coming to you from distance. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
That information is coming to you through a type of vibrational resonance that fills space-time.
When you have a receiver that is tuned to the frequency of those signals, you’ll pick them up.
All you need to do after that is to amplify the signal.
Remote viewing doesn’t necessarily amplify the signal of what you’re viewing, but it does teach you how to reduce your own mental noise, your monkey mind.
Yeah, but what about Deagel? And the future?
I argue that there must have been some technique, other than “extrapolation of data applied to historical models“, to come up with the data that Deagel presented. And the only publicly known method is via Remote Viewing.
Of course, there is the time-travel, and 5th and 7th dimensional travel mechanisms.
I have discussed this elsewhere.
And those are indeed valid methods of "time travel;", but I do not believe that they are actually being used at this time, in this case.
Remote Viewing The Future
Remote viewing the future is possible because time does not exist and therefore it is possible to reach out and link with events that are happening in a future “now” upon the world-line MWI template map.
This can only be done for a relatively short period into the future because the further one looks into the future, the more variables can change what happens.
What happens is that, based on what has occurred or what is going on at the moment, a sort of inevitability occurs.
An Apple Tree Example
For instance, if an apple falls from a tree, there is a strong possibility that it will fall to the ground.
Now, if at a certain time a person walks towards the tree, is it possible to predict if the apple will hit the person on the head or not? Many variables will come into play that permit the apple to hit the person on the head – or not – so it is not usually possible to predict with absolute certainty such an event.
Under an apple tree.
A remote viewer looks out along timelines and picks up the most dramatic events that are likely to occur. Then the person tries to see what is likely to happen. But, as nothing is totally certain, they can only predict with greater or lesser accuracy.
The events along any timeline are quite simply projections of “now” events. The “now” moment is constantly altering but each succeeding “now” moment is dependent on the preceding one to a certain extent.
But given the over all MWI template that most people seem to be using, it can become relatively easy to Remote View upon this template and describe a future that will exist for a wide selection of people.
So, to describe it simply, if one looks at a series of single moments in time, for instance concerning the apple growing on a tree, we can see that the apple ripens and, eventually, falls from the tree. The exact moment when the apple will depart from the tree cannot be predicted but we know that it will eventually fall.
Once it starts to fall it is simple to imagine that it will hit the ground.
So, imagination is brought into play to predict the future from the last “now” moment. That is why remote viewing is so difficult. Once we start to use imagination, we are in murky waters.
World Line Template
While every consciousness has their own pre-birth template maps that they follow, most of the maps are derived from a “universal template”.
Most people all share the same "universal template" from which to develop their initial "pre-birth world-line maps" from.
And thus the “terrain” is similar to each others maps (more or less to some degree).
Even though every one is different, and everyone has their own world-line map that they are following, they are all very similar to each other for the vast bulk of humanity (well, at least geographical clusters of people, anyways.)
And people, on these MWI maps, follow them, interacting with other consciousnesses along the way, generating “clusters” or world-lines that are all tied together.
Most people find living on their world-line maps to be easy if they "just go with the flow". They just follow them and "don't climb those peaks" and just go along with what the relative "winds blow" in their lives. And this all creates a situation where world-lines (on different maps) cluster together.
Never the less, the vast bulk of humanity will act as herded animals and cluster together towards similar goals and objectives.
And thus, the Deagel forecast is one that is based upon this clustering of lines. They are apparently doing so for various corporate reasons, being profit forecasts and other such concerns. And to them the map would look similar to an individual map, only that the vector would be for a group of consciousnesses, not just for one singular consciousness.
Such as this…
The remote viewed future for America.
Of course, and I have stated this over and over again, you have the ability to change your world-line template map, and if you don’t like it you can “slide off it” and get on one that you do like.
Running affirmation prayer campaigns for safety.
Of course, the inertia of millions of people following “the herd” and the clustering of their world-lines is going to be rather difficult to stop. But what you can do is slide off their template and move on your own path. And while there might be all sorts of very bad things going on, and the “news” will amplify this, a person who is conducting their Affirmation Prayer Campaigns diligently will be able to avoid a great deal of hardship and turmoil.
Anyways, back to the matter at hand…
So Deagel came up with this forecast back in 2012 that pretty much stated that a lot of bad things were going to happen to America. And by 2025, the nations would not look anything like it looked like in 2012. They predicted a die off of a very significant proportion of the American population and a collapse of the economy, military might and governance.
Then come 2020, we have the Coronavirus.
And many of the things that they predicted, as outlandish as they sounded back then, now seems frighteningly plausible.
Because their predictions were so detailed, and outlandish, it gives one pause to think. Especially now, as Hard-Right, Religious Zealots are blaming China for trying to kill off Christianity. HERE. Jeeze!
I strongly suspect that this forecast was derived though Remote Viewing activity in association with other calculus. And to this end, I consulted with an MM influencer and contributor, our resident Remote Viewing Expert; Blue NarWhal.
Thinking.
Blue NarWhal Comments
Blue NarWhal is a professional in the Remote Viewing Industry, and has done work for both the United States government and private industry. I asked him for his thoughts and opinions. Edited for clarity and for this venue.
BlueNarwhal:
Knowing most of the top remote viewers on a first name basis I do have some input for you here.
As you know the typical result of civilian allied military development projects, where real operational capability is developed, go through a bifurcation.
It is a bifurcation where one strand goes SAP deep black, and the other goes public debunk.
(You know) there's nothing to see here Fred, these are not the droids you are looking for, move along.
This has been repeatedly confirmed by the best viewers, that there is a whole range of deep black remote viewing corps that...
BlueNarwhal:
...That has multiple purposes.
One purpose is human to alien communication.
Another is strategic advantage and nonlinear intelligence, called “quantum viewing” now.
Predictive viewing, is as Courtney says, subject the multiple worlds branching.
The targets are often collecting data from multiple MWI strands to see variations and research options.
BlueNarwhal:
Subject to the MWI factors.. (corrected).
Here below are my top ten candidate causality strands that could lead to major USA population die off in 4 years. I have gleaned these from my RV associates, and other sources, such as really good verified psychics I personally know, and meta analysis ...
Since each candidate has a lot of detail to go with it, I will start with the titles.
I think the push to write about this is we are at a global inflection point for breakdown and revolution 4th turning style (Howe and Strauss).
Following parsimony, certain candidates are just more likely and bakes in the cake.
But the essential question of where Edwin got his forecast from I think may well have been his contacts in shadow military and recently retired.
The benefactors and the malevolence on the non-human sources have been predicting this die off as well, and some even (have been) blaming the coming die on entirely ET allied to human elites.
The reason being to enact a scorched Earth policy in response to their getting defanged by the benefactor balance aliens.
But we don’t need ET in the mix to accomplish this. So likely other factors are more probable.
BlueNarwhal:
Now I know you are more likely to want to see how we can understand the dynamics from an entirely human causality POV, because that can hold more receptive water...
BlueNarwhal:
Source data candidate of the Deagel USA population reduction forecast and no it wasn’t a typo.
Forecasted for 2025 "top candidate causation" of drastic reduction in USA population ...
[1] Long time plans by globalist elite. Goal for population reduction to stave off CC ruining so much of their asset base in preparation, and thus predicting massive depopulation since the early 2000s.
[2] Long time plans for denationalizing the globe. With the de facto lead player winner likely China, having certain depopulation effects on the most resistant nationalists. (or in other words the "gun toting" USA population.)
[3] China retakes Taiwan. And (foolishly) Japan jumps in to defend them, USA jumps in to defend Japan. Chinese proxy North Korea nukes Hawaii and San Francisco. Followed by a myriad of tactical nuclear events (and chem warfare covertly) from western elite to make their own survival deal with new China global leadership
[4] Virtuous genocide of the vaxxed by the series binary weapon scheme.
[5] Virtuous genocide of the unvaxxed by the vaxxxed totalitarian biomedical martial law state proxy mobs. Since they cannot get the military to do the bidding, UN internment camps spring-up across the USA
[6] Societal Shift. A 4th turning Piscean top down group-schoolers to Aquarian bottom up individualist SOCs - societal shift
[7] Bubbles all break. Global currency crash, petrodollar crash, dollar hyperinflation.
[8] Natural calamities aggravated with the above. Combined with 5 year super drought, massive famine, urban die offs with no resources, more pandemic, more CC extremes, followed by mini ice age super freeze.
[9] Civil war population reduction outcome. With breakdown of US between red and blue, which are unvaxxed and vaxxxed as psychological warfare dehumanization victims in both directions
[10] Vaxxed mRNA die off from runaway variant evolution in the vaxxed bodies, though blamed on unvaccinated, within 4 years 65% of those vaxxed die.
- on this last one, my theory I developed through my own remote viewing is specifically sorcerers apprentice runaway that creates Monsanto like terminator seed immune systems.
I have a short detail on that, let me grab it...
BlueNarwhal:
But before detailing that, here is another ingredient...
CyberPolygon
OK. We are going to get off the subject for a spell. Don’t worry too much about it. Just go with the flow. If it interests you, then great. If not, then chill out.
BlueNarwhal:
On the Cyberpolygon, of which I have been aware for a long time.
After all, since I am a cybersecurity professional, I am well aware of this.
This will the incidence of a behemoth cyber attack.
This will occur soon after all the PR about Cyberpolygon cybersecurity (hits the "news"). As such, it will give the government authorities great “cover” so no one can claim they were asleep at the switch when a national scale false flag cyber attack occurs.
It will be an attack of such severity that it is create adequate national security threat pretext for an “internet martial law” to ensue.
A situation will occur that can more effectively suppress the so-called "Vaxx misinformation".
This will begin by opening the door to authorities literally shutting down the DNS of any and all websites.
As well as interdicting all text messaging traffic that is deemed misinformation by their algorithms.
No of course, nothing to see here, more along. Get help. Get back on your meds. Get jabbed immediately. To save us all!
A false flag cybersecurity attack is intended to accomplish the following objectives:
[1] Stop unsanctioned crypto-currency transactions,
[2] Stop any online resistance to vaxxing,
[3] Stop the ability for the vaccine resistant to organize, and
[4] Stop any dissent to the great reset that will occur when the stock market crashes (due in part to high rates of deaths among the vaccinated, and the seemingly endless new lockdowns.)
The great reset will be touted as virtuous and compassionate.
The creeping installation of UN run internment camps all over the US for the unvaccinated will be hailed as life saving.
This will be especially true as the unvaccinated are now defined as high risk and potential terrorists.
Dependence of the populace on the towing lines of the government narrative will reach an all time high and consolidation of totalitarian power will be complete!
https://threatpost.com/cyber-polygon-2021-towards-secure-development-of-digital-ecosystems/167661/omplete.
Welcome to George Orwell’s worst nightmare.
Monsanto-like “terminator seed” immune systems
And just like that, my sources become absorbed into the blob that has become the “great Vaxx vs. unVaxx debate”.
Sigh. It only happens with Americans inside of America. If you talk with people outside of America, you just won’t hear this kind of stuff.
I have no problem with use of an injection to control the population is feasible. I have no problem with evil people using it to control others. I have no problem with reading about the various ideas that people have on this.
But…
Keep in mind, that all of this is a side distraction from the “big event” what ever it might be. And I personally find it hard to believe that vaccinations are a major part of a big “shake down reset event”.
A part of it YES.
But the main part? NO.
Here, Blue NarWhal goes on…
The dirtiest secret is they installed Monsanto-like “terminator seed” immune systems on a large chunk of the planetary population.
How?
If you don’t get the next booster your immune system will no longer work and you will likely die next variant season. Taking the jab once makes it necessary to take jabs for life.
I told this to xXx and just a couple friends 6 months ago but felt it would be so incendiary to post it anywhere back then.
I still haven’t.
When I first thought of it this way it was too horrible a thought to even imagine and I thought I must be getting too paranoid. And I am not a paranoid person, just a good data collector.. like yourself MM:)
But now….
All the immune systems of the vaxxed incubate or evolve the next deadly variants that precisely escape the last booster just like poor use of antibiotics incubated and evolved antibiotic resistant bacteria. In the case of covid evolution of variants it is the exact same thing.
The only thing they desperately need to pull this multi trillion dollar caper off is to avoid blame for designing the entire thing to operate this way.
If they can mentally and emotionally program the vaxxed to believe only the unvaccinated are variant factories then they can get away with many trillions in profit.
Dehumanization of the unvaxxed gives them cover and profit to the moon.
The truth is the unvaxxed do not evolve the variants.
All variants have started soon after introductions of the vaxx in different countries or during the large trials in those countries.
The evidence is incontrovertible if one reads the real science that is not being faked.
The CDC even recently recommended creating nationwide internment camps for the unvaccinated to keep the vaxxed safe! See how insidious the plot really is?
Of course you do.
But now they will brazenly lie about variants only coming from the unvaxxed even when the evidence is becoming overwhelming to the contrary.
The mob will be programmed to literally want to exterminate the vermin unvaxxed.
They will - to the last - direct all the anger of the vaxxed dying from covid variants on the unvaxxed.
They will gin up a sense of being virtuous to want to send unvaxxed vermin to death camps.
You know this to be true.
History repeating itself now with the 4th Reich Blue Nazis. You feel me? It won’t be a yellow star but a red covid patch that the unvaxxed will be forced to wear. Don’t believe it will come to this?
Not long to wait and find out at this point.
The game is afoot
I totally am nauseous about being right about such terrible things! It’s really just too depressing and insane to believe. But I thought I was insane for thinking the shot was a terminator seed immune system ploy. Now it is becoming entirely true and will continue to be born out.
And sorry, no, you cannot reason with loved ones to not get boosters. The messenger will definitely be shot and reviled.
The lines have been drawn.
Please pretty please tell me I’m wrong about this - I’ve never ever wanted to be more wrong about something in my entire life!
But this I believe will become obvious when millions of vaccinated begin to die from the next variant their own bloodstreams evolved. I am so already grieving the future loss of my family relatives.
Seriously.
Because it’s a lose lose game - get the booster to live another 6 months but at the same time getting foreshortens ones overall life span by another 15 to 20% each shot (that is of course if side effects don’t kill one within 3 weeks of the jab each time).
They actually believe they have pulled off the perfect crime to make trillions and trillions of dollars. That’s more than Carl Sagan’s billions and billlions of stars!
In this case only the paranoid may survive and the innocent follower sheep will perish or at the least become so dumb that the idiocracy movie will seem like a probability.
Brawndo, it’s got electrolytes! =
Pfizer, it’s got electro-spikes!
That’s why Zelenko said it’s a billion x better to have natural immunity.
Weaponizing CORRELATION VS CAUSATION
I know that all of this is a meandering maze off “the beaten path” of what the question was all about. But follow the train of thought. Believe it if you want, or don’t if you want. What ever you do, do not get swept up too far in it.
Don’t get lost in the maze.
Remember that this source is an “insider” in these matters regarding the United States government, and you owe it to hear what he has to say, because SOMETHING has set his mind down these paths. Right or wrong. Factual or fantasy.
Good or bad.
Right or wrong.
Like a little more of my esteemed lunacy?
Weaponizing CORRELATION VS CAUSATION
The CDC policy guidance to doctors is any death after 3 hours of injection to as much as 1 week after is only correlation and not causation.
The only side effect admitted to is a little “very rare” anaphylaxis.
Assignment of causation just so happens to destroy many life insurance payouts - I have collected many reports of that.
The emerging science does not support correlation but causation.
I have links to videos by more than a dozen esteemed doctors and researchers that support causation. But these are not the droids you are looking for, move along says the mainstream biomedical cartel.
There is a 4 part unholy alliance between the government, the media, big tech, and biopharma industry to suppress speech.
Predominantly speech about promising therapeutics.
They will deny causational evidence and malign and de-platform anyone of influence that departs from the “100% safe and effective” narrative.
The normalcy bias is reinforced constantly.
If you follow the money and power it becomes obvious that the unholy alliance is both making a fuck-ton of money and getting untold control and power which will never want to be relinquished.
People in government + big tech + media ownership are heavily invested in biopharma stocks.
Is that correlation or causation?
Correlation only of course. The rising tide floats all boats they say. Sure! Move along nothing to see here. Get the jab.
Are the 450,000 VAERS reports about side effects of which many thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of life long infirmities happening soon after vaxxing just correlation and not causation?
Is the now repeatedly verified presence of EMF responsive graphene oxide found in large quantity in the vaxxes, which right after injected respond to both magnets and EMF detectors only in the injected site, is that correlation or causality?
Is the well established (but totally denied by the CDC “experts”) safety and efficacy of vitamin D and Ivermection and zinc, which when generally adopted shows dramatic drops in death rates (over 85%) in dozens of studies in many countries, is that correlation or causation?
In every case the mainstream government sanctioned experts refuse to even consider the research into these therapeutics (that are all expired patents so there is no money in it for them) and which if were admitted as being effective would quixkly end the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization - is that just correlation or is it causation?
When any esteemed doctor or pathologist or epidemiologist or Nobel Prize winner or vaccine researcher that worked at the head with Gates foundation (Moderna) or for Pfizer - when they risk their jobs and reputation to report any science that impeaches the authoritarian narrative - are immediately cat-called, maligned, suppressed and deplatformed as misinformation terrorists for reporting their scientific conclusions - is their research data only correlation and not causation?
When every single time I am around vaccinated people I really want to hang out outdoors to visit (without masks on) results in my having lung pain, headache, sore throat for several hours afterward (which then abates right after I dose Vitamin D, Quercetin, and Zinc).. is that correlation or causation? (I am not responsive to placebo and never expected or was afraid of hanging with my friends and relatives. But that is the consequence every time).
Are all the bad science and respected scientific journals who are then later forced to retract their highly celebrated therapeutic-denial studies that support the idea that effective therapeutics are nonexistent and dangerous (even though they are safer than aspirin) - is that situation correlation or causation to prevent losing Emergency Use Authorization and to suppress the idea there are real alternatives to jabbing because it fuels the antivaxxers?
Is the fact of even discussing the virus being bio-engineered was totally suppressed for over a year but now finally being admitted only very quietly in the halls of power, is that denial good science or bad science?
Is the fact that Fauci and DARPA and other cohorts jointly and covertly funded the Wuhan gain of function research through Peter Daszak, and then patented the spike protein injection using mRNA technology in early 2019 merely correlation or is it causation?
You see, the entire presumption of correlation over causation truly serves the interests of making money and creating more control over the populace.
When any and all scientific evidence about the dangers of the vaxx or availability of effective and safe therapeutics is quickly dismissed by the vacination stakeholder extreme bias, is that mere correlation or causation?
If the vaxxed have ever never actually read a single source scientific study but only trust the mouthpiece experts which support their normalcy bias that the vax is perfectly safe and effective, and that there are no effective therapeutics - is that denial and dehumanization of anyone suggesting otherwise only correlation or causation?
Well if you are a nice, caring, good and decent person who simply cannot believe the government would lie to you, or that the unholy alliance is evil and greedy, and that there is nothing to see here.
Move along and get the jab and shut up or be dehumanized.
If you disagree - and believe it’s all just random unfounded conspiracy theory that at best is only remote unfounded correlation and never ever possibly causation, then there is no reasoning with you.
No science that will convince you.
No evidence you will ever admit to.
No room for any doubt.
And everyone who says otherwise are likely to be filthy vermin white supremacist domestic terrorists who should be placed in internment camps to protect the vaxxed, then guess what?
We will all just have to wait and see how it all turns out and agree to disagree!
Correlation vs Causation is the defensive talking point for all those in the unholy alliance.
But now that all people resisting or refusing or promoting anything other than the party line about the the vaxx are literally being defined as domestic terrorists.
Any evidence they report is labeled misinformation, well then, good luck with labeling 50% of the populace of the US as terrorists who should be dehumanized and interned to keep the vaxxed population safe.
Are these policies going to be correlation to and not causation of a potential civil war between the red check folks and the blue check folks?
What a pleasant thought. How unifying. How desperate. How immature. How greedy. How all so sweetly patriotic! Yeah sure, I got a couple bridges to sell you. In fact, I got a dozen bridges to sell you, Get in line! Big discounts available. 🪂
Jesus! Man. All I care about is the Deagel Forecast. And here we find that one of my top “to go” people on the Remote Viewing sciences has started connecting the vaccinations of Coronavirus in it’s mRNA form to a profit-scheme that will result in the deaths of millions.
It seems so far out.
But…
According to the 2012 Deagel Forecast, only those nations (that we see today) who are pushing the mRNA vaccine protocol (and who perhaps match up with the rant above) MATCH together.
BlueNarwhal:
H Christ! Are we having fun yet?
BlueNarwhal:
Just a few side notes I wrote over the last weeks... lol
BlueNarwhal:
And you my dear friend predicted all of it earlier this year and last year with the help of your benfactoring inputs as well!
Well, it is true that I predicted much of this kind of stuff. I will not deny that. But it doesn’t need to be so “in your face” and blunt. Does it?
My point is that I am being driven, and going crazy being pushed to push this article (about remote viewing and the Deagel Forecast) out the door as soon as possible, and as a side note, Blue NarWhal is dragging along this vaccination stuff alongside. So there MUST be a reason.
But is the reason important?
Let’s continue…
BlueNarwhal:
It’s war, not between China and US, but between elites and populace, between benefactors and malevolent overseers, between piscean and Aquarian change over, between satanic and holy, between horizontal and vertical evolution, and between last past patriarchy and future matriarchy, and between globalists and nationalists
BlueNarwhal:
We are arriving quite rapidly at the super size MEI inflection point where large scale global bifurcation occurs, and hence there is a tremendous urgency to communicate the big picture so the order and chaos agencies are seen for the agenda motivations they breathe MWI.
So human consciousness has more choices in the matter, so natural leaders that are needed will arise.
BlueNarwhal:
You of course have the Deagel 2020 change of heart write up right....? Worth pasting in here, since it is not nearly as wacky as my stack.
Amen to that!
Deagel 2020 revision to the original 2012 Deagel Forecast
BlueNarwhal:
Forecast disclaimer revision in 2020:
In 2014 we published a disclaimer about the forecast. In six years the scenario has changed dramatically.
This new disclaimer is meant to single out the situation from 2020 on-wards.
Talking about the United States and the European Union as separated entities no longer makes sense. Both are the Western block, keep printing money and will share the same fate.
After COVID we can draw two major conclusions:
[1] The Western world success model has been built over societies with no resilience that can barely withstand any hardship, even a low intensity one. It was assumed but now we’ve got the full hard confirmation beyond any doubt.
[2] The COVID crisis will be used to extend the life of this dying economic system through the so called “Great Reset.”
The Great Reset; like the climate change, extinction rebellion, planetary crisis, green revolution, shale oil (…) hoaxes promoted by the system; is another attempt to slow down dramatically the consumption of natural resources and therefore extend the lifetime of the current system.
It can be effective for awhile but finally won’t address the bottom-line problem and will only delay the inevitable.
The core ruling elites hope to stay in power which is in effect the only thing that really worries them.
The collapse of the Western financial system – and ultimately the Western civilization – has been the major driver in the 2012 forecast along with a confluence of crisis with a devastating outcome.
As COVID has proven Western societies embracing multiculturalism and extreme liberalism are unable to deal with any real hardship.
The Spanish flu one century ago represented the death of 40-50 million people.
Today the world’s population is four times greater with air travel in full swing which is by definition a super spreader.
The death casualties in today’s World would represent 160 to 200 million in relative terms but more likely 300-400 million taking into consideration the air travel factor that did not exist one century ago.
So far, COVID death toll is roughly 1 million people.
It is quite likely that the economic crisis due to the lock-downs will cause more deaths than the virus worldwide.
The Soviet system was less able to deliver goodies to the people than the Western one. Nevertheless Soviet society was more compact and resilient under an authoritarian regime. That in mind, the collapse of the Soviet system wiped out 10 percent of the population.
The stark reality of diverse and multicultural Western societies is that a collapse will have a toll of 50 to 80 percent depending on several factors.
But in general terms the most diverse, multicultural, indebted and wealthy (highest standard of living) will suffer the highest toll.
The only glue that keeps united such aberrant collage from falling apart is over-consumption with heavy doses of bottomless degeneracy disguised as virtue.
Nevertheless the widespread censorship, hate laws and contradictory signals mean that even that glue is not working any more.
Not everybody has to die.
Migration can also play a positive role in this.
The formerly (known as) second and third world nations are an unknown at this point. Their fate will depend upon the decisions they take in the future.
Western powers are not going to take over them as they did in the past because these (Western) countries won’t be able to control their very own cities let alone those countries that are far away.
If they remain tied to the former World Order they will go down along with the Western powers. However, they won’t experience the same kind of brutal decline that the Western powers will experience so brazenly. This is partially because they are poorer and (obviously) not diverse enough. Instead they are stronger than the Western powers because they are actually quite homogeneous. This is their advantage. And that they are used to deal with some sort of hardship. Though, not precisely the one that is coming.
If they switch to China they can get a chance to stabilize but will need to depend upon the management of their own resources.
We expected this situation to unfold and actually is unfolding right now.
With the November election triggering a major bomb if Trump is re-elected. (Did not happen.)
If Biden is elected there will very bad consequences as well.
There is a lot of bad blood in the Western societies and the protests, demonstrations, rioting and looting are only the first symptoms of what is coming.
However a new trend is taking place overshadowing this one.
The situation between the three great powers has changed dramatically.
The only relevant achievement of the Western powers during the past decade has been the formation of a strategic alliance, both military and economic, between Russia and China.
Right now the potential partnership between Russia and the European Union (EU) is dead with Russia turning definitively towards China. That was from the beginning the most likely outcome.
Airbus never tried to establish a real partnership but rather a strategy to fade away the Russian aerospace industry.
Actually Russia and China have formed a new alliance to build a long haul airliner.
Western Europe (not to mention the United States) was never interested in the development of Russia or forming anything other than a master slave relationship with Russia providing raw materials and toeing the line of the West.
It was clear then and today is a fact.
Russia has been preparing for a major war since 2008 and China has been increasing her military capabilities for the last 20 years. Today China is not a second tier power compared with the United States. Both in military and economic terms China is at the same level and in some specific areas are far ahead.
In the domain of high-tech 5G has been a success in the commercial realm but the Type 055 destroyer is also another breakthrough with the US gaining a similar capability (DDG 51 Flight IIII) by mid of this decade (more likely by 2030).
Nanchang, the lead ship of the Type 055 class, was commissioned amid the pandemic and lockdown in China.
Six years ago the likelihood of a major war was tiny.
Since then it has grown steadily and dramatically and today is by far the most likely major event in the 2020s.
The ultimate conflict can come from two ways.
[1] A conventional conflict involving at least two major powers that escalates into an open nuclear war.
[2] A second scenario is possible in the 2025-2030 time-frame. A Russian sneak first strike against the United States and its allies with the new S-500, strategic missile defenses, Yasen-M submarines, INF Zircon and Kalibr missiles and some new space asset playing the key role.
The sneaky first strike would involve all Russian missile strategic forces branches (bombers and ground-based missiles) at the different stages of such attack that would be strategic translation of what was seen in Syria in November 2015.
There was no report that the Russian had such a capability of launching a high precision, multiple, combined arms attack at targets 2,000+ kilometers away.
Western intelligence had no clue.
The irony is that since the end of the Cold War the United States has been maneuvering through NATO to achieve a position to be able to execute a first strike (nuclear) over Russia and now it seems that the first strike may still occur but the country finished would be the United States.
Another particularity of the Western system is that its individuals have been brainwashed to the point that the majority accept their moral high ground and technological edge as a given.
This has given the rise of the supremacy of the emotional arguments over the rational ones which are ignored or deprecated.
That mindset can play a key role in the upcoming catastrophic events.
At least in the Soviet system the silent majority of the people were aware of the fallacies they were fed up.
We can see the United States claims about 5G being stolen from them by China or hypersonic technology being stolen by Russia as the evidence that the Western elites are also infected by that hubris.
Over the next decade it will become obvious that the West is falling behind the Russia-China block and the malaise might grow into desperation.
Going to war might seem a quick and easy solution to restore the lost hegemony to finally find them into a France 1940 moment. Back then France did not have nuclear weapons to turn a defeat into a victory. The West might try that swap because the unpleasant prospect of not being Mars and Venus but rather a bully and his dirty bitch running away in fear while the rest of the world is laughing at them.
If there is not a dramatic change of course the world is going to witness the first nuclear war.
The Western block collapse may come before, during or after the war.
It does not matter.
A nuclear war is a game with billions of casualties and the collapse plays in the hundreds of millions.
He Concludes…
This website is non-profit, built on spare time and we provide our information and services AS IS without further explanations and/or guarantees. We are not linked to any government. Take into account that the forecast is nothing more than a game of numbers whether flawed or correct based upon some speculative assumptions. - Friday, September 25th, 2020
Interesting take and a refreshing relook at the Deagel Forecast
This 2020 is news to me.
BlueNarwhal:
Well then good food for thought to have the whole range of inputs for your writing️
BlueNarwhal:
The 2020 disclosure is plausible. I don’t know the Deagel folks but do know the Stratford
BlueNarwhal:
Stratfor folks and they are similar so I judge this statement from D to be a good picture on why their forecast changed, but it is just the cover story for the kind of crazy stuff I was thinking...
He continues discussing consciousness movement in the MWI.
Consciousness movement in the MWI by Blue NarWhal
BlueNarwhal:
Consciousness MWI
What if MWI travel physically nearly does not happen. Only Consciousness travel can change MWI multiverse bulk-phase lanes. (I think this is possible for many people. -MM)
Types of change:
Outer- The world changes and you don’t, mostly.
Inner- You change and the world stays the same, mostly.
Differences in both yourself and the world are apparent.
Sometimes multiverse A can fuse with an existing other you multiverse B and you find yourself situated in a life steam as you with additional foggy life memory if it’s a new you incoming to you.
So the physical idea of MWI consciousness sliding or jumping or transitioning between universes is all fine and good, if the universe fuses them while still remembering a bit of both for the transiting consciousness.
So what is happening in the balancing of consciousness?
The benefactors, [a]. prior to every substantial jump, and [b]. depending on the target MWI universe group the agency consciousness transited is going to, [c]. install locally entangled paraphysical sync kits in the target universe bodies.
If the small moves predict the large moves…
BlueNarwhal:
Or did I send this to you already and forgot who wrote it - I have too many unfinished and unsent drafts of stuff to you lol
BlueNarwhal:
I think I sent you this as I was assimilating your knowledge into my own framework of understanding... or does this contain specific paragraphs you wrote as I was working through my own take on it...?
BlueNarwhal continues in this interesting line of thought.
Please, everyone, realize that when I “get on a bender or am being pushed” to write or do something, it is SIGNIFICANT. This is most especially true if it is URGENT. It has been my experience that everything attached and associated with my actions may or may not be important, but that I need to include it in my calculus for some reason.
Remember, I only know what I know. The rest is up to youse guys.
Qubit qudit infinity cascade
Qubit qudit infinity cascade
The universal wave equation as the prime qubit/qudit operator
The superposition of hyperlight entangled with both all and one
The existence of alternate multiverse laminar access through qubit fields and spaces that preserve equal probability of all
The qic start of the universe
The bipolar symmetry as a collapsed expression of polar superposition archetype preservation inside local space.
And so on through all quantum wave guided evolutionary complexity manifest permutation
Where out of the seam of infinity and zero reflects dualistic possibility virtual states of plus one and minus one
The singular all encompassing quantum wave equation of the entire scope of the universe is a hyper qubit/qudit singularity function that entangles across all embedded sub wave time functions.
With that I’m alone inside my own quantum qubit infinity manifold, swaddled in my own bubble creation.
However, yet also paradoxically voluntarily and with love entirely embedded within a collective soul group alignment with and for whom I might sacrifice everything.
The distribution of probable and possible trajectories that deviate out our current world line all depend on soul relevance.
In the surface appearance of the other is a co-seeded by self created habitation for different groups of soul who are mutually co-anchoring commonality.
The Bipolar Multiverse
If I can change world lines…
The prime assumptions:
We each exist in our own fully independent universe, (or more properly stated we all live in our own multiverse probability of occurrence trajectories.)
Our consciousness interfaces own quantum creative agency with our present manifest reality.
Our consciousness is a step down of our soul energy into our physical existence.
The Soul could be synonymous with Higher consciousness, the physical reality synonymous with the unconscious and subconscious mind, and the personal self synonymous with the conscious mind relating to their own beliefs, choices, agreements which are in play, singularity issued from our soul.
On one pole you have each soul creating completely independent bubble universes for the habitation of consciousness in physicality.
On the other pole you have a vast population of people (and beings) in their independent universes all fervently believing they live together in a singular shared universe.
Searching for the better explanatory nomenclature.
One idea is there are many different possible collective worlds.
Each have independent persistence and existence separate from our local self awareness.
The dance of illusion of living in a shared universe doesn’t make it unreal, it just comports with how human consciousness creates its own Local Bubble universe.
There exists a spectrum of different novel Global Bubble universes within the multiverse – Earth for example. Their solidity and continuity is not dependent on just one soul’s creation.
That does not mean one’s soul cannot have its own Local Bubble universe make phantom copies of the mutual universes. No, not at all.
We each make illusory copies of whatever large scale mutual universe we believe we are in and do in our usual quarter second wave-particle personal universe lock-in tick rate.
We agree to adopt a set of influences associated to being there. We agree to allow our adoption include our own.
And out of resonant lock with those world lines.
This is really deep and takes the world-line narrative that I have been promoting to that of a mini-universe that we "copy" from the MWI template to live within. An interesting concept and something that I do need to think about. -MM
The multiverse offers all possibilities for soul and consciousness growth, but there is a landscape of alternate probability ‘movement options’ that can naturally occur.
In that landscape of options there are lesser and greater deviating alternate world line moves available to the consciousnesses.
A consciousness can naturally transit into greater degree world line deviance moves if their sum quantum resonance can both entrain and allow it to occur relative to its intrinsic greater/lower likelihood for the consciousness habitation should no active entrainment be engaged.
There are relative world line consciousnesses movement options – or quantum manifestation probabilities – within our personal universal quantum Everett wave function.
Wave function embedded harmonics that intersect with, and offer entrainment access pathways to different outcomes and sequences are a largely passive to activation by consciousness, despite all appearances to the contrary!
These world line trajectories exist out of all the possible alternate infinity qubits
I’m am able to couple with within the singular super wave function.
There are very far world-line variances or trajectories that could cause insanity to engage, except more safely in lucid dreams, but those are not readily accessible to manifest without extraordinary effort with relative shocking, disorienting as new subsumed manifest self-image and world-image radically shift into a new center of gravity of manifest conscious.
I entrain myself to, or am entrained by, various world line shifting options as I may choose, think and feel or choose to allow.
If I let it happen to me I am giving control over to my unconsciousness. If I make it happen I am controlling my own outcomes.
But my options are limited within the superpositional prepositional manifold of my consciousness encompassed by my soul.
It’s got a soul growth agenda.
I have a slight clue, and that’s it.
It about growing the capacity to selflessly nurture collective evolution, and to evolve the capacity to love, to intend, and to romance the soul of greater feminine archetype for inclusion and unity … or of the greater phi masculine archetype that expresses diversity and differentiation …across the many souls in the meta-verse of the multiverse.
Valiant match grids of entangled qubit superposition articulating ‘n’ spatial reduction (quantum collapse) possibilities accessing the multiverse diversity eternity continuum.
Embedded referential meaning and information
Single geometric symbols as containers of all that is sub-referentially defined and associated within its signularity symbols as culimated or concentrated.
Or, alternatively,
It’s subsumption symbols as instantiated singularity event horizon representations or gestalts of specific self-associated component elements held within their symbol mount.
Meaning, as you mount symbols over a subsumed domain of interrelated and contained data reference points…
You might get the accretion of information as explicit subsumption quantum linguistics…
…if that is such a thing…
Remote Viewing and the MWI
You all got a headache yet?
BlueNarwhal:
And this one on RV and MWI...
BlueNarwhal:A new working hypothesis:
Predictive remote viewer naturally quantum-couples or entangles their viewing range to be occur across multiple proximal world line probability trajectories in the multiverse.
Outlier world line target coupling by RVers occurs simply due to the collateral quantum attractive influence that higher relative disruptive novelty factors exert on selected souls and consciousnesses, e.g. a group of top viewers all view a disaster scenario that never happens in the world line from which the viewers viewed.
Yet it clearly happened in some nearby world line of greater variance to our own.
Some of these influences can be injected into remote viewing sessions.
This is due to the idea that individual remote viewers couple with targets via universal quantum field or “soul intelligence”.
This target coupling process can allow insertion of universal intent to bias the remote viewer to couple with a more novel world line but less likely or even unlikely the mutual world line viewers are viewing from.
This seems to a form of universal intent coupling with conscious individual.
The effect is to widen the multiple world line range of consideration aperture to provide high value insight about probabilities on other world lines about similar lurking but unmanifest novel high impact eventualities for the viewer world line. Could universal intent (being entangled for target coupling by remote viewers) be making individual intent see outcomes that might happen but likely won’t?
While working with universal intent sentient within the multiverse quantum super field encompassing all our souls and individual quantum clouds, there is no issue with requesting super sentience to limit target viewing hits to only the higher probability outcomes for the present world line in which the viewers reside. Universal intent is certainly willing to limit targeting to single world line or widen the reception aperture to proximal cluster of most probable but yet alternate world lines relative to an anchor referential consciousnesses.
Another different possibility is that remote viewing “picking up signals” of a proximal relative cluster of world lines is likely only possible because remote viewers are evolving souls and consciousness themselves. And despite their proclivity for rationally limiting future probabilities viewing to the world line in which they reside, multiple world lines will be viewed.
The viewers themselves, as do human beings in general, possess individually, in groups and even globally possess the natural ability to shift/move/migrate to different world lines. The quantum wave field of the soul focuses consciousness on inhabiting a physical embodiment existing in nearby variant world lines that furthers soul growth.
This is in turn depends on their in-body own associated outside influences, their own resonant thoughts, feelings, core beliefs and choices that normally bias target coupling to that which holds the greatest growth value for the viewer alone, unless they alter the target description to anchor its viewing parameters to exclude world line coupling that is less likely for the anchoring set of consciousnesses.
The result is remote viewing in any single timeline easily gets crosstalk from other multiverse proximal timelines. If proven, this may predict targeting protocols with means to bind multiverse RV target coupling range to viewing only the most probable eventuality for the timeline in which the remote viewer originates the session, thereby filtering the quantum coupling multiverse range to the most novel punctuated variations across a cluster of intersecting world lines.
For example, one may find some means to construct the RV target description to effectively limit multi-timeline target coupling to only the most large population probable common future for a selected anchor subjects in the timeline as of the session or as of an identified target date.
However, taskers for remote viewers can design target descriptions to block receptive coupling to less than large selected sample group collective likelihoods. This couples the target range to a more commonly desired and likely world line so that predictive RV sessions entangle only relative to and biased from the selected baseline group of anchor parties. It effects a proximal world line variance clamping function to block entanglement with less likely outcomes for this present world line.
World line entanglement blocking prevents viewer intermediaries drifting towards natural attraction of more novel world lines, regardless of present world line probability momentum and mass habitation factors. It simply works to exclude less likely world line outcomes relative to an anchor reference group of persons or beings to thereby yield more likely valid predictive data for the present world line.
And a few more curiosities written and vectored across our mutual fusion being derivatives., LOL!
Conclusions
Blue NarWhal is saying that using the MWI mapping, that it is obvious that in 2012 that more predominant surface topography features of the world-line template showed (at that time) that there was [1] a looming pandemic, and [2] economic crisis. Using available historical and economic data, Deagel extrapolated to a very disturbing forecast.
In truth, they were really close to the mark, and the clustering of the world-lines are STILL on a trajectory for a very unpleasant conclusion.
Now, we need to filter out the “noise” and consider the world-line template landscape topography.
In remote viewing out of America these days, the primary (peaks and topographical) landmarks viewed are related to [1] the strange imposition of mRNA vaccinations, and [2] a gathering storm of strange behaviors on the social / economic front out of Washington DC.
This “noise” of Vaxx, and economic “bubbles” make the current topographical landscape quite rugged and mountainous. Thus, Americans see the topographical mountains all around them, and they cannot see the larger looming mountains past those peaks. It’s a side effect of the incessant mind-controlling Main Stream and alternative media.
The mountains that surround Americans are predominantly ones of…
Greed.
Media manipulation.
Out of control government.
Economic bubbles
Social re-engineering.
Racial divides.
Hate. Hate. Hate.
While the mountains in the distance consist of other things, that most Americans are not focusing on. For instance; China. Or the “far away” South China Sea. Or what is going on in Russia. Or Africa. Or South America.
But they are real, and of great concern. For it is the real mountains that are the real issues and the real problems that lie ahead.
The real “mountains” are…
Nuclear war with a unified Asia.
End of the US Dollar as the global currency.
Iran allied with Russia and China, and the rest of the Mideast complies.
African middle class growing in favor of Asia.
Europe retreat from American influence.
Thus you can see the differences in all the analysis. Those inside the United States echo chamber are combining elements of the United States government narrative of “Hate China; Blame China; China is evil”, with forced mRNA vaccinations and complete incompetence of the Federal Government. Resulting in this bastardized fucked up narrative…
“China stole an American bio-weapon and it was accidentally released in Wuhan, and when caught, they decided to use it to destroy America and all Christians by forcing them to get mRNA vaccinations that will kill everyone!”
Jeeze!
Putting all this nonsense aside, let’s continue on our study.
Obviously the 2012 Deagel report used Remote Viewing activity and extrapolation of existing economic and social trends and transposed to the two together to arrive at their (horrific) conclusion. In 2012, they predicted a major event, that seems to indicate a pandemic or something similar coupled with an economic collapse.
I am sure that remote viewing of this pulled up those “Vaxx hills”, and “Coronavirus hills”, and when combined, the Deagel group flushed out their predictions as such. I am sure that they did not like it, but the data and the trends, supported by remote viewing substantiated this belief.
Then, last year, in 2020 they revised their forecast. Now, the hills and mountains further out are much closer and clearer.
Before I read the 2020 revised forecast, I believed the following outcomes to be predominant. As you can well read, I said…
Here are some of my suggested candidate combinations that allow us to better understand how those enormous population causality figures could be reached.
Global pandemic, AND genocide.
Global pandemic, AND civil war WITH genocide.
Global pandemic, AND collapsing Military Empire, WITH war.
Global Military Empire AND Nuclear War WITH Global pandemic.
And the 2020 revised forecast states…
Global pandemic, AND collapsing Military Empire, WITH war.
Global Military Empire AND Nuclear War WITH Global pandemic.
The only difference between the two (aside from the order of the wording) is HOW a nuclear exchange comes into being.
Either [1] America conducts a conventional attack against China or Russia (not realizing that it will be against both) and it evolving and escalating quickly into a nuclear war, or [2] A first strike against the out-of-control American government by Asia.
Looking at all the issues, we can make the following statements…
Statements of prediction
Including remote viewing into the calculus, and taking into account all the knowns…
The American leadership class does not contain diplomatic professionals. Instead there are unskilled political donors who are making life and death decisions.
The mRNA vaccination is a real mystery, and there HAS to be a reason behind using it instead of the traditional “Dead Host” vaccination.
The approved 2021 Federal budget includes an enormous military funding outlay that is obviously in preparation for a major war.
The American government, and their media are all talking about an upcoming major war with China.
American military is retreating from Afghanistan, and four bases in Korea, while making QUAD arrangements with Australia and Japan.
All of this is very disturbing, and considered alone would be cause enough to suggest that a major war is just on the horizon.
But…
America (The United States) is crumbling from rot from within…
Racial hate.
Proliferation of firearms, and the establishment of armed groups.
Balkanization.
Economic bubbles.
Social bubbles.
The wealth gap is enormous.
Infrastructure funding is too late.
Rules, regulations and laws are all off the charts.
Couple that with a failed bio-weapons attack on China, and the fiasco which was the Trump neocon administration, followed by the bumbling Biden administration… and hard-core Religious extremists, and industry interests desiring of conflict, war and strife (all for various reasons), and you have a poisonous stew.
The “Genie is out of the bottle”, and I do not think that the looming “mountains” on the horizon can be avoided. The inertia associated with the clustering of world-lines is way too strong. So my guess (and I hope that I am wrong) is that the United States will sleep-walk into a war with Asia, and then before it happens, Asia will strike preemptively.
No matter what the details are, the remote viewing forecast is quite clear.
The United States Military Empire is going to start another major war. It is intended to be a distraction from the domestic failures, and regardless as to how much money President Biden is plowing into the economy, it’s not going to make any difference.
America is toast.
Burnt to a crisp; blackened, burned toast.
America today.
And it’s only a matter of time…
And then when the moron, presses the button, flicks the switch, or twists the knob, all Hell will break loose.
All in all, the USA will suffer horribly, and the combination of everything else will only turn a fiasco into an Hellish nightmare.
But…
You can control YOUR reality. And maybe this mountain of turmoil is sitting off somewhere on your world-line template, you can still navigate around it. Remember, after all, for all the turmoil and strife during World War II, Canada, South America, and Africa was relatively left alone.
Maybe you don’t want to move to Greenland, Patagonia, or Zambia. But you don’t really need to. All you need to do is control your little bit of reality. And if you do that, then everything will work out just fine.
Some final thoughts
Keep in mind that the Deagel remote viewed the future correctly. They printed their results in 2012.
They PREDICTED a bio-warfare induced pandemic.
They PREDICTED an Australian alliance with the United States.
They PREDICTED that America would start entering a period of "popping" of the various economic bubbles.
All of which came true by 2020.
Deagel did NOT change their forecast for 2025. It still stands. They just changed their thinking on how it would come about.
They remote viewed 2025 in great detail.
There will be [1] a massive die off of people in America, and Australia. The rest of the world will fare much better. And, most importantly, a [2] bio-weapon or pandemic figured predominantly in their calculus.
In 2012, they believed that there would be some kind of bio-weapon or pandemic that would kill off so many Americans. But they couldn’t (for the life of them) answer why Australia of all places would also have a large die off. At that time they never could of imagined the QUAD set up by Mike Pompeo, and that the Morrison government would wholeheartedly want to declare war on China. Instead, they figured that it must be a very serious pandemic with some other mystery event that complicated things in a negative manner.
In 2020, in the midst of the (three agent) bio-weapon attacks on China, and the absolute failure of America in securing it’s homeland, as well as the strong alignment of the Australian Morrison government to the war-loving neocons in Washington DC, the revised reasoning became one of nuclear war. Thus they reasoned that since the 2020 pandemic wasn’t that bad, and the drums of war were beating so loudly, that it must be nuclear war and bio-weapons used simultaneously.
