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There’s been a bunch of big earth-shattering changes going on Geo-Politically and domestically. And Though I try to be topical, it’s really freaking out a lot of my MM readership. So I’m going put the brakes on that stuff. Sort of, and get back to some easier stuff to sooth our souls.
And this post is dedicated to Michelle. The stress of moving to a new area, and caring for family has been taking it’s toll. It’s time for a cool look and reminder of whence we came from.
You probably picture everyone dressed in bell-bottoms, their shirts unbuttoned down to their navels and their perfectly coiffed shag haircuts not budging as they boogie-woogied all night long.
And while that may be a fairly accurate snapshot—especially the bell-bottoms—it’s by no means the complete picture.
For those who came of age during the grooviest decade in history, memories run deeper than Donna Summer (Ohhhh I love to love ya baby.) and questionable fashion choices. LOL.
But seriously folks…
The best parts of your childhood probably involved things today’s kids will never know
From an article that I picked up and chopped up out of my unedited stash slush box...
The endless stretch of a lazy summer afternoon. Visits to a grandparent’s house in the country. Riding your bicycle through the neighborhood after dark. These were just a few of the revealing answers from more than 400 Twitter users in response to a question: “What was a part of your childhood that you now recognize was a privilege to have or experience?”
That question, courtesy of writer Morgan Jerkins, revealed a poignant truth about the changing nature of childhood in the US: The childhood experiences most valued by people who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s are things that the current generation of kids are far less likely to know.
That’s not a reference to cassette tapes, bell bottoms, Blockbuster movies, and other items popular on BuzzFeed listicles. Rather, people are primarily nostalgic for a youthful sense of independence, connectedness, and creativity that seems less common in the 21st century.
The Partridge Family.
The childhood privileges that respondents seemed to appreciate most in retrospect fall into four broad categories:
[1] The ability to take risks
“Riding my bike at all hours of the day into the evening throughout many neighborhoods without being stopped or asked what I was doing there,” was one Twitter user’s answer to Jerkins’ question.
Another commenter was grateful for “summer days & nights spent riding bikes anywhere & everywhere with friends, only needing to come home when the streetlights came on,” while yet another recalled “having a peaceful, free-range childhood.”
Countless others cited the freedom to explore—with few restrictions—as a major privilege of their childhood.
American children have less independence and autonomy today than they did a few generations ago.
For many of today’s children, that privilege is disappearing.
American children have less independence and autonomy today than they did a few generations ago. As parents have become increasingly concerned with safety, fewer children are permitted to go exploring beyond the confines of their own backyard.
Some parents have even been prosecuted or charged with neglect for letting their children walk or play unsupervised.
Meanwhile, child psychologists say that too many children are being ushered from one structured activity to the next, always under adult supervision—leaving them with little time to play, experiment, and make mistakes.
That’s a big problem.
Kids who have autonomy and independence are less likely to be anxious, and more likely to grow into capable, self-sufficient adults.
In a recent video for The Atlantic, Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of How to Raise an Adult, argues that so-called helicopter parents “deprive kids the chance to show up in their own lives, take responsibility for things and be accountable for outcomes.”
That message seems to be gaining traction. The state of Utah, for example, passed a “free-range” parenting law in 2018 meant to give parents the freedom to send kids out to play on their own.
[2] Lots of time with family
Another privilege cited by many Twitter respondents was regular time with their parents—around the dinner table, on weekends, on vacation—and access to meaningful interactions with other family members, especially grandparents.
One respondent wrote “My paternal grandparents were my daycare and their house in the country was my playground.”
Another said, “my Italian grandparents lived on a street with a slew of their brothers and sisters. Nobody had any money. Everyone’s doors were open all day. Coffee always on, something on the stove. Endless stories and laughter. The happiest world.”
In an email to Quartz, Jerkins said that many of the respondents “were talking about having their grandparents around, which I thought was incredibly heartwarming.”
Spending time with grandparents is also an important part of child development: Close grandparent-child relationships have significant mental health benefits both for kids and for grandparents, and encourage prosocial behavior in children.
That’s especially true of dads, 63% of whom say that they spend too little time with their kids.
Fondue.
[3] Reading books
Reading is good for children. It makes them more literate, better at math, and more academically successful in general.
So it’s no wonder that a large majority of the respondents to Jerkins’ Twitter question answered cited time for reading as a major privilege of their childhood.
“Books. Hundreds and thousands of them moving through our house—from libraries, bookstores, passed from friends and coworkers of my parents.
No idea too frightening or taboo to discuss or analyze,” one Twitter user wrote. “Books saved my life,” another said.
Today’s teens, however, are reading significantly less than their predecessors. In 1984, 8% of 13-year-olds and 9% of 17-year-olds said they “never” or “hardly ever” read for pleasure.
In 2014, that number had almost tripled, to 22% and 27%. And entire cities have now become “book deserts,” wherein the chances that kids in low-income urban neighborhoods finding children’s books for loan or purchase are slim to none.
[4] A screen-free existence
Gratitude for a childhood free of Facebook and smartphones was another common thread.
Another user answered: “A childhood without social media, tablets, mobile devices, apps, etc.” “I am so happy and blessed,” she continued, “that I can reflect on a childhood filled with books, board games, Razor scooters, and VHS tapes.”
Freedom from the constraints of an online presence is something that not a lot of US kids get to experience these days.
The latest research from Pew shows that 95% of teens report owning a smartphone or having access to one, and that 45% of teens say they are online on a “near-constant” basis.
That’s a marked change from even three years ago, the last time Pew conducted a survey of teens’ technology use, and found that 24% of teens went online “almost constantly.”
With the technology habits of today’s kids comes an increased risk of isolation, depressoin, and other mental health issues, along with the rise of cyber-bullying. A recent study in the journal Emotion showed that “the more hours a day teens spend in front of screens, the less satisfied they are.”
Reinventing childhood…
It’s only after we grow up that we’re able to recognize all the factors that made us into the people we are today.
Jerkins tells Quartz that she’s grateful for many privileges she was afforded: “Private tutoring. Flute lessons. Tap lessons. Dance and gymnastics lessons. Overnight summer camps. Regular summer camps. Books. Travel. Frequent trips to Disney World.” “I was very lucky,” she wrote.
A safe, healthy childhood is a privilege that far too few children in the US and around the world ever get to experience.
But even children who are lucky enough to grow up in a stable environment may not have the kind of adventurous, family-oriented, independent childhoods that the Twitter users who responded to Jerkins’ question describe.
Kids seem to be all the more unhappy for it. Maybe it’s time for a change.
A time for change…
And with the current state of the world as bizarre and challenging as it is right now, who could blame you for having some serious reappraisals on your life and the lifestyles of your family.
Is it time yet?
When I moved to China, I was stunned how community oriented it was, how the children were all out playing, or working with their parents, or spending time with their grandparents. These were things that I grew up with back when I was young, but that is wholly absent today.
Now, I’m not saying that suddenly everyone needs to get a pet rock, or put on some earth shoes, but maybe we all need to be a little less serious and a little more accommodating.
Let’s look at what it was like when I was growing up…
Taking care of Pet Rocks
A pet rock.
Pretty fucked up. I know. But it wasn’t as really serious as we all make it. It was a sort of shrug, and “let’s fuck with someone” kind of play.
.
So…
In the ’70s, we begged our parents for $4 so that we could buy… a rock. Sure, this makes it sound like ’70s kids were the victims of the biggest con in history—and we were.
But we have no regrets.
I almost bought one as a Christmas gift for my “secret Santa” at work. But I was fortunately persuaded to buy something else. So I bought a gallon (about four liters) of a very, very, very cheap perfume. He he. Well, I was, after all, only 16 years old.
We got to feed our Pet Rocks, take them for walks, and even clean up after them, just like a real pet. Call us fools if you must, but we loved our Pet Rocks.
The 1970’s was a a place; a “state of mind”. It really was “dazed and confused.
Like going to a movie theater and being traumatized for months afterwards…
Being afraid to go in the ocean after Jaws
Yikes!
Jaws. A mighty big fish.
All it took was one seriously terrifying movie—Steven Spielberg’s 1975 shark fright fest Jaws—to keep an entire generation of children out of the ocean. All of us ’70s kids would scan the water for signs of a shark fin, hearing da-dum, da-dum, da-dum in our heads as we did.
And let’s not forget Linda Blair in the movie “The Exorcist”.
The Exorcist
Yeah. I was on a date with a girl when I watched it, I had to carry her in my arms to the car afterwards. BTW, my old GTO, don’t you know.
My GTO. Sigh.
I do miss my GTO.
Schoolhouse Rock
I myself didn’t like it, but my younger brother and sister did. I guess that is how they ended up learning math and grammar. You know, from Schoolhouse Rock.
Schoolhouse Rock
These educational animated shorts popped up amid our usual Saturday morning cartoon line-up. And their songs were so darn catchy that we didn’t even mind that they were tricking us into learning.
With educational hits like “Conjunction Junction” and “Three Is a Magic Number,”Schoolhouse Rock probably taught us more than our actual teachers did. Ask anybody who grew up in the ’70s to explain how laws are made in our country and they’ll likely start singing “I’m Just a Bill.”
Oh yeah.
We all wore them…
Tube Socks
Everyone wore tube socks.
.
Everyone.
Tube Socks.
No self-respecting ’70s kid would ever walk out for gym class without a pair of tube socks, preferably one long enough to reach their knees. We all suffered from the same delusion that tube socks made us look athletic and not incredibly silly.
At least we weren’t alone, though. Everyone from Farrah Fawcett to Kareem-Abdul Jabbar made a very convincing case that tube socks were cool.
Yuppur.
Real cool beans.
Worshipping Fonzie
Everyone was into the Fonz.
The Fonz looks at Richie.
Kids didn’t tune in to the sitcom Happy Days because they were nostalgic about the ’50s. They did it to see the Fonz, the coolest character on TV. All across the country, kids would be practicing their Fonzie thumbs up and saying “Ayyyy” with the perfect Henry Winkler inflection.
Then, they would go off and ride their bikes.
Having Tupperware pride
Tupperware
Of course, people still use Tupperware today, but it’s nothing like it was in the ’70s. Our Tupperware was colorful and bold, something that you actually wanted to show off when you opened your lunch at school.
The generation before us even had Tupperware parties to sell these much sought-after storage containers. In the 1970s, you’d have an easier time walking into somebody’s house and stealing a lamp than leaving with their Tupperware. Seriously, we loved it that much.
Using the 8-track player in your car
An 8-track player.
Nobody actually liked 8-track tapes—they were simply the only thing available in the ’70s for recording and listening to music before the cassette came to town. They were incredibly complicated, with four “programs” instead of sides. You had to toggle from program to program, making the whole enterprise hugely annoying and clunky.
In my “neck of the woods”, we had an 8-track player when I was 16 years old and dating my 14 year old girl friend. An FM adapter came when I was 18 years old, and then when I was 19 came the cassette.
Witnessing TV go off the air at night
Then dead air and static. No problem, though. We would just put a few albums on the turntable.
Television station went off the air.
Television wasn’t available 24/7 during our childhood. At around 1 or 2 a.m., most TV stations signed off for the night, playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before leaving us with a test card of color bars. Anyone suffering from insomnia didn’t have a lot of options in those days.
Seeing Star Wars in theaters for the first time
I watched it with another girl. It was her idea, and after a successful date watching “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, we went to Butler, PA and watched this gem. She drove. Not me. She had a silver Chevy Chevelle.
Those were the days.
Hot cars. Fun girls.
A large pizza for a $1.
I guess it was in a galaxy a long, time ago. Sigh.
Star Wars
When George Lucas’s space opera first hit movie theaters in 1977, it was unlike anything the world had ever seen. If you ask anyone who saw the original Star Wars in theaters about their experience, they’ll be able to tell you every little detail, right down to how long they waited in line. For a ’70s kid, it’s easy to get goosebumps just thinking about it.
Yeah. I do remember getting on the phone and talking for hours about the movie.
Chatting on the phone for hours.
Practicing the Hustle
Everyone did it. Though many of us deeply regretted it in the morning.
Dancing the Hustle.
Before there was the Macarena, there was the Hustle. When Van McCoy implored us in his 1975 hit to “do the Hustle,” we all knew we had to learn this dance or we’d be left behind.
Sinking our feet into shag carpeting
God. You all have no idea.
Shag Carpeting.
Shag carpets looked hideous, almost like the hair on the head of a gigantic Muppet. And yet, they were also surprisingly cozy on bare feet. The material felt so soft to the touch that it made an entire generation overlook its heinous appearance.
When Marcia Brady moved out of the house, it was probably to an apartment like this…
Groovy.
With enough black laquer, your den would be fit for a villain from Kung Fu.
They just don’t make houses this way any more.
The perfect kitchen for spilling tomato sauce.
Perfect.
Laughing at Saturday Night Live
Went great with beer.
The crew of Saturday Night Live.
If you weren’t old enough to stay up late and watch Saturday Night Live when it first launched in 1975, you probably had an older sibling or a parent who was—and did. The morning after, you’d beg them to recount every hilarious moment, even if you didn’t always understand all the jokes. If nothing else, the merciless torture of a clay figure named Mr. Bill felt like the most brilliant bit in the world.
Doing the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” dance
Yeah. People danced back then.
The Village People.
The Hustle was hardly the only iconic dance to come out of the ’70s. You can immediately tell if somebody came of age during the decade by whether or not they reflexively spell out the letters “Y,” “M,” “C,” and “A” with their arms whenever this Village People song is played.
Growing up with Sesame Street
Sesame Street.
Every child born in the last 50 years has likely been influenced by Sesame Street in some way. But for ’70s kids who got to experience the PBS show from the beginning, the program was a revelation. We were the first generation to fall in love with Big Bird, Grover, Bert, and Ernie, the fictional characters who taught us everything we needed to know growing up.
For me, I was busy watching Mary Harman, Mary Hartman.
Mary Harman, Mary Hartman.
Expressing ourselves with mood rings
It was very cool.
Mood Ring.
This ’70s fashion accessory was also a liquid crystal thermometer, which is how it could “recognize” your emotional state. Blue meant you were calm or relaxed, amber meant you were nervous or anxious, and black meant you were angry. For ’70s kids, showing someone the color of their mood ring was much easier than talking about feelings.
And who can forget…
Smashing clackers together
Clackers.
What’s surprising isn’t that ’70s kids loved this toy, which consisted of two heavy acrylic balls attached to string intended to be banged together at full force—it’s that it took years before somebody noticed that clackers produced a lot of shrapnel. In 1976, the United States government finally deemed the toy a “mechanical hazard,” and they were taken off store shelves.
Well.
Well.
It was a different time and a different place. And it’s fine to remember the good, the bad and the truly messed up. But you know, the things that we miss today are the things that we took for granted back then.
If something is going well for you; put it in your affirmations so that it keeps supplying you with good and happy memories. Don’t take it for granted. Things taken for granted often disappear.
To underline and appreciate what you appreciate in your affirmations. It’s not just about your future. It’s also about keeping intact things that matter to you.
You know if more people do this, we would still have $1 pizza pies everywhere, we’d be zooming around in GTO’s, and listening to “real” music.
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.
China is a traditional nation that has zero tolerance for progressive ideas or values. And we, within China, see this every day. This is a point that I have made time and time again, and have written various articles on this particular subject. And yet, we are reminded of this fact once again.
Here's a great article. All credit to the original author. Republished from National Justice. Edited to fit this venue.
China: Nationalists Smash Cyber Network of Feminists and Foreign Backed Social Justice Warriors
A cyber army of nationalists have successfully shut down a network of feminists and American-style leftists on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
More than a dozen prominent accounts belonging to purple haired women preaching homosexuality, hatred against men, and attacks on the traditional family were banned from the site for violating Weibo’s policy on promoting hate.
How it began…
The confrontation began when US supported Chinese feminist Xiao Meili posted a video.
It was a video of a woman harassing a random man for smoking a cigarette near a restaurant.
SJW feminists have a “death wish”.
The man responded by throwing his drink in her face.
Meili attempted to paint the incident as a social indictment of Chinese men.
Instead online users swarmed her comments and began protesting her “xenocentrism”.
Xenocentrism is a term used against people attempting to import American and European Union values to China.
When several prominent Chinese “social justice warriors” rallied to her defense and accused the critics of “intimidating” her, the dispute spiraled into an all out cyber war.
Those that attack the Confucian ethic of caring for the elderly.
And those that engage in frivolous sexual harassment accusations.
Western Media are howling!
Western media is up in arms about the affair, blaming the Chinese government for having a role in “silencing” or “censoring” these women.
Article 35 of the Chinese constitution guarantees the right to free speech.
However, Weibo is a privately owned company, meaning that it wouldn’t even be censorship under American law.
The feminists have filed an impotent lawsuit against Weibo similar to ones filed by Americans against Silicon Valley monopolies in hopes of being reinstated.
“Free Speech” or CIA sponsored NGO “Color Revolutions”?
“Human rights” groups, US/European controlled media, and NGOs attempting to spur a political response for merely banning users engaged in what the Chinese perceive as hate speech contradicts their position on online speech in America.
Every powerful institution in the West supports ruthlessly suppressing pro-normal beliefs in America and Europe, including affirming that men cannot be transformed into women through drugs and mutilation.
As politicians, corporations and feminist activists in the United States like to remind us, the right to free speech is not a right to a platform.
Traditional Values within China
Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has sought to avoid a looming demographic winter by increasing national birth rates.
Defending the dignity of the traditional Chinese family, which includes a husband, a wife, children and often older relatives, has been made a national priority by president Xi.
This embrace of tradition is a drastic departure from Mao Zedong’s Marxist campaign to “liberate” women from marriage and force them to go to work instead.
Conclusion
China is quickly becoming a photo-negative of America.
Billionaires who try to exert political influence have their monopolies busted instead.
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.
Here we are going to briefly review the insanity that Washington DC is involved in on the “Geo-political front”, and that will Segway into what is going on in the “home front”. Overall, it’s a damning situation, and getting uglier by the minute. Those of you who thought that Trump was insane will now be terrified that Biden is (maybe) even worse.
Yikes!
"DIPLOMACY'S DEAD, BABY. DIPLOMACY'S DEAD.
The Empire of Chaos is in utter desperation, and on a Kill Bill rampage. Without a samurai sword.
Some of us, including Alastair Crooke, Paul Craig Roberts, The Saker, and if we he was still alive, Prof. Stephen Cohen, have been warning everyone for a long time.
It doesn't matter that Russiagate was completely debunked. The Dem Dementia administration is now on Russiagate 2.0 on steroids.
This "intel" report on Russian interference in the - rigged - US elections does not even qualify as a bad joke.
What Crash Test Dummy's handlers told him to say in that interview about Putin being "a killer", "without a soul" who will "pay a price", goes way beyond ANYTHING that happened during the Cold War.
At least there was a measure of diplomatic decency in the superpowers relationship.
What's happening now is totally reckless, totally irrational - not to mention terminally stupid: there is NO American foreign policy left.
The Kremlin - as well as the Ministy of Foreign Affairs - already got the picture: they are dealing with a bunch of lowly gangsters which also happens to be criminally insane.
For the record: Stupidistan is now at war ON THREE FRONTS. Against Russia, against China and against Iran.
Declining empires are ALWAYS strategically stupid."
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Director of National Intelligence came out with a report today saying that Vladimir Putin authorized operations during the election to under — denigrate you, support President Trump, undermine our elections, divide our society. What price must he pay?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: He will pay a price. I, we had a long talk, he and I, when we — I know him relatively well. And I– the conversation started off, I said, “I know you and you know me. If I establish this occurred, then be prepared.”
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You said you know he doesn’t have a soul.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I did say that to him, yes. And — and his response was, “We understand one another.” It was– I wasn’t being a wise guy. I was alone with him in his office. And that — that’s how it came about. It was when President Bush had said, “I looked in his eyes and saw his soul.” I said, “Looked in your eyes and I don’t think you have a soul.” And looked back and he said, “We understand each other.” Look, most important thing dealing with foreign leaders in my experience, and I’ve dealt with an awful lot of ’em over my career, is just know the other guy. Don’t expect somethin’ that you’re– that — don’t expect him to– or her to– voluntarily appear in the second editions of Profiles in Courage.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So you know Vladimir Putin. You think he’s a killer?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Uh-huh. I do.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS:So what price must he pay?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The price he’s gonna pay we’ll– you’ll see shortly.
This is truly a historic interview and a watershed moment in US-Russia relations. Let’s deconstruct what is happening here:
“Director of National Intelligence came out with a report”:
Ever since 9/11, the US intel community has been under huge pressure to produce not intelligence, but to serve as a kind of criterion of truth, a substitute for any rules of evidence.
For example, if tomorrow Biden’s handlers want to accuse Putin of eating newborn babies for breakfast, all they have to do is get the US intel community to produce a report which will say with “great confidence” that it is “highly likely” that Putin does, indeed, like to start his days by snaking on babies.
The “logic” here works like this: “since we (the West) are the good guys, our intelligence community is objective, non-political and trustworthy”. QED.
And the fact that the history of both the CIA and the FBI prove beyond any reasonable doubt that both of these agencies were totally politicized for decades does not matter.
Why?
Because the also “objective, non-political and trustworthy” US media says that the intel community must be trusted because it is, you guessed it, “objective, non-political and trustworthy”. Oh the beauty of circular logic….
Next,
“What price must he pay?”.
This one is so important that Stephanopoulos asks this twice and Biden “reassures” him twice.
The message here is that it is not Stephanopoulos who demands a retaliation, it is the vox populi, the outraged people of the United States. And why would the people of the USA hate Putin and Russia and demand retaliation?
Why – because the objective, non-political and trustworthy US media fully endorses the claims of the objective, non-political and trustworthy US intel community!
How can anybody possibly doubt these two paragons of honesty?! Only a “Putin agent” would doubt their word, right?
Then,
“Putin does not have a soul”.
This is pretty pathetic, since Stephanopoulos comes from a Greek Orthodox family he should know that all humans have a soul and to suggest otherwise is, actually, a total and categorical rejection of everything Christianity stands for.
It is also a clear case of dehumanization, something which all politicians do before they turn to violence and war.
It is unlikely that Biden has any idea what he did or did not tell Putin when they met, but even if we assume that Biden did actually tell Putin that he had no soul, I can just imagine the true amazement (and inner giggle) of Putin hearing that.
By the way, the “official” response of Putin was “we understand each other” which makes absolutely no logical sense.
So what we have is a basically brain dead pseudo “President” who is programmed by his handlers to tell the US public that Putin has no soul and that Biden told him that face to face. What actual purpose such a statement would pursue is neither asked nor answered.
Finally
“Is Putin a killer”.
First, what a fantastically stupid thing to ask.
Why? Because this question has no objective meaning unless the context or scope is specified.
It could mean “did he commit murder?“, that is illegal manslaughter, a crime under Russian law. Or it could mean “did he, the President of Russia, order Russian special services to kill Litvinenko, Skripal, Navalnyii and others?“.
This would be legal under Russian law and, in fact, the Russians have never denied ordering the execution of, say, Wahabi terrorists (both in Russia and outside).
That would be a policy decision similar to one the US used to (putatively) execute Osama Bin-Laden or General Soleimani.
Finally, that question could also mean “did Putin as the commander in chief of the Russian armed forces order military operations which resulted in the loss of human life, including possible innocent human life?“.
This would also be a policy decision which any commander in chief has to make. These are all completely different questions, but for micro-brains like Stephanopoulos or Biden, the purpose of questions is not to elicit answers, it is to set an emotional tone, a kind of “mental background” which Orwell very aptly called the “two minutes of hate“.
Yes, all of the above is completely unprecedented: not even in the worst hours of the Cold War did western politicians use that kind of language. What we witness today is not only truly extremely dangerous, it is also the end of diplomacy.
The End of Diplomacy
When diplomacy dies, wars are born.
I grew up in So. CA and had the greatest life as a child and up to the millennia when everything changed after 9.11
The point and the problem is that most people define America as the government whereas I define it as the people who by and large are friendly, decent and caring.
Are they misled?
For sure, but they are indoctrinated from early childhood and they resist the idea that their government might be a monster, same as a child does with an abusive parent.
Americans are mostly sheep, but they are good sheep and after all even us “superior” humans share a herd mentality, i.e. shepherd/sheep.
So it pains me to know that it will be we the people who will suffer the fallout of any hostilities with Russia or Iran or China or Venezuela for that matter. The slime overlords will avoid the radar as always.
Yes, I know, ever since the Obama administration, US “diplomats” were mostly unprofessional political appointees with a fantastically low level of education, fully compensated by an fantastically high level of arrogance and hypocrisy. But while the likes of Psaki would spew any idiocy imaginable, US Presidents have never sunk to the level of Biden.
Biden is a reaction to Trump in that his admin represents a desperate attempt to salvage the neoliberal policies of the past 50 years since the 80s. Unfortunately for Biden, and the rest of America, there's only so many populations you can exploit before exploited productive forces become so advanced that they begin to demand higher wages, and thus profits dry up. Global wage differences even out, then import prices go up, and our American standard of living continues to drop until the sweatshops come home to roost. That won't stand and ideology shifts again and again (Biden's response to these shifts is, ironically, censorship and control).
So what does the Biden admin do? They know it will eventually come down to opening up new labor power markets (those sweet, sweet populations and natural resources of Russia are so tempting to Biden's vampiric brood) and taking down competing countries (China's rise as a consumer market is a big problem for the US). This is why Biden's behavior makes sense. If they don't put maximum pressure now, not just on Russia and China, but all potential neocolonial interests, then they won't get the chance in the future. We'll see the internal contradictions in the US give rise to even more blatant fascism (doesn't matter from whom, Trump or Biden).
Furthermore, it does not take a genius to understand the implications of the combination of the two following two facts:
Putin is by far the most popular Russian politician, at least since Stalin
The West sees Putin as some kind of devil incarnate
Ergo: the West hates all the Russian people for regularly voting for Putin
Simple and quite undeniable.
In fact, an increasing number of Russians are saying “we are the Jews of the 21st century” and, frankly, I cannot disagree with this. The big difference here is that 20th century Jews did not have thousands of nuclear weapons to defend themselves. Russians do.
I wonder of Stephanopoulos and the rest of them understand this?
I don’t think so.
Interesting comments by a senior Russian Senator:
“US President Joe Biden’s boorish remarks about Russian leader Vladimir Putin will inevitably have a negative impact on relations between the two countries, Deputy Speaker of the Russian Federation Council (the upper house of parliament) Konstantin Kosachev wrote on Facebook on Thursday……..
“This is a fault line. These boorish remarks have killed off all expectations that the new US administration will pursue a new policy towards Russia,” Kosachev noted. According to him, “evaluations like these from a statesman of such a high rank are generally unacceptable.” The Russian senator stressed that the remarks had come from the president of the country “that drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes, according to expert estimates.” “As a result, the death of more than 500,000 people has been linked to US actions since 2001. Could you comment on that, Mr. Biden?” Kosachev said………..”
There is a culture of total impunity in the USA which stems from the fact that the US never fought a war in defense of the US mainland in its history and from the fact that the USA used to be protected by two oceans and two absolutely peaceful neighbors.
In sharp contrast, Russia has no natural borders and 1000 years experience of war, most of them existential and most fought on Russian soil.
Maria Zakharova today:
17 March 202120:09 Comment by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova
503-17-03-2021
en-GB1 ru-RU1
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov has been summoned to Moscow for consultations in order to analyse what needs to be done in the context of relations with the United States.
The new US administration took office about two months ago and the symbolic 100-day mark is not too far away, which is a good occasion for trying to appraise what Joe Biden’s team has managed to do and where it was not very successful. The most important thing for us is to identify ways of rectifying Russia-US relations, which have been going through hard times as Washington has, as a matter of fact, brought them to a blind alley. We are interested in preventing an irreversible deterioration in relations, if the Americans become aware of the risks associated with this.
This is what we will talk about during the consultations that the Foreign Ministry and other relevant agencies will hold with the Russian Ambassador to the United States.
I would also add that the other comment many Russian officials are making is that Biden simply lacks even basic manners. To make clear: they are not only saying that Biden has zero understanding of diplomacy, they are saying that Biden simply has no basic manners which any semi-educated person ought to have.
On the main Russian TV channel reporters were even asking today whether Russia ought to completely break diplomatic relations with the USA!
Maybe American leadership is hoping that we the people will fail to notice that they have thoroughly destroyed our economy when those of us left after the nuclear exchange are freezing in the rubble of our homes during a truly anthropogenic climate change known as nuclear winter.
There also will be no worries about questions of ownership, acquisition of food, medicine or political power as the well-armed oligarchy ensconced in their bunkers with their mercenary armies will simply take everything not vaporised and leave you to die and rot on the frozen and nuclear-contaminated formerly fruited plain.
It will be a glorious and divinely-inspired “reset.”
That would be a very dangerous mistake and I don’t think that the Kremlin will go so far, at least officially, but there is a clear understanding amongst Russian officials while officially the two countries still have diplomatic relations, in reality the US basically terminated them.
Do I really have to spell out here how insanely dangerous this is?
While it is absolutely normal for some tribes still living in the bronze-age to play out ritual threats and displays of macho prowess in order to impress an adversary, to see the (nominal) leader of a nuclear superpower acting like such a bronze-age tribal leader is perplexing to say the least.
And just like the Sentinelese tribesmen believe that their bows and arrows can scare away metal ships and even helicopters, so do the “Biden tribesmen” (let’s call them that) hope that sanctions or US military capabilities will scare Russia into complete submission.
US military capabilities will scare Russia into complete submission?
Furthermore, at no time does Stephanopoulos question the moral and legal right of the US President to “punish” Russia and/or Putin.
In fact, by repeating this question, he strongly suggests that punishing Russia and/or Putin is not only the right of the US President, but his moral and, possibly, even legal obligation.
This is exactly what Dr John Marciano calls “empire as a way of life” (see here and here for details).
This ignorant, arrogant, narcissistic, messianic and terminally delusional belief that the USA is some kind of “collective messiah” tasked by nature or some god with policing the planet. The Sentinelese try to “defend” their own shores and land and they don’t have millions of members in an organization called “Veterans of Foreign Wars” (have they really no shame at all?) and they don’t spend on “defense” more than the rest of the planet combined.
Finally, we can rest assured that whoever is in command of the Sentinelese he (or she) is a much smarter and honest leader than the brain-dead vegetable that the theft of the US 2020 election put into power.
In Hans Christian Andersen’s wonderful tale the breaking moment comes when an innocent child explains “he hasn’t got anything on!“, while the rest of the people are under the spell of what is called “pluralistic ignorance“.
Let me ask you: how soon do you think that declaring, say, “Uncle Shmuel is truly brain dead…” will become a criminal offense in the so-called “the land of the free and the home of the brave“?
The point is that the neocons in the US needed a puppet in the White House, who would continue the globalist Agenda of introducing a globalist empire run by corporations and private banks. For that to succeed, both Russia and China need to be broken up and plundered.
Too late for that, and by now it’s clear that not only is Sleepy Joe brain dead, but the neocon elite which is still living in the past, incapable of fully understanding that the world is changing.
What the neocon elite is very much aware is the fact that the present Western financial Ponzie scheme cannot function perpetually, showing signs of financial collapse.
You cannot keep postponing gigantic foreign and internal debts and at the same time keep printing funny money in the trillions.
For this scheme to have any chance of being maintained, then good old fashioned plundering is required, the chief targets being Russia and China.
And now we have the answer why Anglo-American elites are aggressively disposed towards both countries. A boiling point is being created, which can explode into something very dangerous and suicidal.
When a rat is cornered, it becomes dangerous, as proven by the neocons, who are apparently losing their nerve, failing to achieve a globalist world wide empire, while the empire they have created is showing signs of dissolution.
For the record: Stupidistan is now at war ON THREE FRONTS. Against Russia, against China and against Iran.
Declining empires are ALWAYS strategically stupid."
Posted by: Seej | Mar 18 2021 19:05 utc | 4
And…
Alas, more than 30 years ago it was observed in USA that it benefits a politician to seem stupid, and being genuinely stupid is even better.
Why do you think power to be within Democratic Party decided to maneuver the least intellectually able contender to win in the primaries? That in itself is not necessarily bad, but on the lower levels of government, you must prove stupidity (or at least utter lack of original thinking) to advance.
Now we have new generations of opportunists hiding any sign of thinking, apart from passing all the required exams in elite schools etc. Let me think of the greatness and extinction of Irish elk.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Mar 18 2021 19:20 utc | 7
Now it all makes sense…
There is a reason why Xi Peng, Putin and Iran are constructing the BRI out of Xinjiang. Asia is unifying against the “dangerous menace”.
BRI simplified, showing only the land routes.
Remember that China-Russia-Iran are a unified block
They have banded together in defense of an out-of-control United States Military Empire.
In a searing, concise essay, Alastair Crooke pointed to the heart of the matter. These are the two key insights – including a nifty Orwellian allusion:
1. “Once control over the justifying myth of America was lost, the mask was off.”
2. “The US thinks to lead the maritime and rimland powers in imposing a searing psychological, technological and economic defeat on the Russia-China-Iran alliance. In the past, the outcome might have been predictable. This time Eurasia may very well stand solid against a weakened Oceania (and a faint-hearted Europe).”
And that brings us to two interconnected summits: the Quad and the China-US 2+2 in Alaska.
The QUAD
The virtual Quad last Friday came and went like a drifting cloud. When you had India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying the Quad is “a force for global good,” no wonder rows of eyebrows across the Global South were raised.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi remarked last year that the Quad was part of a drive to create an “Asian NATO.”
It is.
But the hegemon, lording over India, Japan and Australia, mustn’t spell it out. Thus the vague rhetoric about “free and open Indo-Pacific,” “democratic values,” “territorial integrity” – all code to characterize containment of China, especially in the South China Sea.
The exceptionalist wet dream – routinely expressed in US Thinktankland – is to position an array of missiles in the first island chain, pointing towards China like a weaponized porcupine. Beijing is very much aware of it.
Apart from a meek joint statement, the Quad promised to deliver 1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines throughout the “Indo-Pacific” by the end of… 2022.
…
… by the end of 2022.
… about two years from now.
The vaccine would be produced by India and financed by the US and Japan, with the logistics of distribution coming from Australia.
Produced in India.
Financed by the US and Japan.
Logistical distribution out of Australia.
That was predictably billed as “countering China’s influence in the region.”
Too little, too late. The bottom line is: The hegemon is furious because China’s vaccine diplomacy is a huge success – not only across Asia but all across the Global South.
Yah. China has been doing this all year. And it is just insane to think that American promises of some day in two years is going to matter. Or make a difference. Or to provide credibility.
And as crazy as all this is, we are not even going to begin to talk about the crazed printing of trillions of US Dollars that is now flooding the world.
This ain’t no ‘strategic dialogue’
US Secretary of State Tony Blinken is a mere apparatchik who was an enthusiastic cheerleader for shock and awe against Iraq 18 years ago, in 2003. At the time he was staff director for the Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then chaired by Senator Joe Biden.
Now Blinken is running US foreign policy for a senile cardboard entity who mutters, live, on camera, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Nance” – as in Nancy Pelosi; and who characterizes the Russian president as “a killer,” “without a soul,” who will “pay a price.”
With that in mind, there’s little doubt that the formidable Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, side by side with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, will make shark’s fin soup out of their interlocutors Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at the 2+2 summit in Anchorage, Alaska.
Only two days before the start of the Two Sessions in Beijing, Blinken proclaimed that China is the “biggest geopolitical challenge of the 21st century.”
According to Blinken, China is the …
“only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system – all the rules, values and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to, because it ultimately serves the interests and reflects the values of the American people.”
So Blinken tacitly admits what really matters is how the world works “the way we want it to” – “we” being the hegemon, which made those rules in the first place. And those rules serve the interests and reflect the values of the American people.
As in: It’s our way or the highway.
America is the best, and all the soldiers are Rambo. America is invincible, and you had best obey us or we will destroy you.
Blinken could be excused because he’s just a wide-eyed novice on the big stage. But it gets way more embarrassing…
American foreign policy 2021
Here’s his foreign policy in a nutshell (“his” because the hologram at the White House needs 24/7 instructions in his earpiece to even know what time it is):
Sanctions, sanctions everywhere;
Cold War 2.0 against Russia and “killer” Putin;
China guilty of “genocide” in Xinjiang;
China is a notorious apartheid state getting a free pass to do anything;
Iran must blink first or there’s no return to the JCPOA;
Random Guaido recognized as President of Venezuela, with regime change still the priority.
There’s a curious kabuki in play here.
America is used to fighting wars in far away lands. World War III will be an easy win.
Following the proverbial revolving door logic in DC, before literally crossing the street to have full access to the White House, Blinken was a founding partner of WestExec Advisors, whose main line of business is to offer “geopolitical and policy expertise” to American multinationals, the overwhelming majority of which are interested in – where else – China.
So Alaska might point to some measure of trade-off on trade.
Americans are not afraid to die for “democracy”. Because God has “blessed America” with invincibility.
The problem, though, seems insurmountable.
Beijing does not want to eschew the profitable American market, while for Washington expansion of Chinese technology across the West is anathema.
Blinken himself pre-empted Alaska, saying this is no “strategic dialogue.”
So we’re back to bolstering the Indo-Pacific racket;
Recriminations about the “loss of freedom” in Hong Kong – whose role of US/UK Fifth Column is now definitely over;
Tibet;
The “invasion” of Taiwan, now on spin overdrive, with the Pentagon stating it is “probable” before 2027.
Shutdown of the BRI by intervention in Xinjiang.
“Strategic dialogue” it ain’t.
A new America awaits.
A junkie on a bum trip
Wang Yi, at a press conference linked to the 13th National People’s Congress and the announcement of the next Five-Year Plan, said:
“We will set an example of strategic mutual trust, by firmly supporting each other in upholding core and major interests, jointly opposing ‘color revolution’ and countering disinformation, and safeguarding national sovereignty and political security.”
That’s a sharp contrast with the post-truth “highly likely” school of spin privileged by (failed) Russiagate peddlers and assorted Sinophobes.
Top Chinese scholar Wang Jisi, who used to be close to the late Ezra Vogel, author of arguably the best Deng Xiaoping biography in English, has introduced an extra measure of sanity, recalling Vogel’s emphasis on the necessity of US and East Asia understanding each other’s culture.
“In my own experiences, I find one difference between the two countries most illuminating.
We in China like the idea of “seeking common ground while reserving our differences.”
We state that the common interests between our two countries far exceed our differences.
We define common ground by a set of principles like mutual respect and cooperation.
Americans, in contrast, tend to focus on hard issues like tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
It looks that the Chinese want to set up principles before trying to solve specific problems, but the Americans are eager to deal with problems before they are ready to improve the relationship.”
The real problem is that the hegemon seems congenitally incapable of trying to understand the Other. It always harks back to that notorious formulation by Zbigniew Brzezinski, with trademark imperial arrogance, in his 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard:
“To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are [1] to prevent collusion and [2] maintain security dependence among the vassals, [3] to keep tributaries pliant and protected and [4] to keep the barbarians from coming together.”
Dr Zbig was referring, of course, to Eurasia. “Security dependence among vassals” applied mostly to Germany and Japan, key hubs in the Rimland. “Tributaries pliant and protected” applied mostly to the Middle East.
And crucially, “keep the barbarians from coming together” applied to Russia, China and Iran. That was Pax Americana in a nutshell. And that’s what’s totally unraveling now.
"the Americans are eager to deal with problems before they are ready to improve the relationship."
That observation is consistent with that of an entity that only wants its orders obeyed and seeks no relationship or friendship with any other entity since it sees itself as Top Dog, and #1 in every way. As with the Nord Stream project, we see the Gangster mentality--Do as I say or else!
Not only does the Emperor have no clothes or much of a working memory, he's got erectile dysfunction too that's well beyond the ability of Viagra to fix.
Hence the Kill Bill logic. It goes back a long way. Less than two months after the collapse of the USSR, the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance preached total global dominance and, following Dr Zbig, the absolute imperative of preventing the emergence of any future peer competitor.
Especially Russia, defined as “the only power in the world with the capacity of destroying the United States.”
Then, in 2002, at the start of the “axis of evil” era, came the full spectrum dominance doctrine as the bedrock of the US National Security Strategy. Domination, domination everywhere: terrestrial, aerial, maritime, subterranean, cosmic, psychological, biological, cyber-technological.
And, not by accident, the Indo-Pacific strategy – which guides the Quad – is all about “how to maintain US strategic primacy.”
This mindset is what enables US Think Tankland to formulate risible “analyses” in which the only “win” for the US imperatively requires a failed Chinese “regime.”
After all, Leviathan is congenitally incapable of accepting a “win-win”; it only runs on “zero-sum,” based on divide and rule.
And that’s what’s leading the Russia-China strategic partnership to progressively establish a wide-ranging, comprehensive security environment, spanning everything from high-tech weaponry to banking and finance, energy supplies and the flow of information.
To evoke yet another pop culture gem, a discombobulated Leviathan now is like Caroline, the junkie depicted in Lou Reed’s Berlin:
But she’s not afraid to die / All of her friends call her Alaska / When she takes speed / They laugh and ask her / What is in her mind / What is in her mind / She put her fist through the window pane / It was such a / funny feeling / It’s so cold / in Alaska.
Washington Has Resurrected the Specter of Nuclear Armageddon
During the 20th century Cold War with the Soviet Union, there were US Soviet experts who were concerned that the Cold War was partly contrived and, therefore, needlessly dangerous. Stephen Cohn at Princeton University, for example, believed that exaggerating the threat was as dangerous as underestimating it.
On the other hand, Richard Pipes at Harvard believed that the CIA dangerously underestimated Soviet military power and failed to grasp Soviet strategic intentions.
In 1976 President Gerald Ford and CIA Director George H.W. Bush commissioned an outside panel of experts to evaluate the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimates. This group was known as Team B.
Under Pipes’ leadership Team B created the perception that the US faced a dangerous “window of vulnerability.”
In conventional wisdom, in order to close this window of vulnerability President Reagan began an American arms buildup.
On this point conventional wisdom is wrong.
The Reagan military buildup was as much hype as reality.Its purpose was to bring the Soviets to the negotiating table and end the Cold War in order to remove the threat of nuclear war.
Reagan’s supply-side policy had fixed the problem of worsening trade-offs between employment and inflation, thus making an arms buildup possible.
In contrast, Reagan regarded the Soviet economy as broken and unfixable.
He reasoned that a new arms race was more than the Soviets could afford, and that the threat of one would bring the Soviets to the table to negotiate the end of the Cold War.
The Soviet Union collapsed when hardline communists, convinced that Gorbachev was endangering the Soviet Union by giving up too much too quickly before American intentions were known, placed President Gorbachev under house arrest.
The Yeltsin years (1991-1999) brought the dismemberment of the Soviet Empire and was a decade of Russian subservience to the United States.
Putin came to power as the American neoconservatives were girding up to establish US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
As General Wesley Clark told us, seven countries were to be overthrown in 5 years. The American preoccupation with the Middle East permitted Putin to throw off American overlordship and reestablish Russian sovereignty.
Once Washington realized this, the American establishment turned on Putin with a vengence.
Stephen Cohen, Jack Matlock (Reagan’s ambassador to the Soviet Union), myself and a few others warned that Washington’s refusal to accept Russian independence would reignite the Cold War, thus erasing the accomplishment of ending it and resurrecting the specter of nuclear war.
But Washington didn’t listen.
Instead, Cohen and I were put on a list of “Russian agents/dupes,” and the process of trying to destabalize Putin began.In other words, once an American colony always an American colony, and Putin became the most demonized person on earth.
Today (March 17) we had the extraordinary spectacle of President Biden saying on ABC News that President Putin is a killer, and “he will pay a price.”This is a new low point in diplomacy.
It does not serve American interests or peace.
This all is dangerous.
Yesterday a CIA-Homeland Security report was declassified. The “report” is blatant propaganda.
It alleges that Russia interfered in the 2020 election with the purposes of “denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.”
“Russiagate” is still with us despite the failure of the three-year Mueller investigation to find a scrap of evidence.
We desperately need a new Team B like the one the CIA commissioned in 1976 to check on itself.But in those days discussion and debate was possible.
Today they are not.
We live in a world in which only propaganda is permitted.
There is an agenda.
The agenda is regime change in Russia.
No facts are relevant.There will be no Team B to evaluate whether the Putin threat is exaggerated.
New York City in 2025?
The anti-Russian craze that has been orchestrated in the US and throughout the Western world leaves the US in an extremely dangerous situation.
Americans and Europeans perceive reality only through the light of American propaganda.American diplomacy, military policy, news reporting, and public understanding are the fantasy creations of propaganda.
Los Angles in 2025?
The Kremlin has shown amazing forbearance of Washington’s inanities and insults.It was the Democrat Hillary Clinton who called President Putin the “new Hitler,”and now Democrat Biden calls Putin “a killer.”
American presidents and presidential candidates did not speak of Soviet leaders in these terms. They would have been regarded by the American population as far too deranged to have access to the nuclear button.
Chicago in 2025?
Sooner or later the Kremlin will understand that it is pointless to respond to demonization with denials.
Yes, the Russians are correct.
The accusations are groundless, and no facts or evidence is ever provided in support of the accusations.
Sooner or later the Kremlin will realize that the purpose of demonizing a country is to prepare one’s people and allies for war against it.
They have realized this. They know what will occur. They are ready and prepared.
Washington pays no attention to Maria Zakharova and Dmitry Peskov’s objections to unsubstansiated accusations.
Houston in 2025?
When “sooner or later” is, I do not know, but the Russians haven’t reached that point.The Kremlin reads the latest allegations as an excuse for more sanctions against Russian companies and individuals. This reading is mistaken.
Washington’s purpose is to demonize Russia and its leadership in order to set Russia up for regime change and, failing that, for military attack.
In the United States Russian Studies has degenerated into propaganda.
Recently, two members of the Atlantic Council think tank, Emma Ashford and Matthew Burrows, suggested that American foreign policy could benefit from a less hostile approach to Russia. Instantly, 22 members of the think tank denounced the article by Ashford and Burrows.
This response is far outside the boundaries of the 20th century Cold War.It precludes any rational or intelligent approach to American foreign policy.Sooner or later the Kremlin will comprehend that it is confronted by a gangster outfit of the criminally insane.
Then what happens?
Oh you know.
Sigh…
Pepe does get to the essential detail so clearly. Commonality verses divide all and conquer all. When he says it goes back a long way he is surely right again.
“To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”
“To keep the barbarians from coming together” This is so telling with regard to the little noticed reality that the Roman Empire never truly collapsed.
Its patriarchal method of class rule, wherein an externally imposed force imposes a unity of subjugation on all peoples (symbolized by the fasces) with its iron rings that hold all peoples within its steely grip – is still the dominant ideology of governance in the West.
Boston in 2025?
The collapse of Capitalist America is nothing less than the real and final collapse of the ideology of Roman rule. It has been so long coming that the Western mind has to stretch deeply into history to see it for what it is.
It was Peter Ustinov who said that Americans make the best movies about the Roman Empire. Because they share the same excesses along with similar bad taste. There is a reason that Washington DC has a Cato institute. Rome never had an ideology of commonality.
It had a religion of anti-commonality in governance.
Now all it has left is a very old propaganda display that cannot hide its own sunset. As the dog finally faces its death its plaintive barking becomes ever more shrill and detached from reality.
And on the home front…
The entire United States has become a free-for-all brawl.
Those that are not rioting, or trying to grab as much cash as they can, are busy planning the “new” utopia that will replace the flailing nation.
In America, many millennials are very interested in reliving the Soviet and Chinese experiments with communism. They believe the glowing positive stories that they learned in American public schools, and believe that progressive socialism could easily be implemented in America.
What they don’t realize is that what they have been taught is a lie, or at best an illusion.
All you need to do is crack open a history book and relive that time. It’s not pretty. Here we do talk about it. In fact we talk about a very simple aspect of that time; how people ate. After all, the implementation of progressive socialism under the communist banner was going to right some wrongs, feed everyone, provide safety by disarming everyone, and provide free healthcare. What happened instead should be a wake-up call to everyone.
Here we concentrate on a small area (about the size of California) and how it fared once the Communists came to power in Russia. In America we would today refer to this movement as “progressive socialists”, but aside from the name they are carbon copies of the communists of 1918.
With that being said, please kindly keep in mind that a name is just a name. Many Americans tend to equate all "democracies" at wonderful utopias, and all "communist" nations as Hell-holes. Neither is true.
Many times nations use a name as a cover to pretend and mask what they really are.
Such as the United States "democracy" when it is actually an oligarchy-ruled Military Empire, and the "communist" China with is actually a merit-led republic.
Do not be fooled by what the popular narrative is. Observe how the nation acts, and functions. That will tell you what the nations actually are and what to expect from them.
The February Revolution
The February Revolution (March 1917 in the Gregorian calendar) was a revolution focused around Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). The Russian Revolution of 1905 is considered as a major factor to explain what sparked the February Revolution. In particular, the events of Bloody Sunday triggered massive unrests. A council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created and the beginning of a communist movement began.
Meanwhile, a Provisional Government was formed by members of the Imperial parliament or Duma. The Soviets, which stand for “workers’ councils”, initially permitted the Provisional Government to rule while they kept control over various militias. It took place in the context of major military setbacks during the First World War. After the entry of the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914, Russia was deprived of a critical trade route which led to a minor economic crisis and Russia’s inability to provide munitions to their army. As a result, the army leadership considered they did not have the means to quell the revolution and Nicholas II was soon to become the last Emperor of Russia. [1]
The disruption of agriculture was also a considerable problem in Russia, but it was not caused by poor harvests, which had not been significantly altered during war-time. The indirect reason was that the government had been printing off millions of ruble notes in order to finance the war, and by 1917 inflation had made prices increase up to four times what they had been in 1914.
The peasantry made no gain in the sale of their products, since it was largely taken away by the middlemen on whom they depended. Consequently, they tended to revert to subsistence farming. Therefore, the cities were constantly in a situation of food shortage.
In the meantime, rising prices led to higher wages expectations in the factories. In January and February 1916, revolutionary propaganda partially financed by German funds resulted in widespread strikes.
The overall outcome was a growing criticism of the government. The original patriotic excitement, which had caused the name of St. Petersburg to be changed to the less German-sounding Petrograd, may have subsided a little but heavy losses during the war strengthened thoughts that Nicholas II was unfit to rule. [2]
The following is a reprint of an article titled "How to serve man" By Douglas Smith. Reprinted as found, and edited to fit this venue. All credit to the author.
How to Serve Man
In 1921, the Lenin-led Soviet Union faced one of the worst famines in history. A new book details its horrors and the American effort to combat cannibalism
By Douglas Smith
The stories began to appear in the Soviet press in the autumn of 1921, each one more gruesome than the last. There was the woman who refused to let go of her dead husband’s body. “We won’t give him up,” she screamed when the authorities came to take it away. “We’ll eat him ourselves, he’s ours!” There was the cemetery where a gang of 12 ravenous men and women dug up the corpse of a recently deceased man and devoured his cold flesh on the spot. There was the man captured by the police after murdering his friend, chopping off his head, and selling the body at a street market to a local restaurant owner to be made into meatballs, cutlets, and hash. And then there was the desperate mother of four starving children, saved only by the death of their sister, aged 13, whom the woman cut up and fed to the family.
The stories seemed too horrific to believe. Few could imagine a hunger capable of driving people to such acts. One man went in search of the truth. Henry Wolfe, a high-school history teacher from Ohio, spent several weeks in the spring of 1922 traveling throughout Samara Province, in southeastern Russia, intent on finding physical evidence of cannibalism. In the district of Melekess, officials told him about a father who had killed and eaten his two little children. He confessed that their flesh had “tasted sweeter than pork.” Wolfe kept on searching, and eventually found the proof he had been looking for.
At first glance, it appears to be an unremarkable photograph of six individuals in winter dress: two women and four men, their expressions blank, betraying no particular emotion. But then our eyes catch sight of the grisly objects laid out across a wooden plank resting unevenly atop a pair of crates. There are two female heads, part of a rib cage, a hand, and what appears to be the skull of a small child. The adult heads have been cracked open, and the skulls pulled back. Along with human flesh, cannibals had feasted upon the brains of their victims.
Wolfe stands second from the right, surrounded by Russian interpreters and Soviet officials. There’s a faint look of satisfaction on his face at having accomplished his goal. Here, at last, was the incontrovertible proof he had set out to find.
An American in Russia
Wolfe may have found the answer he had been seeking, but to us, a century later, the photograph raises a number of questions. What was Wolfe doing in Russia in the first place? What had led this young American to a remote corner of the globe, half a world away, in search of such horrors? And why would the Soviet government, the newly formed socialist state of Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party, dedicated to world revolution and the overthrow of the capitalist order, have helped Wolfe to uncover, much less document and publicize, its miserable failure at feeding its own people?
If we look closely, a clue to answering these questions is to be found in the three letters stamped on the box in the center of the frame: “ARA.” Facing one of the worst famines in history, the Soviet government invited the American Relief Administration, the brainchild of Herbert Hoover, future president of the United States, to save Russia from ruin. For two years, the A.R.A. fed over 10 million men, women, and children across a million square miles of territory in what was the largest humanitarian operation in history.
Why would the Soviet government have helped Wolfe to uncover its miserable failure at feeding its own people?
Its efforts prevented a catastrophe of incalculable proportions—the loss of millions of lives, social unrest on a massive scale, and, quite possibly, the collapse of the Soviet state. Having completed their mission by the summer of 1923, the Americans packed up and went home. Before the A.R.A. left, the leaders of the Soviet government showered the organization with expressions of undying gratitude and promises never to forget America’s help.
“An act of humanity and benevolence,” Machiavelli wrote in his Discourses on Livy, “will at all times have more influence over the minds of men than violence and ferocity.” Machiavelli was wrong. The Soviet government quickly began to erase the memory of American charity, and what it could not erase, it sought to distort into something ugly. But it wasn’t just the Russians. Back in the United States, where Americans had followed the work of the A.R.A. with great interest, knowledge of Hoover’s achievement faded. By the time Hoover was voted out of office a decade later, during the Great Depression, the story of this extraordinary humanitarian mission had been forgotten. Now, almost a hundred years later, few people in America or Russia have ever heard of the A.R.A. Here is the story of one of the most horrifying aspects of the famine, and how the Americans sought to document it.