Whether there is a nuclear event, or a bio-weapon event, no matter who caused it, or who instigated it, America will be absolutely and totally devastated. A 70% kill off implies that America would indeed be thrown back to the bronze age.
My advice?
You cannot change what is going to happen. It is pretty much set in stone. The only thing that you can do is to save yourself.
Flee the United States as fast as you can.
Go to a nation with a safer rating on the Deagel scale.
Consider fleeing any nation that is allied with the United States as well. The UK, and those European nations that are part of NATO perform very poorly. Though you will probably have an easier time of it than being the United States, it will still be a very rough life in those places.
It will be a scene out of the movie “Threads“, and you all should get a copy of this movie and watch it right now. And when you watch it, keep in mind that what it portrays is EXACTLY what Deagal predicts will happen to America and it’s allies. Watch it and realize that you have two to three short years to save yourself and your family.
Bugging out.
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
This is the science fiction short story that eventually was made into the famous movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) It’s a great read, and as much as I loved the movie, in many ways this short story was actually better. I hope that you all will enjoy it as much as I have.
THE SENTINEL
Arthur C. Clarke
1951 Avon Periodicals Inc.
The next time you see the full moon high in the south, look carefully at its right-hand edge and let your eye travel upward along the curve of the disk. Round about two o’clock you will notice a small, dark oval: anyone with normal eyesight can find it quite easily. It is the great walled plain,
one of the finest on the Moon, known as the Mare Crisium-the Sea of Crises. Three hundred miles in diameter, and almost completely surrounded by a ring of magnificent mountains, it had never been explored until we entered it in the late summer of 1996.
Our expedition was a large one. We had two heavy freighters which had flown our supplies and equipment from the main lunar base in the Mare Serenitatis, five hundred miles away. There were also three small rockets which were intended for short-range transport over regions which our surface vehicles couldn’t cross. Luckily, most of the Mare Crisiurn is very flat. There are none of the great crevasses so common and so dangerous elsewhere, and very few craters or mountains of any size. As far as we could tell, our powerful caterpillar tractors would have no difficulty in taking us wherever we wished to go.
I was geologist-or selenologist, if you want to be pedantic in charge of. the group exploring the southern region of the Mare. We had crossed a hundred miles of it in a week, skirting the foothills of the mountains along the shore of what was once the ancient sea, some thousand million years before. When life was beginning on Earth, it was already dying here. The waters were retreating down the flanks of those stupendous cliff s, retreating into the empty heart of the Moon. Over the land which we were crossing, the tideless ocean had once been half a mile deep, and now the only trace of moisture was the hoarfrost one could sometimes find in caves which the searing sunlight never penetrated.
We had begun our journey early in the slow lunar dawn, and still had almost a week of Earth-time before nightfall. Half a dozen times a day we would leave our vehicle and go outside in the spacesuits to hunt for interesting minerals, or to place markers for the guidance of future travelers. It was an uneventful routine. There is nothing hazardous or even particularly exciting about lunar exploration. We could live comfortably for a month in our pressurized tractors, and if we ran into trouble we could always radio for help and sit tight until one of the spaceships came to our rescue.
I said just now that there was nothing exciting about lunar exploration, but of course that isn’t true. One could never grow tired of those incredible mountains, so much more rugged than the gentle hills of Earth. We never knew, as we rounded the capes and promontories of that vanished sea, what new splendors would be revealed to us. The whole southern curve of the Mare Crisiurn is a vast delta where a score of rivers once found their way into the ocean, fed perhaps by the torrential rains that must have lashed the mountains in the brief volcanic age when the Moon was young.
Each of these ancient valleys was an invitation, challenging us to climb into the unknown uplands beyond. But we had a hundred miles still to cover, and could only look longingly at the heights which others must scale.
We kept Earth-time aboard the tractor, and precisely at 22.00 hours the final radio message would be sent out to Base and we would close down for the day. Outside, the rocks would still be burning beneath the almost vertical sun, but to us it was night until we awoke again eight hours later. Then one of us would prepare breakfast, there would be a great buzzing of electric razors, and someone would switch on the short-wave radio from Earth. Indeed, when the smell of frying sausages began to fill the cabin, it was sometimes hard to believe that we were not back on our own world – everything was so normal and homely, apart from the feeling of decreased weight and the unnatural slowness with which objects fell.
It was my turn to prepare breakfast in the corner of the main cabin that served as a galley. I can remember that moment quite vividly after all these years, for the radio had just played one of my favorite melodies, the old Welsh air, “David of the White, Rock.”
Our driver was already outside in his space-suit, inspecting our caterpillar treads. My assistant, Louis Garnett, was up forward in the control position, making some belated entries in yesterday’s log.
As I stood by the frying pan waiting, like any terrestrial housewife, for the sausages to brown, I let my gaze wander idly over the mountain walls which covered the whole of the southern horizon, marching out of sight to east and west below the curve of the Moon. They seemed only a mile or two from the tractor, but I knew that the nearest was twenty miles away. On the Moon, of course, there is no loss of detail with distance-none of that almost imperceptible haziness which softens and sometimes transfigures all far-off things on Earth.
Those mountains were ten thousand feet high, and they climbed steeply out of the plain as if ages ago some subterranean eruption had smashed them skyward through the molten crust. The base of even the nearest was hidden from sight by the steeply curving surface of the plain, for the Moon is a very little world, and from where I was standing the horizon was only two miles away.
I lifted my eyes toward the peaks which no man had ever climbed, the peaks which, before the coming of terrestrial life, had watched the retreating oceans sink sullenly into their graves, taking with them the hope and the morning promise of a world. The sunlight was beating against those ramparts with a glare that hurt the eyes, yet only a little way above them the stars were shining steadily in a sky blacker than a winter midnight on Earth.
I was turning away when my eye caught a metallic glitter high on the ridge of a great promontory thrusting out into the sea thirty miles to the west. It was a dimensionless point of light, as if a star had been clawed from the sky by one of those cruel peaks, and I imagined that some smooth rock surface was catching the sunlight and heliographing it straight into my eyes. Such things were not uncommon. When the Moon is in her second quarter, observers on Earth can sometimes see the great ranges in the Oceanus Procellarum burning with a blue-white iridescence as the sunlight flashes from their slopes and leaps again from world to world. But I was curious to know what kind of rock could be shining so brightly up there, and I climbed into the observation turret and swung our four inch telescope round to the west.
I could see just enough to tantalize me. Clear and sharp in the field of vision, the mountain peaks seemed only half a mile away, but whatever was catching the sunlight was still too small to be resolved. Yet it seemed to have an elusive symmetry, and the summit upon which it rested was curiously flat. I stared for a long time at that glittering enigma, straining my eyes into space, until presently a smell of burning from the galley told me that our breakfast sausages had made their quarter-million mile journey in vain. .
All that morning we argued our way across the Mare Crisium while the western mountains reared higher in the sky. Even when we were out prospecting in the space-suits, the discussion would continue over the radio. It was absolutely certain, my companions argued, that there had never been any form of intelligent life on the Moon. The only living things that had ever existed there were a few primitive plants and their slightly less degenerate ancestors. I knew that as well as anyone, but there are times when a scientist must not be afraid to make a fool of himself.
“Listen,” I said at last, “I’m going up there, if only for my own peace of mind. That mountain’s less than twelve thousand feet high -that’s only two thousand under Earth gravity-and I can make the trip in twenty hours at the outside. I’ve always wanted to go up into those hills, anyway, and this gives me an excellent excuse.”
“If you don’t break your neck,” said Garnett, “you’ll be the laughing-stock of the expedition when we get back to Base. That mountain will probably be called Wilson’s Folly from now on.”
“I won’t break my neck,” I said firmly. “Who was the first man to climb Pico and Helicon?” “But weren’t you rather younger in those days?” asked Louis gently.
“That,” I said with great dignity, “is as good a reason as any for going.”
We went to bed early that night, after driving the tractor to within half a mile of the promontory. Garnett was coming with me in the morning; he was a good climber, and had often been with me on such exploits before. Our driver was only too glad to be left in charge of the machine.
At first sight, those cliffs seemed completely unscalable, but to anyone with a good head for heights, climbing is easy on a world where all weights are only a sixth of their normal value. The real danger in lunar mountaineering lies in overconfidence; a six-hundred-foot drop on the Moon can kill you just as thoroughly as a. hundred-foot fall on Earth.
We made our first halt on a wide ledge about four thousand feet above the plain. Climbing had not been very difficult, but my limbs were stiff with the unaccustomed effort, and I was glad of the rest. We could still see the tractor as a tiny metal insect far down at the foot of the cliff, and we reported our progress to the driver before starting on the next ascent.
Inside our suits it was comfortably cool, for the refrigeration units were fighting the fierce sun and carrying away the body-heat of our exertions. We seldom spoke to each other, except to pass climbing instructions and to discuss our best plan of ascent. I do not know what Garnett was thinking, probably that this was the craziest goose-chase he had ever embarked upon. I more than half agreed with him, but the joy of climbing, the knowledge that no man had ever gone this way before and the exhilaration of the steadily widening landscape gave me all the reward I needed.
I don’t think I was particularly excited when I saw in front of us the wall of rock I had first inspected through the telescope from thirty miles away. It would level off about fifty feet above our heads, and there on the plateau would be the thing that had lured me over these barren wastes. It was, almost certainly, nothing more than a boulder splintered ages ago by a falling meteor, and with its cleavage planes still fresh and bright in this incorruptible, unchanging silence.
There were no hand-holds on the rock face, and we had to use a grapnel. My tired arms seemed to gain new strength as I swung the three-pronged metal anchor round my head and sent it sailing Lip toward the stars. The first time it broke loose and came falling slowly back when we pulled the rope. On the third attempt, the prongs gripped firmly and our combined weights could not shift it.
Garnett looked at me anxiously. I could tell that he wanted to go first, but I smiled back at him through the glass of my helmet and shook my head. Slowly, taking my time, I began the final ascent.
Even with my space-suit, I weighed only forty pounds here, so I pulled myself up hand over hand without bothering to use my feet. At the rim I paused and waved to my companion, then I scrambled over the edge and stood upright, staring ahead of me.
You must understand that until this very moment I had been almost completely convinced that there could be nothing strange or unusual for me to find here. Almost, but not quite; it was that haunting doubt that had driven me forward. Well, it was a doubt no longer, but the haunting had scarcely begun.
I was standing on a plateau perhaps a hundred feet across. It had once been smooth-too smooth to be natural-but falling meteors had pitted and scored its surface through immeasurable eons. It had been leveled to support a glittering, roughly pyramidal structure, twice as high as a man, that was set in the rock like a gigantic, many-faceted jewel.
Probably no emotion at all filled my mind in those first few seconds. Then I felt a great lifting of my heart, and a strange, inexpressible joy. For I loved the Moon, and now I knew that the creeping moss of Aristarchus and Eratosthenes was not the only life she had brought forth in her youth. The old, discredited dream of the first explorers was true. There had, after all, been a lunar civilization- and I was the first to find it. That I had come perhaps a hundred million years too late did not distress me; it was enough to have come at all.
My mind was beginning to function normally, to analyze and to ask questions. Was this a building, a shrine-or something for which my language had no name? If a building, then why was it erected in so uniquely inaccessible a spot? I wondered if it might be a temple, and I could picture the adepts of some strange priesthood calling on their gods to preserve them as the life of the Moon ebbed with the dying oceans, and calling on their gods in vain.
I took a dozen steps forward to examine the thing more closely, but some sense of caution kept me from going too near. I knew a little of archaeology, and tried to guess the cultural level of the civilization that must have smoothed this mountain and raised the glittering mirror surfaces that still dazzled my eyes.
The Egyptians could have done it, I thought, if their workmen had possessed whatever strange materials these far more ancient architects had used. Because of the thing’s smallness, it did not occur to me that I might be looking at the handiwork of a race more advanced than my own. The idea that the Moon had possessed intelligence at all was still almost too tremendous to grasp, and my pride would not let me take the final, humiliating plunge.
And then I noticed something that set the scalp crawling at the back of my neck-something so trivial and so innocent that many would never have noticed it at all. I have said that the plateau was scarred by meteors; it was also coated inches-deep with the cosmic dust that is always filtering down upon the surface of any world where there are no winds to disturb it. Yet the dust and the meteor scratches ended quite abruptly in a wide circle enclosing the little pyramid, as though an invisible wall was protecting it from the ravages of time and the slow but ceaseless bombardment from space.
There was someone shouting in my earphones, and I realized that Garnett had been calling me for some time. I walked unsteadily to the edge of the cliff and signaled him to join me, not trusting myself to speak. Then I went back toward that circle in the dust. I picked up a fragment of splintered rock and tossed it gently toward the shining enigma. If the pebble had vanished at that invisible barrier I should not have been surprised, but it seemed to hit a smooth, hemispherical surface and slide gently to the ground.
I knew then that I was looking at nothing that could be matched in the antiquity of my own race. This was not a building, but a machine, protecting itself with forces that had challenged Eternity. Those forces, whatever they might be, were still operating, and perhaps I had already come too close. I thought of all the radiations man had trapped and tamed in the past century. For all I knew, I might be as irrevocably doomed as if I had stepped into the deadly, silent aura of an unshielded atomic pile.
I remember turning then toward Garnett, who bad joined me and was now standing motionless at my side. He seemed quite oblivious to me, so I did not disturb him but walked to the edge of the cliff in an effort to marshal my thoughts. There below me lay the Mare Crisium-Sea of Crises, indeed-strange and weird to most men, but reassuringly familiar to me. I lifted my eyes toward the crescent Earth, lying in her cradle of stars, and I wondered what her clouds had covered when these unknown builders had finished their work. Was it the steaming jungle of the Carboniferous, the bleak shoreline over which the first amphibians must crawl to conquer the land-or, earlier still, the long loneliness before the coming of life?
Do not ask me why I did not guess the truth sooner-the truth, that seems so obvious now. In the first excitement of my discovery, I had assumed without question that this crystalline apparition had been built by some race belonging to the Moon’s remote past, but suddenly, and with overwhelming force, the belief came to me that it was as alien to the Moon as I myself.
In twenty years we had found no trace of life but a few degenerate plants. No lunar civilization, whatever its doom, could have left but a single token of its existence.
I looked at the shining pyramid again, and the more remote it seemed from anything that had to do with the Moon. And suddenly I felt myself shaking with a foolish, hysterical laughter, brought on by excitement and overexertion: for I had imagined that the little pyramid was speaking to me and was saying: “Sorry, I’m a stranger here myself.”
It has taken us twenty years to crack that invisible shield and to reach the machine inside those crystal walls. What we could not understand, we broke at last with the savage might of atomic power and now I have seen the fragments of the lovely, glittering thing I found up there on the mountain.
They are meaningless. The mechanisms-if indeed they are mechanisms-of the pyramid belong to a technology that lies far beyond our horizon, perhaps to the technology of para-physical forces.
The mystery haunts us all the more now that the other planets have been reached and we know that only Earth has ever been the home of intelligent life in our Universe. Nor could any lost civilization of our own world have built that machine, for the thickness of the meteoric dust on the plateau has enabled us to measure its age. It was set there upon its mountain before life had emerged from the seas of Earth.
When our world was half its present age, something from the stars swept through the Solar System, left this token of its passage, and went again upon its way. Until we destroyed it, that machine was still fulfilling the purpose of its builders; and as to that purpose, here is my guess.
Nearly a hundred thousand million stars are turning in the circle of the Milky Way, and long ago other races on the worlds of other suns must have scaled and passed the heights that we have reached. Think of such civilizations, far back in time against the fading afterglow of Creation, masters of a universe so young that life as yet had come only to a handful of worlds. Theirs would have been a loneliness we cannot imagine, the loneliness of gods looking out across infinity and finding none to share their thoughts.
They must have searched the star-clusters as we have searched the planets. Everywhere there would be worlds, but they would be empty or peopled with crawling, mindless things. Such was our own Earth, the smoke of the great volcanoes still staining the skies, when that first ship of the peoples of the dawn came sliding in from the abyss beyond Pluto. It passed the frozen outer worlds, knowing that life could play no part in their destinies. It came to rest among the inner planets, warming themselves around the fire of the Sun and waiting for their stories to begin.
Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favorite of the Sun’s children. Here, in the distant future, would be intelligence; but there were countless stars before -them still, and they might never come this way again.
So they left a sentinel, one of millions they have scattered throughout the Universe, watching over all worlds with the promise of life. It was a beacon that down the ages has been patiently signaling the fact that no one had discovered it.
Perhaps you understand now why that crystal pyramid was set upon the Moon instead of on the Earth. Its builders were not concerned with races still struggling up from savagery. They would be interested in our civilization only if we proved our fitness to survive -by crossing space and so escaping from the Earth, our cradle. That is the challenge that all intelligent races must meet, sooner or later. It is a double challenge, for it depends in turn upon the conquest of atomic energy and the last choice between life and death.
Once we had passed that crisis, it was only a matter of time before we found the pyramid and forced it open. Now its signals have ceased, and those whose duty it is will be turning their minds upon Earth. Perhaps they wish to help our infant civilization. But they must be very, very old, and the old are often insanely jealous of the young.
I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire-alarm and have nothing to do but to wait.
I do not think we will have to wait for long.
The End
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The photo above reminds me so very much of the old Doc Savage paperbacks that I used to read when I was in Middle School. This is a promo image of Dwayne Johnson in one of his Jumanji movies.
Dwayne is an interesting person, but the thing is that few people hate him. He’s a kind soul, or at least tries to portray that image. And without that image, he’s just another smuck that went from weight-lifting to movies.
It’s difficult to keep your reputation. Certainly no one knows that better than myself who now has the ugly reputation of being a nasty filthy child predator now living inside the filthy evil communist Hell-hole.
And that’s the way it works, you know.
To destroy a person completely, you need only destroy his reputation so that no one wants to associate with him, employ him, listen to him, or be friends with him. Then alone, shunned, starving, and destitute he can die inside the hole you made for him to crawl into.
This is a great chapter by Robert Greene. Read it and learn from it.
LAW 5
SO MUCH DEPENDS ON REPUTATION—GUARD IT WITH YOUR LIFE
JUDGMENT
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW I
During China’s War of the Three Kingdoms (A.D. 207-265), the great general Chuko Liang, leading the forces of the Shu Kingdom, dispatched his vast army to a distant camp while he rested in a small town with a handful of soldiers.
Suddenly sentinels hurried in with the alarming news that an enemy force of over 150,000 troops under Sima Yi was approaching.
With only a hundred men to defend him, Chuko Liang’s situation was hopeless.
The enemy would finally capture this renowned leader.
Without lamenting his fate, or wasting time trying to figure out how he had been caught, Liang ordered his troops to take down their flags, throw open the city gates, and hide.
He himself then took a seat on the most visible part of the city’s wall, wearing a Taoist robe.
He lit some incense, strummed his lute, and began to chant.
Minutes later he could see the vast enemy army approaching, an endless phalanx of soldiers.
Pretending not to notice them, he continued to sing and play the lute.
Soon the army stood at the town gates.
At its head was Sima Yi, who instantly recognized the man on the wall.
Even so, as his soldiers itched to enter the unguarded town through its open gates, Sima Yi hesitated, held them back, and studied Liang on the wall.
Then, he ordered an immediate and speedy retreat.
THE ANIMALS STRICKEN WITH THE PLAGUE
A frightful epidemic sent To earth by Heaven intent to vent Its fury on a sinful world, to call It by its rightful name, the pestilence, That Acheron- filling vial of virulence Had fallen on every animal.
Not all were dead, but all lay near to dying, And none was any longer trying To find new fuel to feed life’s flickering fires.
No foods excited their desires; No more did wolves and foxes rove In search of harmless, helpless prey; And dove would not consort with dove, For love and joy had flown away.
The Lion assumed the chair to say: “Dear friends, I doubt not it’s for heaven’s high ends That on us sinners woe must fall. Let him of us who’s sinned the most Fall victim to the avenging heavenly host, And may he win salvation for us all; For history teaches us that in these crises We must make sacrifices. Undeceived and stern-eyed, let’s inspect Our conscience. As I recollect, To put my greedy appetite to sleep, I’ve banqueted on many a sheep Who’d injured me in no respect, And even in my time been known to try Shepherd pie. If need be, then. I’ll die. Yet I suspect That others also ought to own their sins. It’s only fair that all should do their best To single out the guiltiest.”
“Sire, you’re too good a king,“the Fox begins; ”Such scruples are too delicate. My word, To eat sheep, that profane and vulgar herd. That’s sin? Nay. Sire, enough for such a crew To be devoured by such as you; While of the shepherds we may say That they deserved the worst they got. Theirs being the lot that over us beasts plot A flimsy dream-begotten sway.”
Thus spake the Fox, and toady cheers rose high, While none dared cast too cold an eye On Tiger‘s, Bear’s, and other eminences Most unpardonable offences.
Each, of never mind what currish breed, Was really a saint, they all agreed.
Then came the Ass, to say: ”I do recall How once I crossed an abbey-mead Where hunger, grass in plenty, and withal, I have no doubt, some imp of greed. Assailed me, and I shaved a tongue’s-breadth wide Where frankly I’d no right to any grass.”
All forthwith fell full cry upon the Ass: A Wolf of some book-learning testified That that curst beast must suffer their despite, That gallskinned author of their piteous plight.
They judged him fit for nought but gallows-bait: How vile, another’s grass to sequestrate! His death alone could expiate A crime so heinous, as full well he learns. The court, as you’re of great or poor estate, Will paint you either white or black by turns.
THE BEST FABLES OF LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE LA FONTAINE, 1621- 1695
Interpretation
Chuko Liang was commonly known as the “Sleeping Dragon.”
His exploits in the War of the Three Kingdoms were legendary.
Once a man claiming to be a disaffected enemy lieutenant came to his camp, offering help and information. Liang instantly recognized the situation as a setup; this man was a false deserter, and should be beheaded.
At the last minute, though, as the ax was about to fall, Liang stopped the execution and offered to spare the man’s life if he agreed to become a double agent.
Grateful and terrified, the man agreed, and began supplying false information to the enemy. Liang won battle after battle.
On another occasion Liang stole a military seal and created false documents dispatching his enemy’s troops to distant locations.
Once the troops had dispersed, he was able to capture three cities, so that he controlled an entire corridor of the enemy’s kingdom.
He also once tricked the enemy into believing one of its best generals was a traitor, forcing the man to escape and join forces with Liang.
The Sleeping Dragon carefully cultivated his reputation of being the cleverest man in China, one who always had a trick up his sleeve.
As powerful as any weapon, this reputation struck fear into his enemy.
Sima Yi had fought against Chuko Liang dozens of times and knew him well.
When he came on the empty city, with Liang praying on the wall, he was stunned.
The Taoist robes, the chanting, the incense—this had to be a game of intimidation.
The man was obviously taunting him, daring him to walk into a trap.
The game was so obvious that for one moment it crossed Yi’s mind that Liang actually was alone, and desperate.
But so great was his fear of Liang that he dared not risk finding out.
Such is the power of reputation.
It can put a vast army on the defensive, even force them into retreat, without a single arrow being fired.
For, as Cicero says, even those who argue against fame still want the books they write against it to bear their name in the title and hope to become famous for despising it. Everything else is subject to barter: we will let our friends have our goods and our lives if need be; but a case of sharing our fame and making someone else the gift of our reputation is hardly to be found.
Montaigne, 1533-1592
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW II
In 1841 the young P. T. Barnum, trying to establish his reputation as America’s premier showman, decided to purchase the American Museum in Manhattan and turn it into a collection of curiosities that would secure his fame.
The problem was that he had no money.
The museum’s asking price was $15,000, but Barnum was able to put together a proposal that appealed to the institution’s owners even though it replaced cash up front with dozens of guarantees and references.
The owners came to a verbal agreement with Barnum, but at the last minute, the principal partner changed his mind, and the museum and its collection were sold to the directors of Peale’s Museum.
Barnum was infuriated, but the partner explained that business was business —the museum had been sold to Peale’s because Peale’s had a reputation and Barnum had none.
Barnum immediately decided that if he had no reputation to bank on, his only recourse was to ruin the reputation of Peale’s.
Accordingly he launched a letter-writing campaign in the newspapers, calling the owners a bunch of “broken-down bank directors” who had no idea how to run a museum or entertain people.
He warned the public against buying Peale’s stock, since the business’s purchase of another museum would invariably spread its resources thin.
The campaign was effective, the stock plummeted, and with no more confidence in Peale’s track record and reputation, the owners of the American Museum reneged on their deal and sold the whole thing to Barnum.
It took years for Peale’s to recover, and they never forgot what Barnum had done.
Mr. Peale himself decided to attack Barnum by building a reputation for “high-brow entertainment,” promoting his museum’s programs as more scientific than those of his vulgar competitor.
Mesmerism (hypnotism) was one of Peale’s “scientific” attractions, and for a while it drew big crowds and was quite successful. To fight back, Barnum decided to attack Peale’s reputation yet again.
Barnum organized a rival mesmeric performance in which he himself apparently put a little girl into a trance.
Once she seemed to have fallen deeply under, he tried to hypnotize members of the audience—but no matter how hard he tried, none of the spectators fell under his spell, and many of them began to laugh.
A frustrated Barnum finally announced that to prove the little girl’s trance was real, he would cut off one of her fingers without her noticing.
But as he sharpened the knife, the little girl’s eyes popped open and she ran away, to the audience’s delight.
He repeated this and other parodies for several weeks.
Soon no one could take Peale’s show seriously, and attendance went way down.
Within a few weeks, the show closed.
Over the next few years Barnum established a reputation for audacity and consummate showmanship that lasted his whole life.
Peale’s reputation, on the other hand, never recovered.
Interpretation
Barnum used two different tactics to ruin Peale’s reputation.
The first was simple: He sowed doubts about the museum’s stability and solvency. Doubt is a powerful weapon: Once you let it out of the bag with insidious rumors, your opponents are in a horrible dilemma. On the one hand they can deny the rumors, even prove that you have slandered them. But a layer of suspicion will remain: Why are they defending themselves so desperately?
Maybe the rumor has some truth to it? If, on the other hand, they take the high road and ignore you, the doubts, unrefuted, will be even stronger. If done correctly, the sowing of rumors can so infuriate and unsettle your rivals that in defending themselves they will make numerous mistakes. This is the perfect weapon for those who have no reputation of their own to work from.
Once Barnum did have a reputation of his own, he used the second, gentler tactic, the fake hypnotism demonstration: He ridiculed his rivals’ reputation.
This too was extremely successful.
Once you have a solid base of respect, ridiculing your opponent both puts him on the defensive and draws more attention to you, enhancing your own reputation.
Outright slander and insult are too strong at this point; they are ugly, and may hurt you more than help you.
But gentle barbs and mockery suggest that you have a strong enough sense of your own worth to enjoy a good laugh at your rival’s expense.
A humorous front can make you out as a harmless entertainer while poking holes in the reputation of your rival.
It is easier to cope with a bad conscience than with a bad reputation.
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900
KEYS TO POWER
The people around us, even our closest friends, will always to some extent remain mysterious and unfathomable.
Their characters have secret recesses that they never reveal.
The unknowableness of other people could prove disturbing if we thought about it long enough, since it would make it impossible for us really to judge other people.
So we prefer to ignore this fact, and to judge people on their appearances, on what is most visible to our eyes—clothes, gestures, words, actions. In the social realm, appearances are the barometer of almost all of our judgments, and you must never be mis led into believing otherwise.
One false slip, one awkward or sudden change in your appearance, can prove disastrous.
This is the reason for the supreme importance of making and maintaining a reputation that is of your own creation.
That reputation will protect you in the dangerous game of appearances, distracting the probing eyes of others from knowing what you are really like, and giving you a degree of control over how the world judges you—a powerful position to be in.
Reputation has a power like magic: With one stroke of its wand, it can double your strength.
It can also send people scurrying away from you.
Whether the exact same deeds appear brilliant or dreadful can depend entirely on the reputation of the doer.
In the ancient Chinese court of the Wei kingdom there was a man named Mi Tzu-hsia who had a reputation for supreme civility and graciousness.
He became the ruler’s favorite.
It was a law in Wei that “whoever rides secretly in the ruler’s coach shall have his feet cut off,” but when Mi Tzu-hsia’s mother fell ill, he used the royal coach to visit her, pretending that the ruler had given him permission.
When the ruler found out, he said, “How dutiful is Mi Tzu-hsia!
For his mother’s sake he even forgot that he was committing a crime making him liable to lose his feet!”
Another time the two of them took a stroll in an orchard.
Mi Tzu-hsia began eating a peach that he could not finish, and he gave the ruler the other half to eat.
The ruler remarked, “You love me so much that you would even forget your own saliva taste and let me eat the rest of the peach!”
Later, however, envious fellow courtiers, spreading word that Mi Tzu- hsia was actually devious and arrogant, succeeded in damaging his reputation; the ruler came to see his actions in a new light.
“This fellow once rode in my coach under pretense of my order,” he told the courtiers angrily, “and another time he gave me a half-eaten peach.”
For the same actions that had charmed the ruler when he was the favorite, Mi Tzu-hsia now had to suffer the penalties.
The fate of his feet depended solely on the strength of his reputation.
In the beginning, you must work to establish a reputation for one outstanding quality, whether generosity or honesty or cunning.
This quality sets you apart and gets other people to talk about you.
You then make your reputation known to as many people as possible (subtly, though; take care to build slowly, and with a firm foundation), and watch as it spreads like wildfire.
A solid reputation increases your presence and exaggerates your strengths without your having to spend much energy.
It can also create an aura around you that will instill respect, even fear. In the fighting in the North African desert during World War II, the German general Erwin Rommel had a reputation for cunning and for deceptive maneuvering that struck terror into everyone who faced him.
Even when his forces were depleted, and when British tanks outnumbered his by five to one, entire cities would be evacuated at the news of his approach.
As they say, your reputation inevitably precedes you, and if it inspires respect, a lot of your work is done for you before you arrive on the scene, or utter a single word.
Your success seems destined by your past triumphs.
Much of the success of Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy rested on his reputation for ironing out differences; no one wanted to be seen as so unreasonable that Kissinger could not sway him.
A peace treaty seemed a fait accompli as soon as Kissinger’s name became involved in the negotiations.
Make your reputation simple and base it on one sterling quality.
This single quality—efficiency, say, or seductiveness—becomes a kind of calling card that announces your presence and places others under a spell.
A reputation for honesty will allow you to practice all manner of deception.
Casanova used his reputation as a great seducer to pave the way for his future conquests; women who had heard of his powers became immensely curious, and wanted to discover for themselves what had made him so romantically successful.
Perhaps you have already stained your reputation, so that you are prevented from establishing a new one.
In such cases it is wise to associate with someone whose image counteracts your own, using their good name to whitewash and elevate yours.
It is hard, for example, to erase a reputation for dishonesty by yourself; but a paragon of honesty can help. When P. T. Barnum wanted to clean up a reputation for promoting vulgar entertainment, he brought the singer Jenny Lind over from Europe.
She had a stellar, high-class reputation, and the American tour Barnum sponsored for her greatly enhanced his own image.
Similarly the great robber barons of nineteenth-century America were long unable to rid themselves of a reputation for cruelty and mean-spiritedness.
Only when they began collecting art, so that the names of Morgan and Frick became permanently associated with those of da Vinci and Rembrandt, were they able to soften their unpleasant image.
Reputation is a treasure to be carefully collected and hoarded.
Especially when you are first establishing it, you must protect it strictly, anticipating all attacks on it.
Once it is solid, do not let yourself get angry or defensive at the slanderous comments of your enemies—that reveals insecurity, not confidence in your reputation.
Take the high road instead, and never appear desperate in your self-defense.
On the other hand, an attack on another man’s reputation is a potent weapon, particularly when you have less power than he does.
He has much more to lose in such a battle, and your own thus- far-small reputation gives him a small target when he tries to return your fire.
Barnum used such campaigns to great effect in his early career. But this tactic must be practiced with skill; you must not seem to engage in petty vengeance.
If you do not break your enemy’s reputation cleverly, you will inadvertently ruin your own.
Thomas Edison, considered the inventor who harnessed electricity, believed that a workable system would have to be based on direct current (DC).
When the Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla appeared to have succeeded in creating a system based on alternating current (AC), Edison was furious.
He determined to ruin Tesla’s reputation, by making the public believe that the AC system was inherently unsafe, and Tesla irresponsible in promoting it.
To this end he captured all kinds of household pets and electrocuted them to death with an AC current.
When this wasn’t enough, in 1890 he got New York State prison authorities to organize the world’s first execution by electrocution, using an AC current.
But Edison’s electrocution experiments had all been with small creatures; the charge was too weak, and the man was only half killed.
In perhaps the country’s cruelest state-authorized execution, the procedure had to be repeated. It was an awful spectacle.
Although, in the long run, it is Edison’s name that has survived, at the time his campaign damaged his own reputation more than Tesla’s.
He backed off.
The lesson is simple—never go too far in attacks like these, for that will draw more attention to your own vengefulness than to the person you are slandering.
When your own reputation is solid, use subtler tactics, such as satire and ridicule, to weaken your opponent while making you out as a charming rogue.
The mighty lion toys with the mouse that crosses his path—any other reaction would mar his fearsome reputation.
Image:
A Mine Full of Diamonds and Rubies.
You dug for it, you found it, and your wealth is now assured.
Guard it with your life. Robbers and thieves will appear from all sides. Never take your wealth
for granted, and constantly renew it—time will diminish the jewels’ luster,
and bury them from sight.
Authority:
Therefore I should wish our courtier to bolster up his inherent worth with skill and cunning, and ensure that whenever he has to go where he is a stranger, he is preceded by a good reputation.... For the fame which appears to rest on the opinions of many fosters a certain unshakable belief in a man’s worth which is then easily strengthened in minds already thus disposed and prepared.
(Baldassare Castiglione, 1478-1529)
REVERSAL
There is no possible Reversal.
Reputation is critical; there are no exceptions to this law.
Perhaps, not caring what others think of you, you gain a reputation for insolence and arrogance, but that can be a valuable image in itself—Oscar Wilde used it to great advantage.
Since we must live in society and must depend on the opinions of others, there is nothing to be gained by neglecting your reputation.
By not caring how you are perceived, you let others decide this for you.
Be the master of your fate, and also of your reputation.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
"... if they (the psychopaths) keep playing "chicken" with Russia & China, they'll get it-sooner, rather than later"
This is going to be a pretty harsh article. We are not going to “dance around” any of the issues. Instead we are going to spell (or spit) it out directly. If you aren’t ready for it you can leave.
First of all, the Untied States has spent a good portion of the last twelve years building up a narrative towards a major global-wide war with China. The last four years (2016 through 2020) has really placed the TargetingReticule on China, and you have to be delusional not to notice it.
And let’s be real about it, as well.
You can pretend that it’s a “cold war”, or it’s a “hybrid war”, or perhaps a simple “trade war”. But that’s just dancing around the raw and harsh facts. It’s a build up to a “hot shooting war” and you just simply cannot avoid that reality.
Most people avoid the harsh reality because [1] they don’t want to believe it, and [2] they are not given all the information of what if going on.
How many Americans know about the American drones spraying swine flu to devastate the pig industry in 2018? How many Americans know about the tit-for-tat attacks on the VTOL aircraft carriers in 2020? How many Americans are aware of the differences between the COVID-19A and the COVID-19B strains.
Very, very few.
It’s been exceptionally hot. And the only way that you can keep abreast of the latest run of attacks is to read the neocon publications out of the K-street military-industrial network in Washington DC.
Propaganda campaigns, and hybrid wars ALWAYS end up in a hot shooting war. There is not one single instance where it did not. Not once.
And people (!) all hot wars that America initiates requires an ignition event to launch. And if one cannot be found, then a fake event is created. These events are called “false flags”.
What is a “False Flag”?
Afalse flag operation is an act committedwith the intent of disguising the actualsource of responsibility and pinning blame onanother party. The term is popular amongst conspiracy theory promotersinreferring to covert operations of various governments and cabals.
-Wikipedia
The following is from History.com, All credit to the author.
On the night of the 31st of August 1939, several covert Nazi operatives dressed as Polish soldiers stormed the Gleiwitz radio tower on the Germany-Poland border. They broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish before leaving. The soldiers left behind the bodies of a pro-Polish German farmer and several unidentifiable Dachau concentration camp prisoners. The farmer and the prisoners had been murdered and dressed up in German uniforms.
The attack was part of a series of covert actions along the Polish border that the Nazis would use to justify Germany’s attack on Poland the following day. Gleiwitz was a classic ‘false flag’ operation.
So, what is meant by the term ‘false flag’? Originally, the phrase was coined for the practice of pirate ships flying the colors of other nations to deceive merchant ships into thinking they were dealing with a friendly vessel. While the pirates would usually unfurl their true colors just before attacking, the wrong flag would sometimes continue to be flown throughout an attack, hence the term ‘attacking under a false flag’. Over time, the term ‘false flag’ came to be applied to any covert operation that sought to shift the responsibility on to a different party from the one carrying it out, as was the case with the Nazis at Gleiwitz.
One of the most famous incidents considered by many to be a false flag operation is the Reichstag fire, which took place on the night of the 27th of February 1933. A lone communist sympathizer called Marinus van de Lubbe was arrested and charged with setting fire to the German parliament building. This gave Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, the excuse they needed to purge Germany of opposition, especially the communists. The sweeping emergency powers Hitler and the Nazi Party grabbed for themselves after the fire are the reason many people think the Reichstag was burned not by a lone communist protesting Germany’s treatment of the working classes (as van de Lubbe himself claimed while in custody), but by the Nazis themselves.
Of course, it isn’t just the Americans and the Europeans who have been accused of participating in false flag operations over the years. Between 1979 and 1983, the Israeli secret services stand accused of instigating a series of car bomb attacks in Lebanon that killed hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinians. Though the bombings were claimed by the terrorist organization, the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners, many believe the bombs were set off by the Israelis to sew dissent throughout the region and justify an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Though an Israeli general has admitted the attacks were carried out by his country, the official line is still that Israel was not involved.
In the modern era, things become a little murkier. Whether a modern-day false flag operation is real or not is now a matter to be bitterly fought over on the Internet.
To many online conspiracy theorists, the biggest false flag operation of all time was the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Many believe that these attacks were deliberately carried out by the US government as a way to justify the subsequent attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, which they believe were carried out to install a gas pipeline across Afghanistan and to seize the oil wealth of Iraq.
Many ‘9/11 Truthers’ point out discrepancies in the official report into the destruction of the World Trade Center, focusing primarily on the collapse of the Twin Towers and 7 World Trade Center. They argue that the towers could not have been brought down by plane strike and fire alone, be must instead have been brought down by another means, such as by controlled demolition. The claims that 9/11 was an inside job have been vigorously disputed both by the US government and various experts many times, but it is highly unlikely the myriad of conspiracy theories swirling around 9/11 will ever go away.
Accusations of false flag operations have continued right up to the present day. One of the most widely-disputed and discussed is the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings of 2012, which has been laid at the door of the US Government.
People who refuse to believe the shootings were the act of a lone gunman allege twenty students and six staff were deliberately murdered so stricter gun controls could be imposed on the US population. Skeptics point to the attack coinciding with President Barack Obama’s announcement that he would sign restrictive small arms legislation. The convenient timing of the attack could then be used by the president as the excuse he needed to impose new restrictions, hence why it must have been a false flag operation. Again, like 9/11, it is highly unlikely that the theories surrounding the tragic attack will ever die down.
We now live in an age where, to some at least, nothing is as it seems, everything can be labelled a conspiracy and no amount of evidence to the contrary will change people’s minds.
There have been several documented false flag operations throughout history, and the existence of them goes some way to explaining why thousands upon thousands of people all around the world believe many more covert operations have been carried out regardless of government claims to the contrary.
Why does the United States want to start a war with China?
The following is from Global Research. Reprinted as found, all credit to the author and edited to fit this venue. The original title of the article is: "China-US Relations and Biden’s “Global Death Trap”: The World Is Facing Another Cold War Which May Become Hot, Even Very Hot" by Prof. Joseph H. Chung Global Research, April 09, 2021.
In Anchorage, Alaska, on 18-19 March 2021, top diplomats of China and the U.S. met and declared the new Cold War. The U.S. side was represented by Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State and Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, while China was represented, by Wang Yi, Chinese Foreign Minister and Yang Jiechi, top diplomat of China.
Anthony Blinken said ” China’s actions pose a threat to a rule-based order designed to maintain global stability:”
Translation: “You unthankful China, listen carefully! Do not dare challenge the world in which Washington feels comfortable. Otherwise!” This is the declaration of the cold war.
On his part, Wang Yi said: “Beijing is firmly against US interference in domestic affairs. We will take firm actions in our response.” “Most countries in the world do not recognize US values as global values.”
Translation: “Listen You Washington,. China has done a lot for you. China has something to tell you! China has had enough of your bullying. If Washington wants to fight, well, China is ready!
Two days later…
On March 22, Wang Yi, foreign minister of China and Sergei Lavrov, foreign minister of Russia met to protest against Washington’s sanction imposed on Russia and China.
The very next day, on March 23, Xi Jinping, president of China and Kim Jong-un, president of North Korea exchanged letters for mutual cooperation. This is the beginning of China’s recruiting of cold war alliances.
All these events mean one thing. The Global Cold War has begun and the world will be divided once again between the West and the East and the Cold War is likely to become Global Hot War and we will be all dead.
Before I begin, I would like tell this to Beijing and Washington!
In 2020, the combined GDP of China and the U.S. was 35 trillion USD, or 42% of the global GDP of 84 trillion USD.
You China and the U.S. listen! You have become rich and powerful, because the world has worked hard for you. The world has provided low-cost labor, high quality raw materials and people’s precious savings; the world has bought your products.
Remember! The world belongs to every human being and every country.
Please behave like responsible global super powers. You have no right to ruin the world with your hegemonic fight.
So, China and the U.S. please stop the dreadful cold war and take responsibility of assuring global peace, safety and prosperity.
*
In this paper, I am asking these questions.
Why does Washington declare the new cold war now?
What are the American objectives of the cold war?
What are the cold war Strategies of the U.S. and China?
Can Washington win the cold war?
Can the hot war happen?
What will be the impact of the Sino-American war on the humanity?
Why does Washington declare the New Cold War Now?
When it comes to the economy, the language betrays the reality all too clearly. The Trump administration’s economic struggle with China is regularly described, openly and without qualification, as a “war.” And there’s no doubt that senior White House officials, beginning with the president and his chief trade representative, Robert Lighthizer (image on the right), see it just that way: as a means of pulverizing the Chinese economy and so curtailing that country’s ability to compete with the United States in all other measures of power.
-Global Research
There are two possible reasons for Washington’s decision to declare the Cold war against China, a war which actually began since Barack Obama’s Asia Pivot.
The first reason is that Joe Biden needs an enemy dangerous enough to unify the American people and to deal with [1] the impossible task of restoring the economy and [2] justify the raison d’être of the existence of the government.
The Pearl Harbor attack was devastating enough to wake up the sleeping Americans to unite and follow the Washington’s leadership. But I wonder if the Chinese challenge is grave enough to unify the Americans and trust Washington and cooperate for the policy of restoring the economy.
The second reason is more convincing. It is matter of coping with the Chinese economic threat when China’s military challenge is still manageable. The Chinese economy is catching up with the U.S. economy at a threatening rate, while the Chinese military capability is still far weaker than American military capacity. In other words, Washington has decided to hit hard Beijing when it is still a weak attacker and get rid of the economic threat.
I have done some calculations to see the evolution of economic and military power of the two super powers. I have assumed that the Chinese GDP will increase per year, at a compound growth rate of 5 %, from US$ 15.42 trillion in 2020 to $ 24.98 trillion in 2031, or a accumulated increase of 62%. As for the United States, it is assumed that its GDP will increase by 2% a year from $20.93 trillion in 2020 to $25.32 trillion in 2031, or accumulated increase of 21%.
This means that, in 2020, the Chinese GDP was 73.6% of the U.S. GDP to reach 98.7% in 2031. This is surely threatening to Washington.
Thus, the Chinese GDP is expected to catch up with the U.S. economy in ten years. But, we have a different picture as far as military strength is concerned.
We have examined the 10-year evolution of national defense budget of the two countries. It is assumed that the share of the defense budget in the GDP will remain the same throughout the 10 year period. The Chinese 2020 national defense share was 1.15% of GDP yielding $ 178 billion. In 2031.The Chinese defense budget will be $287 billion. Now, for the U.S. in 2020, the national defense budget was $730 billion, or 3.6% of GDP, this rate is applied for 2031 to get $911 billion.
This means that despite rapid rise, the Chinese catching up for the defense budget is much slower than the case of GDP. In fact, in 2020, the amount of Chinese national defense expenditures was 24.5% of that of the American national defense budget to increase only to 30.2% in 2031. This may allow Washington to feel safe as far as the Chinese military threat is concerned.
So, Washington’s strategy is to strike China before the Chinese economy catches up with the U.S. economy while Beijing’s is still “militarily weak”.
What are the Objectives of the U.S. initiated Cold War?
An examination of the demands submitted to Chinese negotiators by the U.S. trade delegation last May suggests, however, that Washington’s primary intent hasn’t been to rectify that trade imbalance but to impede China’s economic growth. Among the stipulations Beijing must acquiesce to before receiving tariff relief, according to leaked documents from U.S. negotiators that were spread on Chinese social media:
[1] halting all government subsidies to advanced manufacturing industries in its Made in China 2025 program, an endeavor that covers 10 key economic sectors, including aircraft manufacturing, electric cars, robotics, computer microchips, and artificial intelligence;
[2] accepting American restrictions on investments in sensitive technologies without retaliating;
[3] opening up its service and agricultural sectors — areas where Chinese firms have an inherent advantage — to full American competition.
In fact, this should be considered a straightforward declaration of economic war. Acquiescing to such demands would mean accepting a permanent subordinate status vis-à-vis the United States in hopes of continuing a profitable trade relationship with this country.
“The list reads like the terms for a surrender rather than a basis for negotiation,” was the way Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, accurately described these developments.
The principal objectives of the Cold War is to prevent China from becoming a Global Power threatening the accumulated interests of the U.S. and its allies.
-Global Resource
What are the Cold War Strategies of the U.S. and China?
The weapons of the New Cold War are likely to include the following:
Security Alliance War
Ideological War
Economic War
Security War
Security Alliance War
The security alliance is designed to maximize the “friendly supports” for the country’s war efforts. On this ground, the U.S. has a definite upper hand. Actually, China has only a few alliances; its potential alliances would include North Korea, Russia, Cambodia, Myanmar and Pakistan. But, there is no guarantee that these potential alliances will help China in a Sino-American war. On the other hand, Washington has a lot of alliances.
The U.S. has many security alliances in the East Asian region: the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance, the U.S.-South Korea Security Alliance, the U.S.-Australia Security Alliance, the U.S.-the Philippines Security Alliance. The U.S. has security partnership with Singapore and Taiwan.
The U.S. has the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) composed of Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.
Moreover, there was the TPP (Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership) led by Washington. It had 12 member countries. Since Trump withdrew, it has become CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership) with 11 member countries. But, Biden might rejoin it, because it is supposed to be a free-trade alliance, but, in reality, it is a part of China-containment alliance. It includes five East Asian countries: Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. In addition, most of the East Asian countries have some sorts of security cooperation with Washington. Thus, the U.S. has a lot of countries with which it has security related relations.
But, the question is whether these security alliances will join the U.S.-initiated anti-China war. They may cooperate with Washington as long as the cold war remains cold. However, what they should do is to persuade Washington to end the cold war, for it is the best way to keep their economy going in peace.
This is suggested by Graham Allison, the author of his famous book, “Destined for War: Can America and China escape Thucydides Trap?” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston-New York, 2017)
Ideological War
The purpose of the ideological war is to demonize the rival country in order to justify the country’s war on the one hand, and on the other, to maximize global support for the war.
The ideological war relies on the following weapons:
Human Right Violations
Freedom of the Press
Violation of law-Based Rules
Authoritarianism
Assertiveness
Violation of the UNCLOS
Human Right Violations:
The U.S. accuses China for violating minority groups’ rights to maintain autonomous values and political system. But, Beijing argues that it upholds the rights of minority groups. China would say that it has to intervene in order to prevent minority regions from becoming independent, thus threatening the sovereignty of China.
China may ask Washington how it would react, if the State of Alaska fights for its separation from the United States. Moreover, China openly criticises widespread human right violations in the U.S. against minority groups including the Black Africans, Native Indians and other minority groups.
The Canadian Human Right Commission defines human rights as the fundamental right of all human beings for a life of dignity, respect and equality. Hence, all human beings have rights to enjoy public goods such as health, education, housing, racial equality, physical safety on the street. These rights may be violated not only by the government but also by individuals and institutions. Any government which fails to protect these rights is violator of human rights.
In the mainstream media, the perception of human rights violation is limited to the harsh measures taken by the government. The human rights issue has become a political tool in international relations. The debate on human rights issue should, on the contrary, focus on a solution to human rights violations rather than political gain.
In regards to Washington’s policy of China’s human rights violations, I am quite puzzled by its lack of consistency. In fact, for decades since the time of Richard Nixon to the era of Barack Obama, human rights violations in China was not a major issue.
Joe Biden makes human right the key issues in Sino-American relations. Why? Is it because he considers China as a threat to U.S. hegemony?
Freedom of the Press:
The American media criticizes China for lack of the freedom of press. It is true that the press in China is closely managed by the State in order to minimize criticism of government policies. China may react by asking if there is freedom of press in the U.S. China may ask if the American press is free to criticize large corporations which finance the media.
Here, I may ask one question which may interest both China and the U.S.
Is the freedom of the press the raison d’être of the press? What happens, if the free press is biased and behaves in such a way that it is harmful to the welfare of the ordinary people? The Korean press is the freest press in the world, owing to the liberal policies of the government of Moon Jae-in.
Unfortunately 98% of the press present biased report, fabricate stories, publish lies in order to protect the corrupted vested interests of the conservatives accumulated for 70 years; the press is the integral part of the corruption; its sole purpose is to destroy the liberal government and retake the power so that it could enjoy the privileges and wealth provided by the corruption culture. The freedom of press is important, but without political neutrality, it can hurt the nation.
In fact, in the context of the Sino-U.S. cold war, one of the most dangerous weapons is the press. Unfortunately, the press gives itself the mission of demonizing the enemy through lies, biased reports, presenting prepared horror pictures. In a way, the outcome of the New Cold War depends largely on the “press war”. So, my humble wish is that the press in the U.S. and China give itself the mission of stopping the Sino-American cold war and not intensifying it.
Law-Based Rules:
If there is any universal consensus in the West, it is the belief that China does not respect law-based rules. But, we seldom find any concrete incidences where China violates such rules.
The trouble is that rules cannot cover all things and all behaviors. Besides, rules must evolve in function of the need of the time. There are hundreds of reports and research papers which give the impression that China does not respect the international rules. But seldom do they point out which laws are violated. If China is such a violator of international laws, how could it trade with other countries and how could it realize the economic miracle without respecting international laws? Have any international institutions including IMF, WTO, WHO and other international institutions complained about China’s not respecting international laws?
China would react. First, it may ask Washington to provide the actual cases of China’s rule violation. In addition, China may add that most of the international rules being conceived and imposed by the U.S., they may not be suitable for countries of different cultures and judicial traditions. Therefore, China might suggest a reform of the international laws more flexible and inclusive.
Authoritarianism:
Another favorite pass time topic in Washington elite circle and media is the sins of China’s authoritarian regime. This is rather amazing, because the U.S. is a lover of authoritarian regimes in numerous countries, provided these regimes are good boys obeying Washington’s command.
Washington loved General Park Chung-hee and General Jun Doo-hwan for their oppressive authoritarian regime, because they were obedient to Washington.
Chiang Kai-sek was a more than an authoritarian dictator in Taiwan, but he was an asset for America’s China policy.
China may tell the U.S. not to worry about the authoritarian character of the Chinese political regime. China may tell Americans that the authoritarianism has been the core of Chinese values and culture. Besides, as a country of 1.5 billion people with more than a hundred dialects and constant threats of [US supported] independence of minority regions, China needs a strong top-down authoritarian decision-making process.
China’s Assertiveness:
China is accused also for its being assertive with its BRI project, its relations with ASEAN countries and, especially, its militarization of the South China Sea.
China is accused for its assertiveness in connection with its Belt-Road Initiative (BRI). The often quoted incident of such assertiveness is the China’s debt-trap applied to Sri Lanka. However, according to studies by Sri Lankans, the story of debt trap is a lie or misunderstanding by so-called China haters. The project of the Hambantato Port was initiated by current prime minister (former president) in the early 2000s.
It was a purely commercial project and managed by a Chinese government-owned enterprise (GOE). Sri Lanka excessively borrowed money from Western financial institutions including the IMF. Sri Lanka’s debt was so high that the cost of servicing the debts represents 44% of government revenue; this is the debt trap which has nothing to do with the BRI. In fact, Chinese loans represent mere 9% of Sri Lankan government debt. The Hambantato Port is leased for 99 years managed by a Chinese enterprise, CMPort. Sri Lanka has to pay the debt to China for the loans. By the way, the port cannot be used by Chinese navy.
China is accused also for bullying South East Asian countries. This is contentious, according to several studies, these countries do not experience Chinese political assertiveness. On the contrary, Chinese soft business diplomacy is greatly appreciated.
Moreover, China’s productive participation in the activities of ASEAN, APT (ASEAN plus Three), ARF (Asia Regional Forum), EAS (East Asia Summits), RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) Shangri-La Dialogue, and numerous FTAs is highly valued. Even those countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam which have security cooperation with Washington do not feel the pressure of apparent Chinese assertiveness.
Chinese assertiveness which is the most criticized is its alleged military assertiveness. To see more clearly the nature of China’s military assertiveness, we need to study its evolution, which shows that China’s assertiveness was the reaction to American assertiveness.
In 2008, The U.S. joined the TPSEP (Trans-pacific Strategic Economic Partnership) which became later the TPP (Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership) which was more a security alliances than FTA (Free Trade Agreement).
In March 2009, China was under surveillance by an American vessel’s surveillance activities near Hainan Island, the key Chinese navy port.
In September, 2009, the U.S. adopted the Air and Sea Battle (ASB) which was another threat to Chinese A2/AD (Anti-Air/Area-Denied) strategy.
In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the U.S. had interests in the South China Sea, meaning the strong military presence in Asia.
In 2012, Barack Obama announced the Asia-Pivot or “Rebalancing” of American military might in favour of the Asia-Pacific region. It is important to point out here that this series of Washington’s assertive activities hostile to China inevitably invited China’s assertive actions.
In fact, in the period, 2013-2014, China extended its ADIZ (Air-Defence Identification Zone) to as far as the region of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Island.
In September 2013, China started its Island-Building operations in the South China Sea.
In 2013, a Chinese navy vessel dangerously approached USS Cowpens, U.S. navy guided-missile destroyer.
Thus, Chinese assertiveness was, largely, the counter defensive actions to the American assertiveness. In short, so called, Chinese assertiveness, cannot not be used for China denunciation.
The building of the South China Sea islands and the militarization of these islands have been the principal object of China demonization. In fact, this operation started in 2013 and completed in 2016. Several reefs including the Mischief Reef, the Subi Reef and the Fiery Reef all became islands armed with missile launch facilities and airstrips for jet fighters. The reason behind this operation may be the fear of blockade of the South China Sea by the U.S. and its allies, a military operation which will make China to starve to death.
Unfortunately, the American assertive actions followed by Chinese counter actions have inevitably led to the deterioration of the Washington-Beijing relations.
In 2014, Barack Obama visited Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore in order to strengthen the China containment operations. What is disturbing is the fact that Barack Obama promised Shinzo Abe, Japanese prime minister, that the U.S. would be ready to intervene, if a Japan-China conflict took the form of military confrontation. Obama did not, however, commit himself to US military intervention. In contrast, Biden’s Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, promised, during his recent visit to Japan, US military intervention in case of China-Japan confrontation involving the Diaoyu/Senkaku Island. This is indeed a dangerous decision on the part of the U.S.
Violation of UNCCLOS:
Another item on the China demonization menu is the theory that China does not respect the UNCLOS (UN Convention of the Law of Sea) and that China prevents free maritime traffic in the South China Sea. But, there is no actual evidence of China’s violation of free maritime traffic in the South China Sea.
To sum up, the Sino-U.S. ideological war has failed to make China’s regime to deserve global suspicion and denunciation.
Washington has no assurance that the region’s neighbouring countries would rally behind the U.S. because of China’s regime and ideology. This does not mean, however, that China is the winner. .
Economic War
As suggested by America’s trade demands, Washington’s intent is not only to hobble China’s economy today and tomorrow but for decades to come. This has led to an intense, far-ranging campaign to deprive it of access to advanced technologies and to cripple its leading technology firms.
Chinese leaders have long realized that, for their country to achieve economic and military parity with the United States, they must master the cutting-edge technologies that will dominate the twenty-first-century global economy,
-Global Research
As I pointed out above, in ten years, Chinese economy will catch up with the U.S. economy assuming that the American GDP will increase by 2% per year, while the Chinese GDP will rise by 5% per year. My assumptions may be wrong, but one thing which is certain is that China’s GDP will soon catch up with that of the US.
There are several reasons:
First, the Chinese per capita is about $11,000 meaning that there is a lot of room for further growth, while in the U.S. where the per capita GDP is $63,000 the potential growth is approaching its limit.
Second, under the intensification of the trade war, the diversification of trade partners becomes strategic. The American trade partners being highly developed countries, the diversification of trade partners will not be a great help, whereas, China’s trade partners being Asian countries with high growth rate, its trade partner diversification will be an advantage.
Third, the U.S., the economy being dependent on high technology, economic growth is unable to create jobs and it creates unequal income distribution at the expense of ordinary Americans, which in the long run, it will slow down the growth of the American economy.
Fourth, the U.S. economy is excessively dependent on the domestic market, the strength of which is the consumer demand. Remember that, in the U.S., the consumer demand accounts for as much as 70% of GDP as against 50% in China. The consumer demand requires strong middle-income class. Unfortunately, in the U.S. the rising inequality of income distribution has almost destroyed the middle class, which will make it difficult to sustain the domestic market.
The COVID-19 crisis has worsened the problem. In short, it will be difficult to stop the Chinese economy from catching up with the American economy.
Security War
As we saw above, it is more than possible that by 2031, Chinese GDP will have caught up with the U.S. GDP. Moreover, if China allocates 3% of its GDP, instead of the present 1.15 %, its military spending will be $ 749 billion, or 82% of Washington’s military expenditures.
The U.S. may beef up its striking force by deploying its 3rd fleet to strengthen the power of its Sea Air Battle (ASB). China will be able to improve its 2A/AD strategy. So, there will be no clear cut winner.
Under such circumstance, God knows what will happen, if China and the U.S. start to “shoot one another”. The message is clear. The shooting war will bring the dooms day for us all. The dooms day will come, if bloody cold war continues.
Can Washington win the Cold War?
The answer is: “it cannot.”
There are several reasons for this.
First, it seems clear that none of the anti-China strategies will give clear upper hand to Washington. In fact, none of the China demonization tactics, the economic war and the military confrontation promises Washington’s victory.
Second, since the fall of the Berlin Wall of 1989, the ideological difference has been much diluted. Hence, the anti-China antagonism is much weaker than it was during the Soviet-U.S. cold war. The implication is that Washington will have difficulties in ganging up its supporters, which will make American offensive uncertain victory.
Third, China being the world’s factory and the world’s consumer market, most of the U.S. allies will be reluctant to support the cold war.
Fourth, the decadence of the U.S.-led neo-liberal economic system and the world wide corruption of the American version of democracy will make it difficult to attract U.S. sympathizers.
In short, neither the U.S. nor China can be the winner. In their cold war, there will be no winner. If there is one, it will be the suffering of all humanity.
If the U.S. cannot win the cold war, that is, if it cannot prevent China from catching up the U.S. economy and the U.S. power, it means that Washington has failed to attain its objectives.
Then, Washington might decide to declare a hot war.
But, American generals and admirals know very well that China is not the (former) Soviet Union and that China is much stronger and richer than the Soviet Union. Moreover, there will be few allies including the UK which will join Washington’s shooting war fight.
However, misguided political leaders might make dangerous decisions to venture into a “shooting war with China” to save the honor and the glory of the U.S. At any rate, we must all try to stop the shooting war, because it will destroy what the humanity has built so far.
Thus, neither the U.S. nor China can win the cold war.
The hot war will kill us all.
So, the only way out for Washington is to admit China as co-leader of the world and cooperate for the global security, safety, peace and prosperity.
There are so many areas where they should cooperate and lead including public health, climate change, natural disasters and terrorism. There are so many global enemies that we need the U.S. and China to deal with these enemies.
Can the Hot War happen?
As Admiral Davidson suggests, one possible outcome of the ongoing cold war with China could be armed conflict of the traditional sort. Such an encounter, in turn, could escalate to the nuclear level, resulting in mutual annihilation. A war involving only “conventional” forces would itself undoubtedly be devastating and lead to widespread suffering, not to mention the collapse of the global economy.
-Global Research
The hot war should not happen, but it can.
The possible flash points of shooting war are the South China Sea, the East China Sea, Taiwan, North Korea especially the Dioayu/Senkaku Island. But, none of these flashpoint countries is likely to lead to shooting war with one exception, namely the Dioayu/Senkaku Island.
Major wars are often sparked by allies of major powers. Graham Allison in his Book (pp 34-38) tells us that the Peloponnesian war between Athena and Sparta, started because of the conflict between Corinth, alley of Sparta and Megara, alley of Athena. In fact, for this reason, Allison is saying that Washington’s plan of expanding security alliances is a very risky game.
If there is any Washington’s ally which might ignite war with China, it will be Japan. (Graham Allison, pp.178-179) There are many reasons. But, I may point out two of them. First, Japan is a military might; its Self Defence Force (SDF) is the third most powerful military force in Asia and it will be much more strengthened by Washington, if the Cold War continues. Incidentally, despite the Peace Constitution, the SDF can go to war and assist the U.S. forces. That is, Japan can participate in the Sino-American war.
The second reason is Japan’s ambition to rule the world. For last 70 years, Japan has been ruled by far-right imperial nationalist conservatives who dream of reviving the Japan of the pre-WWII era.
This extreme right-wing of Japanese politics is inspired by the Japan Conference, led by imperialist symbolized by Shinzo Abe and encouraged by Washington, The Sino-American war provides a golden opportunity for Japan to rearm and realize its dream.
There are four psychic elements which might induce Japan to get into a war against China. These elements are the Hak-Ko-Ichi-U, the Tanaka Memorial of 1929, Shintoism and Bushido.
The Hak-ko-Ichi-U means that the single roof (Japan) should rule the eight corners (the world). This psychic was well represented by the Tanaka Memorial which argued that it was Japan’s sacred destiny to conquer Manchuria for raw materials using Korea as the royal high way to Manchuria, then conquer China for slave labour, then the rest of Asia, and then the U.S.(Pearl Harbour).
Shintoism is back and the Japanese accept the Emperor as God. Bushido has returned and the Japanese people seek redemption by dying for the Emperor. True, many of ordinary Japanese are free from such psychic, but they have no power to participate in Japan’s national policy.
What could happen is Japan’s provocation of military confrontation in the Dioayu/Senkaku Island. Japan could be tempted to provoke war against China just like it did in Manchuria in 1930 and Nanking in 1937.
Moreover, Washington might welcome the Sino-Japan war, not only because it can ruin China and but also the fight between Asian powers would weaken Asia facilitating Washington’s control of Asia. This is something the world should be concerned with. To avoid this, the U.S. should dissolve its security alliance with Japan. For that matter, to avoid shooting war, the U.S. should dissolve all its security alliances.
What we need is huge anti-war alliances including Japan, South Korea and other Washington’s alliances. The same goes for Chinese alliances, although it has few alliances. The ultimate mission of the anti-war alliances is to prevent the super powers from getting into war so that humanity can be saved from total annihilation.
What would be the Impact of the Sino-American War on humanity?
There is no point of talking about the consequences of a hot war, because it is bound to lead to nuclear war and the end of human civilization.
So we will not talk about it…
If Nuclear War is avoided…
Even if a shooting war doesn’t erupt, however, a long-term geopolitical war of attrition between the U.S. and China will, in the end, have debilitating and possibly catastrophic consequences for both sides. Take the trade war, for example. If that’s not resolved soon in a positive manner, continuing high U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports will severely curb Chinese economic growth and so weaken the world economy as a whole, punishing every nation on Earth, including this one. High tariffs will also increase costs for American consumers and endanger the prosperity and survival of manyfirms that rely on Chinese raw materials and components.
This new brand of war will also ensure that already sky-high defense expenditures will continue to rise, diverting funds from vital needs like education, health, infrastructure, and the environment. Meanwhile, preparations for a future war with China have already become the number one priority at the Pentagon, crowding out all other considerations. “While we’re focused on ongoing operations,” acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan reportedly told his senior staff on his first day in office this January, “remember China, China, China.”
Perhaps the greatest victim of this ongoing conflict will be planet Earth itself and all the creatures, humans included, who inhabit it. As the world’s top two emitters of climate-altering greenhouse gases, the U.S. and China must work together to halt global warming or all of us are doomed to a hellish future. With a war under way, even a non-shooting one, the chance for such collaboration is essentially zero. The only way to save civilization is for the U.S. and China to declare peace and focus together on human salvation.
-Global Research
What interests us is the consequence of the cold war. One thing sure is that the longer it lasts, greater become its negative impact. The cold war is likely to have the following impacts.
Globalization impact
Political and ideological Impact
Economic Impact
Globalization impact: the world will be de-globalized and decoupled. There will be Washington-led bloc and China-led bloc. There will be regional globalization led by Washington and Beijing.
Political and Ideological Impact: there will be emergence of two political and ideological blocs. The China bloc will have varying types of political regimes including hybrid regimes, while the U.S. bloc will maintain liberal democracy. Washington’s ambition of evangelical propagation of its democracy will be compromised.
Economic Impact: there will be China-led free trade bloc in which member countries’ sovereignty is respected and trade negotiations will allow accommodations for member countries specific needs. On the other hand, there will be Washington-led free trade bloc in which member countries sovereignty is minimized and the trade negotiations are likely to be controlled by large corporations.
It is difficult to estimate the cost of the cold war. The Rand Corporation is reported to suggest that the American GDP will fall by 30% because of the cold war. It could be more than that because of the pronounced interdependence of national economies. One thing sure is that the longer the cold war lasts, the greater will become the cost.
To conclude, we have to stop, at all costs, the Sino-American Cold War which will surely throw humanity into the deep and dark bottom of the Thucydides Trap.
It is not too late for academics, research centers, thin-tanks, social movements, decent media and, above all, people’s organizations at the grassroots to launch anti-cold war movements throughout the world.
So what is the ignition going to be?
Well, I do disagree with the author above. I believe that we NEED to discuss the very real and very strong possibility of a hot war between the USA and China / Russia. After all, that is what the neocon publications and the military-industrial think tanks on “K-street” and Washington DC beltway have all been chattering about these last few years.
We just cannot ignore it.
Pretend that it will go away if we don’t mention it. Like in the article above.
So, seriously, what kinds of “false flags” can we expect to get the American population all hot and bothered and ready to march off and attack China?
Nuclear Detonation on American soil.
No. China is not going to randomly launch a nuclear weapon on a “sacrificial” city in America. They are not idiots. But the American population might believe the narrative, and thus it is a real possibility of a pending false flag. All it takes is an American made nuke detonated on American soil, and then unleash the dogs of propaganda blaming China, then immediately gear-up Congress into a war footing.
Japan
This is the kind of thing that launched World War II with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Middle East War on Terror
As well as the eight wars in the Middle East against terror by the plane attacks on the World Trade Center on 9-11.
Syria
Reasons forWar "States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger." –George W. Bush,
Blaming China for the Global Pandemic and having a “smoking gun”.
You get Americans all upset about some aspect of their life, then you “prove” that it was caused by the Chinese. For instance the inconvenience of the Coronavirus pandemic, is a good target to direct anger towards.
Bosnia
This is one of the more complex reasons to start a war. An event, often beyond anyone's control sparks a breakup of society, and the changes are often uncomfortable. Such as the pandemic. Certain forces use this period of societal upset to initiate war. Such is the case with Bosnia.
In 1990, as Yugoslavia collapsed, the first multiparty elections were held. These elections created nationalist parties intent on perpetuating ethno-national identities and causes. By 1992, war was being imposed through Serbian and Croatian nationalists seeking to expanded into “greater”national territory.
In the coming years the perpetrators of “ethnic cleansing,”displacement, mass atrocity, and genocide, were rewarded by the international community at the Dayton Accords in 1995. Dayton ended the war, but then imposed an ethno-nationalistic portioned Bosnia. A “tycoon class”of nationalist leaders continues to enrich themselves through corruption supported by poverty, fear, insecurity, and the promotion of divisive ethnic identities.
"The hate didn’t exist before; it was artificially installed. It was all so unbelievable that at first, it seemed funny...The emphasis on ethnicity and exclusion was so strong that ethnic hatred became normalized...There is also the ideology of religion and nationality...Never has there been more religion and less faith...National and religious identities are openly used as weapons in the political arsenal.
–Vedran Grahovac, Prijedor"
An assassination of an American Politician inside Washington DC.
This is a very common technique, and there have been numerous Hollywood movies based on this theme.
World War I
This was the kind of event that started World War I. World War 1 started when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated on June 28, 1914. This was the immediate cause but there were a series of events which triggered the war.
Rwanda
It's also the kind of thing that started the civil war in Rwanda. Thegenocidewassparkedbythedeath of the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down above Kigali airporton 6 April 1994.
The need to rescue or save people
Maybe the people in Xinjiang, those “poor Muslims”, or Tibet, or Taiwan, or Hong Kong. So many areas that the United States has been prepping for actionable “color revolution”.
Panama
TheUnited States invades Panama in an attempt to overthrow military dictator Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted intheUnited States on drug trafficking charges and was accused of suppressing democracyinPanamaandendangering U.S. nationals. Noriegas Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) were promptly crushed, forcing the dictator to seek asylum with the Vatican anuncio in Panama City, where he surrendered on January 3, 1990.
When American is attacked by military forces
As unlikely as it appears, there is nothing to prevent the US government to stage a “false flag” to make it look like some military attacked America. That’s what it did to pull America into the war in Vietnam.
The American Civil War
The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.”
Vietnam WarThe false flag that started the Vietnam War There was notorpedo attack in the Gulf of TonkinHowLyndon Johnsonlied us into a catastrophe On this day in 1964, Congress passed the “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution” which began massive escalationof the US war and occupation of Viet Nam.Thefalseflagthatstarted the Vietnam War |
Conclusion
America has decided to wage a war against Asia. There are aspects of both China, Russia and Iran involved. Right now, it is considered to be “trade”, “Hybrid”, “ideological”, “propaganda”, and …
…it’s intended to go hot.
Whether or not it will be limited to conventional weapons is a silly argument. Of course it will go nuclear.
This article looks at the kinds of false flags that are being set in place for the ignition for the war. And while the planners in K-street and the Washington DC beltway are looking towards a very long generational war, I don’t see that their planning will come to fruition. Instead I picture an unholy terror unleashed upon the USA if any action is attempted. And the result will be a very, very bad and nasty war. And no matter what damage that America wrecks China with, the end result will be the complete and utter devastation of America by the combined forces of Russia and China acting in unison.
To pretend otherwise is foolish.
It’s and entirely uncomfortable subject, but fits exactly with the predictions for the Fiuth Turning generational theory.
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A soft landing for America 20 years from now? Don’t bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that by 2025, it could all be over except for the shouting.
The screaming.
The writhing, and…
…the dying.
Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed.
It’s typically a long, long, looonnnggg build up.
And then, something snaps.
And it all unravels…
Like an over-wound spring.
We know this from history: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood quite soon for the United States, ending within the next few years.
It’s all going to go “belly up”…
Economic (Health of the Economy)
Social (Social unrest, and a collapse of norms.)
Military (Attempts at creating large wars.)
Industrial (Jump starting the manufacturing base.)
Technology (Investments in R&D, NPD and innovation.)
Financial (Value of the USD)
The following is from the Kuntsler Blog also known as “Cluster-fuck nation”. He usually have some nice and pointed points, but this is a crown jewel. In this observation he talks about the major miscalculation(s) in economic policy inside the Washington DC beltway and how it will manifest in “heartland America” when the entire “deck of cards” come tumbling down.
This is a full reprint, all credit to the author. Reprinted to fit this venue with only minor editing as necessary.
We will start with this article, and the follow up with a second one, back to back…
Clusterfuck Nation
For your reading pleasure Mondays and Fridays
A nation literally falling apart certainly might want to Build Back Better, but it also might want to consider building back differently, consistent with the signals that reality is sending to humankind these days.
For instance, the signals that the old industrial paradigm is coming to an end, and that the furnishings and accessories of it may not be the ones that humankind actually requires going forward.
Alas, the psychology of previous investment tends to dictate that societies pound their capital — if they still have any —down a rat-hole in the vain and desperate attempt to keep old rackets going.
And this is the essence of Mr. Biden’s infrastructure bill; a colossal confection of government over-reach with its thin cake layers, cloyingly thick “social justice” frosting, and its giant cherry-on-top of drawing on “capital” that doesn’t exist.
The main racket is the ongoing effort to replace a transactional economy of individual enterprise with the managerial state (that attempts to allocate all resources and direct markets).
We’ve seen that movie before.
It beats a path directly to totalitarian tyranny, and that is already sickeningly visible in the pre-production activities for the new movie.
With social media assisting government to set up total control of its citizens lives — actually copying the techniques already operating in China.
Some pieces of the bill are just plain tragic.
Like the effort to prop up mass motoring by switching out electric cars for the old gasoline-powered cars that have ruled the land for a century.
It’s an appealing fantasy, of course…
…but the electric car thing ain’t a’gonna happen.
Not at the scale envisioned, not unless the government plans to buy the electric cars and give them away to everybody, and that’s rather a stretch.
First, the whole mass motoring racket is falling apart more on its financial model than on whether the cars move by gasoline or electricity.
Americans are used to buying cars on installment loans, and, with the middle-class withering away, there are ever-fewer credit-worthy borrowers for those loans (for ever more expensive cars).
Soon, as the debt markets wobble, there will also be even less hallucinated capital (“money”) to loan out to this shrinking pool of borrowers.
Second, the decrepit US electric grid can’t handle the charging needs of such a gigantic electric car fleet (and fixing the grid alone would be a trillion-dollar project).
Third, the manufacturing of electric cars depends on scarce rare mineral resources that are not readily available in the US, but controlled by foreign nations.
Fourth, car-making utterly depends on far-flung international supply lines for parts and electronics.
This is occurring at a time when the integrated global economy is cracking up under the strain of desperate competition for dwindling resources and the ill-will generated by that.
More… There are yet more kinks in the electric car scheme but those are enough.
MM Comments.
Of course he's talking about the Untied States. The rest of the world doesn't really have this problem. In China, for instance, most public transportation is electric, as is a sizable portion of the private automobile market.
Of course, this whole initiative is in the service of preserving a set of living arrangements that is going obsolete…
… namely, suburbia.
The previous investment represented by all the housing subdivisions, commercial highway strips, malls, office parks, and super-highways pretty much drove the American economy since the Second World War.
It’s understandable that we would be desperate to keep it all running.
As well as fix the pieces that are falling apart, because it’s where we put most of our national wealth.
It’s the whole American Dream in one nifty package.
And, it sure seemed like a good idea at the time, in such a big country, with so much cheap land, and all that oil.
But now things have changed and reality is sending us clear signals that we have to live differently.
The effort to oppose reality is apt to be ruinous for us.
A thumping sense of triumph attended the roll-out of the Build Back Better infrastructure bill…
… at least on the Democrats’ side, especially with all the chocolate Easter eggs for “social justice”…
…lodged in the $1.9 trillion basket.
I imagine it will mark the Biden regime’s high point of esprit.
By the time Congress churns through it all, the financial markets will be sending florid distress signals of deepening instability…
And, with Covid lockdowns ending (or even if they resume), warm weather will bring out people angry about one thing or another into the streets.
And a number of pending legal matters — the Derek Chauvin verdict, the Durham investigation, the Hunter Biden case at DOJ, and perhaps the burgeoning and rather sinister new Matt Gaetz melodrama…
… will stir the pot that the American zeitgeist is brewing in.
With plumes of chaos wafting over the land.
By fall, Build Back Better might transmogrify into the ominous question: build back anything?
Clusterfuck Nation
For your reading pleasure Mondays and Fridays
The people pretending to run the world’s financial affairs do.
The more layers of abstract game-playing they add to the existing armatures of unreality they’ve already constructed…
…the more certain it becomes that they will blow up all the support systems…
…support systems of a sunsetting hyper-tech economy that now has no safe lane to continue running in.
Virtually all the big nations are doing this now in desperation.
This is because they don’t understand that the hyper-tech economy is hostage to the deteriorating economics of energy.
Basically fossil fuels, and oil especially.
The macro mega-system can’t grow anymore.
We’re now in the de-growth phase of a dynamic that pulsates through history, as everything in the universe pulsates.
We attempted to compensate for de-growth with debt, borrowing from the future.
But debt only works in the youthful growth phases of economic pulsation, when the prospect of being paid back is statistically favorable.
Now in the elder de-growth phase, the prospect of paying back debts, or even servicing the interest, is statistically dismal.
The amount of racked-up debt worldwide has entered the realm of the laughable.
So, the roughly twenty-year experiment in Central Bank credit magic, as a replacement for true capital formation, has come to its grievous end.
Hence, America under the pretend leadership of Joe Biden ventures into the final act of this melodrama, which will end badly and probably pretty quickly.
They are about to call in the financial four horsemen of apocalypse:
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT),
A “command” economy,
Universal Basic Income (UBI, “helicopter” money for the people), and
the “Build Back Better” infrastructure scheme.
MMT
MMT is the idea that a nation which claims a monopoly on issuing money can “create” new money ad infinitum with no negative consequences.
That is, we can “lend” ourselves money (borrow it into existence) without having to worry about paying it back.
The theory caught on only because that’s what we’ve done for two decades and, so far, it hasn’t destroyed the banking system…
…though debt turned exponential, which is to say ruinous, only recently…
… so we won’t have to stand by long to see how this experiment works out.
Note this: MMT completes the divorce between productive activity and capital formation, that is, prosperity without wealth.
A “command” economy
A “command” economy means that government increasingly attempts to take over economic enterprise.
It does so to replace x-million individual economic choices of freely-acting people in a society with bureaucratic central planning.
MM Comments.
It is usually a complete and absolute failure. The sole lone exception is China, and it really isn't a "command" economy at all. Just a "top driven" one.
UBI
UBI is the primary feature of that because, in a command economy, production is mostly pretend, so you just have to give people money (for nothing).
Remember the old basic operating system of the Soviet Union, stated succinctly as: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.
Got that?
Build Back Better
The idea behind “Build Back Better” is to renovate the infrastructure of a hyper-tech economy that actually no longer exists.
Why?
Because we are in the contraction phase of an historic pulsation or cycle.
It is leaving us with lots of tech and less production, trending toward zero.
Nobody flogging this slogan actually knows what it ought to mean under the circumstances, which is to go with the flow of the reality of this contraction:
To downsize, downscale, and re-localize all our activities to bring them back into sync with actual productivity…
… that is, raising food, making real stuff, and trading it. Again, it’s the energy dynamic, stupid.
To get to that point, we’re going to shed the massive over-burden of financial game-playing that has pretended to represent our economy.
That means stock valuations and bond prices will vaporize along with the derivative activities concocted for trading gainfully in these now-phantom representations of capital.
If that happens sooner rather than later, we won’t even be able to pretend to Build Back Better the interstate highways, the electric grid, airports, and all the other stuff in the “infrastructure” folder.
Indeed, a lot of that would be malinvestment folly now because we’re nearing the end of mass motoring and commercial aviation as we’ve known them.
If we even have electricity twenty-five years from now, it will come from much-reduced grids on a much more regional basis.
The bottom line for all this is that pretty soon every corner of the country will be on its own amid quite a bit of social disorder and financial wreckage.
So, whatever energy you actually can marshal to Build Back Better, save it for your town or your local community.
And remember, all of the attempts by a national government to control these events…
… and coerce its citizens in the service of that…
… will only lead to a more ineffectual and impotent national government that nobody has faith in…
… confirming the fact…
…that you are on your own.
Yikes!
All things end…
Have no doubt: when Washington’s global dominion finally ends, there will be painful daily reminders of what such a loss of power means for Americans in every walk of life.
Even when the American government tries to distract from the collapse by launching a war.
This little quote was written over a decade ago, in 2010, in Salon…
By 2020, according to current plans, the Pentagon will throw a military Hail Mary pass for a dying empire.
It will launch a lethal triple canopy of advanced aerospace robotics that represents Washington's last best hope of retaining global power despite its waning economic influence.
By that year, however, China's global network of communications satellites, backed by the world's most powerful supercomputers, will also be fully operational, providing Beijing with an independent platform for the weaponization of space and a powerful communications system for missile- or cyber-strikes into every quadrant of the globe.
-Salon 2010
As a half-dozen European nations have discovered, imperial decline tends to have a remarkably demoralizing impact on a society…
…regularly bringing at least a generation of economic privation.
As the economy cools, political temperatures rise, often sparking serious domestic unrest.
Available economic, educational, and military data indicate that, when it comes to U.S. global power, negative trends has aggregated rapidly and are likely to reach a critical mass no later than 2025.
The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, is already tattered and fading and by 2025, its eighth decade, and could (very probably) end up being history.
But don’t worry!
Here’s a number of articles that make the point that there is a significant difference between a collapse and a crisis.
And while not explicitly spelled out directly, it is implied that the worst possible thing that might happen is yet another economic crisis, not an economic collapse.
Economic Depressions vs Collapse
To begin with, I think it’s important to differentiate between economic collapse and economic depression.
A depression is a rather normal part of the market cycle.
As Adam Smith points out in Wealth of Nations, these occasionally happen as the market corrects imbalances within itself.
Maybe there’s some form of bubble akin to the Dutch Tulip Bubble of the 1600s where the price of rare tulip bulbs increased to preposterous levels before people lost entire fortunes when the market corrected itself.
Who knew?
The point is that economic depression is rather normal.
Panicked investors withdrew billions from money market accounts where businesses keep cash to fund day-to-day operations.
If withdrawals had gone on for even a week, and if the Fed and the U.S. government had not stepped in to shore up the financial sector, the entire economy would likely have ground to a halt.
Trucks would have stopped rolling.
Grocery stores would have run out of food, and businesses would have been forced to shut down.
That’s how close the U.S. economy came to a real collapse—and how vulnerable it is to another one.
Will the U.S Economy Collapse?
A U.S. economy collapse is unlikely. When necessary, the government can act quickly to avoid a total collapse.
MM Comment
Nonsense. Compare the US Economy with the Chinese economy.
Most of the CCP government debts are infrastructure = investment. If they need cash, they can simply privatised.
China have a lot of high quality SOEs, they not only make money and contributed to government tax revenue, but their stocks can be used by government to fund social services such as 10% of selected SOEs share are used for age care in China without the need to increase tax.
China Economy benefited from government infrastructure and water redirection strategies, as a result there are new growing opportunities to the economy. Government revenues are healthy with big potential to growth further.
So, no worries with the current china debt level. Beside, the CCP does not give tax Payer money to too big to fail private businesses. when they billed out a private business , they took over the ownership. Last year, there is a private bank become state own.
However, Western debts are given to wall street for speculative activities from real estate to stock markets. These businesses don't pay tax, they only bribe the politicians with campaign money, and enrich those most corrupt politicians with speech fees, book deals etc.
The super rich in the West keep taking from the tax payers by bribing the politicians and not giving back to the society.
So sources of western government revenue become narrower, national and household debt keep rising at radicurous speed. these are real debt with no ability to repay.
So western governmen keep taxing the 99% with yearly rising service fees, council rate, all kind of fines. These policies affect the average people buying power, hence affecting the people buying power. Thus, domestic consumption as one of the major pillars of Western GDP contracted, the economy in trouble.
As rich people don't pay tax, the 99% running out of money. As a result, small and medium sized businesses suffered, tax revenue for government reduced. So trump think that trade war is easy to win, he can raise tax from China, but he failed miserably.
US will collapsed once RMB successfully replace the dollar as world trading currency, when the ability to continue print money without inflation in US is gone, US dollar will collapse, economy will collapse.
Hope the above make sense.
Cheers
<redacted>
Demand would outstrip supply of food, gas, and other necessities.
If the collapse affected local governments and utilities, then water and electricity might no longer be available.
A U.S. economic collapse would create global panic.
MM Comment
Most of the world has expected this collapse for decades and have put in place systems to mitigate any American-centrist collapse. Certainly the five-eyes nations of Canada, UK, NZ and Australia will be negatively affected, but the rest of the world will not be so directly affected.
The USA does not own, run or dictate to the world.
Investors would rush to other currencies, such as the yuan, euro, or even gold. It would create not just inflation, but hyperinflation, as the dollar lost value to other currencies.
If you want to understand what life is like during a collapse, think back to the Great Depression. The stock market crashed on Black Thursday. By the following Tuesday, it was down 25%.
Many investors lost their life savings that weekend.
By 1932, one out of four people was unemployed.
Wages for those who still had jobs fell precipitously—manufacturing wages dropped 32% from 1929 to 1932.
U.S. gross domestic product was cut nearly in half.
Thousands of farmers and other unemployed workers moved to California and elsewhere in search of work.
Two-and-a-half million people left the Midwestern Dust Bowl states.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average didn’t rebound to its pre-Crash level until 1954.
MM Comment
Everything in America today is an illusion. The GDP is artificially skewed in favor of the fantastic wealth held by the 1%. Were they to lose 30% of their wealth, the GDP for the nation could possibly drop to a mere tiny fraction of it's value.
When the curtain comes falling down everything that is fake and an illusion becomes clear for the world to see.
Collapse Versus Crisis
An economic crisis is not the same as an economic collapse. As painful as it was, the 2008 financial crisis was not a collapse. Millions of people lost jobs and homes, but basic services were still provided.
Other past financial crises seemed like a collapse at the time, but are barely remembered now.
1970s Stagflation
The OPEC oil embargo and President Richard Nixon’s abolishment of the gold standard triggered double-digit inflation. The government responded to this economic downturn by freezing wages and labor rates to curb inflation.7 The result was a high unemployment rate. Businesses, hampered by low prices, could not afford to keep workers at unprofitable wage rates.
1981 Recession
The Fed raised interest rates in a bid to end double-digit inflation.
That created the worst recession since the Great Depression. President Ronald Reagan cut taxes and increased government spending to end it.
1989 Savings and Loan Crisis
One thousand banks closed after improper real estate investments turned sour. Charles Keating and other Savings & Loan bankers had mis-used bank depositor’s funds. The consequent recession triggered an unemployment rate as high as 7.5%. The government was forced to bail out some banks to the tune of $124 billion.
Post-9/11 Recession
The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 sowed nationwide apprehension and prolonged the 2001 recession—and unemployment of greater than 10%—through 2003. The United States’ response, the War on Terror, has cost the nation $6.4 trillion, and counting.
2008 Financial Crisis
The early warning signs of the 2008 Financial Crisis were rapidly falling housing prices and increasing mortgage defaults in 2006. Left untended, the resulting subprime mortgage crisis, which panicked investors and led to massive bank withdrawals, spread like wildfire across the financial community. The U.S. government had no choice but to bail out “too big to fail” banks and insurance companies, like Bear Stearns and AIG, or face both national and global financial catastrophes.
2020 Recession
It is too soon to tally up the total costs of the 2020 global health crisisCoronavirus pandemic—the crisis is still ongoing. Already we have seen worldwide supply-chain interruptions, heightened volatility and steep losses in financial markets, and sharp slowdowns in the travel and hospitality industries.
How much economic cost should we expect? According to the United Nations’ Conference on Trade and Development, the global economic hit could reduce global growth rates to 0.5% and cost the global economy as much as $2 trillion for 2020.
So what is going to happen?
I am not really all that good in predicting future events. You know, it’s all a very personal event that lies upon your world-line template. But regardless as to what your template map looks like we can make a couple of basic and reasonable statements…
America is deep, deep in debt.
There are no efforts to control this debt, or slow down spending.
This is not sustainable.
Since it is not sustainable, there will come a time when this kind of behavior will end. It might be gradual, or sudden. But it will have to end.
How the nation handles this change in economic policy will depend on may, many factors. Knowing human nature, humans do not like change, and those accustomed to doing things a certain way will have a difficult time adapting.
Gradual Change
If the change is gradual, and those managing the economy are talented, capable and willing…
… the United States economy can contract in a very controlled implosion, will little radical change, and managed in such as way that the United States might experience a simple minor recession.
Significantly, in 2008, the U.S. National Intelligence Council admitted for the first time that America's global power was indeed on a declining trajectory. In one of its periodic futuristic reports, Global Trends 2025, the Council cited "the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way, roughly from West to East" and "without precedent in modern history," as the primary factor in the decline of the "United States' relative strength -- even in the military realm."
Like many in Washington, however, the Council’s analysts anticipated a very long, very soft landing for American global preeminence, and harbored the hope that somehow...
... the U.S. would long "retain unique military capabilities… to project military power globally" for decades to come.
Sure…
What ever you say.
Wrapped in imperial hubris, like Whitehall or Quai d'Orsay before it, the White House still seems to imagine that American decline will be gradual, gentle, and partial. In his State of the Union address last January, President Obama offered the reassurance that "I do not accept second place for the United States of America."
A few days later, Vice President Biden ridiculed the very idea that "we are destined to fulfill [historian Paul] Kennedy's prophecy that we are going to be a great nation that has failed because we lost control of our economy and overextended."
Similarly, writing in the November issue of the establishment journal Foreign Affairs, neo-liberal foreign policy guru Joseph Nye waved away talk of China's economic and military rise, dismissing "misleading metaphors of organic decline" and denying that any deterioration in U.S. global power was underway.
Ordinary Americans, watching their jobs head overseas, have a more realistic view than their cosseted leaders. An opinion poll in August 2010 found that 65 percent of Americans believed the country was now "in a state of decline." Already, Australia and Turkey, traditional U.S. military allies, are using their American-manufactured weapons for joint air and naval maneuvers with China.
Already, America's closest economic partners are backing away from Washington's opposition to China's rigged currency rates. As the president flew back from his Asian tour last month, a gloomy New York Times headline summed the moment up this way: "Obama's Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage, China, Britain and Germany Challenge U.S., Trade Talks With Seoul Fail, Too."
-Salon 2010
Sudden Change
If those in Washington DC, have been living in isolation bubbles, echo chambers, and have selfish, self-interests at heart rather than what is good for the nation, it is highly likely that there could be a very sudden change. Perhaps one that reaches the limits and boundaries of a catastrophe.
There are far too many variables involved to make accurate predictions. But that doesn’t stop people. And you can find these predictions all over the internet.
Viewed historically, the question is not whether the United States will lose its unchallenged global power, but just how precipitous and wrenching the decline will be.
In place of Washington’s wishful thinking, let’s use the National Intelligence Council’s own futuristic methodology.
Here we suggest four realistic scenarios for how, whether with a bang or a whimper, U.S. global power could reach its end in the 2020s (along with four accompanying assessments of just where we are today).
The future scenarios include:
Economic decline,
Oil shock,
Military misadventure, and…
World War III.
While these are hardly the only possibilities when it comes to American decline or even collapse, they offer a window into an onrushing future.
Economic Decline: Scenario 2020
After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2020, as long expected, the U.S. dollar finally loses its special status as the world’s reserve currency.
Hasn't happened... yet. But that is currently in process.
For many reasons, the Chinese authorities will probably someday stop pegging the yuan to a basket of currencies, and shift to a modern inflation-targeting regime under which they allow the exchange rate to fluctuate much more freely, especially against the dollar.
When that happens, expect most of Asia to follow China. In due time, the dollar, currently the anchor currency for roughly two-thirds of world GDP, could lose nearly half its weight.
Considering how much the United States relies on the dollar’s special status – or what then-French Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing famously called America’s “exorbitant privilege” – to fund massive public and private borrowing, the impact of such a shift could be significant.
Suddenly, the cost of imports soars.
This did happen. From the "Trump Tariffs" of 25%, to the costs of shipping in 2021, importing products into the United States is factually much more costly than before.
Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military budget. Under pressure at home and abroad, Washington slowly pulls U.S. forces back from hundreds of overseas bases to a continental perimeter. By now, however, it is far too late.
Did not happen. The United States military instead got much larger.
Faced with a fading superpower incapable of paying the bills, China, India, Iran, Russia, and other powers, great and regional, provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.
True, and in process.
Meanwhile, amid soaring prices, ever-rising unemployment, and a continuing decline in real wages, domestic divisions widen into violent clashes and divisive debates, often over remarkably irrelevant issues.