All P.R. Is Good P.R.
During his stay in the Soviet Union, William Garner, the P.R. man for the A.R.A., pushed for information on a subject of particular interest: cannibalism. He said he was hoping to get a chance to sit down with a cannibal for an interview before heading home. This wasn’t just morbid curiosity on his part; rather, he had been directed by his bosses to find solid, incontrovertible evidence of cannibalism. The A.R.A. had received Soviet reports on the problem but wanted its own proof. “We have ’em,” William Kelly, stationed with the A.R.A. in the city of Ufa, told Garner, “but they won’t talk for publication.”
Kelly had heard plenty of stories since arriving in Russia. He was convinced there had been thousands of cases of cannibalism that winter, but it was difficult to get precise details. Few Soviet officials were willing to talk to the Americans about this most horrifying aspect of the famine, largely out of a sense of shame and embarrassment for what they felt it said about their country. Nonetheless, a few had shared with Kelly what they knew, telling him that cannibals were dealt with forcefully when caught—put on trial and punished, some of the guilty even sentenced to death for their crimes.
Once, Kelly saw the trial records of a case, complete with a photograph of the accused and a boiled human head. The official policy of the A.R.A. was to soft-pedal such “horror stuff,” in Kelly’s words, in order to avoid accusations that the Americans had been exaggerating for cheap publicity. In early February, the Moscow office wired London to say that “any implication that the American Relief Administration vouches for the existence of cannibalism should be carefully avoided.”
Garner was hoping to get a chance to sit down with a cannibal for an interview before heading home.
“There are continual rumors about cannibalism around here,” Henry Wolfe, the high-school history teacher from Ohio, wrote from Samara on February 12 to his little brother Eddie, a student at Phillips Academy back in Massachusetts. “It is said there are cases where starving people have been eating dead bodies. I have heard some weird stories, but don’t know whether they are true.” He left soon after for the village of Melekess, a journey of some 250 miles. Wolfe wrote Eddie again from there on March 5, describing his trip: “At nearly every village we visited we heard of cannibalism. The stories were told to me by reliable persons and their accounts were corroborated by everyone in the village…. There is a woman in prison here in this town who ate her child. (Keep this on the quiet.) I’m going to see her today. You can’t imagine the terrible straits the peasants in the famine zone are in.”
Wolfe had traveled to New York in August 1921 to hand in his application in person to join the A.R.A. A member of the staff told him they might be in touch later, but they’d already received 500 applications and couldn’t make any promises. He waited around for several days, hoping to hear something. “The more I think of this Russian proposition the better I like it and the more I hope they will need me,” he wrote to his mother. But nothing came through, so Wolfe headed back to Ohio to prepare for another year of teaching history to the kids in the public schools of Coshocton County.
This was a far cry from his days as a volunteer ambulance driver during the war, first with the American Field Service in France and then the Red Cross in Italy, where he crossed paths with Hemingway and Dos Passos. He sent letter after letter to the A.R.A. that autumn, but still there were no openings for him. Finally, in December, he received word that they could use him if he could be ready to sail from New York on January 7. The office made sure to instruct him to bring heavy underwear, high boots, galoshes, and his sleeping bag.
Bodies of Evidence
When he arrived in Moscow at the end of the month, he was shocked to discover that his war service had not prepared him for Russia. The stench of the railroad station was beyond description, as was the mass of ragged humanity lurking in the darkness. Two days later, on the ride from the station in Samara to the A.R.A. house, he passed two dogs fighting in the street over a partially eaten corpse. Wolfe looked at his driver in horror, but the man paid no heed. Such things had become commonplace. On a short walk after dinner, he counted 14 dead bodies lying in the streets around the personnel house.
Wolfe spent most of his time as the lone American in the town of Melekess (now Dimitrovgrad) in northern Samara Province. Touring the villages in the area, he encountered the same hardships witnessed by other A.R.A. men—the frozen corpses stacked like cordwood in locked warehouses awaiting burial in the spring; the fetid hospitals lacking beds, blankets, aspirin, and soap; the walking dead, their eyes sunken and dull, dragging one heavy foot after the other through the snowy streets before collapsing from exhaustion.
Two dogs fighting in the street over a partially eaten corpse—such things had become commonplace.
Wolfe had a particular curiosity about what he called “the infernal crimes” that hunger could drive people to. In village after village, he met peasants who admitted to eating human flesh, whether corpses they had found or victims they had killed for food. It became something of an obsession for Wolfe, and he spent several weeks “on the trail of the cannibal,” as he wrote in a letter to a fellow A.R.A. man, William Shafroth, in early March, aided by “definitive information concerning cannibals” from local officials. Just to be safe, he made sure to carry a revolver with him on his travels.
Hearing the stories of cannibals was one thing, but to be able to catch them in the act was another. “If it can be seen, perhaps it would be valuable information to the A.R.A.” Not long after this, Wolfe found what he had been looking for, and he posed alongside his Soviet helpers for the photograph with his find, a mission-accomplished look on his face. The A.R.A. had its proof. He sent the photograph on to his superiors in Moscow. Unfortunately, the details of the image—where it was taken, the names of the men and women surrounding Wolfe, and the facts behind the discovery of the body parts—have been lost.
Original Sin
According to official Soviet reports, the first instances of cannibalism appeared in late summer 1921. The government was, not surprisingly, alarmed by the reports; nonetheless, it permitted articles about them to be published in the leading newspapers—Pravda and Izvestiia. By the spring of 1922, however, some officials felt the press had gone too far. In March, People’s Commissar for Public Health Nikolai Semashko complained in the pages of Izvestiia that the press had begun to treat the matter as some sort of “boulevard sensation.” Secondhand stories were being reported as facts, and reporters were increasingly prone to unwarranted speculation and exaggeration.
The medical doctor and amateur poet Lev Vasilevsky was prompted by Semashko’s criticism to conduct his own study of cannibalism. In Vasilevsky’s opinion, the problem was too important to be swept under the rug or left to unscrupulous reporters. The truth needed to be known and the guilty punished or, if proved to be psychologically ill, institutionalized. So he set out to undertake a serious investigation, interviewing medical workers and state and local officials, and consulting the materials that had been collected by the city of Samara’s “Famine Museum,” created by two local academics both to document the horrors of the famine and to educate the public. Among the museum’s collections were a series of gruesome photographs of cannibals, typically shown alongside the body parts that had been found with them at the time of their arrest.
In 1922, Vasilevsky published a brochure based on his research, A Horrifying Chronicle of the Famine: Suicide and Anthropophagy. In sparse, unadorned prose, Vasilevsky compiled a chilling catalogue of murder, violence, insanity, and ineffable suffering. He quoted a Bashkir edition of Izvestiia: “In the cantons are very many cases of people consuming human flesh. Driven wild by hunger, they are cutting up their children and eating them. In the grip of starvation, they are eating the bodies of the dead.” Vasilevsky also quoted a provincial official from the village of Bolshaya Glushitsa, in Pugachëv County, who warned that they were being “threatened with the danger of mass cannibalism.”
According to Vasilevsky, there had been hundreds of cases of cannibalism, and he predicted that the numbers were certain to grow as the famine worsened and the taboo against eating human flesh weakened. Indeed, it was the fear of “psychological infection” that prompted Vasilevsky to publish his research with a warning on the title page stating that this work was not to be distributed within the famine zone: readers, he worried, might draw the wrong conclusions from his work.
The people’s commissar for public health complained that the press had begun to treat the matter as some sort of “boulevard sensation.”
Among the cases recounted in A Horrifying Chronicle was that of a group of three adolescents from Ufa Province. Before they were caught, they had lured little children to a remote hut, strangled them, chopped them up, then boiled and eaten their remains. The authorities never did manage to determine the exact number of their victims. The three youths were sent off to a special facility for juvenile criminal offenders, yet the overseers made certain to separate them, concerned that they might try to continue their crimes from inside the institution.
Vasilevsky spoke to the investigating medical doctor. He found the case particularly disturbing. It turned out that the three inmates had had plenty of food at home and had apparently ventured into this grisly business out of sheer curiosity. In their interrogations, they had appeared normal, quiet, and even respectful, but he had no doubt that their “derangement had reached an extreme stage from which there was no hope of recovery.”
Their case reminded Vasilevsky of something he had read in a Kursk newspaper: “People are no longer people. Human feelings have died out, the beast, devoid of all reason and pity, has awakened.” Although Vasilevsky had to agree, he insisted that this had nothing to do with the Russian character but was quite simply the logical result of years of misery and suffering. In this, Vasilevsky was correct. Acts of cannibalism have been recorded during famines throughout history in other parts of the world, such as Ireland during the Confederate Wars of the 17th century and China during the Great Leap under Mao.
Devil in the Detail
Around the time Vasilevsky’s brochure appeared, the Samara State Publishing House released The Book of the Famine, a much larger work filled with official documents—telegrams, letters, interrogation records, police reports, and photographs—describing in grisly fashion many cases of murder, suicide, and cannibalism.
One of the most complete records concerned a 56-year-old illiterate peasant from the village of Yefimovka, Buzuluk County, by the name of Pyotr Mukhin. On January 12, 1922, he testified before Balter, an investigator for the Samara Province Revolutionary Tribunal, that his family had not had any bread since Easter of the previous year. At first they lived off grass, horsemeat, and then dogs and cats. After that, they were reduced to gathering bones and grinding them into an edible paste. But then this, too, ran out, along with all the animals in the village.
“All over our region and in our own village a great number of corpses lie about in the streets and are piled up in the public warehouse. I, Mukhin, early one evening stole into the warehouse and took the corpse of a boy around the age of seven. I had heard that some people of our village were eating human flesh. I took him home on a sleigh, chopped up the corpse into small pieces, and set about to boil it that same evening. Then we woke the children—Natalya, 16 years old, Fyodor, 12, and Afanasy, 7—and we ate it. We ate the entire body in one day, all that was left were the bones.”
Soon after, a man from the village soviet came and asked Mukhin whether the rumor that they had eaten human flesh was true. Mukhin said yes, it was—many did it in the village, although they hid the fact. The man took him to the soviet for questioning. “We don’t remember what human flesh tasted like, we were in a mad frenzy when we ate it. We never killed somebody to eat them. We’ve got plenty of corpses and so it never crossed our minds to kill someone. There’s nothing more I can tell you …”
That same day, Balter questioned Mukhin’s 28-year-old son-in-law, Prokofy, a former Red Army soldier. He told Balter that, a week before he began eating human flesh, he had had to bury his grandfather, father, and mother in the course of just 10 days. All of them had starved to death. Earlier, in the spring of 1921, he had buried his only son, aged two, also dead from hunger. A week before Christmas, his pregnant wife, Stepanida, brought home some boiled human flesh from her father, Pyotr Mukhin, and they ate this together with Prokofy’s sister Yefrosinya. The three of them were arrested and taken to the village soviet, along with some human flesh found in their home.
They were held for three days with no food, and then conveyed to Buzuluk, a journey of four days. Given nothing to eat along the way, they asked one of the accompanying officials whether they might eat the pieces of flesh. He told them no: it had been entered into the police files as evidence. They ignored him and ate it anyway.
Mukhin, his daughter, and his son-in-law were all held in the Buzuluk House of Forced Labor, where they were examined by a psychiatrist from the faculty of Samara University in the middle of January. It was his judgment that none of them displayed any signs of “delirium, delusion of the emotions (hallucinations or illusions), maniacal agitation, condition of melancholy or similar signs of emotional disturbance.” They were neither mad nor insane, but in their right minds. It was hunger that had made them resort to cannibalism, and they presented no danger of committing violence against the community. “They present as typical normal subjects who have been placed in exceptional circumstances that have forced them to commit acts of an anti-human nature, at odds with the normal expression of human nature.” The subsequent fate of Mukhin, his daughter, and his son-in-law is unknown.
They were neither mad nor insane, but in their right minds. It was hunger that had made them resort to cannibalism.
The matter-of-fact tone in which these flesh-eaters described their actions was typical. According to the report of the A.R.A. inspector in Pugachëv County, a man by the name of Svorikin, once the starving had eaten human flesh, they no longer considered it a crime. The corpse, devoid of any human soul, was food, either for them or for “the worms in the ground.” He noted: “They speak of these things with a curious kind of passiveness and quietness, as if the question were not of eating a person but simply a herring.”
The practice became so common in this district that the peasants approached state officials to request the government to permit it. That this took place in Pugachëv County in Samara Province is not surprising. This part of the Volga region, which included Buzuluk, home of the Mukhins, suffered like nowhere else. By July 1922, the population had fallen from 491,000 to 179,000 in just two years: over 100,000 had perished from starvation and disease, 142,000 had been evacuated by the state and various relief agencies, and roughly 70,000 people had simply vanished without a trace. Pugachëv County was particularly remote: cut off from the rail lines, isolated from the outside world, left to survive on its own. It was precisely in such places that the most desperate victims of the famine resorted to cannibalism.
Once the starving had eaten human flesh, they no longer considered it a crime.
But not all peasants were willing to accept their fate and take to eating the dead. On the morning of December 8, 1921, in the village of Pokrov-Tananyk in Buzuluk County, a group of almost 50 angry peasants dragging the body of a brutally murdered man on a sleigh arrived at the home of Comrade Golovachëv, the county chairman. They pounded on his door until he came out, and demanded he give them food or else they would come back and eat the man instead. They threw the bloody corpse on the doorstep and departed. Golovachëv’s response is not known, nor is it known whether the mob made good on its threat. The policeman who reported this incident added, “Crimes of cannibalism are becoming more and more prevalent.”
False Alarm
Even if the A.R.A. wanted to play down cannibalism in its publicity, the subject was too explosive to keep out of the Western press, which had a tendency to treat it with the same tawdry sensationalism that had so angered Commissar Semashko. In April 1922, Reuters reported that during a riot in Samara a member of the A.R.A. staff had been killed and eaten. That same month, a story appeared in a Parisian newspaper stating that the American boss of the A.R.A. in Samara had been murdered, cooked, and eaten by the locals. A bemused Wolfe wrote to his brother in mid-May to say he was sure Eddie had read of the reports that an American had been killed and eaten in Samara, and that the likely victim had been none other than Henry himself, but there was no cause for alarm: this was an old rumor that had been going around for months, and he was safe and sound.
On May 29, The New York Times carried a story on cannibalism that made reference to an exhibition of gruesome photographs recently set up in the Kremlin, only a few doors down from Lenin’s office. The article questioned the reason for the exhibition, surmising that the terrifying images and stories were part of the government’s strategy to wring more aid out of the West. Many of the photographs had been taken by G.P.U. agents to be used as evidence in criminal cases. Although the article gave a vivid, and horrifying, description of the images, the Times refused to publish some of the details, substituting in brackets the words “Here follow details too revolting for publication.”
By the autumn of 1922, Wolfe had had enough of Russia. On November 9, he wrote a letter to Colonel William Haskell, head of the A.R.A. operation in the Soviet Union, informing him that he was beset by “a depression and nervous tension which make it impossible for me to work as I would.” Given what he had seen, no one could blame him. He had gone to Moscow on leave for a time, hoping this would help his mental state, but as soon as he returned to the famine zone, he felt stricken once again with famine shock. The only thing for him to do was resign and go home. The comfortable normality of his native Ohio had never looked so good.
Please keep in mind that as America goes though all these changes, that there will be areas of discomfort and distress. Some areas might experience broken lines of supply and transport. If that happens, the people may become hungry. And a nation where just everyone owns guns, and has a shit-fit over wearing masks, and hoards toilet tissue would go “ape shit” when hungry. Learn from history.
Do not be caught unprepared.
And do not count on your “leaders”. If anything they are puppets controlled by other interests who themselves are idiots.
America is devolving from a land of the “lone wolf” to a land of “every man for himself”. Be safe. Be frosty.
You greatest ability right now is to control your thoughts, to prepare, and establish friendships to everyone in your neighborhood. Be helpful. Obtain useful skills. Know how to be valuable. You will be fine.
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.
Well, America is in a process of change. And it is happening, though it is not being reported. Both the alt-Left and the alt-Right are silent on what is actually going on. The American people are being kept ignorant. But you can rest assured that changes are in process. Pieces are moving into place, and not a peep is being reported to anyone.
Things are occurring.
They are not being reported.
Do not be under the impression that it’s all part of [1] the COVID-19 vaccination issue, [2] the round-up of the participants in the White House Riots, or [3] the moves towards diversity, reparations, or [4] any such quasi-political posturing. Those are nice distractions that the “news” likes to take issue about.
Nothing is being reported. Secrets and orders are being carried out in isolation, by trusted operatives, and done in absolute secrecy. You can guarantee that.
Instead, other things are being “reported” in the American “news”. It’s just one distraction after the other. Hey! How’s all that 5G “brain damage” working out, or those dangerous giant zombie killer hornets (from China)? How has the “news” about this improved our life?
Watch out for the dangerous giant zombie killer hornets (from China – don’t you know!).
…
The New Chinese Year of the Bull starts this evening.
And all of China is subdued.
Part of it is because after last year (2020) most people are cautiously guarded. (Which I think is pretty much the same all over the world). But also because of the risk of war (from the United States and the Quad). The USA, even though Biden is President, is still sending military weapons, equipment and a presence to sit off the coast of China and threaten. And that is what it is. Don’t you know.
They sit there and threaten.
Not for “democracy”.
But to appease the wealthy oligarchy cluster (inside the American military Empire) that Biden will not stop the anti-China narrative. You know, a target; a scapegoat, a “evil” must be identified so that the military war machine can gear into action!
Whoosh!
But really the silence is deafening. Why? Well, for the first time in all of Chinese history, fireworks have been banned. Which makes a very quiet holiday, I’ll tell you what.
We put up our yearly door decorations, and bought some food for the holiday. We’ve got a lot of booze, fine delicious food, and plenty of snacks. But, unlike other years, this year we won’t be off going to a ton load of parties.
Unfortunately.
MM’s yearly door decorations are up for the new year.
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There’s a heightened sense of awareness regarding biological weapons (after what happened last year) has got the inspectors running overtime. They are on a ruthless search and destroy mission to catch the (still officially unnamed) COVID-20 and COVID-21 bio-weapons. The ones released in the fall of last year by a very vindictive President Trump. And the Chinese government has taken action in Beijing and Hong Kong regarding the strange appearances of these bio-weapons.
The virus kit now has throat testing for COVID-19 and anal swabs for COVID-20 and COVID-21. Which is making it rather uncomfortable and unpleasant. But (after all) no one really wants to die by vomiting or diarrhea. So you take the exam lying down. Well, actually, on your side. And you allow the masked and garbed medical professional to shove a long cotton swab in your anus and swirl it around about ten times. They do this twice, you know.
Any ways, it’s really making this CNY feel awfully strange and odd.
Just a reminder.COVID-20 Unusually huge sized virus. Swine-based. Human-transmission. Lethal. Causes death by vomiting. Discovered in a Beijing "wet market" within weeks of the Huge Trump-led US Navy Armada sailing home without a military confrontation. When the PLA discovered the virus, President Trump went into a three day "retreat" causing the USA military to go DEFCON ONE. The cover story was that he had the Coronavirus.
COVID-21 Unusually huge sized virus. Tick-based. Human-transmission. Lethal. Causes death by diarrhea. Discovered in Beijing in October right before the US Presidential Election.
The military are out.
Not as a show of force or intimidation. Not for “riots” or any such nonsense, but because China is back at DEFCON ONE. And you can see the military manning their stations. Here’s a picture at the local mall about a fifteen minute walk from my house.
Nothing of concern, mind you. They are just manning their stations.
The Chinese military are all at DEFCON ONE. To translate to the Alt-Right in the audience; “The ChiCom PLA is in full force oppressing the people again.”
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Usually, it’s a time of “the great migration”, or when everyone goes back home for a month long orgy of eating, drinking, and drinking, and drinking and more eating.
Not this year though.
Everyone is asked to stay home. The local villages have gone door to door asking everyone to tell their relatives to stay put. And bigger cities, like mine, is giving people money to spend at the stores and restaurants to help with the unexpected deviance from tradition.
Now, people ARE having parties, dinners and going out. Just not in their home-towns, and in much smaller and subdued groups.
Chinese New Year is when you go out and drink, and drink, and socialize and eat and eat and eat.
What is all this delicious "democracy" that I keep hearing about? It must be something wonderful and great. It has to be, don't you know, for America to spend trillions of dollars destroying a third of the world for it's survival.
I guess that none of you all realized that this was going on, eh?
Meanwhile, most “normal” and regular folk are having meals with their families. They are all happy affairs, and look sort of like this…
Typical CNY meal in China.
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Not what you would see in an American “Chinese Restaurant” eh?… That’s because what most food in an American-Chinese restaurant are Americanized versions of Chinese food. And it’s sort of the “fast food” version of actual Chinese food.
It’s equivalent to thinking that a McDonald’s “hamburger” is “authentic” American dinner food.
Thinking that a “Chinese Restaurant” in America serves “real and authentic” Chinese food is to think that a McDonald’s hamburger is what a “real” American dinner looks like. While I am sure that (judging from photos of Walt-mart shoppers) that this might be the case, you and I sure as heck knows that it’s not a “real” hamburger.
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But back to my rant…
Oh, yeah.
Sorry about the food digression. I’m talking about the digression of CNY, and how it is muted because of the Coronavirus, the vomiting-to-death virus, and the Beijing tick virus.
BTW... Did you know that there were ticks in Beijing? I didn't. It's too cold and dry, and dusty for them to live. So the ticks must be a hardy species indeed. Wouldn't you think. That is why they have to use remote-controlled drones to spray human-transmissible tick viruses over the populated Northern cities of China.
(Forehead slap!)
I wonder how America would do if some nation decides to conduct this exact same activity on New York, Chicago or Houston? At the rate America is playing with "fire", it might be a good idea to maintain strong bio-weapon discipline and preventative measures as a matter of habit.
Have you ever watched a magician perform a magic trick? One hand is doing the secret activity, while the other hand is involved in the big deception.
All by the American “news”. Hey! What’s in the “news” today, eh?
You all shouldn’t get too riled up about all this. The big build-up is gearing towards Russia. After all, America needs China to keep supplying the parts, materials and electronics for it’s fighter planes and expensive weapons systems.
The hate-narrative is building up against Russia…
What else is new? Eh?
Just like Ancient Rome that HAD to continually right on the outskirts of the empire and "defeat the barbarians at the gates", America must constantly fight against, terror, hunger, obesity, poverty, communism, and everything else it can find...
...for "democracy!"
…now those dirty commies are putting bounties on killing Americans. How dare they! Stinkin’ dirty commies!
But it’s a new year; the year of the Bull, and it’s gonna be real exciting.
Hunan style fish.
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But it’s the world we live in.
Right now. Anyways.
The people running the levels of control of America (and Britain) are a tad crazy. And I need to remind everyone of this, because you aren’t watching how the rest of the world are reacting to the craziness that America is today.
I have to show it to you all in a very elementary form.
You know. Something like this…
Yep. Read and learn.
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Now, if I were in the USA I would lie low and make sure that I knew my neighbors really, really well. You all need a true and real sense of unity during times of high stress and upheaval.
I am not advocating armed rebellion.
But rather a way of connecting with friends and family, and a serious decline in the social networks and communication screed that passes for modern American communication these days. Get back to your roots and help each other. If you try to be the “lone wolf” you will end up…
…being alone.
Work together with friends and family.
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And while President Biden is trying to put a “adult in the room ” aura don’t let that fool you. There are elements in government that are working hand-in-hand, and behind the curtain, to force some changes that many people will be very uncomfortable with.
Only this time…
…well…
…those in government are smarter and better prepared to implement the changes that they desire.
Whether you are a drug dealer, a sexual deviant, a LGBT hater, a member of a “hate” group, a tax cheat, or any other of the millions of titles that they use to justify… they can seize everything you own, destroy your life, and send you to the lowest social classes from whence you will die.
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You know, as someone who actually lives inside a communist country, I can tell you first hand that the rap it gets has little in common with the actual reality. Don’t fear what you do not understand, and please be more understanding of those who hold different views from you.
Now…
That being said, do not turn a blind eye to history. There are some very evil people out there. many of whom prefer to dwell around large urban areas. You know the places, like Washington DC, New York City and Chicago. And they are capable of really taking a wrecking ball to your life. So you need to be alert.
And speaking about changes…
…maybe a review of some history might be in order.
The following is an article titled “46 things I learned from being gulaged Varlam Shalamov spent much of the period from 1937 to 1951 gulaged in the arctic cold of Kolyma. These are the 46 things he learned from the experience”. It was written on January 15, 2020, and described the life inside a Gulag camp in the former Soviet Union. Reprinted as found with notations as shown. All credit to the source and the author.
46 things I learned from being gulaged – Varlam Shalamov
Varlam Shalamov after his first arrest, 1929.
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Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov (June 18, 1907 – January 17, 1982) was a Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor. He spent 15 years enslaved in Soviet gulags — six of them in the gold mines in the bitter arctic cold of Kolyma — due in part to having supported Leon Trotsky and praised the anti-Soviet writer Ivan Bunin.
One of Shalamov’s surviving writings is a 1961 list of 46 things he learned from his gulag experience.
You will benefit the most from it by already knowing the basics about these slave camps which worked many inmates to death (and in some cases even forced the slaves to eat each other).
The essay was translated by Dmitry Subbotin and Robert Denis, and editorial additions are marked in bracketed italics.
What I Saw and Learned in the Kolyma Camps
1. The extraordinary fragility of human nature, of civilization. A human being would turn into a beast after three weeks of hard work, cold, starvation and beatings. [People can easily turn feral. Do not be under the illusion that we (as humans) are beyond our base natures.]
2. The cold was the principal means of corrupting the soul; in the Central Asian camps people must have held out longer — it was warmer there. [Humans can survive in warmer weather, but colder weather will absolutely kill you.]
3. Friendship and solidarity never arise in difficult, truly severe conditions — when life is at stake. Friendship arises in difficult but bearable conditions (in the hospital, but not in the mine).
[ed: u/LevantineJR had an interesting comment on this: “That this is less than a universal, profound truth, has been demonstrated in the labour camps of Imperial Japan during WW2, as recorded by company commander Ernest Gordon in “Miracle on the River Kwai” a.k.a. “In the Valley of the Kwai” (1963). It’d be very interesting and important to understand why widespread solidarity appeared in the WW2 labour camps in Indochina after a period of ~10 months, while in the GULAG it failed to appear for years, or even decades. Harshness of conditions? The death rates in the Japanese war labour camps were several times higher than in the GULAG. So, the general harshness of conditions is ruled out. Nor could it be simply culture or genes, because those very same inhabitants of Kolyma created resistant collectives of solidarity in the Moscow prisons. Now, what of a particular factor: cold? Plausible, I think. Shalamov may be right that cold was an exceptionally strong, and a sort of a key factor.”]
4. Spite is the last human emotion to survive. A starving man has only enough flesh to feel spite — he is indifferent to everything else.
5. The difference between prison and work camps. Prison strengthens character, and work camps, corrupt the human soul.
In America you can see the difference.
In Pennsylvania, the purpose of prison is to rehabilitate. So Prisons are designed to help people correct their behaviors.
In Arkansas, the purpose of prison is to punish. So all prisons are hard-labor work-camps. It is to make people fear the government and incarceration.
6. Organization is important in survival against an oppressive government. I learned that Stalin’s «triumphs» were possible because he slew innocent people: had there been an organized movement, even one-tenth in number, but organized, it would have swept Stalin away in two days.
7. Humans are resilient. I learned that humans became human because they are physically stronger, tougher than any animal — no horse endures work in the Far North.
8. You need faith, and belief in a higher purpose. I saw that the only group that retained a bit of their humanity, despite the starvation and abuse, were the religious, the sectarians, almost all of them — and the majority of the priests.
9. The easiest to corrupt are those in government. The first ones to be corrupted, the most susceptible, are the party members and military men.
10. People who have never been exposed to raw force, and who expected to debate were often surprised how serious, and how quickly events can go from “neutral” to “hot”. I saw what a forcible argument a simple slap could be for an intellectual.
11. You start to rate people by their ability to be brutal. That people distinguish between camp chiefs according to the power of their punches, to their enthusiasm for beatings.
12. A beating is almost irresistible as an argument («Method number three»).
13. Show Trials was how everything was actually run in the DOJ. I learned the truth about the preparations for the cryptic trials [ed: the show trials of the Great Terror of 1937] from masters of the craft.
14. The “grapevine” is real. I learned why in prison you get political news (arrests, etc.) sooner than on the outside.
15. Rumors always had a basis on reality. That prison (and camp) rumours [ed: known in Russian prison slang as parasha — “the slop bucket”] always turn out to be anything but slop.
16. I learned that one can live on spite alone.
17. I learned that one can live on indifference.
18. Hope is bleached from your life. I learned why a man lives neither on hope — there are no hopes at all, nor on will — what will?, but only on the instinct of self-preservation, the same as a tree, a rock, an animal.
19. Don’t stick out. You become a target. I’m proud that at the very beginning, back in 1937, I decided to never become a foreman if my decision could lead to another man’s death, if my will would be forced to serve the authorities oppressing other people, prisoners like myself.
20. My body and spirit proved to be stronger in this great trial than I thought, and I am proud to have betrayed no one, to have sent no one to death nor to the camp, to have denounced no one.
21. It’s easy to give in and sign “the papers” showing your guilt. I’m proud to have made no requests until 1955.
[ed: In 1955 Shalamov made a request for rehabilitation].
22. Bad people are terrible and awesome in their evil. I saw the so called «Beria amnesty» there and then — it was something to see.
[ed: Lavrentiy Beria was one of Stalin’s henchmenHe was a serial rapist and mass murderer who was responsible for, among other things, coming up with the idea for and then carrying out the execution of all of the Soviet Union’s 22,000 Polish prisoners (the Katyn massacre). Shalamov’s “Beria amnesty” is a reference to when Beria released a large number of criminal class gulag prisoners as a political play that backfired on him.]
23. I saw that women are more honest and selfless than men — there was not a single husband at Kolyma who came after his wife. But wives did come; many did (Faina Rabinovitch, Krivoshey’s wife) [ed: See Shalamov’s Green attorney].
24. People still held on to their roles within families. I saw the amazing northerner families (civilians, former prisoners) with their letters to their «lawful husbands and wives» etc.
25. The Wealthy did terrible things to become rich. I saw «the first Soviet Rockefellers», underground millionaires, and heard their confessions.
26. Political prisoners suffered the harshest punishments. If your ideology did not match that of the people running the government, then run for your lives. I saw the hard laborers, and also the large E and B contingents, the Berlag camp.
[ed: Berlag, or Beregovoy Camp Directorate, Special Camp No. 5, was an MVD special camp. These were camps established exclusively for political prisoners convicted according to the more severe sub-articles of Article 58 (enemies of the people). Wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago: “There is no step, thought, action, or lack of action under the heavens which could not be punished by the heavy hand of Article 58.”]
27. There are tradeoffs to everything you do. I learned that one can achieve a lot (a hospital, a work transfer), but at the risk of life — at the cost of a beating and the isolation cell cold.
28. Cells some in different shapes and sizes. All are unpleasant. I saw an isolation cell carved out in rock, and spent one night in it myself.
29. Power is seductive, and entraps everyone. The lust for power, for unpunished murder is great — from big shots down to regular police operatives with rifles (Seroshapka [ed: See Shalamov’s Berries] and his ilk).
30. To protect yourself, you learn to rat-out others, anyone else, just to survive. I learned the unrestrained Russian lust to denounce, to complain.
31. There are no “good” and “bad” people. I learned that world should be divided not into good and bad people but into cowards and non-cowards. 95% of cowards are capable of any meanness, lethal meanness, after light threatening.
32. Prison and work camps do not improve anyone. It’s all a corrupt system of suppression. I am convinced: the camp is a negative experience — entirely. If one spent but an hour there — it would be an hour of moral corruption. The camp has never given anything to anyone — and never could. Everyone, both prisoners and civilians, are corrupted by the camp.
33. Work and “rehabilitation” camps were everywhere, just not advertised to the public. In every region there was a work camp, there was one at every major construction site. Millions, tens of millions of prisoners.
[ed: Estimations of gulag slaves between 1928/9 and 1953 (earlier gulag stats much harder to analyze) range from 14 to 25 million. This number excludes the millions who were “internally exiled” to the wilds or just outright murdered.]
34. A corrupt government leadership corrupts everything. Repressions touched not only the ruling elite but all levels of society — in every village, at every plant, in every family either relatives or friends were repressed.
35. Being helpful to others provides inner peace. I consider the best time of my life to be the months spent in the cell of Butyrki prison, where I managed to strengthen the spirit of those who were weak and where everyone spoke freely.
36. Live day to day, in the “now”. I learned to «plan» one day ahead, no further.
37. Bosses become a different kind of animal. I learned that kingpins are not human.
38. Everyone becomes equal in a work camp. That there are no criminals at the camp, there are your present (and future) neighbors caught behind the line of the law and not those who crossed it.
39. Being a thief is a survival skill. I learned how terrible the ego of a boy, of a youth is: better steal than ask. This and their boasting throws youth to the bottom.
40. When you are isolated away from women, you don’t enjoy their pleasures. Women didn’t play a big role in my life — camp is the reason.
41. Character discernment is useless. The discernment of character is a useless ability — I am unable to change my ways for any scum that comes along.
42. Avoid being the last. The last in the row, which are hated by everyone — by guards and inmates alike — are those dropping behind, the sick, the weak, those incapable of running in the cold.
43. Power comes from a gun. I learned what power is and what a man with a gun means.
44. The balance of justice shifts in a work camp. That the scale is shifted, and this is what is most typical in a work camp.
45. Returning to civilian life is difficult. That passing from a prisoner condition to civilian is very hard, and nearly impossible without a long adaptation period. [It took me about three weeks to get used to soft chairs, commodes with seats, electrical wall outlets, and being able to go outside at will. Not to mention being able to taste salt and sugar, and seasonings. Cheese, butter, and fruit are all glorious.]
Conclusions
Yeah. It’s an interesting piece of history. I think that it gives us an insight into our human nature. Now, let’s all pray that the conditions for mass enslavement of citizens is never replicated ever again. But, let’s be real. OK?
It can.
All it takes is a national leadership that wants to do this (for their own purposes) and an ineffectual department of Justice, and a complete lack (or omission) of leadership policing organizations.
Meanwhile…
Here in China it’s a new year. It’s 2021 and it’s the year of the Bull. Most people are optimistic, even though they are cautiously guarded.
For a while I used to get a new coffee mug at every New Year. It was my little pleasure; to have a new coffee mug to drink out of each year. Unfortunately I feel out of the habit. But that is neither good nor bad. It’s just a sign of change… and a sign of change tends to indicate growth.
Here’s some pictures from my friends. Taken as a whole it might give you all a “flavor” as to what this very strange and odd year of the Bull is starting out as…
Typical. Wine to drink. The Chinese do not daintily sip wine slowly. They drink entire glasses in one singular gulp. Like this gal is doing. She announces “Geng Bei” and empties the entire glass. This picture is a sign of respect to the new in-coming year. It means “I salute your arrival”.
.
Seems strange? Yeah. But it’s a different culture. They aren’t afraid of losing their jobs for drinking wine on their holidays (like I was threatened at General Motors, Delco Electronic, and Poulan Weed-Eater.) And so, living without fear of “consequences” enables people to live life freely.
It’s called “freedom”. You all should try it some time.
Red envelopes. In the Chinese New Year, everyone gives each other “Red Envelopes” full of money. This is instead of presents. There are all sorts of rules regarding it. And they differ from region to region. In general, families pass money back and forth easily, and the kids make out like bandits. Young boys buy toy guns, and games. Young girls buy dolls, APPs and some trinkets.
.
This shows what it is like to get a “red envelope” from a brother or sister. Or perhaps a friend, or an uncle. It’s all very typical.
While I have discussed the enormous red envelopes that companies would give to their employees (in prior articles), this article is on a more personal basis. It’s about celebrating holidays with friends and family.
Red envelopes can come with notes and messages, or just be a thank you for business or friendship. We used to give out red envelopes to our mail mean (actually the UPS equivalent), the local BaoAn(s) which are the security guards to the complex, the management, and the janitorial staff.
.
Again. All this is very typical, and very normal. And isn’t at all being reported by the “informed news” out of America. Have you ever heard of FOX “news” reporting on the red envelopes in China? Have you ever heard Rush Limbaugh discuss it? What about Ellen DeGeneres?
Silence.
Crickets.
And yet some people have the nerve to think that they are well “informed” on the Geo-political issues of the day by listening to “American news”. Give me a break.
Chinese companies process wads of cash to give out to their employees during CNY. All untaxed. All in hard cold cash. How about American and British companies? What do your end-of-year bonuses look like? Tell me about it.
.
yes.
Anyways, money is great, and we could all use more of it, don’t you know. But What I really like about the Chinese new year is all the eating and drinking. I just love food. Yes. It is true, I am a “foodie”, and who can blame me?
Shots of BaiJiu are the norm.
.
And here’s some more pictures of what is going on in China right now, today. Tell me about how CNN is reporting on it. Tell me about what Twitter, and Facebook has to say about it. Please give me insight in how you all can understand China by listening to MSNBC. I’d like to know.
A typical family gathering.
.
Almost like what you would see in the United States. Almost. Only here in China, the adults drink alcohol alongside with the children who drink whatever they want. Since there are no prohibitions (read LAWS) banning things, most children have the opportunity to drink with their parents, and can get exposed to alcohol very early age.
But…
They don’t drink because it is meaningless to them. it is something that ‘adults do”, and you all know that adults are ‘square” and not “hip” and “groovy”. So they tend not to become addicts.
Another typical meal.
.
All this is what is happening right now. People are celebrating the end of 2020, the year of the rat, and welcoming in 2021, the year of the Bull. I pretty much assume that this is what was going on in America as well, though to different extent. And in a different manner.
As well as on a different date.
Typical CNY and CNY eve meals.
.
It’s different and even shocking for most Americans. I think that this is because they don’t know what “freedom” is. They have been repeating the mantras for decades with no understanding, and when they see how other nations live, they become horrified.
“This can’t possibly be true!” They retort.
Everyone knows that….
Yeah.
“Everyone knows…”
Who told them?
Guess which nation this photograph was taken? American LGBT advertising for a “roommate” in Wal-Mart.
.
Sometimes the strange image out of America are just the “tip of the iceberg”, and are but distractions from the master hand-movements of the master deceptions made by the oligarchy? And if so…
…then…
Maybe Americans are already living in a nice Gulag already, but they don’t yet realize it.
That maybe it’s all just a matter of degree. Why construct work camps here and there? Why not turn the entire nation into one gigantic labor camp? Why not? When you can print unlimited money? Control the media, and have a forever-lock on the government, and can make rules and laws with no opposition,and not even follow “guidelines” let alone the “guaranteed” Rights…
…what’s stopping you?
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It’s difficult to measure the damage that an ideology can do on a society. Often you don’t realize what a mess things are until long after the great looting, and destruction. But you can notice events. Often singular events, and often whispered about quietly. And one such event is the purging of art in favor of the formless and meaningless.
Look at the painting above. It is titled “Consulting the Oracle” and was painted by John William Waterhouse. It’s great right? It’s large. It would occupy the wall in a nice sized living room. It’s 77 inches long and 46 inches high. And it’s beautiful. Right?
This painting was very quietly sold by the museum that held it for £5 ($7.50) to a private individual.
I’ve seen cups of coffee that cost more.
The excuse is that the museum needed the money. Bills needed to be paid, and new works of art needed to be purchased to “keep the museum alive and vibrant”. Of course that old “song and dance”. The excuse, a progressive excuse, that you must destroy the old to make room for the new.
Ok.
I’ll bite.
What “new” art was worthy of purchase. How about millions of dollars for this magnificent piece…
Willem de Kooning’s Woman III
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This undeniably strange-looking painting of a woman made Willem de Kooning and his estate a few millions richer. The painting recently changed hands to the tune of $137.5 million. This abstract painting was finished by Kooning in 1953. The painting became rather controversial in the 1970s, because it was refused for exhibit at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. This painting is currently privately owned. It spans 68 inches in height and 48.5 inches in width.
Yes. I cannot believe it. Can you?
And we are not alone either…
This painting is awful.
I get that it’s an abstract expressionist painting, but it is so hideous to look at. You honestly couldn’t convince me to take it if I was walking down the street and saw that laying on the grass. Clearly that means I have no taste because it sold for a ridiculous $137.5 million in 2006. This made it the 4th most expensive painting ever sold.
It was created by painter Williem de Kooning in 1953.
The buyer, David Geffen, is worth $6.5 billion, so nobody is going to step in and tell him how to spend his money… but are you kidding me?
-10 Ugly Pieces Of Art You Won't Believe Sold For Millions
Who in their right mind made this decision?
The Art Renewal Center chimes in…
From the Art Renewal Center…
Works of art worth tens of millions of pounds today have been sold off quietly by museums over the past 50 years for a few pounds. British art institutions such as the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the Exeter City Museum have disposed of pictures by masters such as Van Dyck and Henri Fantin Latour . They were sold without public notice, dismissed as too unimportant to keep. Among the most serious cases is a painting by the 19th-century master, John William Waterhouse . In 1965, the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro sold it for £200 ($300) to a private collector; today it is worth more than £5 million ($7.5 million).
"Most of the works were sold off as they were deemed to be artistically worthless", Christopher Wright, a leading Old Masters scholar, said. He discovered evidence of the sales while preparing a nationwide study of British art for Yale University Press. "They have been sold off without public notice," he said. "Many of the museums didn't dare make it public. They've all been proved wrong."
Mr Wright expressed disbelief at the decision of the Exeter museum to "rape" its collection of 160 works - "there is no other word to describe the destruction of an entire museum collection". The auctions, which involved selling works for as little as £5 ($7.50), included Waterhouse's Consulting the Oracle, four paintings by Fantin-Latour and one by Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema . Caroline Worthington, fine art curator at Exeter, said that the sale took place at Christie's in 1954, "when High Victorian art was deeply unfashionable ... We would like them back, most definitely." "We're talking household names", Mr Wright said, adding that many were bought by the heavyweight dealers Agnews and Colnaghi, who clearly appreciated the importance of the artists, even if the museums did not.
Tamsin Daniel, Truro's curator of art and exhibitions, said that the museum had needed money for storage and a lift. She conceded that the loss was painful. The Waterhouse went to a private collector bidding at Christie's. The £200 ($300) it cost him, she said, was "a bit different to what Andrew Lloyd Webber paid recently for a Waterhouse": £6.6 million ($9.9 million).
Leeds City Art Gallery and Museum, Mr Wright was told by an insider, actually disguised the provenance of works when selling them through an auction house. "They were described as property of Madame X," he said. "The sales were clandestine. They didn't say Leeds was de-accessioning. They were all Victorian pictures purchased from the Royal Academy. They got rid of dozens." Nigel Walsh, curator of exhibitions, expressed surprise at the news, denying that the gallery had sold anything. Nor did Evelyn Silber, its director, know anything about it until contacted by The Times. She later discovered that 37 paintings (nearly all Victorian) had been sold in 1939 under the then director, Philip Hendey, who went on to head the National Gallery in London. The Fitzwilliam in Cambridge sold more than 200 works in the 1950s. Although they were marked "property of the Fitzwilliam" in the catalogs, they were mixed up with hundreds of other lots, Mr Wright said. "They put them through the salerooms in dribs and drabs."
Mr Wright said that the Fortune-teller with Soldiers "was sold off as a copy, but it has since been published as the real thing worth millions".
Craig Hartley, a Fitzwilliam curator, said: "In retrospect, this seems a horrific thing to have done." Among other institutions to have sold off paintings, Mr Wright said, were the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich; the Cooper Art Gallery in Barnsley; the Holbourne Museum of Art in Bath; and the Birmingham City Art Gallery.
-Art Renewal Center article by Dalya Alberge
I am horrified.
Just beyond my self.
So who ended up getting these magnificent works of art?
"They were described as property of Madame X," he said. "The sales were clandestine. They didn't say Leeds was de-accessioning. They were all Victorian pictures purchased from the Royal Academy. They got rid of dozens."
Well, you must understand that a museum collects works of art for pubic display and enjoyment. If they no longer wants to display that art to the public, they take if off display and put it in storage. Apparently these works took up too much space, so they sold them to “Art Dealers”. And these art dealers held auctions and auctioned them off to wealthy attendees.
Yes.
That’s right. The art was taken away from public display and sold off to the oligarchy for their own personal use.
Ladies and Gentlemen ... Artists,
The art of painting, one of the greatest traditions in all of human history has been under a merciless and relentless assault for the last one hundred years. I'm referring to the accumulated knowledge of over 2500 hundred years, spanning from Ancient Greece to the early Renaissance and through to the extraordinary pinnacles of artistic achievement seen in the High Renaissance, 17th century Dutch, and the great 19th century Academies of Europe and America. These traditions, just when they were at their absolute zenith, at a peak of achievement, seemingly unbeatable and unstoppable, hit the twentieth century at full stride, and then ... fell off a cliff, and smashed to pieces on the rocks below. Since World War I the contemporary visual arts as represented in Museum exhibitions, University Art Departments, and journalistic art criticism became little more than juvenile, repetitive exercises at proving to the former adult world that they could do whatever they damn well wanted ... sadly devolving ever downwards into a distorted, contrived and contorted notion of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression? Ironically, this so-called "freedom" as embodied in Modernism, rather than a form of "expression" in truth became a form of "suppression" and "oppression." Modernism as we know it, ultimately became the most oppressive and restrictive system of thought in all of art history.
Every reasonable shred of order and any standards with which it was possible to identify, understand and to create great paintings and sculpture, was degraded ... detested ... desecrated and eviscerated. The backbone of the painters' craft, namely drawing, was thrown into the trash along with modeling, perspective, illusion, recognizable objects or elements from the real world, and with it the ability to capture, exhibit, and poetically express subjects and themes about mankind and the human condition and about man's trials on this speck of stardust called Earth ... Earth, hurtling through infinity with all of us along on board, along with everything we know and everything we hold dear.
Reason ... philosophy ... religion ... literature ... fantasy ... dreams, and all of the feelings, emotions and pathos of our every day lives ... all of it was no longer worthy of the painter's craft. Any hint by the artist at trying to portray such things was branded as banal, maudlin, photographic, illustration, or petty sentimentality.
Our children, going supposedly to the finest universities in the world, being taught by professors with Bachelors or Arts, Masters of Arts, Masters of Fine Arts, Masters of Art Education ... even Doctoral degrees, our children instead have been subjected to methodical brain-washing and taught to deny the evidence of their own senses. Taught that Mattisse, Cézanne, and Picasso, along with their followers, were the most brilliant artists in all of history. Why? Because they weren't telling us lies like the traditional painters, of course. They weren't trying to make us believe that we were looking at scenes in reality, or at scenes from the imagination, from fantasy or from dreams. They were telling us the truth. They were telling it like it is. They spent their lives and careers on something that was not banal, and not silly, insipid or inane. They in fact provided the world with the most ingenious of all breakthroughs in the history of artistic thought. Even the great scientific achievements of the industrial revolution paled before their brilliant discovery. And what was that discovery for which they have been raised above Bouguereau , exalted over Gérôme , and celebrated beyond Ingres , David , Constable , Fragonard , Van Dyck , and Gainsborough or Poussin ? Why in fact were they heralded to the absolute zenith ... the tiptop of human achievement ... being worthy even of placement shoulder to shoulder on pedestals right beside Rembrandt , Michelangelo , Leonardo , Caravaggio , Vermeer and Raphael ? What did they do? Why were they glorified practically above all others that ever went before them? Ladies and gentleman, they proved ... amazing, incredible, and fantastic as it may seem, they proved that the canvas was flat ... flat and very thin ... skinny ... indeed, not even shallow, lacking any depth or meaning whatsoever.
And the flatter that they proved it to be the greater they were exalted. Cézanne collapsed the landscape, Matisse flattened our homes and our families, and Pollock, Rothko and de Kooning placed it all in a blender and splattered it against the wall. They made even pancakes look fat and chunky by comparison. But this was only part of the breathtaking breakthroughs of modernism ... and their offshoots flourished. Abstract expressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, minimalism, ColorField, Conceptual, op-art, pop-art and post modernism ... and to understand it all ... to understand, took very special people indeed, since the mass of humanity was too ignorant and stupid to understand. Like that famous advertisement in the NY Times said so many years ago ... Bad art ... or Good art? You be the judge, indeed.
Of course, to justify this whole theoretical paradigm, all the artists that painted recognizable scenes with depth and illusion had to be discredited ... and discredited they were, with a virulence and vituperation so scathing and merciless that one would think they must have been messengers of the devil himself to deserve such abuse. And to put the final nail in their coffins, all of their art was banished and their names and accomplishments written right out of history. I graduated with a Master's in art education from Columbia University, and I'd never heard of Bouguereau , much less that he was President of the Academy and head of the Salon ... the most celebrated artist of his time who single handedly, using all of his influence as the most respected leader of art world, opened up L'Ecole Des Beaux Arts and the Salons to women artists for the first time in history.
During most of the 20th century, the type of propaganda that has been hurled at academic artists is so insidious that people have been literally trained to discredit, out-of-hand, any work containing well-crafted figures or elements, or any other evidence of technical mastery. All the beauty and subtlety of emotions, — interplay of composition, design and theme, — the interlacing of color, tone and mood, — are never seen. The viewer has been taught that academic painting on a prima facie basis is bad by definition — bad by virtue of its resorting to the use of human figures, themes or stories and objects from the real world.
Prestige suggestion causes them to automatically assume that a work must be great if it's by any of the "big names" of modern art, so they at once start looking for reasons why it must be proclaimed great. Any failing to find greatness is not considered a failing in the art but in the intelligence and sensibilities of the viewer. Students operating under that kind of intimidating pressure, you can be sure, will find greatness - no matter what they are looking at.
The reverse of this has been trained into them when they view academic paintings. They have been taught that works exhibiting realistic rendering are "bad art" and therefore any good that is seen is not due to qualities inherent in their artistic accomplishments, but are rather due to a lack of intelligence and taste in the viewer. The same intimidating pressure works in reverse to ensure that a work by Bouguereau , Lord Leighton , Burne-Jones , Gérôme , Frederick Hart , or any of the rest of you here, will not be seen as anything other than bad by definition.
No student in a school with this kind of dictatorial brain-washing will ever risk exploring or even listening to opposing views, for fear of being stigmatized from that point on, with some undesirable label and being universally despised ... sadly, a very effective deterrent to independent thought. Thus the visual experience of well-drawn representational elements is perceived as a negative, ad hominem, that proves with knee-jerk automaticity the presumed "badness" of the art and its creator.
It is especially ironic that these are the same people who trumpet the virtues and inalienable right to freedom of speech, while they surreptitiously and steadfastly conspire to remove that freedom from those with whom they disagree.
Equally ironic is the charge that academic painting is "uninspired," a proclamation issued by critics who are unable to see beyond the technical virtuosity for which they condemn it, to see what is being said. This rich visual language is wasted on eyes that will not see. It would be no different than dismissing out-of-hand a piece of music as soon as it was determined that notes, chords and keys were used, or dismissing any work of literature upon noticing words arranged in grammatically correct sentences.
That is not to say that all academic art is great, or above criticism - certainly, it is not. It would be no less fallacious to issue blanket praise to an entire category than to condemn it. Academic painting ranges from brilliantly conceived and deeply inspired, to trite and silly, depending on the subject and the artist.
That being said, I find even the worst of it more meaningful than art based on the ridiculous notion that it is somehow important to prove the canvas is flat, and/or that one needs no skill or technique to be an artist - views generally embraced by those who condemn the entire category of academic art. Their point seems to be to elevate to legitimacy that which has removed all standards and prior defining characteristics of art. In other words, by defining non-art as art, the logical conclusion is that art is non-art.
Modern artists are told that they must create something totally original. Nothing about what they do can ever have been done before in any way shape or form, otherwise they risk being called "derivative". How utterly absurd.
These critics like to say Bouguereau's work is really only derivative, harking back to earlier artists. Only in the 20th century has such a thing ever been scorned. To this I have one thing to say:
What, dear friends, is wrong with being derivative?
That's one of the core beliefs of modernism that must be soundly vanquished by common sense and logical analysis. Nobody can accomplish anything of merit if they are in fact not derivative. Only by mastering the accomplishments of the past and then adding to it can we go still further. Every other field of endeavor recognizes this truth. Without the knowledge of the past we are doomed to everlasting primitivism.
And, as far as holding our works up to the old masters, that's what we want to have happen. If we are to accomplish things of true merit and excellence, we must germinate and nurture great masters in the next millennium, too. Bouguereau was quite aware that his work would be compared on the altar of past accomplishments, as did his contemporaries. It was precisely because they mastered the techniques of the past, built upon them and then opened them up to an avalanche of new subject matter and Enlightenment ideals, that they accomplished the greatest half-century of painting in art history.
And when we talk about the basic criteria and parameters of the academic tradition that built from the 14th through 19th centuries, Bouguereau , Lord Leighton and Alma-Tadema were second to none.
Could Bach and Beethoven and Mozart have achieved their masterpieces if someone before had not discovered scales and the circle of fifths? Does that mean these musical giants were nothing but derivative too? In fact all great literature exists due to the existence of advanced language. This upside down thought process would make Dosteovsky, Balzac, Chekhov, Shakespeare and the Brontë sisters derivative as well. If you think about it a bit you will see that these are exact analogies. There is nothing any more derivative about these 19th century Traditional-Humanist-Academic masters.
Being derivative is entirely different from copying. Copying itself can have value, but only for the purposes of instruction. Obviously, a copied work is not original art. But modernist ideologues have disingenuously dismissed all realist art as "derivative" as if that were the same as copying.
Additionally, students today are taught that every parameter upon which any standard for quality and excellence can be deduced is improper, because it's "limiting to freedom of expression."
There can be no story, for then you have to stay within the "tight boundaries" of the tale.
There can be no illusion, for then you are "chained" by the need to recreate a sense of three dimensions.
There can be no drawing, as that can be "limiting" to objects or people or things taken from the real world.
They want to remove the "shackles" of modeling, perspective, or subject matter of any sort.
There certainly can be no attempt at harmonizing of the above parameters with composition, color and tonality, for that would "restrict" one to making everything work together.
On the contrary, they have been propagandized by modernism into believing that only those works that break boundaries, ignore standards, and show no interest in skill or technique can be truly "original" or "inspired." In fact originality of methods take precedence over all else. If something has been done before, or is derivative in any way of anything that was done before, it thereby loses value proportionate to those similarities. In such a "Through the looking glass" world, every would-be "artist" is placed in the untenable position of trying to create an entirely new art form in order to be considered relevant. The sheer glaring reality is that nothing could be more imprisoning, binding, restricting, chaining and shackling than the impossible limitations of modernism and post-modernism, that remove from the would-be artist every tool (including training) that could give him or her the ability to create great works of art. The simple truth is that each and every one of us (and I mean nearly every human being), is capable of thinking of something that has never been done before. Does that make it worth doing and the work of genius?
For example:
(1) I could carefully (with enough money) dig up an old bombed out tenement building in the Bronx, and have it transported to a special slab built for it in Central Park. Rope off the structure and aim lights at it at night and give it a title, and with enough pomp and circumstance think of twenty reasons why this is sheer brilliance and genius.
(2) I could boil the entrails of several different animals and then preserve them by imbedding them in clear plastic. I could then hang them from a mobile with similarly preserved body parts of cadavers, and have critics claim that this is the greatest artistic statement about the horrors of war since Guernica
(3) I could imbed into the walls, ceiling and floors of a small room, pieces of neon lights, parts from broken machines and engines, and broken pieces of structural building materials like bricks, beams and cinder blocks. Then I could glue between everything millions of nails, nuts and bolts, and have clever writers and critics point out how this room (which could be installed at MOMA or the Guggenheim) is the quintessential statement of the effects of the industrial age on human psychology.
Well, those three ideas took all of 3 minutes to think of. MY GOD! This must mean I'm three geniuses rolled into one. Why, at this rate I could come up with more brilliant ideas for Modernism than all of the modernist geniuses put together, if I just would put aside a week or two.
The thing here that really is interesting is not their art at all, but the statement it makes about the nature of our species — that so many seemingly intelligent people have been so easily snookered by the tongue-twisting, convoluted illogic of modernist rhetoric. Clearly for many people it is more important to feel that they are some part of an elitist in-group that is endowed with the special ability to see brilliance where the bulk of humanity sees nothing and is afraid to say so.
Since most people aren't devoted to or educated in fine art, they have successfully intimidated the bulk of humanity into cowering away in silence, feeling foolish for their inability to understand. The average person shrinks away from believing the reality of his or her own senses in the face of seemingly overwhelming numbers of people in this 20th century "establishment" who authoritatively dictate what is great art and what everyone should be seeing.
Modern and Post-modern Art is nihilistic and anti-human. It denigrates humanity along with our hopes, dreams, desires and the real world in which we live. All reference to any of these things is forbidden in the canonistic halls of modernist ideology. We can see that their hallowed halls are a hollow shell, a vacuous, vacant vault that locks their devotees away from life and humanity. It ultimately bores the overwhelming bulk of its would-be audience, who can find nothing with which to relate.
It has been called exciting and cutting-edge, but the sad truth is that it is incredibly humdrum and monotonous. Whether you glue together pieces of plastic or shards of glass, assemble metal scraps or piles of feathers. Whether you dribble little dollops of colors or drag fat uneven slashes of black. Whether you compile a mountain of paper or wrap the Statue of Liberty. The effect is always the same. MEANINGLESS PRIMITIVISM.
Modernism is art about art. It endlessly asks the question, ad nauseam: What is art? What is art? Only those things that expand the boundaries of art are good; all else is bad. It is art about art. Whereas all the great art in history, my friends, is ART ABOUT LIFE.
Of course, this isn't exactly the first time in history that ideas which were complete shams managed to engulf the belief systems of entire cultures and civilizations. In many of those in the past, the lunacy was enforced by the severest of punishments for anyone who would dare to speak out.
At least we live in a time and place where it's possible to speak against this consummate con that has been perpetrated against the greatest period of artistic development and achievement in the history of Western Civilization and culture over the last 500 years.
Three-quarters of the 20th century will go down in art history as a great wasteland of insanity — a nightmarish blip in the long road of the development of human logic and reason and art, from which we are only just starting to awake.
The artists of the 19th century exhibited a deep, abiding respect for humanity and human feelings. A respect for our minds, our spirits and our reason, and a love of beauty, grace and true excellence and accomplishment. Bouguereau , Lord Leighton , Waterhouse , Burne-Jones and the other giants of the 19th C. tried to capture those things that are good and decent in our species. Their accomplishments are the quintessential high point of hundreds of years of human study and development in the art of painting. They are arguably the greatest painters that history has ever produced. Bouguereau especially fits this description. How fitting and sadly obvious that he should be characterized as the chief villain by those who would destroy rather than build — who celebrate chaos rather than order and beauty.
He continues…
Recently, a contributor to an on-line art forum I subscribe to made the following comments about Picasso,
I love the way Picasso did that woman all shards and angles. I don't recall the name of the work. But, he painted the woman in her turmoil how she tore herself apart within, and how he saw what her turmoil did to her. He painted the way he saw her, as fragmented as he saw her. She was a beauty on the outside. Yet, he painted the ugly face of her turmoil, and in so doing painted his turmoil as well.
Picasso worked in a turbulent time. I think it's why some of his works appeared to be reflections in a broken mirror. Shards, impressions all cut up and each with a voice about his subjects and of Spain. His work shows a deeply sensitive artist and was a pivotal point for the Russian avant garde school that said it was okay to feel in paint, to get all the chaos out in paint ... I didn't love him until I studied him ...
- Laurie
And he continues…
I thought it fitting to read here my response to her.
Laurie and Goodart subscribers,
I really need to address these ebullient expressions of praise for Picasso a bit more precisely.
Laurie, this is not to fault you at all, but to analyze the description you have made which reflects the gospel that is taught about him in most art history courses. His name and "achievements" have become so "untouchable" within the sacrosanct walls of modernist cathedrals, that to do any other than you have stated here would be like criticizing the cross or the bible in the College of Cardinals.
Let's look at this one idea at a time.
You said that, "He painted the woman in her turmoil how she tore herself apart within, and how he saw what her turmoil did to her".
I
n fact, all that he painted was a messy characterization of a woman in which the forms and shapes don't align or create any cohesive form. The drawing is virtually non-existent, and the disintegration of all artistic elements are self-consciously laid out for the express purpose of rejecting prior artistic standards.
There is no beauty in her face, or for that matter, ugliness. There isn't even a face ... but elements thrown together with just enough evidence to let the viewer know that it was meant to suggest a face.
Everything about the finished product is utterly awful and would be beneath the capabilities of a talented 12 year old.
Now, what if you are a theorist who needs to justify this hodge-podge of sloppy color and form? What can you creatively think of to place value and meaning, where none exists ... especially, if you are being paid to do just that?
It's simple: you need but approach the work as you would a Rorschach inkblot test, where anyone can use creative ability to make up a story, suggested by little, if any, information. If you want this man's work to be valued highly, you must create a tale of great importance, with meaning, which, when discussed or analyzed in intellectual circles, will be considered profound and meaningful.
The idea of a lady being ugly on the inside is a concept from literature, psychology, and in fact all of human history. Ugliness, mean-spiritedness, and turmoil are major concepts that tint all of human experience. So you simply say that the messiness represents that, and look how brilliant he is to have captured it.
But in truth he has done nothing of the kind. The writers who said that was what it means were the one who did it, and not the artist. Inner turmoil and ugliness on the inside is far more difficult to capture, and takes intense, subtle handling of story telling, composition, drawing, and realistic rendering to successfully convey so that it can be recognized without any words. Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott and Bouguereau's Divideuse both capture beautiful women loaded with inner turmoil, and Cabanel's Cleopatra testing poisons on slaves portrays intense inner ugliness within a beautiful face and figure infinitely better than these broken blotchy messes on canvas by Picasso.
But when the modernist professors say that's what it means, then implicit in their words is that if you don't see it too you're stupid and tasteless. Also to not see it becomes associated with not seeing how wonderful that subject matter would be. And it is after all truly wonderful subject matter. Only one problem; Picasso didn't paint it.
You say, "his work shows a deeply sensitive artist," but I don't conclude any sensitivity whatsoever. What is there is the sensitivity of a bull in a china shop, who stomps around breaking all the beautiful porcelain, and then with an army of critics lined up with their nostrils flaring dares anyone to criticize the dump he just left in the your living room.
"Either you love my turds or you are against freedom of expression."
If you don't want it in your museum, you're the enemy of freedom of speech. Faced with such intimidation surely many would rather line up in support. But there is truly nothing there. It's a trick of words and intimidation. An Illusion of social pressure and fearful conformity.
His school, "... said it was okay to feel in paint, to get all the chaos out in paint ... I didn't love him until I studied him."
Of course you didn't love him until you studied him. What you learned to love was all the explanations about worthwhile concepts and subjects. And with a training right out of Pavlov, you were taught to salivate when you were shown things that caused associations to those worthwhile ideas.
But Laurie, WHERE'S the BEEF? You're salivating at a symbol much the way people react to their country's flag. The flag comes to be seen as beautiful because it represents family, home and hearth, friends, loyalty, and the things we love. You've been taught to react to symbols instead of responding with the freedom of independent thought to works of art that are not supposed to be flag-like-symbols of great artistic ideas, but the great works of art themselves, which communicate, through a readily discernable visual language, some aspect of the human condition.
You had to be taught to love Picasso, because nobody would love him otherwise. But people don't need to be taught to love Rembrandt , Michelangelo , Bouguereau , or for that matter Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, or Tom Sawyer, The Grapes of Wrath, Alice in Wonderland, or The Christmas Carol.
Teaching and information can add to the depth of understanding of great works of art, but they are great initially by their ability to capture the soul and imagination of the viewer, without thousands of words to instruct us on how to deny the evidence of our own senses and to deny our innate sense of truth and reason.
Of course, what tends to happen to people who have allowed themselves to be convinced that the emperor is wearing beautiful clothes, is that they have become "ego invested" due to years of having parroted the same falsehoods ... and the associated humiliation that goes with acknowledging that one has been had. The more years, and the more said in support of Modernism, the greater the difficulty in breaking through the gestalts, and taking off the iconic blinders, shedding all the preconceptions and looking again with "innocent eyes" and describing what is really there (at least to yourself), and then comparing it to the maligned academics like Waterhouse , Bouguereau , Lord Leighton , Burne-Jones , Gérôme , and Alma-Tadema , and deciding with freedom of thought and an honest wish to find the truth, which of them indeed are works of art, and which are snake oil salesmen."
He continues…
And so I ended that letter.
The change in people's perceptions about this is happening now very quickly. Even this austere institution, probably the greatest museum in the Western Hemisphere, just a couple of summers ago had a major retrospective of one of these maligned 19th century masters, Edward Coley Burne-Jones.
And in their literature on the show declared him one of the three greatest English artists of the last century, along with Constable and Turner. In fact, the Metropolitan Museum deserves great credit for being one of the first great institutions to once again hang their Bouguereaus and Gérômes, Meissonnier and Burne-Jones, on permanent exhibit in the face of scathing criticism from the press back in 1980.
Soon after, Laurie followed this with a good-natured post saying that although she felt that I may have insulted her intelligence, she loved me all the same. To which I responded:
And …
Laurie,
It was not my wish to insult your intelligence. The very brightest of people are just as vulnerable. It is in human nature to go along to get along. I certainly did it too when I was in college and grad school in fine art. Even when I was finally willing to speak my mind about Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko and Warhol .... Picasso was somehow sacrosanct, and I would pay lip service to his brilliance while the works of the other modernists I allowed myself to see as they were.
It wasn't until I hit about 40 years old that I started to more fully recognize the power of prestige suggestion and social intimidation in forming opinions.
To truly judge your own feelings and opinion about a work of art, you need to look at it as if it were painted by a complete unknown, perhaps some student in another town, and then ask yourself what your opinion of that work would be then. Would you think it was one of the greatest works in the history of civilization, would it even be great ... or good ... or mediocre .... or just plain bad?
So true.
He continues further…
I know now absolutely that nearly all the works by most of the famous Modernists are truly awful on all fronts.
I also know that the best works by Bouguereau and Waterhouse would thrill me to my bones even if they had been painted by complete unknowns. When I saw a Bouguereau for the first time, I had never heard of him, but my response was immediate unambiguous and self-validating. I needed no books or texts or convoluted explanations. The strength of the work was powerful, unique, immediate and overwhelming.
It was exactly as I had felt in the presence of Michelangelo's David. Ah, but when I saw the David I was already predisposed to see what history considered one of humanity's greatest masterpieces. However, it was that seminal experience at 18 that excited my interest in art. The Bouguereau that I saw, Nymphs and Satyr, was when I was 32 years old, and it's effect was equally profound, changing the course of my life, ultimately leading me to this podium here today.
Don't let pride get involved here. Don't even answer me. Just ask yourselves and answer honestly.
One common claim that you hear repeatedly is that the proof that some abstract expressionists were great artists, can be found in their high quality academic student drawings. My answer to this is that it's really irrelevant whether or not they could do a decent student drawing. If anything it only makes it sadder that promising young talent was wasted. The quality and value of their "mature" work is not helped a bit by showing that they could draw decently when young.
The best way to prove that is to consider the inverse.
Would Raphael or Bouguereau's mature work be somehow made the worse if their student drawings from decades earlier had been of poor quality? Their great paintings would still be just as great, and de Kooning's hideous smears for which he is so famous are still just as awful.
I am quite certain that every artist in this audience paints better than all of the famous modernists and post modernists, and is more deserving of societal attention and praise. Yet still, so-called "major works" of theirs can sell for between 2 and 25,000,000 dollars at auction. The dirty little secret, however, that the modernist establishment and the press has been hiding, is that those same works sold for two to three times those prices back in 1988 and 1989. While the prices of all the icons of modernism peaked at that time, and any money invested then has declined a whopping 50 to 80%, the market for Gérôme , Waterhouse , Bouguereau , Alma-Tadema , Burne-Jones , Rossetti , Millais and Lord Leighton , has increased between 2000 and 10,000 percent since 1975.
Every year, records are being broken again and again.
In 1977, the world record price for a Bouguereau was $17,000. Now, in the past 3 years, the world records for his work first topped a million dollars in 1997, then a million and a half in 1998, two and a half million in 1999, and last May, Charity sold for over $3,500,000. Additionally, last June the world record for any Victorian painting was completely trampled when Saint Cecilia, by John William Waterhouse, sold for just over $10,000,000 in London to Andrew Lloyd Weber.
There are only 826 Bouguereaus and about 465 Tademas in the world. Do you know how many Picassos there are? Can anybody here guess? There are 80,000 of them, and the balance between supply and demand has faltered, and like the dot com stocks of last year they will soon come crashing down along with hundreds of billions of paper profits lost in the dust of history. Like the tulip bulbs in the 17th century, or Tokyo Real estate in the 1980's, investors will be decimated. If I owned a work by any of those "Abstract artists" I would be racing to cash it in before the fall, and that has been my recommendation to dozens who have asked me.
Many of my friends in and out of ARC have told me that I shouldn't talk so much about the modernists. One of them recently wrote to me saying, "I really don't think we help our cause by helping talentless modernists get press coverage." Another fearfully said, "Don't criticize the modernists, just focus on what's good."
I replied as follows:
His reply…
When have the modernists ever held back from criticizing traditional and academic art? The problem with this attitude, while I also find it very appealing, is that our not talking about the modernists doesn't really mean much.
The fact is that they are being talked about with high praise, in nearly every university art department and art history course in the western world ... parroting the same things that they were taught. They are also being constantly celebrated and exhibited by the biggest and most prestigious museums and getting rave reviews in the newspapers as often as not.
If somebody doesn't explain to everybody why they're not really any good, and why they're not really even artists, and how the whole thing is a hoax, then they will continue their propaganda and continue brainwashing our children and intimidating them into feeling stupid if they don't go along to get along ... and they'll do it unopposed.
If we don't speak up and tell the world that the Emperor's naked, nobody else will. We may not want to talk about them, but we have to if we are going to have any chance of turning things around. We have to provide a theoretical and philosophical context for the feelings of the tens of millions of people out there who are disgusted and feel an aversion for Modernism ... but feel afraid to say so. They need to know that they are not alone and they need to have their feelings validated. And at the same time, we need to provide alternatives ... rich alternatives with great traditional art and with countless images of the greatest paintings in history.
So well put…
And now ladies and gentlemen ... artists ... portrait artists ... I come at this point ... to you. Who are you? Who do you think yourselves to be? Well let me tell you how I see you. You are beyond doubt, the true artistic heroes and heroines of the 20th century.
Many of you know that I am the chairman of the Art Renewal Center, which you can find at http://www.artrenewal.org. The Art Renewal Center is building the largest on-line museum on the internet, and is completely devoted to the return of standards, training and human themes and subjects in the visual arts. Modern Art is about expanding the definition of art.
They believe that "everything is art", or, "Whatever the artist says is art, is art."
Well, if everything is art, then nothing is art.
Any definition that includes everything is not a definition at all. As I said, Modern art is "art about art", while all the great art and literature and theatre throughout history is "Art about life."
I wrote about all of you, and your teachers, in the published Philosophy of the Art Renewal Center. Here's what I said:
Against all odds, and in the face of the worst kind of ridicule and personal and editorial assault, only a small handful of well-trained artists managed to stay true to their beliefs. Then, like the heroes and heroines who protected a few rare manuscripts during inquisitional book-burnings of the past, these 20th Century art world heroes managed to protect and preserve the core technical knowledge of western art. Somehow, they succeeded in training a few dozen determined disciples. Today, many of those former students, have established their own schools or ateliers, and are currently training many hundreds more. This movement is now expanding exponentially. They are regaining the traditions of the past, so that art may once again move forward on a solid footing. We are committed in every way possible to record, preserve and perpetuate this priceless knowledge.
That's who you are. So if some of you are having trouble selling your work, or haven't been able to command the prices you deserve ... if you feel infuriated at piles of bricks and elephant dung filling museum galleries, while you can only pay to have space allotted to you for an evening in a great museum like this ... don't despair.
Your time is coming. You have done humanity a service of such magnitude, that sadly you will never be properly repaid. Keep painting your great portraits, and when you can find the time, paint what your heart tells you to paint, too.
The modern world is a boiling cauldron of all sorts of great and absurd ideas, feelings, pathos, pathologies, psycho pathologies, humiliation, and dehumanizing ideas ... and yet ... yet even beauty, too, is still here amongst us, here in this hall and throughout the world, and her manifestations in modern times have been insufficiently expressed. So, find her in your homes, find her in the streets, find her in your communities and in nature, and especially, find her in each other ... and save her ... save her ... protect and cherish her ... and exalt her back to her rightful place ... a place of supreme prominence, and bring her back into these our greatest institutions and our highest citadels of society and culture.
Thank you.
So inspiring.
Here’s one of my lost paintings. Destroyed by the “new” America that exists for the few; the oligarchy that controls all.
I am not a master, but I like to believe that I could have been one. The idea that the oligarchy controlled government can destroy your life’s work, your purposes, and everything that you have created so that they can implement some kind of selfish utopia is distrubing. It show that they are, and the systems that they have created, are pure psychopaths and psychopathic in nature.
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Psychopathic systems do not lend longevity to society. Instead they offer a means of destruction.
I aruge that the oligarchy can only continue upon this path that they tred upon by converting everyone to adopt their methodology, or to convert everyone into mindless, emotionless followers.
How about other examples…
"In retrospect, this seems a horrific thing to have done."
Ya. Think?
There are so many examples of great works of art that used to be owned by museums for public enjoyment, but that have been sold off to private collectors. And while some have been repurchased by other museums and are now available for viewing, the battle to obtain these “lost works” was contentious in many cases. We are , and should consider ourselves, to be lucky. Lucky that the oligarchy has allowed us to be able to view these works on the internet. Lucky to be able to recognize that they existed and still exist, and lucky that they were not burned in bonfires of progressive revisionism and fashion.
Examples of artworks that have been sold off…
Let’s look at just some of the art; the paintings that the museums around the world has sold off for the price of a cup of coffee…
Constant Afternoon Langour by Jean-Joseph Constant (Benjamin-Constant) (1845-1902, France)
And…
Bramley Frank – A Hopeless Dawn
And…
Herbert Draper – Lament for Icarus
Draper's vision of Icarus, crashed and dead on the rocks, stays true to the myth and yet has a drama to it that is definitely the making of a more contemporary mind. Nearly 50% of the canvas is covered by the image of Icarus' gigantic, broken, dark wings. The wings are so huge they are cut off at the top left of the canvas and at the middle right.
This makes the image seem even larger than life. It is as if we look through a window that is not large enough to hold the view. It is possible that the advent of the camera influenced the artist's eye in choosing this unusual perspective.
But the impact is successful, dramatic and highly emotional because of the skill in which the wings are painted.
They are so huge, in fact, that they make shadows on much of what remains of the canvas. They are so immense and yet they have failed poor Icarus so completely.
Icarus lies dead; a darkening figure still strapped to the useless wings, as a sorrowful and sensual nymph pulls his upper torso gentle towards her. Two other nymphs look on woefully. The canvas creates a heart breaking darkness with small splashes of gold light falling on the nymphs and the far rock wall. The golden light is reminiscent of the hope for freedom that Dadelus had once had for his son Icarus.
All life, beautiful or not, comes to an end, and all our grand strivings lead us to the same end. The power in this work of art is the sense of loss it projects. If you read the text in the catalogue, it mentions other layers of possible meaning. Simon Toll makes note that Draper's father died shortly before this painting was executed and he suggests that this painting "may also be a private statement of loss." The text also suggests that the painting may be a tribute to the artist Leighton, who died two years earlier.
-ARC
And…
Lady Godiva by Lefevbre Claude Gheerbrant – Musée de Picardie
Examples of “art” that have been purchased by museums afterwards…
Let’s have a look at the kinds of art that the museums (all over the world) purchased once they discarded the “old” and “outmoded” art…
White Fire I by Barnett Newman
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Would you believe that this ridiculous-looking canvas was sold for $3.8 million? This abstract painting, which is comprised of two straight lines, was created in 1954. Barnett is an American artist who is a strong follower of abstract expressionism.
Abstract Expressionism, broad movement in American painting that became a dominant trend in Western painting during the 1950s. The movement comprised many styles varying in both technique and quality of expression. Artists include Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler.
-Abstract Expressionism | Definition
This painting, which follows the color field painting style, is one of the few pieces that he has created during his lifetime. Barnett is considered the greatest color field painters of his time. That is the reason why this expensive painting is very popular now.
Or how about a museum considering this to be a worthwhile addition…
Royal Red and Blue
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This is one of the most basic paintings to date but don’t let its simplicity fool you. It was sold for a whopping $75.1 million during a Sotheby’s auction in November of 2012.
The painter, Mark Rothko, is a known abstract expressionist.
This painting date back 1954 and basically has three blocks of color – and that’s it. Rothko is an American painter with Russian and Jewish Roots. He is known for the color field method style of painting which was popular in New York during the 50’s.
Summary of Color Field Painting
Color Field Painting is a tendency within Abstract Expressionism, distinct from gestural abstraction, or Action Painting. It was pioneered in the late 1940s by Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still, who were all independently searching for a style of abstraction that might provide a modern, mythic art and express a yearning for transcendence and the infinite.
To achieve this they abandoned all suggestions of figuration and instead exploited the expressive power of color by deploying it in large fields that might envelope the viewer when seen at close quarters. Their work inspired much Post-painterly abstraction, particularly that of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski, though for later color field painters, matters of form tended to be more important than mythic content.
-The Art Story
The idea is to paint the canvas with large blocks of solid colors giving off an impression of an uneven surface and a flat plane. This painting pretty much depicts that, although very simplistic that you can imagine a toddler painting this art piece, it has a surprisingly outrageous value.
Interchange
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To a lot of people, this can be viewed as a real abstract painting with a lot of character in it. There is no doubt about it- but to be valued at $300 million sparks a different kind of conversation.
As with all abstract art, most people can claim they can paint something similar, but in fact, there is more to this painting that meets the eye.
William de Kooning is a New York painter, but is originally from Netherlands. This artwork is an example of ‘action painting’ which is a technique where the artist spontaneously splash paint on canvas versus the traditional painting style that is meticulous and takes time to complete.
Action painting, direct, instinctual, and highly dynamic kind of art that involves the spontaneous application of vigorous, sweeping brushstrokes and the chance effects of dripping and spilling paint onto the canvas. The term was coined by the American art critic Harold Rosenberg to characterize the work of a group of American Abstract Expressionists who utilized the method from about 1950.
-Action painting | art | Britannica
It is somehow a form of physical art.
This technique is made popular during the 40’s to 60’s and has coined the concept of abstract expressionism. This painting was made in 1955 and is now housed in the private collection of Kenneth C. Griffin.
Onement VI
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This is one of the most boring paintings that you will ever see but you will be surprised to know that this blue colored canvas sold for over $43 million in 2013. It is one of the works of Barnett Newman, a known abstract expressionist. He has done a number of similar paintings such as this and has an entire “Onement” collection, which is basically composed of one dominant color and a division (what he calls a ‘zip’) right smacked in the middle. The zip is used to define the space of his paintings. This New York artist was born in 1905 and has made a following because of his color field art.
Birthday by Paul Klee
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If you don’t know better, you might mistake this for a preschooler’s art project. This is actually a painting from the famed painter Paul Klee. It starts off with an odd old maroon color with asymmetrical and disorganized images of triangles and squares, and oh yes, an odd orange circle in off center. One can maybe make this out as a series of houses or even a castle- but, hey, what do we know. Paul Klee is a Swiss-German painter born in 1879. Most of his works are now housed in varied museums all over the globe.
Blue Rectangle Over The Red Beam
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If you hear the word ‘painting’ you might be imagining something with a lot of imagination, color gradients and creative imagery. This painting from Kazimir Malevich is far from being complicated or deep but it is one of the most significant work of art to date.
Malevich is actually the pioneer of geometric abstraction- that is pretty obvious with his love of squares and rectangles.
Geometric abstraction, through the Cubist process of purifying art of the vestiges of visual reality, focused on the inherent two-dimensional features of painting. This process of evolving a purely pictorial reality built of elemental geometric forms assumed different stylistic expressions in various European countries and in Russia.
-Geometric Abstraction | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of ...
This artwork was sold in Sotheby’s auction for a staggering $60 million and is the most expensive piece of Russian artwork of all time.
No. 5, 1948
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To the naked eye, this painting may simply look like a piece of stringy lines splashed around using a yarn, just like those kindergarten art projects kids use to make. This is an artwork done by Jackson Pollock in the year 1948. It is quite a large piece of artwork measuring 8 ft by 4 ft. He is a known abstract expressionist.
This painting in fibreboard uses brown, yellow, white and grey paint. It is often tagged as a dense bird’s nest because of the way the strips of paint overlap each other. This artwork was reported to be sold for over $140 million to a private collector.
Black Square
This oil painting was done in oil on linen and is now housed at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. As you would have realized by now, the painting is a mere black square. But there is a lot of philosophy and history behind this seemingly plain and dull painting. This piece is dubbed as the ‘zero point of painting’ and a combination of various art methods including futurism and constructivism. This is one of the prime works of Kazimir Malevich, who is the leader in Russian avant-garde art and has several pieces of similar works under this collection. He described this artwork as ‘liberated nothing’.
Conclusion(s)
One afternoon I toured an art museum while waiting for my husband to finish a business meeting.I was looking forward to a quiet view of the art works.
A young couple viewing the paintings ahead of me chatted nonstop between themselves.I watched them a moment and decided the wife was doing all the talk.I admired the husband's patience for putting up with her continuous talk.Distracted by their noise,I moved on.
I met with them several times as I moved through the different rooms of art.Each time I heard her constant burst of words,I moved away quickly.
I was standing at the counter of the museum gift shop making a purchase when the couple came near to the exit.Before they left,the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a white object.He extended it into a long stick and then tapped his way into the coatroom to get his wife's jacket.
"He's a brave man."The clerk at the counter said,"Most of us would give up if wewere blinded at such a young age.During his recovery he made a promise that his life wouldn't change.So ,as before,he and his wife come in whenever there's a new art show."
"But what dose he get out of the art?"I asked,"He can't see."
"Can't see?You're wrong.He sees a lot.More than you or I do."The clerk said,"His wife describes each painting so he can see it in his head."
I learned something about patience,courage and love that day.I saw the patience of a young wife describing paintings to a person without sight and the courage of a husband who would not allow blindness to change his life.And I saw the love shared by two people as I watched this couple walk away hand in hand.
-MoFanGe
If you were in the role of the wife (as described above – explaining each painting to her husband), how would you go about describing the more traditional artworks that the museums have sold off? How long would each painting take to describe?
Likewise, how would you describe the new progressive artworks? How long do you think it would take to describe them?
Perhaps this simple measurement, this idea in how to describe the impressions of art that is presented to you, is an element of it’s value and worth. Not that of the amount of currency that is used to purchase it, but rather the emotions and feelings that are generated upon viewing it.
I have argued HERE that the oligarchy is populated with psychopathic individuals that not only are unable to emote, but are unable to feel or express real emotions. Instead they only mimic actions and facial expressions to manipulat others to follow and believe them. As such, these psychopathic individuals see no value in art. Their only value is how they can be used as an element in financial exchange and commerce.
And thus, the study of art, is the study of the oligarchy that rules us.
The oligarchy that rules 99.9% of humans have evolved into a new KIND of human.
They are in possession of a service-for-self sentience, and are extremely good at manipulation, creation and generation of money and currency, as well as the accusition of power as well as the control over others. They are weak in the ability to express emotions and cannot emote. Medically they are known as psychopathic personalities and a healthy society cannot afford to have individuals of this disposition near any positions of power.
As they see no value in the art like “normal” people, they have subverted the institutions that they control; the libraries, the museums, and the art world into something that they understand. They understand money and using objects as trade mediums. They do not conderstand or emote the value of art.
And finally…
This movement towards progressive revisionism can only originate from those that are unable to understand art. They have no idea or concept of evoked emotion via visual stimulation. It is alien to them. They couldn’t understand it in any of it’s myrid forms. Thus…
Indeed, thus…
The entire progressive revisionism movement from art, to culture to society is driven from the oligarchy downward. It is their efforts to redraw the world into a “utopia” that they can understand and embrace.
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After 75 years of non-stop narrative that “fighting is the last resort of fools”, and that a “kinder and gentler nation” is at hand, what has America turned into? Instead of being a male-driven patriarchal society, what has the feminization movement brought America to? Is it actually a well-behaved, respectful and fair place?
No.
No it isn’t.
It’s a non-stop sequences of cat-fights, and verbal assaults with regulations on just about every action that you could think of.
It’s true. Have you ever wondered about Social Media? Doesn’t it more resemble two teenage girls fighting in eighth grade than two grown adults having a conversation?
Well. Guess what? It’s a Western phenomenon. It is something that has occurred in nations that have adopted a progressive social structure, the r/K society has developed and all discourse has degenerated to that level. While other nations, more traditional in nature, really doesn’t have this problem.
Guess what else this “improvement” on society has created?
The Karen.
My mom is a Karen whose name is actually Karen. Simply put, I haven’t seen her in over a year because I couldn’t take it anymore. Living with her was just an exhausting nightmare.
Karen’s world revolves around Karen. Nobody else’s issues matter. If you tell her that you had a bad day, she’ll give you 20 reasons why her day was worse. You worked 60 hours this week? Well, when she was your age, she would work 80. You’re in the hospital after having major surgery? She has a pinched nerve in her arm, which is somehow worse. Your boyfriend cheated on you? She couldn’t even begin to tell you about all the heartbreak she’s experienced in her life.
She complains left and right about anything and everything. If you’re taking a week break after just getting back from college, she’ll ask why you haven’t gotten a job yet and claim you’re lazy. If you’re out to eat at a restaurant the food is always too cold or too burnt or too salty. You can only ever go to the places SHE wants to go to, because everything else is crap. My entire graduation dinner she complained about how cold the food was.
She THRIVES in getting attention and constantly seeks it, but she has very few ACTUAL friends. Facebook is her lifeblood and she’s always looking to start something on there. She’s the queen of sharing uninformed, misguided, conservative propaganda, which always starts fights in her comments. Also, if a tragedy happens in the family (like the passing of my teenage cousin), she’ll make a big scene on Facebook and expect condolences from anyone and everyone, and makes note of the people who don’t give her what she wants.
Don’t even get me started on the blatant racism. I’ve heard everything from, “watch out for black people on the subway. They’ll try to take your purse” to “It should be illegal for those Muslims to cover their faces. You should be able to see someone’s face.” One of my best friends is black and she once told me, “He’s one of the good ones. They should all be like him.”
-12 People Reveal What’s It Like To Be Related To A ‘Karen’
So, in nations that have not adopted the progressive societal structure, they are able to have more or less pretty inoffensive comment sections on social media. The people tend to be more respectful and much more polite.
Like…
Poland.
Brazil.
Russia.
China.
Japan.
Ah. America. Home of the pussy-ants pansies beta clucks.
I argue that traditional management of society from the personal level through to the government level is a very important element of the success of that nation. When you try to “improve” it by implementing change, you need to set forth a sequence of trials, and monitor their results carefully. You just don’t set up some kind of movement and force the rest of the world to conform to your madness.
America changed.
And today everything that you see around you is a consequence of that change.
And I, for one, do not like it.
I like family units where everyone has a role. I like polite discussion and discourse. I like to be able to buy something and not pay hidden fees, taxes, or read down a long list of warnings and advisement. I like a world where I can shake someones hand, look him in the eye, and make a lasting contract. I like a world where mothers are respected, and grandparents live in your house with you. I like a world where you are respected as a person.
Sigh.
Ah. There is nothing wrong with human nature, and if you all want to be passive, beta clucks. Fine. But you all will be eaten alive by very vicious, hungry wolves.
This is a great article worth a read. It’s about one of the aspects of what a man is. He’s a person who is not afraid to kick up a little bit of dust from time to time.
Just some guys talking. Right? But you know, don’t you, you know not to cross them or mess with them. Why? Is is because they are going to say things that will hurt your feelings? Is that why you don’t want to mess with them.
Everybody knows the benefits of lifting weights but it isn’t the only game in town that can build your body and mind. Learning how to fight also has a place as one of the key things all men (and wo
men) should do to get the most out of their life experience. Sound like an exaggeration? It’s really not, especially when you consider learning how to fight has been a rite of passage since the beginning of time in many dominant cultures. It is only in recent times that the practice of channeled aggression has been given a bad rap.
The practice of fighting, or learning a martial art, is especially valuable for men, for whom the acting out of aggression, the desire to dominate, the ability to look after ones’ family or tribe, as well as having the camaraderie of like-minded males, is a huge factor in wellbeing and something that modern society constantly deprives them of.
The ability to challenge others, to endure pain, and the knowledge that you can look after yourself physically, are very underrated factors that contribute to high levels of functioning in other areas of life. Learning how to fight doesn’t mean you have to go around bashing heads in but, knowing you could if you had to, can make all the difference between a timid boy and a dominant man.
If you are still not sure how learning how to fight can benefit you, the 12 reasons below should clear up any confusion.
1) Learning how to fight builds unbreakable confidence
Have you ever seen a fighter who looks timid and scared of the world?
Didn’t think so.
The knowledge of knowing you can take anyone on and, in all probability, defeat them in a physical contest can do wonders for self-confidence. You may think this is crude or uncivilized. Nevertheless, we are fighting animals that have survived because of our ability to think and defeat enemies.
Most of the giant ancient civilizations that we know were masters of violence and war, and this is still true today.
Being able to fight gives us the assurance we can take care of ourselves and the people who are dear to us. It also ensures that our confidence is not based on anything external, like possessions or material goods.
Our confidence, therefore, cannot be taken away and is literally unbreakable.
2) Learning how to fight teaches persistence
If you hadn’t already guessed, learning how to fight is tough.
Training to get into fighting shape is brutal.
The actual fighting is dangerous and extremely violent.
Even sparring is rough if you underestimate what you are up against. All of this combines over time to build your mental and physical toughness.
As you go forward and resist the urge to quit, you learn persistence and why it is so valued as the secret of success. It takes persistence to get up when you keep getting your ass kicked. It takes persistence to throw another kick when it feels as though your leg is about to drop off.
Learning to take action anyway will deeply affect your success in other areas of life.
3) Learning how to fight teaches us how to control our emotions
When we are first learning how to fight, things are not going to be rosy.
Our bodies (and, quite possibly, our faces) are going to get beaten up.
We are going to be tired beyond our wildest dreams.
One thing that fighting does during this process is teach us how to control our emotions.
We will no doubt come up against a lot of fear, anger and frustration as we master techniques and get knocked down by more experienced challengers. We may encounter some negative emotions that we have stuffed down since childhood that fighting is finally allowing us to let go of. Though this process is bumpy at best, it is cathartic. Over time, we will learn to do what we have to do to achieve our goals, regardless of how we are feeling.
This mastery of thoughts and emotions is priceless, for lasting confidence and well being.
4) Learning how to fight is a great way to relieve stress
As we mentioned above, the process of learning how to fight can be physically exhausting. Keeping your mental edge during a fight so you don’t get knocked the hell out is exhausting.
There is natural satisfaction that comes from good, honest physical work – however violent – and when we are done for the day we will feel good.
After a few hours you will be soaked in sweat, with muscles shaking, and all you will want to do is eat something and go to sleep. Over time, this routine of hard work and pushing through the pain will eliminate a huge amount of stress from your life.
5) Learning how to fight takes you a long way from your comfort zone
There is nothing more uncomfortable than being thrown into our situation you are not familiar with.
Learning how to fight is no exception in this case.
It is unlikely, upon first entering the gym you wish to train in, you will be met by big smiles and fireworks. Instead, you are going to have to earn the respect of the more experienced people in there.
You will have to work hard and show you are not another person who is going to come for two weeks and then not show up again.
Voluntarily sailing away from you comfort zone like this is courageous act and, in overcoming what you were afraid of in the first place (new people, no experience etc.), you will be rewarded with a level of self-esteem that can never be taken away from you.
Experience stepping out of your comfort zone more and more often and it will rapidly start to expand.
6) Learning how to fight will get you in the best shape of your life
It doesn’t matter how much weight lifting you do or how many miles you run during the week – training to fight is another ballgame entirely.
For one, you will need to work for many hours before you are competent at certain skills, and even then you will be nowhere near mastering all of the nuances that come with real fighting.
The training fighters do to be able to withstand punishment and dish it back out is brutal and your conditioning is going to level up as a result. Sparring or grappling for 3-5 minute rounds is no joke, even for an elite athlete. One huge bonus of all this punishment? You will actually look as tough as you are for once, rather than looking hard but running scared like a lot of bodybuilders.
With the right set of rules governing your training and nutrition, you should be able to stay in shape all year with no extra effort needed.
7) Learning how to fight teaches you discipline
The skill and sport of fighting shares this with all other types of physical competition.
Its takes prolonged discipline to see the fruits of your labor.
This means getting up early to fit in a training session, eating right, living right, foregoing too much alcohol and getting a good night’s sleep.
Having the mental discipline to stick to this routine, despite all of the obvious temptations of instant gratification around you, will set you apart from others as time goes by.
Success is not an overnight thing but, with continuous discipline, it will come to you just as sure as the hands on the clock will continue going around.
8) Learning how to fight will force you to get out of your own head
Too many of us spend days feeling self-conscious and disempowered because we spend too long in our own heads.
From birth and childhood, we have been implanted with a lot of negative beliefs that don’t serve us, all of which are going around in a continual loop in our subconscious minds.
To sit and listen to them for too long is tantamount to throwing all of our hard-earned confidence and self-esteem out of the window.
Aside from consciously practicing positivity, we also need to spend time out of our heads, doing something physical. Hitting the gym can be good. Having sex is good. Learning how to fight is a great way to do this. We have no choice but to be totally present in our bodies and to reject intruding thoughts, or else we might catch a sharp right to the jaw.
Forcing ourselves to be in the moment – rather than withdrawing mentally and emotionally – is great practice for other pressure situations that may occur in our lives, including business meetings or family emergencies.
9) Learning how to fight allows you to express yourself physically
Despite what modern thinking will tell you, men are inherently physical and prone to violence.
The great majority of the victims of this violence will be men. The physical expression of aggression and the thrill of war have long been swept under the rug as the dark side of the human psyche.
In today’s world, our violence is played out in movies, in computer games, in the board room, or in politics.
As entertaining as this, it leaves a lot of men feeling repressed and emasculated.
Learning how to fight remedies this need for challenge and violence completely. Through training and sparring you can express yourself physically in a relative safe, socially-condoned environment, which will make you finally feel like the dominant person that you are.
Don’t believe it?
Go and find out for yourself and report back.
10) Learning how to fight gives you the opportunity to compete for something
Just as men inherently crave confrontation and violence, they also crave competition for something.
In this day and age, most major competition is relegated to professional sports or business.
When you learn how to fight, and decide to fight against others in competition, you unleash that latent part of you. You will learn the reward of real competition and putting it all out there, willing and finding a way to win.
Make no mistake – we all want to win.
This is not ‘bad’ or to be punished.
It is just natural.
Fighting in proper environment can give us the buzz of competition without any unfavorable repercussions.
11) Learning how to fight forces us to take action and master ourselves
We aren’t all born with the action habit.
Some of us are never taught that no-hesitation killer instinct that sets the super-achievers apart from the crowds.
Many of us procrastinate and put things off, mostly because we fear being rejected by those who are close to us.
When we learn how to fight, we have to tackle this inability to take action head on. We have to learn to act, regardless of how we feel, otherwise we are going to get our lights turned out.
This ability to do things when we don’t feel like it is one of the secrets of really productive people that always seem to be achieving something.
Master yourself and cultivate the habit of taking action and you will see huge changes in the direction of your life. All of a sudden, you will be in control.
12) Learning how to fight puts us into contact with more dominant, like-minded individuals
There is a famous quote that states we are a combination of the 5 people we hang out with the most.
Whether this is true or not, the people we spend a lot of time have a huge influence on our thoughts and behavior. Prolonged interaction will make certain traits ‘rub off on you’, whether you are aware of it at the time or not.
Hanging out with others who are learning how to fight then, in an MMA gym or dojo or whatever, ensures you are interacting with like-minded individuals who are aware of who they are inside. Think about the people who fight – dominant, powerful, alpha individuals who set goals and get what they want.
Having that camaraderie, as well as that mindset rub off on you, is never going to hurt anything.
13) Learning how to fight makes you far more attractive
As much as women (and men) protest that they don’t like violence and hate people who fight, its mostly all lies fed by society.
The fact is, people (especially women) are attracted to those who can hold their own physically and win a fight.
This shows in many ways that they are a dominant individual who is more than capable of looking after a family – a very attractive trait.
Most fighters are also very at ease in their own skin and super-confident in themselves, which comes through in their body language and the way they interact with people. This is a far-cry from some weightlifters who compensate for their inner anxieties by building large muscles.
The fact is, women don’t care all that much about big muscles.
They want a strong, confident man who can take care of things and keep them safe.
Want to be more attractive?
Learn how to fight.
14) Learning how to fight supplies us with a powerful, positive philosophy of life that we can carry with us always
Acquiring the will, skill and attitude of the warrior is not all about physical ability.
Most fighting schools, and in particular martial arts, are brilliant for instilling a philosophy of respect, discipline and hard work upon their students.
These ancient philosophies help us keep things in perspective, keep our egos from running wild, and ensure we treat our newfound powers with great respect and responsibility.
This code of honor is not just applicable on the training mats, in the ring or in the octagon – it can be applied to all areas of life and absolutely should be.
Internalizing this philosophy gives us confidence and purpose – a mission that was perhaps not there before. This is the one thing that all mentally strong people have in common – without exception – and will serve you well for the rest of your life.
“Prize fighting is short. You get in, get rich and get out. But martial arts are for life. It’s for life.”
– Conor McGregor
Conclusion
It’s an outstanding article and very true.
Men need to be able to fight. We need that feeling of control and power. We need to feel that we are in control of our life. And when we get that feeling, it reflects upon us, and as a result…
…big changes in our life takes place.
Tony Soprano Enjoying life.
We start to eat better, we find the house tidy at the end of the day, and people tend to respect us more. No. It’s not because we threaten everyone with a punched nose. It’s because we have a self-confidence that we carry with us everywhere.
Men are not women.
Yet we are the same.
I am immensely attracted to a self-confident woman. It’s something that I just cannot control myself about. It’s like Sharon Stone in the movie Casino. Self Confidence is addictive.
For men…
…we can get this through learning how to fight and the discipline that comes with it.
And maybe, just maybe, those “Karens” in our lives would be a tad more respectful to the rest of us.
My sister AND sister in law are both Karen’s. I will show up to restaurants 15 min early to warn them. I tell them if it’s not done to their liking they WILL hear about it and they will make your shift hell. I’m just there as a warning.
I used to work in restaurants and those people made life hell. I do what I can to help. Generally my drinks are better and we get a free appetizer as soon as those two tornados walk in all hell breaks loose. Not enough ice, table is too cold, it’s too loud, etc. I also tip really big because I DON’T want to be associated with the two tornados.
I live overseas so I only see them 2 weeks out of the year. So it’s manageable. I only put up with their attitude because they could take my nieces and nephews away from me. I pick my battles. I need my nieces and nephews to know I’m always here for them and they can talk to me about anything. I can’t risk our relationship being tampered with, especially since I only see them 2 weeks a year.
Remember, being able to fight is not the same thing as fighting. It is a simple thing really.
It makes for a polite society.
Do you want more?
I have more posts along these lines in my Happiness 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 very much.
There’s a lot of things that you can say about all the changes going on in America today. I have written about this extensively. But one area that I hardly touched upon is the way that the American public education system has been geared up to produce peasants.
Yes, you read that correct. Peasants.
The rulers, and the wealthy (aren’t they one and the same?) send their children off to private (for profit) expensive schools for education. Everyone else, by law, must attend “public” schools, where the government decides what will be taught, when and how.
These “public schools” indoctrinate. They train young youth to become reactionary (as opposed to free-thinking), and to obey authority without question. They learn that they must work within the systems provided, pay taxes because it is necessary, and conform at all costs.
Which results in some really stunning changes to the population…
Now, this subject has been covered elsewhere by other authors on both sides (heck, all sides) of the political spectrum. Neither side likes it.
The traditional conservatives are horrified at what is being taught, and want to eject their children from the educational system and home-school them.
The progressive liberals are concerned that the schools are not progressive enough, and that real change is necessary given how messed up the United States is today.
Now…
Don’t get confused.
American peasants. These are the under-employed strata of the peasant class.
Please, it’s easy to get confused, but don’t.
I live inside of (so called) “Communist China”, but China hasn’t been “communist” since the late 1970’s. Instead, it is a single-party, traditional, social republic, internally policed with membership by merit. Which is think is light-years of improvement over the fiasco that Mr. Mao setup back in the 1940’s.
And America…
That “land of the free”, of “democracy” and “liberty” is only a myth perpetuated by the ignorant. America ceased being “free” with the passage of the 11th amendment, and has has six major reorganizations of governmental structure since. Today it is a Military Empire, serviced by American tax-paying serfs, for the well being of the ruling oligarchy.
I argue that the changes to the American population is NOT random or a natural evolution. I argue that it is intentional.
Just like the former Soviet Union tried to remake the Russian population into loyal serfs, so has the United States tried to do so.
Here is an interesting take on this matter by a woman who used to live inside Russia while it was hard-core communist. She teaches inside America and is shocked how little the student understand history and what hard-core Marxist Communism is. Of course, the reader might think that all this has to do with political ideology. I argue something different…
I argue that this is what you see when there is an overt attempt at the stratification of society into separate and distinct classes of people; The rulers, and the ruled.
So don’t look at the following article as “communism being indoctrinated inside of America“, instead look at it as an attempt by the American oligarchy to create a nation of serf-peasants by using the same techniques that successfully operated within the former Soviet Union.
The following is a direct reprint of “A Russian Woman Working as a College Professor in the US Writes About the Sovietization of Amerika” by Rod Dreher Sat, Feb 29, 2020. It was edited to fit this venue, and all credit to the writer.
A Russian Woman Working as a College Professor in the US Writes About the Sovietization of Amerika
I’m in the editing and rewriting stage of Live Not By Lies now,
but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk yesterday with a woman
I’ll call “Clarissa,” whose stories were so good that I’m weaving them
into the book’s narrative.
Clarissa is a college professor who emigrated to the US from Russia
as a young woman, a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. She is
yet another ex-Soviet bloc person who is extremely anxious about the
emergence of soft totalitarianism here. Of course she can’t use her real
name, because she fears professional retaliation. It should tell us
something that not a single academic from a former communist country
that I interviewed for this book was willing to speak using their own
name — this, in the Land of the Free. Why not? Because they were afraid
of facing professional consequences for speaking out against identity
politics and the “social justice” regime. Below, some quotes from our
interview:
I have the feeling of extreme frustration. Our stories of people in the former Soviet space are constantly dismissed. I have no idea why.
I think it happens because people still think that the ideas that existed in the Soviet Union are basically good – that it was the execution that was at times excessive.
My father says what happened to us was not about the economic system. The economic system was just an excuse. This could happen anywhere – even under capitalism.
The American serf-peasant class buying necessities at a store.
—
Totalitarianism is something that takes away from people the unbearable burden of freedom. It allows many people to hound and persecute with impunity. That is pleasant in many senses.
There was a practice in the Soviet Union where people would be told to get together in groups at work and write letters to the newspaper to denounce famous poets or artists.
We see that today in Twitter. People love that because it allows a little person to completely destroy somebody who has done something great.
This is very human. Once you have removed any moral or religious obstacles to that behavior, what’s to stop anybody?
—
When I was nine years old, I had a teacher of Russian literature. I really admired her.
What we didn’t know was that her father was a high ranking KGB officer.
He found out that a little girl in our class, Masha, was attending church with her parents, and not only that, but was singing in the choir. The teacher one day pulled that little girl out in the class and for an hour unleashed a torrent of abuse on this child.
For what?
The feeling of power of persecuting that child in front of the rest of us. This is not happening right now in the US, but it’s conceivable.
—
(On American vulnerability to totalitarianism)
It’s American exceptionalism.
You all think you’re such special people that you’re going to do it right.
If socialism comes here, don’t worry, we’ll make it happen in the correct way.
Not true! Ten years ago if you had told me I would be seeing this in the US, I would have laughed in your face. But now it’s happening. I’m seeing it happening to my friends.
It’s like their minds are disintegrating.
American peasant serfs are not taught discipline, care, concern, morals, or basic behavior. Instead they are taught to be automatons for the state. In much the same way that the former Soviet Union instructed unyielding obedience and a squashing of independence. You can see this lack of discipline throughout America today.
—
Once your religion is taken away, you still have a need for an overarching moral law.
You’re going to look for it somewhere else, even outside religion. We’re seeing it now with this identity politics. …
In the Soviet Union when I was young, cynicism was everywhere. Nobody believed in anything. Everybody just went through the motions.
I used to think that cynicism was the worst thing in the world. It’s not. The worst thing in the world is the lack of cynicism and critical difference, and accepting everything uncritically.
These people today, they really believe all this woke ideology. And that’s what’s really scary.
I have a friend who is very woke. The woke ideology is the belief is that if somebody departs from the dogma, even by an inch, that person is an evil, hate-filled bigot.
When I disagree with her, I can see that she genuinely can’t comprehend that I disagree with her. She knows I’m a good person, but here I am disagreeing with her. She can’t understand it. And she’s an educated person! A college professor.
The intellectuals are playing a dangerous game. They think they can control it. They think that once their ideas are imposed on society, they can control it. That’s ludicrous. They’re going to be the first ones the system turns on, because as intellectuals, they can be the first ones to spot the flaws in the system.
Nobody is going to be safe. Nobody can pledge enough allegiance to this kind of system to protect themselves.
—
I mentor early career academics. I used to enjoy it, but not anymore. These graduate students are not producing scholarship. They’re just turning in collections of woke slogans.
I don’t even know what to do with that. When we start talking to the younger academics, they don’t understand what we want for them. They were taught this way, and they’re reproducing it.
I see this from students who come to college.
It seems like all they get in the schools is dogma. They are blank slates. They have no real knowledge of anything – they just repeat slogans, and when you ask them to explain it, they turn blank.
In the Soviet Union, when you were a student and assigned to write a paper, you knew that the thing to do was to go straight to the correct books in the library and copy the relevant articles, word for word, with no deviations.
That was your paper.
When my family left, we arrived in Canada, and I entered the university there. When I was assigned my first paper, I found it impossible to believe that the teacher really did want me to think for myself. It was an incredible feeling!
To think about something, and to say what I really thought about it! It was so weird, but so liberating.Now, I’m seeing young people who are just like we were in the Soviet Union.
They are afraid to think for themselves. They only want to know what the “right” answer is, and repeat it. It’s depressing.
—
The problem is that many people still associate totalitarianism with an all-powerful state, and if it doesn’t come from the state, it’s not totalitarianism.
What we’re dealing with now is not coming from the state. None of us are afraid that the government is going to send secret police and take us to the dungeon.
That’s not going to happen.
No. We’re afraid of being humiliated and deprived of a living. Of being a pariah, of being marginalized, unpersonned, cancelled.
You don’t need the government for that, especially in the age of social media. It wasn’t the government hounding those Covington Catholic boys, or J.K. Rowling.
Voting for someone [as a protest against political correctness] is wonderful, but the government cannot solve this problem.
—
Since I started going to church a couple of years ago, I began to understand what was taken from us. I feel incredibly angry that we were deprived of something that’s such a huge part of our culture and civilization, that it taken from us. I take my little girl to church and Sunday school. I want my child to know this so she doesn’t have to discover it in her forties, and feel clumsy.
—
I wish we had some form of a secret handshake [on my campus]. I know a couple of other professors on campus who I suspect are one of us. But everybody is so closeted, it’s impossible to talk about it.
We have this bias response team that prowls the campus looking for signs of non-compliance, and to justify their existence. We had the same thing in the Soviet Union.