True and in process.
Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.
Good call. Donald Trump became President, and Biden continues his neocon ambitions.
The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.
Oh, the world is paying attention. It's just that America is viewed as a declining and unstable nation.
Oil Shock: Scenario 2025
The United States remains so dependent upon foreign oil that a few adverse developments in the global energy market in 2025 spark an oil shock.
By comparison, it makes the 1973 oil shock (when prices quadrupled in just months) look like the proverbial molehill.
Angered at the dollar’s plummeting value, OPEC oil ministers, meeting in Riyadh, demand future energy payments in a “basket” of Yen, Yuan, and Euros.
That only hikes the cost of U.S. oil imports further.
At the same moment, while signing a new series of long-term delivery contracts with China, the Saudis stabilize their own foreign exchange reserves by switching to the Yuan.
Meanwhile, China pours countless billions into building a massive trans-Asia pipeline and funding Iran’s exploitation of the world largest percent natural gas field at South Pars in the Persian Gulf.
Concerned that the U.S. Navy might no longer be able to protect the oil tankers traveling from the Persian Gulf to fuel East Asia, a coalition of Tehran, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi form an unexpected new Gulf alliance and affirm that China’s new fleet of swift aircraft carriers will henceforth patrol the Persian Gulf from a base on the Gulf of Oman.
Not happened, and there are no plans for this. What is happening is that China and Iran, with Russia have formed a joint military block.
Under heavy economic pressure, London agrees to cancel the U.S. lease on its Indian Ocean island base of Diego Garcia, while Canberra, pressured by the Chinese, informs Washington that the Seventh Fleet is no longer welcome to use Fremantle as a homeport, effectively evicting the U.S. Navy from the Indian Ocean.
Did not happen. In fact, the United States is pushing for even stronger military presence, and few other nations are enthusiastic about joining the QUAD.
With just a few strokes of the pen and some terse announcements, the “Carter Doctrine,” by which U.S. military power was to eternally protect the Persian Gulf, is laid to rest in 2025. All the elements that long assured the United States limitless supplies of low-cost oil from that region — logistics, exchange rates, and naval power — evaporate. At this point, the U.S. can still cover only an insignificant 12 percent of its energy needs from its nascent alternative energy industry, and remains dependent on imported oil for half of its energy consumption.
Did not happen. Instead, the USA is heavily involved militarily in the entire Middle East region.
The oil shock that follows hits the country like a hurricane, sending prices to startling heights, making travel a staggeringly expensive proposition, putting real wages (which had long been declining) into freefall, and rendering non-competitive whatever American exports remained.
Not happened yet, but 2025 is still four years away.
With thermostats dropping, gas prices climbing through the roof, and dollars flowing overseas in return for costly oil, the American economy is paralyzed. With long-fraying alliances at an end and fiscal pressures mounting, U.S. military forces finally begin a staged withdrawal from their overseas bases.
I would highly doubt it. If anything the last few years has been a nearly insane level of pro-military anti-China, anti-Russia and anti-Iran war-mongering.
Within a few years, the U.S. is functionally bankrupt and the clock is ticking toward midnight on the American Century.
Military Misadventure: Scenario 2014
Counterintuitively, as their power wanes, empires often plunge into ill-advised military misadventures. This phenomenon is known among historians of empire as “micro-militarism” and seems to involve psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the sting of retreat or defeat by occupying new territories, however briefly and catastrophically.
These operations, irrational even from an imperial point of view, often yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the loss of power.
Embattled empires through the ages suffer an arrogance that drives them to plunge ever deeper into military misadventures until defeat becomes debacle.
In 413 BCE, a weakened Athens sent 200 ships to be slaughtered in Sicily.
In 1921, a dying imperial Spain dispatched 20,000 soldiers to be massacred by Berber guerrillas in Morocco.
In 1956, a fading British Empire destroyed its prestige by attacking Suez.
And in 2001 and 2003, the U.S. occupied Afghanistan and invaded Iraq.
With the hubris that marks empires over the millennia, Washington has increased its troops in Afghanistan to 100,000, expanded the war into Pakistan, and extended its commitment to 2014 and beyond, courting disasters large and small in this guerilla-infested, nuclear-armed graveyard of empires.
So irrational, so unpredictable is “micro-militarism” that seemingly fanciful scenarios are soon outdone by actual events. With the U.S. military stretched thin from Somalia to the Philippines and tensions rising in Israel, Iran, and Korea, possible combinations for a disastrous military crisis abroad are multifold.
Washington makes its move, sending in Special Operations forces to seize oil ports in the Persian Gulf. This, in turn, sparks a rash of suicide attacks and the sabotage of pipelines and oil wells. As black clouds billow skyward and diplomats rise at the U.N. to bitterly denounce American actions, commentators worldwide reach back into history to brand this “America’s Suez,” a telling reference to the 1956 debacle that marked the end of the British Empire.
Well things are going on. Most are not reported. There is the enormous Beirut explosion, as well as various other oil related military Mal-adventures.
World War III: Present Situation
In the summer of 2010, military tensions between the U.S. and China began to rise in the western Pacific, once considered an American “lake.” Even a year earlier no one would have predicted such a development. As Washington played upon its alliance with London to appropriate much of Britain’s global power after World War II, so China is now using the profits from its export trade with the U.S. to fund what is likely to become a military challenge to American dominion over the waterways of Asia and the Pacific.
With its growing resources, Beijing is claiming a vast maritime arc from Korea to Indonesia long dominated by the U.S. Navy.
In August, after Washington expressed a “national interest” in the South China Sea and conducted naval exercises there to reinforce that claim, Beijing’s official Global Times responded angrily, saying, “The U.S.-China wrestling match over the South China Sea issue has raised the stakes in deciding who the real future ruler of the planet will be.”
Amid growing tensions, the Pentagon reported that Beijing now holds “the capability to attack… [U.S.] aircraft carriers in the western Pacific Ocean” and target “nuclear forces throughout… the continental United States.” By developing “offensive nuclear, space, and cyber warfare capabilities,”
China seems determined to vie for dominance of what the Pentagon calls “the information spectrum in all dimensions of the modern battlespace.” With ongoing development of the powerful Long March V booster rocket, as well as the launch of two satellites in January 2010 and another in July, for a total of five, Beijing signaled that the country was making rapid strides toward an “independent” network of 35 satellites for global positioning, communications, and reconnaissance capabilities by 2020.
To check China and extend its military position globally, Washington is intent on building a new digital network of air and space robotics, advanced cyberwarfare capabilities, and electronic surveillance. Military planners expect this integrated system to envelop the Earth in a cyber-grid capable of blinding entire armies on the battlefield or taking out a single terrorist in field or favela.
By 2020, if all goes according to plan, the Pentagon will launch a three-tiered shield of space drones — reaching from stratosphere to exosphere, armed with agile missiles, linked by a resilient modular satellite system, and operated through total telescopic surveillance.
Last April, the Pentagon made history. It extended drone operations into the exosphere by quietly launching the X-37B unmanned space shuttle into a low orbit 255 miles above the planet. The X-37B is the first in a new generation of unmanned vehicles that will mark the full weaponization of space, creating an arena for future warfare unlike anything that has gone before.
From 2008 through 2016, American military forces were training to invade islands in the South China Sea, and moneys were spent enlarging military bases in the Pacific.
From 2017 through 2020, it's been war. Mostly "hybrid", but there has been a major biological warfare effort involved against China with 7 strains attacking livestock, and three attacking people. All have failed.
Leaving and resulting a March 2021 Alaskan meeting where the USA told China to "roll over and die", or be destroyed. China responded back with "Fuck you".
World War III: Scenario 2025
The technology of space and cyberwarfare is so new and untested that even the most outlandish scenarios may soon be superseded by a reality still hard to conceive. If we simply employ the sort of scenarios that the Air Force itself used in its 2009 Future Capabilities Game, however, we can gain “a better understanding of how air, space and cyberspace overlap in warfare,” and so begin to imagine how the next world war might actually be fought.
It’s 11:59 p.m. on Thanksgiving Thursday in 2025. While cyber-shoppers pound the portals of Best Buy for deep discounts on the latest home electronics from China, U.S. Air Force technicians at the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) on Maui choke on their coffee as their panoramic screens suddenly blip to black. Thousands of miles away at the U.S. CyberCommand’s operations center in Texas, cyberwarriors soon detect malicious binaries that, though fired anonymously, show the distinctive digital fingerprints of China’s People’s Liberation Army.
The first overt strike is one nobody predicted. Chinese “malware” seizes control of the robotics aboard an unmanned solar-powered U.S. “Vulture” drone as it flies at 70,000 feet over the Tsushima Strait between Korea and Japan. It suddenly fires all the rocket pods beneath its enormous 400-foot wingspan, sending dozens of lethal missiles plunging harmlessly into the Yellow Sea, effectively disarming this formidable weapon.
Determined to fight fire with fire, the White House authorizes a retaliatory strike. Confident that its F-6 “Fractionated, Free-Flying” satellite system is impenetrable, Air Force commanders in California transmit robotic codes to the flotilla of X-37B space drones orbiting 250 miles above the Earth, ordering them to launch their “Triple Terminator” missiles at China’s 35 satellites. Zero response. In near panic, the Air Force launches its Falcon Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle into an arc 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean and then, just 20 minutes later, sends the computer codes to fire missiles at seven Chinese satellites in nearby orbits. The launch codes are suddenly inoperative.
As the Chinese virus spreads uncontrollably through the F-6 satellite architecture, while those second-rate U.S. supercomputers fail to crack the malware’s devilishly complex code, GPS signals crucial to the navigation of U.S. ships and aircraft worldwide are compromised. Carrier fleets begin steaming in circles in the mid-Pacific. Fighter squadrons are grounded. Reaper drones fly aimlessly toward the horizon, crashing when their fuel is exhausted. Suddenly, the United States loses what the U.S. Air Force has long called “the ultimate high ground”: space. Within hours, the military power that had dominated the globe for nearly a century has been defeated in World War III without a single human casualty.
A New World Order?
Even if future events prove duller than these scenarios suggest, every significant trend points toward a far more striking decline in American global power by 2025 than anything Washington now seems to be envisioning.
As allies worldwide begin to realign their policies to take cognizance of rising Asian powers, the cost of maintaining 800 or more overseas military bases will simply become unsustainable…
… finally forcing a staged withdrawal on a still-unwilling Washington.
With both the U.S. and China in a race to weaponize space and cyberspace, tensions between the two powers are bound to rise, making military conflict by 2025 at least feasible, if hardly guaranteed.
Complicating matters even more, the economic, military, and technological trends outlined above will not operate in tidy isolation.
As happened to European empires after World War II, such negative forces will undoubtedly prove synergistic.
They will combine in thoroughly unexpected ways, create crises for which Americans are remarkably unprepared, and threaten to spin the economy into a sudden downward spiral, consigning this country to a generation or more of economic misery.
As U.S. power recedes, the past offers a spectrum of possibilities for a future world order.
At one end of this spectrum, the rise of a new global superpower, however unlikely, cannot be ruled out.
Yet both China and Russia evince self-referential cultures, recondite non-roman scripts, regional defense strategies, and underdeveloped legal systems, denying them key instruments for global dominion. At the moment then, no single superpower seems to be on the horizon likely to succeed the U.S.
Nonsense. As of 2021, Russia, China and Iran have combined for a unified Asia.
In a dark, dystopian version of our global future, a coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral forces like NATO, and an international financial elite could conceivably forge a single, possibly unstable, supra-national nexus that would make it no longer meaningful to speak of national empires at all.
As stated by an American inside of America over ten years ago. Such dated ignorance.
While denationalized corporations and multinational elites would assumedly rule such a world from secure urban enclaves, the multitudes would be relegated to urban and rural wastelands.
In “Planet of Slums,” Mike Davis offers at least a partial vision of such a world from the bottom up. He argues that the billion people already packed into fetid favela-style slums worldwide (rising to two billion by 2030) will make “the ‘feral, failed cities’ of the Third World… the distinctive battlespace of the twenty-first century.”
As darkness settles over some future super-favela, “the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression” as “hornet-like helicopter gun-ships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts… Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions.”
At a midpoint on the spectrum of possible futures, a new global oligopoly might emerge between 2020 and 2040, with rising powers China, Russia, India, and Brazil collaborating with receding powers like Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States to enforce an ad hoc global dominion, akin to the loose alliance of European empires that ruled half of humanity circa 1900.
Another possibility: the rise of regional hegemons in a return to something reminiscent of the international system that operated before modern empires took shape.
In this neo-Westphalian world order, with its endless vistas of micro-violence and unchecked exploitation, each hegemon would dominate its immediate region — Brasilia in South America, Washington in North America, Pretoria in southern Africa, and so on. Space, cyberspace, and the maritime deeps, removed from the control of the former planetary “policeman,” the United States, might even become a new global commons, controlled through an expanded U.N. Security Council or some ad hoc body.
All of these scenarios extrapolate existing trends into the future on the assumption that Americans, blinded by the arrogance of decades of historically unparalleled power, cannot or will not take steps to manage the unchecked erosion of their global position.
If America’s decline is in fact on a 22-year trajectory from 2003 to 2025, then we have already frittered away most of the first decade of that decline with wars that distracted us from long-term problems and, like water tossed onto desert sands, wasted trillions of desperately needed dollars.
Duh. It's pretty fucking obvious.
If only 15 years remain, the odds of frittering them all away still remain high. Congress and the president are now in gridlock; the American system is flooded with corporate money meant to jam up the works; and there is little suggestion that any issues of significance, including our wars, our bloated national security state, our starved education system, and our antiquated energy supplies, will be addressed with sufficient seriousness to assure the sort of soft landing that might maximize our country’s role and prosperity in a changing world.
Yup. Forget about a "soft landing". The psychopaths in Washington DC will have none of that.
Europe’s empires are gone and America’s imperium is going.
It seems increasingly doubtful that the United States will have anything like Britain’s success in shaping a succeeding world order that protects its interests, preserves its prosperity, and bears the imprint of its best values.
This was written a decade ago in 2010.
The “knee jerk” reaction is for America to start a war.
Don’t.
China. Does. Not. Play.
The Oligarchy have their ideas…
Certainly the PTB, and the oligarchy skedaddled to their hidy-holes in remote areas of NZ, Canada, and Europe. So that tells me that the oligarchy believe that a collapse is imminent.
So, taking their lead and some common sense, we can take note and prepare…
As Ayn Rand points out throughout her books (particularly in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal), it is production which is true wealth. The person who produces, whether that be food, shoes, holsters, or some other form of tangible good, is the one who holds true wealth. They’re adding something to society, creating something that others need or want.
In the same spirit, I would argue that the person who can provide a tangible service as well also has true wealth. An electrician who can provide light to a building, a plumber who can ensure personal hygiene is a diminished issue, and a doctor who can repair a wound are all examples of people who may not necessarily produce tangible goods (such as in the case of farmers, leatherworkers, and blacksmiths), but they still are able to produce a service that is both wanted and needed.
So, one of the first things that we can do to prepare ourselves for economic collapse is to become capable of producing.
This can be done in two primary ways: by the learning of a new skill or by getting into the business of producing merchandise.
Learning a New Skill
This is part of the reason that I went and became a locksmith. I have more than one job but wanted to have something of a backup plan perchance something should happen to my primary income. Tradesmen are both necessary and (typically) in short supply. Learning a concrete skill seemed to be something that would provide a fairly decent insurance policy should I need to fall back on something else. I’m glad I did, too. We’re a ‘key’ business.
Whether it be plumbing, carpentry, farrier work, or any other kind of trade for that matter, the point is that becoming proficient in a trade is to make yourself proficient in something that is likely to always be necessary. To look at a rather morbid example of such, we can analyze what the Germans did to the Jews throughout the Holocaust. Whether you are reading Schindler’s List, Maus, or The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz, you can see that it was the Jews who knew a trade such as metal polishing, mechanical work, or machining were (at least for a while) kept alive. (Of course, I’m by no means saying that pianists, teachers, and shopkeepers had no value.)
Learning to Produce Products
The second aspect would be investment in a particular merchandise. It involves producing products, starting a side business of some sort, perhaps. True, this often requires increasing one’s knowledge in a particular field, but there are some regions where it is simply the investment that allows a man to produce. As the saying goes, it takes money to make money.
This is where a shopkeeper would fit in. It is because such a man has invested capital into supplies that he is able to produce wealth for himself. Post-economic collapse though, which supplies will help one to produce wealth, however? Well, that leads me to the next topic: bartering.
Barter Society
I think that one of the first things that people need to realize when it comes to economic collapse is that things revert to a BARTER society. Look throughout history, and you’ll see that this is the case. The world doesn’t go to pot and a day later people are walking around and trading gold coins with one another. (I believe Joe Nobody illustrates this point rather well in his Holding Their Own series).
No, people start with trading goods and services for other needed/desired goods and services. Greece proved this with their recent economic collapse within the past five years or so. People traded eggs, milk, and meat for what they needed. I think it’s important to note that the farmer – a producer – was the one that was able to provide this for people as well. HE had true wealth throughout the collapse.
Again, in Venezuela we saw the same thing. People resorted to trading bananas for haircuts. The FIRST thing that becomes of value during an economic collapse is goods and services. True, there will be a very short window in which cash is king until people realize that the paper they have trusted all those years is now truly worthless in every sense of the word, but that window is short.
Barterable Goods and Services
So, after the brief cash window closes, after your world resorts to barter, the question becomes: “Okay, so what do I barter with? How do I get the things that my family needs?”
Regarding goods, I believe that the following is a good list to begin with. These are the things that people are going to need, and that are going to hold intrinsic value post-economic collapse:
Water – Particularly water bottles. These are readily portable, and not so value dense as to be unpractical for trade.
Water Filters – The majority of Americans have less than 3 days of food in their home. That includes water. If people can’t afford their electric bill, post-economic collapse, they are going to need access to safe water, and a water filter provides that.
Ammo– I truly believe that this will be one of the most practical and widely accepted forms of currency. It’s been used before as a currency, and it’ll be used again.
Guns– Value-dense, but there are going to be people who want them to protect their families from post-collapse violence. The demand for guns skyrocketed this year thanks to the riots and government action. What do you think the demand will look like post-collapse?
Food – There will always be a need for food, and – as witnessed by food bank lines – one of the first indicators of economic downturns.
Diapers – Parents go through thousands of these per year and will not have an adequate supply for their kids post-collapse. I believe reusable cloth diapers will be important.
Body Armor – Value-dense, but people will want it. There are record sales of it this year, and that desire will continue in a violent, post-collapse economy.
Coffee – It creates an addiction, and the withdrawal effects SUCK. People are going to want coffee, and there are ways to store it for a long time.
Boots – There will be an increase in the amount of walking the average man does thanks to the unavailability of gasoline. Shoes will wear out and need to be replaced.
Coats – Clothing wears out, new people are always being created, people constantly change size, and people always need it.
Gloves– There will be an increase in outdoor work, and gloves wear out.
Alcohol – Another thing that mankind can’t seem to get enough of. I just wouldn’t broadcast how much of this stuff that you have. People kill for it.
Tobacco – Another addiction that I wouldn’t broadcast you have a lot of. Cigarettes were routinely used as currency among POWs in WW2, and still are used in prisons throughout the world as currency.
Baby Formula – If breastfeeding is no longer an option, people are going to need formula to feed their babies. Parents WILL feed their babies, and there will be a dire need for such. Once again, not something I would advertise that I have a stockpile of.
Gasoline – This will always be needed for vehicles and generators.
Salt – Needed for meat storage since it is very unlikely that people will have access to constant electricity for refrigeration.
Medical Supplies – Crutches, slings, gauze, various first aid equipment and more will be in short supply. People always hurt themselves, and very few of much stored for their own first aid.
Medicine – There will always be a need for medication.
Spare Gun Parts – Guns break, and few have spare parts stored.
Condoms – People are going to realize that now is probably not the best time to get pregnant. If you staple three of them together and sell them in multi-packs, you can create a market for your baby formula as well! (I’m kidding, I’m kidding.)
Eye Glasses – Maybe it’s difficult to get replacement glasses, but reading glasses can be bought in bulk cheaply. It’s one of the most difficult things to get in prison, as the “state issue” glasses make you look like a retired mob boss.
Holsters – The thousands of people who bought pistols to keep in their nightstand will come to realize that they need a way to carry their weapon around with them. Things will be too dangerous to do otherwise, and many forget to buy a holster ahead of time.
When it comes to services, these are the skills that I believe will be in great demand post-economic collapse. It would be wise to learn at least some degree of proficiency in one of them.
Farming – Food production will be vital, and the man with beehives, fields, a garden, chickens, or dairy animals will be able to produce an item that people need on a daily basis.
Ranching – Much different than farming. Whether you know how to manage cattle for somebody else, or have the knowledge to raise them of your own accord, cattle, sheep, goats, and so on are going to need to be cared for to provide meat, leather, hides, and more for people.
Mechanical Work – Vehicles, generators, and more will break down and people will need them to be fixed.
Electrical Work – Wiring solar, pumps for wells, and more will always be needed.
Machining – It is likely that there will still be factories producing, and machinists will be needed for such.
Gunsmithing – Accidents happen, and few trust their own abilities to fix a firearm. Gunsmiths will be needed for such events.
Leatherwork – Primarily for holsters, gun straps, and clothing.
Medical Work – There will be a dire need for such workers post-economic collapse. People will be unable to afford their medications, or regular healthcare services, and thus there will be a drastic increase in acute conditions. Medical workers will be needed to address such, even if it is on the individual barter basis.
Protection – Herds, businesses, neighborhoods, and residences are going to want permanent protection, and will be willing to hire experienced armed men to do so. Knowing how to patrol, set up a perimeter, and dispose of threats will be in demand.
Baking – Knowledge of how to make bread will allow you to produce an item that everyone will need and want post-collapse.
Textile Creation – Whether this comes in the form of knitting, crocheting, tailoring, or so on, there will be a need for items of cloth as clothing gradually wears out, is lost, soiled, or stolen.
Keep in mind that all the above are general lists. Undoubtedly, you will be able to think of both goods and services that will have post-economic collapse value that are not included above. These are simply given to get your mind thinking about some sure-fire ways to be able to barter for what you need in the event of an economic collapse.
What About Precious Metals?
There are two reasons gold and silver have been omitted:
First, the use of precious metals doesn’t seem to come into common use until well after the period of barter transactions.
Second, I believe that precious metals are much more important for wealth evacuation. Let’s take a look at both of these in more detail.
To begin with, seldom throughout history do we see precious metals instantly being reverted to as currency post-economic collapse. Why? You can’t eat them, you can’t drink them, and few understand their inherent value (ask a friend what the current price of gold is to find see). Even fewer can tell if the gold/silver that you are offering them is the real deal or a fake.
Stocking precious metals is now how to survive an economic collapse. People don’t want gold and silver after an economic collapse. They want to be able to feed their families. Gold and silver will not be a readily used means of exchange in such an event.
To further complicate matters, gold is incredibly value dense. As of this writing, gold is a little over $2000 an ounce. That’s a lot of value wrapped up in that little coin. If you need ammunition, and go to buy it from some small-time reloader, do you think he’ll be able to honor the equivalent of an ounce of gold’s worth of ammo? Odds are he won’t even have that much in stock. If we really want to examine the issue, I think that silver would be a better form of currency, precious-metals wise.
Silver is currently around $25/ounce. That’s a much more useable value amount on a daily basis. (If you want to read more, read about the best silver for preppers.) However, what we see throughout history is the reversion to barter, not to the gold standard.
Gold Exception – Wealth Evacuation
If you’ve got to get the heck out of somewhere, and fast, then I believe that gold is where it’s at. Silver is too bulky. A pocket full of gold coins would allow you to “start fresh” somewhere a bit more stable (if you can find such a place). Shoot, we can even look at the US post-Civil War here. Southern money was worth nothing after the war. However, those with gold and silver were able to have something with inherent value that would be redeemable for the new currency.
Again, we can look to the German Jews of the late 1930s. This was a very scary time to be a Jew in Europe. The persecution was very real, and things were heating up. The man who was able to sew gold coins up into the hem of his jacket, and get the heck out of Dodge ASAP was able to arrive at a new and politically friendlier climate with at least some of his wealth intact and under the radar. Baggage is lost and stolen. Clothing seldom is. Thus, I believe that one of the best purposes of gold is wealth evacuation.
How to Survive an Economic Collapse Summary
If you had asked people a year ago if they ever thought the entire world would enact lockdowns and throw refuse people for not wearing a surgical mask at Kroger, they would have said you were nuts. Yet, here we are. Why is it so improbable to think an economic collapse couldn’t be next? All of the warning signs are there? Is it foolish to just ignore them, and pretend that things will always continue on as “normal”?
I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.
Conclusion
So, let’s simplify things.
The statists argue that nothing really bad will happen in the future. At worst will be a recession, but Washington DC will have everything under control.
The “doom and gloomers” are forecasting a complete melt-down of the American society, and it will happen regardless of an American involvement in World War III.
Preppers are fearful for the worst of the worst.
Fourth Turning followers are also fearful for the worst of the worst.
Media Shrills are mindless automatons. They just regurgitate their programming.
Sheeple are oblivious. They know that things are going to shit, but they believe what ever they read. The the “news” says that everything is under control.
Neocons believe that everything will be fixed and turn around once the USA wins World War III.
So what is going to happen?
I cannot tell you all because everyone’s future is different. We all have our own MWI topography maps, and our futures depend on our thoughts, and affirmations.
Would it be too strange for me to allude that the members of each of the groups above will have their own futures play out exactly as their thoughts and actions dictate…
…Yup. That is what it’s gonna be (more or less).
No one is going to be unscathed. We will all experience changes. It’s just that the magnitude of the changes will differ from person to person. The best advice that I can give is to make your immediate environment safe, secure and as stable as possible.
There is no way to predict what will happen for the vast bulk of humanity. All you can do is prepare for your own family and your own region.
The best way to prepare is to be prudent. Be cautious. Be positive, and conduct prayer affirmations that include a GENEROUS listing of affirmations that describe safety and isolation from any looming catastrophes as a result of American mismanagement, evil behaviors, or insanity of one level or the other.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
Here’s a nice charming story. I guess it is a bit dated, but the hopefulness of the 1960’s shines through. Lovely.
THE END OF THE BEGINNING
Ray Bradbury
He stopped the lawn mower in the middie of the yard, because he felt that the
sun at just that moment had gone down and the stars come out. The fresh-cut
grass that had showered his face and body died soft!y away. Yes, the stars were
there, faint at first, but brightening in the clear desert sky. He heard the
porch screen door tap shut and felt his wife watching him as he watched the
night.
“Almost time,” she said.
He nodded; he did not have to check his watch. In the passing moments he felt
very old, then very young, very cold, then very warm, now this, now that.
Suddenly he was miles away. He was his own son talking steadily, moving briskly
to cover his pounding heart and the resurgent panics as he felt himself slip
into fresh uniform, check food supplies, oxygen flasks, pressure helmet,
space-suiting, and turn as every man on earth tonight turned, to gaze at the
swiftly filling sky.
Then, quickly, he was back, once more the father of the son, hands gripped to
the lawn-mower handle. His wife called, “Come sit on the porch.”
“I’ve got to keep busy!”
She came down the steps and across the lawn. “Don’t worry about Robert; he’ll be
all right.”
“But it’s all so new,” he heard himself say. “It’s never been done before. Think
of it – a manned rocket going up tonight to build the first space station. Good
lord, it can’t be done, it doesn’t exist, there’s no rocket, no proving ground,
no take-off time, no technicians. For that matter, I don’t even have a son named
Bob. The whole thing’s too much for me!”
“Then what are you doing out here, staring?”
He shook his head. “Well, late this morning, walking to the office, I heard
someone laugh out loud. It shocked me, so I froze in the middle of the street.
It was me, laughing! Why? Because finally I really knew what Bob was going to do tonight; at last I believed it. Holy is a word I never use, but that’s how I
felt stranded in all that traffic. Then, middle of the afternoon I caught myself
humming. You know the song. ‘A wheel in a wheel. Way in the middle of the air.’
I laughed again. The space station, of course, I thought. The big wheel with
hollow spokes where Bob’ll live six or eight months, then get along to the moon.
Walking home, I remembered more of the song. ‘Little wheel run by faith, Big
wheel run by the grace of God.’ I wanted to jump, yell, and flame-out myself!”
His wife touched his arm. “If we stay out here, let’s at least be comfortable.”
They placed two wicker rockers in the center of the lawn and sat quietly as the
stars dissolved out of darkness in pale crushings of rock salt strewn from
horizon to horizon.
“Why,” said his wife, at last, “it’s like waiting for the fireworks at Sisley
Field every year.”
“Bigger crowd tonight . . .”
“I keep thinking – a billion people watching the sky right now, their mouths all
open at the same time.”
They waited, feeling the earth move under their chairs.
“What time is it now?”
“Eleven minutes to eight.”
“You’re always right; there must be a clock in your head.”
“I can’t be wrong tonight. I’ll be able to tell you one second before they blast
off. Look! The ten-minute warning!”
On the western sky they saw four crimson flares open out, float shimmering down the wind above the desert, then sink silently to the extinguishing earth.
In the new darkness the husband and wife did not rock in their chairs.
After a while he said, “Eight minutes.” A pause. “Seven minutes.” What seemed a
much longer pause. “Six . . .”
His wife, her head back, studied the stars immediately above her and murmured,
“Why?” She closed her eyes. “Why the rockets, why tonight? Why all this? I’d
like to know.”
He examined her face, pale in the vast powdering light of the Milky Way. He felt
the stirring of an answer, but let his wife continue.
“I mean it’s not that old thing again, is it, when people asked why men climbed
Mt. Everest and they said, ‘Because it’s there’? I never understood. That was no
answer to me.”
Five minutes, he thought. Time ticking . . . his wrist watch . . . a wheel in a
wheel . . . little wheel run by . . . big wheel run by . . . way in the middle
of . . . four minutes! . . . The men snug in the rocket by now, the hive, the
control board flickering with light.
His lips moved.
“All I know is it’s really the end of the beginning. The Stone Age, Bronze Age,
Iron Age; from now on we’ll lump all those together under one big name for when we walked on Earth and heard the birds at morning and cried with envy. Maybe we’ll call it the Earth Age, or maybe the Age of Gravity. Millions of years we fought gravity. When we were amoebas and fish we struggled to get out of the sea without gravity crushing us. Once safe on the shore we fought to stand upright without gravity breaking our new invention, the spine, tried to walk without stumbling, run without falling. A billion years Gravity kept us home, mocked us with wind and clouds, cabbage moths and locusts. That’s what’s so god-awful big about tonight . . . it’s the end of old man Gravity and the age we’ll remember him by, for once and all. I don’t know where they’ll divide the ages, at the Persians, who dreamt of flying carpets, or the Chinese, who all unknowing
celebrated birthdays and New Years with strung ladyfingers and high skyrockets,
or some minute, some incredible second the next hour. But we’re in at the end of
a billion years trying, the end of something long and to us humans, anyway,
honorable.”
Three minutes . . . two minutes fifty-nine seconds . . . two minutes fifty-eight
seconds . . .
“But,” said his wife, “I still don’t know why.”
Two minutes, he thought. Ready? Ready? Ready? The far radio voice calling.
Ready! Ready! Ready! The quick, faint replies from the humming rocket. Check!
Check! Check!
Tonight, he thought, even if we fail with this first, we’ll send a second and a
third ship and move on out to all the planets and later, all the stars. We’ll
just keep going until the big words like immortal and forever take on meaning.
Big words, yes, that’s what we want. Continuity. Since our tongues first moved
in our mouths we’ve asked, What does it all mean? No other question made sense, with death breathing down our necks. But just let us settle in on ten thousand worlds spinning around ten thousand alien suns and the question will fade away. Man will be endless and infinite, even as space is endless and infinite. Man will go on, as space goes on, forever. Individuals will die as always, but our
history will reach as far as we’ll ever need to see into the future, and with
the knowledge of our survival for all time to come, we’ll know security and thus
the answer we’ve always searched for. Gifted with life, the least we can do is
preserve and pass on the gift to infinity. That’s a goal worth shooting for.
The wicker chairs whispered ever so softly on the grass.
One minute.
“One minute,” he said aloud.
“Oh!” His wife moved suddenly to seize his hands. “I hope that Bob . . .”
“He’ll be all right!”
“Oh, God, take care . . .”
Thirty seconds.
“Watch now.”
Fifteen, ten, five . . .
“Watch!”
Four, three, two, one.
“There! There! Oh, there, there!”
They both cried out. They both stood. The chairs toppled back, fell flat on the
lawn. The man and his wife swayed, their hands struggled to find each other,
grip, hold. They saw the brightening color in the sky and, ten seconds later,
the great uprising comet burn the air, put out the stars, and rush away in fire
flight to become another star in the returning profusion of the Milky Way. The
man and wife held each other as if they had stumbled on the rim of an incredible
cliff that faced an abyss so deep and dark there seemed no end to it. Staring
up, they heard themselves sobbing and crying. Only after a long time were they
able to speak.
“It got away, it did, didn’t it?”
“Yes . . .”
“It’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Yes . . . yes . . .”
“It didn’t fall back . . .?”
“No, no, it’s all right, Bob’s all right, it’s all right.”
They stood away from each other at last.
He touched his face with his hand and looked at his wet fingers. “I’ll be
damned,” he said, “I’ll be damned.”
They waited another five and then ten minutes until the darkness in their heads,
the retina, ached with a million specks of fiery salt. Then they had to close
their eyes.
“Well,” she said, “now let’s go in.”
He could not move. Only his hand reached a long way out by itself to find the
lawn-mower handle. He saw what his hand had done and said, “There’s just a
little more to do . . .”
“But you can’t see.”
“Well enough,” he said. “I must finish this. Then we’ll sit on the porch awhile
before we turn in.”
He helped her put the chairs on the porch and sat her down and then walked back out to put his hands on the guide bar of the lawn mower. The lawn mower. A wheel in a wheel. A simple machine which you held in your bands, which you sent on ahead with a rush and a clatter while you walked behind with your quiet
philosophy. Racket, followed by warm silence. Whirling wheel, then soft footfall
of thought.
I’m a billion years old, he told himself; I’m one minute old. I’m one inch, no,
ten thousand miles, tall. I look down and can’t see my feet they’re so far off
and gone away below.
He moved the lawn mower. The grass showering up fell softly around him; he
relished and savored it and felt that he was all mankind bathing at last in the
fresh waters of the fountain of youth.
Thus bathed, he remembered the song again about the wheels and the faith and the grace of God being way up there in the middle of the sky where that single star, among a million motionless stars, dared to move and keep on moving.
Then he finished cutting the grass.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Throughout history, nations rise when there is righteous leadership that cared for its citizens' welfare and do the greater good. When they are corrupt and self-serving, those nations fall. Learn from history because we live in a world governed by cause and effect. History will repeat itself.
-Tom Tan
Imagine that. A nation decides to adapt to the people instead of legislating behaviors for them to follow. I know, I know, it’s a long way to go. But to hear that this is happening in the United States is absolutely astounding. It really is.
Wow!
Good stuff!
Great.
It’s about time.
It’s a new world
Yes it is.
I see the global pandemic starting a trend. Actually a series of trends. One of which would be a severely curtailed movement of people across national borders. While others involve a decrease in the use of airlines and planes to go from place to place. You will see these venues downsize.
Just like American malls have down-scaled due to the loss of the American middle class.
the world is changing. you can see it everywhere.
Here’s a scanning robot that I encountered at the mall when I was out getting some groceries. (We go to the mall for fun, we really don’t need to. The delivery services of Er-le-ma and Kangaroo are quite functional.) He said a cheery “Ni Hao!” as I walked by.
It’s a new world out there.
.
But you all have got to get the stupid “elected officials” out of Washington DC and start working together to help Americans. All this finger pointing, first to Russia and then to China is just useless and very counter productive. Nothing good will come of it. You have to look inside and address the problems there.
Why is “democracy” so valuable?
It’s heavily promoted (don’t you know) that one-person, one-vote system is the pinnacle of “freedom” and “liberty” in the world. Which is rather strange as the founders of the United States said the absolute opposite.
And people are looking at these various systems of governance with a keen eye. Maybe there needs to be some changes they wonder…
Daniel Bell has put forward his views in favor of China's political meritocracy... against the one person one vote (Western Democracy model) as a mode of selection for political leaders. He has done this in two books.
The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy
Princeton University Press, 2015. ISBN 9781400865505.Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University and professor at Tsinghua University (Schwarzman College and Department of Philosophy). He was born in Montreal, educated at McGill and Oxford, has taught in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, and has held research fellowships at Princeton's University Center for Human Values, Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences and Hebrew University's Department of Political Science.
Here:
https://youtu.be/e63ro_suARA
If you are fat and overweight, you change your diet, go to a doctor, exercise more, and monitor your vitals. You do not point at a thin and healthy person and blame them for your problems. Nothing positive or good will come out of it.
Speaking about blaming China…
Pause in WeChat, TikTok ban a positive signal for China-US ties: analysts
The Americans were going to ban WeChat and TikTok from the USA. Then they realized many of their businesses - specially the precious petite bourgeois "small businesses" - are only profitable with WeChat, while a whole sector of the "influencers" business only existed (and prospered) because of TikTok (the same way many glorified salesmen only exist in YouTube).
My bet is, if they can't outright expropriate WeChat and TikTok (Trump tried to expropriate TikTok, forcing it to include their algorithm and source code in the forced selling of their American branch of the business, essentially creating a second, American clone of the company), the Americans will simply let this legal aberration to slowly die and fade into oblivion.
China shows zero tolerance for fake news by banning BBC World News
Propaganda is not information. Fake news is not press. Lies are not speech. Therefore, the BBC is not press and is not speech.
The USA's response was hilarious. It basically stated that, because China has an oppressive system and the West has a free system (because of reasons), China is not entitled to ban Western news outlets, while the West is entitled to ban Chinese newspapers at will. Typical case of infantile "I'm better than you" rant.
Chinese consumption unabated on Spring Festival Eve despite 'stay put' policy
After months of double digit cases, Mainland China finally zeroed new cases and is holding its Spring Festival. Meanwhile, the self-governed province of Taiwan cancelled its Spring Festival after eight consecutive months of (officially) zero new cases and just some 20 cases in January (12 of which happened in a cluster, a hospital). Weird, somebody is cooking the books here...
UK economy hit by record slump in 2020 but double-dip recession avoided
The UK's economy fell double the expected - but at least it avoided a double-dip recession!
Why Japan Inc can’t and won’t quit China
Welcome to the world of capitalism, Mr. Pesek.
-Posted by: vk | Feb 12 2021 12:18 utc | 72
It’s actually pretty bad.
It’s sort of like this…
It’s the way of losers.
To blame others for things that you yourself cause. And yet I find it difficult to accept that America is populated with losers. Sure there are evil people in government, and dregs of society shopping at Wal-mart, but certainly decent people still exist, don’t you think?
America is a real mess
Tax freedom day this year fell on Aug. 12. That’s how long it now takes for the middle-class worker to fulfill his “obligation” to the leviathan. The Ponzi scheme that is our fiat money system is insatiable. It inflates away the savings and investments of Main Street America.
Americans need some protection.
.
While the middle-class struggles, the entitlement class grows. High unemployment (who can even count the unemployed at this point), directly caused by government lockdown policies, pushes more people out of the middle class and into the parasite class. One in five American children now lives in poverty, according to a report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
But the parasites live well off the producers. They get “free” housing, “free” food, “free” cable television, “free” cell phones. Their kids eat “free” at school (meals are still handed out at schools, even in lockdown). These “entitlements,” along with ever-extended long-term unemployment benefits, become so attractive that the incentive to work is suppressed.
The workers look with disdain on the parasites. The parasites look with envy on the workers, wanting not their jobs but what they have. Recent riots in Great Britain demonstrate what happens when the parasites decide they want more.
Meanwhile, even the working class is at war with one another. This is encouraged by the elites, but the current Administration has doubled down. The thugocracy of the Labor Unions terrorize non-union workers and companies large and small.
. In America, everyone is at war with each other. America should be offering a helping hand to others in need. Not trying to fight each other.
.
Tea Party members, at least those who gathered in 2009 and much of 2010 before the Republican Party began to co-opt the movement, were blue collar and white collar, owners of small businesses, retirees, former military, salt-of-the-earth people from all political spectrums who would not support toppling foreign regimes, making war on countries that have not attacked us “for democracy,” or perpetual wars.
And while they indicated they are fed up with the status quo, Tea Party rallies were peaceful and orderly gatherings: Americans engaging in their right to petition government.
Now? Capitol protestors are “terrorists.” Right wing, left wing? Republican, Democrat? Engage in your Two Minutes Hate. The lamestream media talking heads are proud.
The elites love war abroad and at home. It distracts the masses from government’s ongoing theft and manipulation. Anger with one another allows them to continue their looting. It promotes threats and violence, which allows them to further clamp down on freedom.
Endless wars, abroad and at home, equal totalitarianism. It’s totalitarianism under the sweet-sounding name of “democracy“.
American Police State. Domestic arrest within a military empire. What would the Founders of the United States think of this? Do you think that they would approve?
.
Lest you think this is not the case, ABC News reports that …
"The Pentagon will deploy more than 1,100 troops to five vaccination centers in what will be the first wave of increased military support for the White House campaign to get more Americans inoculated against COVID-19."
You all think that America isn’t a Oligarchy-run Military Empire?
We need some angels to intervene and set things right.
Angels.
.
The American cult of the individual denies not just community but the very idea of society. No one owes anything to anyone. All must be prepared to fight for everything: education, shelter, food, medical care. What every prosperous and successful democracy deems to be fundamental rights — universal health care, equal access to quality public education, a social safety net for the weak, elderly, and infirmed — America dismisses as socialist indulgences, as if so many signs of weakness.
How can the rest of the world expect America to lead on global threats — climate change, the extinction crisis, pandemics — when the country no longer has a sense of benign purpose, or collective well-being, even within its own national community? Flag-wrapped patriotism is no substitute for compassion; anger and hostility no match for love. Those who flock to beaches, bars, and political rallies, putting their fellow citizens at risk, are not exercising freedom; they are displaying, as one commentator has noted, the weakness of a people who lack both the stoicism to endure the pandemic and the fortitude to defeat it.
Let’s get on a more positive note. And let’s start talking about rebuilding America into something better.
The People the Suburbs Were Built for Are Gone
A new book documents the “retrofitting” of obsolete suburban malls, box stores, office parks, parking lots, motels, and more. by Shayla Love written on January 22, 2021, at 1:00am. Edited to fit this venue. All credit to the author.
Last summer, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, co-bylined an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal promising to “protect America’s suburbs,” describing how they reversed policies that would allow for the creation of denser living structures in areas zoned only for single-family homes.Advertisement
“America’s suburbs are a shining example of the American Dream, where people can live in their own homes, in safe, pleasant neighborhoods,” they wrote.
But the suburbs, in the sense of the idyllic American pastoral Trump and Carson referenced, have been changing for some time—not necessarily the physical homes, stores, roads, and offices that populate them, but the people who live there, along with their needs and desires. Previous mainstays of suburban life are now myths: that the majority of people own their homes; that the suburbs are havens for the middle class; or that the bulk of people are young families who value privacy over urban amenities like communal spaces, walkability, and mixed-use properties.
This mismatch has led to a phenomenon called “suburban retrofitting,” as documented by June Williamson, an associate professor of architecture at the City College of New York, and Ellen Dunham-Jones, a professor of architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. They have a new book out this week: Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges.
Welcome to Metropica, a Supposed City of the Future
Allie Conti
Since the 1990s, Williamson and Dunham-Jones have been watching the suburbs evolve. They have found that much of the suburban sprawl of the 20th century was built to serve a very different population than the one that exists now, and so preserving what the suburbs once were doesn’t make sense.
Their book describes 32 recent instances in which suburban structures have been transformed into something new. Many of the cases in Williamson and Dunham-Jones first book from 2011 on the same topic were focused on underused parking lots being transformed into mixed-use spaces. But in this new book, the retrofitting projects have become more ambitious, as cities and towns turn old box stores, malls, motels, or office parks into places for people to live, work, eat, play, exercise, go to the doctor, or even watch Mexican wrestling.Advertisement
They have found that when the suburbs are retrofitted, they can take on an astonishing array of modern issues: car dependency, public health, supporting aging people, helping people compete for jobs, creating water and energy resilience, and helping with social equity and justice.
Motherboard talked with Williamson and Dunham-Jones about why and how we should retrofit the suburbs, and whether or not the COVID-19 has made the suburbs appealing again, or instead accelerated the desire to retrofit the burbs.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Motherboard: How do you define the suburbs—a slippery term with no concrete definition? You write in the book that you define something as suburban based on its “suburban form," not necessarily on location or city lines—what do you mean by that?
June Williamson: We’re architects and urban designers and so we are focused on the built environment. That means that when we’re looking at places, generally, that have been built out in the second half of the 20th century to be car dependent, not walkable, and have comparatively lower density.
Ellen Dunham-Jones: Similarly, you can look at the street networks. If you’ve got a grid, more or less, with small, walkable-sized blocks, that’s urban form. If you have a highway leading off into cul de sacs, that’s suburban form, which is a more treelike kind of pattern.
JW: That kind of development certainly characterizes most of the peripheral areas around the older urban cores in Northern American cities. But it can also be found within municipal boundaries of cities. We advocate for an erosion of oppositional thinking that you’re either in the city or the suburbs. When you look at a larger metropolitan area, suburban form can also be found near the center in need of retrofitting.
You argue that many of these suburban forms are obsolete today because they don't fit the needs of the people who live there now. Can you walk me through some of the major demographic changes that have led to these suburban forms becoming obsolete?
EDJ: One of the biggest shifts is that the U.S. now is a majority of one to two person households. And yet, the majority of land within regional urban boundaries is zoned for single-family houses. That already is something of a mismatch.
The expectation going forward is that something like 80 percent of new households that will form over the next 15 years will be these one to two person households. A lot of them would prefer an apartment or a condo—smaller units.Advertisement
Plus you have the aging of the society, that’s the other really big piece. Especially in the suburbs, a lot of elderly people loved their single-family house while they were raising the kids. But now that they’re empty nesters and retiring, it’s kind of lonely. They want to stay in their community with doctors and friends nearby. But a lot of them are looking for, frankly, a more urban lifestyle.News
Our Infrastructure Is Being Built for a Climate That’s Already Gone
Shayla Love
It's pretty interesting how the desires of both the younger millennials, Gen Z, and a lot of those aging boomers are converging on an interest in more walkable, mixed-use, compact urban places out in the burbs.