Right now they’re on campus, but eventually, they’re going to be in every workplace. If you have everybody in your workplace trained in diversity, then you can treat your workers however you like, and nobody will care.
(On the culture created by diversity and sensitivity training in the workplace)
All your co-workers are enemies. Either they can get you in trouble, or they are out to destroy you with an accusation. It destroys all sorts of uncontrollable communities – friendship, families, church communities. When you set people against each other, they are much easier to control. This is what it was like under totalitarianism.
The wall-to-wall propaganda that characterizes this new totalitarianism isn’t state-sponsored either. It’s disseminated solely through corporate channels. Traditional politicians are squeezed out by TV and social media stars who represent this new form of power. The complete dependence of their popularity on Twitter and Instagram means they will do absolutely anything to avoid being deplatformed. It’s no longer about courting rich donors to donate to your campaign. Now it’s all about being a funny enough clown that attracts hits and likes to enrich the owners of these platforms.
Every day, the power of these giant corporations to unearth a tweet or a like on a tweet that can sink absolutely anybody grows. There is no need for a state to keep a dossier of kompromat (compromising material) on each citizen. This process has been completely corporatized. And the worst part is that people who are wielding this sort of coercive power honestly see themselves as powerless victims who have to defend themselves from coercion.
You know, since I started writing this post, I went to look up the blog entry I posted from my first interview with Clarissa, a year or so ago. I couldn’t find it, except in my notes for the book. I wonder if I ever posted it. Sorry if you’ve already seen it, but I suspect I forgot to put it on the site.
Here’s the text:
Just got off the phone with a Soviet-born academic who teaches in a small state university in the American heartland. She blogs under the name “Clarissa,” but I got her real name, and checked her out. She’s REALLY excited about this book, and told me she would be a source, and introduce me to the emigre community. She’s teaching a class on totalitarianism this semester, and is unnerved to have discovered that every single one of her students thinks that socialism is a good thing.
“I teach in the heart of America, in what a lot of people think of as the Bible Belt, and this is how they think,” she said.
She got her PhD at a top American university (I checked this out), and said that it was a constant struggle there to be heard. Whenever Marxist topics would come up, she would talk about her experience in the USSR, and people would shout her down. “You wouldn’t believe the rage in their faces,” she said. “They did not want to hear it.”
She said that when she talks to her parents and tells her about things she’s seeing as an American academic, within academia, they’re shocked. They keep saying, “It’s like we had it back in the Soviet Union!”
She has learned to be very, very careful about what she says among her colleagues. She knows that nobody wants to hear it, and now she’s afraid of being identified and punished. She said, “I have to live my intellectual and spiritual life underground. I stay silent about so many things with my colleagues because I know that they would honestly and sincerely see me as some kind of monster because of the things I believe, which are in no way radical.”
Yesterday a tenured academic she knows in California wrote to her to say that he withdrew from publication a paper he had written that very mildly criticizes woke dogma (she didn’t say what it was) within the academy, because he lost his nerve. He’s tenured, so he wasn’t afraid of losing his job. He was afraid of becoming a pariah — of his friends turning their backs on him because of his views, and others being afraid to take his side out of fear that they would be seen as tainted.
“To be honest, I wouldn’t want anybody at work to know I read your blog,” she said.
She also said that she can’t stand Trump, but has come to see him as the only obstacle between herself and total progressive madness. “It’s the most frustrating thing!” she said, her voice rising. I told her I agreed with her, and we laughed about that.
The diversity commissars have everybody terrified at her university, she said. Recently the chief diversity officer publicly identified her as “transphobic.” Why? Because a student asked her about use of the term “Latinx.” It came up in class, and as a Spanish speaker, she mentioned that many Spanish speakers hate the term. For this, she was identified as “transphobic” by the diversity office. She said that she didn’t even express an opinion about the term, only noted that it’s not popular among Spanish speakers. So now she’s on the watch list.
Here’s something really interesting: she said that one of her research interests is how multinational corporations undermine the nation-state. She said that wokeness in corporate America is a weapon used by white-collar professionals to weed out competitors for increasingly scarce jobs. She said, “People find ideological purity tests useful to weed out people who compete for jobs you cover. Progressive forces are completely allied with globalist capitalism.”
She also said that people have no idea how vulnerable they are to this mindset, because of social media. “You will not be able to predict what will be held against you tomorrow. You have no idea what completely normal thing you do today, or say today, will be used against you to destroy you. This is what people in the Soviet Union saw. We know how this works. This is why people like me are so upset today. I’m so glad you’re writing this book. Thank you for calling me and letting me vent.”
Metallic comments…
It’s so easy to read this and fall into any one of the many “pigeon hole” narratives that we have been programmed to follow. Much like Pavlov’s dog, we must look at everything as political ideology. And that is the way that this professor looks at it. And that is the way that the author looks at it.
But that is not whats really going on.
What is actually going on is the [1] the system for social stratification used by the former Soviet Union,has [2] been ported and adopted by the United States and [3] it’s implementation has been through the American educational system.
It has created an environment that favors a Ruling Class that is served entirely by an under-educated peasant / serf class.
And we can see how this system has resulted in RADICAL changes to American society…
The following article is a complete reprint of “America 1950 vs. America 2020” by Michael Snyder on September 14, 2020. It was edited to fit this venue, and all credit to the author.
America 1950 vs. America 2020
If you could go back to 1950, would you do it? There would be no Internet, no cellphones and you would only be able to watch television in black and white. But even though they lacked many of our modern conveniences, people genuinely seemed to be much happier back then. Families actually ate dinner together, neighbors knew and cared about one another, and being an “American” truly meant something. Today, we like to think that we are so much more “advanced” than they were back then, but the truth is that our society is in the process of falling apart all around us. Could it be possible that we could learn some important lessons by looking back at how Americans lived 70 years ago?
Of course there has never been any era in our history when everything has been perfect. But without a doubt, things are vastly different today than they were back in 1950…
In 1950, Texaco Star Theatre, The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy were some of the most popular shows that Americans watched on television.
In 2020, a Netflix film entitled “Cuties” is so trashy and so disgusting that four states have sent a letter to Netflix asking for it to be removed because it is “fodder for those with criminal imaginations, serving to normalize the view that children are sexual beings.”
When an isolated ruling caste controls over under-educated peasants, there are apt to be conflicts and turmoil between the uneducated serfs.
In 1950, television networks would not even show husbands and wives in bed together.
In 2020, “adult websites” get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.
With social engineering comes a destruction of morals, when the government becomes the solution to all issues.
In 1950, people would greet one another as they walked down the street.
In 2020, Americans are too enamored with their cellphones to be bothered with actual human contact.
One of the first things to disappear during social re-engineering are societal manners.
In 1950, gum chewing and talking in class were some of the major disciplinary problems in our schools.
In 2020, kids are literally gunning down police officers in the streets.
With the collapse of the middle class, the PTB isolated themselves in enclaves, and the lower serf / peasant classes now merge with the unemployed and under-employed classes that are prone to violence.
In 1950, people would make an effort to dress up and look nice when they would go out in public.
In 2020, most of the population has become utter slobs and “People of Walmart” has become one of our most popular memes.
When you are a peasant, you don’t care about your public appearance.
In 1950, the typical woman got married for the first time at age 20 and the typical man got married for the first time at age 22.
In 2020, the typical woman gets married for the first time at age 27 and the typical man gets married for the first time at age 29.
With societal change comes an evolution from a generalized behavior via the r/K theory.
In 1950, a lot of people would leave their homes and their vehicles unlocked because crime rates were so low.
In 2020, many that live in urban areas are deathly afraid of all the civil unrest that has erupted, and gun sales have soared to all-time record highs.
With a segregated and stratified society are large numbers of unnecessary people. Who resort to crime for entertainment and emotional escape.
In 1950, Americans actually attempted to parent their children.
In 2020, we pump our kids full of mind-altering drugs and we let our televisions and our video games raise our children.
Like the former Soviet Union, people use escape methods to leave a life that is stressful and that they have no control over.
In 1950, Baltimore was one of the most beautiful and most prosperous cities on the entire planet.
In 2020, Baltimore regularly makes headlines because of all the murders that are constantly occurring. Of course the exact same thing could be said about many of our other major cities.
Along with the collapse of society comes the collapse of the infrastructure that supports the society.
In 1950, 78 percent of all households in America contained a married couple.
In 2020, that figure has fallen below 50 percent.
In 1950, about 5 percent of all babies in the United States were born to unmarried parents.
In 2020, about 40 percent of all babies in the United States will be born to unmarried parents.
A total breakdown in American society structure that favors both parents working in grey cube boxes, and not raising children as family units.
America needs no moral compass. The government controls all. Thus, the oligarchy controls everything.
In 1950, we actually had high standards for our elected officials, and people actually did research on the candidates before they cast their votes.
In 2020, more than 4,000 people in one county in New Hampshire voted for a “transsexual Satanic anarchist” in the Republican primary, and she is now the Republican nominee for sheriff in Cheshire County.
American government has become a joke.
In 1950, children would go outside and play when they got home from school.
In 2020, our parks and our playgrounds are virtually empty and we have the highest childhood obesity rate in the industrialized world.
Children have become isolated, and easy to entertain with sedentary pastimes. Just like the former Soviet Union citizens became.
In 1950, front porches were community gathering areas, and people would regularly have their neighbors over for dinner.
In 2020, many of us don’t know our neighbors at all, and the average American watches more than five hours of television a day.
Americans have become isolated, and easy to control. Just like the former Soviet Union citizens became.
In 1950, Americans used words such as “knucklehead”, “moxie” and “jalopy”.
In 2020, new terms such as “nomophobia”, “peoplekind” and “social distancing” have been introduced into the English language.
Normal change is trivial. But when someone or some nation is involved in social change it will affect everything, including the language.
In 1950, the very first credit card was issued in the United States.
In 2020, Americans owe more than 930 billion dollars on their credit cards.
Americans are in debt and must work to stay alive. The consequence of not working is starvation and possibly prison.
In 1950, one income could support an entire middle class household.
In 2020, tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs and filed for unemployment, and more than half of all households in some of our largest cities are currently facing “serious financial problems”.
An entire family must toil to pay the taxes and fees, and living costs. All of which benefit the wealthy elite.
In 1950, the American people believed that the free market should govern the economy.
In 2020, most Americans seem to believe that the government in Washington and the Federal Reserve must endlessly “manage” the economy.
Now, people expect the wealthy oligarchy to provide for their needs through a mechanism known as “the government”.
In 1950, “socialists” and “communists” were considered to be our greatest national enemies.
In 2020, most of our politicians in Washington have eagerly embraced socialist and communist policy goals.
From independence to dependence on government.
In 1950, the U.S. Constitution was deeply loved and highly revered.
In 2020, anyone that actually admits to being a “constitutionalist” is considered to be a potential domestic terrorist.
The original constitution supported independence from government. That is a dangerous idea today.
In 1950, the United States loaned more money to the rest of the world than anybody else.
In 2020, the United States owes more money to the rest of the world than anybody else.
America is in dept, as the ruling oligarchy operates above and isolated form the government that it controls. They are safe no matter what happens.
In 1950, the total U.S. national debt reached the 257 billion dollar mark for the first time in our history.
In 2020, we added 864 billion dollars to the national debt in the month of June alone. In other words, we added over three times more to the national debt in that one month than the total amount of debt that had been accumulated from the founding of our nation all the way to 1950.
The wealthy oligarchy can drive a nation into the ground. It matters not to them. For they exist above and beyond the government.
In 1950, most Americans were generally happy with their lives.
In 2020, the suicide rate is at an all-time record high, and it has been rising every single year since 2007.
It sucks being a poor peasant.
Conclusion
Change is a natural part of life. When you get older, such as myself, you view change with a kind of nostalgia. You miss “the good old days”. But the fact is that most change is artificial.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most change was glacial. Entire generations would come and go with very little change in their lives.
So what was driving the change?
Technology?
Yah! Well, that’s the standard “boiler plate” answer.
And yes, it is true that “technology” was what advanced change during the “Industrial revolution”, but it is really only a small contributor. Something else happened at the same time…
It was the power, and the methodology of large government ruled by small groups of men.
Did you notice the changes since 1950? Did you notice what had changed? Yes, everything that changed favored the small elite Ruling Class of America at the expense of the working class. In fact, the working class had become serf / slaves. And that is why the Ruling class treats them like the peasants that they are.
I will say it again, and repeat. What changed everything was…
Large powerful governments ruled by small groups of men.
The major driver of change are governments, for they alone have the power to change society. And society, like it or not, is what drives all the changes in our lives. And the number one method that these governments use to enact social change is the education system.
Thus we have a situation where the United States government has adopted the very same stratification systems employed by the former Soviet Union.
The reason why America is currently “on fire” and such a mess right now is because the stratification process is nearly complete. There are large segments of the society that welcomes their new roles as serfs and peasants (out of ignorance) and large sections that do not.
Unlike the Soviet Union. In Russia, Stalin killed enormous groups of people, and anyone who would oppose him was rounded up, killed outright or sent off to die of starvation. When he implemented his stratification program, he had very little remaining opposition.
That is not the case in America today.
Thus,
The ruling oligarchy is looking at this situation and sees that the former Soviet Union system of control can only happen when there are large groups of opposition forces out of the way. In order to implement their segregation and stratification initiatives, they will need to devise a system to suppress these opposition forces.
What will happen is unknown.
Civil War
An external war of distraction.
A World War.
Nothing, just more of the same ratcheting up in severity.
But the PTB pretty much expect that all this to settle out eventually. One way or the other. And when the dust settles and the fires die out, and the survivors start to rebuild their lives, you can well realize that the world will be quite different going out, than what it is today; going in.
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Ambassador Fox:Your refusal to comply with my orders has endangered the entire success of this mission. I can have you sent to a penal colony for this.Mr Scott:That you can, sir, but I won’t lower the screens.Ambassador Fox:Your name will figure prominently in my report to the Federation Central.Doctor McCoy:Well, Scotty, now you’ve done it.Mr. Scott:Aye. The haggis is in the fire for sure, but I’ll not lower my defenses on the word of that mealy-mouthed gentleman down below. Not until I know what happened to the Captain.
-Star Trek, A Taste of Armageddon 1967
This is not your red vs. blue kind of conflict. This is not the SA fighting the SS. This is not the Northern “Boys in Blue” marching against “Johnny Reb” in grey. This is not the glorious Allied forces fighting the evil Nazi’s. This is something different and on a completely different level.
I anticipate the normal horrors of war, and mayhem. But only this time it will be up front, up close, and right in your face. It will be like the hand to hand, street to street conflicts going on in the Bosnia / Hertivogania conflict. Only this time, it will include all sorts of unexpected and dangerous “innovations”.
And for all of you who think that you and your trusty .303 will be able to fight back against under-educated hordes, you are woefully wrong. Both sides have no idea just how nasty things can be. And both sides are going to spill a lot of blood, and there will be great sadness and agony in the process. All the time, the oligarchy will sit away smug inside their bunkers isolated from the carnage that they set upon the world.
The following is an interesting article. Some military-trained conservatives decided to visit an Antifa riot, and they were wholly unprepared for what they encountered. It’s a good read whether or not you agree with their intent, or their politics. Just take note that war is never what you expect.
The smart man avoids war, and runs away from conflict.
The following article is titled “Antifa Reality Check”. It was posted by NC Scout on September 5, 2020. It is reproduced with minor editing to fit this venue. All credit to the author.
“Very basic background. My friend is a prior service 1st LAR 0311, 0351. (from Wiki: 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion is a fast and mobilized armoredterrestrial reconnaissance battalion of the United States Marine Corps.) Multiple tours in the early to late 2000s, then DoE, then was put through selection and went to work for Colonel G____ as a team member. Since leaving, he has been doing contract work.
He is an experienced and capable meat eater and the furthest thing from a pussy or coward. Try to learn from his experiences.
“Me and three of my buddies were in Portland this weekend, got attacked by Antifa. There’s a Twitter video with millions of views on it. They ended up on Hannity and Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro etc., of us getting beaten with bats and rocks the size of cantaloupes thrown at us, getting spit on etc. We were all carrying pistols as well. Opportunity, ability and jeopardy, we were in a deadly force situation and we could easily articulate the use of deadly force, but they had pepper sprayed us. They were using industrial strobe lights on us, etc. We couldn’t PID our target and what lied beyond it, They did a great job of taking our situational awareness away, it was fucking incredible.
Bro my perspective on this changed so much.
The reason we were there wasn’t to counter protest or some shit, **** and *****, two of the guys with me, one of which is a bronze star and Purple Heart recipient. They’re both in the hiring process for the Portland Police Department. One is from Ohio and one is from Virginia. They both flew in that day just so they could come check out the city before they move their families across the nation.
Something else that I should make perfectly clear. We went to the Federal Courthouse first. There wasn’t a whole lot going on down there. We walked around and took some pictures. Bumped into a Sheriff at one point. Talked to him for a while. We asked him if the riots were over? He said fuck no, they’re trying to fuck a police station up right now on 47th and Burnside, We asked him if we could go, and he said yeah, it’s still a peaceful assembly, it hasn’t been declared a riot yet….
So, legit, we walked into this thing blind, in hindsight it was stupid on our part, I had no idea that they were like that. If it had been a full-blown riot we would not have gone. Bottom line, man, if you had ever given me a scenario like this and said hey, you’re sober, and you have a gun, and somebody is hitting you with a bat and throwing rocks at you that could kill you or put you in a coma, you try to get away but they cut you off with a convoy of vehicles and the assault starts again. They impede your movement and beat you with bats… Would you shoot?
I’d be like, yeah what fucking planet are you from?
But in all the training that I’ve been through my life, I’ve never been in one where in the first five seconds of the scenario you’re blinded with a strobe light and sprayed with pepper spray…. That changes everything. They were throwing these rocks from 15 feet back in the crowd, you couldn’t see who the fuck through it, etc. things like that…. It’s just a good talking point for guys that carry concealed, but you need to think through all these different scenarios.
It got way worse after that video ended, they chased us for 11 city blocks. They had a convoy of about 25 vehicles that cut us off at the next intersection, They had scouts on the corner with radios, they had a drone following us, they had a bull horn calling us Nazis, and the crowd was following a red strobe light that was up in the air on a stick, so they would announce Nazis and then people would follow the red strobe light, That video is just the beginning, I’ve got a fucking fractured hand from a baton, everyone of us has black and blue bruises up and down their legs and back, I had a guy spit in my face from 6 inches away, call me a pussy and a coward for not doing anything about it, and then tell me that he was going to find where I live, rape my mother, rape my children in front of me and then kill me.
I’ve never been more angry about something in my fucking life, the level of restraint that it took for us to not fight back in any capacity whether that was with a gun or fists is incredible. All of us have kids at home. The only thing going through all of our minds was we have to be able to justify deadly force if we’re going to go that route, there’s also hundreds of these people, we can’t see straight because of all the pepper spray, and it’s hard to PID exactly who is throwing these rocks and hitting us with batons, because they would hit you and fucking run and their buddy would run up and hit you. It was an incredibly stressful situation, they did a very good job tactically of taking away your situational awareness, and in my opinion complicating your legal defense when you split one of their faces open with a hollow point.
As we were running from the crowd after about the third block or so, we’re sprinting because the mob head caught back up to us and vehicles were trying to cut us off, I put my hand on the back strap on my appendix, And I heard somebody yell “Hey bro, whatever you’re reaching for, don’t reach, just keep running, they’re still 30 feet behind you. Keep running straight.”
We get 11 blocks down the road and this black Chevy Impala is ghosting us down the street, he’s kind of been in our shadow since block two or three He rolls his window down and starts asking us a bunch of questions. Why are we here, what are we doing, telling us we need to get the fuck out of here, asking us where our car is etc., we pretty much told him to get the fuck away from us because we didn’t know who he was. I finally asked him at one point, Who the fuck are you, man, you need to leave us alone, and he was like I’m the fucking police, bro, who are you?
So he pulled his car over and he and his partner talked to us. He was one of the special programs guys, either with SWAT or SRT or whatever. He was the one that yelled at me not to reach, and tried to help us out. He said he knew that we’ve been pepper sprayed and we’re having trouble seeing, I kind of snapped at him, Like hey motherfucker, You’ve been watching this whole thing fucking unfold and you didn’t intervene at all or light the crowd up or something? He started laughing and he was like, Man, if I got out and tried to help you guys, my fucking car would be on fire right now, and I’d be running next to you.
Bottom line: don’t go to an Antifa protest where you can put yourself in that situation. And if you find yourself in that situation, expect them to employ tactics that take away your situational awareness, and complicate the use of force continuum.”
Conclusion
War is something that should be considered as an option of last resort. It doesn’t matter if you are two people having a disagreement, or two nations involved in some kind of trade dispute. All war is ugly, crazy and unexpected.
Here, we have well trained soldiers going against militant civilians on their turf. They entered equipped, and read to go “hot” if need be. They had to be arrogant, for they were moving into an environment that was hostile and they were not concerned. In my “book”, it makes them cocky.
When I see Donald Trump sending Two complete assault carrier battle groups to the Chinese coastline, so close that you could see everyone with your own eyes. And then, expecting to threaten China in that action, I see the same kind of cocky invincibility as is written here.
Real war is not a Tom Clancy novel, it is not Rambo or Arnold Schwarzenegger killing hundreds of people with single shots to the forehead. It’s actually very uncomfortable, very horrible, and something that you don’t want to have any part of.
Expect to be surprised, tricked, betrayed, and killed.
Right now the United States is in the opening stages of Civil War, and the fact that the President is doing nothing (and don’t give me those excuses that he is powerless) tells me everything that I need to know about who is behind this, and what the objectives are.
Any president that can ban cat videos on cell phones, arrest foreign CEO’s by proxy, unleash a global bio-weapon the COVID-19, and blow up BRI shipping ports with a micro-nuke most certainly…
…most certainly…
…stop all the riots and unrest going on in the country today.
So. Everyone. Avoid all the conflict. Do not be under the impression that you will be able to fight off invading urban youth marching and screaming into bullhorns. It won’t be that way. You all won’t be playing cowboys and Indians inside a wooden stockade fort.
It will be black urban youth hyped up on drugs with kill-lust in their eyes. They will ride into your neighborhoods in brand new vehicles and pickup trucks mounting full automatic weapons. They will use drones, and fly bombs, and firebomb your community. They will attack, while flanking units go behind you and kidnap your family. They will leave raw earth, fire and blacked destruction in their wake.
Learn the lessons listed here in.
If you haven’t already, relocate to a quiet and boring place where you can ride out the up coming shit storm.
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’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.
Do you want more?
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.
Yesterday, I published a post by a Hard-Right conservative Russian who had some dire warnings for America and Americans. I published it with some caveats, as some of his terminology was repugnant to my readership (and me). Never the less, if you distill everything, he had something good to say.
He said “Organize”.
Now, I took his article and massaged it with Metallic finesse. And I laid it all out that it is the PTB (sitting comfortably in their mansions) that are the enemy. They want us to fight among ourselves.
Don’t.
To which I (sort of) twisted his message. I said yes, we must organize. But, organize, on both sides. Come together on both sides. Fight against the common enemy the PTB that are causing all this turmoil in the first place.
And that was my message.
The way for humanity to get through this trying and difficult time is to work together and subdue the evil psychopaths that have hoarded all the gold and are using it to destroy humanity and remake it in THEIR image.
Well…
Now let’s give equal time to some words of wisdom from the Left. And yes, I’m going to twist this message in a metallic way as well…
The title for this comes from Umair Haque, who has seen what is happening here now in America, and warns that those who have seen the end result elsewhere first hand are being ignored. He is crying out to be heard.
We Don’t Know How to Warn You Any Harder. America is Dying.
We Survivors of Authoritarianism Have a Message America Needs to Hear: This is Exactly How it Happens, and It’s Happening Here.
…We survivors of authoritarianism have a terrible, terrible foreboding, because we are experiencing something we should never do: deja vu. Our parents fled from collapsing societies to America. And here, now, in a grim and eerie repeat of history, we see the scenes of our childhoods played out all over again. Only now, in the land that we came to. We see the stories our parents recounted to us happening before our eyes, only this time, in the place they brought us to, to escape from all those horrors, abuses, and depredations.
We survivors are experiencing this terrible feeling of deja vu right now as a group, as a class. We talk about it, how eerie and grim this sense of deja vu is. It’s happening all over again! Do you remember this part of your childhood? When the armed men roamed the streets? When the secret police disappeared opponents? When the fascist masses united — and that was enough to destroy democracy for good? We talk about it, believe me — but you don’t hear it because we have no real voice. America’s pundits are named Chris and Jake and Tucker. They are not named Eduardo and Ravi and Xiao and Umair. But Chris and Jake and Tucker can’t help you now. They don’t know what the hell they’re dealing with. They literally have no idea because they have no experience whatsoever.
The only people who do right now in America are us survivors. Let me remind you, by the way, what happens we speak out: we lose whatever credibility and status we have. The moment I began to warn of this, I lost my column in HBR, my cable news appearances, and so forth. Don’t cry for me. Understand me, my friend, know me. If we had a voice, we survivors, we would be warning you as loudly and strongly as we possibly could.
All of us. We would say:
This is not a joke. This is not a drill. When we survivors of authoritarianism experience, as a group, a class, a cohort, something that we never, ever should — the horrific deja vu that the horrors of our childhoods, that our parents knew, are happening, all over again, here, something is much, much more wrong than you know.
This is what four more years looks like.
READ THE WHOLE THING. It may be the most important thing you read all day or all week or all month.
Consider just this one warning:
Why? They point to the complete breakdown of the rule of law. The rule of law only means something when an authoritarian can’t simply disappear people from the streets, ordering his paramilitary to do it, ignoring the constitution, discarding due process — with total impunity. But all that is exactly what Trump can do.
He now has the nascent powers of a Gaddafi or a Saddam. No, I’m not kidding. He doesn’t have the full powers, to be sure — but he certainly has the beginnings of them. Maybe he can’t have people tortured in jail yet — but he can have almost anyone he likes in America picked up and disappeared.
So how far away do you think even worse abuses of power are? When a tyrant can have almost anyone in a country they like disappeared, how far away do you really think torture is? Rape? Murder? I’m not being hyperbolic. I’m trying to speak to you like an adult. Will you listen?
Those words take on real urgency when you see something like this coming from the Trump administration.
Acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf stated that the Justice Department is looking into arresting leaders of Black Lives Matter (BLM) amid protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake by police officer Rusten Sheskey.
“Do you think the Department of Homeland Security is getting the help it needs from the Justice Department?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked. “Why haven’t we seen the leaders of antifa and BLM arrested and charged for conspiracy under, say, [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Law], like the heads of the mafia families were?”
“This is something I talked to the AG personally about and I know that they are working on it,” Wolf replied, referring to Attorney General Bill Barr.
The DHS chief also stated that the Justice Department is “targeting and investigating the head of these organizations, the individuals that are paying for these individuals to move across the country.”
Carlson pressed Wolf on why the “funders” of the anti-police brutality protests “haven’t been punished.”
“Again, I would say that again the Department of Justice, who has the lead in all of those investigations, are certainly moving as quickly as possible,” Wolf said.
Both the Hard-Right and the Hard-Left narratives are dripping with emotion and angst. Both are yelling at Americans. Both are saying “Wake Up!” Things can go really, really bad.
The Hard-Right offered a solution; Organize.
The Hard-Left also offered a solution; Embrace democracy more.
Scene from Aliens. You need to know what you are dealing with before your rush in and try to improve upon it.
Hum. Do you see where I am going with this? Both sides are correct. Both sides see that there is a problem. Both sides are terrified with what might happen. Both sides are concerned and offer solutions. But what are they?
More democracy.
WTF?
What is going on.
In both cases the people on both sides of the political spectrum look at the same failed model for answers and solutions. They look towards “democracy” to be the savior in this issue and the means to stop this mess.
It's like sheep that are unhappy with their lot in life. They look at the field next door. They see the taller, and greener grass, and the the other sheep, and they want to revolt and be like that other farm. They want to exchange their shepherd for another shepherd.
Here’s a big secret for you all…
“Democracy” is NOT the answer.
All democracies turn into oligarchies. And oligarchies turn into military empires. With various political solutions cropping up from time to time.
It's pretty well discussed. You all should read the Federalist Papers. The founders of the United States pretty much laid all this out for everyone to see. No one listened, of course. But it is the historical record.
So what is the answer?
Well, if I were to wave a magic wand, and place an ideal governance upon the United States, the LAST thing that I would do is have a democracy.
Democracy is a failed model. It has an expiration date; a “half-life” before it devolves into something else.
No.
Democracy is the LAST thing that you want.
You want something else.
You want small government. That way it can be participative.
You want quick and responsive “feed back mechanisms” on the local level.
You want management by merit and ability.
You want rotating management with short terms of office.
Now, I can tell you what you do not want…
You don’t want the same system with different ideologies.
You don’t want a larger system.
You don’t want a bigger, more powerful system.
You don’t want a militarized system.
Now, China is doing it right. For how long is unknown. I do not know how long this current bout of Chinese governance will last for. But I do know that it shows the rest of the world that [1] things CAN be governed by merit over popularity. That [2] small levels of governance at the local level does work, and [3] that a policing mechanism for the leadership ranks (the Corruption Police) is necessary to control fraud.
So right now, in these early stages of the popular American revolt, everyone is thinking about changing the individuals and their party platforms that comprise the government. They are not talking about changing the way the government operates.
And they should.
Nothing will change otherwise.
If you want real change, real substantive change, then you need to nuke it all from orbit and start from scratch all over again.
Ripley meme.
Do you want more?
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.
This post is an update to my SHTF series of posts.
My last SHTF post was back in October 2019, and before the COVID-19, the NED sponsored pro-democracy attempt at a “color revolution” and the fierce anti-China propaganda onslaught. Back then, it seemed that America was waltzing into a state of intensified confusion.
Now things are much clearer.
The USA is on an out-of-control bobsled heading straight for disaster.
There’s no getting off now.
In previous SHTF posts, I had advised (fellow) Americans that the United States was due to a great reset, and that it would be uncomfortable for many. I also advised that if they were smart, to leave America and go to stable but boring places far away from the “death throes” of a dying empire.
I was correct.
Today, most Americans are trapped within the United States are are unable to leave. For the most part, there are very few nations willing to take in American citizens. The terrible handling of the COVID-19 has make the rest of the world frightened in having anything to do with Americans.
So Americans are trapped. Not only from asking permission to leave America by the American government, but also finding another nation willing to take in Americans. It’s “slim pickings”.
So…
Here you are.
We are in a SHTF situation where you are geographically locked inside a geographic region, while that region experiences all sorts of upheavals and changes. Don’t believe me? Well, take a look at the latest news articles out of the Drudge Report today…
You are trapped inside the United States, the news is about this chaos…
… and that chaos.
It’s all a big nasty mess. From people unemployed because of the COVID-19, to the illness itself. To the BLM and Antifa riots, to food shortages, and armed marches. To Donald Trump going “hog wild” crazy in his anti-China crusade. Seriously, it is nuts.
Indeed, in your immediate neighborhood, everything is quiet and calm. Most of the upset is transmitted to you via the Internet, and you have no idea what is true or what is false. Though most of you probably believe in the trends of what you read.
Well…
This is normal.
The Timeline
Let’s take a review of the timeline for the “great reset”.
To review, according to all the measurements that I have mentioned beforehand, everything is pointing to a period of discomfort starting in 2008, and increasing in severity in 2018. Then from 2018 to 2028 will be the worst period of discomfort. With things really starting to get bad around 2020. And a peak crisis period from 2023 to 2027, with the major crisis event centering around 2025.
According to the “Fourth Turning”, we can expect a major critical event to take place around 2025. As shown in the following illustration…
Here are the next few years before the Fourth Turning is expected to reach a crisis point.
Here are my thoughts, and some advice to those of you willing to listen…
Good News
There are some good things that I can say right now.
[1] Firstly, the good news is that change is a natural part of growing. (I know, yada, yada, yada.) But it is true. The United States simply cannot continue as an oligarchy ruled military empire run on imaginary “petrol-dollars”. It has to change. And it will, and you are seeing the start of the changes…
[2] The climax of the event is not this year. That’s the good news.
[3] It will be sometime around 2025 (plus or minus two years). Or as early as 2023, or as late as 2027. That’s in three years at the earliest.
The period of discomfort will last a decade. So expect things to be dicey through 2030.
[4] Here’s more good news. It will not be uniform. There will be areas that will see terrible change, and others what will not see much change at all.
So what will it be like?
Several things will explode all at once…
Several things could implode all at once. Indeed, this is the likeliest scenario. As there are all sorts of trends and events just about to run “off the rails”, and all sort of “the opportunistic others” who have plans to take advantage of government collapse.
All the usual “good people” assure us that violent revolution is not on the table. This means, simply, that it is.
- From Brett Stevens at Amerika
It could be everything and anything. It could be social upheaval in alignment with the Nazi takeover of Germany in the 1930’s, coupled with the genocide of the Cambodians under Pol Pot. It could be a mixture of George Orwell, and the worst elements of THX1138. It could be every nightmare that you could possibly dream of.
‘THX 1138’ is a chilling look at a 25th-century totalitarian state where mankind is stripped of any individuality. People are numbered drones, and a government-enforced program of sedating drugs controls the populace. The story’s title character, THX, is a factory worker whose life is irrevocably changed when he stops taking his mind-numbing drugs.
When the violence comes—and it will come—the military and militarized police forces will face domestic insurgents who are better armed, trained, supplied, coordinated, and technologically proficient than the foreign insurgents the military has heretofore been unable to defeat.
- From Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic
Breitbart - Calif. Police Chief Cancels Event to Honor Fallen Officer Because Republicans Were Invited ... "this is not Trump country, we don’t want Republicans here"
Indeed, all this anti-white propaganda is geared towards genocide. It is not geared to any objective regarding healing. It is an out of control manipulation by the oligarchy to pit Americans against each other.
You cannot purify white people through the healing magic of diversity if they are not actually part of diversity.
-Z Man
Let’s just clear out all the nonsense and get to the basics…
When Progressives talk about diversity, they mean blacks.
We can put the upper bound on diversity as 20%. Any more than that and white crime victimization and awareness of it begins to soar. This sets off white flight.
Baltimore is a great example. Once its black population crossed the 25% level, it began a rapid decline into chaos.
As Rhodesia, Baltimore and now South Africa show, there is some minimum number of whites required to keep the lights on, so everyone can enjoy the wonderfulness of diversity.
In the case of Rhodesia, the number fell below the minimum and it became Zimbabwe. In Baltimore, they have hovered along the critical number for decades. South Africa staggers on, but they too are approaching the inflection point.
-Z Man
Someone, or some group, is organizing a campaign leading towards the genocide of “white people”. This will absolutely manifest during the crisis period. Look, just because the mainstream media isn’t covering the obvious does not mean that that it doesn’t exist.
Fighting Is Under Way
And leftist blood-lust is not limited to a fringe. A very intelligent and gentle acquaintance of mine, someone with whom I once enjoyed a cordial and friendly long-running debate, believes that Trump sent federal troops into Berkeley the other night to conduct mass arrests of protesters, trigging the riots. It’s completely untrue and she had no idea where she heard it, but she believes it as much as she believes in gravity. And her false belief, what psychologists would call a hallucination (h/t Scott Adams), allows her to justify anything the rioters did, up to and including murder.
Here’s the thing. You’ve probably heard the word “privilege” so much you could puke when you hear it. The idea of white privilege is central to the leftist hallucination. And the idea of a privileged race led Germany to the Final Solution.
Adolf Hitler wrote in 1919:
"But an anti-Semitism based on reason must lead to a systematic legal elimination of the privileges of the Jews. The ultimate objective of such legislation must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews from civil and cultural influence."
In fact, the Nazi propagandists worked overtime to defame Jews for their privilege. Hitler claimed Jews avoided physical labor of any kind, preferring work in finance, mercantile, and the arts. He lamented that Jews wrote and produced 90 percent of German movies despite being only one percent of the population. His propaganda depicted Jewish women as fat and lazy, yet wealthy, feeding off the labor of the German people.
Substitute “working class whites” for “Jews,” and Nazi propaganda sounds a lot like CNN commentators and UC Berkeley professors. Even so-called conservative Bill Kristol says it’s time to replace America’s white working class with immigrants.
It’s pretty clear that the left uses the same rhetoric and scapegoating against conservatives as the Nazi used against Jews. So we have to ask if these leftists use the propaganda techniques to the same end.
The Nazis wanted to vilify and dehumanize Jews so the German people would be conditioned for the Final Solution: extermination.
When you hear the speeches of campus protesters, you have to conclude that the left has a final solution in mind for people like you and me. You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are the words of a school teacher in Seattle protesting against Trump and his supporters:
"And we need to start killing people. First off, we need to start killing the White House. The White House must die. The White House, your fucking White House, your fucking Presidents, they must go! Fuck the White House.
Pay the fuck up, pay the fuck up. It ain’t just your fucking time, it’s your fucking money, and now your fucking life is devoted to social change."
Democrats, establishment Republicans, and the supposedly “responsible” media ignored this story. They ignored it because they are afraid of attracting the mob’s attention. Like Germans in the 1930s, some people value their own survival too much to stop bloodshed and brutality.
-Hennessysview
It could be an exodus of the wealthy from the urban centers…
All those pricey urban meccas could become crime-ridden ghost towns. How could such a reversal occur? Everyone who lives outside protected enclaves will reach a point where the "urban lifestyle" is no longer worth the sacrifices and costs. Once enough of the top 10% leave, the food/beverage service industry implodes.
Service employees are renters, paying sky-high rents that unemployment can't cover. Vacant apartments pile up. As the exodus gathers momentum, all the reasons people clung so rabidly to urban meccas decay. Local government jacks up fees, tickets, permits and taxes, accelerating the exodus.
That's how pricey urban meccas turn into ghost towns inhabited by those who can't leave and those living on public services.
-Of Two Minds Blog
And what would happen if a civil war, a CWII or SHTF event were to occur? America would be in chaos. Everything would be a mess, and the central governments from the Federal to the State, and Local levels would be very busy trying to maintain order.
Would other nations sit by and watch from afar? Would they decide to help and roll in the UN to restore order? Or would they just be content to watch America burn?
Thus, if a civil war broke out in the United States, would China, Russia, and Iran not jump in to finally render America helpless? To take advantage of the situation, to cripple the United States to a point where it could never ever, ever EVER fully recover?
Why NOT do a “double tap” and castrate America back into oblivion from which it would take a full 100 years to recover from?
Nuclear war, one initiated by America in order to control the American mobs, could easily reverse America’s fortunes in a nanosecond. The idea that a war out here, or over there, would be created and have no consequences is a very dangerous belief. The world is not the 1960’s, and not every nation is a third world tiny splat of land. Major nations are now getting involved in the global scene, and they do not take kindly to Americans throwing their weight around.
If America has gotten fat, plump and comfortable, being the bully on the global stage, throwing “regime changing” wrenches (via the CIA, NED, and NID) to everyone from Venezuela, Syria, the Ukraine, Hong Kong and China, won’t other nations resent it?
And, if an opportunity presents itself, would not another nation take advantage of that opportunity. An opportunity to “de-fang” the United States, and “neuter” it’s ability to project global influence (read; power) in the world?
I would say yes.
“Hours after the bombs go off in cities, these fires continue to build up and they create firestorms that feed on themselves. They get so hot that everything in the city becomes fuel for its own destruction. The energy released becomes much greater than the weapon itself,” Dr. Mills explained, drawing parallels to the way fire consumed the city of Dresden during the World War II. From each of these 100 detonations, massive firestorms would engulf whole cities and churn five million tons of black carbon into the stratosphere.
By nuking the major American cities, all industry would grind to a halt. Banking and savings would be non-existent. Everything would collapse and the survivors would flee the cities into the countryside.
Americans should never be under the impression that the rest of the world views us with favor. In fact, it is quite the opposite.
The next turning could have the worst elements of everything known to man. This could be nuclear war, chemical, biological and germ warfare high technology spying and swarm drone weapons. All of which could happen simultaneously while the USA government might to enact genocide against its citizenry.
Oh, and by the way, a fellow by the name of John Titor claimed to be from the future. Yes, he claimed to be a time traveler from the future. He described just this exact scenario, where there was a rather long period of civil unrest and then Russia nuked all the cities. Whether you believe him or not is immaterial. He has some interesting things to ponder.
The link below opens up into a new tab for your reading pleasure.
From the post…
' The blogger suggests this because he questions what actually occurred did not match all the conflicts that John Titor predicted. Perhaps the events he mentions will actually still occur, only they will actually occur 10 years later.
Maybe, instead of a civil war in 2013, there is one in 2023? Nuclear war in 2025, instead of 2015. '
Remember those dates;
2020 – Instability.
2023 – Civil War.
2025 – Nuclear War.
So, there is going to be an increase in the severity of the current mess…
Yes, there is.
And no, we don’t know the precise details.
But, do we really need to know all those details? History has told us that when America goes into a Fourth Turning reset situation, it becomes a no-rules cluster slug-fest. In fact, we can say that…
The most advanced weapons will be used.
War will be fought on American soil.
Foreign nations will be involved to some extent.
And since this is scheduled to happen pretty soon, what can you do (personally) to protect yourself and your family?
Well, I have some thoughts on this matter…
[1] Relocate to a safe, boring area.
Yes, you are trapped in the USA for now. Maybe things will open up next year, or maybe not. But in the meantime, you can relocate to a safe and quiet location that is pretty bland and boring. That’s the key don’t you know. Be bland. Be boring. Be safe. Be dull. Be uninteresting.
A great idea me-thinks.
But where?
[1a] Avoid all urban areas. You want to avoid crowds and the likelihood of meeting people who you do not know personally. Historically, cities have always been dangerous during societal upsets, resets and wars. Let me be clear about this; Get out while the getting’s good.
[1b] Avoid wilderness areas. One of the first things that began in March when the COVID-19 outbreak started to happen was all the city-dwellers took their RV’s, trucks, pickups and vehicles and headed for the state forests. The roads were blocked and the entire forests were jammed packed like a New York City rush hour with angry and frustrated city people. There were arguments, stores that were cleaned out and incidents of stabbings and shootings. Do not go where other people might go. Avoid state parks, federal parks, state and federal forests, and other “green areas” that are displayed on maps.
[1c] Move into a small town. Small towns have the basics that you need to survive. Additionally, it is much easier to make friends there. Now the thing is that if you move into a small community, you absolutely MUST know your neighbors. Do not plan on moving somewhere and not meeting people and making friends. Not only must you make friends, but you must be productive, helpful and good.
I would suggest that you also…
[2] Have a secure lifestyle
Which means…
[2a] Get involved in the community. A the bare minimum, this would include being a regular member of a church, and a member of some other activity, like the Chamber of Commerce, or the Grange, or the Rotary. make sure that you are known and recognized.
Many people think about “bugging in”, or “being mobile”. Here, I suggest that you integrate yourself with your community. For there is strength in numbers. Automatically, you will be part of something bigger. And when things go bad, you would be far, far better off than the lone guy hiding in a basement with six months stockpile of rice.
Now is NOT the time to be a “lone wolf”. You need to integrate yourself as part of a community and do it quickly.
And that is lifestyle.
To be a part of something, you must be ready and willing to participate in things and contribute. This is true in life, but it becomes very importantly true during crisis situations.
So here, I advise that you pick up some skills that you can use to provide help, services, and assistance were things to go really bad…
[2b] Emergency First Aid. You should take some classes in emergency first aid. You should be able to bend a broken arm, stitch up a cut, and perform emergency surgery. You should know how to handle gunshot wounds, infections, and food poisonings. This means that not only would you take a singular class at the YMCA, but advanced courses at the community college, and have some reference books on hand in your house. Finally, let people KNOW that you have these skills.
This is not only a useful skill for yourself, but it is something that you can trade for when you need to trade or barter.
[2c] Access to fresh water. During great societal upsets the ability to get water, electricity and internet is gone. Some areas might be spared this, but most will not. We know from recent history that in Bosnia, people died trying to get fresh water, or contracted illnesses from drinking tainted water. Either have a way to collect and purify water, or invest in a well.
[2d] Ability to repair without electricity. Which means that the ability to repair things without electricity would be a very valuable skill. If you have access to a manual lathe, or other such tools, you will be able to provide your services from anything to repairing a windmill on a water pump, to repairing a gun. Be helpful.
Try repairing things without electricity. You will be surprised how difficult it is. You need to be able to do this with files, hammers and pliers.
[2e] Local Indian lore. Long before the United States was colonized, the local Indians in your region lived well. They farmed and had their own ways of preserving food, and treating their sick. This is local lore that has been forgotten, but not at the local library or historical society. Connect with these people and learn a thing or two. You will not regret it.
This is one of those things that you see all over the Internet. How to make hide-holes, and how to secure your windows and other such things. There is much to cover here, but I will stick to the basics.
[3a] You need well bolted doors. One that can be barricaded with 2×4 lumber pieces from the inside (two beams, top and bottom, resting on a metal clamp). It might not prevent your house from burning down, but it will be able to defend against roving bands of urban youth in jacked cars.
[3b] Windows need to be secured and covered if need be. Plywood, ready to put up in place, or welded metal bars, or other systems that would make break-ins very difficult.
[3c] The home needs to be hidden with overgrown shrubbery and debris. Sure, eventually people will find you. But don’t make it easy. Be the junk yard next to the gold refinery. Be the boring electrical sub-station next to the grocery store. Be the abandoned building next to the hardware store.
[3d] You need a hidden room, or basement chamber. Any hidden room, or any size if far better than none at all. You need to be able to secure your valuables, both things and people.
[3e] You need guns and you need not to be afraid to use them. I would suggest that you forget about those cheap SKS banana-clip pseudo assault guns. Get yourself a couple of shotguns. And a few reliable 9mm handguns. Expect that when you shoot people, it will NOT be like television. They will not go down on the first shot. Chances are that you would have to empty the entire clip into their chest. Be ready to use them.
[3f] You need a garden and you need to keep it working year-around. Make sure that you always have potatoes, onions, and other related root crops planted. Most bandits couldn’t tell a potato plant from skunk weed. So while they might raid your tomato bushes, they would tend to leave your potatoes alone. Plant some apple trees, and other berry bushes. Let your property provide sustenance for you.
[3g] If you have room, consider a chicken coop. Learn how to raise chickens. These are a great thing to do to provide food on your table, and a great way to trade with your neighbors with.
[4] Supplies
From what I see, things are going to get really bad over the next three years. Finally around 2025, things are going to go to shit really fast. So you’ve got a precious few years to stock up, learn and prepare. I hope that things won’t go “tits up” in your area, but if they do, you’ll be ready for anything.
[4a] You need basic food supplies to last you for at least six months. This means canned goods, rice, wheat flour, nuts, and other things of importance. Like cooking oil, salt, pepper, baking soda, yeast, etc. Buy the cans by the case. Buy the staples by the sack. Buy the liquids by the gallon.
[4b] Additionally, you will need “kits”. These are things that will provide you will options if things go really bad. Like cages to raise pigeons in, fishing tackle, traps for rabbits and other small game, crossbow or other quiet way to hunt. And, with everything, you had best be well prepared in how to use them effectively and properly.
[4c] Prepare things for trade. You should plan on having things for trade. The most popular things are vices. So you can stock up with cheap alcohol in little bottles (bigger than those airline bottles), smaller than a regular bottle. This can be any alcohol. Same goes for tobacco, cigarettes, and other related items. Including disposable lighters. (You can buy a case of 100 really cheaply.)
[5] Mobility
You should have a bicycle or two. Both should be capable of off road use. Do not expect that vehicles will still be operable during the height of the crisis. In fact, you will probably want to keep off the roads. Anything that will enable you to travel quickly and silently through the forest would be an advantage.
[6] Electric system
You should have a system of recharging DC batteries. Whether this is by solar power or wind, and then have a set of walkee-talkee’s. You can also have a small battery powered, or hand crank powered radio and lights. Plan now. Do not wait until the last moment.
Here at MM I can supply shipping containers of this stuff. (nothing smaller than a pallet load). If you are interested contact me privately on laobangbh@163.com .
[7] Deceptions
If things get to the point where the government has broken down…
Police are unavailable. Military are deployed in certain areas. News is periodic or confused, then you know that SHTF is getting worse. You will need to create deceptions to make your property unattractive.
Some ideas.
[7a] (Fake) Downed high power lines with signs that warn of “High Voltage”. And (if possible) some low voltage DC shock wires to dissuade any adventuresome individual.
[7b] A few dead people in the yard that looks like they got trapped when they messed up with the wrong people.
[7c] Bad odors, flies, maggots, and refuse.
[7d] Rattling cans, and other things that make a real racket is anyone moves in a certain area on your property. Most people want stealth and quiet. Even after all the turmoil dies down, people will still travel in small groups and move about silently. By rigging up noise makers, you will discourage these people from coming near your property.
[7e] Traps. With spikes, barbed wire, and other mechanisms that can be lethal if triggered. Think Vietnam booby-traps.
The idea here is that you do not want anyone to come near your space and your property. You will make it as unappealing as possible, and life threatening tends to work the best.
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.
It will be a turning point. It will be a point of inversion, a point of change. A point where things go one way or the other, and everyone in the middle is killed.
Glory or Ruin.
It will be the us vs them. The patriots vs the Red Coats. The grey vs the blue. The yanks against the Nazi’s.
Conclusion
Aside from the move to a safe spot, every item on this list can be purchased in total under a few thousand dollars.
If nothing happens, then consider yourself fortunate. You will have squandered your money on a insurance policy. But you and I both know that things are building up. The Antifa and BLM are on the march and are openly telling everyone what they plan to do. Theya re being funded by rich oligarchs, and are receiving large sums of money and weapons…
If something does happen, while you might not be the best prepared prepper in the nation, you will be able to survive. And that is what all this is about. Survival.
I wish that you all could have done what I did, and took a “life boat” off to a far away land. But most of you did not. Instead, figuring that you would know when you would need to leave, and then leave then.
Well… that time came and went. And you should have left the same time as when the oligarchy fled. The last week of March 2020.
You are now completely trapped with the rest of the population upon a ship that is slowly sinking into the deep dark cold waters.
It’s quiet now…
But the Captain is busy shouting orders to the staff, and people are a little restless in the lounges and staterooms. He’s slurring his voice, and making all kinds of strange proclamations and orders. Sometimes the stewards just stand there and look at him with a blank expression on their face. “Is he mad?” they ask themselves.
Do not think that it is just going to go away. Plan and take the necessary actions to secure you and your family’s safety.
Do you want more?
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.
Here are some videos taken around China during the Summer of 2020. During this time, China has pretty much recovered from the Coronavirus, but remains guarded and cautious. The rest of the world is still fighting the virus, and the United States is a “basket case”. The videos are a collection of home movies that I took and Tictok videos from the original platform Douxing, which has always been banned in the United States.
Incidentally, all those laws being made in the United States about banning or changing Tictok or Wechat has absolutely ZERO effect in China.
American laws end at the American shoreline, and as far as the influence that they will have, it will be minimal. The primary generation of income for all the Chinese companies come from within China itself.
So, as an example, Tictok revenue in the USA is less than 2% of what it makes in China.
Here, I use Alex Jones as an example (in the title) as he is pushing the “China Bad” narrative (generated by the Pompeo CIA / State Department) very rigorously. He, like others of his market segment, (such as Rush Limbaugh and Hall Turner) use China as the scapegoat for all the problems that America is experiencing. It’s a convenient villain.
It’s also absolutely and completely false.
It's like a fight in a school yard between two bullies. The teacher comes out to break it up. And one of the bullies points to the teachers car and yells"Someone is trying to steal your car!"
China does not look anything like these multi-millionaire television and radio personalities say. And because they are so very, very, very far off the “deep end” in their speculative fantasies, those that listen to them, end up making decisions based on bad intel.
They make bad decisions based upon their illusions instead of based on reality.
Such as Donald Trump / Mike Pompeo when they decided to “institute a regime change” in Communist China “for the Chinese people”.
Not realizing that the Communist Government IS the people of China.
Not just in "flowery words" and "pithy sayings", but really in reality. Their entire society is structured as that of an individual having membership within something greater.
America, is set up the opposite. It is a nation of "lone wolves", or individuals who fight alone and reap all the benefits of their hard labors for themselves alone.
So the Pompeo speed and the Trump public positioning, is of course very silly, and absolutely insane that a (supposedly capable) government would even dare publicly announce such a strategy.
"Ah. I do not like their government. We will do everything to destroy that government. We will build a coalition to enable us to destroy it as a collective group.
We are doing it for democracy, and freedom, and for the people of China."
Now, for the record, I have listened to these television personalities for decades. For the longest time I believed every word that they said, as they provided me with a news and opinion outlet that was not (then) available on the “mainstream American press”. And in so believing everything, I became a rabid nationalist conservative.
Then life happened.
Uh oh.
I saw how “Justice” actually works, and how absolutely out of touch the mainstream conservative narrative actually is with the many facets of American society. Some things just did not add up. (How can a nation be a Republic with the election of Senators? If America is so great, why was I always “treading water” and desperately trying to play “catch up?)
I started to move to the left (politically) and for the longest time I oscillated back and forth between left and right trying to find a “middle ground”. I guess you might say that I was a Libertarian at heart. I just pretty much wanted to be left alone. I wasn’t hurting or harming anyone. I just wanted to be left alone.
If America was the land of the “lone wolf”, then let me take on that role. Leave me alone! As it is my right as an American!
No one in the USA would let me.
There was always something I was doing wrong. From not wearing a seat-belt, to smoking in a restaurant, to drinking beer on Sunday, to not reporting a sale (I made to a friend) to the IRS. It got so bad that I was afraid to do anything. When I was driving, I would always look at my speedometer if I saw a police car. I would only carry just “enough” money in my wallet so that I wouldn’t be questioned “why” I had so much money. It was NOT a life that I wanted to live.
Then I moved to China.
Whoa! Was it nothing like I expected!
I expected something out of a dystopian novel. I expected darkness, pale faces and dour expressions. I expected goose-stepping security guards everywhere. I expected sadness, grey skies and a bleak landscape. I expected third-world hovels, and a remote and impossible to reach ruling class. I expected filth, squalor, bad habits, nasty behaviors, and oppressive regulations and endless lines of bureaucracy.
I expected the “cardboard cut-out” illusion that has been drummed into my head for the last six decades.
I did not see it.
I saw something else.
I saw FREEDOM. Real, honest to goodness, freedom. I saw people who were living life without fear of the police. I saw people who were able to save money. I saw people smoking (gasp!) at their desks at work (gasp!) and pin-up of nude girls on the office walls (gasp!) and buying beer at lunch as if it was nothing. Nothing! I saw people that had hope and dreams and a strong belief that their government would stick by them, and help THEM when they needed it.
Oh….
Let me show you what I saw, and continue to see, in China to this day…
Each picture contains a movie. Please click on the picture to watch a movie that will open up in a new tab that will illustrate the story within the picture shown.
The videos
Here are some videos that I have collected and that provides some sort of “snapshot” of life in China. Good or bad, you can say that [1] it is different from that in the United States, and [2] that it doesn’t at all resemble anything like the news media (on all levels) say it is.
And that is the point.
These videos are a selection of videos that point to how life is within China in various aspects. They are a mix of some “home videos” that I took (like the first one) and videos that I have collected using various Chinese APPs. I suggest you check them all out.
Conclusion
One of the many things you learn when you leave the Untied States (or any of it’s satellite nations, like the UK or Canada) is that the world looks nothing like the American media says it is. In fact, it looks absolutely and stunningly different.
This goes as far as what other nations are like. As in the example of China. To, just how welcome all the Americans are when they are busy “spreading democracy and freedom” to the rest of the world. Like here…
.
Or, being an example for the rest of the world to emulate. Like how the United States has handled the Coronavirus. As shown clearly in this video…
.
The future belongs to people who will work together as a society for the benefit of all. Not to those who take, who demand, and who do not contribute. Their ideas no longer work in this small place that we call the earth. Being selfish is not going to help society as a whole. We will all need to work together.
The best example that I can give is this;
You can be the best basket-ball player in the world. But up against a team of other players, who are all well trained in working together, you will lose. You will fail spectacularly.
Don’t be selfish. Work together to make the world a better place. That is what China is trying to do, and you can see it if you study the culture long enough. The opposite is the United States. Lead by a “self made” man who accumulated piles and piles of riches all by himself.
Be part of something greater. Work as part of a group.
Or die alone.
Do you want more?
I have many more posts along these lines in my China Index. You can see it 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 very much.
As the COVID-19 ravishes the United States, a number of interesting articles are appearing. These articles consider the COVID-19 as the “pivot moment” of change that the United States sorely needs. Maybe so, or maybe not. We will see. In any event these articles are interesting, introspective, and poignant. Here is one such article.
This article is titled “The Strength of Broken Dreams” by Matthew J. Peterson and was written on 1APR20, when the COVID-19 just started to turn the United States upside down. It was edited to fit this venue and all credit to the authors.
The Strength of Broken Dreams
“The American Dream” is dead, but America remains.
In the 1960s the American Dream spread quickly through the American mind.
At its best it meant that Americans could fulfill the moderate, but deeply rooted, desire most people have to work, own a home, and raise a family on the income earned by one parent.
At its worst, it was not attached to much more than this—a generic promise of economic and social mobility. The phrase was always ridiculed by intellectuals and activists as much as it was used positively. This is America, after all.
It was always amorphous. But for some time now, the American Dream has been dead, both as concept and as reality. In the coming months, regardless of exactly how long it lasts, millions will be forced to further reevaluate their dreams as the virus takes its toll on our bodies, our economy, and our way of life.
American Dreams
Dreams slip into air outside the grasp of mind the more fully we try to hold onto them. Is their unraveling noble or unsavory? Is their letting go freedom—or slavery?
Today we hold that two parents must work for ideological as well as practical reasons. We’re told the family itself is oppressive. Certainly it is harder for many people to start and raise one, as both lived experience and data show. The suburbs are castigated as evil. Certainly it is now harder in many regions to afford a home in one. The idea of working for the same employer for years and “settling down” was long unthinkable to Millennials, and the “gig economy” celebrated, up until recently.
It made sense to tell people looking for a decent way of life to move to southern California in the 1950s and ’60s. They could buy a home, and their children could go to college and work to become doctors or lawyers. Would you advise an young, aspirational family to move to southern California now, in 2020?
But from the end of World War II to the present day, we have not stopped dreaming. We dreamed many dreams. The American Dream became an increasingly feverish kaleidoscope of dreams, manipulated by many mad masters, both within and without ourselves. Our own desires, as well as our ruling classes, increasingly untethered our dreams from reality. First whimsical and sentimental, Disney’s childhood; then Dionysian, like 70s teenage rock; then hardening into habitual vices pretending to be respectable, responsible adulthood; culminating in denial, dysfunction, and vicious delusions.
These dreams did not ultimately better us or draw us out of ourselves. They did not call us to higher purpose or action. Nor did they finally cause us to go wild, become revolutionary or reactionary, violent, or unrestful.
Instead they acted like cultural ketamine, lulling us into dissociative sleep. In our near past, many have lived in a steady twilight of manicured dreams and illusions, a coma stabilized and maintained by the anaesthetic drip of electronic media, nourished only by the feeding tube of petty consumption. These dreams are coming to an end.
As my friend and colleague James Poulos has frequentlysuggested over the last few years, the rise of digital technology—combined with impoverished, if not dystopian, elite “ethics” and “politics”—have interrupted our dreams and left us disenchanted with the televisual era. We are now collectively waking up to the reality around us: our doddering leaders long past retirement age, our corrupted institutions, our paltry or absurdist political ideologies, our weakened bodies and souls, and, for many, a deep unhappiness and dissatisfaction with present circumstances.
This is the real reason for the rise in deaths of despair despite a historically high level of material prosperity—which is rendered meaningless in context. The first to wake up were those affected most by economic realities, haunted as they were by the dawning perception that no way out, no path forward, no respectable, honored, or fulfilling way of life was available to them. What, in our contested landscape, is the American way of life now?
Our dreams were already dissipating. The coming of the virus has perhaps hastened their demise, widening the demographic range of those waking up in the valley of the real. Trust in our political, cultural, and economic system and its leaders was already waning. Regardless of how long the virus lasts, how many people are now being forced to rethink their education, their status, their work, and the very course of their lives?
The experience of the changes that have only just begun will have deep and personal effects on each of us. Our dreams are unraveling, and we cannot hold onto them.
The Death of Celebrity
Dreams unmasked and untethered, threads unbound.
Celebrity killed people—but the crowd was entertained.
Celebrity routinely, ritualistically killed people, but the crowds that created and sustained them throughout their lives were also entertained by their deaths. For the crowd which they became obliged to serve, a “tragic” death was all part of the final act, drenched in maudlin sentimentality—catharsis on the cheap.
One could never interrupt the show to speak at length of the likely actual causes of their deaths, of their inner wretchedness and pain—whatever propelled them to seek refuge in addictive pleasures. Whatever really haunted them. Whoever managed and directed their lives. Whatever kept them from healing and strengthening themselves and living accountable lives.
“No. Money and fame are good and make you and us, your fans, happy. Let us keep our fantasies,” said the plaintive crowd. “You can’t take them from us. They are ours. They do not condemn us like the heroes of old. They are our living puppets. Our living symbols. And they must die so we can live these fantasies. They must die so we can live in dreams.”
More proximately, the celebrities were the puppets of those who controlled our dreams. When the mechanism of dream creation fails, in part because it has become readily observable, all involved are revealed for what they are. And we no longer care about them. Celebrities singing “Imagine” are no longer likeable, with or without their makeup. They no longer dazzle, and we’d rather see those to whom we have some real connection on our screens. We’d rather see our family and friends than watch these dull strangers off stage without their masks on.
The #metooed men behind the curtains that have lately lifted are uninteresting to us. They are going into retirement as quickly as they can. The galaxy of interwoven mythologies they created has lost its luster, no longer appealing to our inner feelings. Nostalgia, already made uncomfortable by the totalizing “woke” politicization of our media companies, now dwindles as the future becomes more pressing on the present than the memories of childish comforts past.
For the educated classes, the same logic applies to the “news” and what passes for analysis, punditry, and intellectual notoriety. The desire for fame in the 20th century, when the screen was “silver” and the carpets ran red, boiled over briefly onto social media before the reality of digital life devalued all punditry, talking heads, and even the glamour of entertainment itself.
It was always a strange and slavish notion: why would multiple generations of millions of children desire such a thing—to be an actor or musician strutting about the stage, often paid as a part-time employee, “project” by ”project”, show by show, by producers and owners who are actually in charge? One need not be a Socrates nor a Plato to see this as nothing other than a sign of great sickness, of a society in the throes of worsening political disease.
Yet we thought it could go on forever, until it didn’t.
Dissociative Slumber
Dreams deferred? Dreams opaque and vanishing in the nude, once covered in robes that now fall silently like snow to ground.
To live the unexamined life is to be lost to yourself: to be cut off from outside light and air, cultivating an empty darkness within that eventually suffocates even the inner light by which you see yourself, snuffing out your very person. It is a long and difficult journey both to get to such a place, and to journey back—although jolting experiences can hasten the process in both directions. The streaming flood of borrowed dreams, which could not be countered by our broken families and decrepiteducationalsystem, made it possible for masses of people in our lifetimes to approach it.
We spent hours daily looking into screens pretending to substitute for reality. They gave us shared mass dreams and epistemologies by which we saw ourselves and the world at large. As time went on, the televisual medium became less reflective of us as a people and more directive, seeking to influence our way of life in an ever deeper, ever “woker” manner. At the same time, digital technology fractured the shared nature of those dreams and their corresponding epistemologies, allowing for multiple “channels,” voices, and ways of seeing the world that undercut mass control.
The temptation of all human beings in slipstreams of relative peace at home is to go to sleep—to pretend that the vivid drama of good and evil is not playing out within our hearts and minds and across the globe every day. To pretend that one can simply absolve oneself from the pursuit of justice. To pretend that one’s own society or social clan is incorrupt. To laugh off the deepest questions and airily dismiss earnest answers, as if “science” or some “expert” out there has dissected and explained it all. To lazily believe and indulge in distractive fictions and comforting technocratic myths about your world.
Such matters are extraordinarily difficult, after all. That’s what makes individual virtues and political life noble.
But this is also what makes giving up altogether so tempting. If all institutions are perfectly fine—or perfectly corrupted—why bother? This giving up, or refusal to take responsibility, leads to lives cut off from actual politics and real virtues, in which either soft hedonism or asinine idealism of all sorts flourishes. Live Action Role Playing, or idealism, leads in turn to more dashed hopes and dreams, fostering more shallow cynicism. And here we are.
What incidents like the 1619 Project reveal is how deep the suicidal urges of the western world have seeped into the American psyche. People on the Left (and Right) want to denigrate, revile, and blame the founding—our origins and intrinsic system. It makes them feel good. It doesn’t matter what some of the best historians (leaning Left with no bone to pick) say about the truth of the matter. We wanted to believe negative mythology about ourselves.
This is so because we knew something was amiss, but whatever that is we cannot easily discern. 1619 is but one example. It’s not just that it pronounces we are flawed, like every human society (although not every human society is equally good about admitting it). It’s that we want to believe we are intrinsically broken and cannot be fixed—at a time in which we are indisputably the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth. This is a spectacle worth meditating on.
We want to believe we cannot change ourselves or our system and that it must break down, or be broken down. It would be one thing if we did so because we wanted something better, but this is by no means clear. Insofar as anyone does seemingly want things to improve there is a deep divide over what would constitute “improvement.” Regardless, this sort of fatalism is often a self-fulfilling prophecy in individual human lives.
We are indeed waking up now, but not in the manner the Social Justice Warriors or Right-wing culture warriors might wish. The virus is yet another quickening event that threatens our posturing. It makes a mockery of our preferred stance and subgroups. It reveals things as they are—and challenges us to confront reality.
The new reality is uncomfortable because it snaps us out of our stupor. The populace, waking up from a long distracted, T.V.-induced sleep, discovers that in real life it’s now often functionally illiterate, increasingly unemployed or engaged in meaningless employment, obese, addicted, and grumpy, if not suicidal. People increasingly feel real fears and have no idea what to do with them.
Meanwhile, our various officially approved groups of rulers are exposed as vapid, apolitical, smoothly medicated drones who wish to live as comfortably as transhumanly possible and are uncomfortable dealing with anything that bursts their finely tuned bubbles. And in differing ways, in digital life everyone seems far more vulgar and vicious than what used to be shown to us “on” the major vehicles of social engineering.
Who will rescue us from them—and ourselves?
The Courage of the Real
You find yourself looking up from the bottom of a large and ancient lake. Disorientated and troubled, you eventually get your bearings. Reflexively longing to reach the sunlit surface, you begin to feel the weight of the deep bearing down on your body. Above the underwater motions of living creatures, your countrymen are engaged in fierce naval battle on the surface. The wreckage and bodies drift downwards, but you cannot rise. Held in place, you can do nothing.
The human soul is difficult to rescue and resuscitate when habitually distant from the real, entranced in a kind of living death. But the jolt of events increasingly allows us to see our caves for what they are. The inner pilot light needs to be lit again, but what will catch? This is the problem America now faces.
The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves about ourselves and end up believing. When those lies are taken from us, we are disorientated and feel the pain of their removal. But as we begin to see past them, we see the distance we have created between ourselves and reality, and we despair.
We often don’t tell ourselves outright lies so much as hide from ourselves, shoring fragments against our ruins to hide our ruinous parts from ourselves and others, attempting to cordon off or even willfully self-amputate what we consider undesirable.
We cling desperately to these fragments—these distractive or reflective fictions—as if camouflage, armor, or shelter could turn us into something we think we’d rather be, never mind heal the disease or wounds they might conceal.
Courage is needed first to seek out and confront the truth about yourself and reality, and then to conform and develop yourself accordingly. It takes courage to confront and develop one’s inner life, and above all to conform that life to reality as it is.
We are most often cowards not because we make the effort to run away, but because we merely turn away. We turn our gaze from the truth about our inner and outer reality, and we act according to our willful ignorance.
Having so turned, we too easily recreate ourselves in our own preferred image by way of simplistic amputation, bifurcation, or cosmetic concealment. Over time, we each begin to live within a partial framework of habitual blindness or willful fantasy.
In this sense, certain forms of even physiological mental illnesses or debilitating conditions can often be seen as more extreme forms of what all humans suffer, often at their own hands along with those of others in the same troubled state.
What festering wounds are we hiding? The metastasizing soft hedonism of distraction. The painful brokenness of shattered families. The apolitical “politics” of “naturally” unsocial atomistic gods. Disembodied bodies, puritanically dedicated to amorphous, directionless, prophylactically un-gendered sex within themselves, social only for the sake of attaining a continuous, inner-directed masturbatory self-affirmation.
In a sense there is no “other” when we are all autonomously equal godlike beings. When we forgo seeking fulfillment out there, or simply use what is outside ourselves for our own ends, we discover a certain devilish equality. This the inverse of the natural equality yet buried deep at the heart of the American regime. It is an imposter, born ex nihilo, rather than the substance of human nature.
As in John Lennon’s song, we imagined the impossible. We saw evils mixed up with being. Therefore being itself was evil. So we imagined we were nonbeing, or that we could become so.
We imagined we were pure potential, to be molded within ourselves without any form from the outside. We thought we could share the world because we had nothing to unify us other than our rejection of any religious or political claim to its rightful use. We thought we could attain unity merely by each seeking to use the other for their own purposes. What is everyone’s is no one’s, we thought, and so we should realize we are each no one in the empty solipsism of our self, within which we could form our own being.
In sum, we imagined that our imagining alleviates the unpleasantness of the real by eliminating the central forms of human community. This practically defines everything that went wrong with the televisual era. This was the best we could wish for—the best we could imagine—preferring imagined nonbeing to engaging with the difficulties of the real, which we wanted to evade, or saw no way to resolve. It was to act as if in the here and now we could be either gods or beasts, with nothing possible in between.
This is also the path to power for those who would rule without the bother of deep consent. Get the populace to think they are all perfectly equal, self-sufficient, atomistic little gods who make their own, fully informed, rational choices and arrive at their views the same way: internally, by means of the majesty of their own will and the gloriousness of their own mind, without learning from others outside themselves, least of all leaders or any kind of order or hierarchy. Without taking cues from anyone or anything or any event. Without suspecting that entertainment and advertising no less than punditry and education affects them in anything more than a neutral way.
Flatter them. Get them to think they are independent, free thinkers without ever having to work to think.
Give them leaders they don’t see or acknowledge and a shadow government of hierarchical order which gives them cues. Create and shape events and images that lead them to desire whatever you wish, from within, as if they’d thought of it themselves. Let them project their desires into the emptiness of the images and talking heads while you control the frame and focus, molding their desires. Let the millions of independent, free thinkers each buy millions of the same product so they can show each other they are independent and free.
Enslave them to their own internal desires. Profit and rule.
It’s an old story, forever new.
Reality-#Based Hope
Looking down the trail ahead at dusk, before having to turn back. Looking down the long roads as you pass. Looking up before turning in. Looking up before heading down again.
Tocqueville, in his introduction to Democracy in America, describes how the very people who could have helped shape democracy for the better rejected it for the wrong reasons while the worst people led its rise for all the wrong reasons. As democracy rose regardless, Tocqueville was keenly aware of the screeching, jumbled train wreck that is human existence, tried to describe it, and hoped someone paid attention. Which no one often does, really, until well after the fact.
And that’s life, often enough. To glimpse the contours and predict the directions of the train wreck—which is to see the flaws on all the “sides”—and yet refrain from despair is achievement enough. This alone is so difficult that, to clean things up, people generally construct or retreat into another’s ideological fantasy world. To fight to see the real is hard enough, and then we find it hard to bear much of what we are given to see.
But some times in life the real is forced upon us. I suppose this is why Christianity treats hope as one of only three supernatural virtues, presuming that we understand enough to know why it is needed. In this life, as anyone who has ever undergone its tragedies knows, hope is a virtue.
In our technologically advanced, spiritually primitive paganism, hope is the forgotten of the three new preeminent virtues Christianity offered as gifts to the world. Charity is abused to death; talk of love now bores us and is near meaningless from over-use. Faith or belief we think we know, even if we reject it. We think it means a kind of reasonless act of our individual will. A planting of our willful flag wherever we choose.
But hope as a kind of core or supreme virtue is almost a mystery. What does that even mean?
We don’t need hope if the arc of history bends our way and progress is inevitable.
Worse, we have hidden the very truths that reveal our need for it so as not to trouble ourselves. Death. Deep institutional corruption. Civilizational collapse. The underlying currents of pain in our particular lives like loneliness, guilt, and other anxieties. Unpleasant fictions, all. Eat, drink, and be merry. Take more pills. “Love.” Have “faith” in what you will. And “hope”—well, there’s no need for wishful thinking. Work hard and study, believe in the dreams our culture gives you, and you will be set free.
And the suicide rate rises.
The difference between hope and the shallow self-help that passes for it (often aping faith in one’s own will rather than hope) is in many ways the difference between life and death—sadness and distraction versus happiness and fulfillment.
Hope is what Christianity gave the world, even if you think it bunk. The European primitives before conversion struggled with just this: a dark vision of a doomed world. The monsters would encircle them eventually, they thought. In the end, the dragon would come and slay them all.
The therapeutic and distractive uses of technology in our time are designed to keep such visions at bay. Some iterative mythos of ekpyrosis would inevitably return except for the fact that our masters today have isolated us, and told us a different lie: like Sisyphus in reverse we must keep entertaining and pleasuring ourselves, over and over, with small delights, alone. This is happiness.
And yet we are not happy.
But we think we should be. There must be something wrong with us! Why doesn’t it work? Why am I not happy? We must climb the hill again!
Our ignorance of the human condition is vast. It is astounding that it is even possible to keep a population so ignorant. But we came to think that we had no need for hope. The problem must be in our procedure or its execution. There must be some external or internal constraint holding us back from happiness. We must further free ourselves. And thus we find ourselves enslaved.
Hope is what truly frees the oppressed, which is why the deepest form of oppression obviates not only the perception of its reasonableness or its possibility but the understanding that we need either cultivate it deep within, or live as dead among the living.
Yet even a name comes from another, just as each of us do. A name is given and received.
Names remind us that identity is not and cannot be wholly self-determined. Even in a world that recklessly seeks total atomistic self-determination, and increasingly lauds even self-mutilation accordingly, the nature of naming remains difficult to thwart. This is why it is now a hate crime to “deadname” those who say they wish to change their sexual biology.
A name is blessed or cursed, loved or hated, and gathers reputation from others. This is why Aristotle says fame or status is not a secure good upon which to base one’s ultimate happiness. A name comes from another.
We do not create ourselves or anything else out of nothing, but remain mere temporary stewards of what we are given, and whatever we finally wrought from what we were given. A name comes from another who recognizes us as something determinate.
We both name and receive names. The first human, Adam, did not create but named the animals, the Old Testament tells us, even as God often changes the names of the prophets. We need space to form ourselves and build human communities, but this does not fully unmake what we are and naturally need to become. We need to discover and receive wisdom beyond ourselves and our own experiences to do so, but this does not mean slavishly repeating old mantras or stale formulas.
The Strength of Broken Dreams
Looking through the mirror, through the glass. Looking through the water, past your own reflection, at living things, darting fast.
This transitional slipstream, in which we see suddenly and much too clearly through the water instead of being lulled to sleep by the familiar, muddying currents of the rhetoric of pre-digital life, will eventually pass. At some point we will no longer behold our own reflection mirrored on the increasingly digital surface, as all the old policies and outdated ideologies dissolve.
And perhaps, if we are conquered by those who would further control us, we will all float on into false dreams and visions again, but of another, more terrifying kind. But in the present we need the courage to jettison the old and think anew. We need new humbler but more noble dreams, conformed to the real. The best hopes and dreams are more real than the reality of present experience, because they bring what already exists unseen into sight, and what could and should actually be into being.
But fitfully waiting for this to happen is not a strategy or a plan. We can’t dream our way to better dreams.
A new frontier is the only way forward—and out of—what is and what is to come. But it is not clear where and what manner of frontier it could be. A trove of wisdom and achievement, retrieved and repurposed, is necessary for any needed renaissance. But it is not clear where in the past and what manner of wisdom might revitalize us.
As Peter Thiel wrote recently, “a renaissance will require motivational goals,” which means goals that are “both ambitious and achievable.” The goals of the televisual era were either hubristic and unachievable (“world peace”) or too small and hedonistic (“netflixing”). We are increasingly searching for something else now; like it or not, for the foreseeable future we will be compelled to grasp for it—or die trying.
There are certain summer nights when you can stride the earth and feel as if you could reach up and touch the full moon. But to actually get there, one needs to keep one’s wonder at the skies while willfully submitting to the crushing realism of humility. Reach your hands in the sky as you dream and you will experience the futility of attaining the heavens.
To accomplish such a “dream,” like those who actually put the man on the moon, one needs to abandon dreams. One must observe, learn, and act. One must work hard to know—and then overcome—every physical obstacle that stands in one’s way. One must see, in real life, what prevents the dream from being accomplished, and alter it accordingly.
Dreams in the best sense arise from wonder about what truly is, and concerted effort to discover it. This means that a clinical scientism that pretends to know more than it does, and lashes out at and seeks to cover up the great mystery of existence, can be as much of an impediment as distractive dreams to human vitality. This is because scientism itself has become a dream, and separated itself from the totality of human experience accordingly.
We must experience genuine wonder about human life and nature again, not strain within ourselves to dictate like gods.
It may be necessary for those whose dreams are still borrowed from mass culture, to be disrupted and turned away from the streaming images so that they might have dreams of substance, based on who and what they truly are, and who and what truly is outside themselves and beyond the shadows on the walls of the cave. Many need to be rehabilitated and encouraged to dream natural dreams—to be given truer dreams.
But even for those who perhaps have truer dreams already, it may be necessary to periodically sacrifice them upon the altar of our hearts. What if one must routinely give up the callings of your dreams in order to discover your true calling, or even merely glimpse it, reaching for a goal that, like a shade in Homer, Virgil, and Dante, cannot be grasped by the hands of the living? Is this not the fate of all men? The way of all flesh?
We make idols of good things, as well as bad. We make idols of things worth idolizing, in their way. But to grow and develop, to avoid stuntedness and stagnation, one must sometimes break them and enter out into the unknown once more.
There is a season and a sense in which we ought not to encourage or nurture dreams, or urge others to follow them, but rather to give them up. To let them remain illusions only, patches of glimmering sunlight on the earth beneath the trees in summer.
When I am overburdened by clinging to these dreams too long, can I recognize it? Can I free myself of them? Can we each put aside the unfelt weight we carry and dive into the ocean free? Perhaps they will return. Perhaps not. But to put bread out on the waters is to expect it not to return, to expect only the unknown, and to have to search again to know.
This is why our dreams are so hard to give up: they give us something known—something to hang on to—regardless of their realism, regardless of our circumstances. We imagine we might someday carve them into the future—into the rock of reality itself. We enjoy these imaginings, and linger with them, and attempt to chisel them into stone. To put these plans and their corresponding tools down is to begin again, even if they have propelled us forward to wherever the place we actually stand.
We must sometimes let go of what we have been chiseling, and when we do so we discover where we truly are again, and eventually resume traveling, moving, seeking.
What if, then, to offer up our dreams is not weakness but strength? What if it was silly to think one could hold on absolutely, could conclusively determine and dictate one’s dreams to the world?
To weather broken dreams is to pass through a portal into a vast reality beyond the constraints of your former world, which was likely a sort of constructed idol—an idolatrous landscape or constructed reality, meant to serve virtual goals. If, that is, one can survive the passing through—if your broken dreams don’t break you.
If our dreams become leverage against us for fear of losing them, they may have become idols. You must smash your idols to be free of fear. You must mentally work through killing your Isaacs. Kill your darlings. Even the most noble ones. Neither the world nor God owes any of us our dreams made real.
The American Dream is dead, but America still lives. If it is to live on, we must let the past die, look to our present, and habitually act to confront and determine it. We must not look to the past for dreams, but for the wisdom to perceive and act in the present. We must clear and build more humble paths towards higher ground. It is only then that we can begin to dream naturally again.
When reality has already broken your dreams, holding onto them will only accelerate your own self-destruction.
We are born naked, and we die so—with nothing that is ours except what we formed inside ourselves. But it may be that if we can sacrifice our dreams, what we are inside cannot be broken.
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This is an interesting article that I personal believe has merit. It is, of course, about the United States and some historical events that resulted into the cluster-fuck that America is today. It describes the “improvements” by the radical “enlightened” progressives that changed America into an oligarchy.
Good going assholes.
Well, the United States Empire is on the decline and the people on the decks of the sinking ship are all scurrying here and there trying to make sense of things, and figuring out how to survive the tumult. It’s horrific.
This article kind of winds the clock back a spell. We look at what events caused the great ship to sink. (Um. Many.) Now I have covered this subject in numerous other posts, but here we have another person that wants to throw his “two cents” into the fray.
It’s a good read.
(I am getting tired of the COVID-19 posts, lately.)
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how things are and how we got here – and I think I’ve identified the date when we went off course: September 14th, 1901.
The day William McKinley died, a few days after being shot.
Take a look at this last address, made shortly before he was shot – do read the whole thing.
But the bit that stands out for me is how he talks at length about the growing inter-dependence of the world…
… while also asserting that our fair trade relations must never be done at the expense of our home production.
Get it?
We must trade, but we must never harm ourselves in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.
This is the sort of speech we got when the President and Congress were trying to serve the interests of the American people…
… and they were doing what they did out in the open, debating it in public, and working strictly within the Constitutional confines of our government.
President McKinley
People don’t think much of McKinley and even someone as versed in history as I am only have a slight bit of knowledge about him…
… from a prosperous Ohio family; Civil War service, law, politics and the rise to the top.
He is portrayed as unimaginative; plodding.
He is entirely overshadowed by the man who succeeded him, Theodore Roosevelt, who is always cast in heroic terms…
…taking over and reinvigorating the American government.
But I think we can see now, at long remove, that having a vigorous American government isn’t an unalloyed benefit.
With a slight hiccup under Coolidge in the 1920’s, since McKinley we’ve seen the atrophy of Congressional power; an increasingly Imperial Presidency and the massive expansion of government control…
… and, over the long term, the imposition of policies which are overtly destructive of the United States.
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt came in and had his famous assertion that if the law doesn’t specifically prohibit a President from doing a thing, then the thing can be done.
It was a gigantic shift.
It started the process of having our system being that of a government with strictly enumerated powers to having a government doing whatever it can get away with.
Wilson and FDR just put that attitude on steroids…
… so much so that even a limited government man like Reagan still blithely exercised powers that Presidents up to McKinley would never dreamed of exercising.
But a government without limits is a government which not only can do anything…
… it will do anything…
… and as it will still be a government run by human beings, it will almost certainly end up doing whatever those with the most influence demand.
And therein lies our problem.
Today
Realize that today – right now – there are people, right and left, who are demanding that Trump essentially go to war with Turkey because they think it wrong that the Turks are going after the Kurds.
Maybe the Turks are wrong.
But if the Turks are wrong, then it isn’t for the American President to decide if we fight them…
…or, at least, it isn’t supposed to be the President who decides if we fight…
… it is supposed to be Congress.
Our Congress, which will debate a declaration of war and then vote on it…and if approved, we go to war.
But, we’re so far down this road that most don’t even see that – they are so used, that is, to the government just doing things that they are demanding it just do something in Syria.
And do something about climate change.
And do something about trans people.
And do something about illegal immigrants.
And so on and on and on.
A big mess.
And think about what we’ve got: a gigantic system of treaties, alliances, agreements, laws, regulations and such which authorize this, that or the other thing and none of it is fully known, hardly any of it was really debated…
…and it is all in the service of doing something…
… nobody really knows what…
… but if we don’t keep things just as they are, disaster will result.
Or, so we’re told.
President Trump
I asserted some while back that President Trump is the most law-abiding President we’ve had since Coolidge: and I’m sure I’m right about that.
I do not say the most morally excellent President – first off, I can’t peer into souls and so I’m unable to judge the status of President Trump’s; secondly, because it is irrelevant to whether or not the President obeys the law.
And Trump obeys the law.
The proof of that is that after years of relentlessly being investigated (often by entirely illegal means) they still haven’t found a crime they can hang around his neck.
Hardly anyone could survive that scrutiny…
…but, Trump has.
And if you look at what he says and does, he’s always acting within the law and asking Congress to codify things into law. He isn’t President Pen and Phone.
I don’t know if this lawfulness is the result of deep thought on the part of the President or mere instinct – but regardless, Trump has hit upon the first requirement of liberty: adherence to law.
That we can only do, via government, what the law says we can do – no more, no less and if you don’t like it, change the law via lawful means.
A Nation of Laws
It is my view that a Republic must strictly enforce its laws – and because of this, the laws must be [1] few and [2] easy to understand…
… and the government must not attempt to manage the lives of the people…
… because doing so requires a multiplicity of laws…
… each of which will merely increase government power along with the ability to abuse that power.
We cannot, willy nilly, go back to 1901…
… but we must go back to it as much as we can, and the first step is to start enforcing all the laws.
The laws against illegal entry. The laws against government malfeasance. So on and so forth: it doesn’t matter if they are good or bad laws: if they are on the books, they must be strictly enforced.
And it is the strict enforcement of bad laws which will ensure their repeal or modification…
… keeping in mind that a host of laws are on the books which routinely trip up regular folks…
… and they are kept intact because they aren’t allowed to trip up the Ruling Class…
…start having people like Hillary going to jail like a poor swabby who took a wrong picture…
… and all of a sudden our Rulers will be less interested in keeping laws like that on the books.
Detangling
The next part of a restoration should be, in my view, a disentangling of the United States from the world.
We can be an Empire or a Republic: We can’t be both.
NATO has to go.
The UN has to go.
Free Trade has to go – I am going to write up about what McKinley was talking up: Trade Reciprocity, which I think that Trump is on about. I want us to trade with the world – but only in ways that are mutually beneficial.
Bring our boys and girls back home.
Maintain a second-to-none military force in being. Advise the world that an attack upon the United States is a suicidal act – and then destroy the first nation which tests us on it. If we have alliances, they are to be temporary and serving a particular national goal.
No more CIA.
No more NSA.
No more FBI. Relations with tyrannical States to be kept to a minimum (tyranny and liberty cannot really coexist).
It is time – past time – that we gave up the goals of those who don’t have our interests at heart.
This is our country – it is made by us and for us.
It is not a world police, nor a dumping ground for the world’s refuse. It is a place where free people debate among themselves and decide via law what course to follow.
It is time, that is, for America to be America.
Conclusion
If laws are being selectively enforced, then America functionally has no laws. Instead it operates lawlessly outside the confines of its charter.
America became this “whatever it is” over the years. And it all pretty much began a hundred years ago.
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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.
The progressive Marxists, that call the Democrat party their home, have pretty much saturated every government organization, institution and business in the United States. Since Obama was President, we have had all the Fortune Five Hundred companies hire expensive “diversity officers”, and the “Deep State” has relentlessly pushed progressive Marxism at all levels. It’s only a few short years away from when they will regain the totality of American governance. It is helpful to look at what will happen in America through the lens of what happened in the Soviet Union when they took power.
America is about to become full-on Marxist. It’s only a few short years away. But, first you all must be disarmed, and by golly you will be.
Get ready, because it’s coming and you will not be able to stop it.
The Soviet Union is the blueprint for much of what the left is selling these days. We can see it all around us. And yet we mistakenly think that it is dead and buried. We mistakenly think that it only exists in Communist China.
That’s really and terribly wrong.
The progressive Marxists in America would have a very difficult time living inside of China. For it is a Chinese Conservative traditional nation with zero tolerance for any of that progressive nonsense. They believe in work, merit and participation. If you don’t agree, they will re-educate you to “cure” your malfunction. The Communist Chinese are communist in name only.
They are a traditional conservativetotalitarian nation with zero acceptance of anything else.
It’s not “free” like America is. It doesn’t permit “diversity” as part of “democracy”. It doesn’t allow the “free exchange of ideas and thought” like America does. It doesn’t permit allowances for the “less fortunate” or the “less privileged”.
America has “freedom” and “democracy”.
The blueprint for progressive Marxist democrats is not China, it is the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union was one of the most brutal regimes of the 20th century. Yet, given the significant timescale of its existence and subsequent collapse, many things have been erased from public memory. Today it is remembered fondly by the leadership of the Democrat party, and cherished by their rabid followers.
This is really strange as terms like dictatorship are often used casually in political debate. This is done without a full appreciation of what real tyranny actually looks like. As well as what to expect when it is permitted to thrive and grow inside of America…
Pseudoscience will be endorsed by the Federal government.
While Soviet socialism (typically referred to as communism) was viewed as scientific by its followers, science was unquestionably subject to ideology.
Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet scientist who backed an alternative theory to genetics which would become known as Lysenkoism. He was hostile to the idea of genetics which highlighted unchanging traits. This was at odds with his Marxist beliefs, which stated that with the right conditioning, society and ultimately humanity could be perfected.
What was once consider fringe, became suddenly real when the armed government took control of the narrative. This was true in all historical venues and will be frighteningly true in America as well.
The Soviet government eagerly embraced Lysenko’s ideas and his theory was installed as the only acceptable viewpoint within agricultural science. Any scientists who challenged this were removed from their positions and publicly smeared. Many were imprisoned and executed. Not only was science handicapped in the Soviet Union for decades, these bogus theories worsened the famines of the 1930s.
We can well expect that pseudoscience to be embraced and made the law of the land within America;
Global Warming.
Gender equality.
Mainstream abortions on demand as being natural.
Children protesting climate change.
Psychiatry will be used to silence political dissidents
In the Soviet Union, political dissidents were imprisoned for years in mental asylums and forcibly given mind altering drugs for challenging Marxist doctrine. It was claimed that anyone who lived in a socialist system but was still opposed to socialism had to be insane.
The Soviet authorities even invented a new psychiatric term; ‘sluggish schizophrenia’. Its symptoms included obsessing over philosophy or religion, having ‘delusions of reform’ and having inflated self-esteem. But of course, the disorder was completely made up and deliberately vague so it could be attached to dissidents when useful.
In a society that makes no differences regarding gender, would have no problem forcing gender change “therapy” on dissidents.
What made this method particularly effective was that once someone’s sanity was called into question, they were not subject to the same due process compared with a criminal case. This gave the State even more power than it normally had as it wasn’t required to inform the accused of basic details of their case. Approximately 20 thousand people were institutionalized under such claims but the total is believed to be significantly higher.
We hear about progressive liberals wishing Trump supporters would die, and they have even taken up arms and weapons to make sure this happens. Imagine what happens when they are in complete control of the medical establishment.
The top Democrat Leadership will all be sexual predators
Funny how the progressive Marxists are all about trying to out Sexual predators. However it’s been my experience that the people who talk the loudest about certain things are usually the one with the problems about that issue.
The democrat party rewards sexual predators.
Lavrentiy Beria was a Soviet politician and state security administrator under Stalin. He began his career as the chief of police in Georgia and eventually became the head of the secret police, overseer of the Gulag prison system and Central Committee member. Stalin warmly referred to him as “my Himmler”.
Aside from being responsible for the murder, torture and false imprisonment of millions of peoples, he was also a well-known sexual deviant. During his free time he would prowl the streets of Moscow and identify young women for his henchmen to kidnap and transport to his private accommodation where he would sexually assault them. After his death Beria’s villa was turned into an embassy and during refurbishments the bones of dozens of young women and teenage girls were discovered buried on the property.
Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore notes that Beria’s depravity was well known amongst the Soviet leadership. While Stalin tolerated Beria due to his reliability, in one instance, when Stalin heard his daughter was at Beria’s house, he frantically called her and ordered her to leave immediately.
Bill Clinton and Jeffry Epstein.
Expect, regardless of gender, the top progressive Marxist leadership will be aggressive sexual predators. They will have money, complete and absolute power, and will be able to do what ever they want with out any opposition.
Prisons will be an integral part of the United States economy.
The labor camp system was originally created by Lenin but was at its worse under Stalin. These camps, which would become known as the Gulag, were used to imprison those accused of political crimes. The conditions in the camps were appalling. Abuse and mistreatment were commonplace, and it’s estimated up to 2 million people died within them.
American prisons, both State and Federal, will be repurposed to hold “undesirables”, “deplorables” and other misfits that cannot adjust to the new Marxist utopia that America has become.
These camps operated as a tool of political terror and also facilitated what was essentially slave labor. The Soviet authorities saw the Gulag as a way of helping the economy and believed it could produce a significant amount of income.
Gulag prisoners were frequently put to work in mines, forests, oil fields and large construction projects. Huge amounts of the resources were produced from the forced labor, creating an entire industry in itself. At Kolyma, a region in the far east of Russia, there were 80 Gulag facilities, all dedicated to mining its significant gold deposits.
However, the Gulag turned out to be an ineffective economic model because unsurprisingly slaves don’t make good workers. The labor camps ultimately became a massive drain on State finances.
Most State prisons within America today operate under a “for profit” model for private enterprise.
Today, throughout the United States, the prisons exist under a “for profit” model. Expect them to be expanded and merged with FEMA and some kind of Social Program along the lines of the CCC to enroll dissidents and control them.
Starvation will be used as a weapon
Several famines occurred within the USSR as a result of farm
collectivisation. This was largely due to the fact that this policy
simply does not work, but what is also true is the Soviet authorities
knew that access to food could be used to control the population.
An enormous percentage of Americans rely on food stamps to live. The government can control these people by withholding their benefits.
This strategy was used in one of the most infamous man-made famines of the 20th century, the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933, known as the Holodomor. What was particularly cruel about this famine was that it wasn’t solely caused by incompetence, bad policy or denial. Rather it was deliberately manufactured and worsened by Stalin as a means of wiping out the Kulaks, peasant farmers who were economically more successful than the rest of the population and thus, class enemies.
Historians have also speculated that the famine was targeted at Ukraine in order to weaken its national identity. Ukrainian nationalists had put up fierce resistance to Bolshevik rule during the Russian civil war and Stalin was not willing to risk the region rising up.
After seizing crops and livestock, Soviet forces closed off the borders and arrested- or just shot- anyone that tried to flee. It’s estimated that four million Ukrainians died as result of this famine but the true figure will never be known as there was a coordinated effort to cover up the death toll.
An enormous percentage of Americans rely on food stamps to live. The government can control these people by withholding their benefits.
Enemies with become friends.
While it is true that Nazism and Communism were bitter enemies, the two ideologies saw they had more in common with each other than their non-authoritarian rivals. After all, both are, fundamentally socialist systems.
Their uneasy but mutually beneficial association peaked in August 1939 with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Officially, this was a neutrality pact but in reality it was also an agreement on which areas of Eastern Europe the two regimes would take over. Poland was the main target of this deal, and within two weeks of each other, the two powers occupied the nation in September 1939. As the Nazis rounded up Jews in their half of the country, the Soviets systematically murdered Polish intellectuals and military officers in their sector.
Chuck Schumer with President Putin of Russia.
Even years prior to this agreement, the secret police of both regimes, the Gestapo and NKVD, had been cooperating by exchanging political dissidents who had fled their respective countries. More bizarrely, the NKVD handed over numerous German communists to their Nazi counterparts. Many of those who were traded between the two agencies would meet their end in either the Gulag or SS concentration camps.
Like the book “Animal Farm” you will see the those in power will embrace the ideologies of other socialist nations, become close working friends and mutually support each other.
Terror and violence will be mainstream.
People who are “woke” have little respect for the thought of others. They go into “brain freeze” and immediately assault you for thinking differently than they do. You can expect this behavior to become sanctioned by the government.
Antifa are the “Brown Shirts” of the American Democrat Party.
When the atrocities of the Soviet Union are discussed, much of the focus is put on Stalin. However this means the crimes of other earlier revolutionary figures are overlooked, in particular with the USSR’s founder, Vladimir Lenin.
Lenin strongly believed that there could be no peaceful transition
from capitalism to communism. The wealthy elites could only be removed
from power by force, not to mention they had to be punished for their
crime of exploiting the people. Even after the Bolsheviks had achieved
control of the government violence and specifically terror were used to
control the population and eliminate any perceived threat to its power.
The Democrat “Brown Shirts”; the Antifa, thrive in Democrat strongholds, but once the Democrats obtain true and complete power, they will be everywhere.
Hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of people, were executed and imprisoned during the ‘Red Terror’, a campaign of violence against those labelled as class enemies. Additionally, during the early years of the Bolshevik government, numerous uprisings were brutally put down.
All of this was organized and endorsed by Lenin. It was under his leadership that the secret police, initially called the Cheka, and the Gulag were established. Moreover, he explicitly stated that the goal was to terrify the population into submission.
This is what the Antifa will look like once the Democrats come to complete and absolute power in America.
“Fake news” will be used to control thought.
We have become accustomed with Google, Facebook, Twitter and all their sub-companies censoring conservative thought. They have also created “fact check” organizations to enforce the legitimacy of their narratives. This is a well known technique and was practiced in the Soviet Union extensively.
CNN news team announces that Trump won the 2016 Presidential Election.
The KGB was the institutional successor of the Cheka and NKVD, operating from 1954 to 1991 and was responsible for state security. Abroad, its primary goals were to foster political unrest and promote Marxist ideology.
One of the KGB’s most well-known activities was planting false stories in Western media and spreading conspiracy theories with the intent of destroying trust in institutions and inciting conflict. Today this is widely known as ‘fake news’ but its origin can be traced back to the Communist intelligence agency who referred to it as ‘disinformation’.
President Trump was the first person to take on the massive American news organization.
One of the most famous cases of a successful disinformation campaign
was in 1984 when the US media covered the supposed scandal of the AIDs
virus being created by the American government. This was in fact a lie
that had been carefully crafted and strategically inserted into foreign
news sources by Soviet intelligence until it reached Western
journalists.
Within Russia, while the KGB was officially disbanded, its influence and tactics can still be observed today and have undoubtedly been boosted by the emergence of the internet.
Sweeping purges of non-Marxist thought will be common.
Once the progressive Marxists take control there will be no “free thought”. Like at work, you cannot offend anyone, it will be on steroids. You will, and must act and speak in accordance with the proclaimed fashion. If you fail to do so, you might end up in a re-education camp in Alaska.
Historian Stephen Kotkin describes the Great Terror as “an episode that seems to defy rational explanation.” Between 1936 to 1938 Stalin carried out a sweeping political purge of his administrative, military and diplomatic ranks. Hundreds of thousands of people were arrested, tortured, imprisoned and in many cases summarily executed based on imaginary political offenses.
Sweeping purges of non-Marxist thought will be common.
Again, there was no rational reason to inflict this chaos on the country. Historians have been baffled for decades over Stalin’s actions in this period as his position as leader was arguably stronger than it had ever been and there were no obvious internal threats to the Soviet Union.
While several theories have been put forward, Kotkin suggests that the most creditable explanation is that Stalin wanted to psychologically destroy his inner circle so they would never try to undermine him. Alongside this twisted motivation was Stalin’s paranoia towards the influence of his exiled rival, Leon Trotsky, especially after Trotsky published books severely criticizing Stalin.
Not only was the Terror completely unnecessary, it was also damaging
to the regime. With many of the Red Army’s most experienced and
competent officers purged during the Terror, Soviet forces were severely
weakened in their ability to fight back when the Nazis invaded in 1941.
This resulted in extraordinarily high casualties for the Soviets.
There will be institutional anti-Semitism
You wouldn’t think this would occur, but it is a foundational fundamental requirement of Marxist control.
Soviet anti-Semitism was inherited to a large degree from the Tsarist era, and arguably communist anti-Semitism can be traced back to Karl Marx himself, who firmly associated Judaism with greed and exploitation.
Bigotry towards Jews was also closely tied to the Soviet anti-Zionist campaign. It even had an official organization called the Anti-Zionist Committee of The Soviet Public which explicitly stated that Zionists had been collaborators with the Nazis, enabled the genocides in Eastern Europe and had deliberately exaggerated Jewish victim-hood during the war.
Expect this to be the new American Leadership once Trump leaves office.
Though publicly the government claimed to make a distinction between
Zionism and Jews, in reality there was institutional discrimination.
Jews were prevented from holding certain jobs and were often scapegoated
in political witch-hunts. Additionally, as part of the Soviet’s
anti-religion campaign, the Jewish faith was subject to, alongside other
religious faiths, State oppression in various forms.
The ruling democrat organization will turn on the Jewish people with a vengeance.
Following the Six Day War in 1967, any Jewish-Soviet citizens who applied to immigrate to Israel were denied permission and considered enemies of the people. These individuals, the ‘Refuseniks’, faced severe social and legal consequences, with many being imprisoned for years.
Conclusion
We can see what to expect through the lens of history.
Trump has been unsuccessful in overturning centuries of corruption of the Constitutional Republic. Minor surgery with a tweet here, or an appointment of a judge there is not enough to erase the embedded “deep state” and the progressive tears by Presidents Wilson, FDR, Clinton, Johnson, Obama and Bush.
When Trump leaves, the progressive Marxists will enact sweeping changes and you will be helpless to withstand the onslaught.
Carl Marx will call America his home.
What you need to think about is how you will adjust to the new reality and live within it. Fighting is out of the question. You will be disarmed, and if you haven’t left the United States by now, you never will.
It’s gonna be too late.
So plan on how you will live within the progressive utopia that is bounding towards you. It’s inevitable.
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.
After around three decades of increasing progressive Marxism and “Woke” nonsense, the assaults seem (or appear) to have subsided somewhat. It’s no longer “in your face” as badly as it was under the Obama Administration. But, I am here to tell you that it has not subsided, that it is not going away. It is only in remission, and we can expect that the dangerous stew that is brewing inside our schools, inside our institutions, and inside our government is going to boil-over. Maybe not now, and maybe not under a Trump Presidency, but it will decidedly boil-over and it will affect YOU.
Here is an interesting article from a Russian Immigrant that is in the university setting and comments on what it is like being around all these “woke” progressive Marxist idealists… the very ones that will be running America very shortly. Please pay attention, and understand that America is destined for change…
It might be calm and methodical, or radical and abrupt with many painful days. But whatever form it takes, it will be uncomfortable. Read this and consider what it means when every company, every school, every bureaucracy, every organization and at every government level these people are in control…
Woke! ‘The fanatical glimmer in their eyes really scares me’
Last year, I spoke to a Soviet-born scholar who teaches in an American public university. I’m using a quote from our discussion in my forthcoming (September) book, Live Not By Lies. This morning, she sent me this e-mail, which I reproduce here with her permission:
I know from your blog that the work on your new book is going well and I’m glad because, boy, it’s so needed.
I’m observing some disturbing developments on my campus, and we are really not one of those wokester schools for spoiled brats one normally associates with this kind of thing.
This academic year I’ve had an opportunity to work with some early-career academics. These are newly-minted PhDs that are in their first year on the tenure-track.
What’s really scary is that they sincerely believe all the woke dogma.
Older people – those in their forties, fifties or sixties – might parrot the woke mantras because it’s what everybody in academia does and you have to survive.
But the younger generation actually believes it all.
Transwomen are women, black students fail calculus because there are no calc profs who “look like them,” ‘whiteness’ is the most oppressive thing in the world, the US is the most evil country in history, anybody who votes Republican is a racist, everybody who goes to church is a bigot but the hijab is deeply liberating.
I gently mocked some of this stuff (like we normally do among older academics), and two of the younger academics in the group I supervise actually cried…
Because they believe all this so deeply, and I’d even say fanatically, that they couldn’t comprehend why I wasn’t taking it seriously.
The fanatical glimmer in their eyes really scared me.
Back in the USSR in the 1970s and the 1980s nobody believed the dogma.
People repeated the ideological mantras for cynical reasons, to get advanced in their careers or get food packages. Many did it to protect their kids. But nobody sincerely believed.
That is what ultimately saved us.
As soon as the regime weakened a bit, it was doomed because there were no sincere believers any more.
Everybody who did take the dogma seriously belonged to the generation of my great-grandparents.
In the US, though, the generation of the fanatical believers is only now growing up and coming into its prime.
We’ll have to wait until their grand-kids grow up to see a generation that will be so fed up with the dogma that it will embrace freedom of thought and expression. But that’s a long way away in the future.
I’m mentoring a group of young scholars in the Humanities to help them do research, and I’m starting to hate this task.
Young scholars almost without exception think that scholarship is entirely about repeating woke slogans completely uncritically.
Again, this is different from the USSR where scholars peppered their writing with the slogans but always took great pride in trying to sneak in some real thinking and real analysis behind the required ideological drivel.
Every Soviet scholar starting from the 1970s was a dissident at heart because everybody knew that the ideology was rotten.
All of this is sad and very scary.
I never thought I’d experience anything worse, anything more intellectually stifling than the USSR of its last two decades of existence. But now I do see something worse.
The book you are writing is very important, and I hope that many people hear your message.
Folks, Americans are extremely naive about what’s coming. We just cannot imagine that people who burst into tears in the face of gentle mockery of their political beliefs can ever come to power.
They are already in power, in the sense that they have mesmerized leaders of American institutions.
I’m telling you, that 2015 showdown on Yale’s campus between Prof. Nicholas Christakis and the shrieking students was profoundly symbolic.
Christakis used the techniques of discursive reason to try to establish contact with these young people.
None of it mattered.
They yelled and cursed and sobbed.
The fact that he disagreed with them, they took as an assault on their person.
And Yale University caved to them!
This stuff is so outrageous that we can’t wrap our minds around how these people will ever come to rule us. Listen to what these people who grew up under communism are saying!
Nadine Gordimer said:
“All the young are candidates for the solutions of communism or fascism when there are no alternatives to despair or dissipation.”
The
religion of social justice is rushing in to fill the vacuum. Nice
liberals, and nice conservatives, cannot allow themselves to think of
where this might go. Solzhenitsyn knew better:
If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia;
…that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings, that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the “secret brand”); that a man’s genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp…
… not one of Chekhov’s plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums.
So did Dr. Silvester Krcmery, a Slovak Catholic lay leader in the underground church, who suffered isolation and torture in a communist prison for his faith and resistance.
In the memoir he wrote after communism’s fall, Krcmery warned future generations that the past could be prelude to the future if they were not vigilant:
We are so often naive in our thinking. We live, contented and safe, with the idea that in a civilized country, in the mostly cultured and democratic environment of our times, such a coercive regime is impossible.
We forget that in unstable countries, a certain political structure can lead to indoctrination and terror, where individual elements and stages of brainwashing are already implemented.
This, at first, is quite inconspicuous.
However, often in a very short time, it can develop into a full undemocratic totalitarian system.
Hannah Arendt, in her 1951 study The Origins of Totalitarianism, said these factors in German and Russian society made them susceptible to Nazism and Bolshevism, respectively:
Loneliness
Social Atomization
Loss of Faith In Hierarchies And Institutions
The Desire To Transgress And Destroy
Indifference to Truth, and the Willingness To Believe Useful Lies
A Mania for Ideology
A Society That Values Loyalty More Than Expertise
The Politicization of Everything
If you think we’re not going on full-tilt on these things, you aren’t paying attention.
Some people seem to think that the Arendt list is somehow faulting the Left. It’s not, at least not intentionally. She said these factors were present in both Germany, which went to the hard right, and Russia, which went to the hard left. I think these factors are present in our society, period. Some of them are stronger on the Left, it is true, but I think they’re all simply present. Is loneliness a Right or a Left thing? Is social atomization?
Conclusion
I read this article with a great degree of sadness. Americans are within a propagandized bubble. Outside of that bubble, everything is dark, evil and dangerous. Inside that bubble you are either ‘woke” or an enemy.
Americans live within an artificial bubble. The inside of the bubble is a narrative that is increasingly defined by the American mainstream press. Many can see what bullshit is is, so they try to find other sources for news. Outside the bubble is a complete fabrication that the mainstream media controls. It’s all a big lie.
I am outside the bubble and I see all of this quite clearly.
Outside the Bubble
I am in Communist China, but it doesn’t resemble anything like what Americans fear it to be.
Yet, it almost went off-the-cliff.