JW: Commuting has also been transformed dramatically over the past decade or so, too. The notion that people live in the suburbs and work in the cities just isn’t true anymore.
EDJ: We tend to think that the jobs are downtown. Since the 1980s, the majority of jobs have been more than three miles from the central business district. In places like Atlanta, where I live, it’s closer to 90 percent of jobs are way outside. The central business district often has high rises and so it’s really visible, but we’re really seeing something called job sprawl. I certainly see in Atlanta, we have a lot of reverse commuters in that situation.
So when you talk about retrofitting, you mean finding and altering underused or abandoned suburban buildings to better accommodate the demographics and desires of the people who live there now?
JW: Absolutely. And in most of the cases we’ve studied, this is happening because the built places have failed or are struggling to some degree. Advertisement
The dead and dying malls, the vacated office parks, the ghost box stores left behind. Rather than bring back the same thing, this is a tremendous opportunity.
It can be as simple as re-inhabiting, or an adaptive reuse—fixing up the building, or changing the parking lot for something that’s better suited to the times. Taking something that was commercial and turning it into housing.
It can also involve re-greening because so much of the suburbanization processes disrupted the regional ecologies and stormwater flow systems. Then it’s an opportunity for wider ranging benefits. There could be places of recreation or social exchange having small plazas and program parks. And then there is redevelopment. Taking a low density, car-dependent use-separated or mono-use place and mixing it up and investing in it.
I was really struck by the statistics in the book about how many parking spaces there are per household in certain cities. Like how there are 1.97 cars per U.S. household, but in Des Moines, Iowa, there are 19 parking spaces per household. In Jackson, Wyoming, there are 27. These all seem like really obvious places to re-think about how we're using land.
JW: These choices around parking we’ve made have been codified through regulations and naturalized as normal.
EDJ: We really have made it almost a right to park as opposed to a right to housing. Cars have much more protection than people do.Advertisement
There are these aging properties for the most part; a lot of them have become obsolete and those are places to retrofit. But sometimes [properties] are thriving. They’re doing well. Yet they still look at their parking lot as this underperforming asphalt. It’s not doing enough of the job. Sometimes there’s a mall that is doing well, and it makes more sense now to build a parking deck and build housing and bring in offices and make more mixed use. Tech
The Broken Algorithm That Poisoned American Transportation
Aaron Gordon
All of these: the parking lots, the dead space, the vacant spaces. Those are the opportunities for the suburbs to finally address really urgent challenges of equity, climate change, and health.
You’ve been documenting retrofitting since 2011, when your first book came out, and now this second book includes even more case studies. Is the retrofitting phenomenon increasing, or does it need a push?
EDJ: If you go into any architecture school or city planning school’s library, there are tons of books on downtowns. There’s remarkably little written about the suburbs or suburbia. Most of what is there are sort of condemning them as wasteful and ecological boring places.
We’re academics, we’re documenting this stuff, but we’re not exactly neutral. We are advocates. We’re advocates within our disciplines to to sort of say, hey, we really need to bring design to the suburbs
There’s so much opportunity. It is where most Americans live. We saw a lot of these projects happening and noticed that none of the architecture magazines would cover them because they weren’t cool looking enough. Advertisement
And yet this stuff was happening. We thought it was important both to say it’s important that the suburbs do retrofit and become more sustainable and resilient in just places. But it’s also really important to recognize this is actually happening. And that this should happen even more. A lot of communities are afraid to do something unless they know that some other community has already done it.
A former Big Lots box store and parking lot converted into the Collinwood Recreation Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
You discuss the many social challenges retrofitting can take on. Some are more obvious like reducing dependency on cars or becoming more environmentally friendly. But there are some less intuitive ways retrofitting can impact our lives, like improving public health.
JW: One of the observations in public health is that there are chronic diseases of our time in developed countries, and certainly in Northern America, related to obesity and the higher incidences of diabetes, and so on.
One way to address those kinds of diseases is simple physical activity, yet we’ve designed physical activity out of our environments. To design it back in is a kind of low cost way of getting people to move their bodies.
A lot of literature looks at how access to nature, being able to have a view of trees, but also being able to socialize with others is really important. That links back to the demographic prevalence of one and two person households. That leads to loneliness. How can our physical environments create places—not force people to be physically active or to socialize in any particular ways—but to support the possibility?Advertisement
Can you explain one specific facet of intentionally designed well-being called the "third place?"
JW: This is a sociological concept. The “first place” is home and then the “second place” is work. The third place is is a little harder to define.
You might know it as the coffee shop, barbershop, or pub—so it might be a privately owned place, a place of business. It’s where one habitually gathers with others, forms friendships, and is engaging in social life. These are the places that we can design into suburbs as a way to support the overall social body.
EDJ: The suburbs largely sold themselves on the value of the terrific private realm that they present. The suburbs emphasize privacy. As these demographics are changing, there’s more and more people recognizing, “I’m lonely. I would like a little bit more of a public realm.”
If your public realm is just a commercial corridor full of strip malls and parking lots, there’s not much opportunity.
What we see happening are both the incorporation of the third places, but also small programmed parks, little town greens that have places for yoga classes, farmers’ markets, concerts, movie nights, and those kinds of activities that don’t force people to talk to one another, but at least enable the building of community.
The atrium at Bell Works, formerly Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey.
You also write how retrofitting the suburbs can be a tool for social equity, or minority community building—how does that work?
JW: When thinking about social equity, it’s about how people use their social relationships in their social network in order to get connected to opportunity. It really is worth a lot. And it’s one of the reasons we need to challenge the exclusionary practices that have been codified in suburban jurisdictions for decades now. And the coarse sorting that we find in suburbs.
Some of the ways to break out of that is in older retail properties, the rent might be less. There’s an opportunity for networks of immigrant groups with social and business relationships to form businesses, bring people in, and enliven a place. Advertisement
There is a number of examples of vanilla shopping malls that had seen better days that were dead and dying. They have been reinhabited and revitalized by reflecting the changing demographics of the neighboring areas.
One example is Grand Plaza in Fort Worth, what has been rebranded as a Latino mall. One of the large several story department stores was broken up into hundreds of stalls for very small businesses, like a mercato that you might find in Central America or Mexico. The central atrium space in the mall now hosts Mexican wrestling and other kinds of themed events that reflect the culture of the dominant ethnoburb demographics surrounding it.
These places can also become flash points in political movements. If you’re in the suburbs and you want to gather to have a peaceful protest, where do you go? One of the places you might go is the mall parking lot or along an arterial boulevard.
What is there still left to do when it comes to retrofitting the suburbs with social equity in mind?
EDJ: One of the other myths about suburbia is that the suburbs are middle class. Well, the middle class has been shrinking—we all know that. What we also see is that the suburbanization of poverty has really been tremendous. And yet it’s relatively invisible.
Poverty remains most highly concentrated in our cities. But there’s actually more Americans living in poverty out in the suburbs.Advertisement
We draw attention to some of the efforts that have been made. Sadly, we don’t yet see nearly enough examples of retrofitting that are really addressing the problem.
There have been some cases of aging garden apartments that are the housing of last resort for a lot of very, very poor people.
Those are just kind of aging out. In some cases, they’re being redeveloped into more expensive fancy apartments. We need a lot more attention to preserving and restoring a lot of those. It’s not solving a lot of ecological problems. These places are very auto dependent. But there’s such desperate need for more affordable housing out in the burbs.
JW: I don’t think we can emphasize enough that there are people in very precarious conditions across the metropolitan landscapes of North America, and that retrofitting is a way by increasing the mix and introducing supportive housing and other kinds of support services in places where people aren’t marooned if their car breaks down and so forth. It’s an important factor in this conversation. It’s not something that can be isolated as only a city or urban problem.
Remaking these garden complexes or old motels, if you’re going to add transit, make sure there’s access for lower income people, and also younger people who might be on the beginning stages of their kind of lifelong earning trajectory. They should be saving money and shouldn’t have all of their income poured into housing and supporting a vehicle.
There were a couple other case studies from the book I wanted to bring up. For example, I did not know that Bell Labs had been retrofitted!
JW: That’s a super interesting retrofit. Bell Labs is a storied mid-century modern research and development campus designed by Eero Saarinen, a famous architect who unfortunately died right near its completion.
All sorts of things were invented there: transistors and technologies that led to cell phones. But it lay vacant for many years.
It’s in an affluent exurb in New Jersey, and the municipality hoped to tear it all down and develop 50 or so McMansions there
But the Preservation Society and other groups rallied and a developer got interested, and now it’s become like a vertical downtown. It has a quarter-mile long atrium and dozens of businesses located on the ground floor. They have a farmer’s market, yoga, a hairdresser, a Montessori school, a branch of the local public library, and fireworks on the Fourth of July. It’s called Bell Works.
This kind of development concept is being repeated in another former AT&T property outside Chicago, so we’ll see how that goes.
EDJ: There’s well over 150 office parks that are now being urbanized in some way.
Bell Works is an example of mixing the uses of a space that used to be just offices, and where the assumption was that scientists would have epiphanies if they were isolated in their office looking at a pastoral landscape. Now, we tend to think of innovation as occurring in much more urban places, and it’s the chance encounters that trigger innovation.
It’s also being driven because employers recognize that the younger workers do not want to work in a cubicle in an office park. They do not want to work in a place that is only “work.”Advertisement
Another great example is the old box store that became a recreation center.
JW: Yes,in this case it was Big Lots in a relatively low-income neighborhood on the periphery of Cleveland that has been transformed into a recreational center.
It now has a running track through it, a pool, some outdoor recreational spaces, and it’s yards from the lake there, too.
There are opportunities to take these dead retail boxes all across the country—and there are thousands of them—and rethink not only the building itself, but the entire property and parking lots to support health, wellness, day care clinics, clinics for routine health care, libraries, and other kinds of sharing services.
Sometimes it's not about redeveloping these spaces, but about regreening them. Can you give an example of that kind of project?
JW: Back in the 19th century, Meriden, Connecticut lost all of its industrial use and job space, and so by the middle of the 20th century, a suburban, enclosed shopping mall had been built in the middle of downtown over in creek, and it failed miserably.
Every time there was a big storm event, the creek would flood and cause millions of dollars of damage to all the neighboring businesses and the town had become increasingly lower-income.
Formerly a mall and parking lot, Meriden Green, CT, now has relocated subsidized housing, and green infrastructure including a daylit brook and stormwater park.
What happened here was an incredible greening retrofit where the mall was demolished, the creek that had been put into concrete below ground was opened back up to the air. The ground was regraded—that’s a technical term, but basically the surface of the ground was made lower.
The whole property was turned into a park, which is a stormwater park. The next time there’s a big storm event, the park becomes like a big bathtub and water will drain there and eventually percolate into the soil and not cause all of the damages that it had in previous cycles.
There’s this beautiful amenity and then around it, lots of new housing is being built that then has the park amenity. There’s a train station right there that’s been rebuilt with increased service through central Connecticut. It has all of these kinds of connected benefits around taking away development.
Last summer, the New York Times wrote that "New Yorkers Are Fleeing to the Suburbs" because of the pandemic. There's been this narrative that people who live in urban areas are moving back to the suburbs—and they suddenly want the things that were previously obsolete. Do you think that's true, and would it put a stall on these kinds of retrofitting projects?
JW: Broadly, what we’ve seen in this past year is an intensification, or an acceleration, of some of the trends that were happening already. There was already the redistributing of populations to some of those locations, especially in metro areas like New York, which are so insanely expensive. If you could find something that was New York-like in New Jersey or Westchester or Long Island, it would make sense that those places might be attractive to people.
What we’re seeing right now, I think in New York certainly, is people who’d been thinking about this acting on it. But where are they moving in the suburbs? They’re not rejecting the urban lifestyle altogether. They’re being drawn to already urbanizing locations in the suburbs.
It’s not a complete rejection of one for the other, but it’s finding like for like. Still, the evidence is mostly anecdotal at this point. Time will tell.
I think it’s also understood that developers who are planning new projects in these suburban locations are looking to make mixed-use places, and are looking to add different housing types in their suburban projects.
EDJ: In the long run a lot of those suburbs that those folks are moving to, if they’re going to retain those households, they’re going to have to start providing more of the urban amenities.
I’m certainly seeing around Atlanta as one example, a lot more communities changing their zoning to allow for access to accessory dwelling units, to allow for what’s been called the “missing middle”—duplexes, quadplexes, townhouses—in existing neighborhoods with suburban neighborhoods that were single family [only]. Now they’re allowing that densification.
Those regulatory changes have happened just in the last eight months. There’s been a surge of that. And it’s very much in response to recognizing that there is the market, the demand. People want these more urban lifestyles, even if they are choosing to move to the burbs. A lot of people who have isolated themselves might still be craving places to be able to gather safely. And so it could accelerate the retrofitting of suburbia.
America is a real mess.
But it’s changing.
It is a constructed gulag for Americans and you all had best not get “out of line”. You must obey or suffer the consequences. I am reminded about how the jails and prisons are in Communist China. Did you know that they have been modeled after the Arkansas (American state) Hard-Labor Camps? Yeah, it was a surprise to me too. But when I was in the ADC, sure enough, there was a delegation from China there at Pine Bluff, and Brickey’s learning about how best to construct workable hard-labor camps.
You can see that they have taken a page from the American police state and improved upon it…
The Chinese Jail and Prison system. All modeled after the Arkansas hard-Labor system.
.
Now, the Arkansas hard-labor system was modeled by Nazi German immigrants after World War II who took former slave plantations such as Brickey’s North Arkansas Regional Unit and turned them into hard-labor camps. Which is why they greatly resemble the old “resettlement” camps that the Nazi’s constructed in Poland during World War II. Anyways, the Chinese see the efficiency of this system and have incorporated elements in their own prison system.
So yes, America is a model for the world!
Chinese Jail and Prison.
America is changing
Yes, it is.
After the crisis event during a fourth turning, the resulting America will be substantially changed afterwards. We can see that the changes are starting. And they are long over due. We do not know the full extent of the changes, but we do need to be aware that they are in process.
Forget your fantasies that America will relive the American Civil War, the American Reconstruction Period, or the growth of suburbia in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The resulting American will be quite different, and will NOT resemble any other nation on the globe. It will be a uniquely American change. Let’s pray and hope that it will be a good one
In the meantime, please keep your eyes open. Look for examples of change. That will provide you with insight on the future of America. It is your “weather vane” to judge the direction that America is heading towards. Keep in mind that the “news” is really a horrible medium to view changes. You need to take “deep dives” into other sources, and use your own eyes and ears to provide you guidance.
Fauci, Biden's top medical adviser, told CNN that the approaching deaths tally (of 500,000) was "a terribly historic milestone in the history of this country."
I have more posts along these lines in my Functional Notes Index.
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This post is in response to an Influencer who asked…
What troubles me the most is what is coming to my country and you covered it so well but if there is anything that you can add i am sure the majority of readers are concerned with this and would greatly appreciate your input.
What is so odd is everyone I talk with tells me that they can feel something coming but they don't know what it is.
i love my country dearly but to see what has happened to it and to so many lazy, entitled and plain stupid Americans i know that this has to happen. I do so very much appreciate MM.
Yes. Something is coming. Everyone can feel it. But no one knows what it is.
All throughout history there have been critical turning points when events have greatly accelerated, and it appears that we have reached one of those turning points.
In fact, this may be turn out to be the biggest turning point of them all.
Millions upon millions of Americans can sense that big trouble is ahead. For many, it is like a “gut feeling” that they just can’t shake.
Just a few days ago, my wife met a woman from the west coast that just moved here. This woman and her husband were desperate to leave California, and they felt very strongly that they should move somewhere safe.
What makes her story remarkable is the fact that my wife and I have heard similar stories from others countless times over the past 12 months.
Our nation is being shaken in thousands of different ways, and so many of us can feel that things are building up to some sort of a grand crescendo.
-Why Are So Many Americans Stockpiling Guns, Silver And Food Right Now?
Part of the problem, maybe a big part, is that the American “free” media doesn’t report anything. And Americans are manipulated and kept in the dark about so many things that the rest of the world knows about. Since Americans are kept ignorant for manipulation purposes, they can “feel” things, but have no “knowledge” to channel their feelings into understandings.
Feelings + Intel = Knowledge
I’ve tried to lay out information (Intel) so that you all can be ready and prepared. But even with that people as asking for more concrete and hard predictions.
Timing
Historical records clearly point out the the United States will go through a severe and harsh change in society. This has been building up for some time. The worst and most catastrophic elements of that change has already been set in motion. Anything that will occur will occur during the ten-year span from 2020 though 2030.
Serious upheaval in America will occur from 2020 though to 2030. This is a ten year period of time. As this post was written in 2021, there are nine years remaining during this period.
Summary
I’m going to lay out some points and some information. I’ve covered the background elsewhere in great detail. However, here we are just going to throw it all out for purposes of review.
Generational Turnings are a historically accurate methodology for predictive behaviors.
America; the United States, will go through the following in the next ten years;
Domestic unrest resulting in death(s).
A complete change in the Federal Government.
The value of the USD will collapse.
A very serious “Hot War” on American soil.
Cultural, and societal collapse.
Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings. Consequently, individuals underestimate the likelihood of a disaster, when it might affect them, and its potential adverse effects. The normalcy bias causes many people to not adequately prepare for natural disasters, pandemics, and calamities caused by human error. About 70% of people reportedly display normalcy bias during a disaster.
-Wikipedia
Let’s go one by one on these points.
[1] Domestic unrest resulting in death(s).
Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with domestic unrest. Not only that but people die. Yes. There is an entire sub-culture of Americans that believe that domestic unrest will occur. All you need to do is google SHTF and “prepper”. And you know that many Americans expect this. Gun stores are empty of guns and ammo.
Everyone is expecting societal unrest. And they plan on defending themselves and their family. In fact, for the last three months the top MM posts are those devoted to the SHTF Index.
And sure… nothing is guaranteed. This fear might just be a passing fad. Or the absolute result of American media going “off the rails”. Or some kind of mass psychosis due to being locked inside all 2020. It could be anything.
I am of the opinion …
Most Americans are unhappy.
Most Americans are locked inside of a class structure with little upward movement.
There are terrible and systematic problems regarding American society.
Government “solutions” are insufficient, meager and viewed as an insult.
There are groups who desire to capitalize on domestic discord to promote their own agendas.
There are elements inside of the Federal Government that have the power and plans to come down aggressively to any disruption of society.
None of the above should come as any surprise to most Americans. And thus I conclude…
There is a higher than average chance that there will be domestic revolt / upset. This is not a continuation of BLM, Antifa “riots”, or a Trump Supporter “frat party” style takeover of Congress. This will be something far more serious, sinister and deadly. It will not be reported, or if it is, it will be reported in such a way as to minimize what is actually going on.
Historically, these kinds of events are preceded by the government trying to take preemptive actions. That could be [1] “false flag” events, [2] a banning of weapons or one or more Rights / freedoms, and [3] a call to fight some kind of “enemy” or “threat”.
If any of the above occurs to any serious degree, you can well expect domestic discord to follow promptly.
Historically, all Democrat Presidents have had a major "Gun-related mass-killing event" within the first nine months of their Presidency. That includes Trump who was supposed to lose to Hillary Clinton.
[2] A complete change in the Federal Government.
Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with a serious and large change in the Government. The current American government is an enormous behemoth, it is sluggish, inefficient, lazy, and is out of control. To believe that it is working fine or that it could be improved is to ignore the facts. Both sides of the political divide demand a restructuring.
Democrats are looking towards a Socialist and Marxist solution.
Republicans are looking for a return to the 1776 Republic.
The compass is all over the place on this. One thing is for certain, the wealthy oligarchy loves the status quo and do not want to change anything. To make the changes that are necessary, a real revolution must occur.
The Federal Government will change substantially. I can offer no insight into what it will change into. Needless to say, the nation is completely divided and polarized and no matter who obtains the reins of power, large segments of the population will be unhappy. The only way that I can see any kind of satisfaction is by an overwhelmingly exhausted citizenry that is ready to accept change, no matter how radical it is.
Nor can I offer insight as to how this will happen. What I do know is that unless it happens, there will be no ‘Crisis Event”.
[3] The value of the USD will collapse.
Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with economic changes. I see an exponential increase in the value of the stock market with zero connection to the lives of actual American citizenry. I also see an exponential increase in the national debt. It doesn’t take a genius to see that both of these things are not sustainable.
People have been predicting the eventual collapse of the American economy for decades. Yet it still hums along. The only way that this will change is if the international medium of exchange changes. And there is evidence that this is exactly what is going on. I do not see this as a sudden, precipitous event, but rather a trend that continues over a long swath of time before the USD stabilizes.
The USD will significantly change in value negatively. This will occur over a period of time. The end result will be generalized discomfort for Americans on many levels.
[4] A very serious “Hot War” on American soil.
Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with “hot wars”; shooting wars that occurring using the most advanced technology available, and they occur on American soil.
Even if the nation stays together, its geography could be fundamentally changed, its party structure altered, its Constitution and Bill of Rights amended beyond recognition. History offers even more sobering warnings: Armed confrontation usually occurs around the climax of Crisis. If there is confrontation, it is likely to lead to war. This could be any kind of war—class war, sectional war, war against global anarchists or terrorists, or superpower war. If there is war, it is likely to culminate in total war, fought until the losing side has been rendered nil—its will broken, territory taken, and leaders captured. And if there is total war, it is likely that the most destructive weapons available will be deployed.
There is no avoiding this. Anyone who thinks that China will allow another Yemen, Afghanistan or Syria to occur in the South China Sea is delusional. The same goes for Russia. These nations do not play, are peer-capable, or superior in training and weaponry, and work together. The idea that America can take on China or Russia independently is a fantasy. Any war with either will result in a war with both simultaneously.
So forget the illusions that America has the biggest, the baddest, and the best military. It might get by trying twenty years to fight goat-herders with AK-47’s, but is no match for merit-based, well-trained, superior-armed, and a pissed-off Asia.
From 2017 through 2020, the United States “carpet bombed” China with bio-weapons. This effort affected Russia, and Iran. And of course, China, Iran and Russia knows who was involved, why and how.
But China, Russia and Iran didn’t take any obvious retaliatory action.
That should make every single Americans hair stand on end.
We should expect a major hot war. This war will be instigated though American actions and international activities. Neither China, nor Russia are stupid. They will strike first. They will use full-spectrum nuclear weapons, and America will resemble one of the nations that it “bombed the shit out of” for “democracy”.
[5] Cultural, and societal collapse.
Historically, Fourth Turnings are always associated with severe changes to society and the individuals who live inside America. In the past, Americans have been resilient enough, independent enough, and hardy enough to rebuild any collapsed society. But today, I am not so sure.
With or without war, American society will be transformed into something different. The emergent society may be something better, a nation that sustains its Framers' visions with a robust new pride. Or it may be something unspeakably worse. The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.
Most Americans are terribly overweight, and while many are functional with technology, during a period of societal collapse most technology will not operate in an optimal manner during a full scale Crisis Event. During 2020 large segments of the American population failed to work together and wear masks during the pandemic. I just cannot imagine that Americans would rebuild radioactive cities, start planting vegetables in their suburban lawns, and working together for free.
Americans have been a historically resilient people, but whether or not they will be able to come together during the Crisis Event is unlikely. It is not a politically attractive position, but it is a realistic expectation.
Let’s combine everything together.
Well, there is nothing that I have said here that I have not covered elsewhere. But let’s see if we can compile some knowns to help us make a substantive predictive engine for our use.
Keep in mind that this is just a predictive map. It may or may not happen.
Uh Oh!
My argument is that the COVID-19 fiasco in the United States is not part of this collapse crisis vector. It is only a contributor.
Whether the future occurs as predicted will depend on the actions or inaction’s of the American Presidency. Any of the following events will probably unleash a particular singular element of the Crisis event.
Passage of restrictive laws that infringe on cherished Rights.
A military action that involves either China, Russia or Iran.
No attempts at financial, banking or economic restructuring.
A “false flag” event of any purpose.
Knowing that these are exactly the same kind of modus operandi that Washington has used over the last fifty years, you can well expect that some or all of them will precipitate the Crisis event.
Year by Year expectations
The graphic above is pretty complex. Let’s look at it like you would a newspaper horoscope.
2021
The pandemic continues all year.
Posturing of various political and special interests organized by various oligarchies.
Continued (minor) unrest on many levels.
A somewhat stabilization of the overall economic consideration.
A “false flag” event.
2022
The pandemic continues.
Domestic unrest starts to manifest. Maybe shootings or some kind of organized behavior.
Some unpopular laws or regulations are implemented.
The USA starts to get involved in some strong covert (not visible) international military actions.
2023 Crisis
People are adapting to the Pandemic and it seems to be subsiding.
Domestic unrest continues and gets more violent.
The economy and the USD starts to falter. Economic Balloons start to “pop”.
The Federal Government looks towards a hot war with a major power as a desirable technique of distraction and unification.
The USA starts to engage in International Military Actions of some visible type.
Risk of a HOT WAR is very high. It may or may not hit American soil.
2024 Insanity
Still a pandemic, but is under control.
Domestic unrest breaks out in open conflict in numerous areas.
The Federal Government starts to decentralize, or change in some significant manner.
The economy starts a long sequence of contractions and mini-collapses.
The USD starts to have it’s value erode significantly.
HOT WAR! Americans on American soil are affected. It’s not a “police action” in a far away land or sea.
The health system, inefficient and expensive collapses completely.
Society is disrupted. Communication, transport, food, and electricity are all unreliable and disrupted.
The Election is a landslide for one political party who promises massive change.
2025 “Everything but the kitchen sink”
2025 will be like 2024, only crazier, and more intense.
Discord and disruptions are commonplace and are no longer isolated to certain geographic regions. Everyone “feels the pinch”.
May people start to die of illnesses that could have been prevented or cured.
New illnesses and viruses start to appear all over America. These are far worse than the COVID-19. Americans treat them like the “seasonal flu”.
Everyone is in “survival mode”.
Americans start to turn to non-American news for information.
2026 “The Kitchen Sink gets included”
Anything that was good about 2025, is now gone.
Normal lifestyles are permanently disrupted.
Urban areas are hotbeds of contentious activity.
Woods and forests are flooded with urban refugees.
Hot war ends.
2027
Things are still crazy, but groups of people are working together to sort out the craziness.
A new type of government emerges.
Domestic discord and fighting continues, but it’s mostly “turf wars”.
The USD has substantially collapsed.
US economy is in ruins.
The government begins to discuss reconstruction efforts and mobilization of work forces for a common good.
2028
A new normal has arrived in America.
There is a new government, new people, new ideas, and new systems.
The USA is shattered and a real mess, but people are starting to band together in small groups to make things right in their little area of control.
People can see the “light at the end of the tunnel”.
2029
Reconstruction efforts begin.
Rehabilitation efforts begin.
New policies and lifestyles start to manifest.
A brighter future lies ahead for everyone.
The sky is falling!
We were told that 2021 would be the year when everything starts to get back to normal. But that hasn’t exactly been the case, has it? It has been just over a month, and there is still chaos everywhere. We have seen a wild riot at the U.S. Capitol, civil unrest has been erupting in major cities from coast to coast, millions of people have filed for unemployment benefits, a president was impeached, and a crazy ride on Wall Street made “GameStop” a national phenomenon. That would normally be enough for an entire year, but we are still in the first week of February. Economic Collapse Blog (Read More...)
Oh, sure. Doomsday predictions are a “dime a dozen”. From Global Cooling, to Global Warming, to Chinese Killer Zombie Hornets, to 5G radiation. From California sliding into the Pacific, to Y2K collapsing the entire basis of civilization. To …
…well you get the picture.
Those that run the government and their oligarchy owners know all of this. The trick is, and the key is, to identify just how the President and Congress will be able to prevent any of this from occurring. I argue that it’s like the little boy with his finger in a dike. He might not be able to stop the great enormous explosion of change.
But if he is able to, if he is able to redirect it, than much of all this can be avoided, and the status quo can continue for another 150 years.
…
Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Remember the final scene in the movie “Back to the Future III”, when the Professor Emmet Brown tells Marty and his girlfriend that the future is not carved in stone. You have the ability and the tools to change it.
The future is not carved in stone. You have the ability to change it.
Do you want to see similar posts?
I hope that you found this post curious. Please take care. You can view other similar posts in my SHTF Index, here…
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you.
It is easy to get distracted by the daily gyrations, ceaseless media propaganda, political theater, false narratives, and delusional beliefs of both the left and right, as this military empire built on debt and deceit spirals towards its fiery cataclysmic climax.
Opposing forces have gathered themselves into position focusing on defeating their domestic enemies, with the left seeming to have strategic advantage but led by hubristic dullards, while numerous foreign adversaries circle like hungry vultures ready to pounce on the dying beast of an empire.
-The Burning Platform
The Fourth Turning is when (the American) society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. This idea of cycles and change where society rises and falls upon generational maturity was developed by two authors; Strauss and Howe. They postulated that there are four turnings in society. Together, the four turnings comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth.
This is a prediction of the future based upon the generational and social cycles of the past history. It is fundamentally an American observation, though the system and predictions can be applied to other cultures and other societies.
According to the predictions…
Even if the nation stays together, its geography could be fundamentally changed, its party structure altered, its Constitution and Bill of Rights amended beyond recognition. History offers even more sobering warnings: Armed confrontation usually occurs around the climax of Crisis. If there is confrontation, it is likely to lead to war. This could be any kind of war—class war, sectional war, war against global anarchists or terrorists, or superpower war. If there is war, it is likely to culminate in total war, fought until the losing side has been rendered nil—its will broken, territory taken, and leaders captured. And if there is total war, it is likely that the most destructive weapons available will be deployed.
After the Crisis event…
With or without war, American society will be transformed into something different. The emergent society may be something better, a nation that sustains its Framers' visions with a robust new pride. Or it may be something unspeakably worse. The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.
This post asks if the predictions made by the authors [1] actually manifested as predicted, or are [2] yet still to manifest.
Prediction
.
Taking note of “The Fourth Turning” and the Strauss and Howe generational theory of predictive behavior in America, we note that they predicted a Crisis Catalyst in 2005 and a Climax in 2020.
If the Crisis catalyst comes on schedule, around the year 2005, then the climax will be due around 2020, the resolution around 2026. What will America be like as it exits the Fourth Turning? History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong—the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Since Vietnam, many Americans suppose they know what it means to lose a war. Losing in the next Fourth Turning, however, could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence—and perhaps even our nation—might never recover. As many Americans know from their own ancestral backgrounds, history provides numerous examples of societies that have been wiped off the map, ground into submission, or beaten so badly they revert to barbarism.
Indeed, the dates are close but seem to be off by a few years.
In our case, it appears that the “Crisis catalyst” did not occur in 2005 as predicted. It occurred in 2008 with the Wall Street “too big to fail” debacle.
That is three years later.
Adjusting the dates
“It seems I always underestimate the ability of sociopathic central bankers and their willingness to destroy the lives of hundreds of millions to benefit their oligarch masters. I always underestimate the rampant corruption that permeates Washington DC and the executive suites in mega-corporations across the land. And I always overestimate the intelligence, civic mindedness, and ability to understand math of the ignorant masses that pass for citizens in this country. It seems that issuing trillions of new debt to pay off trillions of bad debt, government sanctioned accounting fraud, mainstream media propaganda, government data manipulation and a populace blinded by mass delusion can stave off the inevitable consequences of an unsustainable economic system.”
-The Burning Platform
Adjusting the Strauss and Howe dates to account for the delay in the catalyst, messes things up a bit. They predicted…
There is a nice graphic that I composed for your purposes of planning out the next few years. I hope that it is helpful. Adding three years, gives us…
“Crisis catalyst” in 2008.
Climax in 2023.
Resolution in 2029.
.
Of course, you could argue the 2020 was the “climax” simply because it was one Hell of a shitty year. But you all know, it was a shitty year for everyone on the globe. Not just Americans. I argue that it was just foreplay for bigger stuff to come.
Am I right or am I wrong?
I'd say that America is inching closer to 476 - 1000 era (the Dark Ages). Free thought and speech is dying. Common sense is gasping its last breath. Freedom will be a pleasant memory if we remain on our current path. A handful of evil despots are grasping for world domination and they aim to take their wrath out on all us peasants and serfs.
-Action Jackson
The way I see things is in a very simplistic manner.
I view the entire event cycle as if one would clear out the dead-wood and brush that accumulates in a field gone wild. There, the weeds and undergrowth are permitted to grow and clutter up and starve the field in such a ways that no productive crops can grow. Instead of having a field full of tomato plants, you end up with a plot full of weeds, long woody undergrowth, and difficult to remove tenacious shrubbery and young trees.
Overgrown field.
Obviously you need to tend to the field to prevent this from ever getting so bad, but as the farmer gets old, and his children move to other pursuits in the cities, he just cannot tend to the weeds and growth. They start to overtake the farm. Pretty soon eventually all that remains are but one or two well tended productive fields and the rest are permitted to go fallow.
The thing is about fallow fields is that the farmer can light a periodic fire and burn away all the problematic undergrowth. But if the farmer fails to do this, the undergrowth just piles up and accumulates.
Eventually it reaches a point of spontaneous combustion. Whether the spark that ignite it is a heat wave, lightening, or an errant cigarette butt, eventually the field will catch fire and burn up.
Brush fire.
The amount of damage that occurs is directly proportional to the amount of debris that is present. Thus if the field has been permitted to grow fallow for a decade or more, it will go up in a braze of fire that will burn uncontrollably, perhaps even extending well past the borders of the farmer’s field.
Thus I contribute this thought…
The United States is a field that has been permitted to go fallow. It has been untended for a long, long time. Other farmers have predicted that any day now that it would start to burn up. But…
… those dates seemed to come and go.
Now the debris is piled up really high. And it is bone dry. No rain for a couple of years. There seems to be things that are smoldering. You see some smoke here and some smoke there. But no real fire has yet to ignite.
Smoldering brush.
Thus we enter 2021…
Nothing caught fire yet.
I believe there are smoldering embers just waiting to be stirred into a conflagration which will engulf the entire world in a fiery purging of the existing social order, which has exhausted itself and needs to be cleansed. Jefferson understood the nature of Fourth Turnings two hundred years before Strauss & Howe put it to paper.
-The Burning Platform
Sure 2020 was a shit year, and the United States handled it terribly. The smoke is wafting up from the brush piles in the fields. But nothing has yet ignited. It hasn’t.
Wall Street is still cheating. And they getting away with blatant crimes and raking in billions of dollars. Sure there was the Game Stop and Robinhood scandals. But nothing has changed.
Race relations are at the lowest point. And laws, protests, and social re-engineering are not achieving anything other than pissing people off from both sides of the isle.
The Coronavirus showed how incompetent the United States government actually is. And yet aside from a few shuttered businesses, and having to wear masks, everything else seems to be a continuation of the status quo. The only difference is that the poor are poorer, the rich are richer, and the middle class are turning into the lower-middle class.
Donald Trump had an opportunity to make a difference. But in hindsight he talked a big game but pretty much wrecked not only the economy, but the global standing of the United States in the eyes of the world. He left office in disgrace. The GOP is in shambles, leaving the DNC as the only party of worth standing. Radical elements stand in the wings waiting to take over.
The Washington DC riots were a joke. This was not a revolution. It was a party by drunk frat boys. Yet there is evidence that it will result in laws that are going to turn up the Police State from idle to aggressive.
Armed rebellion is all talk with no substance. Sure gun stores are out of stock of everything from guns to bullets to flack vests. But aside from one or two well reported incidents, no “hot” fighting has occurred.
All this tells me that the “Crisis” has yet to occur.
Having studied the Civil War exensively when I was a history major years ago, I would say there are many very clear parallels with the 1850's right now. The level of division and hate is comparable.
What many seem to forget is the war didn't just start out of the blue nor did most people in the 1850's believe war was going to happen. War became entirely unavoidable in 1859 with John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. That was a tipping point.
The southerners began arming themselves to the teeth and preparing for war.
That raid was itself more or less inevitable after the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court in 1857, which so angered abolitionists that they became far more aggressive.
In 1860 of course the South realized they had no ability to sway the outcome of the election and they could not block anything the north wanted.
To compare this to current events I would say the SCOTUS refusal to address the second amendment violations ongoing, particularly with multiple cases denied cert this summer, can be compared with Dred Scott in terms of effects.
The various one person-one vote rulings in the 60's which held that states could not model their legislatures after the federal Congress (i.e., towns or counties equally represented in one house, representation by population in another) handed total power to the big cities, stripping rural areas of any power to prevent trampling of their rights.
So we have the legal/political situation that existed in the 1850's/60's with a large swath of the population, a minority in terms of numbers but still substantial, essentially having no real voice in the government.
We also have the hate and division over various issues. Gun control, notably. A Biden presidency implementing his gun control plans could trigger a modern-day John Brown moment.
But it's important to also remember that as civil wars go, ours in the 1860's was quite unusual. We had a relatively clean dividing line. State governments versus a federal government. And leaders who were honorable enough people they more or less accepted defeat in the case of the south, and didn't mass incarcerate the defeated enemy afterwards as criminals in the case of the north.
Most civil wars particularly in more recent times are not this clean.
They tend to be messy with less clear geographical boundaries to delineate the opposing sides. Armed groups rise and fall, violence tends to be random and sporadic, and you don't necessarily have two opposing government-controlled armies more or less following the rules of conventional warfare.
If we have another civil war this is how I would expect it to go. Neighbor versus neighbor, city versus country, far left vs far right. Very violent, bloody, disorganized, highly desperate as one side will criminalize the other for participating, and hard to stop once it starts. And of course foreign governments would be involved if indirectly.
I would say toss a coin for the answer on if it happens. I think the risk is high. The only way to avoid it is for the politicians to back off of the divisive issues to attempt to bring back some national unity. But neither side is showing any such signs of doing so. The SCOTUS could single handedly prevent the gun control plans of the democrats with some well written rulings on pending cases but I doubt it will.
-Vermont Mountain Man
2020 was NOT the Crisis.
I could be wrong
The historical target dates are approximate. Which is something at I believe. And that there are elements that will cause variances on the target dates.
In my mind the Crisis catalyst was targeted for 2005 +/- 3 years. And we have pretty much identified 2008 as this Fourth turnings Crisis Catalyst. It is three years later. Which means that if the time from the catalyst remains stable, then the Climax has yet to occur.
With this knowledge, we can say that the Climax is targeted for 2023.
Or, any day now with the range of 2023 +/- 3 years. Means 2020 though 2026.
Any. Day. Now.
What does Mr. Howe say?
Below is a brief essay originally published on 3/11/19 by Neil Howe discussing the typical progression of each “Turning”. It remains more relevant than ever amidst our current zeitgeist. It was written nearly a year before 2020 showed it’s ugly, ugly face.
NH: We live in a tumultuous time in American history.
The 2008 financial crisis and all its hardships, was the catalyst that tipped us into this age of uncertainty. It marked the start of a generation-long era of secular upheaval that will continue to run its course over the next decade or so. This is the generational theory I laid out in “The Fourth Turning,” a book I co-authored with William Strauss in 1997.
The Fourth Turning explains the rise of a figure like President Trump. In Trump’s Inauguration Day speech, he painted a bleak picture of “American carnage,” of “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation” with “mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities.”
Looking abroad, it’s unclear whether America will turn inward and fall prey to nativism or maintain it’s nearly seventy year role as leader of the Free World. Other countries are becoming similarly insular. Britain voted to exit the European Union and we’ve heard anti-E.U. rumblings echoed throughout Europe from France to the Netherlands.
Other nations and peoples around the world are looking to either fill the vacuum in global leadership or exploit it to advance their own ambitions. We’ve seen the thunderous rise of Chinese economic clout, the calculating geopolitical maneuvering of a resurgent Russia, and the barbarous chaos wrought by the so-called Islamic State.
In many ways, this era of uncertainty follows the natural order of things. Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern. Over the past five centuries, Anglo-American society has entered a new era – a new turning – every two decades or so.
At the start of each turning, people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, the nation, and the future. Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, or a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum.
The First Turning is called a High.
This is an era when institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is confident about where it wants to go collectively, even if those outside the majoritarian center feel stifled by the conformity.
America’s most recent First Turning was the post-World War II American High, beginning in 1946 and ending with the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, a key lifecycle marker for today’s older Americans.
The Second Turningis an Awakening.
This is an era when institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy. Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of personal authenticity. Young activists and spiritualists look back at the previous High as an era of cultural poverty.
America’s most recent Awakening was the “Consciousness Revolution,” which spanned from the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid 1960s to the tax revolts of the early ‘80s.
The Third Turning is an Unravelling.
The mood of this era is in many ways the opposite of a High. Institutions are weak and distrusted, while individualism is strong and flourishing. Highs follow Crises, which teach the lesson that society must coalesce and build. Unravelings follow Awakenings, which teach the lesson that society must atomize and enjoy.
America’s most recent Unraveling was the Long Boom and Culture Wars, beginning in the early 1980s and probably ending in 2008. The era opened with triumphant “Morning in America” individualism and drifted toward a pervasive distrust of institutions and leaders, an edgy popular culture, and the splitting of national consensus into competing “values” camps.
And finally we enter the Fourth Turning, which is a Crisis.
This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression finds a community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group.
In every instance, Fourth Turnings have eventually become new “founding moments” in America’s history, refreshing and redefining the national identity. Currently, this period began in 2008, with the Global Financial Crisis and the deepening of the War on Terror, and will extend to around 2030.
If the past is any prelude to what is to come, as we contend, consider the prior Fourth Turning which was kicked off by the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with World War II.
Just as a Second Turning reshapes our inner world (of values, culture and religion), a Fourth Turning reshapes our outer world (of politics, economy and empire).
To be clear, the road ahead for America will be rough. But I take comfort in the idea that history cycles back and that the past offers us a guide to what we can expect in the future. Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern.
Make no mistake. Winter is coming. How mild or harsh it will be is anyone’s guess but the basic progression is as natural as counting down the days, weeks and months until Spring.
Exerpts from the book The Fourth Turning
In 1860-1861 southern states took the Lincoln victory as a de-facto proof that the North would increasingly seek to impose its will upon the south (they were right, but losing the war actually made it happen faster and more completely).
What people generally forget is that all states had large militias that were beholden ONLY to the states, and people had much more belief and legal adherence to the individual states, than now.
Terrorist actions do not start a war, because you cannot really go to war conventionally against terrorism. What happened in the 1860's is that state governments formed a new nation in rebellion.
Personally I don't think the Left or the Right, as a whole, have the balls to do this today. But I guess we'll see. Eventually the threats become real enough that it's hard to ignore them and just hope everything goes back to normal.
-Aerindel, SoJ_51 and Observer
This is straight from the book …
“Something happened to America at that time,” recalled U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye on V-J Day in 1995, the last of the 50-year commemoratives of World War II. “I’m not wise enough to know what it was. But it was the strange, strange power that our founding fathers experienced in those early, uncertain days. Let’s call it the spirit of America, a spirit that united and galvanized our people.” Inouye went on to reflect wistfully on an era when the nation considered no obstacle too big, no challenge too great, no goal too distant, no sacrifice too deep. A half-century later, that old spirit had long since dissipated, and nobody under age 70 remembered what it felt like. When Joe Dawson reenacted his D-Day parachute drop over Normandy, he said he did it “to show our country that there was a time when our nation moved forward as one unit.”
The Eternal Return
On the earthen floors of their rounded hogans, Navajo artists sift colored sand to depict the four seasons of life and time. Their ancestors have been doing this for centuries. They draw these sand circles in a counter-clockwise progression, one quadrant at a time, with decorative icons for the challenges of each age and season. When they near the end of the fourth season, they stop the circle, leaving a small gap just to the right of its top. This signifies the moment of death and rebirth, what the Hellenics called ekpyrosis. By Navajo custom, this moment can be provided (and the circle closed) only by God, never by mortal man. All the artist can do is rub out the painting, in reverse seasonal order, after which a new circle can be begun. Thus, in the Navajo tradition, does seasonal time stage its eternal return.
Like most traditional peoples, the Navaho accept not just the circularity of life, but also its perpetuity. Each generation knows its ancestors have drawn similar circles in the sand—and each expects its heirs to keep drawing them. The Navaho ritually reenact the past while anticipating the future. Thus do they transcend time.
Modern societies too often reject circles for straight lines between starts and finishes. Believers in linear progress, we feel the need to keep moving forward. The more we endeavor to defeat nature, the more profoundly we land at the mercy of its deeper rhythms. Unlike the Navajo, we cannot withstand the temptation to try closing the circle ourselves and in the manner of our own liking. Yet we cannot avoid history’s last quadrant. We cannot avoid the Fourth Turning, nor its ekpyrosis. Whether we welcome him or not, the Gray Champion will command our duty and sacrifice at a moment of Crisis. Whether we prepare wisely or not, we will complete the Millennial Saeculum. The epoch that began with V.J.-Day will reach a natural climax—and come to an end.
An end of what?
The next Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. But this end, while possible, is not likely. Human life is not so easily extinguishable. One conceit of linear thinking is the confidence that we possess such godlike power that—at the mere push of a button—we can obliterate nature, destroy our own seed, and make ourselves the final generations of our species. Civilized (post-Neolithic) man has endured some 500 generations, prehistoric (fire-using) man perhaps 5,000 generations, Homo Erectus ten times that. For the next Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection, and bad luck. Only the worst pessimist can imagine that.
The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm—which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance—could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. The “Western Civilization” of Toynbee and the “Faustian Culture” of Spengler would come to the inexorable close their prophesiers foresaw. A new dark ages would settle in, until some new civilization could be cobbled together from the ruins. The cycle of generations would also end, replaced by an ancient cycle of tradition (and fixed social roles for each phase of life) that would not allow progress. As with an omnicide, such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.
The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. This nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, Etruria ten, the Soviet Union (perhaps) only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a threat in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most horrible war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.
Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.
The new saeculum could find America a worse place. As Paul Kennedy has warned, it might no longer be a “great power.” Its global stature might be eclipsed by foreign rivals. Its geography might be smaller, its culture less dominant, its military less effective, its government less democratic, its Constitution less inspiring. Emerging from its millennial chrysalis, it might evoke nothing like the hope and respect of its “American Century” forbear. Abroad, people of goodwill and civilized taste might perceive this society as a newly dangerous place. Or they might see it as decayed, antiquated, an Old New World less central to human progress than we now are. All this is plausible, and possible, in the natural turning of saecular time.