There was a big show-down between the hard-line Communist / Marxist elements and their armies of progressive idealists during the “cultural revolution” and it could have gone downhill really fast.
Instead they embraced other things… like traditional conservative Chinese values, the idea of working hard and achieving things through merit, and contributing instead of fighting the government.
And..
… and now today, China is a nation of traditional conservative pragmatists, and all those Marxist idealists are off in re-education camps. Like the Falin Gong, the “pro-democracy” pawns, and the Muslim religious extremists.
You don’t hear about all that.
America is about “democracy!” China doesn’t have it. So it’s bad.
People! The world is not what CNN, and FOX tell you. It is something all together different. Now, I can talk until I am blue in my face, but you will never be convinced until you experience things FIRST HAND. I implore you to do just that.
So, just recognize that the world “outside” of America is not what you are led to believe and expect.
Meanwhile… on the inside of this bubble….
Inside of the Bubble
Radical idealists are now infiltrating all the organs of power. The government and the political factions are permitting this, and soon, once they have regained full control of the levers of power, they will implement their ideology.
First will be the disarming.
Then will be the collections of people on the lists.
Then will be the FEMA camps.
What comes next will not be recorded for history.
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.
When your world is turned upside down, what is it like? Can you rush to the supermarket and stock up on groceries? Can you rely on the national guard to keep roving gangs at bay? Can you make sure that your home is heated and that you have running water? What is it like?
This is an interview with Selco when he first started posting on the internet. He says a lot of interesting things, and makes a number of points that I would like to underline.
TheSiegeofSarajevowasthelongestsiegeofacapitalcityinthehistoryofmodernwarfare. AfterbeinginitiallybesiegedbytheforcesoftheYugoslavPeople’sArmy, Sarajevo, thecapitalofBosniaandHerzegovina, wasbesiegedbytheArmyofRepublikaSrpskafrom 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 duringtheBosnianWar.
This article is from another article posted, titled ;”How I survived a year of SHTF in 90s Bosnia”. I think that is is pretty good. All credit to the author and the source. I did edit his grammar, for the most part. It makes for decent reading that way.
Introduction
Back in September of 2011, a user named Selco joined the forums at SurvivalistBoards.com and posted “my SHTF experience-wartime,” a thread that would since become legendary in survivalist communities and beyond (you frequently see people reference it to this day on sites such as 4chan and reddit).
In it, Selco details his experience of living in a besieged Bosnian town of 50 to 60k people during the Bosnian War (1992-1995). The siege took away everything modern humans take for granted and tested with extreme brutality Selco’s and his community’s ability to survive.
But what is so interesting about this war story is that it was told to a group of survivalists (preppers) who had questions — lots of questions.
How does barter work and which survival strategies are worthless bunk?
How were the social dynamics when everyone realized there was no law?
What really happens and what kind of tricks do people actually get up to to get by when faced with — essentially — the apocalypse?
Selco’s first post.
OK, i wanna share with you my own experience. (be patient with my English, I am from far away )
I am from Bosnia, and as some of you may know it was hell here from 92-95, anyway, for 1 whole year I lived and survived in a city of 50 000- 60 000 residents WITHOUT: electricity, fuel,running water, real food distribution, or distribution of any goods, or any kind of organized law or government. The city was surrounded for 1 year and in that city actually it was SHTF situation.
We did not have organized army or police force, there was groups of defenders, actually anybody who had a gun, fight for his own house and his own family.
Some of us was better prepared, but most of families had food for couple of days, some of us had pistol, few owned AK-47 when all started.
Anyway, after one month or two, gangs started with their nasty job, hospital looked like butchery, police force vanished, 80 percent of hospital staff gone home.
I was lucky, my family was big in that time (15 members in one big house, 5-6 pistols, 3 Kalashnikov s) so we lived and survived, most of us (that is).
I remember US Air force dropped MRE every 10 days (God bless USA for that) as help for surrounded city, it just was not enough. Some of houses had little gardens with some vegetables, most did not.
After three months rumors started about (the) first deaths from starvation, deaths from low temperatures, we stripped every door, window frame from abandoned houses for heating, I burned all my own furniture for heating, lot of people died from diseases, mostly from bad water (two of my family members), we used rain water for drinking, several times I ate pigeons, once I (even) ate rat.
Money did (was) not worth shit.
We traded things, (the) black market worked. A few examples: for 1 (can of) corned beef can you could have woman for couple of hours (sounds bad, but it was the reality). I remember, (that) most of that the women were just desperate mothers…
…candles, lighters, antibiotics, fuel, batteries, rifle ammo and of course food, we fight like animals for that.
In a situation like that, lot of things change, most of people turned into monsters, it was ugly.
Strength was in numbers, if you were alone in the house, you would have probably been robbed and killed, no matter how well armed (you were).
Anyway, war ended, again thanks to America (and again god bless USA for that). It is not important witch side was right in that war.
It was almost 20 years ago, but believe me, for me it was just like yesterday, I remember everything, and I think that I learned a lot (of things).
Me and my family are (all) prepared now, I am well armed, (well) stocked and (well) educated.
War is never pretty. Nor does it resemble what is portrayed by Hollywood. All is in ruin, and there are no clear friends, sides, or relationships.
It is not important does not matter what going to happen; earthquake, war, tsunami, aliens terrorists, important thing is that something is gonna (eventually happen).
And from my experience, you can not survive alone. Strength is in numbers. Be close with your family, prepare with them. Choose your friends wisely and prepare with them too.
And at the end, this is my first post, and my English is not so good, so don t judge me too hard. ”
Q: How did you get around safely?
Actually, the city was broken in something like a lot of street communities. In my street (15 or 20 houses) we organized patrols (5 armed man every night) to watch out for gangs or enemies.
Cities were death traps and your only hope for survival were your friends and family.
We traded things between people in that street. Five miles from my street there was one street with something (that looked) like organized traders, but it was to dangerous to go there. It worked only during the nighttime (during the day it was sniper alley) and (it was risky) you had a greater chance to be robbed there than to trade. I used that street only 2 times, and believe me, it was only when i really needed something (really) bad.
Selco didn’t want to specify the city, but based on his description it could be Livno, which had 40,600 residents in 1991 (now at 34k). Wikipedia: “After the end of World War II, Livno was a part of Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Yugoslavia. After its collapse in 1992 and during the Bosnian War, it was under control of Croat Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia.”
Q: What about wood? It looked like there are many forests around your city, why did you have to burn doors and furniture?
First, thank you for your questions, I did not expect this kind of interest in my post.
I ll be glad to share lot of things with you guys because i want to learn lot of things from you.
Anyway:
Bosnia does have a lot of woods and forests when you go and check the map, but I lived in city closer to the Croatian border, more to the South. I really don’t want to mention name of the city, but if you check the map, the southern part of my country closest to Croatia is all rocky.
Yes we had some trees in my city, parks, fruit trees, but most of the city was building and houses. But believe me…
… all the trees in the city are going to be burned very fast when you don’t have electricity for cooking and heating. After that all what you have is furniture, doors, wooden floors… (and believe me that stuff is burning up far too fast)
Death came swiftly from unexpected places and was often sudden and swift.
There was almost no car use in town. This is because: most of the roads were jammed with ruins, abandoned cars, destroyed houses stuff like that, and petrol was like gold (to us).
If i needed to go somewhere I almost always used night time. I never went alone but also I never went in big group either. (We traveled in smaller groups) (2-3 men maybe), always armed, very fast, always in shadows, through ruins, rarely ever openly on the street, actually… always hiding.
We did not have suburbs and farmers, in the suburbs were the enemy army. We were surrounded by the enemy army, and inside town… (well,) you did not know who is your enemy.
You can expect that all government organization to shut down, and the currency that you hoarded to be useless.
And yes, there were organized groups of gangs, 10-15 people, sometimes even 50. But also there were (a lot of) normal people like you and me, fathers, granddads, decent folks, who robbed and killed. There wasn’t too much good and bad guys (black and white), most of everyone was (some shade of) gray, ready for everything.
Q: Did you prep and what kind of skills did you need?
Of course you can ask.
We used what we had, we were not prepared for that situation. We did not know about prepping.
During a SHTF event, it will all be crazy. Currency, and money will be useless. There will be no water, and no electricity. There will be no wifi and no internet. Most furniture will be used for firewood, and people will trade anything to stay alive.
So you can imagine in some aspects we went back to stone age, actually in most (ways we did).
We just used everything what we had. One example, I had in my possession, a propane (or butane I am not sure which) large storage bottle; cylinder (i am not sure is that right word), but I did not use it for cooking or heating, it was too valuable. Instead, I managed to modify that bottle with my friend. I attached a hose and created some kind of refueling mechanism (sorry my English is going down here) so i can refill those disposable lighters, (they are not really disposable if you have know-how) those lighters were worth a small fortune.
During the war, the capital lay in ruins.
To make story short, somebody (would) bring an empty lighter to me and I would fill that lighter up with gas. Usually I took one can (of food) for that or (else) one candle or whatever he was able to offer me.
I hope you understand my example, my English is poor on some things.
One more example, I am a registered nurse, in any time like that, my knowledge was (a valuable thing) for trade.
And yes, be trained and educated, in times like that it worth a fortune if you know how to fix things. Eventually, all your goods are going to be exhausted one day. However, your specific knowledge can be your food.
Neighborhoods will be in ruins. Those with the best or the wealthiest homes will be repeatedly looted and attacked. Even if you do not appear to have a nice house, if your neighbors think that you might have storage and food, you will be looted.
I mean learn to fix things (shoes or people, whatever you can).
My neighbor used to know how to make some kind of oil for oil lamps (oil in glass, peace of rope – “kerosene camping lanterns”) and he was never hungry, he never did show me how he made that oil for the lamps. ”
I believe he used some tree behind his house and small amount of diesel fuel, i don’t know.
My point is to learn things, people always need somebody who knows how to fix things.
It was not survival movie, it was ugly, we did what we have to do to survive.
Nobody wins, we just survived, with a lot of bad dreams.
Q: Wasn’t it religious, the war?
Sorry man wrong info, that was not Cristian vs Muslim war, it was civil war, with lot of switching between sides.
And sorry I will not get into the politics involved, I really don’t care too much about that, I am not going into religious stories. I mean, I believe in God as a higher power, and I am trying to live by his laws, but I do not belong to any dogma, Muslim or Christian.
Q: Who was your support group?
My group was only my family. This was my blood (relatives like uncles, grandmother…), in my street. In my town trips I had some close friends, but my best friend(s) was my family. I never took a stranger into my close group.
Q: If you had three months to prepare today, what would you do?
If I have extra three months to prepare?
Hmmm, I’d probably run overseas …
<Joke>
OK, Now I am very well aware how things can go very bad in very short time, so (today) I have food, hygiene, energy etc. to supply me for 6 months. I now live in apartment with some improved security. I also have a house with shelter in a village some 5 miles from my apartment. In that house are also supplies for 6 months. The village there is a small community, and most of them are my relatives, (and now) most of them are prepared (they learned that from war). I have four kinds of (live) fire weapons with (at least) 2000 bullets for each (sorry, can not go in details, laws are different here for rifles).
I have big garden at that house and some good knowledge about gardening and farming.
I think i have knowledge now to smell trouble. You (do) know that when everybody is saying that everything is going to be fine you somehow know that is everything going to fall apart.
I think I have the strength necessary to do everything what it takes to keep me and my family alive, because when everything is going to shit…
…be sure, you are going to do some bad things to save your kid. You don t want to be hero, but you do want to survive with your family.
I am nurse, also I am paramedic (US standards)
And i am willing to learn from all of you.
One man survivor, no chance ( OK, it’s only my opinion).
No matter how well armed and prepared you are, at the end you are gonna die. I’ve seen that, many times. Family groups or closest friend with lot of preparing and lots of different knowledge (skill sets) will carry you through the SHTF event, I believe that is what is best.
Q: What items should we stockpile?
Thank you.
Well it depends, I guess if you stock only one thing you are not going to survive. (That is), unless you want to survive like robber, then you need only a gun and lot of ammo.
I believe, besides ammo, food hygiene and energy things (batteries etc.) are necessary. You need to focus on small things for trade. This would include pocket knives, lighters, and flints.
Also a LOT of alcohol, the kind that can store long. I mean stuff like whiskey and all that. It’s not not important what kind, you can have cheapest brand. It is a very good thing for trade in desperate times.
Also lack of hygiene things killed a lot of people, I’ve seen that.
You gonna need to have some simple things, like for example lot of garbage bags, I mean a lot, many uses for that, and a LOT of duct tape, many many uses for that (too).
In case of weapon keep it simple. I mean now i always carry a Glock 45 with me, because i like that gun, but it is not a usual gun and usual caliber here…
The G21 is the perfect answer to the gun owners who’re interested in owning a .45 ACP for defense purposes, but have remained loyal to the 9mm because of its capacity.
… so I also have two 7.62 mm TT Russian pistols hidden, because almost everybody has that gun here and a lot ammunition (is available).
Russian engineers decided to develop a round based on the German Mauser’s 7.63 mm ammo. So in the early 1930s, the Soviet was armed with the famous TT-30 pistol. Its construction was based on a simplified version the of Brauning pistol. The TT-30 received powerful 7.62 x 25 rounds that flew out of the gun at 420 meters per second.
I don t like Kalashnikov, but here there is that rifle on almost every 3rd house so…
AK-47.
Most of the time I collected my water from roof in 4 big barrels during the war, then boiled to disinfect it, we also had river in that town, but it was far too polluted but if you can’t choose…
I don t think I am an expert, I am here to learn.
I guess, it depends how far you going to go to survive with your actions, you need to be prepared to do some ugly things.
Oh yes… it changed my perspective on life.
I know now that bad things can happen, and one more important thing, actually I believe it is most important:
I no longer believe government and authority, not at all.
When they really doing their best to assure you that everything going to be fine, you can be sure that something bad is happening.
American politics.
Do not just believe, (do your own) research.
Q: What about the civil war…and the religious fighting? Did
gold and silver help much and how did you get the alcohol and other
supplies?
Hello to all. It is me again.
I believe in some point this discussion gone the wrong way, and no I am not offended, everybody have right for opinion, so here are few of my opinions:
It was a civil war, yes there was a great influence of religion, but somebody mentioned “what did you do with people of other religions?”
Well in my family there are people with different religious beliefs so what do you mean with that?
I’ll try to explain you simply; it was an attackers and defenders war. (There were a) lot of switching sides; a civil war.
The war ended without winners, it ended with a truce, thanks mostly to USA.
It was a wrong war, (all for the) wrong reasons.
I did not fight for religion or ethnicity, I fought to keep my family and myself alive.
For the last 15 years we have had peace. We live with people who used to be our enemies. I do not to want to have war and enemies again because ethnicity or religion or for any other reason.
Please do not try to generalize anything about that war, there was no good or bad side, we all suffered and (now) we all try to live together again.
And yes every side did bad things, and every side had both good and bad guys.
I am here for one and only reason- survival, I want to learn, and I can share some useful stuff with you. I don’t think (want to know) about your religious beliefs, your ethnicity or your politic opinions.
Few words about my city before war, it was the usual Bosnian town. (It had a) normal life, decent people, schools, theaters, and parks. (It had a) college, airport, crime rates were very low. (The) town was like most of the smaller towns in USA (I think). I was a young man, just like any of you are maybe.
Now very important think: I am not here to discuss about war reasons, or sides, religion or anything similar.
Thanks to the war, in my town was REAL SHTF situation, and we can discuss only about that, only that is important.
You have a lot internet pages, you can learn everything about that war, and you can choose side if you want. OK that’s it.
About survival.
I don t know about other people on this forum, but I have lot of alcohol stacked now.
At the beginning of the war a tank grenade smashed front wall of small distillery (alcohol factory) close to my house. (It opened up and we were able to access it) so we took something around 500 liters of rakia (it is something like Bosnian whiskey, I guess, it’s made from grapes, and very strong)
It was great stuff for trading, people used alcohol a lot, desperate times I think, we also used it for disinfection.
About hygiene, cups and plates, paper or plastic, your gonna need a LOT, I know, we did not have it at all.
My opinion is that hygiene things are more important maybe than food, you can easily shoot pigeon. If you have a grandmother she may know (about) some of the eatable plants on nearest small hill (my experience) but you can not shoot hand sanitizer
Water purifying pills, all kind of cleaning stuff, sanitizers, lot of soap, bleach, gloves, masks, all disposable. (All are important and needed.)
Here, I copy and edit this in the middle of the cornovirus event inside of China. And this advice is spot on, I'll tell you what.
Take very good care about (getting) first aid training. Learn how to treat smaller cuts, burns or even a gunshot wound. There will not be any hospital (available), even if you found a doctor somewhere he probably will not have any meds, or (perhaps) you won’t have stuff to pay him with.
Learn how and when to use antibiotics and have a lot of it on hand.
Believe me with (some) good knowledge and goodly amount of meds you are gonna be rich.
About gold and silver, yes, me personally gave all my gold for ammunition in that time, but it wasn’t worth too much.
About pets, i did not have any, I did not notice a lot pets in that time, did somebody ate them? I don’t know… probably.
About a small family, hmm, not good.
Usually a few smaller families would get together in the biggest house available and stay together, all relatives (my case).
A small family or a single man, (is) not good (an ideal arrangement) for survival in town (during a) SHTF event.
Maybe in the wilderness (but I don t have experience in that).
Even if you keep a low profile, hidden in your house with lots of food etc, sooner or later the mob will come. And you have maybe have one or two guns… (it’s going to be) very hard (to make it oout alive).
I agree with the low profile policy, it is very important not to attract people with anything. But when they come, (and they will come) you will need to have numbers, people and guns, your best people is your family.
About moving through the city: always move during night time as I mentioned earlier. Never alone. 2-3 man. Move very fast, never attract anything. Look like everybody else. If most folks look desperate, poor, and dirty you need to look the same. There is no need that everybody else knows that you have a good amount of food, ammo, clean clothes and everything else back at home. Look and act like everybody else. (Blend in. Be inconspicuous.)
When somebody attacks you or your family then (is when) you need to show them that you are very ready.
I never walked in big groups, in that time and that situation, (the only) big groups are gangs.
Now, this is all my experience, it was then. I made a lot of mistakes. I am no expert. I am here just like any of you, to learn and share.
For example i don t know too much about wilderness survival, I am here to check learn about it.
Oh yes, few things to the Sedoy: my wife is different ethnicity, and she is also a Catholic, I am not, and to answer you: no I am not going to shoot her.
Q: What happened to those who died? Where did people get firewood?
Well, who ever died or get killed in that period, did not get a proper funeral.
Folks used used every peace of free land, close to their house for burial. Sometimes even in the garden. 2-3 city parks turned to graveyards. After the war most of them are exhumed and properly buried.
There was not nothing like burning bodies or anything similar, as far as I know.
Oh one more interesting thing about fire. Some people used to travel a few miles during the night just to find fire somewhere so they can light a peace of wood and bring it home, and start a fire for cooking or heating. Lighters and matches were really precious, and most of the folks did not have enough firewood to keep a file or embers burning. For most of the people it was constant search for something, fire, wood, food, ammo…
Q: Was salt valuable?
It was valuable yes, but not too much, for example coffee or cigarettes were worth much more.
Q: What about cigarettes?
Hm, I had a lot of alcohol as I mentioned before. I traded almost everything without any problem, let me say it like this: consumption of alcohol was probably 10 times more than during normal times. Not to mention cleaning and disinfection.
On the other hand, you made a very good point, if you have money and time and you have a storage it is probably better to store cigarettes or candles and batteries for trade, or food.
I was not a “prepper” at that time, we did not have time to prepare. A few days right before the SHTF politicians on TV stated that everything is fine. Then, when the sky fell down we just take what you can.
Q: Tell us more about cooking and the foods you were able to
prepare. Were you concerned about the smell getting around and alerting
people that there was food over there?
About cooking, before the SHTF I used in my house electricity for both, cooking and heating. So when everything started I traded some stuff for some kind of old wood stove. I put it in the kitchen and fix exhaust pipe (right word?) through a hole in wall. I used that for both cooking and heating.
During the summer I cooked in my backyard (walled fence, brick, luckily).
Concerning the smell of the food, hum. I’ll try to (describe for you a) picture (of the) situation: no electricity, no running water, sewage off for months, dead bodies in ruined houses, grime and mess, believe me it was very difficult to smell something nice.
It was not like in movies, it was ugly, dirty, and smelly.
Yes I had a few problems because of cooking, only a few, but as I said before, enough people, properly armed and with the will to defend…
… and you can manage most of the problems with that.
Probably, the situation would be (quite) different in the wilderness.
I ate mostly some kind of pancakes with local herbs (it does not require cooking oil and too much firewood), and of course, everything what I could get and trade (we ate). Rice was good to eat, not too much firewood for that.
I think I had (a lot of) luck, only a few times (did) I eat funny things like pigeons.
I always had something to trade, I guess that saved me…
… and guns of course.
Downtown Grbavica, a suburb of Sarajevo, March of 1996. Sarajevo was also besieged and faced many of the issues described by Selco.
Q:
1. Why would the night be safer than daytime? Outside of the obvious of
being easier to hide at night, but were the gangs more out during the
days? Also, why only small groups of 2-3? What happened to larger
groups?
2. Why would you have to go out at night? For instance, where were you going and why?
3. How did you handle the mob situation when they came for you, or your family?
4. You mentioned trading for bullets, etc. How much shooting were you doing during that time and how much ammo did you have, or would like to have had?
5. How were you able to determine who was an enemy and who wasn’t? How did you manage to get out there trade with people and when/where?
6. What fortifications did you do to your home and what kind of guard, or protections did you have in place?
7. Finally, how did you avoid snipers? What precautions did people take against them?
Firstly, almost nobody went out during the day because of snipers, the line of defense was very close, so whatever you have to do, you do it during the night.
(You) trade something, look for firewood (I can’t express how much this was important (to us) in town, and hard), looking for anything, check somebody, to go to hear news (very very important, lot of people get killed because they go somewhere just to see what happening, or what’s new) remember, no news, no radio ,no TV, nothing, rumors fed lot of people.
Already (as I) explained, you can stay home and die of hunger and cold, or even by infection of some small wound or go out and risk your life, try to find – trade anything useful
I did have situations concerning my house only, there is no need (to get into) too many details, we had more fire power, and (a) brick wall.
Also we had something like a street watch, people from my street were well organized, in case of gangs, now there were a lot shootings.
There was pretty much shooting all over town, I did not have enough weapons at the beginning. (I had) one rifle and one pistol (old world war II vintage), maybe 100 bullets total. Later I traded some things for more rifles and ammo. I remember that I gave away a car battery for 2 rifles.
How much ammo ?
A LOT, as much as you can (get a hold of).
Most of the time you are not able to determine who is enemy or friend. Expect my family and few real friends. Everybody else is a potential enemy. When your friend must choose between his child’s death and your death guess who (he) is going to choose.
Rumors, somebody tells you that some old guy a few blocks away has some cans and he is looking for ammo or whatever. You go there, as I say you are always looking for something. Same some people would came to my street as traders, with some goods.
There was something like trade street during the night, actually it was in the big ruins of sport center. You can go over there and look for something or offer something. However, it was not controlled by anyone so it was too dangerous.
It was primitive pretty much, a brick wall around the house, bags of sand on windows and doors, over that bags we used whatever you can. (There were) big pieces of metal, stones, (everywhere). Inside the house we put all kinds of stuff on the windows, (leaving) only a small opening left for a rifle. (We had a rule) always 5 members of family ready for fight, one always outside on street hidden.
Stone age situation.
To avoid snipers, we would stay home during the day, there were not so many night snipers, even during the night we never walked openly on the streets if we can avoid that, always (using) shortcuts, trough ruins, fast and quiet.
Q: What was your bathroom situation? Where did you go? Did
you have anything to wipe with? Sorry ask such personal questions, but
this is something that I’ve wondered about in this type of situation.
We used shovels and any piece of land close to house, (yeah) it sounds dirty, and it is dirty; washing with collected rainwater, sometimes (we would) go to the river (most of the time that was too dangerous) Most of the time we did not have toilet paper, even if I had it, I (would) trade it.
It was a bad situation all the time.
If i can give some advice: first to prep is a weapon and ammo, then everything else.
I mean everything, depends how much money and space you have.
If you forget something no problem there is always somebody ready for trade, but if you forget guns and ammo then you may not be able to get to trading places.
I do not see big family or group of really (I mean really) good friends as more mouth to feed, I see them as more guns and strength, it is in people’s nature to adapt.
And keep it simple and use common sense. In the first period (of the war) the weak people vanished, others fought.
Go with small things, lighters, candles, flints.
It is great idea to have a fuel generator (electrical generating unit) but i think a better idea is to have 1000 BIC lighters. A fuel generator is great, but in a SHTF scenario in town it is going to attract a whole army. But, 1000 BIC lighters don’t take up too much space, (they’re) cheap, and you can always trade it for something.
Real SHTF scenario demands a complete change of the normal mindset, (it’s) hard to explain, I’ll try through examples.
Q: How easy/hard was it to get weapons AFTER the SHTF and what could you trade for weapon and ammunition (I remember you saying a car battery for a rifle) and where would I go to find the people who trade in weapons?
Hum, you re right, after the war every house here had a weapon from the war, and yes the police did take some action to take illegal weapons from the population. It depends from man to man I guess, a lot of people find ways to hide their weapons somewhere, just in case.
I also have legal weapon (license), and the authority here has some thing they refer as “temporary collecting”. It basically says something like: “in a case of unusual event (riots, unrest, etc) government has the right to temporary collect all legal weapons”. So I keep always in mind that fact. And I acted like some other people.
You know some people have legal weapon for everyday carry (I have a Glock 45 and Taurus 38) but some people with legal weapon also have illegal weapons hidden somewhere just in case SHTF and “temporary collecting”.
It is not hard to get weapon in SHTF if you have good stuff for trade,. However, the other thing is important. The very first days of SHTF is worst in terms of chaos and panic. So, maybe you’re not gonna have time to get a gun. And to be unarmed in chaos panic and riots is bad.
In my case, the man needed a car battery for a HAM radio I think, and he had some extra rifles, so we traded.
Q: What about medical care for people who were shot or became injured?
Wounds was mostly gunshot wounds of course, without specialists and everything else, if wounded manage to find a doctor somewhere he had like 30% chances to live.
Again it is not (like a) movie, mostly they died.
A lot of people died even from minor cuts infections, I had antibiotics maybe for 3-4 treatments. Of course for my family only.
Simple things killed people. Diarrhea can kill you in a few days without meds and re-hydration, (fluid therapy, IV) especially small kids. Lot of fungal skin diseases, and food poisoning, we could not do too much. Basically we treated diseases mostly with local herbs, and if you had a wound, put rakia (whiskey) on it and tried to find antibiotics somewhere.
So i was good at fixing wounds in term of emergency help, but longer procedure…
…bad prognosis.
What I learned? Hygiene again, and a lot of meds, especially antibiotics. You need to learn to treat lot of stuff, go online, finish some training, EMT maybe, first aid etc.
In SHTF things are different, learn how to open IV, when to use certain drugs, or antibiotics.
Get your self ANA TE (anti tetanus ) shot injections , snake poison kit, adrenaline kit (allergic reactions, different kinds) tick removal kit, (tick related illness can kill you, learn how to remove tick)…
Get in Supply your prepper storage some reanimation kit (simple one) like a small oxygen cylinder, a BVM mask etc. It is not really hard to learn to use all of these.
OK let’s be clear about something, of course you can not use anything of this in the “real world” unless you are certified and trained for that ( EMT, nurse, physician ).
But in SHTF nobody will ask you for your license, just learn and have it in your storage big part for medical things.
So to answer question how did I help and treat others? Most of the time everyone was very poor. I helped some with the resources that I had. I took food or something else for exchange, I was badly prepared for that, now I have what I need to have.
Q: Did your local currency/money still hold value? Were you still able to use money to purchase items from other people?
No, not really. I mean sometimes you can use foreign money if you had it to buy something, (dollars or German marks) but even in that rare occasion the rate was unbelievable. For example 1 can of beans for 30-40 dollars (normal value was maybe 0.50). I guess somebody had connections with outside world, black market you know, so he can earn a lot of money. But it was very rare. Trade was main thing to get something.
Local currency crashed very fast, in few weeks or month maybe.
Q: How much space should I keep for alcohol storage? What was security like?
About alcohol first, you are right but you are right in both ways, people needed alcohol more in desperate times then usual, so it is a kind of gambling I guess, it is very good item for trading. I never had problems with alcohol trading and having than problems with trading other things.
Also I am thinking about something else, maybe it is better to fill my storage with something less space consuming but still interesting for trade, like batteries, antibiotics etc.
Thing is I had all that alcohol for free, I did not buy it. I don t know about this.
In most of the situations people attacked me because they thought they are stronger, they did not know for sure what I really had.
About ammunition trade, it depends how much ammo you are going to have, sometimes I would trade ammo for food, and in few weeks again food for ammo. However, I never never conducted trade at my home, and never bigger amounts, very few people knew how much of anything I had in my house.
The point is to store as much of anything as you can store (space , money). (Then) later during the situation you ll see what is most popular. Correction – ammo and guns always gonna held first place for me, but who knows maybe number 2 for trading gonna be for example masks with filters.
About medical issue , I’ll write in my next post what do I have now in my medical part of storage
Defenses were very primitive, again we were not prepared. We use whatever we could, windows were broken, roofs mostly damaged from shelling, all windows were blocked with something, sand bags and rocks. Every night I blocked my yard gate with junk- rubble from the street and I used an old aluminum ladder to get over the (brick) wall, when I came back I called somebody from house to get me with that ladder so I can move back in.
A guy from my street barricaded his house completely. If he goes out at night, he used a hole that he made in one room that was connected with his neighbor’s house, and then go trough his (ruined and destroyed) house out. So, actually he had secret entrance.
It may look weird to say but most secured houses are gone first, of course we had some very nice houses in neighborhood, with walls, dogs, alarms, steel bars on windows, alarms. And you can guess what happened, mobs attacked those houses first, some were defended other not, depend how many guns and hands they had inside.
So i think security is great, but be sure that you keep it low profile. Forget about alarms, if you live in town and SHTF you gonna need simple looking non-interesting secured house, with a lot of guns and ammunition.
Just keep it low profile and not interesting.
On my apartment door now I have a steel door for security reasons, but only to keep me trough the first (brief) short period of chaos, then I am ready to move out to connect with a much bigger group of armed people (family and friends) in the country (I hope).
Well in my case migration did not happen because it happens very fast. The other army just closed up the city in a ring and that’s it. If you ask me where was that army and how we were unable to see them coming, the answer is simple. That army was an ally of the army of my side and people…
… one day we woke up and figured they are the enemy now and they are closing all the ways out. Politics. It is true, it’s one more side of civil war.
But I heard from others parts of country, and my friends who stayed in villages in the other parts in state, that they had much better situations. Their countryside had land, corn, wheat, fruit trees, farms etc. They had enough food, it was bad, but much better than in the city.
I know one thing if we had some way out from the town, we would use it, (unfortunately) we did not have it.
Q: What was the situation with banks and stores?
About banks, loans, credit cards. Complete monetary system died for about one year, so nothing works.
It is complex question in many ways, I’ll try it to answer it in some future posts, (I) need much more time and much much more space to describe it.
Even now, almost 20 years later, folks are in European court suing banks, because they don’t want to admit their savings in banks.
A lot of different things happened in that period. They changed money, I mean (the) monetary name, they changed it 2-3 times , hyperinflation occurred. (All manner of things were lost), lost (all the) paper trails about savings, loans … I remember some people use that situation to get rich, they are still rich.
So I’ll try to describe that in separate post.
There was a lot of problems with proving peoples property after everything. For example: my father had a nice apartment and because of the war he had to leave it. Now, after the war ended he was at court for about 4 years proving that the apartment was his.
Now, the reasons for that were different, because politics in that time, but also he did not have enough paper work to prove that apartment was his (he did not take papers from the apartment when he fled), he had more important things to care about.
On the other side during the worst period, people just moved in the empty house, and that’s it.
I mention rural areas in another post. As far as I remember it was better there.
In that period there wasn’t any running vehicles. Actually I remember a tank at the front line, and Lada Niva (check it on web) with cut off doors and roof and installed machine gun (I think it was an old m53) and those two only moved when they fired (they keep it hidden behind ruined houses).
Lada Niva
For let me call it “civilian population” there was no moving with
vehicles, streets were mostly under rubble and unusable and fuel was too
expensive.
Not to draw attention was a big thing, about clothing, there used to be some sort of town defense, it was not like a real military, mostly mixed civilian clothes with parts of uniforms, different types of weapons, so no rules.
But as soon as we start to go in to those things and try to talk about two armies, their strength, war crimes, politics I am not gonna like it any more, because people gonna start to choose sides, and I think it is not important for us here.
As I said before there wasn’t an organized army, but we all had been like soldiers, we had to, most of us carried weapon and tried to protect ourselves from the enemy army and robbers.
Inside the town you did not want to look fancy because somebody would shoot you and take all your good stuff, you did not want to have a fancy rifle, because probably you not gonna find ammo in that caliber and also you are drawing attention to yourself.
So let me try to put it this way: If SHTF tomorrow, I will try to look like most of the people outside, scared, desperate, confused and I’ll scream maybe, no fancy looking stuff, I’ll not go out in fancy new uniform and yell “I am here, you are finished now looters and robbers”.
I’ll stay low profile, heavily armed and well prepared waiting to see my options, even if I have to go out with all my gear to do things I’ll go out in the night, with my best friend or brother. Maybe it sounds ridiculous, but from my experience it works, be very well prepared, but let nobody outside your house know or see that.
No matter how good your house security is, how good your weapon is, if people see that they have good reason to rob you they probably rob you in town SHTF. It is only matter of time and number of guns.
Don’t ever give them reason to be interesting in robbing you. Stay uninteresting. Now this is my opinion, maybe is not working in different situation.
About robbing grocery store and gas stations; it happened very very fast, as soon as shooting started all valuable things were emptied. There was some effort of authority to keep it together but everything fell apart in the first few weeks.
Bernie Carr from ApartmentPrepper was fascinated with the story and had even more questions, and was able to reach Selco.
Q: On the forum where you described your experience of being
under siege, you mentioned that you had no electricity or running water.
How did you and your family handle the toilet (sanitary) conditions?
We had a small yard and dug holes for toilets, we thought it was temporary so the holes were small but later on we dug bigger ones because we realized this is long and world might have forgotten us. It was not nice but at least we did not do it in the house like many others did. Whole area started to smell bad anyway, stench from dead people is worse than a bit of poo.
Q: A lot of my readers are women and they would want to know what did the women, children and elderly members of your family do on a day to day basis during the time your city was under attack?
The roles were back to hundred years ago. Before war we were modern society, but as soon as SHTF the women, kids and elder stayed mostly at home. They wanted that, no questions. Happened automatically.
They did the washing, cooking, cleaning and taking care of sick people. Just sometimes when shelling was a bit less some women came along to gather herbs or MRE if food aid was coming that time. Not often. We always had some man protecting the home, women, children and elderly.
Q: From all the weapons that you used, what was your
preferred weapons for when you went out into the street OR when you were
staying at home and why?
Always had the same weapons, TeTe gun / some Russian gun and AK47. Simple choice, most ammo for these weapons. We had only a few of those so we exchanged them among us. Did a good job, very reliable weapons. AK47 has good stopping power, just not very good on fully auto. Can make a mess out of a human.
Q: A lot of apartment preppers will probably decide to stay
in their homes and this has raised a lot of discussions on the pros and
cons of staying in the city. Some people say that by staying in the
city, the infrastructure will be restored first, and that those living
in the countryside would be attacked by roving bandits. The other side
states that those living in the countryside have greater chances of
survival as they would be more self-reliant and not dependent on
resources from the city. Based on you and your family’s experience,
which would you prefer and why?
RUN! If you lucky yes, city might be better off but if not it is so much worse. Bug in for a few days until first madness settled and then bug out. Also depends on the weather. Might stay at home in winter and risk getting robbed / murdered instead of going out and freezing to death. Only run if you know where you run to.
Daisy Luther from The Organic Prepper
also contacted Selco for an interview. We highlight a couple of the
Q&As and you can go to her site if you’d like to read the rest (she
focuses on politics and the US situation).
Q: What parallels do you see with events in the US and Bosnia before the SHTF?
US and Yugoslavia (in 1990) on first look do not have
anything in common because people are going to say, “The USA cannot have
anything similar to any socialistic system.”
This is true but only on first look.
Yugoslavia had somewhere around 20-22 million citizens, six republics
(similar to states in the US), 3-4 main religions, and many national
groups (ethnicity).
The official state policy was to build Yugoslavian “nationality”
(from the end of WW1) and through different ways that effort was
successful until the 90s.
We were “something big, united through differences with a strong connection to make something big.”
And then those differences were used to make chaos.
In the late 80s and beginning of the 90s (when democracy came) the
problems started and ended up in series of wars and cases of complete
collapse.
Things that I experienced in my case prior to SHTF, and things that you might recognize:
Things that make differences between people are more and more problematic (race, religion, political opinion).
Polarization is getting obviously stronger.
People want to come to your country, but they do not want to
“assimilate” or contribute to the greater good. They want to preserve
their way of life which is often absolutely contradictory to the way
that your country (society) works.
The political way of solving those problems often fails, because, in
essence, those problems are hard to solve in a democratic way (in the
spirit of democracy).
Your freedoms are “shrinking” as a result of that.
Calls for “radical solutions“ for the problems are stronger and stronger.
The media is absolutely working a dirty job, and it is hard to find out what is the truth anymore.
Suddenly people and events from history are “brought back” so people
can judge and argue about it, to write history again, to build myths
sometimes.
Q: Anything else to add?
I have seen many people killed, a lot of women and children too, civilians. A huge number of people suffered, were hungry and cold and were terrified through that period.
But I can count on one hand the dead or hungry politicians in that time.
Things were good for them through that period. Some of them ended up even richer. A lot of them are still powerful in the same or different parties, and are still talking about “their people” or “ causes” or “fear from others”.
It is the way it works.
Conclusion
This is good stuff, don’t you think?
Take heed, SHTF can come in many forms. Like the biological warfare with the coronvirus here in China. (Just a second ago I stepped outside to check with the apartment complex police. We are still under lock-down. No one can come in or leave the complex.)
Make sure you have a tight group of friends and family.
Stockpile food.
Stockpile sanitary and anti-bacterial supplies.
Have skills or items to barter.
Be able to defend yourself with equipment that you know how to use well.
Lie low key, and hide.
If you enjoyed this post, please be sure to visit the rest of my blog here…
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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
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off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Here’s what to expect once the socialists register your firearms… outlaw them, disarm you, and take you to a “safe place”…
Know your history.
One of the common themes that I see from time to time from liberals, and the uneducated (could they be one and the same?), is that registration of firearms means nothing.
That no one will take your guns.
They actually pretend to believe it and say that mantra with authority. They say it with conviction.
But it’s a lie. Historically, guns are always seized after registration.
The left took “1984” not as a cautionary tale, but a guidebook; an erotic how-to tale leading to Utopia. They’re executing a thought-blitzkrieg to enact their agenda, hoping the bulk of Americans won't catch on.
- Democrats And The ‘Reeducation’ Of The American People
Further, the seizing of firearms almost always results in genocide against a minority population of some sort. Which then resorts in events such as described here.
Based on newly-discovered, secret documents from German archives, diaries and newspapers of the time, Gun Control in the Third Reich presents the definitive, yet hidden history of how the Nazi regime made use of gun control to disarm and repress its enemies and consolidate power. The countless books on the Third Reich and the Holocaust fail even to mention the laws restricting firearms ...
- Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and ...
Here is an interesting biography by a German boy (now an old man) who entered a German “safe haven” once he and his family was disarmed. At that time, everyone thought that the German government had their best interests are heart and that they were going to be transported to “protected communities” to live.
They were, however, being sent to their deaths.
Read it, and remember that at that time Germany was the most advanced, socially advanced and technologically advanced nation in the world. They had the best machine, electronics, transportation and doctors.
During the earlier years, when did you realize that the Nazi regime was going to be a very, very big problem?
Well, in 1939, when the war broke out, I was only about 10 and a half years old. I didn’t know much about politics.
But in 1938, there was Kristallnacht in Germany, and… actually, we all know what happened with that, where Jewish people were not allowed to do this or that, all the Jewish shops in Germany and Austria were broken into, the breaking of the glass, the shopkeepers were pulled out, and many were beaten to death or sent to Dachau (at that time, it was just a prison)… and many Jewish homes were ransacked and they were burning Jewish temples, places of worship, many many Jewish temples in Austria were actually burned.
And it was not done by a bunch of gangs, wild…you know, hooligans. It
was government-owned. Government orders. And they actually ordered to
start fires in all these temples and places of worship. And firefighters
stood by, guarding the houses that are NEXT to these temples, so they
shouldn’t catch on fire, but the temples were burning.
So those things were happening when I was 9 and a half. And i had no
idea of these things. If my parents knew something, they wouldn’t tell
us.
Expert Tip: Do not try to “protect” your children from the truth.
I came from a wonderful loving home, a family of 7. And out of that family, only my older sister Lola and I survived.
Expert Tip: If you and your family are classified as a “deplorable” or “privileged”, you can expect most of your family to be killed by the government.
Lola was 5 years older than I was, and unfortunately she passed away a few months ago. She was a wonderful artist, lived in New York, and still her art is in many museums all over the world, including in Jerusalem… but anyway, to answer your question: did I know what was going on?
No. We had a pretty normal life. Until all hell broke loose, in September of 1939.
And the world broke out. And it didn’t take long. Right within days, we knew exactly what Nazi barbarism was.
What happened particularly in the train carts that transported you to the concentration camps? What do you remember of the transport inside the carts? Were you all crammed in with no food and water for days? How did people relieve their bowels? What of children or babies that there may have been present?
Okay, to answer your question about the cattle cars… they pushed us
in cattle cars. That was on the way to Auschwitz. And then with the
death-camp going to Dachau, the second time for me.
Expert Tip: Do not board the cattle cars, the trucks, the buses, or any kind of transport provided by the government.
To give you an idea – 80 people in a cattle car would be possible, if not for the fact that most people were told to bring along their valuables…
… because they were being told that they were being relocated in Germany, and these able-bodied people will be working…
… and the children will go to school, and the older parents will be taken care of…
…so they brought along all their valuables, all they could carry.
Expert Tip: You will NOT be told that you are going to a Concentration Camp. You will be told it is something else.
In collecting the disarmed civilians, they were told that they would be relocated to “safe areas”. So they brought all their belongings with them. Then they were segregated by gender.
So NOW, with all the bundles and valises they brought, if a person had to sit down, another person had to stand up.
The sanitary conditions – all they had were 2 buckets in the corner. They were full of water when we went in, and once the water was gone, there was nothing else left. So all we had were those 2 buckets for sanitary facilities.
So you can imagine 80 people using those 2 buckets.
Once these buckets got filled up – they kept spilling over on the
floor in the cattle car. If you can picture this, one day, two days,
three days… with all of that waste on the floor… at this point, we were
happy that we had bundles so we could sit on top of the bundles instead
of all the human waste on the floor.
Disarmed males, separated from their families, being instructed by the police that they are being taken into custody for “their own protection.
The conditions were unbelievable.
We had babies there. Pregnant mothers. We had older people. Sick people.
And they are screaming and yelling. It just went on…
…the conditions were unbelievable. Some people were dying, they just could not take it anymore, they gave up.
Expert Tip: Avoid crowds.
Day one, day two, day three – we finally arrived into Auschwitz, it
was called “Ausfhwenchiem” in Polish (it’s very hard to pronounce, I
know that).
Anyway, I don’t want to get into details, but to answer your
questions – the conditions were unbearable. After 3 days, they opened up
the gates, let some fresh air, and we came out.
But to answer your question – yes, it was inhumane. It was impossible to – I guess at the end of another day, half the people would’ve died. People were throwing up from the smell.
Just unbelievable.
It was completely inhumane. But they didn’t care. They took us to be killed anyway.
Expert Tip: No one will care.
How violent were the camps?
Well, the camps were not violent. The leaders of the camps were… they were very violent.
Expert Tip: The leadership is inherently violent and cruel.
In Auschwitz, for instance, they would make us stand at attention for an hour in the freezing cold in the morning, and an hour at night, and count you and count you and count you…
Actually, there was no purpose in that.
Children in the Nazi Concentration camps.
The only purpose they had was to weed out the strong from the weak.
And by making you stand at attention for an hour or two -so if you
started to lean a little bit, or your knee would buckle a little bit –
they would pull you out and either shoot you or send you to the hospital
where they sent you to the gas chambers or whatnot to get rid of you…
They only wanted people to stay there to work. To be able to work,
you have to be healthy and fed. But they didn’t care. They would always
get new people, fresh people. It was very hard. They had all kinds of torture methods.
For instance, in the camps in Auschwitz – I’ll go through it when I can, tell you about my camp experience – in Auschwitz they would make us stand in line in the freezing cold, and they had a little game – where they said “Take off your cap! in German.
So you had to stand at attention, take off your cap, and you had to hit your arm against your leg with the cap.
All they wanted was to hear one sound. If somebody was a second late,
they wanted to know who they were. And then they would pull them out,
and beat them to death, or give them lashes… and sometimes they would
pull people out just to make a point.
And then put the hats back on. Up and down, up and down… it was a
game. These capos, these people inside the camp who were guards, and
guarding us… they could do with us whatever they wished.
There was no accounting. If they had some kind of fetish or crazy idea, they played it out with people.
What did they care? Kill you, not kill you?
Once disarmed and entrapped within a “safe area”, the inmates are dehumanized in appearance and action.
What did you eat in the camps?
Okay… we ate very little. Whatever we can. Whatever they fed us. And believe me, whatever they fed us was not fit for human beings.
But daily, usually, we had a few slices – like maybe 3-4 slices of bread. And they gave us a little margarine. The bread was made from half-sawdust… not real wheat, or anything like that. It was half sawdust, but it was food we could digest. And a little margarine, they always… had a little liverwurst – I mean very little.
They gave you JUST ENOUGH to keep you alive, because they needed your work. And if you got sick, and you died – well, that’s what they planned anyway! But as long as you could work, they kept you alive.
Deplorable Jewish-Germans, demonized for their privilege, sent to “safe places” once disarmed by their government.
It’s strange, because a few years ago, when you had slaves in this world, you fed them well –
you wanted them to be fairly healthy and work hard. But the Nazis
barely fed us enough to keep a bird alive. And as long as you lived,
they used every ounce of strength from you to work.
Expert Tip: Genocidal slavery is far worse than historical slavery.
And if you died – well, it’s perfectly alright! Or they shot you, or beat you to death, who knows what they did.
So the food wasn’t very much. They gave us a little bit of what they
called coffee – it was made out of grain. But it was hot liquid. They
fed us once a day some soup, and you wouldn’t dare to find out what’s in
the soup, because if you found out, it would make you sick to your
stomach.
It was mostly liquid, but if the person dealing out the soup was a
friend of yours, or knew you, they went down with the ladle a little deeper to pick up something of substance.
It could sometimes be a rat, or a mouse. You would be surprised. They threw everything in there.
Deplorable Jewish-Germans, demonized for their privilege, sent to “safe places” once disarmed by their government.
Anyways, it wasn’t enough, and we were constantly, constantly, in hunger. Starving.
What was the most horrifying thing you personally witnessed?
The most horrifying thing I personally witnessed was the hanging of those 3 inmates that escaped and they caught them.
They put the noose on them, one at a time.
The last one that they hung was a young man, and he screamed out the prayers, the Jewish prayer before dying.
It’s only 5 or 6 letters.
But when they heard that, they kicked the stool out from under him, not even allowing him to finish 2 words of that prayer.
That was horrifying to me.
And the other thing that was even worse was when they first occupied
Poland, Krakow, within 5 days there was a truck pulling up to our
building, and Nazi soldiers jumped out of it, and all they wanted to
know was where the Jewish people lived. They asked the Super where the
Jewish people lived.
And he was quick to oblige.
Expert Tip: Socialist Marxists are very brutal once they confront an unarmed citizenry.
They came in, pistol-whipping us. They had sacks for us to throw in
all our valuables. They were beating up my father to open up the safe,
they cleaned everything out.
Famous Hitler Quote.
While this was going on, we heard horrible screams next door from the other Jewish family.
So my sister Lola, the one who survived, and I ran out through the back door to go into our neighbor’s through their back door to see what happened.
There was a young couple living there with 2 daughters, about my age. We used to play in the yard, after school. And the mother gave birth to an infant boy, about I guess 1 month earlier? or 3 weeks earlier? And we came in, we saw this monster holding the baby by its legs, and swinging it.
And screaming to the parents MAKE HIM SHUT UP!
And of course the parents and daughters were screaming Our baby, our baby, don’t hurt our baby!
And when we came in, we couldn’t believe what we saw. This monster had this smirk on his face, like he was enjoying what he was doing. And he smashed the baby’s head right into the doorpost, head first, killing it instantly.
That…That memory I will never forget. Seeing that baby scream, and
then the sudden silence. And the head opened up, and everything on the
floor. We all jumped on this monster, and started to beat him, and
scream – of course, we were all pistol-whipped by his buddies.
Expert Tip – Never allow Social Marxists to rule over you, disarm you, or control you in any way.
Anyways, it’s a long story, but all I can tell you is the mother died
within 2 weeks in the hospital, I don’t know if because of heartbreak,
or being beaten.
This was our first taste of Nazi brutality.
Virginia Governor, in 2020, demanded and legislated at Virginians be disarmed “for the children”.
In those dark days how did you find the strength to survive? Did you ever want to give up so the suffering would end?
Well, the answer to that question is simply that it’s human nature to
overcome most of the atrocities and difficulties that are thrown at
them.
But I didn’t think that I was any different than any other person.
Expert Tip: Democrats, no matter what they call themselves, are Socialist Marxists that given the change would go full-on Pol Pot on you and your family.
At least at that time, I didn’t give it any thought. I just wanted to survive – to get by every day, to stay out of the way, not to be as visible, because these – I don’t know what to call them – these monsters… just look for any kind of reason to pull someone out to kill them, to set an example.
Deplorable Jewish-Germans, demonized for their privilege, sent to “safe places” once disarmed by their government.
So you had to keep timid. And try to do everything that they ordered
you to do. And not to be outstanding, or visible, in such a way. So… if
you’re insignificant, they don’t look to pull you out, and show an
example.
This may be one of the reasons that I survived.
Expert Tip: The key to survival in a Social Marxist utopia is to be as hidden, and nonthreatening as possible. Use that time to leave it as silently and as quickly as possible.
And I was always very… don’t know how to say it? I was always very enthusiastic about life itself.
I hadn’t had a life, until that point, and whatever I did have, at this point, was sort’ve blocked out of my mind. I didn’t remember the good years any more.
So to me, life was very important, and I had to do everything humanly possible to survive, not to give them a reason or a cause to pull me out, and kill me.
What was one of the most uplifting things you witnessed during your imprisonment?
There were a lot of incidents like this, but few and far between.
Because missing one bit of food meant certain death. I remember one
inmate gave away his ration of food for a cigarette butt, and the guy
died that night.
The Nazis had figured out exactly what a person needed to live until
the following day, so very little of it went on where people were
generous by giving away their food – they couldn’t afford do, it meant
certain death.
But I did come across very generous and very good people in my life, who had saved Jewish people, and I called them “Righteous Gentiles.” I even had a head of the Gestapo who saved my sister, Lola, the one who survived – and saving her, she saved me and dozens of others people from a ghetto. And that enabled us to escape the ghetto and run away to Hungary, which was still a free country.
Now this head of Gestapo knew what he was doing was wrong, according to their laws, and eventually, he was executed by the Germans. But he saved many Jewish people, including myself and some others that i know survived the war thanks to him.
So not everyone was bad.
But of ALL people – we couldn’t believe the Head of Gestapo would do what that man did.
Expert Tip; There are “friends” in the most unlikeliest of places. But do not count on them. The odds of you encountering them is minuscule.
Who were your liberators and could you talk a little about when you first saw them and if you kept in touch with them over the years?
At first, you know, they looked like GODS to me.
I was liberated by the American soldiers. And every soldier that i saw looked like a God. I didn’t know how to thank them.
But I have met liberators – and until I started teaching about the
Holocaust, and speaking, and lecturing – actually, it’s in my book, and
it’s a long story to tell, but how in Tennessee, at the University of
Tennessee, I happened to accidentally meet the liberators of Dachau, 2
gentlemen who liberated me.
Virginia Governor, in 2020, demanded and legislated at Virginians be disarmed “for the children”. Those that will resist will need to confront the police and the national guard. He is even budgeting for special collection teams to go door to door to disarm the citizenry of Virginia.
And they were telling their stories about what they found in Dachau,
these atrocities, and I was a speaker immediately following them.
And sitting there, I couldn’t believe – I was on pins & needles – these people rescued my life! These people liberated me!
And then when it was my turn to speak, i walk over to them with
shaking knees, and I embrace them, and I say: “You two gentlemen gave me
my life. You liberated me. I wouldn’t be here without you.“
OF ALL PLACES. And they happened to be the soldiers who liberated
Dachau! And I was liberated there! How strange and coincidental that
were in the same stage, talking about the same thing. And when they
talked about liberating Dachau, and all these atrocities – I couldn’t
believe what I heard…
Yes, yes. Those are the only two gentlemen I met those many years later, and we keep in touch quite often.
What was the first thing you ate after being freed from the camp?
The first thing I ate, I remember, 2 GIs, American soldiers walked
up to us, and they opened up a can of Spam. And they handed it to me and
my cousin.
Well, it smelled so good that we made a mistake and we ate some of it.
Expert Tip; When starving, eat sparingly and carefully. Your body will not be able to handle the food.
And unfortunately, both of us came down with dysentery, I guess it
sped up, he would’ve probably died anyway, and my cousin died in my arms
the night after liberation. I got very sick too, and when they took him
away from me, I tried to follow.
I only weighed 65 pounds. I was a skeleton. Skin and bones.
So what can I tell you? The first food we ate was Spam.
I never ate that in my life before. I guess the Americans found it in
the German magazines, and they handed it out to the starving people.
They meant well, but our stomachs were not used to it.
A Jesuit priest picked me up, and took me to a field hospital in
Dachau, where I passed out, and I was out in a coma for over 2 months.
So what I ate afterwards, I have no idea. But it was good food, because I
came to myself, and surprising when I woke up after coma, I couldn’t
believe seeing myself – I looked pretty good! I had flesh on me.
I looked like a human being again.
What was your initial experience of America when you first arrived in 1947?
Well, when I was arrived, I was very, very overcome. I was impressed. It was just overwhelming to me.
Gun registration and control works. These experts clearly recommend it.
First, I arrived in New York harbor, and of course, the skyscrapers, the lifestyle… I made a sort of promise to myself then: This is going to be the first day of your life. From this day on, there is only ONE place to go: SUCCEED.
Expert Tip: When you flee a nation that has made gun ownership illegal, move to one where you can be free and own weapons.
I will build a family, I will do whatever I can in my power to succeed in this United States of America.
And this was my first impression. I liked what I seen. I met people who I thought were industrious, with businesses and families and love…there’s respect.
I loved what I saw in America.
I became American in my heart immediately.
So I adopted America, and I am glad America adopted me, and allowed me to be part of it, and become a citizen.
As a survivor, do you think you could ever forgive those who caused the Jewish race persecution? If so, what makes you forgive them, if not what would have to be done for it to be forgiven?
Okay, that’s a very good question. No, the answer is: I can’t forgive those people who were directly involved, the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Obviously, I can never forgive them.
And perhaps I feel that it’s not really up to me. It’s up to the victims. They have to forgive them. But I can’t forget. But the other answer is: I do not blame the son for his father’s sins.
Which means I have nothing against the people of Germany today.
They are not at fault for what happened. And to me, we are all part of the human race. So whether you’re German, or French, or American… whether you’re one religion, Catholic, Jewish, Protestant – it doesn’t matter.
We are all part of the human race.
And I respect every person.
As long as they prove themselves to not be racist or hateful people. As long as they don’t repeat the atrocities from the past – I respect them. And I tolerate them. I think it is beautiful that we are different.
So I hope this gave you the answer.
How hard is it to keep painful memories at the forefront of your mind as you do this? How do you find the motivation and inspiration to do so?
Well… I am thankful to God for the strength that I am healthy enough
to share my story. And I hope for many years that I can continue doing
this. Because it is something that needs to be done.
Gun registration and control works. Progressive Marxists clearly recommend it.
I started it over 20 years ago, approximately 25 years ago. It all started with my grand-son, who invited me to speak in one of the schools. Before I was silent, I kept it bottled up in me.
I thought Why subject our children, our grandchildren, to all these tragedies?
I wanted them to grow up as normal American kids.
Not to feel some kind of guilt-trip or something. So I didn’t talk much about it. But my grand-son asked me to come to school to talk about it.
Expert Tip; Do not hide Marxist atrocities. Do not allow anyone to hide the truths of social Marxism.
And from that date on, I came to Los Vegas Nevada, and I joined the Holocaust Survivor’s Group, and the speaker’s bureau, asked for volunteers. So I volunteered. And I haven’t stopped speaking since.
I felt I had to reach out.
I had to do much more than just speaking, exposing colleges. It has to be more wider-scale. So I started Zachor Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, hoping it would reach millions of people worldwide.
We have to keep this world from acquiring amnesia. But there are many other ways to reach out. And as time went on, I kept adding those ways.
Since I retired – actually, when I retired to Las Vegas, I felt I’ll take it easy for a while, I always felt that I was a very hard worker, but it turns out I’ve never worked so hard in my life as retirement!
So yes, I am grateful for this. I will do everything possible – because the world has to know. We have to do everything possible to keep the world from forgetting.
Have you or any other survivors you’ve met had to deal with PTSD or other mental health issues after the war ended? How were you able to go through it?
Post-traumatic stress, is that what you’re saying?
I didn’t have very much of that.
I knew… there were no surprises.
I knew exactly what was happening in the camps. I went through it every day.
So after liberation, I really did not have that much stress, because after going through hell, everything is paradise.
Expert Tip; After strife… It’s ALL good!
I knew I had to work hard in order to achieve my dream, to be
successful in this world, but to have post-traumatic stress… I didn’t. I
dunno. Maybe because i was too young, I didn’t realize. But to me,
every day was a gift from heaven.
So after going through what I went through – everything was easy. It was simple.
State police in Cambodia rounding up people who’s name were on gun registration lists. They then took them to “safe places”, that were “for their protection”.
To some people – things may look hard, like hard work, or digging
ditches, or who knows what you’re doing that’s hard. To me, it was a
pleasure, work. I’m doing this as a free man, a free person!
I never try to stay away from hard work. I knew that in order to
succeed, you have to work hard. And I did many things in this wonderful
America, in this country of ours, that wasn’t easy. But I don’t remember
post-traumatic stress. I really don’t have an answer for that.
You’ve obviously had an amazingly long life and experienced a lot of extreme things. What is the single moment in your life that stands out in your memory the strongest?
Well… the worst thing stands out in my life is memory, the memory
when we arrived into Auschwitz, and they said “Women and children to the
right, and men to the left” and I was holding onto my little brother
Tully, my older sister Goldie, and we were just… pulled apart.
Never to see each other again.
And when I found out where they went… and what happened to them, that was one of the worst nightmares of my life.
Expert Tip: Never allow yourself to be divided, separated, and segregated by your enemies.
I couldn’t believe when I was told that they were actually those
ashes that we see, those flames shooting out… those are our parents, our
mothers, our fathers, our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters… ashes.
This was a terrifying moment in my life. When I realized my sister,
my little bother, were just burned to death. Just… I couldn’t get over
it, for a long time.
And of course… other memories, there are many others.
Having my first daughter, my second daughter, my marriage to my lovely wife of 64 years…
There are a lot of wonderful, wonderful moments in my life. Besides the atrocities at the beginning
How frustrating is it that some people refuse to believe the Holocaust occurred?
I don’t believe that they don’t know better. They know better.
Expert Tip: Socialist Marxists lie. Everything they say is a lie.
They just believe that if a lie is told long enough, that some people will start believing in that lie. Because nothing in history was ever as documented as the Holocaust itself.
Eisenhower, when he came across these camps, instructed his soldiers, the fighting men to take pictures – all the pictures they could, from all they saw, these atrocities, “because someday there will be people denying that it ever happened.” That it ever happened.
So he was smart enough. And millions, and millions of pictures. It was documented in pictures, and films. So what’s the use of denying it?
Great Hitler Quote
They are preying on youngsters who don’t know better, or uneducated
people. This is why education is important. Because people who are in
countries who don’t have the chance to know the truth – they hope that
these people will believe it.
Those are anti-Semites. People who hate Jewish people.
What do you think about the status of Jews in Europe today?
About the status of Jews in the world today? It’s very grim. I read about it all the time. It seems like Anti-Semitism is taking over, all over again.
It’s not so… visible, openly.
Expert Tip; Nazi Germans were Democrat Socialists.
But what bothers me the most is in Germany itself, it’s become
fashionable among the elites in Germany to make jokes, and to sort’ve
blame things on the Jewish people. This is… what actually started the
whole thing.
Hitler, and the Nazis, did not begin by killing. This is not how it started.
Expert Tip: The killing did not start immediately. The disarming, and the name calling came first.
It all started with hate.
Propaganda.
And… this is happening again. Not to such an extent, as before, obviously. But I can see in my personal opinion that I have, if I am allowed to say this – I personally feel that there is only one race in the world, and that is the HUMAN race.
And we are all human.
So apparently, there is a little amount of evil that is lurking in
each one of us. We have to be very careful not to allow it to surface.
Because we are all the same people.
Progressive socialists are all the same. They give themselves different names. They promise to create a utopia. They have the registration of weapons, then seize them, and then kill specific “deplorable” segments of the population. All in the name of progressive, modern advancement.
I guess that the Nazis were not born monsters. They had lovely families. There were educated people.
So… people can be subverted in such an easy way. Simply by words from the mouth.
Hitler was a good orator. And he lashed out. And that’s how it started.
It’s beginning again. Little jokes, here and there about Jews. Little jokes about problems all the fault of a Jew… in a nice way. You know?
Expert Tip; Being called “deplorable” or accused of “privilege” is what Hitler did to the Jews. The Social Marxists use the exact same “playbook”.
And this is happening all over again in parts of the world. And it’s fashionable to make jokes about Jews. That bothers me. It bothers me a lot. And it’s happening. Of course, it is fueled by religion, and other sources… but WHY?
Why can’t we tolerate and respect each others’ religion? Why can’t we live side-by-side? And respect?
Great Pol Pot quote.
No matter what your religion is.
See the beauty in that part. And why do we have to try and convert others to be like them, or like us?
The beauty in this world is that we are different – we think different, we have different beliefs, we look different… can you imagine if we all looked the same, and if we all believed the same? Like Hitler wanted the Nazis to be?
It would be a dull, dull world. It would be like a bunch of ants following a leader.
So yes, I am very disturbed at what is happening.
Expert Tip; Survivors of Social Marxist re-engineering and utopias are alarmed at what is going on in the United States today.
And this is why I am doing MORE than I can do. Day and night, I have sleepless nights, I think of what I can do…to get the message out. To get to more people.
And this is why it’s so important to go to schools, why education is so important.
Deplorable Jewish-Germans, demonized for their privilege, sent to “safe places” once disarmed by their government.
Because hatred exists ONLY where people are ignorant.
So each one of us has to choose responsibility. To live lives that work against hatred.
Obviously – hatred is out there, even with bullying. Or political
campaigns. Reckless driving. All of these things contribute to an
environment of hatred.
And hatred can only exist where people are ignorant. So we must
constantly provide anti-hatred education. And in doing so, we can
contribute to the healing of others.
To respect. To heal the world. It has to be through
education. And it has to be through educators who are… known that they
believe in tolerance, and respect. So we have to be also very careful
who these educators are.
If you had the chance to go back in time and see your young self, what would you do and what would you tell him?
I would tell myself “Ben, you have to respect and love all people
in this world. Do not discriminate. Do whatever best you can in your
life to help others. In general, just be a person of love, instead of
hate. We have so much in this world, and I guess.. after going through
all this hatred, and atrocities, I would absolutely tell myself that
Ben, you cannot discriminate. We are all part of the human race. And
this is something that I feel starts – hatred begins in schools. I would
tell myself that.“
Deplorable Jewish-Germans, demonized for their privilege, sent to “safe places” once disarmed by their government.
It starts early as bullying. When you bully someone, you make an enemy for life. So why bully? Why hate?
This is something I have learned from living this life of mine, and
going through hell on earth… that we have to find a way to prevent this
from ever happening again.
So it has to start with me. I have to be the one. I have to be a loving person, instead of a hateful person.
And whatever you do – don’t ever be a bystander. If
you see someone else being hurt, or something being wrongfully done –
don’t be a bystander, the way the world was during World War II.
Expert Tip; Do not allow the Socialist Marxists to take control of government. Do not accept it. Fight back.
Speak up. Let your voice be heard.
Shout out. Let the world know. And this is what I am hoping I can
accomplish in my life. To get this world to shout out… for peaceful
purposes.
Shout out for love, for tolerance, against anti-Semitism, against
racism… we only get it through education, so if I had my chance of
reliving my life, this is what I would try to do. And this is what I am
trying to do, in the last 25-30 years of my life.
Deplorable Jewish-Germans, demonized for their privilege, sent to “safe places” once disarmed by their government.
What would you like every young person to know? What advice could you give them on how to live well?
The advice I can give every person… to live better…is “No matter – I want each person to know that life is a matter of choices.”
An individual can always CHOOSE what happens to them.
Idi Amin disarmed his nation, then declared war on them. Remember history.
Whether it’s a crisis, or a calamity, people can choose to either ruin their lives, or to learn from it, and move forward.
It’s essential to understand the consequences of personal choices.
It’s possible to let tragedy or trauma become a reason to stop living.
But it’s also possible to live through extreme circumstances like I did and commit to a life that has meaning. A life that matters.
If you strive – whatever profession you’re in – to be the BEST in
that profession – and if you work for a company, try to find out how you
can, or what you can do, to help this company succeed – then you will
be successful.
Don’t be a clock-watcher.
Just…see what you can do to possibly improve that company,
so they can make money, hire more people… if you have this outlook, be
the BEST in whatever you do… you have nothing to worry about in life.
You will have a wonderful life.
This is what I feel I succeeded in. Because i never thought about myself personally. I thought if my boss is going to be successful, I will be, automatically, awarded. That’s the best advice I can give you.
Absolutely never permit gun registration or disarmament. History clearly warns us of the consequences.
And it all started by gun registration.
Then disarmament.
Finally, his family being told to gather their belongings to be relocated to a “safe place” where they could live in peace.
And the rest, is history.
Do not allow your family, your loved ones, and your very existence to be turned into ashes and oily dust from furnace fires.
Expert Tip; Know your history and prepare for the worst. Pray that it does not happen, but be ready just in case it does.
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This post describes contemporaneous American events in the light of the loss of liberty and freedom.
Most certainly, that once you have a two-tiered justice system, you actually have no rule of law. And without a Rule of Law, you cannot have either freedom or liberty.
Today, America does not have Rule by Law. It has Rule by selectively applied Brute Force.
There is no rule of law in the United States. And there hasn’t been one for some time. When you have a two tiered justice system, then you have no justice when the country is founded on “equality”.
Introduction
America was founded on the premise of liberty and freedom. We have all heard this, well most of us, anyways. (Who knows what they are teaching in schools these days.) This article makes the simple statement; freedom and liberty REQUIRES a robust rule of law applied evenly throughout the nation.
If you do not have a robust Rule of Law, evenly applied. You will not have either freedom or liberty.
America is toast.
Freedom and liberty REQUIRES a robust rule of law applied evenly throughout the nation.
When rules are bent in favor of one person over another, justice fails. Without justice, the nation fails. It might be a slow slide into the abyss, but fail it will.
In the beginning…
When In The Course of Human Events……
The Founders of this nation put forward a very basic premise:
"...to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them..."
That no government, no person whether royalty or not, King, Queen or Pawn, can take from one to give to another, to make one lesser than another, to being removed from one of the basics of humanity…
…all for the privilege of another.
This is America today. Where and what freedoms remain?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."
That the very premise
of humanity is that one has a right to live, to be left alone to do as
one pleases, and to pursue — but not be guaranteed — happiness. The
only lawful and proper constraints arise when your exercise of same
prevents someone else from having that same peaceful enjoyment.
America was founded as a place where people could aspire to follow their dreams unencumbered by government interference. Sadly this is no longer the case, as the movie “Tucker – A man and his dream”, so clearly illustrates.
One cannot have a right to life if one cannot defend it using tools at least as powerful as those who would take it from you. You cannot have that right to life, that right of freedom and that right of liberty, if the rules of law are not evenly applied to everyone.
There is no freedom when the government can stop your pursuit of happiness.
Based on a true story. Shortly after World War II, Preston Tucker is a grandiose schemer with a new dream, to produce the best cars ever made. With the assistance of Abe Karatz and some impressive salesmanship on his own part, he obtains funding and begins to build his factory. The whole movie also has many parallels with director Coppola’s own efforts to build a new movie studio of his own.
There is no freedom when the government can stop your pursuit of happiness.
This is the story of entrepreneur Preston Tucker and the innovative car he designed in the late 1940s.
The car was attractive, economical, and safe, and had many features not found on the cars of that time -- an air-cooled rear engine, disk brakes, independent 4-wheel suspension, an additional center headlight that pivoted left and right for better vision when turning, a padded dash, seatbelts, and a popout safety windshield.
Tucker's promotional activities generated widespread public excitement and interest in the car, but the powerful auto industry blocked its production.
Only 50 cars were ever made.
The plan was to produce the car in the former Dodge B-29 engine plant on the far southwest side of Chicago. Many Chicagoans invested in the Tucker Motor Corporation, and some bought dealerships.
Even today, many people believe that then-Senator Homer Ferguson (R-Michigan) is the person most responsible for the loss of their investment in the revolutionary ahead-of-its-time "Tucker Torpedo".
- Tucker: The Man and His Dream
There is no freedom when the government can stop your pursuit of happiness.
This is a basic premise. It is a fundamental requirement for a nation to be one where people can live within an environment of freedom and liberty.
America today.
There is no freedom when the government can stop your pursuit of happiness.
The Constitution
The Founders put together a document called The Constitution. It established the Rule of Law that the nation would exist under.
The debate over it, and what needed to be added to it, is found in The Federalist and The Anti-Federalist; two books that are the chronology of the running debate of the time.
Anyone who claims to have an opinion on the foundations of our nation and why the Constitution is important ought to have read both, as should anyone who claims a right to run for elective office at any level — state, local or federal.
Duh! All elected officials NEED to be well-versed in both documents. The vast majority today are not.
Chief among the foundation of this nation is The Rule of Law and that it apply equally to everyone, all the time. It must be applied in each case evenly without exception.
Over time.
By various people, all for various reasons…
Laws grew, became confused, morphed into one thing or another, and their application distorted.
Today, functionally, the Rule of Law does not exist in America.
I can point this out, over and over, and over. And so I will, using examples that we read about every single day.
The law clearly states…
Not one illegal immigrant has a right to live and work, and have children in America. This is true under any circumstance; The Rule of Law says so.
It does not matter whether they personally intended to break said law; that merely encompasses whether they bear criminal culpability for the offense. It does not matter what you call them either. You can call them “dreamers”, “hopefuls”, “migrants”, “refugees” and “travelers”.
If they do not follow the law, they must be imprisoned, and then expelled.
Migrants ride on top of a northern bound train toward the U.S.-Mexico border in Oaxaca, southern Mexico, in March. Migrants crossing Mexico to get to the U.S. have increasingly become targets of criminal gangs who kidnap them to obtain ransom money.
Laws follow Due Process and are implemented, policed and structured fairly. Otherwise, they do not follow the Rule of Law. All laws must follow the Rule of Law, and that means that they are derived from the Bill of Rights.
Red Flag Laws
‘Red flag’ gun confiscation laws violate every principle of liberty upon which our country was founded. There is no due process associated with “red flag” laws. A judge’s order to seize the firearms from an American citizen who has not been accused of a crime, charged with a crime, convicted of a crime—or who never even threatened to commit a crime—based on the accusation of a single individual is anything but due process.
Our accuser could be a disgruntled employee, a bitter ex-spouse or relative, a vengeful neighbor, an anti-gun liberal or even an anti-gun policeman. By definition, “red flag” laws use mere suspicion of what one “might” do as justification to seize a person’s firearms. Tactics such as these have been used in virtually every despotic regime of history.
- Pastor Chuck Baldwin, quoted at Survival Blog
The key to having a Constitution, and a Bill of Rights… a strong organized structure from whence all other laws are derived, is that it becomes clear whether a law is constitutional or not.
Not all laws are constitutional.
Since the Rule of Law is derived from the Bill of Rights, any law that violates it is invalid.
How can you have an ATF who’s entire reason for existence is to infringe on the second amendment?
How can the IRS exist when it, by it’s own fundamental nature, violates the fourth amendment?
How can the FDA ban or arrest someone for using drugs when it violates the ninth amendment?
Now, the latest, in a long string of unconstiutional laws, the “red flag” law completely throws the “due process” scheme out the window. Where, an elected judge will make a determination of whether or not someone is guilty and action by the government needs to take place.
Once you remove judges from the equation…
You have no Rule of Law.
And…
And…
And it’s a big deal.
It’s a really, really, big deal.
If you do not enforce the Rule of Law, you do not have a nation.
The anti-gun movement.
Senators Richard Blumenthal and Mark Warner, both Democrats, have threatened legislation that is a rank violation of the First Amendment. They do so using the excuse of being necessary in response to the Christchurch live-stream.
The second amendment.
So…
Now we have 90% of the counties in Virginia turning into sanctuary enclaves that protects the Bill of Rights for the citizens of those counties. The Democrat reaction? Call in the military and increase funding to incarcerate everyone opposing them.
The Bill of Rights is not up for debate.
That’s right.
Pay attention.
Virginia under Democrat leadership.
The elected officials”, the new government has decided to openly violate the Rule of Law, and disarm citizens in direct defiance of the Bill of Rights.
This arrogance is what the founders of the nation fought against.
And it’s going to be fought again.
Americans fought the arrogant British government. They did not like being treated as a “cash cow” while the ruling class spent the money on frivolities.
90% of the counties in Virginia has declared themselves sanctuaries against government encroachment of their liberties and they will fight back.
Americans should pay attention.
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.
When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity.
To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.
I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
-Theodore Dalrymple
It is not possible to understand evil.
In contrast, the “American” empire acts like Genghis Khan on steroids without his military genius:
it appears to me Washington is intent on the wholesale obliteration of countries, their infrastructure, murdering the civilian populations by the millions, and so on.
Moreover, perhaps in the most memorable quote of Hillary Clinton in calling some Americans “deplorables,” it seems the entire class of rulers of America views its citizens as dispensable commodities and ill disguised contempt.
You cannot stop evil if you refuse to recognize it exists. You cannot accept that evil exists in this world if you close your eyes to it. You cannot see the evil. You cannot see the dangers if you fail to watch the errors others made that led them to their demise.
-UNZ
1st Amendment – Freedom of Speech. Means zero censorship of speech of any kind.
2nd Amendment – Ability to fight back against a tyrannical government.
Yet, these two elected Democrat officials want to violate a core tenet of law. Why?
Why?
The Democrats believe that they have achieved a strong degree of control over Americans and the only thing remaining to do is to disarm them. They are following a time-line and time-table laid out years ago, and if it seems like they over-played their hand it is because they did NOT expect a Donald Trump in the office of the President. They expected a Hillary Clinton.
Why the Democrats want to suppress freedom.
Governments are banning and attempting to ban guns and opinions related to keeping guns, not because they fear copycats:
They are banning that speech and literally burning books because faced with the gore, the nastiness and inhumanity of these acts the people may conclude that it was the government itself that sowed the seeds of these acts.
And that the government conspired with gave comfort to said people and groups…
…all the while rendering individual people powerless to stop it by infringing on The Right to Keep and Bear Arms…
…and did all of the above intentionally.
Were the people to reach that conclusion they’d be correct and in response they might revoke their consent to said government entirely and demand it depart.
When the citizens reach the conclusion that the government is corrupted and needs to be reformed, the second amendment is designed to facilitate that change.
America is resembling a slave camp.
A slave is not allowed weapons because he might use them to become free.
If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society—you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not.
Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right.
-Ayn Rand
A collapse of cultures…
Cultures collapse when there is no cohesion remaining.
Cultures collapse when the primary means to get ahead is to stomp on someone else’s head instead of innovating.
Cultures collapse when cheating is no longer punished and is celebrated instead.
Cultures collapse when cheating is no longer punished and is celebrated instead.
If that is not curtailed then collapse is inevitable — it is simply a matter of time.
Europeans dubbed it the Great War. Americans today remember it as World War One, and recall it as little more than a precursor of an even more violent Second World War. In reality, Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s justification for entering the war as a freedom crusade, as a “war to end all wars,” was, ultimately, little more than rhetorical cover for what amounted to a war in support of one group of empires, the British and French, against another, German and Austrian.
Indeed, in a certain sense, it was a bankers’ war. While the ostensibly “neutral” United States acceded to the British Navy’s starvation blockade of Germany, Washington simultaneously traded war materials with its Anglo brothers and floated London vital loans numbering in the billions of dollars. Clearly, by 1917, after three years of macabre massacre, Washington had a pecuniary interest in British victory.
That may not be the version of First World War history that most Americans learned in elementary or high school. Even less well known is the cynicism and civil liberties suppression of the “Progressive”-in-chief, President Wilson.
His strongman tactics: imprisonment of peaceful antiwar activists under the Sedition Act, detainment of pacifists in prison camps, and prosecution of critical journalists under the (still statute law) Espionage Act, are abhorrent enough. Worse still, however, was the reflexive manner in which the progressive “left” quickly fell in line with their president.
The left eats its own; maybe it always has. Immense majorities of “progressive s,”just like their socialist brethren in Europe, supported Wilson and the war in spite of past records of more dovish positions.
They then proceeded to attack, suppress, and often professionally ruin, or imprison, their former compatriots —relabeled as “radicals”—such as Randolph Bourne and Eugene Debs.
Nonetheless, for all of World War I’s horror, futility, absurdity even, the veterans of the war collectively emerged from the sodden trenches imbued with a vocal philosophy of never again. Indeed, they celebrated the moment the guns finally fell silent, the 11th minute, or the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month, 1918, as Armistice Day.
It was, romantic as it now seems, widely believed that theirs would be the last war. In fact, millions of lucky survivors left the war deeply dedicated to ensuring that be the case. Much of the finest Western literature of the 20th century, unsurprisingly, generated from the pens of disgruntled, damaged veterans—Hemingway, Graves, Fitzgerald, Sassoon, and many more—forever changed by the experience of needless war.
- The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs: An Interview with Andrei Martyanov ... a long but fascinating read
Whether something is “hate speech” is in the eye of the beholder but irrespective of that The First Amendment protects it.
Why?
Because even the most-vile expression of dislike is one’s right to hold and have. To state otherwise is to state a right to control another person’s mind and thoughts — to not only enslave as to labor but to thought itself.
That is profoundly evil.
The facts are (and do facts matter in America any longer?) that on July 27th, 2014, when the East of Ukraine was already at war, a young woman and her little daughter—Kristina and Kira—were murdered from the shelling of Ukrainian forces. The mother then was named the “Gorlovka Madonna.”
What is evil?
Manipulation by others for personal gain? Why are the Democrats so focused on the Ukraine? Why do they want to start World War III with Russia?
America tomorrow.
Why is our government fighting eight simultaneous wars in far off lands? Lands like Yemen? Lands like Syria? Lands like Afghanistan? Lands like Libya?
Why does it want a pick a fight with Russia over the Ukraine?
Why does it want to pick a fight with China over Taiwan?
What the heck is the matter with these people?
Why is the American leadership so focused on fighting wars, and why do they want to challenge major nuclear armed nations? Can they not see the consequences?
Evil has occupied all American institutions for some time now.
All, not most, American institutions are not corrupted.
They are all beyond redemption. It need to be completely overhauled and that might mean burning them all down and building up out from the ashes remaining.
In contrast, the “American” empire acts like Genghis Khan on steroids without his military genius:
it appears to me Washington is intent on the wholesale obliteration of countries, their infrastructure, murdering the civilian populations by the millions, and so on.
Moreover, perhaps in the most memorable quote of Hillary Clinton in calling some Americans “deplorables,” it seems the entire class of rulers of America views its citizens as dispensable commodities and ill disguised contempt.
You cannot stop evil if you refuse to recognize it exists. You cannot accept that evil exists in this world if you close your eyes to it. You cannot see the evil. You cannot see the dangers if you fail to watch the errors others made that led them to their demise.
-UNZ
This very same act is what our government is now calling on “big companies” to do, it is what the left has repeatedly done to anyone who dares speak against their policies and desires.
This is true whether on college campuses, in corporate America or in the public square.
If this story was a movie plot,…the audience would walk out and want their money back. Way too unbelievable! hat’s right, – College Bribe Mommy has a JD from Harvard, Daddy has a JD from USC and was a prosecuting attorney for both Los Angeles and San Diego, – before going into high tech and becoming CEO of Wireless Telematics.
Celebrities with dim-witted children got them into colleges by paying bribes and cheating.
The claim that said students were “blameless” if their test scores were faked or they faked a “disability” to extend time and thus be able to cheat is a lie.
Another view…
Said “students” are fully culpable yet none of them have been charged;
Not only did every one of them know they didn’t compete on the rowing team (for example)…
Any of them who got an extra hour or two to take the SAT or ACT knew damn well they were cheating, whether they knew their answers were being modified or not.
Why did this happen and why aren’t the kids in the dock too?
Sad will be the day…
Universities do not obey the law.
We have no rules of law.
Colleges claim they need “diversity.”
That’s nonsense; in a meritocracy the best rise irrespective of skin color, race or religion.
The fact is that this “diversity need” is met by lowering standards and allowing unqualified people who cannot do the work into the school.
When you no longer follow the conventions established by merit, you end up diluting the value of your institution. Eventually, the lowest common denominator becomes the norm.
This was going on in the 1990s and it has only gotten worse — much worse — since.
There is, of course, no value in that to a person “selected” via “diversity” if they have to pay full price and will inevitably fail to be able to do the work.
America today.
This in turn means someone else gets screwed so they don’t have to pay full price and they also don’t have to do the work they are incapable of.
The alleged “degree” conferred by said school is thus rendered meaningless; it no longer denotes competence and to prevent that from being recognized and their “brand” destroyed said colleges conspire with employers and governments, both outwardly and not to “require” said “credentials” for an ever-expanding list of “professions.”
In short college is no longer about education.
Instead, it is about grift, fraud, bribery and slavery. It’s a racketeering enterprise writ large and ought to be prosecuted as a felony, starting with the “most-elite” schools.
Devolution of cultures.
Is it any surprise that a tiny bit of the bribery began six months earlier with so-called “standardized” testing that really isn’t and claims of being on a soccer team that were false?
Federal agencies do not follow the law.
We have no rule of law.
The Fed is prohibited from buying anything other than government backed securities.
Fannie and Freddie paper have on their face the statement that they have no such backing; go online and view any of their prospectuses.
That the government bailed them out does not matter.
Mount corruptmore.
The Fed’s transacting in same and their continued ownership is illegal.
Rather than change the law (which might provoke a debate over exactly what The Fed “prints”) they simply ignore the law and you let them.
You let them.
The Fed's legal mandate under the law is for stable prices.
The Fed’s chair and other governors make dozens of speeches a year and testify under oath before Congress to their intent to violate the law with their “2% inflation target.”
Inflation, is by definition, not stability.
Congress could change that law but doing so might provoke a debate over exactly what The Fed “prints” and so instead both Congress and The Fed ignore the law and you let them.
You let them.
The truth is that Money is a medium of exchange which you acquire by producing something of value to someone else. It facilitates trade because it is fungible — that is, you don’t need to transact in oranges, chickens or hours of programming a computer; all three can be reduced to money.
The truth is that Money is a medium of exchange which you acquire by producing something of value to someone else.
You cannot print money because it is impossible to materialize a television, a car, a piece of computer software, gasoline or electrical power out of thin air.
You can print credit, which spends like money.
But if you emit credit then what you are claiming is that someone in the future will produce a thing to legitimate what you did. If the people refuse what’s left?
Prosecuting him would have inevitably drawn those Democrats into what could have easily wound up being criminal culpability including spying for foreign nations. Which is treason.
So they let him go.
They let him go despite proof that he wired more than $280,000 to Pakistan — funds that very well might have been used to facilitate terrorism!
Outstanding…
Industry does not obey the law.
We have no rule of law.
Industry does not obey the law.
It is a felony to restrain trade, attempt to monopolize or fix prices among people who are supposed to be competing.
The medical industry does it every single day.
Neoliberal Economics Destroyed the Economy and the Middle Class ... credit-driven debt grows faster than the income that services it, and this impoverishes the 90%
- Paul Craig Roberts
Why not when the example set is that if you’re rich or powerful (and they are both) you could even spy for a foreign nation and get away with it.
We could literally dispose of the entire federal budget deficit, all of the Federal debt, all of the state and local pension problems and cut property taxes in half or more if we put a stop to this crap.
They do it because despite the law they have no fear of prosecution.
Why should they?
We certainly are living in dangerous times; I suspect it’s even dangerous to me to discuss the writings on his blog and his two recent books with Andrei Martyanov in an environment of omnipresent electronic monitoring and profiling of every individual American citizen, especially those who question the warfare state and challenge its goals, if only out of sense of morality and a perception—at least on my part—that the policies pursued will be destructive to America, which unfortunately seems hellbent on a path of no return.
-UNZ
You can, through hard work, earn a mid-six-figure income and have multiple business ideas that you can develop.
But given the above examples, along with the myriad things I’ve watched big business do in the last 20 years and get away with all of them — acts that were I to do myself I would be prosecuted criminally and go to prison…
So why would I?
If I was to undertake any of those risky ventures and put my capital and intellectual effort at risk any of those people could illegally undermine my product or service, putting me out of business or simply steal it.
Now we know how and why Google and Amazon and Facebook got so big, so fast. They were the corporate arm of the surveillance state.
- From Vox Day at Vox Popoli
Unless I was willing to personally kill the persons responsible there is nothing I could do about it and I’d go broke.
I will not undertake such a venture for as long as all of this crap exists, and that’s why.
I instead choose to hike, ski, run, drink beer and enjoy a much lower stress lifestyle.
There are those of us who choose to live a more relaxed and simpler life. One without stress and fighting to be the “top dog” in the barnyard.
I do not need any of the trappings of wealth; they’re options.
When my time comes to die those ideas, products and services intentionally left undeveloped will die with me instead of being produced.
Intelligent people decide to “tune out” and not fight the system.
We have no rule of law.
The Christchurch shooter, obviously nuts, wrote a “manifesto” which governments are actively trying to suppress your ability to read.
In it he pointed out an inconvenient truth — that there is no nation with a material white population percentage in which white women are reproducing at a replacement or better rate.
That is, unless this changes white people will eventually go extinct.
Know your history. Read up on it.
We bemoan a little fish, frog or bird disappearing but there is literally not one word in the media about this. The most-productive and innovative differentiated group of human beings ever to walk the planet is heading directly for extinction by their own voluntary decision.
Why are white women choosing not to bear children?
Maybe it’s because a goodly number of them have come to the same conclusion I have.
That there is no rule of law.
Think about this cartoon. Think about what it means. How can this be permitted to happen if the Rule of Law were being followed?
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.
-Ayn Rand
Thus unless they’re so rich they can cheat (like those who did so to get their kids into college) their offspring have no chance of success on a merit basis.
And they thus make the entirely reasonable decision not to create children at all.
After all why would you willingly and intentionally bring a child into this world if you believe they are going to be enslaved and mercilessly robbed for their entire lives?
After all why would you willingly and intentionally bring a child into this world if you believe they are going to be enslaved and mercilessly robbed for their entire lives?
Rather than correct that problem governments instead are importing people who have not yet made that determination.
Or even worse, believe (and are explicitly promised) that they can simply put their hand out and force others to provide whatever they want and need.
And…
And thus those people make the entirely reasonable decision to breed like rabbits!
The socialist ideal eventually goes viral, and the majority learns to game the system.
Everyone is trying to live at the expense of everyone else.
In the terminal phase, the failure of the system is disguised under a mountain of lies, hollow promises, and debts. When the stream of other people's money runs out, the system collapses.
-Kevin Brekke
WE HAVE NO RULE OF LAW.
Think about this tweet. Think about what it means. How can this be permitted to happen if the Rule of Law were being followed?
WE
HAVE NO RULE OF LAW AND WE ARE GOING TO LITERALLY EXTINGUISH WHITE
PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE WESTERN WORLD AS A RESULT. AS FURTHER POPULATION
SEGMENTS ARE TAPPED TO BE THE VICTIMS OF SAID POLICIES THEY WILL CHOOSE
NOT TO REPRODUCE AS WELL AND INEVITABLY THEY WILL ALSO GO EXTINCT, ONE AT A TIME.
Our government is depraved.
We have no rule of law.
Our government has turned into a tyrannical monster. It is obvious to everyone.
We have in fact become so depraved that our own government is giving cats diseases on purpose. The excuse is to study them, and even though those diseases are easily curable and the animals could then be adopted out that takes a bit of effort and more than a a nickel in cost so they kill them instead.
That would be bad enough but our government is also importing cats and dogs from nations around the world for the purpose of meat to feed said study subjects, practicing animal cannibalism.
We can’t be bothered to use byproducts of human food production; you see, that might cost a bit more money.
In twenty-five years, we went from arguing that it must be legal to burn the American flag to punishing someone who burns an LGBTP flag with fifteen years in prison.
- From Brett Stevens at Periscope
I’m not the only one who recognizes this; here’s another article pointing out many of the same things.
America is extended, riddled with debt and too reliant on ever more debt, past its growth peak, incapable and unwilling to address structural issues.
Both political parties have given up on dealing with debt, illusory monetary policies such as MMT are invented to render structural issues as irrelevant.
Meanwhile wealth inequality keeps expanding from administration to administration no matter who is in charge with voters distracted by the ideological divisions of the day, not trusting their leaders or each other.
And all this with 3.8% unemployment. What will this all look like during the next downturn?
Nobody knows. Rome showed us to not take civilization for granted. It also showed us to not ignore structural problems before they become too large to tackle.
Sven may be hopeful but I am not.
The writing is on the wall.
When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you … you may know that your society is doomed.
-Ayn Rand
I’m not alone either. Charles Hugh Smith has written a number of columns on this same point, including just recently.
I challenge you to show me just one “grand idea” or modern stock market rocketship that is not a scam in some form over the last 10+ years.
America today.
Netflix, as just one example, effectively stole their entire distribution infrastructure, which is very expensive, through various forms of browbeating and when that was threatened they got the government to mandate their ability to force non-customers to pay for what they wanted during the Obama Administration.
Then, when Obama left, both he and his wife got a multi-million dollar contract from the company.
No justice in America today.
You don’t really think that was the kickback payment to the former President since the stock went from ~$5 when Obama took office to nearly $400 now….
Martyanov blogs about the political class, including Donald Trump, on his blog Reminiscence of the Future…. But I gave him, if you pardon the expression, a homework assignment, a recent piece by Whitney Webb describing the powers behind Washington’s politicians, be they “Democrats” or “Republicans.”
It’s hard to determine where the real power in Washington and the City of London lies, that is to say who the actual rulers are, but the greater power is evidently held by the central bankers and billionaires, operating in a mob like fashion as Ms. Webb described, in fact actually working with mobsters.
-UNZ
None of them would exist were there an even-handed enforcement of the law for the simple reason that all of them violate the basic law of business balance:
The more people who touch a transaction the more it costs -- always.
The reason for that is simple: Nobody works for free.
If you think you’ve found someone who is someone else is stealing from them because no rational person will perform work that benefits only someone else.
No reason to change. The justice system is beyond repair.
We have no rule of law.
This can’t — and won’t — change without Americans rising up by the millions and demanding that it stop and be willing to enforce that demand by whatever means are necessary.
Soldiers and armed civilians occupy the office of ousted Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu in the capital Bucharest on Dec. 26, 1989, the day after he was executed.
This does not mean violence is required.
However, until and unless, those who claim to be “our leaders” believe that any such demand has the force of the people behind it (and will be enforced)…
… should they stick up their middle finger toward common people (once again) as they have done for the last 30+ years…
… they have no reason to stop stealing…
…no reason to stop rigging the system…
…and no reason to stop screwing everyone else.
There’s no reason for me to be hopeful.
This is what I would look like if I was a cat.
This is because there is no reason to believe that Americans, say much less the people in any of the other developed, Western nations will in fact demand this crap stop.
While we have been indoctrinated to believe that “democracy” is the favored and best way to govern nations, the spectacular failure of what America has become is obvious to the world to see. America, that great, and grand experiment is a complete and total failure.
Coming soon to a State near you.
You, and I, and our families will now need to ride out the collapse to it’s conclusion.
Yvonne, I don’t think many in Russia view the United States as a “fascist” power per se—it is indeed difficult to do so for a country so ethnically and culturally diverse as the United States.
This diversity precludes the United States to define itself completely as a nation in an ethno-cultural sense, nor does the political system of the United States allow for the emergence of a dictator, a key element of the fascist state.
For all his bluster today and accusations in being a sort of a dictator, President Trump is an extremely weak president, as is generally the office of POTUS.
The United States is a classic oligarchy wrapped in a vast state bureaucracy a/k/a the Deep State which is increasingly dysfunctional.
If it is a fascist state in any sense, it is a very sad in a comical sort of way fascist state, as the three-years long Russia and Ukrainegate “investigations” demonstrated. Russians, however do use widely the term of “liberal fascism” to underscore the totalitarian nature of the so called “liberal” ideology of which the United States, together with subservient Europe, are the main drivers.
As I repeat ad nauseam for years now, the Western in general and American in particular so-called elites are incompetent. I observed a precipitous decline in the professional, the intellectual and the ethical levels of these elites for over twenty years.
Now it has reached truly grotesque forms from pedophilia inside the ruling class, to the media being utterly corrupt and incompetent.
I can only repeat my point about the US having no mechanisms anymore for producing real statesmen.
Russians know this, they observe this everyday and in my fifty-seven years of life on many continents I cannot recall a time period when Russians had such contempt for and rejection of the so called “democratic values.”
This is simply unprecedented in Russian history.
- Andrei Martyanov
America tomorrow.
Conclusion
There is no rule of law in the United States. A two tiered justice system is NOT rule by law. It is rule by power. As such, the nation will soon collapse. As the Rule of Law is a fundamental aspect of a thriving and successful nation.
There is no rule of law in the United States. And there hasn’t been one for some time. When you have a two tiered justice system, then you have no justice when the country is founded on “equality”.
A Rule of Law is important to suppress evil, and to keep the government under control and the nation stable.
Now, everyone, from all quarters and all points of view are starting to come together. All from different perspectives and are arriving at the same conclusion.
r/K theory
Generational turnings.
The rise and fall of nations.
Kala Rhythms
I pretty much covered this subject here, in numerous posts.
When there isn’t any rule of law, the people in power start to act tyrannical and dictatorial. Fundamental to this behavior is the disarming of the population. As that is the last remaining resistance to them.
Failure to obey the Constitution is treasonous.
You can expect to see an acceleration of disarmament efforts all over the Western sphere of influence. With major efforts in the United States taking place irregardless of the consequences. The progressive Marxists do not believe that people will rise up and fight back.
They DO NOT believe that it will happen, or if it does, that they can effectively suppress the actions and spin the events in their favor.
You all can decide on how to handle the elements that are certain to transpire. Just be quick about it, why don’t you.
We don’t have any control over the coming storms- but what we do control is our own abilities and what we bring to the table.
- NC Scout at American Partisan
Some areas will be very “hot”, while others will escape unscathed.
Some areas will be very “hot”, while others will escape unscathed.
Plan ahead, and be smart about it. If you have any questions, check out this post…
If you enjoyed this post, then please check out the SHTF master index. You can access it 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.
This article discusses the current preparations for war on going in the state of Virginia. This is a war between conservative patriots, and progressive Marxists. It’s a war between then the urban cities and the rural areas. In many ways, it is shaping up to resemble the Bosnia civil war in general scope with elements of the Rwandan genocide being planned for in the urban areas.
It is my sincere hope that things can be diffused shortly. However, the build up of tensions is proceeding unabated, and it appears to be intentional.
America today. We are at a point of no return.
First, the sides
The sides have already been established early on. One one side you have the conservative, traditional patriots. They reside in the predominantly rural areas and typically vote Republican and voted Trump into office. They fiercely defend free speech, free association, and the right to bear arms. They are very, very tired of progressive Marxism being rammed down their collective throats, and it appears their angst has reached a breaking point.
They follow and believe in the Constitution, both State and Federal, as written.
“It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”
—Thomas Paine
Advertisement catering to the American patriot.
On the other side you have the progressive socialist Marxists. They voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. They have been funded from enormous cash donations out of state, and even out of country. They have big business, and big government, and big landholders and the big oligarchy on their side. They pretty much reside in the urban areas and the richest and wealthiest counties.
The progressive activists come in different shapes, sizes and an amazing array of names. They go from democrat socialists, to communists, to liberals, to progressives, to social activists. They have armed groups that range from the Black Panthers, to the BLM and the Antifa. They all believe in replacing the United States Constitution with a more malleable document where they can control everything.
The break down between these two groups can easily be illustrated on the 2016 election map, by country, for Virginia in 2016.
The break down between these two groups can easily be illustrated on the 2016 election map, by country, for Virginia in 2016.
Second, the violations of Rights
Expert Tip – Never hand in your weapons to the government.
Well, after intense funding from outside the state, and a lack of interest in the Republican “wishy-washy” candidates, the progressive socialist democrat Marxists took control of all the levers of power in Virginia.
This newly elected democrat majority wants to ban the majority of firearms in the state. They want to ban everything about firearms. They want to ban ownership, transport, training and even mentioning having a gun.
The German genocidal events are well known to most Americans over the age of 40. Not so well known to the younger generations. The Nazi Germans "purged" the German society of "undesirables" which included just about EVERYONE except the "chosen" Arian race.
Hitler gun ban meme.
As such the newly elected socialist / Marxist democrats wasted no time “rubber stamping” pre-written anti-gun legislation…
Four
years after the government passed the anti-gun ownership legislation,
the Christians were all collected and rounded up by armed militia,
soldiers and local police forces. They were collected in the schools,
town centers, and formed into groups. Then they were either killed
outright, or sent on death marches into the hot barren desert.
They want people to turn in their weapons, New Zealand style, and barring that go house to house to search and confiscate the weapons. Those that do not comply will be arrested and given felony convictions.
It’s a scene right out of the 1984 movie “Red Dawn”.
FEMA camp scene from the 1984 movie “Red Dawn”. Where people were rounded up because of their association with weapons. Here, Harry Dean Stanton gave the legendary line, “AVENGE ME!”
Why this is contentious.
The political “talking points” is that all this is “common sense gun control”.
However, the real reason is to wrest control of the United States from the people. This is a long-duration effort that has been on-going for over a century, and now the only thing standing in the way of this takeover are clusters of armed citizens.
The idea is to disarm the citizens and begin the standard socialist takeover of the nation. Already, [1] the socialist Marxists have gained control of almost every government institution, and has molded it in their image. They have also [2] taken over many of the largest private institutions as well. In addition, they have also [3] been funding and arming socialist Marxist agitators.
Everything is falling into place.
Antifa receiving weapons, logistics and strategy training under the CIA alongside the ISS fighters in Syria.
For those of you that don’t know what this means, I’ll tell you. It means complete and utter genocide of the opposition.
It’s “common sense” genocide.
Like this… (Opens up in a different tab.)
In case you, the reader, think that I am exaggerating, read up on this subject. I have a six part study of this, and it is very important to read. The first post will take you into the series. Click on the link below, and it will open up in a different browser tab.
Oh, and don’t think that you will be able to sit this one out…
Ahhh, but don’t listen to me. Listen and get a second opinion, like this…
Gun Control “wet dreams”. Here is a second opinion on this subject.
Our protections…
Aside from a direct violation of the second Amendment in the Bill of RIGHTS…
Right to Bear Arms
Passed by Congress September 25, 1789. Ratified December 15, 1791. The first 10 amendments form the Bill of Rights
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
It is also a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of RIGHTS. For these laws talk about going house to house, searching for firearms and seizing them, and arresting the people in the house for good measure.
Search and Seizure
Passed by Congress September 25, 1789. Ratified December 15, 1791. The first 10 amendments form the Bill of Rights
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Another opinion…
There isn’t any “due process” in any of these Democrat actions on gun control.
To these people, it’s as if the Bill of Rights does not exist, and that elected officials can make what ever rules and laws they want, selectively enforce them and the people; the citizens have absolutely zero say in the matter.
The American Bill of Rights does not exist if the government does not protect it.
This subject is also covered here (opens up in a separate tab.)…
Tazewell County has formed an official active militia.
Tazewell County has formed an official active militia as per the Second Amendment to the Constitution. This is in response to the actions of Virginia lawmakers that (immediately upon election) passed a very draconian gun control bill. A bill that is in violation of both the Federal and the Virginia Bill of Rights.
Tazewell County has formed an official active militia as per the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
The foundation and the authority for Tazewell County to take this action is the Constitution itself;
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
"To all of those who like to mock gun owners and ask if they’re going to fight tyranny in a militia, Virginia’s answer is a clear and adamant “yes.” That’s exactly what they’re planning to do."
Background
Daisy Luther has been tracking this issue aggressively on her website The Organic Prepper. I can find no source finer and better researched than hers on this issue…
After the most recent election, the state’s House and Senate are both Democrat majorities and they haven’t wasted a moment in attempting to gut the gun laws in what has historically been a permissive state.
The so-called “assault weapon ban” is SB16 and has that perilously vague wording we all know to be incredibly dangerous. In some interpretations, this law, if it passes, could make illegal the ownership or transportation of any semi-automatic gun because extendable magazines are available for it – and you don’t even have to have the extendable mags. (source)
I personally do not know if the progressive Marxist democrats in the United States realize that they are going to experience some “push back”, or if the “triggers” are intentional to start open warfare. I just don’t know.
Maybe they just think we are all stupid, dumb hicks that will obey what ever they tell us because we are not as bright and enlightened as they.
The Reaction
In a series of rapidly changing developments, Virginia is undergoing wholesale rebellion by rural and even suburban counties, rejecting the oppressive gun control agenda recently revealed by the new incoming Democrat-controlled legislature.
Gun owners all across Old Dominion have been up in arms since anti-gun forces took the House and Senate in the recent election and are now preparing to resist having their arms taken from them in any way possible.
-Gun Rights Watch
That’s pretty much it.
You can chip away at every Right in the book , but when you start taking away the 2nd amendment… the very last roadblock to mass slaughter, genocide and tyranny, patriots will put their foot down.
And they have.
Counties across the state quickly organized into Second Amendment sanctuaries.
The speed at which they reacted is a testament to how furious they are that their state government now wishes to infringe on their rights.
An even dozen counties have passed gun owner sanctuary resolutions already, with new ones coming on a near-daily basis.
-Gun Rights Watch
The idea behind this is that the counties, as Second Amendment sanctuaries, would disregard any law that violates either the Federal or State Rights protecting firearm ownership, use and training.
The county-level defensive tactic that began originally in Oregon close to a decade ago, then popularized in Illinois, has spread to over a dozen states. It comes as no surprise that with few other options and little to lose, many communities in the state are vowing not to take part in any gun confiscation schemes or enforcement of unconstitutional laws designed to make private citizens less able to defend themselves.
Now, compare this map to the 2016 election map at the first part of this post. Obviously the battle lines are forming and the progressive tyrannical democrat Marxists want to disarm all traditional conservatives.
Then they have other things that they intend to do. It’s the historical norm. Don’t you know.
Other things…
South Africa. Once the socialist Marxists gain control, they purge all opposition by using military armed police. Do you think that those dead bodies on the ground had firearms? Do you think that they were trained in how to shoot, and oppose the ruling Marxists in power? This is what a Marxist progressive socialist utopia looks like. It is South Africa today. The disarmed people are turning over their farms, vehicles, and property for an increasingly hungry Marxist government.
The Reaction from the Tyrannical Marxists…
This reaction of taking proactive steps, as opposed to the nearly uniform sheep-like behavior of the past few centuries took the Marxists by surprise. Their reaction was totalitarian.
What?!?!
The sheep (serf-slaves) won't obey us? Well, that just won't go. Jeeves, please fetch me my jewel-encrusted phone. Yes. Now, quickly, don't you know, my masseuse is due in five minutes...
George. George Soros, please. Yes.
What should we do? The plantation is in open rebellion. What would you advise?
Oh, yes. That's right.
Kill the fuckers. Show them who's boss...
State Representative Donald MacEachin (D) was the first to suggest calling up the National Guard to squelch the rebellion…
McEachin also noted that Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam could call the National Guard, if necessary.
“And ultimately, I’m not the governor, but the governor may have to nationalize the National Guard to enforce the law,” he said. “That’s his call, because I don’t know how serious these counties are and how severe the violations of law will be. But that’s obviously an option he has.” (source)
This reaction was historical.
Which is to say, it follows the model of a tyrannical takeover predictably and unequivocally. It’s historical and follows the same tried and true application of seize, suppress, repress and implement tyranny.
There is no fucking way that Americans are going to allow the government to take away their rights, and implement genocide on them and their families.
There is no fucking way that Americans are going to allow the government to take away their rights, and implement genocide on them and their families.
No. Fucking. Way.
The progressive Marxists are delusional to believe that it will ever happen without a fight.
So they began to contemplate calling in the military to disarm, arrest, and subjugate the citizens of Virginia.
Adolf Hitler addressing his military telling them that they need to round up Jews, and undesirables, disarm them all for the good of the nation.
The National Guard’s Response
Maj. Gen. Timothy P. Williams, the Adjutant General of Virginia’s National Guard responded rather vaguely via Twitter.
We have received multiple questions regarding proposed legislation for the 2020 General Assembly session and the authority of the Governor of Virginia to employ the Virginia National Guard in a law enforcement role.
We understand and respect the passion people feel for the U.S. Constitution and 2nd Amendment rights. We will not speculate about the possible use of the Virginia National Guard.
— Va. National Guard (@VaNationalGuard) December 13, 2019
The responses in the Twitter thread were very interesting and suggest a firestorm is brewing…
A militia is forming in Virginia
Tazewell County, a county on the mountainous West Virginia border, is taking this threat to the Rights of citizens very seriously. In their minds, the government has completely failed them that that the time has long past for passive acceptance of tyranny. They believe that they need to take strong, unequivocal, and proactive measures to assure that their Rights will remain intact and in place.
The militia is constantly made fun of by the mainstream American media, however there is nothing wrong with demanding that people obey the Constitution. When the government stops following it, and then starts to break every single law in the book, true patriots will not allow it to pass. They will fight back and wrest control back to them.
So, not only did they pass a Second Amendment Sanctuary resolution, but they’ve also officially begun to form an armed, and active militia.
Just this past Tuesday, on December 10th, the Board of Supervisors from Tazewell County passed two different resolutions in light of controversy circling those who are pro-gun.
The first resolution declared the county to be a second amendment sanctuary. This is not at all surprising to see, as 76 out of 95 counties, 9 out of 38 independent cities, and 13 towns have adopted second amendment sanctuary resolutions.
The second item on the agenda was the proposition of establishing a militia in the county. When both of the resolutions passed, the crowd cheered loudly in support of the decisions.
Also, the resolutions didn’t exactly pass by a small margin; the votes were unanimous, with more than 200 citizens standing by in support.
-Law Enforcement Today (source)
County Administrator Eric Young explained why the county has opted to form a militia.
“Our position is that Article I, Section 13, of the Constitution of Virginia reserves the right to ‘order’ militia to the localities.
Therefore, counties, not the state, determine what types of arms may be carried in their territory and by whom. So, we are ‘ordering’ the militia by making sure everyone can own a weapon.”