Alternatively, the new saeculum could find America, and the world, a much better place. Like England in the Reformation Saeculum, the Superpower America of the Millennial Saeculum might merely be a prelude to a higher plane of civilization. Its new civic life might more nearly resemble that “shining city on a hill” to which its colonial ancestors aspired. Its ecology might be freshly repaired and newly sustainable, its economy rejuvenated, its politics functional and fair, its media elevated in tone, its culture creative and uplifting, its gender and race relations improved, its commonalities embraced and differences accepted, its institutions free of the corruptions that today seem entrenched beyond correction. People might enjoy new realms of personal, family, community, and national fulfillment. America’s borders might be redrawn around an altered but more cogent geography of public community. Its influence on world peace could be more potent, on world culture more uplifting. All this is achievable as well.
Conclusion
2020 was not the Climax; the Crisis of the Forth Turning in America. That still lies ahead of us.
I hope it never comes to this. In lieu, I can see the Balkinization of the country take place, sides would move to designated areas and set up permanent camp. There may be 2, 3 or more countries within the US before the dust settles.
-Survivalist Boards
A climax is a major event. It is typically marked by full-scale discord and absolute totality of full-scale war. That did not occur in 2020. That is not occurring now. 2020 was marked by a “pandemic”. Most Americans (through their media) believe that either [1] it is a hoax, or [2] it is a new strain of flu that is sweeping the globe. It is neither. It is a bio-weapon attack on China by the neocon Trump administration gone terribly wrong.
Xi Peng and Putin do not get their intel from Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and CNN. They get it from their Intel divisions. And both nations have a full picture of what is going on, has gone on and will go on further.
Both nations (China and Russia) filed a formal complaint against the United States for launching this bio-weapon (and all the others that it launched in late 2020). And while Americans ignored this complaint, pretending that it is meaningless, it did do something. It marked the start of Russia and China teaming up militarily against the United States.
…
United States. (With the UK, Canada, Israel, and Australia.) Today there is isolated America. Confused. Arrogant. Thrashing and moaning. Demanding all sorts of things.
The Rest of the World. And the rest of the world, lead by Russia, and China, that are very carefully and very precisely planning to stop all this nonsense once and for all.
…
…
And America learned nothing.
Keep in mind that the last pandemic of 1918 was not a climax event, though it certainly was a contributor that lead to events that shaped the actual Climax. A climax is full-scale-war. It’s terrible discord at home domestically, and engagement with a major “hot” war. Both at the same time.
The “Fourth Turning” is a crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval — the old order is toppled and a new one put in its place. As America’s most recent “Third Turning” began in the mid-1980s, it was due to expire in the first decade of the 21st century. If we accept Howe and Strauss’ thesis, America has already entered its next “Fourth Turning”.
-What exactly is the “Fourth Turning” envisioned by William ...
It’s a combination of events that will shatter all norms, and make people settle down and just be happy to drink some simple tea under the shade of a tree.
No.
It hasn’t yet arrived.
Many world leaders feel that we are approaching a major war. Countries are preparing for war, with Russia and China at the forefront, and Japan starting its own re-militarization program.
According to the Strauss-Howe theory, 2017 is equivalent to 1933 (when Hitler got in charge and started rebuilding Germany’s army), 1854 (when the prospect of an American Civil War felt more and more imminent), and 1779 (the middle of the American Revolutionary War against Britain, and the year of the French Revolution).
Needless to say, right now we are living in very interesting times.
-Charting the Strauss Howe Fourth Turning
The piles of brush and fallow fields are all smouldering. A bunch of kids are playing with matches at the edge of the field, a lighting storm is gathering in the skies, a dog knocked over the logs that held the fire pit and the ashes are smoldering in the dry grass, and a tanker truck full of gasoline crashed and tipped over and all the gasoline is spilling into the dry, dry field.
All the signs are there.
No one is calling the fire department to start engaging in preventative measures. Instead every one is standing by watching it smolder, chewing on crud and going moo.
…
The nearest practical equivalent that I can illustrate is a Civil Defense officer wearing a helmet and telling everyone to get into the bomb shelter. Meanwhile you can hear the bombs drop and explode in the far distance, as they are getting closer and closer to you.
Civil Defense Warden
A “Crisis” will be an actual “Crisis”. All you need to do is compare it to previous fourth turnings.
The last crisis was a five year war, with nuclear, and chemical weapons. It consisted of a complete meltdown in the American economy, and the loss of the lives of millions of people. It changed America and resulted in the formation of outsourcing Congressional power to alphabet organizations, turning America into a military empire, and a multi-decade “cold war”.
The crisis before that was also a five year war, using the most modern weapons available at the time. The entire society was torn apart and rebuilt. American state economies were shattered and the resulting reconstruction period lasted a full decade. It changed America and resulted in not only a ban on alcohol, but also the income tax system.
No.
The Crisis hasn’t yet arrived.
Check out this most interesting graphic. It’s a close up view of a much larger graphic that puts all the Strauss and Howe Fourth Turning writings into a really nice pictorial. Amazing.
Plotting when wars occurred during the Fourth Turning. This very interesting graphic clearly shows when the expected Climax will occur, and it is pointing straight towards a “hot war”. America will not win that “Hot war”. And America will be forever changed afterwards.
.
This chart is just one quadrant of a much larger graphic. It shows the seasonality of Anglo-American history since the end of the Middle Ages, according to the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory (as described in their 1997 book The Fourth Turning). Click here to download an enlarged version of the entire chart..
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Phew! Another title that you will not find anywhere else in your “Google” searches.
"Everything has an end, so do empires, both the United States and the Soviet Union. Washington has outrageously favoured a small camarilla of ultra-billionaires. Now it has to face its old demons, prepare for secession and civil war..."
"...Part of the power has already tipped democratic institutions into the hands of a few ultra-billionaires. The United States that we knew no longer exists. Their agony has begun."
-https://www.voltairenet.org/article211982.html
The following is a most excellent article. And the commentary by MM is just pure gold, if I must say so myself. It’s a long read, but well worth it. In it, it compares the two forms of capitalism; [1] a Chinese form, and [2] an American form. Then argues that the American form is at an advanced state of development, whereas the Chinese form is in an infantile stage.
According to the thought process, industrial capitalism – earning money through making things is an early step that growing nations adopt. While earning money through taxation, rent, regulation and interest is a late-stage step that advanced nations evolve into.
The discussion behind all this is interesting. It starts off great and then kind of meanders about, but the content is very curious. And we provide this article here for people to consider. In all of it’s imperfections and curiosities.
Personally, I find the late-stage step; capitalism through non-physical activities to be a wasteful endeavor and a cancer upon society. As such, it is the major driver behind all the problems that the United States is currently dealing with at this moment. Please kindly read the article below. It is a full reprint, with little editing and all credit to the author.
The Consequences of Moving from Industrial to Financial Capitalism
By Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar
January 17, 2021 “Information Clearing House” – Michael Hudson: Well, I’m honored to be here on the same show with Pepe and discuss our mutual concern. And I think you have to frame the whole issue that China is thriving, and the West has reached the end of the whole 75-year expansion it had since 1945.
So, there was an illusion that America is de-industrializing because of competition from China. And the reality is there is no way that America can re-industrialize and regain its export markets with the way that it’s organized today, financialized and privatized and if China didn’t exist. You’d still have the Rust Belt rusting out. You’d still have American industry not being able to compete abroad simply because the cost structure is so high in the United States.
The wealth is no longer made here by industrializing. It’s made financially, mainly by making capital gains. Rising prices for real estate or for stocks and for bonds. In the last nine months, since the coronavirus came here, the top 1 percent of the U.S. economy grew by $1 trillion. It’s been a windfall for the 1 percent. The stock market is way up, the bond market is up, the real estate market is up while the rest of the economy is going down. Despite the tariffs that Trump put on, Chinese imports, trade with China is going up because we’re just not producing materials.
America doesn’t make its own shoes. It doesn’t make some nuts and bolts or fasteners, it doesn’t make industrial things anymore because if money is to be made off an industrial company it’s to buy and sell the company, not to make loans to increase the company’s production. New York City, where I live, used to be an industrial city and, the industrial buildings, the mercantile buildings have all been gentrified into high-priced real estate and the result is that Americans have to pay so much money on education, rent, medical care that if they got all of their physical needs, their food, their clothing, all the goods and services for nothing, they still couldn’t compete with foreign labor because of all of the costs that they have to pay that are essentially called rent-seeking.
America
Housing in the United States now absorbs about 40 percent of the average worker’s paycheck. There’s 15 percent taken off the top of paychecks for pensions, Social Security and for Medicare. Further medical insurance adds more to the paycheck, income taxes and sales taxes add about another 10 percent. Then you have student loans and bank debt. So basically, the American worker can only spend about one third of his or her income on buying the goods and services they produce. All the rest goes into the FIRE sector — the finance, insurance and real estate sector — and other monopolies.
And essentially, we became what’s called a rent-seeking economy, not a productive economy. So, when people in Washington talk about American capitalism versus Chinese socialism this is confusing the issue. What kind of capitalism are we talking about?
America used to have industrial capitalism in the 19th century. That’s how it got richer originally but now it’s moved away from industrial capitalism towards finance capitalism. And what that means is that essentially the mixed economy that made America rich — where the government would invest in education and infrastructure and transportation and provide these at low costs so that the employers didn’t have to pay labor to afford high costs — all of this has been transformed over the last hundred years.
And we’ve moved away from the whole ethic of what was industrial capitalism. Before, the idea of capitalism in the 19th century from Adam Smith to Ricardo, to John Stuart Mill to Marx was very clear and Marx stated it quite clearly; capitalism was revolutionary. It was to get rid of the landlord class. It was to get rid of the rentier class. It was to get rid of the banking class essentially, and just bear all the costs that were unnecessary for production, because how did England and America and Germany gain their markets?
They gained their markets basically by the government picking up a lot of the costs of the economy. The government in America provided low-cost education, not student debt. It provided transportation at subsidized prices. It provided basic infrastructure at low cost. And so, government infrastructure was considered a fourth factor of production.
And if you read what the business schools in the late 19th century taught like Simon Patten at the Wharton School, it’s very much like socialism. In fact, it’s very much like what China is doing. And in fact, China is following in the last 30 or 40 years pretty much the same way of getting rich that America followed.
It had its government fund basic infrastructure. It provides low-cost education. It invests in high-speed railroads and airports, in the building of cities. So, the government bears most of the costs and, that means that employers don’t have to pay workers enough to pay a student loan debt. They don’t have to pay workers enough to pay enormous rent such as you have in the United States. They don’t have to pay workers to save for a pension fund, to pay the pension later on. And most of all the Chinese economy doesn’t really have to pay a banking class because banking is the most important public utility of all. Banking is what China has kept in the hands of government and Chinese banks don’t lend for the same reasons that American banks lend.
(When I said that China can pay lower wages than the U.S., what I meant was that China provides as public services many things that American workers have to pay out of their own pockets – such as health care, free education, subsidized education, and above all, much lower debt service.
When workers have to go into debt in order to live, they need much higher wages to keep solvent. When they have to pay for their own health insurance, they have to earn more. The same is true of education and student debt. So much of what Americans seem to be earning — more than workers in other countries — goes right through their hands to the FIRE sector. So, what seems to be “low wages” in China go a lot further than higher wages in the United States.)
Eighty percent of American bank loans are mortgage loans to real estate and the effect of loosening loan standards and increasing the market for real estate is to push up the cost of living, push up the cost of housing. So, Americans have to pay more and more money for their housing whether they’re renters or they’re buyers, in which case the rent is for paying mortgage interest.
They only lend against collateral that’s already in place because they won’t make a loan if it’s not backed by collateral. Well, China creates money through its public banks to create capital, to create the means of production. So, you have a diametric opposite philosophy of how to develop between the United States and China.
The United States has decided not to gain wealth by actually investing in means of production and producing goods and services, but in financial ways. China is gaining wealth the old-fashioned way, by producing it. And whether you call this, industrial capitalism or a state capitalism or a state socialism or Marxism, it basically follows the same logic of real economics, the real economy, not the financial overhead. So, you have China operating as a real economy, increasing its production, becoming the workshop of the world as England used to be called and America trying to draw in foreign resources, live off of foreign resources, live by trying to make money by investing in the Chinese stock market or now, moving investment banks into China and making loans to China not actual industrial capitalism ways.
So, you could say that America has gone beyond industrial capitalism, and they call it the post-industrial society, but you could call it the neo-feudal society. You could call it the neo-rentier society, or you could call it debt peonage but it’s not industrial capitalism.
And in that sense, there’s no rivalry between China and America. These are different systems going their own way and I better let Pepe pick it up from there.
Pepe Escobar: Okay. Thank you, Michael, this is brilliant. And you did it in less than 15 minutes. You told the whole story in 15 minutes. Well, my journalistic instinct is immediately to start questions to Michael. So, this is exactly what I’m gonna do now. I think it is much better to basically illustrate some points of what Michael just said, comparing the American system, which is finance capitalism essentially, with industrial capitalism that is in effect in China. Let me try to start with a very concrete and straight to the point question, Michael.
Okay. let’s says that more or less, if we want to summarize it, basically they try to tax the nonproductive rentier class. So, this would be the Chinese way to distribute wealth, right? Sifting through the Chinese economic literature, there is a very interesting concept, which is relatively new (correct me if I am wrong, Michael) in China, which they call stable investment. So stable investment, according to the Chinese would be to issue special bonds as extra capital in fact, to be invested in infrastructure building all across China, and they choose these projects in what they call weak areas and weak links. So probably in some of the inner provinces, or probably in some parts of Tibet or Xinjiang for instance. So, this is a way to invest in the real economy and in real government investment projects.
Right? So, my question in fact, is does this system create extra local debt, coming directly from this financing from Beijing? Is this a good recipe for sustainable development, the Chinese way and the recipe that they could expand to other parts of the Global South?
Michael: Well, this is a big problem that they’re discussing right now. The localities, especially rural China, (and China is still largely rural) only cover about half of their working budget from taxation. So, they have a problem. How are they going to get the balance of the money? Well, there is no official revenue sharing between the federal government and its state banks and the localities.
So, the localities can’t simply go to central government and say, give us more money. The government lets the localities be very independent. And it is sort of the “let a hundred flowers bloom” concept. And so, they’ve let each locality just go the long way, but the localities have run a big deficit.
What do they do? Well in the United States they would issue bonds on which New York is about to default. But in China, the easiest way for the localities to make money, is unfortunately they will do something like Chicago did. They will sell their tax rights for the next 75 years for current money now.
So, a real estate developer will come in and say; look we will give you the next 75 years of tax on this land, because we want to build projects on this (a set of buildings). So, what this means is that now the cities have given away all their source of rent.
Let me show you the problem by what Indiana and Chicago did. Chicago also was very much like China’s countryside cities. So, it sold parking meters and its sidewalks to a whole series of Wall Street investors, including the Abu Dhabi Investment Fund for seventy-five years. And that meant that for 75 years, this Wall Street consortium got to control the parking meters.
So, they put up the parking meters all over Chicago, raised the price of parking, raised the cost of driving to Chicago. And if Chicago would have a parade and interrupt parking, then Chicago has to pay the Abu Dhabi fund and Wall Street company what it would have made anyway. And this became such an awful disaster that finally Wall Street had to reverse the deal and undo it because it was giving privatization a bad name here. The same thing happened in Indiana.
Indiana was running a deficit and it decided to sell its roads to a Wall Street investment firm to make a toll road. The toll on the Indiana turnpike was so high that drivers began to take over the side roads. That’s the problem if you sell future tax revenues in advance.
Now what China and the localities there are discussing is that we’ve already given the real estate tax at very low estimates to the commercial developers, so what do we do? Well, I’ve given them my advice. I’m a professor of economics at the Peking University, School of Marxist studies and I’ve had discussions with the Central Committee. I also have an official position at Wuhan University. There, we’re discussing how China can put an added tax for all of the valuable land, that’s gone up. How can it be done to let the cities collect this tax? Our claim is that the cities, in selling these tax rights for 75 years, have sold what in Britain would be called ground rent (i.e. what’s paid to the landed aristocracy).
Over and above that there’s the market rent. So, China should pass a market-rent tax over and above the ground rent tax to reflect the current value. And there they’re thinking of, well, do we say that this is a capital gain on the land? Well, it’s not really a capital gain until you sell the land, but it’s value. It’s the valuation of the capital. And they’re looking at whether they should just say this is the market rent tax over and above the flat tax that has been paid in advance, or it’s a land tax on the capital gain for land.
Now, all of this requires that there be a land map of the whole country. And they are just beginning to create such a land map as a basis for how you calculate how much the rent there is.
What I found in China is something very strange. A few years ago, in Beijing, they had the first, International Marxist conference where I was the main speaker and I was talking about Marx’s discussion of the history of rent theory in Volume II and Volume III of Capital where Marx discusses all of the classical economics that led up to his view; Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, John Stuart Mill, and Marx’s theory of surplus value was really the first history of economic thought that was written, although it wasn’t published until after he died. Well, you could see that there was a little bit of discomfort with some of the Marxists at the conference. And so, they invited for the next time my colleague David Harvey to come and talk about Marxism in the West.
Well, David gave both the leading and the closing speech of the conference and said, you’ve got to go beyond volume I of Capital. Volume I was what Marx wrote as his addition to classical economics, saying that there was exploitation in industrial employment of labor as well as rent seeking and then he said, now that I’ve done my introduction here, let me talk about how capitalism works in Volumes II and III. Volumes II and III are all about rent and finance and David Harvey has published a book on Volume III of Capital and his message to Peking University and the second Marxist conference was – you’ve got to read Volume II, and III.
Well, you can see that, there’s a discussion now over what is Marxism and a friend and colleague at PKU said Marxism is a Chinese word; It’s the Chinese word for politics. That made everything clear to me. Now I get it! I’ve been asked by the Academy of Social Sciences in China to create a syllabus of the history of rent theory and value theory. And essentially in order to have an idea of how you calculate rent, how do you make a national income analysis where you show rent, you have to have a theory of value and price and rent is the excess of price over the actual cost value. Well, for that you need a concept of cost of production and that’s what classical economics is all about. Post-classical economics denied all of this. The whole idea of classical economics is that not all income is earned.
Landlords don’t earn their income for making rent in their sleep as John Stuart Mill said. Banks don’t earn their income by just sitting there and letting debts accrue and interest compounding and doubling. The classical economists separated actual unearned income from the production and consumption economy.
Well, around the late 19th century in America, you had economists fighting against not only Marx, but also even against Henry George, who at that time, was urging a land tax in New York. And so, at Columbia University, John Bates Clark developed a whole theory that everybody earns whatever they can get. That there was no such thing as unearned income and that has become the basis for American national income statistics and thought ever since. So, if you look at today’s GDP figures for the United States, they have a figure for 8 percent of the GDP for the homeowners’ rent. But homeowners wouldn’t pay themselves if they had to rent the apartment to themselves, then you’ll have interest at about 12 percent of GDP.
And I thought, well how can interest be so steady? What happens to all of the late fees; that 29 percent that credit card companies charge? I called up the national income people in Washington, when I was there. And they said well, late fees and penalties are considered financial services.
And so, this is what you call a service economy. Well, there’s no service in charging a late fee, but they add all of the late fees. When people can’t pay their debts and they owe more and more, all of that is considered an addition to GDP. When housing becomes more expensive and prices American labor out of the market, that’s called an increase in GDP.
This is not how a country that wants to develop is going to create a national income account. So, there’s a long discussion in China about, just to answer your question, how do you create an account to distinguish between what’s the necessary cost to production and what’s an unnecessary production cost and how do we avoid doing what the United States did.
So again, no rivalry.
The United States is an object lesson for China on what to avoid, not only in industrializing the economy, but in creating a picture of the economy as if everybody earns everything and there’s no exploitation, no earned income, nobody makes money in their sleep and there’s no 1 percent.
Well, that’s what’s really at issue and why the whole world is splitting apart as you and I are discussing in what we’re writing.
Pepe: Thank you, Michael. Thank you very much. So just to sum it all up, can we say that Beijing’s strategy is to save especially provincial areas from leasing their land, their infrastructure for 60 years or 75 years? As you just mentioned, can we say that the fulcrum of their national strategy is what you define as the market rent tax? Is this the No. 1 mechanism that they are developing?
Michael: Ideally, they want to keep rents as low as possible because rent is a cost of living and a cost of doing business. They don’t have banks that are lending to inflate the real estate market.
However, in almost every Western country — the U.S., Germany England — the value of stocks and bonds and the value of real estate is just about exactly the same. But for China, the value of real estate is way, way larger than the value of stocks.
And the reason is not because the Chinese Central bank, the Bank of China lends for real estate; it’s because they lend to intermediaries and the intermediaries have financed a lot of housing purchases in China. And, this is really the problem for if they levy a land tax, then you’re going to make a lot of these financial intermediaries go bust.
That’s what I’m advocating, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. These financial intermediaries shouldn’t exist, and this same issue came up in 2009 in the United States. You had the leading American bank being the most crooked and internally corrupt bank in the country, Citibank making junk mortgage, and it was broke.
Its entire net worth was wiped out as a result of its fraudulent junk mortgages.
Well, Sheila Bair, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) wanted to close it down and take it over. Essentially that would have made it into a public bank and that would be a wonderful thing. She said, look Citibank shouldn’t be doing what it’s doing. And she wrote all this up in an autobiography. And, she was overruled by President Obama and Tim Geithner saying, but wait a minute, those are our campaign contributors. So, they were loyal to the campaign contributors, but not the voters; and they didn’t close Citibank down.
And the result is that the Federal Reserve ended up creating about $7 trillion of quantitative easing to bail out the banks. The homeowners weren’t bailed out. Ten million American families lost their homes as a result of junk mortgages in excess of what the property was actually worth.
All of this was left on the books, foreclosed and sold to a private capital companies like Blackstone. And the result is that home ownership in America declined from 68 percent of the population down to about 61 percent. Well, right where the Obama administration left off, you’re about to have the Biden administration begin in January with an estimated 5 million Americans losing their homes.
Decline in home ownership in the United States prior to the Coronavirus.
They’re going to be evicted because they’ve been unemployed during the pandemic. They’ve been working in restaurants or gyms or other industries that have been shut down because of the pandemic. They’re going to be evicted and many homeowners and, low-income homeowners have been unable to pay their mortgages.
There’s going to be a wave of foreclosures. The question is, who’s going to bear the cost? Should it be 15 million American families who lose their homes just so the banks won’t lose money? Or should we let the banks that have made all of the growth since 2008? Ninety five percent of American GDP of the population has seen its wealth go down. All the wealth has been accumulating for the 5 percent in statistics. Now the question is should this 5 percent that’s got all the wealth lose or should the 95 percent lose?
The Biden administration says the 95 percent should lose basically. And you’re going to see a wave of closures so that the question in China should be that, these intermediate banks (they’re not really banks they are sort of like payday loan lenders), should they come in and, bear the loss or should Chinese localities and the people bear the loss?
Somebody has to lose when you’re charging, you’re collecting the land’s rent that was paid to the creditors, and either the creditors have to lose or, the tax collector loses and that’s the conflict that exists in every society of the world today. And, in the West, the idea is the tax collectors should lose and whatever the tax collector relinquishes should be free for the banks to collect.
In China obviously, they don’t want that to happen and they don’t want to see a financial class developing along US lines.
Pepe: Michael, there’s a quick question in all this, which is the official position by Beijing in terms of helping the localities. Their official position is that there won’t be any bailouts of local debt. How do they plan to do that?
Michael: What they’re discussing, how are you not going to do it? They think they sort of let localities go their own way. And they think, well you know which ones are going to succeed, and which ones aren’t, they didn’t want to have a one-size-fits all central planning. They wanted to have flexibility. Well, now they have flexibility. And when you have many different “let a hundred flowers bloom,” not all the flowers are going to bloom at the same rate.
And the question is, if they don’t bail out the cities, how are the cities going to operate? Certainly, China has never let markets steer the economy, the government steers the markets. That’s what socialism is as opposed to finance capitalism. So, the question is, you can let localities go broke and yet you’re not going to destroy any of the physical assets of the localities, and all of this is going to be in place. The question is how are you going to arrange the flow of income to all of these roads and buildings and land that’s in place? How do you create a system?
Essentially, they’re saying well, if we’re industrial engineers, how do we just plan things? Forget credit, forget property claims, forget the rentier claims. How are we just going to design an economy that operates most efficiently? And that’s what they’re working on now to resolve this situation because it’s gotten fairly critical.
Pepe: Yes, especially in the countryside. Well, I think, a very good metaphor in terms of comparing both systems are investment in infrastructure. You travel to China a lot so, you’ve seen. You’ll travel through high-speed rail. You’ll see those fantastic airports, in Pudong or the new airport in Beijing. And then you’ll take the Acela to go from Washington to New York City, which is something that I used to do years ago. And the comparison is striking. Isn’t it?
Chinese high speed rail.
Or if you go to France, for instance, when France started development of the TGV, which in terms of a national infrastructure network, is one of the best networks on the planet. And the French started doing this 30 years ago, even more. Is there……, it’s not in terms of way out, but if we analyze the minutia, it’s obvious that following the American finance utilization system, we could never have something remotely similar happening in United States in terms of building infrastructure.
So, do you see any realistic bypass mechanism in terms of improving American infrastructure, especially in the big cities?
Michael: No, and there are two reasons for that. No. 1, let’s take a look at the long-term railroads. The railroads go through the center of town or even in the countryside, all along the railroads, the railroads brought business and all the businesses had been located as close to the railroad tracks as they could. Factories with sightings off the railroad, hotels and especially right through the middle of town where you have the railway gates going up and down. In order to make a high-speed rail as in China, you need a dedicated roadway without trucks and cars, imagine a car going through a railway gate at 350 miles an hour.
Railroad station in China.
So, when I would go from Beijing to Tianjin, here’s the high-speed rail, there’s one highway on one side, one highway on the other side. There’ll be underpasses. But there it goes straight now.
How can you suppose you would have a straight Acela line from Washington up to Boston when all along the line, there’s all this real estate right along the line that has been built up? There’s no way you can get a dedicated roadway without having to tear down all of this real estate that’s on either side and the cost of making the current owners whole would be prohibitive. And anywhere you would go, that’s not in the center of the city, you would also have to have the problem that there’s already private property there.
And there’s no legal, constitutional way for such a physical investment to be made. China was able to make this investment because it was still largely rural. It wasn’t as built up along the railways. It didn’t have any particular area that was built up right where the railroad already was.
So certainly, any high-speed rail could not go where the current railways would be, and they’d have to go on somebody’s land. And, there’s also, what do you do if you want to get to New York and Long Island from New Jersey?
Sixty years ago, when I went into Wall Street, the cost of getting and transporting goods from California to Newark, New Jersey, was as large as from Newark right across the Hudson River to New York, not only because of the mafia and control of the local labor unions, but because of the tunnels.
Right now, the tunnels from New Jersey to New York are broke, they are leaking, the subways in New York City, which continually break down because there was a hurricane a few years ago and the switches were made in the 1940s. The switches are 80 years old. They had water damage and the trains have to go at a crawl. But the city and state, because it is not collecting the real estate tax and other taxes and because ridership fell on the subways to about 20 percent, the city’s broke. They’re talking about 70 percent of city services being cut back. They’re talking about cutting back the subways to 40 percent capacity, meaning everybody will have to get in — when there’s still a virus and not many people are wearing masks, and there was no means of enforcing masks here.
So, there’s no way that you can rebuild the infrastructure because, for one thing the banking system here has subsidized for a hundred years junk economics saying you have to balance the budget. If the government creates credit it’s inflationary as if when banks create credit, it’s not inflationary. Well, the monetary effect is the same, no matter who creates the money. And so, Biden has already said that President Trump ran a big deficit, we’re going to run a bunch of surpluses or a budget balance. And he was advocating that all along.
Essentially Biden is saying we have to increase unemployment by 20 percent, lower wages by 20 percent, shrink the economy by about 10 percent in order to, in order for the banks not to lose money.
And, we’re going to privatize but we are going to do it by selling the hospitals, the schools, the parks, the transportation to finance, to Wall Street finance capital groups. And so, you can imagine what’s going to happen if the Wall Street groups buy the infrastructure.
They’ll do what happened to Chicago when it sold all the parking meters, they’ll say, OK, instead of 25 cents an hour, it’s now charged $3 an hour. Instead of a $2 for the subway, let’s make it $8.
You’re going to price the American economy even further out of business because they say that public investment is socialism. Well, it’s not socialism. It’s industrial capitalism. It’s industrialization, that’s basic economics. The idea of what, and how an economy works is so twisted academically that it’s the antithesis of what Adam Smith, John Stewart Mill and Marx all talked about. For them a free- market economy was an economy free of rentiers. Free of rent, it didn’t have any rent seeking. But now for the Americans, a free-market economy is free for the rentiers, free for the landlord, free for the banks to make a killing. And that is basically the class war back in business with a vengeance. That blocks and is preventing any kind infrastructure recovery. I don’t see how it can possibly take place.
Pepe: Well, based on what you just described, there is a process of turning the United States into a giant Brazil. In fact, this is what the Brazilian Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Pinochetista, as you know Michael, has been doing with the Brazilian economy for the past two years, privatizing everything and selling everything to big Brazilian interests and with lots of Wall Street interests involved as well. So, this is a recipe that goes all across the Global South as well. And it’s fully copied all across the Global South with no way out now.
Michael: Yes, and this is promoted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And when I was brought down to Brazil to meet with the council of economic advisers under Lula, [Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil], they said, well the whole problem is that Lula’s been obliged to let the banks do the planning.
So, basically free markets and libertarianism is adopting central planning, but with central planning by the banks. America is a much more centrally planned economy than China. China is letting a hundred flowers bloom; America has concentrated the planning and the resource allocation in Wall Street. And that’s the central planning that is much more corrosive than any government planning, could be. Now the irony is that China’s sending its students to America to study economics. And, most of the Chinese I had talked to say, well we went to America to take economics courses because that gives us a prestige here in China.
I’m working now, with Chinese groups trying to develop a “reality economics” to be taught in China as different from American economics.
Pepe: Exactly, because of what they study at Beijing University, Renmin or Tsinghua
is not exactly what they would study in big American universities. Probably what they study in the U.S. is what not to do in China. When they go back to China, what they won’t be doing. It’s an object lesson for what to avoid.
Michael, I’d like to go back to what the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] had been discussing in the 2000s when Lula was still president of Brazil and many of his ideas deeply impressed, especially Hu Jintao at the time, which is bypassing the U.S. dollar. Well, at the moment obviously we’re still at 87 percent of international transactions still in U.S. dollars. So, we are very far away from it, but if you have a truly sovereign economy, which is the case of China, which we can say is the case of Russia to a certain extent and obviously in a completely different framework, Iran. Iran is a completely sovereign, independent economy from the West. The only way to try to develop different mechanisms to not fall into the rentier mind space would be to bypass the U.S. dollar.
Michael: Yes, for many reasons. For one thing the United States can simply print the dollars and lend to other countries and then say, now you have to pay us interest.
Well, Russia doesn’t need American dollars. It can print its own rubles to provide labor. There’s no need for a foreign currency at all for domestic spending, the only reason you would have to borrow a foreign currency is to balance your exchange rate, or to finance a trade deficit.
But China doesn’t have a trade deficit. And in fact, if China were to work to accept more dollars, Americans would love to buy into the Chinese market and make a profit there, but that would push up China’s exchange rate and that would make it more difficult for her to make its exports because the exchange rate would come up not because it’s exporting more but because it’s letting American dollars come in and push it up.
Well, fortunately, President Trump as if he works for the Chinese National Committee, said, look, we don’t want to really hurt China by pushing up its currency and we want to keep it competitive. So, I’m going to prevent American companies from lending money to China, I’m going to isolate it and so he’s helping them protect their economy. And in Russia he said, look Russia really needs to feed itself. And, there’s a real danger that when the Democrats come in, there are a lot of anti-Russians in the Biden administration.
They may go to war.
They may do to Russia what they tried to do to China in the ‘50s. Stop exporting food and grain. And only Canada was able to break the embargo. So, we’re going to impose sanctions on Russia. So immediately, what happened is Russia very quickly became the largest grain exporter in the world.
And instead of importing cheese from the Baltics, it created its own cheese industry.
So, Trump said look, I know that Russians followed the American idea of not having protective tariffs, they need protective tariffs. They’re not doing it. We’re going to help them out by just not importing from them and really helping them.
Pepe: Yeah. Michael, what do you think Black Rock wants from the Chinese? You know that they are making a few inroads at the highest levels? Of course, I’m sure you’re aware of that. And also, JP Morgan, Citybank, etc. What do they really want?
Michael: They’d like to be able to create dollars to begin to buy and make loans to real estate; let companies grow, let the real estate market grow and make capital gains.
The way people get wealthy today isn’t by making an income, it’s been by making a capital gain. Total returns are current income plus the capital gains. As for capital gains each year; the land value gains alone are larger than the whole GDP growth from year to year. So that’s where the money is, that’s where the wealth is. So, they are after speculative capital gains, they would like to push money into the Chinese stock market and real estate market. See the prices go up and then inflate the prices by buying in and then sell out at the high price. Pull the money out, get a capital gain and let the economy crash, I mean that’s the business plan.
Pepe: Exactly. But Beijing will never allow that.
Michael: Well, here’s the problem right now, they know that Biden is pushing militarily aggressive people in his cabinet. There’s one kind of overhead that China is really trying to avoid and that’s the military overhead because if you spend money on the military, you can’t spend it on the real economy.
They’re very worried about the military and they say, how do we deter the Biden administration from actually trying a military adventure in the South China Sea or elsewhere? They said well, fortunately America is multi-layered. They don’t think of America as a group. They realize there’s a layer and they say, who’s going to represent our interests?
Well, Blackstone and Wall Street are going to represent their interests.
Then I think one of the, Chinese officials last week gave a big speech on this very thing, saying look, our best hope in stopping America’s military adventurism in China is to have Wall Street acting as our support because after all, Wall Street is the main campaign contributor and the president works for the campaign contributors.
The politician works for the campaign contributors. They’re in it for the money! So fortunately, we have Wall Street on our side, we’ve got control of the political system and they’re not there to go to war so that helps explain why a month ago they let wholly-owned U.S. banks and bankers in. On the one hand, they don’t like the idea of somebody outside the government creating credit for reasons that the economy doesn’t need. If they needed it, the Bank of China would do it. They have no need for foreign currency to come in to make loans in domestic currency, out of China.
The only reason that they could do it is No. 1, it helps meet the World Trade Organization’s principles and, No. 2, especially during this formative few months of the Biden administration, it helps to have Wall Street saying; we can make a fortune in China, go easy on them and that essentially counters the military hawks in Washington.
Pepe: So, do you foresee a scenario when Black Rock starts wreaking havoc in the Shanghai stock exchange for instance?
Michael: It would love to do that. It would love to move things up and down. The money’s made by companies with the stock market going up and down; the zigzag. So of course, it wants to do a predatory zigzag. The question is whether China will impose a tax to stop this, all sorts of financial transactions. That’s what’s under discussion now. They know exactly what Black Rock wants to do because they have some very savvy billionaire Chinese advisers that are quite good. I can tell you stories, but I better not.
Pepe: Okay. If it’s not okay to tell it all, tell us part of the story then.
Michael: The American banks have been cultivating leading Chinese people by providing them enough money to make money here, that they think that, okay they will now try to make money in the same way in China and we can join in. It’s a conflict of systems again, between the finance capital system and industrial socialism. You don’t get any of this discussion in the U.S. press, which is why I read what you write because in the U.S. press, the neocons talk about the fake idea of Greek history and fake idea of the Thucydides’ problem of a country jealous of another country’s development.
There’s no jealousy between America and China.
They’re different, they have their own way. We are going to destroy them. And if you look at the analogy that the Americans draw —and this is how the Pentagon thinks — with the war between Athens and Sparta.
It’s hard to tell, which is which. Here you have Athens, a democracy backing other democracies and having the military support of the democracies and the military in these democracies all had to pay Athens protection money for the military support and that’s the money that Athens got to ostensibly support its navy and protection that built up all of the Athenian public buildings and everything else.
So, that’s a democracy exploiting its allies, to enrich itself via the military.
Then you have Sparta, which was funding all of the oligarchies, and it was helping the oligarchies overthrow democracies. Well, that was America too. So, America is both sides of the Thucydides war if the democracy is exploiting the fellow democracies and is the supporter of oligarchies in Brazil, Latin America, Africa and everyone else.
So, you could say the Thucydides problem was between two sides, two aspects of America and has nothing to do with China at all except, for the fact that the whole war was a war between economic systems. They’re acting as if somehow if only China did not export to us, we could be re-industrialized and somehow export to Europe and the Third World.
And as you and I have described, it’s over.
We painted ourselves into such a debt corner that without writing down the debts, we’re in the same position that the Eurozone is in. There’s so much money that goes to the creditors to the top 1 percent or 5 percent that there is no money for capital investment, there is no money for growth. And, since 1980 as you know, real wages in America have been stable. All the growth has been in property owners and predators and the FIRE sector, the rest of the economy is in stagnation.
And now the coronavirus has simply acted as a catalyst to make it very clear that the game is over; it’s time to move away from the homeowner economy to rentier economy, time for Blackstone to be the landlord. America wants to recreate the British landlord class and essentially what we’re seeing now is like the Norman invasion of England taking over the land and the infrastructure.
That’s what Blackstone would love to do in China.
Pepe: Wow. I’m afraid that they may have a lot of leeway by some members of the Beijing leadership now, because as you know very well, it’s not a consensus in the political arena.
Michael: We’re talking about Volume II and III of Capital.
Pepe: Exactly. But you know, you were talking about debt. Coming back to that, in fact I just checked this morning, apparently global debt as it stands today is $277 trillion, which is something like 365 percent of global GDP. What does that mean in practice?
Michael: Yeah, well fortunately this is discussed in the 19th century and there was a word for that — fictitious capital — it’s a debt that can’t be paid, but you’ll keep it on the books anyway. And every country has this. You could say the question now, and The Financial Times just had an article a few days ago that China’s claims on Third World countries on the Belt and Road Initiative is fictitious capital, because how can it collect?
Well, China’s already thought of that. It doesn’t want money. It wants the raw materials. It wants to be paid in real things. But a debt that can’t be paid, can only be paid either by foreclosing on the debtors or by writing down the debts and obviously a debt that can’t be paid won’t be paid.
And so, you have not only Marx using the word fictitious capital. At the other end of the spectrum, you had Henry George talking about fictive capital. In other words, these are property claims that have no real capital behind them. There’s no capital that makes profit. That’s just a property claim for payment or a rentier claim for payment.
So, the question is, can you make money somehow without having any production at all, without having wages, without having profits, without any capital? Can you just have asset grabbing and buying-and-selling assets? And as long as you have the Federal Reserve in America, come in, Trump’s $10 trillion Covid program gave $2 trillion to the population at large with these $1,200 checks, that my wife and I got, and $8 trillion all just to buy stocks and bonds.
None of this was to build infrastructure. None of this $8 trillion was to build a single factory. None of this 8 trillion was to employee a single worker. It was all just to support the prices of stocks and bonds, and to keep the illusion that the economy had not stopped growing. Well, it’s growing for the 5 percent. So, it’s all become fictitious. And if you look at the GDP as I said, it’s fictitious.
Pepe: And the most extraordinary thing is none of that is discussed in American media. There’s not a single word about what you would have been describing.
Michael: It’s not even discussed in academia. Our graduates at the university of Missouri at Kansas City, we’re all trained in Modern Monetary Theory. And as hired professors they have to be able to publish in the refereed journals and the refereed journals are all essentially controlled by the Chicago School. So, you have a censorship of the kind of ideas that we’re talking about. You can’t get it into the economic journals, so you can’t get it into the economics curriculum. So, where on earth are you going to get it? If you didn’t have the internet you wouldn’t be discussing at all. Most of my books sell mainly in China, more than in all the other countries put together so I can discuss these things there. I stopped publishing in orthodox journals so many years ago because it’s talking to the deaf.
Pepe: Absolutely. Yeah. Can I ask you a question about Russia, Michael? There is a raging, debate in Russia for many years now between let’s say the Eurasianists and the Atlanticists. It involves of course, economic policy under Putin, industrial capitalism Russian style. The Eurasianists basically say that the central problem with Russia is how the Russian central bank is basically affiliated with all the mechanisms that you know so well, that it is an Atlanticist Trojan Horse inside the Russian economy. How do you see it?
Michael: Russia was brainwashed by the West when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. First of all, the IMF announced in advance that there was a big meeting in Houston with the IMF and the World Bank. And the IMF published all of its report saying, first you don’t want inflation in Russia so let’s wipe out all of the Russian savings with hyperinflation, which they did. They then said, well now to cure the hyperinflation the Russian central bank needs a stable currency and you need a backup for the currency. You will need to back it with U.S. dollars.
So, from the early 1990s, as you know, labor was going unpaid. The Russian central bank could have created the rubles to pay the domestic labor and to keep the factories in place. But, the IMF advisers from Harvard said, no you’ll have to borrow U.S. dollars. I met with people from the Hermitage Fund and the Renaissance Fund and others.
We had meetings and I met with the investors. Russia was paying 100 percent interest for years to leading American financial institutions for money that it didn’t need and could have created itself. Russia was so dispirited with Stalinism that, essentially, it thought the opposite of Stalinism must be what they have in America.
They thought that America was going to tell it how America got rich, but America didn’t want to tell Russia how it got rich, but instead wanted to make money off Russia. They didn’t get it. They trusted the Americans. They really didn’t understand that, industrial capitalism that Marx described had metamorphosized into finance capitalism and was completely different.
Finance capitalismFinance capitalism or financial capitalism is the subordination of processes of production to the accumulation of money profits in a financial system. Financial capitalism is thus a form of capitalism where the intermediation of saving to investment becomes a dominant function in the economy, with wider implications for the political process and social evolution. Since the late 20th century, in a process sometimes called financialization, it has become the predominant force in the global economy, whether in neoliberal or other form.Wikipedia
And that’s because Russia didn’t charge rent, it didn’t charge interest. I gave three speeches before the Duma, urging it to impose a land tax. Some of the people I noticed, Ed Dodson was there with us and we were all trying to convince Russia, don’t let this land be privatized. If you let it be privatized, then you’re going to have such high rents and housing costs in Russia that you’re not going to be able to essentially compete for an industrial growth. Well, the politician who brought us there, Viatcheslav Zolensky was sort of maneuvered out of the election by the American advisers.
The Americans put billions of dollars in to essentially finance American propagandists to destroy Russia, mainly from the Harvard Institute of International Development. And essentially, they were a bunch of gangsters and the prosecutors in Boston were about to prosecute them.
The attorney general of Boston was going to bring a big case for Harvard against the looting of Russia and the corruption of Russia. And I was asked to organize and to bring a number of Russian politicians and industrialists over to say how this destroyed everything. Well, Harvard settled out of court and essentially that made the perpetrators the leading university people up there. (I’m associated with Harvard Anthropology Department, not the Economics Department.)
So, we never had a chance to bring my witnesses, and have our report on what happened, but I published for the Russian Academy of Sciences a long study of how all of this destruction of Russia was laid out in advance at the Houston meetings by the IMF. America went to the leading bureaucrats and said; look, we can make you rich why don’t you register the factories in your own name, and if you’re registered in your own name, you know, then you’ll own it. And then you can cash out. You can essentially sell, but obviously you can’t sell to the Russians because the IMF has just wiped out all of their savings.
You can only cash out by selling to the West. And so, the Russian stock market became the leading stock market in the world from 1994 with the Norilsk Nickel and the seven bankers in the bank loans for shares deal through 1997. And, I had worked for a firm Scutter Stevens and, the head adviser, a former student of mine didn’t want to invest in Russia because she said, this is just a rip off, it’s going to crash. She was fired for not investing. They said look, we know that’s going to crash. That’s the whole idea it’s going to crash. We can make a mint off it before the crash. And then when it crashes, we can make another mint by selling short and then all over again. Well, the problem is that the system that was put in with the privatization that’s occurred, how do you have Russia’s wealth used to develop its own industry and its own economy like China was doing. Well, China has rules for all of this, but Russia doesn’t have rules, it’s really all centralized, it’s President Putin that keeps it this way.
Well, this was the great fear of the West. When you had Mikhail Gorbachev beginning to plan to do pretty much what is done today, to restrain private capital, the IMF said hold off. We’re not going to make any loans to stabilize the Russian currency until you remove Mr. Primakov.
The U.S. said we won’t deal with Russia until you remove him. So, he was pushed out and he was probably the smartest guy at the time there. So, they thought [President Vladimir] Putin was going to be sort of the patsy. And he almost single-handedly, holding the oligarchs in and saying, look, you can keep your money as long as you do exactly what the government would do. You can keep the gains as long as you’re serving the public interest.
But none of this resulted into a legal system, a tax system, and a system where the government actually does get most of the benefits. Russia could have emerged in 1990 as one the most competitive economies in Eurasia by giving all of the houses to its people instead of giving Norilsk Nickel and the oil companies to Yukos. It could have given everybody their own house and their own apartment, the same thing in the Baltics. And instead it didn’t give the land out to the people. And Russians were paying 3 percent of their income for housing in 1990. And rent is the largest element in every household’s budget.
So, Russia could have had low-price labor. It could have financed all of its capital investment for the government by taxing, collecting the rising rental value. Instead, Russian real estate was privatized on credit and it was even worse in the Baltics.
In Latvia, where I was research director for the Riga Graduate School of Law, Latvia borrowed primarily from Swedish banks. And so, in order to buy a house, you had to borrow from Swedish banks. And they said, well, we’re not going to lend in the Latvian currency because it can go down. So, you have a choice; Swiss Francs or German Marks or U.S. Dollars. And so, all of this rent was paid in foreign currency. There came an outflow that essentially drained all the Baltic economies. Latvia lost 20 percent of its population. Estonia and Lithuania followed suit.
And of course, the worst hit by neo-liberalism was Russia. As you know, President Putin said that neo-liberalism cost Russia more of its population than World War II.
And you know that to destroy a country, you don’t need an army anymore. All you have to do is teach it American economics.
Pepe: Yes, I remember well, I arrived in Russia in the winter of 91 coming from China. So, I transited from the Chinese miracle. In fact, a few days after Deng Xiaoping’s famous Southern tour when he went to Guangzhou and Shenzhen. And that was the kick for the 1990s boom, in fact a few years before the handover, and then I took the Trans-Siberian and I arrived in Moscow a few days after the end, in fact, a few weeks after the end of the Soviet Union.
But yeah, I remember the Americans arrived almost at the exact minute, wasn’t it, Michael? I think they already were there in the spring of 1992. If I’m not mistaken.
Michael: The Houston meeting was in 1990. But all before that already in, 1988 and 1989, there was a huge outflow of embezzlement money via Latvia. The assistant dean of the university who ended up creating Nordex, essentially the money was all flying out because Ventspils in Latvia, was where Russian oil was exported and it was all fake invoicing. So, the Russian kleptocrats basically made their money off false export invoicing, ostensibly selling it for one price and having the rest paid abroad and, this was all organized through Latvia and the man who did it later moved to Israel and finally gave a billion dollars back to Russia so that he went on to live safely for the rest of his life in Israel.
Pepe: Well, the crash of the ruble in 1998 was what, roughly one year after the crash of the baht and the whole Asian financial crisis, no? It was interlinked of course, but let me see if I have a question for you, in fact, I’m just thinking out loud now. If the economies of Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, the case of South Korea and Russia, were more integrated at the time as they are trying to integrate now, do you think that the Asian financial crisis would have been preventable in 1997?
Michael: Well, look at what happened in Malaysia with Mohammad Mahathir. Malaysia avoided it. So of course, it was preventable, and they had the capital controls. All you would have needed was to do what Malaysia did. But you needed an economic theory for that.
And essentially the current mode of warfare is to conquer the brains of a country to shape how people think and how they perceive the economy.
And if you can twist their view into an unreality economics, where they think that you’re there to help them not to take money out of them, then you’ve got them hooked. That was what happened in Asia. Asia thought it was getting rich off the dollars inflows and then the IMF and all the creditors pulled the plug, crash the industry. And now that all of a sudden you had a crash, they bought up Korean industry and other South Asian industries at giveaway prices.
That’s what you do. You lend the money; you pull the plug. You then let them go under and you pick up the pieces. That’s what Blackstone did after the Obama depression began, when Obama saved the banks, not the constituency, the mortgage borrowers. Essentially that’s Blackstone’s modus operandi to pick up distressed prices at a bankruptcy sale, but you need to lend money and then crash it in order to make that work.
Pepe: Michael, I think we have only five minutes left. So, I would expect you to go on a relatively long answer and I’m really dying for it. It’s about debt, it about the debt trap. And it’s about the New Silk Roads, the Belt and Road Initiative, because I think rounding up our discussion and coming back to the theme of debt and global debt.
The No. 1 criticism apart from the demonization of China that you hear from American media and a few American academics as well against the Belt and Road is that it’s creating a debt trap for Southeast Asian nations, Central Asian nations and nations in Africa, etc…. Obviously, I expect you to debunk that, but the framework is there is no other global development project as extensive and as complex as Belt and Road, which as you know very well was initially dreamed up by the Ministry of Commerce. Then they sold it more or less to Xi Jinping who got the geopolitical stamp on it, announcing it, simultaneously, (which was a stroke of genius) in Central Asia in Astana and then in Southeast Asia in Jakarta. So, he was announcing the overland corridors through the heartland and the Maritime Silk Road at the same time.
At the time people didn’t see the reach and depth of all that. And now of course, finally the Trump administration woke up and saw what was in play, not only across Eurasia but reaching Africa and even selected parts of Latin America as well. And obviously the only sort of criticism, and it’s not even a fact-based criticism, that I’ve seen about the Belt and Road is it’s creating a debt trap because as you know Laos is indebted, Sri Lanka is indebted, Kyrgyzstan is indebted etc. So, how do you view Belt and Road within the large framework of the West and China, East Asia and Eurasia relations? And how would you debunk misconceptions created, especially in the U S that this is a debt trap.
Michael: There are two points to answer there. The first is how the Belt and Road began. And as you pointed out, the Belt and Road began, when China said, what is it we need to grow and how do we grow within our neighboring countries so we don’t have to depend upon the West, and we don’t have to depend on sea trade that can be shut down? How do we get to roads instead of seas in a way that we can integrate our economy with the neighboring economies so that there can be mutual growth?
So, this was done pretty much on industrial engineering grounds. Here’s where you need the roads and the railroads. And then how do we finance it? Well, The Financial Times article, last week, said didn’t the Chinese know that [with past] railroad development, they’ve all gone broke? The Panama Canal went broke, you know, the first few times there were European railway investment in Latin America in the 19th century, that all went broke.
Well, what they don’t get is China’s aim was not to make a profit off the railroads. The railroads were built to be part of the economy. They don’t want to make profit. It was to make the real economy grow, not to make profits for the owners of the railroad stocks. The Western press can’t imagine that you’re building a railroad without trying to make money out of it.
Then you get to the debt issue. Countries only have a debt crisis if their debt is in a foreign currency. The first way that the United States gained power was to fight against its allies. The great enemy of America was England and it made the British block their currency in the 1940s. And so, India and other countries, that had all these currencies holdings in sterling, were able to convert it all into dollars.
The whole move of the U.S. was to denominate world debt in dollars. So that No. 1, U.S. banks would end up with the interest in financing the debt. And No. 2, the United States could, by using the debt leverage, control domestic politics.
National debt as a function of GDP.
Well, as you’re seeing right now in Argentina, for instance, Argentina is broke because it owes foreign-dollar debt. When I started the first Third World bond fund in 1990 at Scutter Stevens, Brazil and China and Argentina were paying 45 percent interest per year, 45 percent per year in dollars debt.
Yet we tried to sell them in America. No American would buy. We went to Europe, no European buy this debt. And so, we worked with Merrill Lynch and Merrill Lynch was able to make an offshore fund in the Dutch West Indies and all of the debt was sold to the Brazilian ruling class in the central bank and the Argentinian bankers in the ruling class, we thought oh, that’s wonderful.
We know that they’re going to pay the foreign Yankee Dollars debt because the Yankee Dollars debt is owed to themselves. They’re the Yankees! They’re the client oligarchy. And you know, from Brazil client oligarchy is, you know, they’re cosmopolitan, that’s the word. So, the problem is that on the Belt and Road, how did these other countries pay the debt to China?
Well, the key there again is the de-dollarization, and one way to solve it is since we’re trying to get finance out of the picture, we’re doing something very much like, Japan did with Canada in the 1960s. It made loans to develop Canadian copper mines taking its payment, not in Canadian dollars, that would have pushed up the yen’s exchange rate, but in copper.
So, China says, you know you don’t have to pay currency for this debt. We didn’t build a railroad to make a profit and you want, we can print all the currency we want. We don’t need to make a profit.
We made the Belt and Road because it’s part of our geopolitical attempt to create what we need to be prosperous and have a prosperous region. So, these are self-reinforcing mutual gain. Well, so that’s what the West doesn’t get — mutual gain? Are we talking anthropology? What do you mean mutual? This is capitalism!
So, the West doesn’t understand what the original aim of the Belt and Road was, and it wasn’t to make a profitable railroad to enable people to buy and sell railway stocks. And it wasn’t to make toll roads to sell off to Goldman Sachs, you know.
We’re dealing with two different economic systems, and it’s very hard for one system to understand the other system because of the tunnel vision that you get when you get a degree in economics.
Pepe: Belt and Road loans are long-term and at very low interest and they are renegotiable. They are renegotiating with the Pakistanis all the time for instance.
Michael: China’s intention is not to repeat an Asia crisis of 1997. It doesn’t gain anything by forcing a crisis because it’s not trying to come in and buying property at a discount at a distressed sale. It has no desire to create a distressed sale. So obviously, the idea is the capacity to pay. Now, this whole argument occurred in the 1920s, between [John Maynard] Keynes and his opponents that wanted to collect German reparations and, Keynes made it very clear. What is the capacity to pay? It’s the ability to export and the ability to obtain foreign currency. Well, China’s not looking for foreign currency. It is looking for economic returns but the return is to the whole society, the return isn’t from a railroad. The return is for the entire economy because it’s looking at the economy as a system.
The way that neoliberalism works, it divides the economy in parts, and it makes every part trying to make a gain, and if you do that, then you don’t have any infrastructure that’s lowering the cost for the other parts. You have every part fighting for itself. You don’t look at in terms of a system the way China’s looking at it. That’s the great advantage of Marxism, you’ll look at the system, not just the parts.
Pepe: Exactly and this is at the heart of the Chinese concept of a community with a shared future for mankind, which is the approximate translation from Mandarin. So, we compare community with a shared future for mankind, which is, let’s say the driving force between the idea of Belt and Road, expanded across Eurasia, Africa and Latin America as well with our good old friends’, “greed is good” concept from the eighties, which is still ruling America apparently.
Michael: And the corollary is that non-greed is bad.
Pepe: Exactly and non-greed is evil.
Michael: I see. I think we ran out of time. I do. I don’t know if Alanna wants to step in to wrap it up.
Michael: There may be somebody who has a question.
Pepe: Somebody has a question? That’ll be fantastic.
Alanna: There is a question from Ed Dodson. He wanted to know why there are these ghost cities in China? And who’s financing all this real estate that’s developed, but nobody’s living there? We’ve all been hearing about that. So, what is happening with that?
Michael: Okay. China had most of its population living in the countryside and it made many deals with Chinese landholders who have land rights, and they said, if you will give up your land right to the community, we will give you free apartment in the city that you could rent out.
So, China has been building apartments in cities and trading these basically in exchange to support what used to be called a rural exodus. China doesn’t need as many farmers on the land as it now has, and the question is how are you going to get them into cities? So, China began building these cities and many of these apartments are owned by people who’ve got them in exchange for trading their land rights. The deals are part of the rural reconstruction program.
Alanna: Do you think it was a good deal? Vacant apartments everywhere.
Pepe: You don’t have ghost cities in Xinjiang for instance, Xinjiang is under-populated, it’s mostly desert. And it’s extremely sensitive to relocate people to Xinjiang. So basically, they concentrated on expanding Urumqi. When you arrive in Urumqi it is like almost like arriving in, Guangzhou. It’s enormous. It’s a huge generic city in the middle of the desert. And it’s also a high-tech Mecca, which is something that very few people in the West know. And is the direct link between the eastern seaboard via Belt and Road to Central Asia.
Urumqi, China.
Last year I was on an amazing trip. I went to the three borders, the Tajik-Xinjiang border, Kyrgiz-Xinjiang border and the Kazakh-Xinjiang border, which is three borders in one. It’s a fascinating area to explore and specially to talk to the local populations, the Kyrgiz, the Kazakhs and the Tajiks.
How do they see the Belt and Road directly affecting their lives from now on? So, you don’t see something spectacular for instance, in the Xinjiang – Kazakh boarder, there is one border for the trucks, lots of them like in Europe, crossing from all points, from Central Asia to China and bringing Chinese merchandise to Central Asia.
There’s the train border, which is a very simple two tracks and the pedestrian border, which is very funny because you have people arriving in buses from all parts of Central Asia. They stop on the Kazakh border. They take a shuttle, they clear customs for one day, they go to a series of shopping malls on the Chinese side of the border. They buy like crazy, shop till it drops, I don’t know for 12 hours? And then they cross back the same day because the visa is for one day. They step on their buses and they go back.
So, for the moment it’s sort of a pedestrian form of Belt and Road, but in the future, we’re going to have high-speed rail. We’re going to have, well the pipelines are already there as Michael knows, but it’s fascinating to see on the spot. You see the closer integration; you see for instance Uyghurs traveling back and forth.
You know, Uyghurs that have families in Kyrgizstan for instance, I met some Uyghurs in Kyrgyzstan who do the back-and-forth all the time. And they said, there’s no problem. They are seen as businessmen so there’s no interference. There are no concentration camps involved, you know, but you have to go to these places to see how it works on the ground and with Covid, that’s the problem for us journalists who travel, because for one year we cannot go anywhere and Xinjiang was on my travel list this year, Afghanistan as well, Mongolia.
Urumqi, China.
These are all parts of Belt and Road or future parts of Belt and Road, like Afghanistan. The Chinese and the Russians as well; they want to bring Afghanistan in a peace process organized by Asians themselves without the United States, within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, because they want Afghanistan to be part of the intersection of Belt and Road and Eurasian Economic Union. This is something Michael knows very well. You don’t see this kind of discussions in the American media for instance, integration of Eurasia on the ground, how it’s actually happening.
Michael: That’s called cognitive dissonance.
Alanna: To try to understand it gets you cognitive dissonance.
Pepe: Oh yeah, of course. And obviously you are a Chinese agent, a Russian agent. And so, I hear that all the time. Well, in our jobs we hear that all the time. Especially, unfortunately from our American friends.
Alanna: Okay. I know you have other things to do. This has been fabulous. I want to thank you so much, both of you, uh, with so easy to get attendance for this webinar. There were 20 people in five minutes enrolled and in two days we were at capacity. So, I know there are many more people who would love to hear you talk another time, whenever you two are so willing. And I think you both got much out of your first conversation in person. Everybody listening knows these two wonderful gentlemen, they have written more than 10 books, and they have traveled all over the world. They are on the top of geopolitical and geoeconomic analysis, and they are caring, loving people. So, you can see that these are the people we need to be listening to and understanding all around the world.
So, thank you so much. Ibrahima Drame from the Henry George School is now going to say goodbye to you and will wrap this up. Thank you again.
Pepe: Michael it was a huge pleasure. Really, it was fantastic. Really nice, we’re on the same website. So, let’s have a second version of this.
Ibrahima: So, let’s have a second version of this two months from now. Thank you very much for participating and I really hope you liked this event. And, we also want to ask for your support by making a tax-deductible donation to the Henry George School. I believe I shared the link on the chat. Thank you. And see you soon.
Pepe: Thank you very much. Thanks Michael. Bye!
Attributions
Michael Hudson is an American economist professor of economics at the university of Missouri Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. He’s a former Wall Street analyst political consultant commentator and journalist. He identifies himself as a classical economist. Michael is the author of J is for Junk Economics,Killing the Host, The Bubble and Beyond, Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, Trade Development and Foreign Debtand The Myth of Aid, among others. His books have been published translated into Japanese, Chinese, German, Spanish and Russian.
Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War;Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor toThe Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.
Just a couple of guys chatting away about America and China and the theories behind capitalism; meaning …
CapitalismCapitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, a price system, private property and the recognition of property rights, voluntary exchange and wage labor. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by every owner of wealth, property or production ability in capital and financial markets whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.Wikipedia
Ugh.
No. No. No.
Meaning;
Using money as a medium of exchange for products or services. And the idea of private ownership of the things that you can exchange it for.
I found the discussion interesting in that it validated my belief. Which is a belief that China is growing and is successful today, while the USA is apparently collapsing upon itself.
They came at it from a very interesting angle.
In their mind, the state of America today (and other leading Western nations) is because the medium of exchange differs.
China – exchanges – products & services for money.
USA – exchanges – interest on debt to generate money.
Looking at the world from this lens, or with this set of crystal-clear glasses you can see that no matter what the USA does, China will overtake it.
Not by it’s enormous size, or the great number of STEM graduates, or it’s philosophical drivers or social engineering advances…
…but rather through the nature of the capitalism that it employs.
The United States debt is over 20 trillion dollars and climbing. Those that enjoy this debt, those that make money off of it are bankers, and speculators such as the Stock Market. They are a small minority of people. A very, very, very tiny group of people.
According to this article, half the world's wealth (!) was controlled by 62 individuals in 2016. In 2017 (see here) this number drops substantially. From only these two articles, these are the numbers.
2011 - 388 people
2012/13 - 177 people
2014 - 80 people
2015/16 - 62 people
2017 - 8 people!
Meanwhile, China not only makes products and provides services, but also has a philosophy where the community REQUIRES everyone to participate making products, and providing services.
The United States has a different philosophy. Be the best, capture all the money, sit at the top. Let the rest of the world flounder.
…
Where I am getting to on all this is simple…
Imagine three hundred years in the future.
China
Everyone is either making things or providing services for others. Milk is being delivered; new gizmos and gadgets are being designed and sold. People are learning and striving. Extreme poverty is gone. But so is extreme wealth. All people have a comfortable life. But extremes in poverty and wealth do not exist.
And the United States…
United States
There is only one oligarchy running things. It is a family where the oldest member is tremendously old and is on advanced life support. He is fawned over by his family.
The rest of the world lives in extreme poverty with electronic tracking of actions and behaviors. Few own anything. They rent it all to others who funnel the money to this lone individual. These poorer people, the vast majority of them provide maintenance and protection services. No one is skilled at reason or fabrication. The most skilled are those that count the money that the wealthy own.
Oh for certain, the “citizens” of the United States will loudly and most vociferously proclaim their “freedom”! And you know what, they will probably still be able to own guns too. They will proudly take the bullets out of the display case and shine then up every Fourth of July as a symbol of how exceptional they are.
…
As I see it, the American system is not sustainable. It is not healthy and it is a waste of time. It is one that converts the citizens of the United States into a caste system of two types of people; the Rulers and the Servants.
This is a battle for the potential future of the sentience of the human species;
Service to Self society with a two-tiered caste system This is the American / Western model.
While the Chinese model, is sustainable. It is doable, and it is workable, and it will provide advantage to the vast bulk of society, not just one singular family and their psychopathic leeches.
Service to Others society, with no class distinction, only individual merit.
I strongly believe that anyone in support of the current way that the United States is and how it operates and who is desirous of continuing this path is either evil, not thinking properly, or has some kind of selfish agenda.
And this, boys and girls, is what the big “sentience selection” event(s) are all about. Our benefactors want us humans to select the pathways for our species. And you can rest assured that there are individuals on both sides of this issue that are willing to fight to the death for their vision of utopia.
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Love him or hate him, President Trump has severely altered the geography of the American domestic political scene. He has also severely altered the international relationships that America has with other nations; friend and foe. (Well documented.) Some people laud this as beneficial, while others decry this as something horrible. For me, personally, it’s a “mixed bag”.
"a mixed bag"
COMMON IDIOM
If something is a mixed bag, it contains things that are of very different types or qualities. The newspapers carry a mixed bag of stories on their front pages. The programmes are a mixed bag as they have to cater for all tastes. Note: The bag referred to here is a hunting bag containing the different kinds of animals and birds that the hunter has shot.
-The Free Dictionary
On one hand, it was a relief to see an “outsider” enter Washington, DC and “shake things up”. I was getting tired of feeling like no one in government cared about me, or my problems and issues. Trump entered office and acted like a “big wrecking ball”. He “shook things up”, and really “upset the apple cart”. That was a relief. It gave me hope that real change in America was possible.
shake something up
to cause changes to something, esp. in order to make improvements.
upset the apple cart
wreck an advantageous project or disturb the status quo.
go under the wrecking ball
To be destroyed or demolished.
Fig. to be wrecked or torn down.
But on the other hand, he and his small army of neocon conservatives completely demolished whatever international standing that America has held. They (the neocons) were under the delusion that somehow 2020 was actually 1960, and that America was a vibrant and healthy nation, a manufacturing powerhouse, and beloved all over the world. All of which was false.
And in their glee to “reestablish America as a global leader – 1960s style” they torn down all the Agreements that America was part of. They did so in the belief that better, more pro-America agreements would be put in their places. And sadly, that has not been the case.
Now a new President will come into office; Mr. Biden.
I cannot predict what will happen. Actually. I know that the American “news” organizations are flooding the internet with stories about how [1] Biden will be tougher on China than Trump, [2] that Biden is going to issue forth Marxism in the United States, [3] Ban Guns, and [4] so on and so forth… But no one really knows what will happen.
It could become a complete police state, but jeeze guys, isn’t that what it is already?
America is a military empire and it’s citizens live within a Police State.
Anyways, I find that this fascinating.
Why?
Two reasons.
[1] The American government owns all mainstream, alt-Left and Alt-Right media. They are pushing these narratives. Why? Why are they doing it?
That’s right. I can see an anti-China propaganda campaign as a lead up to a hot war. That always happens. That is what happened with Syria and what happened with Vietnam. But if there is no hot war, or the intention of going into a hot war, then why do it?
What is the purpose of the devotion of time, money, and resources to get Americans all riled up against a common enemy if it is not war? Why is the media (Alt-Left, Alt-Right and mainstream) all geared up so that just about every second or third article is Hate-China?
It’s getting to be that Americans are becoming fearful of the most popular, and the most populous nation on the planet. Why? (You might want to see what the rest of the world thinks about America today.)
Who and what really controls the American “news”.
[2] Both the Democrat Party and the Republican Party are a uni-party. They show different faces to the electorate, but actually are in the same club.
The uni-party are the same with only very minor differences in ideology. That is true. Look at the voting records. Not the individual votes. But rather the final votes when the votes have been counted.
Oh, sure, Congressman Royalasshole decided to vote “no” on congressional resolution Fuck-Americans-in-the-ass, but his party did. Oh, by just one or two votes. Imagine that! Back-door dealings…
Hey Congressman Smartlydressedolderdickhead made the arrangements. Most could vote to please their constituents, but, as long as the party voted as the oligarchy favored, then all was well.
It’s a uni-party.
The uni-party.
So what is actually going on?
My personal belief is that President Trump was an intentional plant. He was popularly elected, but it was intended for him to be elected. Hillary Clinton was a very polarizing figure, ran a weak election campaign, and lost.
I believe that it was intended for him to be elected over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Further, that it was intended for him to has a short four year term in office, intentionally. Leading up to Biden who is the intentional follow-up President that came into office.
From my point of view, as an outsider – I no longer live inside the American media echo chamber, it appears to be crystal clear that America is being run as a big Ponzi scheme and that the entire election process is just one big hoax. No citizens have any control over anything.
And you are free to agree or disagree. But it really seems to me that the forces aligned for a Biden win, whether legitimate or not, are aligned that way intentionally.
Very powerful force, with very powerful resources, are manipulating American citizenry in very precise and elaborate ways. The outcome, no matter how you look at it, is planned.
What is going on?
I personally believe that most people are good. And that most American are good. That they live in a nation that has become hostile to them in various ways. For some, it dates way back decades or centuries, for others it is recent. But both sides of the political spectrum see America a very sick and in need of change. The difference is that both sides see different ways of accomplishing that objective.
Far Left = Marxism is the solution.
Mainstream = The status quo is perfect as it is.
Far Right = A return to a Republic is the solution
All are false.
You are here.
It is no secret (but not at all publicized in the United States) that China threw away it’s mantle of Marxist Communism back in the 1970’s. It nearly destroyed the nation, and torn it apart in ways that Americans have a hard time understanding. Over 30 million people died under Chinese Marxism. And the Chinese leadership said “never again” and changed the government.
Someone should have woken up the neocons and got them out of their comfortable echo chamber. Their narrative about what China is hasn’t been updated since the 1970’s and they are spouting nonsense that anyone outside of the USA can see clearly. China is many things, but Marxist Communist it is not.
No. American Marxism will not be an improvement. It will be a disaster.
Bafflegab.
Likewise, a return to a Republic is not the solution either. We know from history how the American Republic turned into a Democracy. How it became an Oligarchy, and then evolved into a Military Empire. Trying to hit a “reset button” in the hope of a return to what was intended is a mistake. It’s just going to allow others to establish a better, stronger and more powerful oligarchy.
No. A return to the past is not the solution either.
I want to believe.
Now, I advocate something radical.
I strongly suggest that the federal government be dissolved. It be destroyed and the individual States regain their sovereign identities.
I think that the citizens will have better control over their lives and that the benefits that the Federal Government provides won’t even be noticed when it is gone. In fact, I argue that the benefits of having a Federal Government is actually tiny on a vast majority of folk in the United States today.
How are the citizens of West Virginia benefiting from the war in Yemen?
How do the people in Tennessee benefit for the billions of federal taxes for a High Speed Train in California?
In what way does the ATF benefit the people of North Dakota?
Selected flags of the various States.
Rather than fight each other over ideology, I argue that now is the time for Americans to come together and forge a new government, and stop looking to the past for answers. Whether it is Marxism, or a 1776 Republic.
While everyone might have different personal ideologies, I argue that most people want to be left alone. they want to work, play, and raise their families. And that they really don’t care all that much about who is doing what in Washington DC.
The two parties simplified.
So What is the Big Picture?
Provided that I am correct, that it’s all a big show for the masses, then what is actually going on? What is the big plan?
Well, by looking at the results of the Trump Administration’s actions on an international scale, it seems rather obvious. He has pretty much torn up almost all the agreements, trampled on our relationships with long-term allies, and has engaged on a war footing with the largest and most important nation on the planet. Why?
Look what he is doing…
Isolate America from the rest of the world.
Contain any upset and internal turmoil domestically to American shores.
Minimize the economic “footprint” of any economic collapse that will happen inside of America.
Limit any external damage that might occur as the American monster empire goes into it’s death throes.
That is the only thing that makes sense when you look at things objectively. And not from some kind of partisan divide.
Don’t believe ANYTHING out of the American “news”. Both the Alt-Left and the Alt-Right are controlled by the American State Department. They push narratives to control the citizenry.
Why is this going on?
Well, it seems obvious. The United States is long, long over due for a reset. And no matter how you look at it; it is going to occur.
It is going to occur. The reset will happen. The oligarchy realizes this. So they have planned accordingly. From their point of view, it is best to let the trends run their course, but in such a way that they control the outcome. And that is why all this is going on.
The dichotomy between what is happening in the real world and what is happening in the world of the financiers will lead to violent upheaval on a timeline not anticipated by the ruling class. There is a good reason gun stores were overwhelmed with business at the outset of this over-hyped flu pandemic. Trust in the government, central bankers, the corporate media, and “experts” is disintegrating rapidly. The anger and disillusionment grows by the day and pockets of resistance are propagating throughout the country...
The only thing that matters is we will experience a disastrous outcome in the very near future from this reckless issuance of debt. The civic decay has entered the confrontational stage, with sides taken, weapons at the ready, awaiting the spark which will ignite the dynamite.
Reopen the nation, American Thinker – Hundreds of thousands of businesses are on the verge of bankruptcy and permanent closure. 33+ million are unemployed, and the federal government is creating massive unsustainable debt. This nation has made the biggest blunder in its history. The time has come for the politicians from the President to the Governors and Mayors to stop hiding behind the scientist/bureaucrats and fully reopen the nation. Focus on that segment of the population most at risk, without compulsory isolation or de facto imprisonment. And restore the civil liberties that have been wantonly eroded.
Spicy times ahead. Read some history.
Picture above; as the Ottoman empire started to collapse, they disarmed the citizenry. Then found scapegoats or villains. They collected them, marched them off and killed them.
Spicy times ahead.
The importance of isolating America from the rest of the world
America is being isolated in so many, many ways. Most Americans are unaware of this, as they do not live internationally. But what is actually happening is that President Trump’s policies have make it very “uncool” to have anything to do with America.
Global stability is maintained by strong routes of communication, give and take, and trade. This ensures that countries can address concerns early on before things get blown out of control, and spiral down a dangerous path towards war. It’s a very human thing, this idea of clear communications and open productive dialog.
It’s like a family. What happens when one member decides to stop talking, starts doing what they please without the consent of others in the family? What happens when they arbitrarily decide to eat what they want and spend the family budget as they feel fit, without input form the rest of the family?
But when you have a problematic family member, one with a mental illness, and alcohol addiction, or problems with the police, the family has a responsibly to isolate him/her and get them help where their problems can be resolved. For some this is a 12-step program, for others it is incarceration in a jail or a mental hospital. But no matter what the situation, the person needs to be placed in a “safe place”, isolated and attended to by experts.
When you have problematic family members you need to isolate them and get them help. They need to work out their own problems in a safe and controlled environment.
.
Other nations do not want “spill over” from American domestic turmoil to affect their economies. They collectively desire to minimize the effects of any problems.
That is what the United States is being set up for now.
And people are noticing.
From the woodpile report; July will tell the truth about the economy. I’ve chosen November as the month of general truth, whether the years following will be of manageable coping, of unexampled disaster, or something in between.
We could see a return to pre-Covid conditions, the economy revive, preps largely unneeded. Or hard times will persist but get no worse than they are now, with normalcy slowly returning, preps helpful but not critical. Or daily life could worsen long term and become the new normal, modest preps necessary but sufficient until a slow turnaround takes hold some years out.
Or systemic disruption and shortages could multiply, the recession deepen into a depression , extensive preps needed to make it from one month to the next. Or it could become a general disaster with outright starvation, government rule by decree, cities uninhabitable, regional withdrawals into fiefdoms, and only extensive preps being enough to avoid personal catastrophe. Or we'll see a rapid and unstoppable national and global collapse, criminal raids on a regional scale, rule by force, preps depleted or confiscated and the widespread rise of outright survivalism.
Preppers attempt to maintain some or most of their present circumstances in tough times. The survivalist has his own definition of preps. He practices to survive by anticipating and training for the worst of the possibilities.
Survivalism comes first, not last, because in the end preps assume the prepper survives to use them.
There are entirely reasonable variations on these themes. This is merely my personal arrangement.
He also goes on to say…
It appears we're at the start of an economic collapse similar to that of 1929 and into the 1930s. What we're seeing in Minneapolis and elsewhere appears to add the danger of organized violence.
A widespread decampment from big cities began some time ago and appears to be accelerating. Bloomberg reports RV sales are up 30% in some urban places.
The causes are fascinating but in the end what matters is how their migration to the "flyover country" they so despise may affect your personal plans.
July, when the long term direction of the economy will be plain to see, may be your last opportunity to shape your preparations more exactly, meaning food, shelter and protection. November is the month of the presidential election, when all sides reveal their intentions and one is chosen. It's also when winter weather begins.
Time is running out.
The alarm bells are ringing all over the United States…
Lockdowns, Mises Institute – Those who have claimed that lockdowns are “the only option” had virtually no evidence at all to support their position. Indeed, such extreme over-the-top measures such as the general lockdowns required an extreme level of high-quality, nearly irrefutable evidence that lockdowns would work and were necessary in the face of a disease with an extremely high fatality rate. But the only “data” the prolockdown people could offer was speculation and hyperbolic predictions of bodies piling up in the streets. The lockdown crowd destroyed the lives of millions to satisfy the hunches of a tiny handful of politicians and technocrats.
Peter Grant at Bayou Renaissance Man mentions the unmentionable in his essay, Bailing out the states: the momentum and the prospect for violence builds. Excerpts:
If their residents find that government largesse is no longer flowing; and if they believe that they're entitled to such largesse; then they're going to get out of control and try to take what they want. The results are likely to be catastrophic for law and order, and civil society.
I think the ordinary people of America realize this. After all, that's why they bought more guns in March than any other month in previous US history. They're getting ready to defend what's theirs—and I believe they're right in anticipating the need to do so...
You want to know why my friends want me to upgrade their rifles? You want to know why I've been warning about COVID-19 as a threat to personal security, and suggesting ways to keep your shooting skills honed, even during the lockdown? ... Look no further.
American Gun News – Another Maryland Man Red-Flagged to Death by the Cops … cops shot him through a window while asleep in bed. They also shot his pregnant girlfriend
Power grab, Sovereign Man – If you think about 9/11 in particular, its remarkable how much power the government grabbed, and how many freedoms they took away. What I’m most concerned about at this point is not the virus, nor even the economic devastation.They have us all cowering in our homes, stripped of the most basic freedoms to do just about anything. People are being thrown off their own private property because they’re not an ‘official resident’ of the town. Others have been arrested for attending a funeral. Others threatened with jail for their social media posts. There’s going to be a huge impact on our freedom from this astonishing growth of unchecked government power.
…
The oligarchy, and I mean the top most, highest levels of the 1%, are aware of all these trends and they expect things to get worse. They see and view what America is entering as something that is unavoidable, but can be controlled somewhat.
The most important thing for them is to limit the damage.
Keep it on a local scale within America. Try to avoid spillover to the rest of the world. And that requires that America be isolated to various degrees from the rest of the world. Disentangled.
Isolation
As I see it, there is an effort for complete isolation.
When I mean complete isolation, I am referring to [1] a drop in international obligations and trades as well as [2] a long drawn-out rise in being fearful of other nations. Treaties would be torn up or ignored. All done to “improve” America. And news would make Americans fearful, afraid, and full of hate towards other nations, and other peoples.
You simply cannot deny this.
The year of 2020 has been a non-stop China-hate-fest. Every other article is China doing something wrong, and how dangerous they are. Coupled with that is systems of isolation and a break-up of channels of communication. Students are no longer permitted in the USA, Chinese applications and communication channels are banned (such as QQ, Wechat, and Tiktok) plus an onslaught on the American means of communication. Zoom now requires the Chinese to pay a hefty fee to use it, and Skype is putting access limitations on it’s use within China.
Americans have been so dumbed down that they don’t even realize it is happening. You would think that they would at least ask themselves “Why this flood of anti-China articles now? What happened to the most favored trading nation status?”
America is so dumbed down that this is what passes for “news” in the United States today.
.
You can argue the Mike Pompeo narrative; “China IS bad. So all this is necessary”. But I argue that it’s a big lie. It’s all part of a large orchestrated effort to isolate America from the rest of the world.
What follows is a brief compilation of the many, many treaties that President Trump and his small band of neocons have broken, collapsed, argued for re-posturing, or simply abandoned and no longer functionally obeys the Agreements that the United States has already signed. Combined, it paints a damning picture of intentional isolation from the global, and Geo-Political landscape.
Broken Treaties leading towards American isolation.
Let’s walk down the long hallway of broken treaties, collapsed agreements, and ignored responsibilities. Let’s look down that hallway and see whether or not the United States people are being screwed by it’s leadership… all in the name of “Making America Strong Again”.
As we walk down this hallway, let’s look for clues to see whether or not Americans are being screwed by the oligarchy as part of their long term plan.
.
President Donald Trump's decision to begin the process of withdrawing the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty will end an arms control agreement with Russia that has been a centerpiece of European security since the Cold War.
The move, meant to penalize Russia for noncompliance, is likely to alarm the international community, particularly Europe, and cause fears that the US and Russia could enter a new nuclear arms race.
Trump's time in office has seen the President remove the US from multiple international organizations and has not hidden his frustration with international trade groups and security alliances.
-CNN
China
China really doesn’t figure strongly here. Trump has made it clear that he wants to sever all ties with China, and isolate them. To this end he has constructed the ‘QUAD” to encircle China and threaten them with military support. It’s sort of like this…
Trump is trying to isolate China from the United States.
Trump’s long list of global trade deals, agreements exited or renegotiated
President Donald Trump campaigned on deals. Making deals — like an Israel-Palestine peace accord. And breaking deals — like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Iran Deal, both of which he labeled disasters.
Since entering the Oval Office in 2016, Trump — a self-professed negotiator —has delivered on many of his promises to abandon international pacts that previous administrations had authorized.
KORUS
The Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) went into effect on March 15, 2012. Most Korean industrial and consumer goods currently enter the United States free of duty and the merchandise processing fee (MPF) and by 2016 that figure grew to over 95 percent.
Then Trump ended it as soon as he came to office.
He renegotiated in such a way that South Korea will no longer have the United States as it’s largest export target. Instead there are limits to what South Korea can ship to America. That way, when or if, America collapses, the economy of South Korea will not be so broadly affected.
This makes sense from an Oligarchy point of view. Not so much for a MAGA (Make America Great Again) point of view.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership
KORUS wasn’t the only treaty that Trump broke as soon as he came to office.
Just days after assuming office, Trump delivered on a campaign promise and announced that the U.S. would be pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries that took seven years to negotiate and was signed by then-President Barack Obama in his second term. Its goals were to boost exports, remove tariffs and non-tariff barriers, and open access to more markets.
It was a turn toward protectionist measures. By abandoning a deal that would give American companies an opportunity to seek cheap labor abroad, Trump signaled that his priority is to reduce the number of jobs leaving the country.
In a memorandum announcing the move, Trump favored bilateral negations and said they were to be pursued whenever possible to “promote American industry, protect American workers, and raise American wages.”
The end result was that the huge trade connections that America has had with 11 other nations collapsed. The trade back and forth between these countries started to decline and now are only a fraction of what they once were.
If Trump did nothing, and TPP stayed intact, a collapse of the American economy as a result of internal turmoil or economic malfeasance would result in economic turmoil in those 11 nations as well. Pulling out provides a “safety valve” for those nations so that if anything were to happen to the USA, the damage would be domestic and not international in scope.
The Paris Agreement
On June 1, 2017, Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, an international climate accord that the U.S. signed under the Obama administration that aims to combat global warming by gradually reducing emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, which come from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas.
Trump cited “onerous energy restriction” on the U.S. and the possible job losses it could cost as reasons for dropping out of the deal. Industrial sectors such as cement, coal, and iron and steel, Trump said, could be affected by America’s inclusion in the accord. He said there were plans to begin negotiations to reenter the deal or enter an “entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers.”
Trump said the deal “punishes the United States,” which he claimed was the world leader in environmental protection, without imposing any “meaningful obligations” on the world’s leading polluters. Historically, the U.S. has ranked as one of the worst emitters of carbon dioxide, but it’s been noted as recently as this year that its contribution to CO2 levels globally has been on the decline.
What is not spoken of isn’t anything regarding climate, or the environment. There are two impacts that this has that are significant here;
American influence in an entire slew of subsequent treaties will be absent.
Other nations will not be economically dependent on this treaty as a source of income.
People all over the world rely on American funding through treaty. Trump has gone about severing as many of those ties as possible.
The Iran Deal
Throughout the 2016 presidential election campaign, then-candidate Trump promised that once he was in office he would tear up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran — better known as the Iran nuclear deal. The president called it the “worst deal ever.” Pushed into passage by the Obama Administration, the Iran nuclear deal reduced economic sanctions against Iran as long as the country ended its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
In May, the White House announced that because the JCPOA “failed to protect America’s national security interests” it would be pulling out of the historic deal.
The White House accused the Iranian regime of archiving its past nuclear weapons work and continuing to enrich uranium and develop ballistic missiles. The administration left some room for a new deal to be struck but said that a return to the negotiating table would depend on a number of preconditions such as the Iranian regime completely abandoning their intent to develop nuclear weapons—something Trump alleges they never stopped pursuing.
In the meantime, the administration has renewed sanctions against Iran. These measures, according to the White House, would target several of the country’s economic sectors such as energy, petrochemical, and finance.
So what? What does this matter?
Iran who is one of the leading economic influences int he Middle East will continue to be economically removed from the United States. People! This is not about nuclear weapons, bombs or war. This is about preventing the entire Middle East from getting economically entangled with the United States when it is on the verge of a major shut-down.
G7
The Group of Seven (G-7) is an intergovernmental organization that meets periodically to address international economic and monetary issues. G-7 countries consist of the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan.
This is an important group. It discusses international trade, money and related issues. Trump is not pulling out of it, as it really doesn’t make trade decisions, but it is very noteworthy that Trump has insisted that Russia be part of it, and China be out of it.
What is he thinking? What is on his mind?
UNESCO
In Oct. 2017, the State Department announced that the U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations cultural organization UNESCO, which serves a number of functions around the globe such as promoting literacy and protecting historic and cultural sites through the World Heritage Center.
It was a symbolic gesture on part of the Trump administration, seeing as the Obama White House cut off funding for UNESCO in 2011, after the group voted to include Palestine as a member. The reasons the State Department gave for leaving the organization include what it views as mounting debt within the organization, a need for “fundamental reform,” and continuing bias against Israel.
Again, America’s ties to major world organizations is being severely reduced, curtailed and severed.
NAFTA
On Aug. 27, President Trump ended nearly 25 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, the trade pact linking U.S., Canada, and Mexico. He announced a new, bilateral agreement with Mexico known as the U.S.-Mexico Trade Agreement.
Canada was initially left out of the new deal, which was designed to replace the NAFTA, an agreement that Trump says carried bad connotations. Signed in 1993, NAFTA eliminated tariffs on most goods traded among the continent’s three largest countries and made it easier for companies in those countries to move goods across borders. The old trade pact is often blamed for the flight of U.S. manufacturing jobs to Mexico and the deindustrialization of the American economy.
The new deal includes controversial stipulations such as the “rule of origin,” which requires that cars must be built with at least 75 percent parts made in North America (up from 62.5 percent under NAFTA) and that 40 to 45 percent of an automobile must be manufactured by employees earning at least $16 an hour.
This is a mixed bag. I see the economic ties to Mexico loosened, but not severed. Any collapse of America will affect Mexico. But not as terribly as before.
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
On Oct. 20, Trump announced to reporters his intention to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a 1987 pact between the United States and Russia that required both countries to destroy ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of between 310 and 3,400 miles, along with any supporting equipment.
Nothing quite ruins your day like global thermonuclear war.
Trump claims that Russia has violated the Cold War-era treaty, set to expire in two years, and said that the U.S. will begin weapons development unless Russia and China—who is not a party to the pact—agree to a new deal.
Days after the announcement, White House National Security Advisor John Bolton met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin and said there was no chance the Trump administration would reverse its decision. Bolton suggested the INF treaty was outmoded.
“There’s a new strategic reality out there,” Bolton said. “This is a cold war bilateral ballistic-missile-related treaty — in a multipolar ballistic-missile world.”
The USA has 6000+ nuclear weapons. Russia has 7000+ nuclear weapons. But it’s a multipolar because China has 300. What the fuck?
Including China guarantees that this treaty will die. China wants no part of nuclear negotiations. (Their weapons are just enough to deter, not to MAD smash.) Knowing this, Trump has set the treaty to end. Why?
Why?
United Nations Human Rights Council
Calling it a “cesspool of political bias,” Nikki Haley, then-Ambassador to the United Nations, announced in June that the United States was pulling out of the United Nations Human Rights Council, leaving the U.S. without a vote and sidelined from the Geneva-based group that aims to promote human rights around the world.
The Trump administration made the move amid criticism surrounding its practice of separating immigrant children from their parents at the border. The Human Rights Council called on the White House to end the practice because it “runs counter to human rights standards.”
Again, severing the agreements with other nations. Closing of economic ties and destruction of lines of communication.
UNRWA
In August, the Trump Administration said that it would halt U.S. contributions to the United Nations’ aid program for Palestinian refugees. The decision is part of the administration’s efforts to rein in foreign aid and restrict assistance to the West Bank and Gaza. The move came one week after the White House revoked more than $200 million in economic aid to the Palestinian territories.
The U.S. is “no longer willing to shoulder the very disproportionate share of the burden of UNRWA’s costs,” said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, referring to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. The U.N. agency provides health care to approximately 3 million Palestinians, education assistance to 500,000 children, micro-loans to another 400,000 beneficiaries, among other aid.
Again, severing the agreements with other nations. Closing of economic ties and destruction of lines of communication.
WTO
The World Trade Organization is a global organization made up of 164 member countries that deals with the rules of trade between nations. Its goal is to ensure that trade flows as smoothly and predictably as possible.
As part of his broader attempts to renegotiate the United States’ global trade deals, President Trump has threatened to withdraw from the WTO, calling it a “disaster.”23 If the U.S. were to withdraw, trillions of dollars in global trade would be disrupted.
Again, severing the agreements with other nations. Closing of economic ties and destruction of lines of communication.
WHO
The World Health Organization (WHO) was first proposed in 1945 as a public health agency to be formed as part of the United Nations. WHO’s constitution was ratified on April 7, 1948, marking its official establishment.
WHO categorizes its work into three broad areas of focus:
Advocating for universal health coverage
Preparing for public health emergencies and coordinating a global response
Serving vulnerable populations
As an agency of the United Nations, WHO’s governing body – the World Health Assembly (WHA) – includes representatives of every United Nations Member State. WHO’s structure includes an executive board comprised of 34 technically qualified representatives from the various Member States. These members generally possess an extensive background in clinical or public health.
The WHA currently consists of 194 members, one designee from each Member State. Meetings of the WHA and Executive Board may be attended by “non-State actors” (non-governmental organizations, academic institutions, philanthropic organizations, and others) who may observe and make statements to the body, but cannot vote.
During the middle of a global pandemic that is crushing the United States, Trump pulls out of the very agency set up to deal with this problem.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance of 28 countries that border the North Atlantic Ocean. The Alliance includes the United States, most European Union members, Canada, and Turkey. The United States contributes three-fourths of NATO’s budget.
Again, severing the agreements with other nations. Closing of economic ties and destruction of lines of communication.
Open Skies
**BREAKING**
The United States will officially pull out of another arms control pact with Russia on Sunday, marking the end of a six-month notification process informing Moscow, U.S. officials told Fox News. -FOX News 22NOV20
The Trump administration is set to pull out of the Open Skies Treaty, which was signed between former Cold War foes in 1992 to set up unarmed, reconnaissance flights over each other’s territory to collect data on military forces.
However, the U.S. has accused Russia of violating the agreement for years, barring flights over Russian territory, including Kaliningrad where nuclear weapons are suspected of being present and in range of major European capitals.
Conclusion
As I see it, there are no “real” political parties. Just actors playing a role. And who would be best at playing this particular role, right now, than a reality show television star and casino owner; Donald Trump. He plays a role. He is an actor. And people are treating him as “the real thing”, when all he is is just a puppet for the oligarchy.
We need to be careful and see things as they really are.
You need to be careful not to confuse who you are dealing with or what they actually are.
Instead of thinking Progressive Marxists vs. Traditional Conservatives, perhaps we should be thinking in terms of …
… serfs vs. the massive oligarchy.
A reset is in process. It is going to happen whether you want it to or not. The only thing that you can do is escape to safe havens (like the oligarchy did, or what I did), or hunker down and steel-yourself for some discomfort.
I have mapped out, here, what I believe is going on.
The oligarchy realizes that the United States is due for a most contentious clamorous collapse. It will not be uniform. Some areas will remain unscathed, while other areas will be dangerous, even lethal.
As the USA collapses like a big, dangerous out of control monster, it will thrash about and cause all sorts of discord. This is what the oligarchy fears.
And so, President Trump, their "plant" has set up systems so that the collapse of the United States will be isolated to America (as much as possible).
Now, President Biden will try to calm things down, perhaps do his best to control the hard-Left, and the minor oligarchy members (Congress and other billionaires; the PTB) from aggravating the hard-right. He will have a tough time at it.
But you will probably see him trying to settle and calm things, rather than to stir things up.
Predictions;
America will undergo a reset. 2023 to 2025 at it’s peak, with a long slow return to stability starting to manifest around 2030.
Some areas will be affected terribly, others no so badly.
Internationally, it will have an effect on the globe, but not as terrible as one might fear.
A hot war with a major nuclear-armed power is a strong possibility. I believe that it will be Russia.
China will get some dings. But it will not be anything like what will happen to America.
If a hot war occurs, the United States (as we know it) will be no longer.
What will replace America could be anything. Though my bets are on a fractured nation into five or more separate nations, all tied together by treaty. Each one with it’s own laws and ways of doing things.
Remember boys and girls, America can’t build a simple wall on it’s territory, spend 77 billion dollars for s simple train line, or keep the COVID-19 in check. What makes anyone think that it can rebuild after a devastating nuclear war? It cannot.
The loss and destruction of America will not any sense, but that is the human species for you. You need not be surprised.
The loss and destruction of America will not any sense, but that is the human species for you.
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Remote viewing is defined as the ability to acquire accurate information about a distant or non-local place, person or event without using your physical senses or any other obvious means. It’s associated with the idea of clairvoyance, seemingly being able to spontaneously know something without actually knowing how you got the information. It is also sometimes called “anomalous cognition” or “second sight.”
Many of us experience this from time to time as an intuitive flash of insight that turns out to be correct. Many well-known entrepreneurs and business people, like George Soros, Conrad Hilton, Thomas Alva Edison and Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, have attributed their business success to this ability. And we’ve all seen natural psychics perform seemingly amazing feats of mental skill on TV.
The difference between natural psychic receptivity and remote viewing is that the latter is a trained skill, a controlled process, that the average person can learn to do, to some degree or another.
-Gaia
This post covers remote viewing of the future and how it works. But instead of saying that remote viewing of the future is a glimpse of the shared universe, we look at it in it’s true state. For the “shared universe” is really the MWI. And thus you have a quandary. If you are on a world-line following your own specific paths, and you read about someone remote viewing the future, is it accurate?
Does the remote viewing of their extrapolated future, have meaning for you?
And, how can you know anything at all about their extrapolated future when you are on your very own personal world-line?
What is the mechanism for observing world-line futures?
Well, here in this post we will look at all these elements and more. So this post will enable the reader to obtain a far better understanding of our universe, and the abilities that we have and hold within it.
First off…
What is the Mechanism for observing world-line futures?
It’s pretty much understood that certain people have “tapped” into our reality and have trained themselves to observe things and relate these things to others. It’s known as “Remote Viewing”. There is not too much that I can add to this, except to lay out the general mechanism(s) involved.
Thoughts control our reality.
By awareness, and training, one is able to see, and track what our reality is.
This might manifest in all kinds of abilities that go by the labels of ESP and PSI.
You can pretty much INDIVIDUALLY see what your own future holds by [1] adding affirmations that state that ability and that allow your to learn and cultivate it, and [2] try using any of the well publicized techniques of remote viewing yourself.
I have done both.
But I do not use it very often at all.
The reason is this…
Remote Viewing of my death
I used both techniques [1 & 2] above to view what would happen in my future.
The year was 2005 and I was going through a remarkable time. My mother died, I went through a divorce, there was a fight over her estate, and I was caught up in the middle of it, I lost my job, my car, my house, and my pets. And then I was retired from MAJestic.
I went though a serious crisis after crisis and I was fearful of my future as everyone was telling me what to expect once I entered retirement…
I fully expected to be hurt seriously, and killed as part of MAJestic. It was not an idle concern. I knew from <redacted> . Certainly there was a couple of attempts along these lines (I haven’t written about them, yet) And I was literally shaking all day and everyday.
Once the papers got the news that I was being arrested as a Sex Offender, all hell broke out. And the vast amount of hatred and disgust poured into my life. People were driving by my house, and stopping and looking it over. People started to follow me. I even caught a guy with a can of gasoline trying to break into my back door.
I was at a low point.
The fear was eating me alive.
And so I added these affirmations. I specifically asked for direction, calmness, solutions and starting points.
Answers started to flow into my consciousness…
Go to a counselor.
Have a doctor look at my shaking, fear, and upset.
Realize that my possessions are only things.
My mother’s time was over. It had nothing to do with me.
The divorce was part of MAJestic retirement.
I had to be retired. I was considered “dangerous”.
Do not fight the retirement, accept it and focus on the objectives.
Don’t flee.
Migrate what remaining assets I had outside the country.
Focus on reestablishing my friendships and community in China.
The retirement will be short, and then I can move to China.
Finally…
I “saw” my death.
I was thin, and looked like I was in my 90’s. I was in a hospital bed in a very modern hospital. I had two or three others in my room looking at me, and I expired peacefully. Calmly. Smoothly. Like drifting off into luke-warm water.
This image.
This image was all that I really needed to have. It told me that no matter what I was going to go through, that I would go through it and survive. i would be fine and die an old man being taken cared for and surrounded with people who cared for me.
And that was all I needed.
To understand how remote viewing works you need to understand how our “reality universe works”…
As I have repeatedly stated, [1] we are consciousness.
We are NOT a body.
Further, [2] our consciousness enters a specific singular world-line. Usually empty and devoid of other “active” consciousnesses.
We do not share a “place” inside a universe with others.
And [3] it appears that we share things because billions of years of thoughts have created an underlying “template” that all the world-lines feed off of.
But…
It’s [4] not a singular template. Wildly divergent thoughts and actions have created multiple “template(s)”.
And thus when your consciousness enters a body on the earth, you are positioned upon one of a multitude of templates.
This template is the “pre-birth world-line template”.
A starting point
A “pre-birth world-line template” is the starting point that the consciousness uses when it enters the earth reality to obtain experiences. It is a point in “time”. It is a spatial location. And it comes with a “map” of the highest-probability world-lines for the “passage of time”.
This template is called a “template” because it is used by other consciousness’s as well. There are many, many such templates. And, as such, many, many, such maps.
What a map is, is a cluster of “highest probability” outcomes of the decision process for a given consciousness.
If your routine is to drink coffee with toast in the morning, it would be a point on the map.
Jumping out the window and killing a chicken and eating it for breakfast is a possibility, but a remote one. Thus it is not on the map.
To get to that remote possibility, you need to “slide” off the map onto another world-line template map.
The map is a display of the “highest probability” world-lines that your thoughts will generate for you.
It is (often) mapped out on the MWI in the form of a 3-D (three dimensional map). With the “lessons a soul can learn” (also known as hardships or entropy) mapped in the Y-axis. And it would appear to us (observing the map) as highs and lows; as mountains or valleys.
Of course, the newbie might think that since changes and feelings change on a moment to moment basis, then the basic map would change as well. Well, that is false. We only believe that we have control over our thoughts and the generation of the world-lines. In all actuality we do not. We are like sheets in the wind and our thoughts are predictable based upon the stimuli that our consciousness experiences in any given world-line.
In the image below, we see two individuals that share the same pre-birth world-line templates. They MAP is identical for each, but the path that they take is different. (This is a rather extreme simplification, but it is a useful exercise.) Notice that they both use the same pre-birth world-line template. Thus, they both “understand” each other. Notice that they make different decisions within the same template, but the decisions make sense to each other.
A “pre-birth world-line template” all mapped out with that of another whom actually shares your template.
Because [1] they use the SAME “pre-birth world-line template”, and that [2] both of them follow the same predictive pathways within the MAP, we can say that both Mr. Red and Mr. Blue’s world-lines are “clustered together”.
You can be on the same map and cluster together.
But also different maps can also cluster together if their thoughts are similar enough.
As such, while they are on different individual world-lines they might share the same sights that each observes. They might watch the same birds flying in the sky or the same mountains in the distance. And they might observe the same things that other people who use the same “pre-birth world-line template” do. As in this example…
The experiences that a consciousness is exposed to varies from person to person, yet we all can experience the same kinds of things in similar ways.
Here we can see that all three individuals are using [1] the same “pre-birth world-line template”, and [2] the same map, and [3] are all clustered together.
The Pre-Birth World-Line Template is THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of your life upon the earth. No matter what decisions or thoughts that you have, this template is the foundation from which they derive from. This is the starting point; the initial conditions that your consciousness uses when it thinks and makes decisions and initializes physical actions.
And while you can move away using world-line travel, and strange and unexpected behaviors, and even slide off the world-line map into new, strange and unexpected maps (and their associated world-lines), the basic “programming” of your physical body will remain intact. You will always have the “pre-birth world-line template” influence in your life.
So stop that idea that once you are on a new world-line that everything is fresh and new. It isn’t. It’s just a continuation of your “passage of time” as it “hauls about a large line of experiences behind it”.
But…
Is it possible to predict the future using Remote Viewing in the MWI?
Well, the answer to this is YES it is.
However the future that you (or the person making the remote viewing activity) is able to predict is your own shared template, and shared map. If you are not on a shared map then the predictions would have very little relevance to you.
Here’s an example.
Let’s suppose that you have been [1] conducting consciousness navigation using “Prayer / Intention Campaigns”, and [2] you have been very aggressive about it. Because you have been so aggressive, [3] you have been sliding off your baseline “pre-birth world-line template” onto new maps.
Like this image…
In this map we see that Mr. Red has slid off his “pre-birth world-line template” map and entered a new map full of new realities for him. He uses Remote Viewing to see what lies ahead of him. In this instance, he views the future WITHOUT any slides to other maps. And he has a blurry image of the future, because the strongest candidates for his future lie in three separate world-lines. Thus he tries to interpret the results as best as he can using the tools at his disposal.
In this case, the remote viewed points are designated as three potential blue dots. YES. A person can remote view their future. But the nature of the MWI is one of a blurry and unsure future. For he (you, perhaps) are seeing three possible “blue dot” futures. It’s not all that clear.
Now, some things are stable enough to resolve clearly. Because all three “blue dots” share many attributes. You can see those attributes most clearly. But it will be the specifics that will be difficult to pin down.
Now, that does not necessarily mean that they cannot see the futures for other templates. Many such templates themselves cluster together. And thus one remote viewing of the future can apply to broad swaths of population.
Of course, the ideal is that since “time” is the real progression of your consciousness through the MWI. And you go world-line through world-line on a “pre-birth world-line template”, of course it is possible for you to “see” the future. You just need to be aware about the map topography.
And, if you KNOW that you are conducting Intention Campaigns that involve slides, you can factor those slides into your remote viewing efforts. Thus, you are best able to see the future that you, yourself are in the process of mapping out.
However the ability to do so for others involves a completely different set of skills. It is one that has to be cultivated and trained for over time.
So let’s talk about other people.
Does the remote viewing of someone else’s extrapolated future, have meaning for you?
Maybe yes and maybe no. It depends upon if the pre-birth world-line template resides upon the same cluster or grouping of world-lines.
Yes. If you share the same underlying pre-birth world-line template, and / or reside on a MAP from whence the future was perceived from.
No. If your MAP, template, and world-lines have no connection to that of the remote viewer.
If you are both on the same template then, the future is likely to be the same for you. As well as same or similar to all others that share that template or similar maps. It makes sense, yes?
Here are two different people. One Mr. Red and one Mr. Yellow. They do not share the same “Pre-birth world-line template”, nor do they share the same kinds of world-lines and neither of their world-line paths and maps are part of the same cluster. The end result is that both people remote view their futures and come up with widely different futures.
Now, the use of Remote viewing is not just a skill that anyone can use. It is a skill that you can learn, and achieve a great degree of accuracy with, provided that you understand that you are dealing with the MWI and that there are limits to what you can observe.
In the example (picture above) you can see that two different people would have widely different remote viewing results simply due to the nature of the map that their world-line travels follow upon.
Therefore, it would ONLY have meaning for you if your world-lines are all clustered (in some way) with the world-lines of the person conducting the Remote Viewing exercise. Which for many people (or at least a sizable percentage) would actually be the same.
How can one know about someone else’s future when you are on a different world-line?
Good question this.
The odds are that you cannot.
UNLESS, of course, you have chosen to enhance and cultivate your inherent awareness to the point where you could actually do so. These other skills are possible, but you need to cultivate and develop them. This entire exercise relates to the ability to tap into the non-physical worlds, get the date there and extrapolate with your senses. There are those that can do it. After all, there was a CIA program specifically devoted to this exercise.
In general, I would advise the reader just to mind your own business and stick to your own issues, and ignore the thoughts and predictions of others. Their realities will not have anything to do with yours (for the most part).
Predictions are what we make out of fear in the hope of trying to find some guidance when we feel that our life is “out of control”. You don’t need to worry about that, really. If you seriously want to have insight into what YOUR future will hold, then just simply add affirmations to your intention campaign. Such as these…
I have occasional glimpses or visions of clarity that will depict my life at points in time of six, nine and twelve months in the future.
I intrinsically understand the relative importance of other predictions that I read and hear about.
I do not fear the future, and am very comfortable with my life as it unfolds.
Metallicman predictions
So, please don’t ask me if I know what is going to happen in the future. I do not. No one does because we are all within our very own bubble of reality. The best that I can do is predict what is going on within MY cluster of world-lines and what the end result might be for others that share my similar train of thoughts.
As such, I pretty much assume that Metallicman readers pretty much share some of my baseline maps and templates. So you might be pleased or horrified to see your future though the eyes of us out here.
Which means, the PTB are correct.
Spicy times are coming, but they will not be distributed equally.
Care and due diligence will be necessary.
Avoid crowds, and establish yourself firmly within a community.
Be a Rufus.
In which case, I predict a period of global turbulence lasting at least ten years. Followed by a nice and slow period of extended calm and peace.
The last period of upset was 80 years ago and that was the 1940’s. The first five years of that decade was marked by a global wide war.
The next few years will prove to be exciting and if you all don’t want to share in that excitement, perhaps you should find quieter and more boring places to live. Maybe you might try to replicate what the oligarchy has done and buried themselves deep underground in hidy-holes in the remote sections of quiet and non-intrusive nations.
Don’t waste your time trying to find answers on the internet. Almost everything on the internet is censored. If you can find things that are not censored, you must carefully determine and discern whether it is disinformation or not. Most Alt-Left, and Hard-Right are saturated with disinformation. Avoid them.
Remember, boys and girls. Real wars, nuclear explosions, and biological weapon use will not be televised. As will the horrors of concentration camps, and genocide. None of that is ever televised. The “dumbed down” sheeple need not be informed.
Find the answers inside yourself. You’ll be a better person for it.
Is it possible to perform Remote Viewing?
Yes. Anyone can.
I will cover Remote Viewing in another post. I am not an expert in it, and at best I am just a hobbyist who used it occasionally. Yet I know a thing or two that might give the experimenter some advantage when using the techniques.
Declassified remote viewing sketch.
But here in this post we are concerned with the Remote Viewing of others and whether or not they have any relevance to a practitioner of prayer / affirmation campaigns. In general they don’t. The only real relevance is what you, yourself thinks about.
Conclusion
In times of trouble or change, people become fearful of the future. They try to search for ways or understandings on how their life might stabilize into some kind of calm and predictable life. As a result they tend to look at those who might give them predictions of what the future might hold.
Right now, there is an American election coming up. It is between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And people are consulting their favorite “news” organizations for reassurance that their “guy” would win. Also along these lines are polls and “experts” who crunch data and try to help people sort out what the future will be.
Impressive prediction graphics abound on the Internet. This one was found here.
There are techniques that utilize the resources of clairvoyants and people who conduct Remote Viewing exercises.
There are also other ways to divine what the future might hold. Such as tarot cards, soothsayers, people who speak in tongues and other techniques like automatic writing, and mediums.
All this might give the reader a pause to hope, but the truth is that the ONLY way that you can control your future is through your thoughts and your actions. (And that includes buying a plane ticket to Bora Bora.) And if you want to live in a stable and peaceful world, the answer lies in your affirmation campaigns. Concentrate on yourself and your family. Don’t worry too much about the alarms and predictions of others.
Bora Bora.
And that includes Metallicman. For I see some spicy times ahead on my clustered world-lines. Perhaps it might be a good opportunity for you (if you have concerns) to slide off the current world-track you are on, and slip into a far calmer world-line. Don’t you think?
It’s NOT that difficult.
If you are truly worried then conduct an affirmation prayer campaign using the following affirmations;
Myself, my family and my immediate friends are all safe, secure, and happy. We are isolated from any conflict, trouble and strife that swirls around us.
We are protected, happy, and have a safe and calm life. We are insulated from danger.
Whatever is reported in the news I have an immediate understanding of it’s relevance to my life.
I and my family are given direction on how to act, behave, think, and work so as to avoid any troubles and conflicts that might come near us.
And finally,
Please avoid crowds. Avoid danger. Cultivate friendships. Learn skills, and volunteer in your community. Be known within your community.
Do you want more?
I have more posts of a similar nature in my Prayer / affirmation index here…
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It’s one thing to have Alex Jones predicting that the United States is going to collapse any day now, and it is another thing entirely when an intelligence analyst says so. And thus we have this bit of shocking news. A global military intelligence website has revised it’s five year forecast to predict a massive drop in American population by 2025.
Deagel.com is apparently some sort of global military intelligence site. They have had an online presence since 2003. They report on high-level military equipment assets and keep track of military expenditures by country “with nearly impeccable numbers”. It’s very similar to Janes.
However, unlike Janes, this is not an “Industry” outlet. But rather an “intelligence” outlet staffed with retired or former intelligence and military folk. As such, it is interesting to those of us that follow the military trends in industry.
Now, since the Military-Industrial cabal has pretty much the “lion’s share” of the oligarchy control over the United States government, any military intelligence related to this should be considered important. For this level of intelligence is what industry uses to make forecasts and projects for markets and survivability of the sales generation options.
In Late August, the Internet was all buzzing about a forecast on this website…
Deagel Forecast For USA – Population Drops 70% by 2025
One aspect of their site is to “forecast” financial outlooks for countries around the world. They track GDP (gross domestic product), defense budgets, and even population (forecasts) for each country.
No one knows for sure, but I’ve read that their sources are “the ‘deep state’ with the CIA, US Department of Defense, US Department of State and World Bank contributing data for their forecasts.
According to their own website, Deagel provides news and intelligence on international military aviation and advanced technologies.
Little is known about the real owner(s). The site name is registered in France. All online information about them is “redacted for privacy”. The site hosting company is located in Old Tappan, New Jersey. Which is pretty much in a semi-rural location with some nice wooded hills and nothing much else. The only thing that I can recall (personally) about that area is the rather large contingent of Jewish establishments there.
Deagel Forecasts Massive Depopulation in the USA by 2025
They have been forecasting a huge population drop in the United States for several years. They haven’t changed their forecast. It’s been projected to decrease for a long time now. And the election of Donald trump made no difference in the projection.
Current population of the USA is about 327 million.
What this means is that the defense intelligence organizations represented by Deagel believe that there will be some kind of event or series of events that will result in a major population drop by 2025.
Deagel site projections.
From the chart above we can clearly see a number of conclusions or extrapolations that they have made.
[1] USA Population (Red notations)
According to their projections, by the years 2025, the population of the United States would decrease. It would go from 327 million people to 100 million people. This would be approximately a 70% decrease in population over a short period of time (from now 2020 to 2025 = five years).
[2] World Population (Purple notations)
According to their projections, the entire world would suffer through a depopulation event. With the population decreasing from 7,385 million people to 6.870 million people. This is a drop of 515 million people. This is about a 7% decrease in the world population.
Thus taking [1] and [2] together, we can see that they expect the United States to take the brunt of most of the population decrease.
[3] American Defense Budget (Blue Notations)
We can see that they anticipate a very drastic decrease in American military spending by 2025. From $637 billion to $32 billion. It would be a reduction to 5% of what the current budget is.
Certainly they anticipate that the American military would be repurposed to a significant extent and this budget would not be able to support any kinds of expeditionary foreign operations.
[4] Global Defense Budgets (Green Notations)
This is very interesting, while there is a slight decrease in global defense spending, the change in spending values is small (comparatively). The global spending would go from $1.7 trillion to $1.2 trillion dollars.
Obviously they believe that the rest of the world’s military would still be funded at nearly the same levels as presently shown.
What are they saying?
To look at the chart and observe the numbers, they anticipate some kind of event or series of events that will take place IN AMERICA between 2020 and 2025.
These event(s) will dramatically decrease the size of the United States population.
The global population will also be reduced as well, but not at all at the same level of catastrophic drop that America will experience. It will not be as catastrophic to the rest of the world as it will be for Americans.
By 2025, the American military would be severely scaled down to a mere 5% of what it is now (by budget). But the rest of the world would pretty much keep their military budgets as the same level.
And this all means that…
America’s GDP will collapse from $19T to $1.6T.
PPP (Power purchasing parity) would collapse from $60,000 to $16,000
The resulting America would not look like anything that would be recognizable to anyone today. Those survivors would be struggling financially, and economically. America would not longer be a global superpower or “the policeman” for the world. Most of the rest of the world would move on, and continue with their lives and societies. While Americans would be undergoing some very severe changes to it’s society and cultures.
How did they arrive at these conclusions?
No one really knows how they came to these numbers and figures. But we do know that these are the same kinds of figures that the intelligence and military agencies use to make forecasts for spending, planning and purchases.
What I can pretty much say is that these figures pretty much match up with the John Titor narrative. He claimed to be a time traveler from the future, and pretty much said all of what is being presented here. It’s just that his dates were off by exactly ten years.
You all can read what he had to say in my John Titor Index here…
But these figures pretty much agree with the Fourth Turning predictions and other predictive sources that I have mentioned in my SHTF Index. Many people are pretty much convinced that the USA is under a state of collapse. The question is not “if”, but “When” and “how bad” it will be.
And let me offer some thoughts…
Metallicman commentary
There’s much I can say, and much that I cannot. But I will throw out some things to give the reader pause to contemplate…
A 70% decrease in the population signifies either [1] massive starvation, [2] a bio-weapon (i.e. smallpox. Something with a high R0 and high lethality.) WMD, or [3] A MAD level nuclear exchange with Russia.
China is “small potatoes” in regards to nuclear weapons. Their entire military is defensive in nature. They are no slouches, and could render the top ten American cities into radioactive glass. But they are not equipped to wage this kind of war with the USA. This level of destruction involves Russia.
Many people could die in an American Civil War, but not at a 70% level.
The low estimate of 600,000 is 1.91 percent of the census population. And 750,000 deaths would represent 2.38 percent of the total population. All told, the Civil War likely claimed somewhere between 2 percent and 2.5 percent of the total population.
-What Percentage of Americans Died During the Civil War ...
Starvation
Intentional starvation is the ONLY method, short of a full-on MAD-level nuclear exchange would result in these kinds of deaths. History tells us that Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot all were very successful in this effort.
In fact, the starvation of the Eastern European peoples by Stalin is exactly the kinds of events that can result in these high and terrifying numbers…
So I would have to suggest that it might be due to starvation. This is a true and real possibility. Either through the loss and destruction of crops, or transportation and distribution channels, or by pricing the foods to un-affordable levels.
Bio-Weapons
The only nation that still maintains bio-weapon inventories and development is America. Last I heard it was under the control of neocon John Bolton.
The rest of the world just simply isn’t a threat.
Russia scaled down their operations back in the 1990’s. If the Russians still have this capability I would be surprised.
China has no bio-warfare labs, nor do they train and practice in this environment. Their only concern is defense.
North Korea might have bio-weapons, but there is no actual verification of this. Iran might also have bio-weapons, but again there is no actual verification of this.
The rest of the world just simply doesn’t have the resources to develop such weapons.
Since there is a real lack of “enemies” with this capability, it is unlikely that a bio-weapon event would ever occur. The only way that it would occur is if America used the weapons against some enemy and it boomeranged back to the United States.
Nuclear
True to form, Donald Trump has been re-configuring the military to use nuclear weapons in a strategic and tactical “humane” way. If so, this could trigger the Russian “Dead Hand” system, and unleash holy Hell upon an unprepared America.
Conclusion
How many times have you wished that you invested in Google back in the day when you had a chance? How many times do you lament not buying stock in Walmart, McDonald’s, Starbucks, or Microsoft? Well the future seems to be written on the wall…
Well, it pretty much looks like anyone who is going to remain in the United States for the next ten years is in for a very exciting and dangerous time. I do hope that it does not materialize, but it looks to me that a nice small bungalow cabin in Chile might be preferable to a penthouse apartment in Los Angles, a suburban house near Portland, or a mobile home in Kentucky.
As I have stated before, if you can…
…then leave the States. At this point, it doesn’t matter where, or how ill-prepared you are. I think you all need to start making the preparations to either shelter-in-place, or bug-out to less dangerous neighborhoods.
Those top-tier oligarchy members left for their underground bunkers in early March 2020.
Their highly-paid enablers and support “armies” are all publishing articles like this one. You can well recognize that “the writing is on the wall”, and that action should be well in process by now.
What ever happens, please keep in mind that food storage is important, as is being armed with something simple and reliable and dangerous. Like a shotgun. (Forget about those AK-47 look-alike clones. They cannot hit the side of a barn.) Learn skills like first aid, and other things that can enable you to be a well liked and well-needed person in your community. And finally, stop being a lone wolf. You work as part of a community, or you will DIE.
Good wishes.
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I believe that it is time for all Americans to take a serious re-look at what America stands for; our “democracy”, and our way of life as it exists today. Is it really all that great?
Is America living up to the grand ideals set forth in the “Great Experiment of 1776”?
Or, it is just going to be yet another big mistake heading towards the “great collapse” of society?
I think that a serious reappraisal of [1] what America is, [2] what notions it is founded upon, and [3] how it is structured needs to be re-thought out. It is time to take a good long hard look at [4] what America has become, and [5] how we got here. And [6] what needs to change once [7] corrective measures have been put in place.
I ask this.
Really, is democracy; “rule by popularity” ideal for Americans?
A typical American, inappropriately dressed (obviously), shopping at Wal-Mart. Really, is democracy; “rule by popularity” ideal for Americans? Or should America be run by talented people who earned their role through merit rather than popularity? Think about it.
Can the Constitution be protected from “well meaning”, or “the greedy”, or “evil” such as President Wilson, or FDR, or Obama from rewriting and re-interpreting it to fit their various nefarious ends?
Well, can it?
Because if we cannot, using the current governmental structure, then we must change it into something different.
Indeed, simply hoping that our progeny will be “ever vigilant” is just wishful thinking, and history has proven, for certain, that it does not work. And at that, we must well understand that it will NEVER WORK in the future.
Can the Constitution be protected from “well meaning”, or “the greedy”, or “evil” such as President Wilson, or FDR, or Obama from rewriting and re-interpreting it to fit their various nefarious ends?
What’s going to stop another Wilson, another FDR, another Obama, another Bush from rewriting the Constitution, or reinterpreting it to fit their nefarious ends? What’s it going to take?
What is it going to take?
But my thoughts are this matter are perhaps a little too harsh to the general American public. No one wants to hear that a democracy is flawed, or rather so flawed that America will collapse upon itself within a decade. No one wants to hear this.
Americans have a Pavlovian response to the phrase “freedom and democracy,” and it’s no surprise that so many of them are rooting for the protesters in Hong Kong.
-World Affairs Blog
Well, others, better word-smiths than myself have some things to say about this subject. One of the best comes from Mr. Noonan in his article titled “A Clean Break“. He wrote this article on 29 September 2019, and I personally think that it is brilliant. He isn’t so prone to offending people as I am.
For I earnestly believe that America has neither "democracy" nor "freedom". We just parrot the words without talking a good look around us at what America has devolved into.
Here I present it for your viewing pleasure.
This article is copied as written without much editing aside from some paragraph formatting and the fonts used in this template.
I added some "pull away" text for highlighting and maybe interjected on or two personal comments along the way (though you will be able to easily see that they are from your's truly.)
I have added my own pictures to help illustrate some of his fine points.
After reading the article, I would suggest the reader go to his original article and read some of his other works. This fellow is brilliant and a word-smith.
All credit to the author Mr. Noonan writing in Blogs for Victory.
As the last few weeks have played out in politics, it has forced me to do a complete re-assessment of how I’ve looked at the world for my entire adult life.
To be sure, this reconsideration has been ongoing for about a decade, or maybe a little more, but it has really crystalized out recently. It is time for a complete, clean break with what went before and to chart a new path forward.
As the last few weeks have played out in politics, it has forced me to do a complete re-assessment of how I’ve looked at the world for my entire adult life. It is time for a complete, clean break with what went before and to chart a new path forward. Maybe the American Constitution is flawed in some very serious ways, and it is up to use to seek out those flaws and eliminate them completely.
What Hunter Biden did is nothing new; it isn’t in the least remarkable.
He was merely the recipient of what people in his position routinely receive: a special deal which allows him to be very rich for little or no effort.
Hunter Biden was merely the recipient of what people in his position routinely receive: a special deal which allows him to be very rich for little or no effort.
This way his life can be devoted to what really matters: hanging around with other rich people, attending conferences and galas and generally having a swell time.
And if he decided to follow in Daddy’s political footsteps, the way would be cleared for him in some safe (Congressional) seat.
If you start looking into it – as Matt and I did in our 2007 book, Caucus of Corruption – you just see that it is everywhere. In that book, for political reasons, we concentrated on the Democrat side of the aisle (given that our goal was to show the absurdity of the Democrats 2006 campaign against a so-called “GOP culture of corruption”), but we could easily have written it about politics, in general.
If you start looking into it – as Matt and I did in our 2007 book, Caucus of Corruption – you just see that it is everywhere. In that book, for political reasons, we concentrated on the Democrat side of the aisle (given that our goal was to show the absurdity of the Democrats 2006 campaign against a so-called “GOP culture of corruption”), but we could easily have written it about politics, in general.
Corruption is everywhere in the United States.
What it really shows is that people who go into politics – with a few very rare exceptions – are in it for themselves.
The advent of legalized corruption launched by the Supreme Court empowers the superrich to fund their own presidential and congressional campaigns as pet projects, to foster pet policies, and to represent pet political enclaves. You have a billion, or even several hundred million, then purchase a candidate from the endless reserve bench of minor politicians and make him or her a star, a mouthpiece for any cause or purpose however questionable, and that candidate will mouth your script in endless political debates and through as many television spots as you are willing to pay for. All legal now.To compound the political felony, much, if not most, campaign financing is now carried out in secret, so that everyday citizens have a decreasing ability to determine to whom their elected officials are beholden and to whom they must now give special access. As recently as the 2014 election, the facts documented this government of influence by secrecy: “More than half of the general election advertising aired by outside groups in the battle for control of Congress,” according to the New York Times, “has come from organizations that disclose little or nothing about their donors, a flood of secret money that is now at the center of a debate over the line between free speech and corruption.”Of this handful, the largest by far is WPP (originally called Wire and Plastic Products; is there a metaphor here?), which has its headquarters in London and more than 150,000 employees in 2,500 offices spread around 107 countries. It, together with one or two conglomerating competitors, represents a fourth branch of government, vacuuming up former senators and House members and their spouses and families, key committee staff, former senior administration officials of both parties and several administrations, and ambassadors, diplomats, and retired senior military officers.WPP has swallowed giant public relations, advertising, and lobbying outfits such as Hill & Knowlton and BursonMarsteller, along with dozens of smaller members of the highly lucrative special interest and influence-manipulation world. Close behind WPP is the Orwellian-named Omnicom Group and another converger vaguely called the Interpublic Group of Companies. According to Mr. Edsall, WPP had billings last year of $72.3 billion, larger than the budgets of quite a number of countries.
– From the Gary Hart article, Gary Hart: America’s Founding Principles Are in Danger of Corruption
Corruption is part of democracy.
They want power and money and attention and fame and praise and so they go into politics – and almost invariably, if they are even modestly successful at winning office, wind up richer than they did when they started.
And it has been going on for a long time, folks; throughout all the Western democracies.
When you study the motivations of those in politics, you discover what drives them. They want power and money and attention and fame and praise and so they go into politics – and almost invariably, if they are even modestly successful at winning office, wind up richer than they did when they started. And it has been going on for a long time, folks; throughout all the Western democracies.
There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy.
It is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep some thirty years ago over the day’s newspaper and woke up last week over the later newspaper, and fancied he was reading about the same people.
In one paper he would have found a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland.
In the other paper he would find a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland.
If this is not being governed by families I cannot imagine what it is. I suppose it is being governed by extraordinary democratic coincidences.
…extraordinary democratic coincidences.
Funny, huh? How people from the same family can keep winding up on top. Either they are families of geniuses, or someone is making things happen.
What are the odds that the son of an American Senator would be just the person an oil company needs to pay $50,000.00 a month to?
But, it just keeps happening and happening because, well, that’s just the way it is. And it wouldn’t be so bad if they were at least any good at being an oligarchy!
But they aren’t.
After you study this issue, you discover that it just keeps happening and happening. And the reason why, is because, well, that’s just the way it is. And it wouldn’t be so bad if they were at least any good at being an oligarchy!
Back in Chesterton’s day, there was the cold, hard reality that Winston Churchill was at least as talented as his father, Randolph. There was something there – there was, that is, a justification for Winston getting a leg up (and he did) to enter politics based on his father’s previous efforts.
These days, you get to benefit even if the previous person in line was a complete, rotten failure. And rotten failure is all we’ve gotten – and I’m getting very ecumenical in that, by the way. I’m not excusing anyone on partisan grounds any longer.
To be sure, the Republicans I voted for in the past were at least better than the Democrats I voted against (with the exception of McCain: knowing that I’m the co-author of Worst President, please understand that I believe McCain would have been even worse than Obama proved to be).
But they were only better in degree, not in kind.
Republicans are corrupt.
I mean, let’s face some cold, hard facts here: President Bush the Younger was re-elected with 51% of the vote in 2004 and came into his second term with high approval ratings and a Republican Congress.
With all this, he couldn’t even manage to de-fund Planned Parenthood or NPR!
I mean, let’s face some cold, hard facts here: President Bush the Younger was re-elected with 51% of the vote in 2004 and came into his second term with high approval ratings and a Republican Congress. With all this, he couldn’t even manage to de-fund Planned Parenthood or NPR! He did not care for the conservative cause(s), he only campaigned on them to hood-wink all of us for voting for him. He knew which levers to push, and which buttons to push.
It could have been done, easily, in a budget reconciliation between House and Senate and there would have been nothing the Democrats could have done about it.
On a more personal level, how can public service be promoted as an ideal to young people when this sewer corrupts our Republic? At this point in early twenty-first-century America, the greatest service our nation’s young people could provide is to lead an army of outraged young Americans armed with brooms on a crusade to sweep out the rascals and rid our capital of the money changers, rent seekers, revolving door dancers, and special interest deal makers and power brokers and send them back home to make an honest living, that is, if they still remember how to do so.Our ancestors did not depart Europe and elsewhere to seek freedom and self-government alone. They came to these shores to escape social and political systems that were corrosive and corrupt. Two and a quarter centuries later, we are returning to those European practices. We are in danger of becoming a different kind of nation, one our founders would not recognize and would deplore.In addition to the rise of the national security state, and the concentration of wealth and power in America, no development in modern times sets us apart more from the nation originally bequeathed to us than the rise of the special interest state.There is a Gresham’s law related to the republican ideal. Bad politics drives out good politics. Legalized corruption drives men and women of stature, honor, and dignity out of the halls of government. Self-respecting individuals cannot long tolerate a system of election and reelection so dependent on cultivating the favor of those known to expect access in return. Such a system is corrosive to the soul.
– From the Gary Hart article, Gary Hart: America’s Founding Principles Are in Danger of Corruption
This was “better” than a President Kerry who probably would have increased PP funding, but not really better in that the taxes of pro-life Americans were still going to fund something they consider abhorrent…and which Bush and the entire GOP campaigned on getting rid of.
I know some will say that this is just our GOP screwing it’s base and that the Democrats don’t do that. But, they do.
Both the republicans and the democrats are corrupt to the core. They only care about themselves and their little tribe of corrupt underlings. No one else.
Democrats are corrupt.
Obama was elected in 2008 with 53% of the vote and came into office with a Democrat Congress and a filibuster-proof Senate majority…and he couldn’t even get the single payer health system Democrats say they want.
It would have been easy.
The GOP could have done nothing to stop it. Enact a 10% payroll tax to fund it and just start passing out the cash to people who need health care.
A former senator from Colorado, Gary Hart, has written an extremely powerful and accurate critique of the unfathomably corrupt and crony state of the U.S. government in 2015. It covers several very important angles, including how appalled and disgusted our founders would be at the current state of affairs. How a once great republic has devolved into a thieving oligarchy in which the pursuit of money at power at the expense of the public good has been elevated into something that’s not just tolerated, but actually celebrated and encouraged amongst an ethics deprived status quo.
-Liberty Blitzkreig
That you and I know it would have been a disaster is neither here nor there – our side had lost the election and the Democrats won all the power they could possibly need to make all Democrat dreams come true…and they couldn’t do something like that.
Once you are in politics, it’s all on for party-on good times. You swindle and funnel money left and right and no one gives a damn about the American people. This includes both sides of the Congress, and all their cronies from the war-mongering generals to the intellectuals pushing climate change, and radical social change down our collective throats.
They instead wound up with the abomination known as Obamacare which even if it had worked as planned would still have left millions out in the cold and cost like the devil – but they couldn’t even write something that worked!
Meanwhile, not only did Obama not end the wars they campaigned against in 2008, he started new one’s…
droning the living sh** out of every poor, brown skinned person they could target (well, those they weren’t letting in as unvetted refugees, that is).
A public works bonanza that didn’t create any public works.
A slew of new spending which improved nothing.
This is what the Democrat voters get for investing their time and effort? Yep – in other words, nothing: but lots and lots for whomever is the crony. Democrat cronies made out like bandits. But your average purple-haired Democrat wanting more safe spaces? Not much.
This is what the Democrat voters get for investing their time and effort? Yep – in other words, nothing: but lots and lots for whomever is the crony. Democrat cronies made out like bandits. But your average purple-haired Democrat wanting more safe spaces? Not much.
By that standard, can anyone seriously doubt that our republic, our government, is corrupt? There have been Teapot Domes and financial scandals of one kind or another throughout our nation’s history. There has never been a time, however, when the government of the United States was so perversely and systematically dedicated to special interests, earmarks, side deals, log-rolling, vote-trading, and sweetheart deals of one kind or another.What brought us to this? A sinister system combining staggering campaign costs, political contributions, political action committees, special interest payments for access, and, most of all, the rise of the lobbying class.Worst of all, the army of lobbyists that started relatively small in the mid-twentieth century has now grown to big battalions of law firms and lobbying firms of the right, left, and an amalgam of both. And that gargantuan, if not reptilian, industry now takes on board former members of the House and the Senate and their personal and committee staffs. And they are all getting fabulously rich.Frustrated, irate discussions of this legalized corruption are met in the Washington media with a shrug. So what? Didn’t we just have dinner with that lobbyist for the banking industry, or the teachers’ union, or the airline industry at that well-known journalist’s house only two nights ago? Fine lady, and she used to be the chairman of one of those powerful committees. I gather she is using her Rolodex rather skillfully on behalf of her new clients. Illegal? Not at all. Just smart . . . and so charming.There is little wonder that Americans of the right and many in the middle are apoplectic at their government and absolutely, and rightly, convinced that the game of government is rigged in favor of the elite and the powerful. Occupiers see even more wealth rising to the top at the expense of the poor and the middle class. And Tea Partiers believe their tax dollars are going to well-organized welfare parasites and government bureaucrats.
– From the Gary Hart article, Gary Hart: America’s Founding Principles Are in Danger of Corruption
And as far as the social disintegration we’ve seen over the past 60 years – we’ve been blinded by the Democrats pushing the disintegration that we haven’t noticed the Republicans letting them do it.
And when they have power to roll it back, doing nothing of the sort.
And as far as the social disintegration we’ve seen over the past 60 years – we’ve been blinded by the Democrats pushing the disintegration that we haven’t noticed the Republicans letting them do it. And when they have power to roll it back, doing nothing of the sort. They just smile for the cameras, enjoy their high-priced meals in fancy restaurants, free hookers, and retire for their closed “boys clubs”.
The Administrative state and its regulators, a creation of previous congress’s, have grown into a bureaucracy so entrenched that worker’s can’t even be fired. They lurk in the darkness of their own regulations and use their powers to punish those who fail to comply. Regulators are great for making and executing rules and regulations, and taxing, but not so good at designing those regulations to advance unproven political theories, that most often come undone.
The unrealized dangers of delegating rules and regulations making, is that Congress removes itself from accountability. Legislators govern by theory, proposing ideas that are then delegated to an agency charged to “make” it work. To ensure their schemes work, Congress politicized the Federal judicial benches, including the Supreme Court, to support their legislative agenda regardless of the unconstitutionality, through judicial activism. Judges don’t make laws!
- Why Should We Accept Corrupt Government?
Their actions are disgusting.
And now we see in the Epstein case the reason why it might have all been allowed to happen: Lord only knows how many of the high and mighty are caught in that web…
…but what better way to get out from under that rock than by making the rock legal?
Hey, Paul Ryan, you’re the guy in charge of the House. You’re the Speaker of the House. [1] You had half a decade to figure out what to REPLACE Obamacare with and you came up with … bupkis? [2]. Hey, Paul Ryan, you had more than a hundred days to fashion a piece of legislation after you knew President Trump won — even with all the “budget resolution”, three tranche, inside baseball baloney and it came as a surprise that the Freedom Caucus wasn’t on board? [Pro tip: Check with your own caucus first. OK, that’s better.] Hello, America, Paul, babe — that was your job. We gave you one stinking job — to fashion a clean repeal and replacement of Obamacare — and you were surprised the Freedom Caucus wasn’t genuflecting and kissing your ring? A week out, you tell the President you “have the votes” and the day of the vote you come to the White House and say, “Uhhh, maybe not. Maybe not, Mr. President. Poorly played, Paulie. Very poorly played. [3]. Hey, Paul Ryan, this shit is on you not the President. You suck at your job.
By making you, a normal person, the bad guy if you point out some of the disgusting actions?
Illegal immigration to provide votes for Democrats and cheap labor for Republicans.
Wars which don’t end in victory or defeat.
Enforcing immorality against popular wishes.
Providing government sinecures to anyone who will toe the line – and who won’t be got rid of no matter how corrupt or stupid they prove.
Accepting money from foreign entities who want the United States destroyed.
Will you fucking Republicans stop criticizing President Trump for following through on his campaign promises?
He ran on them. He told you what they were. He won on them. He is delivering on them and you snowflakes act like you just discovered them.
Both sides, all the time – and on top of being this stupidly destructive, raking it in for themselves, their families and their friends. It is time to bring an end to all that. By peaceful means if possible but, ultimately, by any means necessary.
Our peaceful means are “President Trump”.
President Trump is the hero of the common man.
Trump isn’t part of the system, you see.
Dimwits look at his billions and go, “he must be one of them”. But, the bottom line is that he’s not.
He’ll hang out with them. Be friends with them. But he never was of them. He made his own way and got his pile of money…and then looked around and saw, from the 1980’s, what was happening to his country and started to wonder why, and if there were anything he could do about it?
He essentially first let Bill Clinton have his chance.
Then Bush the Younger.
Then even Obama.
But he found out something – it didn’t matter who was in charge, they were all in on it, together. That is, regardless of stated political philosophy, the primary goal of nearly everyone in politics was personal enrichment and making sure no outsider pushed his or her way in.
Trump found out something – it didn’t matter who was in charge, they were all in on it, together. That is, regardless of stated political philosophy, the primary goal of nearly everyone in politics was personal enrichment and making sure no outsider pushed his or her way in.
Trump decided to push his way in.
And now he’s there – and outside of a precious few (Cruz, Paul…and, oddly, McConnell), he’s nearly alone fighting for one thing: us.
The United States of America.
We, the people.
And everyone inside is furious and terrified and so are lashing back as much as they can hoping that something, anything will turn up to get rid of Trump.
And, make no mistake about it, they are already planning on punishing us for electing Trump. They don’t propose to allow this sort of thing to happen again.
And, make no mistake about it, they are already planning on punishing us for electing Trump. They don’t propose to allow this sort of thing to happen again.
And everyone inside is furious and terrified and so are lashing back as much as they can hoping that something, anything will turn up to get rid of Trump. And, make no mistake about it, they are already planning on punishing us for electing Trump. They don’t propose to allow this sort of thing to happen again.
The “big con game” is up.
I’ve mostly stopped arguing with liberals these days – first off, it is pointless but, secondly, I’m starting to pity them; nearly as much as I pity that shrinking number on the right who still stand aloof from Trump: they simply can’t shake free from the line they’ve been fed.
And none of us can get high and mighty about that: to one degree or another, all of us were suckered at one time or another.
No other government is as corrupt as the United States government.
All of us believed in some aspect of the con being used to keep us confused, frightened and divided while the Ruling Class stays fat and happy.
All of us. Including myself.
But for those of us who have awakened from the con, it is time for a clean break – a refusal to accept that anything over the past 60 years was any good…a desire, that is, to move forward in an entirely new way, unshackled to whatever we might have said or done in the past.
We have learned all about the great con game, and we are fed up. We know know what is going on and we are pissed, and desire real, substantive change. Now, for those of us who have awakened from the con, it is time for a clean break – a refusal to accept that anything over the past 60 years was any good…a desire, that is, to move forward in an entirely new way, unshackled to whatever we might have said or done in the past.
We can see what happened; we can see what needs to be done – we can’t trip ourselves up (nor allow our opponents to slow us down) by fussing over what views we might have expressed previously.
Our desire is a Constitutional Republic of free people – our means of getting there must be “whatever works”, not adherence to a dogma which might, upon review, only have been a means whereby the con artists kept us in line in the past.
I, for one, will only defend what I find defensible and will attack whatever I see as wrong.
Republicans Are Terrified Because Their Candidates Are So Fucking Lazy. As a number of Democrats win high-profile special election victories in deep red districts, fewer and fewer safe Republican strongholds seem to be off limits.
We still have a magnificent window to win this thing and fix our nation – naturally, the first requirement is protecting President Trump.
We need a complete review of EVERYTHING and ask “is it good”
But the next step is just as important: a complete review of everything and asking the question, “Is this good?”.
We’ve already learned that so-called “Free Trade” wasn’t what many of us thought it was – take that as your template and ask yourself, “is this thing I’ve adhered to really in the interests of a free people? Or is it something which only serves the well-connected?”.
As Lincoln once said, it is time to think anew and act anew: not to create something different (nothing can be more magnificent than the United States, as far as human effort allows), but to recreate what we had, but even better than before.
It is time to think anew and act anew: not to create something different, but to recreate what we had, but even better than before.
And if that mission requires us to knock a few off their pedestals, then that’s just what will have to happen.
The problems of government are systemic. The reason for government should be a primary concern of anyone wanting a better government but this cannot be accomplished with people of socialist persuasion who scream, yell and interrupt other speakers in an effort to kill free speech.
Trump has thrown a wrench into the gears of socialisms advancement. Socialists are reeling in confusion but don’t count on them staying there. A revolution is coming. The question is, who’s going to lead it, them or us?
- Why Should We Accept Corrupt Government?
SHTF Related Index
This is a collection of my posts related to prepping, SHTF (Shit Hit The Fan), CWII (American Civil War 2), Fourth Turning (Strauss–Howe generational theory)
and other posts related to the very sad and sorry tatters that America
is today. Actually, I am a little stunned that I have written so much
about these matters. But America today is very ill and there are things
that really should be said.
Here are the posts.
SHTF and Related Index
Some prepper humor…
Articles & Links
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because I just don’t care to.
Keith Kaplan
CEO, TradeSmith