Thus, if anyone from the state (government) tries to remove the Sheriff from their elected office because they refuse to enforce unjust laws, those state officials will be faced with a lawful militia composed of citizens within the state.
- Tazewell County Administrator Eric Young (source)
Arming up and readying for battle
This article explains the extensive training being offered by Tazewell County to its citizens. This is being done in order to make sure everyone is acting safely and responsibly.
“Coincidentally,” there’s an anti-paramilitary bill on the table.
It’s probably no coincidence that at the same time militias are forming, there’s also a bill to make them illegal. The anti-paramilitary bill SB64 has thrown kerosene on an already brilliant inferno.
This bill, once it becomes law, will make learning how to shoot a weapon a felony. It will be equal to that of rape of a child, or selling hard drugs to infants.
The future of anyone who has any association with guns, gun organizations, shooting, shooting clubs, or hunting. This is a scene from the Bosnia conflict. Take note that all these rounded up men, every single one in this picture, was killed and found buried in a mass grave five years later.
Obviously, the radical progressive Marxists want a conflict. They do so, obviously in the belief, that they will persevere and win this conflict.
Here’s some of the text of that bill.
§ 18.2-433.2. Paramilitary activity prohibited; penalty.A person shall be is guilty of unlawful paramilitary activity, punishable as a Class 5 felony if he:
1. Teaches or demonstrates to any other person the use, application, or making of any firearm, explosive, or incendiary device, or technique capable of causing injury or death to persons, knowing or having reason to know or intending that such training will be employed for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder; or
2. Assembles with one or more persons for the purpose of training with, practicing with, or being instructed in the use of any firearm, explosive, or incendiary device, or technique capable of causing injury or death to persons, intending to employ such training for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder; or3. Assembles with one or more persons with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons by drilling, parading, or marching with any firearm, any explosive or incendiary device, or any components or combination thereof.
-(source)
Obviously, this is not a coincidence.
They predicted how rural Virginians would respond to their gun-grabbing actions. Their plan all along was to confiscate guns and turn any organized resistance into a felony.
The “fall back” position is to “register the guns” instead of an outright seizure. But that is just buying time. The truth is that history tells us that ALL registration of weapons WILL result in collection efforts, followed by the obligatory genocide of the disarmed. Gun registration is the “Albanian method” of genocide.
The Virginia Legislators are committing treason.
There could hardly be anything more unconstitutional than SB64. When you violate the Constitution you commit treason.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
They are violating their oath.
This is the pledge these legislators swore:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties incumbent upon me as ………. according to the best of my ability, (so help me God).”
-(source)
Every person in the government who has sworn this oath yet supports these unconstitutional bills should be immediately recalled as well as tried criminally. This is long overdue, and because of this lack of policing of the elected officials, we have found ourselves within this mess.
When the government stops policing the very structure of the national Constitution, the door opens wide for the usurpation by people with evil intent.
This strategy was orchestrated by someone with a lot of money and power.
Daisy Luther framed this situation quite presciently. She said…
This is something that has been thought through, perhaps even by gun control advocate and presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg. The reason I’m suggesting Bloomberg specifically is that his PAC donated millions and millions of dollars to turn the legislatures of 24 states to a Democrat majority.
His millions worked in 21 of those cases, and Virginia is one of them. Packing the state legislatures with allies would help his agenda should he actually become the next president. Records filed so far show that organizations controlled and funded by Mr. Bloomberg spent more than $41 million on 24 House races, much of it on eye-catching ads rolled out on social media and broadcast on television in the crucial final days of the campaign.
And while it’s impossible to conclude that any one factor tipped the balance in a race, Mr. Bloomberg appears to have reaped the benefits of his millions in giving.
Democrats won 21 of the 24 races he sought to influence. Of those, 12 had been considered either tossups or in Republican districts. “The mission was to flip the House. Success or failure would be defined by that,” said Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Mr. Bloomberg. (source)
Bloomberg is rabidly anti-gun and has said that ending “the nationwide madness of U.S. gun violence” is the impetus behind his run for the White House. If he were to be elected, may God help America, because he will destroy everything for which our nation has ever stood.
Here’s the summary on what’s happening in Virginia
It’s funny because it is so very true. Girls and guns. So very funny.
Let’s look at all these facts together.
With Michael Bloomberg’s help, the Democrats took over the Virginia state congress.
There’s an anti-paramilitary bill that would disallow armed people
to gather or teach others how to use firearms or any technique that
could cause injury or death.
There’s a bill that would make semi-automatic weapons illegal.
Nearly the entire state (aside from the highly populated areas that
elected these yahoos) has balked and formed Second Amendment
sanctuaries.
A legislator threatened the sanctuaries with the National Guard.
The sanctuaries responded by activating an organized militia.
The only real way to prevent bloodshed and save face for the congress and governor is for these bills not to pass.
What happens when only the government has guns.
That would be difficult, though, given the fact that Bloomberg dumped
millions of dollars into getting people elected who promised to pass
strict gun control bills. If they suddenly vote against the bill, they
will have to face their angry constituents and the wrath of Bloomberg.
Rural Virginians seem unlikely to back down and are willing to fight.
They have another month to get organized to defend their communities.
Remember that in situations such as these, the rumor mill works overtime. There are a lot of reports that are exaggerated.
The truth is bad enough that we don’t need to add far-fetched theories to the mix.
History is terrible enough and crazy enough that all you need to do is read the “lessons learned” from the handful of survivors of Socialist / Marxist genocides.
This article is a very good, common-sense breakdown of fact vs. fiction, although some vehemently disagree with the assessment that the government will not turn off communications and power for the sanctuary areas.
It’s certainly not impossible to imagine that drastic measures could be taken.
Very Puzzling.
What will happen next remains to be seen, but it is no exaggeration to say that the future of our country is now riding on the response of Virginians, should these unconstitutional laws pass.
Conclusion
These articles will either pass or not.
If they pass, there will be “push back” from the conservative patriots against the Marxist democrats.
If they do not pass, then there will be a short (perhaps two to three years) while the progressive Marxists regroup and rethink a strategy that will enable them to attain their goals to their benefit.
And that is the way it is.
This is when the bullet meets the bone.
Thus, the first volley into CWII and SHTF is in progress. Make sure that you have achieved all your prepper goals, mapped out strategies and have back-up plans in the event that things do not go in your favor.
There
is a direct link between gun collection and genocide. It is the
historical norm. However, most people are ignorant of history, and
others don’t care. They openly want genocide… against their neighbors.
They never think that it could be used against them.
Best of luck, and God’s grace.
If you liked this post, you can find other similar posts on this link here. It will take you to an index of similar posts of the same general venue.
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because I just don’t care to.
There are many articles about the Trade War between the United States (Donald Trump) and China. Many are written from the perspective of an American consumer sitting in America, and desirous of a return to the “golden days” of industrial might. Others are written from the point of view of a progressive “enlightened” globalist who wants a one-singular world order. This article is different. It is written from the point of view of someone who has a vested interest in both “camps of thought”.
A fresh slap of reality.
In terms of the trade war, there are some facts that do not support any of the assumptions held and promoted by the “talking heads” in the mainstream media.
None of these facts agree with the promoted narratives. This is true whether you are politically liberal or conservative.
On the conservative side...
I’m seeing a type of artificial patriotic fervor. It's an organized attempt using memes and propaganda to convince conservatives that the trade war requires mindless fealty to the anti-China message.
Americans don’t like dictators, and many don’t like China. However, conservatives are being duped into thinking the trade war against China some type of an ideological crusade. It’s one that somehow will lead to a better America or a better world.
People! Wake up. This is not what the trade war is intended to do.
Let’s start with the assumptions surrounding the trade war and then look at the evidence that debunks them. Remember people…
The American government requires an alert and well-informed citizenry to function properly.
Fallacy #1: China needs America
The idea here is that the entire nation of China, all 1.4 billion of them, needs Americans (325 million) buying their products.
Seriously?
I’m not sure where this idea comes from specifically, but it’s not based on anything tangible. I sometimes wonder if the notion that the world depends on the American consumer (for its bread and butter) is perhaps a kind of appeal to American’s narcissism? Thus making the average American feel superior, or feel special. You know, by simply by telling them that their steady American way of life (one of debt-based consumption) keeps the engine of the global economy running.
Pretty outrageous.
In the case of China, here are the facts:
The US only comprises around 18% of Chinese exports. While this is a nice piece of the pie, it’s hardly enough leverage to bring down China’s economy. China would suffer profit losses in certain sectors as well as a possible recession, but not the kind of crisis that some in the alternative media are predicting.
There will not be riots in the streets, famine, or civil upheavals. Don’t be silly.
In 2018, China shipped 18% of its exports to the United States. That contributed to a $419 billion trade deficit. China's trade with Hong Kong, at 14%, was almost as much. Its trade with Japan, which was at 6%, and South Korea, at 4.5%, was much less.
-The Balance
You need to know that China is NOT structured like the United States and does not operate under rule by popular opinion. They are a serious, serious nation. Their leadership got where they are through merit. (Have you ever attended school with a Chinese / Asian student? They work hard, study hard, and make informed, calculated decisions.)
For the last decade or so, China has been busy changing its economic model. They have moved from an export-based system to a far more self-reliant domestic-based system.
I covered this subject in another post. You can click on the link below. It will open up in a separate tab so that your reading here will not be interrupted.
Maybe they knew something that the Bush and Obama administrations didn’t. It appears that they have been preparing for a possible economic war with the US.
For the last decade, indeed since 2010, China’s domestic market has grown dramatically. This should indicate to the more alert in the audience that China has no intention of relying on the US consumer as an economic pillar.
They are a self-sufficient nation.
Meanwhile, the US consumer is almost tapped out. It’s hard to see because retail sales in certain areas remain steady. Not to mention that the mainstream media (and the Fed) has been using this to promote the idea that the economy is still “going strong”. It’s not really the true and real situation.
The reality is that US consumption is driven by historic levels of debt. Household debt is now FAR above levels last seen after the last financial crisis, with total debt at $1.2 trillion higher today than its last peak in 2008.
The downturn in retail is more obvious in the steady closings of thousands of outlets in 2019 alone. This year has seen a 29% increase in store closings compared to 2018, even though 2018 saw a considerable spike in store shutdowns. Around 12,000 stores are slated to close this year.
OK, so the actual situation is quite different from the mainstream media narrative.
China is a self-sufficient nation.
America is completely engulfed in a debt hole.
So the question is, with the US consumer stretched thin by debt and US retail on the verge of a recessionary plunge, why would China feel threatened by the loss of the American consumer market?
They are losing it already by attrition.
The truth is they aren’t threatened. Which is whythe trade war continues unabated. This is the situation despite the fact that so many people have argued that China would “quickly fold” to Trump’s demands.
I realize this is not what many people want to hear, but it is foolish to get caught up in a farcical mob mentality and ignore the fundamentals in the trade war. If you think that the US is going to “win” based on leverage, you are sorely mistaken.
America has NO leverage. The US is in no better shape economically than China; in many ways, we are much worse off.
“Trump’s claim that an exodus of foreign firms will force China to capitulate to US demands to settle the trade war is wishful thinking at best,”
-Week In China
Fallacy #2: Manufacturing Will Return
This is perhaps the most persistent and fraudulent “carrot” that has been held out to the American people. It’s the idea that those “golden days” of American Manufacturing will return, and all will be back to “normal”.
It’s a lie.
It’s not going to happen.
I am sorry to break this new to you all, but factories, industrial might, scientific ability and skills are not “light switches” that you can turn on and off at will. You cannot just snap your fingers and start up a fully automated factory, producing high quality products with a skilled work force overnight.
It doesn’t work that way.
I covered this subject elsewhere. You can click on the link and it will open up in a separate tab.
First, as it stands now manufacturing in the US makes up only 11% of total economic output. I don’t think that many people understand the consequences of this.
We have a 70% retail and service-based economy.
This means that the majority of US citizens in the job market have no experience whatsoever in the manufacturing sector.
Thus, by extension, the average US company has no guidelines for how to establish a manufacturing base using the existing American labor pool.
Second, American labor expects a certain level of wage compensation. Not to mention an expectation of union organization. Combined, this makes manufacturing far more expensive here than in just about anywhere else in the world.
The average factory worker in China makes around $3.60 per hour. So tell me, just how exactly would the American market ever be able to compete with this?
Tariff’s alone are not enough to force corporations to spend the billions necessary to rebuild factories in the US and hire American workers at $15+ an hour (let alone the $45+ an hour at union wages). It’s just not going to happen.
There's a movie called "American Factory" that might be worth your time to watch. It's a documentary that was released in August 2019.
The documentary tells an increasingly American story. In 2015, seven years after a General Motors plant closed in Dayton, Ohio, a Chinese company that manufactures glass for trucks and automobiles reinvests in the factory.
The former GM workers are are ecstatic. Some went into foreclosure and were evicted from their homes after GM pulled out — one woman, a forklift operator named Jill Lamantia, is living in her sister’s basement. They’re happy to have another factory job. Never mind that the GM plant was fully unionized and paid more than $20 an hour, and Fuyao, a non-union shop, has a starting pay of $14 an hour, it’s a job.
Cao has a bold vision: Pair U.S. workers with Chinese workers, who are brought to Ohio to train and work alongside their American counterparts. The idea is that the Chinese and the Americans can learn from each other, taking the best working methods from each culture to increase production. Although Cao visits regularly from China, the onsite boss is an American, and management is from both cultures.
But the results don’t meet that utopian ideal. The culture divide seems insurmountable. To start with, the Chinese workers have no problem working long hours and overtime, while the Americans are used to eight-hour shifts...
Download the Movie Torrent HERE.
Read reviews about it HERE.
Third, there are many, many places besides China to build a manufacturing base. No company is going to bring its factories to the US when they can build in Vietnam, or Taiwan, etc. In many cases, it is cheaper to ship raw materials and products to these countries, have them finished by cheap and motivated workers in Asia, and then have the items shipped back, than it is to build the product from start to finish in the US.
Fourth, we can talk all day about patriotism, but in the end, the average American is not going to buy “Made in the USA” for most goods out of a sense of patriotic duty if the price is twice as much or much more. Walmart and Amazon dominate the retail market for a reason – they sell things cheaply.
$19.95 Toaster – Made in China.
$79.95 Toaster – Made in the USA.
Fifth, raising tariffs on foreign exporters would only work to encourage consumption of domestically manufactured goods. If the foreign made products cost too much, then you would buy American. Right?
Why buy an Mercedes, when you can buy fifteen (x15) Kia Rio Sedans for the same amount of money?
2019 Mercedes-Benz S-Class – $253,550
Kia Rio LX, 4-Door Sedan. – $16,195
This only holds true if the US already had a large manufacturing base and produced all the items other nations produce. But it doesn’t. Many of the things that are under the tariff schedule are wholly made overseas.
Televisions – 100% made in China.
iPhones – 100% made in China.
Sneakers – 100% made in China.
Clothes Washers – 100% made in China.
Automobile Tires – 100% made in China.
The American consumer doesn’t have a choice. He can only buy imported items. Thus, it is the American consumer that ends up paying the tariff.
Entering into a trade war without a resilient manufacturing sector is backward. You don’t fight a trade war to get manufacturing to come back, you fight a trade war to promote the goods you already manufacture.
Seriously, if Trump had really intended to bring factories back to the US, he should have done things differently. For instance, he could have given corporations tax break incentives in exchange for creating manufacturing jobs on US soil.
If you do “A”, I’ll give you “B”.
Instead, he didn’t do this. He just gave American corporations tax breaks for nothing.
Fallacy #3: China Will Starve Without American Food
Uh, no. China will not experience famines, riots, or starvation. It’s all pretty darn silly.
This is a very weird argument. It’s as if some people assume that the US is China’s only potential source for food. Where do Americans get such really “off the wall” ideas? Seriously!
China buys agricultural products from all over the world and has alternative sources for foods like soybeans and pork, including Brazil, Mexico, and Russia. Not to mention that they grow, and raise their own food. It’s part of the conservative belief in self-sufficiency. Don’t you know.
I covered this subject elsewhere. The link below will open up in a new tab. It’s pretty damming and will open up a few eyes. China is not a nation to be trifled with.
Prices will rise in China, sure, but nowhere near the point of
collapse. Again, the Chinese are not reliant on the US for anything, so,
the idea that the US has overt leverage in the trade war is simply not
true.
Fallacy #4: The World Will Side With The US Over China
This is a prime question – if they had to choose sides, would a given nation choose the USA, or choose China?
On one hand you have the debt-ridden oligarchy-ruled military state with a large consumer base or communist China’s cheap export market. What would they choose if they had to pick only one?
The US consumer is nearly tapped out.
China has the largest import/export market in the world.
The vast bulk of manufacturing is in China.
The US has little manufacturing to speak of.
I also question the validity of the idea that Europe or most other nations have loyalty to American markets. Think about it; do they really?
Do they see America as indispensable?
Or is the rest of the world being sent on a path towards globalism? Meanwhile the US is being made to look like a barbaric and archaic throwback. Like some kind of Neanderthal man that is desperately clinging to power. And one that is willing to drag everyone else down with him if he doesn’t get his way?
Why do people cling on to the power they hold, and you have to wait until they die before you can have some “new blood” and some changes done? Why won’t they just let go and accept change.
Many in the “liberty movement” understand that this is not the case.
We know that the globalists have sabotaged this country from within. We also know that they are using Trump as controlled opposition and a useful puppet in this task.
Ah yes, but the majority of the rest of the world does NOT understand this.
If there is an economic crash which sends shock-waves through multiple economies, the trade war will most likely be blamed along with Trump and his “populist” supporters.
The rest of the world will see us as the villains, because they do not understand the nature of 4th Generation Warfare, nor do they understand the globalists’ strategy of “order out of chaos”.
The narrative that has been pushed in the global mainstream media is quite different than what you would see on FOX.
China is the victim of US aggression.
The trade war and the economic crisis are purely a product of Trump’s madness.
Who do you honestly think the world will eventually side with?
We’ve been hearing this for almost three years now. Trade wars are “easy to win”, right?
Every couple of months the trade war deal hype is recycled and every couple of months the markets are hit with renewed disappointment. The latest trade talks are set for October and if they happen at all, it is unlikely they will result in anything of significance.
At most, they will be heralded as the “start of a great deal” and both sides will claim “progress was made”, and then, once again, nothing will happen and the conflict will accelerate.
You would think people would have figured it out by now, but the investment world learns very slowly and functions solely on blind hope. At the very least, economic analysts are starting to realize that no deal is coming and that the situation is only going to get tenser.
In fact, it is designed to get more tense.
Fallacy #6: The US Dollar Is Untouchable
This claim revolves mainly around the idea that because the US dollar is the world reserve currency, the US has the upper hand in all trade negotiations. Therefore, the rest of the world will follow the currency leader because there “is no other option”.
I disagree.
As Bank of England governor Mark Carney has openly admitted, the plan is to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency anyway. How? Well with a global cryptocurrency, of course.
They need a massive crash event, and they need the US dollar to go the way of the dodo.
It seems rather convenient to me that China has been preparing for just such an event. While many analysts point out that China has generated intense amounts of debt over the past decade, they seem to forget that this was a requirement in order for China to attach the Yuan to the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket. This is, of course, the foundation for a global currency mechanism.
Chinese economic officials and the globalists both argue that the current monetary system, based on a single national currency (the dollar) as the world reserve is inherently unstable.
Their solution? A basket of currencies monitored by the IMF, followed by a single digital currency mechanism.
I would note that China and the globalists have consistently hinted that a major economic crisis event will act as a catalyst for this “reset” in the world monetary order and that the dollar must be replaced in the process.
China has also been stockpiling large amounts of gold for
the past decade. This would indicate they are expecting a monetary
devaluation event, most specifically in the dollar. It’s as if they
know something the rest of us only suspect.
The trade war is the perfect cover for the collapse of the US dollar that the globalists desire. While some people suggest that China’s dumping of US treasuries is the “nuclear option” in the trade war, this is not exactly true.
The REAL nuclear option is for China to dump the US dollar as the reserve trade mechanism and go to a basket of currencies, which the IMF will happily aid them with.
As the largest exporter/importer in the world, China can drop the dollar and most of their trading partners will follow their lead. The US economy would crumble in response, as the dollar is the only thread holding our system together.
This is a FACT, Jack.
This is the ugly truth behind the trade war. It is nothing more than a farce, a smoke and mirrors distraction leading up the dismantling of the US dollar and paving the way for the globalist one-world digital currency system.
Whether or not the plan succeeds relies on ample resistance from people who see the danger ahead. However, make no mistake, the globalists are not afraid of an economic crash or the decline of the dollar. In truth, they WANT these things to happen so they can establish even more centralized control.
Updates
Hot off the presses! We surveyed our members on how they are adapting to the US-China Trade War and have some surprising comparative data here from a previous survey in January 2019.
Long story short: European companies have resigned themselves to the long-term nature of the trade war, and many have made significant shifts in strategy to mitigate its effects. That means changing suppliers, rejigging product flows through corporate global operations, and avoiding the US-China trade 'border' like the plague.
Interestingly, roughly the same number of companies that are moving relevant production out of China (8%) are increasing investment in China (6%) as companies decide to move out affected production or further onshore supply chains respectively to avoid the tariff bite.
However, the effects of the uncertainty coming from the trade war are increasingly significant. In January, 6% of members said they were delaying investment/expansion decisions in reaction to the conflict. That number climbed to 15% in September.
-European Survey
Conclusion
The “Trump Trade War” is a natural progression of events that were bound to occur sooner or later. It will eventually precipitate numerous events. One of which will be a global currency. Another will be a strong ascendancy of China in the global stage. As well as some serious internal economic readjustments (collapse, maybe?) in America.
We will sit by and see what happens.
Personally, I hope that any changes that occur to be a painless as possible. To endure the changes, you might need to turn off the mainstream American media which will be shrieking, wailing, gnashing it’s teeth and flaying it’s arms all about in wild, crazed abandon.
12OCT19 Update
Trump said the U.S. and China have "agreed in principle" on a preliminary trade agreement. Trump acknowledged that differences remain on major issues on which the two countries are divided, but the White House still decided not to push ahead with a planned increased to tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods next week.
The move would have raised those tariffs to 30% from 25%.
"There's too many factors at play for him to just issue threats to governments, China's or anybody else's, to just follow along with what he says," said Wang, referring to the U.S. president's previous threats to slap additional penalties on Chinese goods.
-USA Today; Senior China adviser: Trump to blame for delays in securing final trade deal, says China has been 'accommodating'
Take a break
I know all this is very serious stuff, and a tad alarming. I would suggest that you might want to check out some of my lighter articles. Here’s four stories for starters. All open up in a separate tab for your viewing pleasure. Pick one and relax.
Links about China
Here are
some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader,
might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.
China and America Comparisons
As an
American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United
States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Who
doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what
China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in
China.
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
What is China like?
The
purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world,
outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they
might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank
you.
And while
America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources,
and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has
done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and
you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
Summer in Asia
Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…
Some Fun Videos
Here’s a collection of some fun videos taken all over Asia. While
there are many videos taken in China, we also have some taken in
Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea and Japan as well. It’s all in fun.
Articles & Links
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.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
Here, in this article, we look at the United States involvement with HK. We [1] study how the United States uses Hong Kong to exert pressure on China for trade and geopolitical advantage. We also [2] take a look at the various people “behind the scenes” that are pushing for American involvement, for their own personal gain. Finally, [3] we study the role that the American media plays that the stereotypes that they cultivate in order to manipulate Americans. This is perhaps the most comprehensive overview of the USA / China involvement in Hong Kong that you will find on the internet.
For starters, you the reader should recognize that global politics are often complicated, and convoluted. People will say one thing and then do the other. That there are forces, all with their own agendas, manipulating, jockeying, and vying for positions of power and advantage. All of this takes place on a canvas that is painted by the media. Often, a picture that doesn’t at all resemble what is actually going on behind the scene.
Or has everyone forgotten the "Trump is going to prison for conspiring with Russia to steal the election" narrative from the mainstream media from 20016 though to 2019?
The HK / USA / China issue is typical in geo-political posturing. It is like an onion. It really is.
You look at the onion, and you see the outside as portrayed to you. Much like how you observe the news media reporting. Then, you peel away the first layer. There you see the actions, and turmoil behind the scene. Your eyes will often burn. Because the truth what is going on was unknown to you. You then peel away the second layer, and find out just how deep all this goes.
You continue deeper and deeper.
You peel each layer away, one by one. And then finally you reach the true truth of the matter and take a good hard look at what is involved. In this particular situation, there are nine (x9) levels or layers of this “onion”. Ah, yes, and in this article we will investigate each one.
The HK – China – USA “free democracy” protests during 2019, and their complexity relative to the comparison to that of the layers of skin in an onion.
Here, we will proceed forward and address this issue in all of it’s complexity. We will move forward from the outside inward, and study each layer in relative detail.
The layers in this issue are;
News media reporting and bias.
Constructed and cultivated stereotypes.
The actual physical events.
The people who caused the events.
The people who are driving the events forward and pushing.
The people who provide financial support, training, and logistics.
The rise of the risks involved.
Reactions and the casualties of war.
The root effects; the trade relationships between the USA, HK and China.
As such, we will begin here…
News media reporting and bias.
President Donald Trump tweeted on August 13 that he “can’t imagine why” the United States has been blamed for the chaotic protests that have gripped Hong Kong.
Donald Trump doesn’t understand how anyone could link the Summer of 2019 HK riots with the Summer of 2019 Trade Wars with China.
Trump’s befuddlement might be believable considering [1] the carefully managed narrative of the US government. As well as [2] the mainstream American media apparatus. Yeah, I get it. Even VP Mike Pence repeats this ludicrous narrative. But come on! Do you really think that the world believes this? After Syria? After Libya?
What? You think that the Chinese will believe that you are sincere?
This GIF pretty much sums up how it looks like to the rest of the world…
I am shocked! Shocked! That there is a connection between the Summer of 2019 HK riots and the Summer of 2019 trade wars.
I believe that the Hong Kong protest is influenced by the US.
The rioters are well-trained, organized and commanded, knowing what to do and when to do it, they have a united uniform, they know where the cameras are and they know how to disable them, they know how to fight against tear gas.
The violent protests are not simply targeting the extradition law amendment bill, but also aiming to throw Hong Kong into disarray, to drag down the SAR government.
- Ty Yang (Hong Kong , China)
You think that they do not have informants? You think that HK is independent and immune from Chinese mainland observation? You think China doesn’t have cameras, video surveillance, wiretaps on telephones, and are not monitoring their insurgents?
Of course they are. And of course, they know full well what is going on. They know.
Keep your hands off Hong Kong!
US has no authority to lecture China on our own sovereign territory. How can US warmongers like Mike Pence even have the legitimacy to talk about HK, when the US is still illegally militarily occupying Syria with their US bases. Syria gave no permission for the US to build bases in Syria. How can the US think they have any god-given right to smack to China?
- MrBudha888 (China)
And we shouldn’t take their (apparent) lack of action on these matters as a weakness. Instead, we should consider it with the upmost caution. They do not make decisions based on what they see on CNN. They make their decisions off other criteria.
So it would be the height of follow to assume that the Chinese are simpletons, backwards, inept, and foolish. They are not. They know the game, and how it is played. They have over 5000 years of political intrigue, and they most certainly will not base their decisions off of what they see on the news.
The suspicion of US manipulation behind the scenes is gaining traction in the online world.
The US has gained notoriety for using subterfuge to interfere with other sovereignty's affairs.
It's not like the world is oblivious to that.
- Joseph Kuan (US)
This reporting has been very “black and white”.
They report that the protests are some kind of organic “pro-democracy” expression of young idealistic grassroots youth. That they only want “freedom”, American style “democracy”, and a “slice of the American pie”. They just do not want to be considered Chinese, and they certainly don’t want anything to do with mainland China.
Oh. If only it were TRUE…
The protests have been staged and arranged for an American audience, because that is the insurgents’ primary funding source.
However, a look beneath the surface of this oversimplified, made-for-television script reveals the truth.
It’s all a stack of cards. It’s all an illusion. It’s all a manipulation. It’s all a line and nonsense. And the Chinese are all well-aware of this.
US is everywhere in other countries' affairs! What a joke!
Nothing will distract China from focusing on economic development and raising the standard of living for the 1.4 billion Chinese people.
The US should do the same, concentrating its resources and energy to improve American people's lives. There is so much more to be desired for the most advanced country of the world.
- Miyya Z (China)
The truth is that there is a small but extremely vocal and well-funded, ferociously anti-Chinese network behind the demonstrations. They hate China. They really, seriously do.
But, it’s more than just hating China.
They hate America as well. They also hate Britain. They are so filled with hate that you would think that they were members of the American terrorist groups Antifa, and BLM. I mean, after all, they look like them, they act like them, and they use the exact same strategies as their American counterparts, the Antifa.
What? You think the Antifa and BLM love America? That’s what you think?
When a masked radical is shouting and screaming at you and is telling you that they want you hurt, tortured, and killed, you should believe them. The mainland Chinese are listening to them, and as a result they are amassing military forces in the event that things spiral out of control.
But they will cover up and hide their hate. Most of the time they will put on masks and pretend to be something else. They will act nice and courteous, and seem and appear reasonable. Anything to obtain their goals.
Frangfang (Hong Kong, China)
The US is linking the current situation in Hong Kong to the US-China trade negotiations, using Hong Kong as leverage to pressure compromise from China. Such 'bargaining', in essence using Hong Kong as a 'trading chip', would be a gross insult to the Hong Kong people.
And their goals are simple ones. It’s what every dictator and tyrant wants. They want their own fiefdom; they want Hong Kong as their own, and then they want to join the rest of the world as global oligarchs.
And America plays along.
Jimmy Lai (HK ultra-billionaire) meets with American VP Mike Pence. His goal is to disrupt the relationship between the United States and China so that he can have financial and economic advantage in Hong Kong. His primary and sole goal is to INTERRUPT the relationship between China and America.
This network has been cultivated, funded, and trained with the help of millions of dollars from the US government. (Read on to see the funding amounts, the agencies, the American officials involved, and other particulars.) Not to mention a particularly vocal progressive globalist Washington-linked local Hong Kong media tycoon. (Jimmy Lai with dreams of his own nation, and a near religious cult of followers.)
Constructed and cultivated stereotypes.
The way that the events are portrayed in Hong Kong is to fit the appetite for the American news-consuming audience. In particular, to appeal to the emotions of two especially and diametrically opposed groups;
The Progressive, Liberal Democrat Marxists.
The Traditional, Conservative Republicans.
The protests in HK are staged to pander to the American consumer. They are designed most especially to trigger emotional responses from Americans. This is most especially true when the protestors sang the Star Spangled Banner. I ask the reader this, how many of you can sing the Chinese national anthem?
Let’s start with the appeals to the liberal democrat progressive Marxists in America. Look at the progressive media show DemocracyNow! (DN!) as one example. It is a prominent media outlet on the “progressive” end of the spectrum. They have been quite busy “reporting” on all the protests in Hong Kong. They report on them as if they are part and parcel of the same kinds of Antifa and BLM protests in the United States. So, of course, they would report on everything. Right?
From April through August 28, there have been 25 brief accounts (“headlines” as DN! calls them, each amounting to a few paragraphs) of the events in Hong Kong and 4 features, longer supposedly analytic pieces, on the same topic. Transcripts of the four features are here, here, here and here.
Democracy Now! is an hour-long American TV, radio and internet news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman, who also acts as the show’s executive producer, and Juan González. The show, which airs live each weekday at 08:00 ET, is broadcast on the internet and by over 1,400 radio and television stations worldwide.
There is not a single mention of [1] possible US involvement or the meetings of the various leaders of the protest movement with [2] Pompeo, [3] Bolton, [4] Pence, or [5] the “Political Counselor” of the US Hong Kong consulate. It’s almost like they ignore the news that doesn’t fit their narrative. Imagine that!
And this silence on US meddling is true not only of most progressive commentators but also most conservatives.
On the Left when someone cries “Democracy,” many forget all their pro-peace sentiment. And similarly on the Right when someone cries “Communism,” anti-interventionism too often goes down the tubes.
In fact on its August 12 program, DN! managed a story taking a swipe at Russia right next to the one on Hong Kong – and DN! was in the forefront of advancing the now debunked and disgraced Russiagate Conspiracy Theory.
Amy Goodman is an American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter, and author. Her investigative journalism career includes coverage of the East Timor independence movement and Chevron Corporation’s role in Nigeria. Since 1996, she has been the main host of Democracy Now!, a progressive global news program broadcast daily on radio, television and the Internet.
Yes, on the other side of the political spectrum, is an appeal to American conservatives.
Protesters in Hong Kong waving the American flag and singing the American National anthem as they advocate for democracy. Wow! pic.twitter.com/CKyFstud22
— Kaya Jones (@KayaJones) August 12, 2019
Displays of pro-American “jingoism” in the streets of Hong Kong have been like catnip for the international traditional conservative right. Conservatives LOVE to hear that people are throwing down the chains of Marxist socialism and embracing liberty and freedom. Even though they are actually calling for “democracy”, instead.)
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III is an American radio talk show host and conservative political commentator. He resides in Palm Beach, Florida, where he broadcasts The Rush Limbaugh Show. According to December 2015 estimates by Talkers Magazine, Limbaugh has a cume of around 13.25 million unique listeners, making his show the most listened-to American radio station.
Conservative Joey Gibson
Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson recently appeared at an anti-extradition protest in Hong Kong, live-streaming the event to his tens of thousands of followers.
A month earlier, Gibson was seen roughing up antifa activists alongside ranks of club wielding fascists.
In Hong Kong, the alt-right organizer marveled at the crowds. “They love our flag here more than they do in America!” Gibson exclaimed as marchers passed by, flashing him a thumbs up sign while he waved the Stars and Stripes.
In Hong Kong, Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson marveled at the crowds. “They love our flag here more than they do in America!” .
Personally, I like to refer to these narratives a “two dimensional”, “black and white”, “cardboard cutouts”. It’s a simplified narrative useful for emotional manipulation of large groups of simple-minded people.
Boris and Natasha are card-board cut-outs (a two dimensional portrayal) of Russian Communists during the 1960’s and into the 1970’s.
The actual physical events.
Throughout the summer of 2019 the world has watched as protests shook Hong Kong.
A man in Taiwan murdered his girlfriend and then fled to Hong Kong. The Taiwan government wanted HK to extradite him to face justice. To facilitate this (and other similar cases), an extradition bill was proposed and about to be signed, when suddenly all Hell broke loose.
It turned out that (apparently, out of the blue), a large number of Hong Kong residents didn't like the idea of being forcibly extradited to another country to face legal charges.
As early as April they began as peaceful demonstrations which peaked in early June, with hundreds of thousands, in protest of an extradition bill.
That bill would have allowed Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, to return criminals to Taiwan, mainland China or Macau for crimes committed there – after approval by multiple layers of the Hong Kong judiciary.
In other words, if you commit a crime in Taiwan and flee to Hong Kong, the Hong Kong police would no longer provide you with a safe-haven. They would return you back to the Taiwan where you committed the crime.
Ai! This was considered an assault in "freedom" and "liberty".
Protestors in Hong Kong protesting the passage of the extradition bill.
In the wake of those enormous nonviolent demonstrations, Carrie Lam, CEO of Hong Kong, “suspended” consideration of the extradition bill, a face-saving ploy. To make sure she was understood, she declared it “dead.”
The large rallies, an undeniable expression of the peaceful will of a large segment of the Hong Kong population had won an impressive victory. The unpopular extradition bill was slain.
But that was not the end of the story.
The protests continued.
Carrie Lam, CEO of HK, meets with Xi Peng the President of Mainland China.
They… continued.
They continued, even after their goals were met.
They continued, even after the head of the HK government admitted to bowing down to the demands of the protestors. Yes, it’s true. A smaller segment continued the protests. (The Hong Kong police at one point estimated 4,000 hard core protesters.)
They pressed on with other demands, beginning with a demand that the bill be “withdrawn,” not simply “suspended.” Well, it's all a matter of terminology. By “suspension” is every bit as terminal as death by “withdrawal.” The most recent news confirms that Corrie Lam has now formally withdrawn the bill.
But even at that, the protests are continuing by this group of hard-core radicals.
They still continued to protest.
The people who initiated, inflamed or caused the events.
On the surface, it seems very simple. An extradition bill was up for ratification. Protests against the ratification were initiated, and the bill was withdrawn. Victory, right?
Nope.
Radical elements are pushing for more protests. These are violent protests, and they pull at the heartstrings of American democrats who can see their faces behind the black-hoods and face masks of the protestors, as well as American conservatives who get "goosebumps" when they see their American flags being waved along side for calls for freedom and democracy.
Who are the public people who are getting everyone all riled up and agitated on both sides of this issue (oh, yes, there are two sides to this issue. Even though the mainstream America only shows one side.)?
As the summer passed, two iconic photos presented us with two human faces that captured two crucial features of the ongoing protests; they were not shown widely in the West. They are, apparently, not considered to be “newsworthy” enough for the American viewing public.
Fu Guohao
First, Fu Guohao, a reporter for the Chinese mainland newspaper, Global Times, was attacked, bound and beaten by the radical protesters. This occurred during their takeover of the Hong Kong International Airport.
FuGuohao, a reporter for the Global Times, a nationalistic Communist Party-run newspaper, has become an overnight sensation. He is being hailed as a hero on Chinese social media after he was tied up and beaten by protesters as Tuesday’s demonstrations at Hong Kong’s airport descended into violence.
- Chinese Reporter Assaulted at Hong Kong Airport
Fu Guohao, reporter of Chinese media Global Times website, is tied by protesters during a mass demonstration at the Hong Kong international airport, in Hong Kong, China, August 13, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
When police and rescuers tried to free him, the protesters blocked them and also attempted to block the ambulance that eventually bore him off to the hospital.
Protestors fought the police.
Protestors blocked the ambulance.
Protestors bound, taunted and tortured Mr. Fu Guohao.
The photos and videos of this ugly sequence were seen by netizens across the globe even though given scant attention in Western media.
Where were the stalwart defenders of the press in the US as this happened? As one example, DemocracyNow! (DN!) was completely silent as was the rest of the US mainstream media.
Fu’s beating came after many weeks when the protesters threw up barriers to stop traffic; blocked closure of subway doors, in defiance of commuters and police, to shut down mass transit; sacked and vandalized the HK legislature building; assaulted bystanders who disagreed with them; attacked the police with Molotov cocktails; and stormed and defaced police stations.
The protestors seem to be trying to provoke mainland China to take action. However, HK is standing firm and allowing the protestors a great deal of leeway in their actions and damage.
Fu’s ordeal and all these actions shown in photos on Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, a paper leaning to the side of protesters, gave the lie to the image of these “democracy activists” as young Ghandis of East Asia.
The South China Morning Post is based in Hong Kong and its readership is concentrated there so it has to have some reasonable fidelity in reporting events; otherwise it loses credibility – and circulation.
Similarly, much as the New York Times abhorred Occupy Wall Street, it could not fail to report on it.
Joshua Wong
A younger generation of political HK activists emerged during the 2014 Occupy Central protests with a new brand of localized politics. It is a brand that appealed to the American conservative (anti-Chinese) Right.
Joshua Wong was just 17 years old when the Umbrella Movement took form in 2014. After emerging in the protest ranks as one of the more charismatic voices, he was steadily groomed as the pro-West camp’s teenage poster child.
Joshua Wong meets with Sen. Marco Rubio (R) in Washington on May 8, 2017
Wong received lavish praised in Time magazine, Fortune, and Foreign Policy as a “freedom campaigner,” and became the subject of an award-winning Netflix documentary called “Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower.”
Unsurprisingly, these puff pieces have overlooked Wong’s ties to the United States government’s regime-change apparatus. For that is what he is. He is the face of the American conservative foreign branch.
For instance, National Endowment for Democracy’s National Democratic Institute (NDI) maintains a close relationship with Demosistō, the political party Wong founded in 2016 with fellow Umbrella movement alumnus Nathan Law.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a U.S. non-profit soft power organization that was founded in 1983 with the stated goal of promoting democracy abroad. It is funded primarily through an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress in the form of a grant awarded through the United States Information Agency (USIA). It is an American agency that obtains funds directly from the American federal government.
National Endowment for Democracy’s National Democratic Institute (NDI)
To find out a little bit more about this “shadowy” and “well funded” machine for causing protests, turmoil, and discord in other nations, read this…
It’s a bit long. You can skim over it, or ignore it as you wish. It’s just some really interesting background information on how front organizations, funded by the United States government, can be used to create proxy protests, and turmoil for American geo-political advantage.
“They’re meddling in our politics!” That’s the war cry of outraged Clintonites and neocons, who seem to think election interference is something that Russians do to us and we never, ever do to them.
But meddling in other countries has been a favorite Washington pastime ever since William McKinley vowed to “Christianize” the Philippines in 1899, despite the fact that most Filipinos were already Catholic. Today, an alphabet soup of U.S. agencies engage in political interference virtually around the clock, everyone from USAID to the VOA, RFE/RL to the DHS—respectively the U.S. Agency for International Development, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Department of Homeland Security. The last maintains some 2,000 U.S. employees in 70 countries to ensure that no one even thinks of doing anything bad to anyone over here.
Then there is the National Endowment for Democracy, a $180-million-a-year government-funded outfit that is a byword for American intrusiveness. The NED is an example of what might be called “speckism,” the tendency to go on about the speck in your neighbor’s eye without ever considering the plank in your own (see Matthew 7 for further details). Prohibited by law from interfering in domestic politics, the endowment devotes endless energy to the democratic shortcomings of other countries, especially when they threaten American interests.
In 1984, the year after it was founded, it channeled secret funds to a military-backed presidential candidate in Panama, gave $575,000 to a right-wing French student group, and delivered nearly half a million dollars to right-wing opponents of Costa Rican president Oscar Arias—because Arias had refused to go along with our anti-communist policy in Central America.
A year later, it gave $400,000 to the anti-Sandinista opposition in Nicaragua and then another $2 million in 1988. It used its financial muscle in the mid-1990s to persuade a right-wing party to draw up a “Contract with Slovakia” modeled on Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America; persuaded free marketeers to do the same in Mongolia; gave nearly $1 million to Venezuelan rightists who went on to mount a short-lived putsch against populist leader Hugo Chavez in 2002; and then funded anti-Russian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine in 2005, and the later anti-Russian coup there in 2014.
What all this had to do with democracy is unclear, although the NED’s role in advancing U.S. imperial interests is beyond doubt. Rather than “my country right or wrong,” its operating assumption is “my country right, full stop.” If Washington says Leader X is out of line, then the endowment will snap to attention and fund his opponents.
If it says he’s cooperative and well-behaved, meaning he supports free markets and financial deregulation and doesn’t dally with any of America’s military rivals, it will do the opposite. It doesn’t matter if, like Putin, the alleged dictator swept the last election with 63.6 percent of the vote and was declared the “clear” winner by the European Union and the U.S. State Department. If he’s “expanding [Russia’s] influence in the Middle East,” as NED President Carl Gershman puts it, then he’s a “strongman” and an “autocrat” and must go.
America’s own shortcomings meanwhile go unnoticed. Meanwhile, the NED, as it nears the quarter-century mark, is a bundle of contradictions: a group that claims to be private even though it is almost entirely publicly funded, a group that says democracy “must be indigenous” even though it backs U.S.-imposed regime change, a group that claims to be “bipartisan” but whose board is packed with ideologically homogeneous hawks like Elliott Abrams, Anne Applebaum, and Victoria Nuland, the latter of whom served as assistant secretary of state during the coup in Ukraine.
Historically speaking, the NED feels straight out of the early 1980s, when Washington was struggling to overcome “Vietnam Syndrome” in order to rev up the Cold War. The recovery process began with Ronald Reagan declaring at his first inaugural, “The crisis that we are facing today [requires] our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds, to believe that together with God’s help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us. After all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.”
The U.S. was apparently not just a nation, but something like a religion as well. Additional input for the new NED in 1983 came from spymaster William Casey, CIA director from 1981 to 1987, who, after the intelligence scandals of the 70s, had swung around to the view that certain covert operations were better spun off into what the British call a “quango,” a quasi-non-government organization. “Obviously we here should not get out in front in the development of such an organization,” he cautioned, “nor do we wish to appear to be a sponsor or advocate.” It was a case of covert backing for an overt turn.
Others who helped lay the groundwork were:
Neoconservative ideologue Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan’s ambassador to the UN, famous for her argument that “traditional authoritarian governments” should be supported against “revolutionary autocracies” because they are “less repressive” and whose UN aide Carl Gershman would become NED president and serves to this day.
Human rights Democrats who believe that America’s job is to enforce democratic standards throughout the world, however idiosyncratic and self-serving they may be Old-fashioned pluralists who maintained that the power to succeed existed in different groups’ working separately toward a common goal, in this case, spreading democracy abroad .
The result was an ideologically lethal package that assumed whatever Americans did was democratic because God is on our side, that old-fashioned CIA skullduggery was passé, and that the time had come to switch to more open means. “We should not have to do this kind of work covertly,” Gershman later explained. “We saw that in the 60s, and that’s why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that’s why the endowment was created.”
In the interests of pluralism, the NED adopted a quadripartite structure with separate wings for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, the GOP, and the Democrats, each working separately yet somehow together.
Pluralism helped tamp down debate and also shore up support on Capitol Hill. Liberal Democrats were initially skeptical due to the NED’s neocon tilt. Michigan Congressman John Conyers Jr. tried to kill it in 1985, and The Nation magazine complained a few years later that the group served as little more than “a pork barrel for a small circle of Republican and Democratic party activists, conservative trade unionists, and free marketeers who use endowment money to run their own mini State Department.”
But when the House voted unexpectedly to defund the agency in 1993, beneficiaries sprang to its defense. Major-league pundits like George Will, David Broder, and Abe Rosenthal “went into overdrive,” according to The Nation, as did the heavy hitters of the Washington Post editorial page. Vice President Walter Mondale, a member of the NED board of directors, worked the phones along with Lane Kirkland, George Meany’s successor as head of the AFL-CIO.
Ronald Reagan wrote a letter, while Senators Richard Lugar, Orrin Hatch, and John McCain pitched in as well. So did prominent liberals like Paul Wellstone, John Kerry, Tom Harkin, Ted Kennedy, and Carol Moseley-Braun. These people normally couldn’t bear to be in the same with one another, but they were of one mind when it came to America’s divine right to intervene in other nations’ affairs.
The anti-NED forces didn’t stand a chance. Twenty-five years later, the endowment is again under attack, although this time from the right.
Gershman started the ball rolling when, in October 2016, he interrupted his busy pro-democracy schedule to dash off a column in the Washington Post accusing Russia of using “email hackers, information trolls and open funding of political parties to sow discord” and of “even intervening in the U.S. presidential election.” Since there was no question whom Russia was intervening for, there was no doubt what the article amounted to: a thinly veiled swipe at a certain orange-haired candidate.
Never one to forget a slight, Trump got his revenge last month by proposing to slash the NED budget by 60 percent. The response was the same as in 1993, only more so. Uber-hawk Senator Lindsey Graham pronounced the cut “dead on arrival,” adding: “This budget destroys soft power, it puts our diplomats at risk, and it’s going nowhere.”
Gershman said it would mean “sending a signal far and wide that the United States is turning its back on supporting brave people who share our values,” while Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin moaned that the administration was guilty of an “assault on democracy promotion.” The ever-voluble Democratic Congresswoman Nita Lowey accused the administration of “dismantling an agency that advances critical goals.”
“The work our government does to promote democratic values abroad is at the heart of who we are as a country,” added Senator John McCain. America is democracy, democracy is America, and, as history’s first global empire, the U.S. has an unqualified right to do unto others what others may not do unto the U.S. Only a “Siberian candidate,” “a traitor,” or “a Russian stooge” could possibly disagree.
- The National Endowment for (Meddling in) Democracy by Daniel Lazare
Julie Eadeh
In August, a candid photo surfaced of Wong and Law meeting with Julie Eadeh, the political counselor at the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong, raising questions about the content of the meeting and setting off a diplomatic showdown between Washington and Beijing.
Julie Eadeh
People, it’s pretty obvious that Washington D.C. is involved in the HK protests, when you have photos of the protest leaders meeting with American presidential aides!
People, it’s pretty obvious that Washington D.C. is involved in the HK protests, when you have photos of the protest leaders meeting with American presidential aides in the HK Marriot hotel!
This is very very embarrassing. Julie Eadeh, a US diplomat in Hong Kong, was caught meeting HK protest leaders. It would be hard to imagine the US reaction if Chinese diplomat were meeting leaders of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter or Never Trump protesters. pic.twitter.com/JfiU2O2HZq
— Chen Weihua (@chenweihua) August 8, 2019
Of course, this kind of nonsense won’t be tolerated by China.
The Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong submitted a formal complaint with the US consulate general, calling on the US “to immediately make a clean break from anti-China forces who stir up trouble in Hong Kong, stop sending out wrong signals to violent offenders, refrain from meddling with Hong Kong affairs and avoid going further down the wrong path.”
The Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong submitted a formal complaint with the US consulate general, calling on the US “to immediately make a clean break from anti-China forces who stir up trouble in Hong Kong, stop sending out wrong signals to violent offenders, refrain from meddling with Hong Kong affairs and avoid going further down the wrong path.”
So the United States wants to get involved in Chinese affairs.
Well, then be prepared for some “push back”. The pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao doxxed Eadeh. They published personal details about Eadeh, including the names of her children and her address.
But, Washington, D.C. is not used to “push back”.
State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus lashed out, accusing the Chinese government of being behind the leak but offering no evidence. “I don’t think that leaking an American diplomat’s private information, pictures, names of their children, I don’t think that is a formal protest, that is what a thuggish regime would do,”she said at a State Department briefing.
Totally ignoring the already issued formal protest from China.
State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus lashed out, accusing the Chinese government of being behind the leak but offering no evidence. “I don’t think that leaking an American diplomat’s private information, pictures, names of their children, I don’t think that is a formal protest, that is what a thuggish regime would do,” she said at a State Department briefing.
Aside from the official American government protests bout the doxxing, the leaked Mariott photo underscored the close relationship between Hong Kong’s pro-West movement and the US government.
There is ample proof that the United States government has been coaching, and supporting the protests in Hong Kong.
Since the 2014 Occupy Central protests that vaulted Wong into prominence, he and his peers have been assiduously cultivated by the elite Washington institutions to act as the faces and voices of Hong Kong’s burgeoning anti-China movement.
This has continued a pace.
In September 2015, Wong, Martin Lee, and University of Hong Kong law professor Benny Tai Lee were honored by Freedom House, a right-wing soft-power organization that is heavily funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and other arms of the US government.
In September 2015, Wong, Martin Lee, and University of Hong Kong law professor Benny Tai Lee were honored
by Freedom House, a right-wing soft-power organization that is heavily
funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and other arms of the US
government.
Freedom House
Just days after Trump’s election as president in November 2016, Wong was back in Washington to appeal for more US support. “Being a businessman, I hope Donald Trump could know the dynamics in Hong Kong and know that to maintain the business sector benefits in Hong Kong, it’s necessary to fully support human rights in Hong Kong to maintain the judicial independence and the rule of law,” he said.
Wong’s visit to Washington DC provided occasion for the Senate’s two most aggressively neoconservative members, Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton, to introduce the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act,”.
Wong’s visit provided occasion for the Senate’s two most aggressively neoconservative members, Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton, to introduce the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act,” which would “identify those responsible for abduction, surveillance, detention and forced confessions, and the perpetrators will have their US assets, if any… frozen and their entry to the country denied.”
Marco Rubio
Tom Cotton
Wong was given the “royal carpet treatment”. He was then taken on a junket of elite US institutions including the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank and the newsrooms of the New York Times and Financial Times. He then held court with Rubio, Cotton, Pelosi, and Sen. Ben Sasse.
Heritage Foundation
Nancy Pelosi
Ben Sasse
Wong was given the “royal carpet treatment”. He was then taken on a junket of elite US institutions including the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank and the newsrooms of the New York Times and Financial Times. He then held court with Rubio, Cotton, Pelosi, and Sen. Ben Sasse.
In September 2017, Rubio, Ben Cardin, Tom Cotton, Sherrod Brown, and Cory Gardner signed off on a letter to Wong, Law and fellow anti-China activist Alex Chow, praising them for their “efforts to build a genuinely autonomous Hong Kong.” The bipartisan cast of senators proclaimed that “the United States cannot stand idly by.”
Ben Cardin
Sherrod Brown
Cory Gardner
Rubio and his colleagues nominated the trio of Wong, Law, and Chow for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.
A year later, Rubio and his colleagues nominated the trio of Wong, Law, and Chow for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.
Honored to have met Joshua Wong, a student leader who led a big protest demanding universal suffrage in Hong Kong. pic.twitter.com/sSb46j7zIX
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) November 18, 2015
Washington’s support for the designated spokesmen of the “retake Hong Kong movement” was supplemented with untold sums of money from US regime-change outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and subsidiaries like the National Democratic Institute (NDI) to civil society, media and political groups.
National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
National Democratic Institute (NDI)
Washington’s support for the designated spokesmen of the “retake Hong Kong movement” was supplemented with untold sums of money from US regime-change outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and subsidiaries like the National Democratic Institute (NDI) to civil society, media and political groups.
As journalist Alex Rubinstein reported, the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, a key member of the coalition that organized against the now-defunct extradition law, has received more than $2 million in NED funds since 1995.
Other groups in the coalition reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NED and NDI last year alone.
While US lawmakers nominate Hong Kong protest leaders for peace prizes and pump their organizations with money to “promote democracy,” the demonstrations have begun to spiral out of control.
The people who are driving the events.
25th August 2019 – (Hong Kong) The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has funded the 2014 Occupy Central in the past but many have begun to wonder if the Americans did indeed have a hand in the latest anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong. Numerous meetings between pro-democracy political activists, representatives from NED and top government officials have left us wondered if NED has funded the frontline protesters .
We have mentioned earlier in our previous article that, there are in principle two factions of protesters, the genuine protesters (90%) and the frontline protesters (10%). Only the 10% frontline protesters are potentially funded by the Americans as the mass of Hong Kong protesters fit naturally into their agenda.
What is NED? NED is a U.S. non-profit soft power organization that was founded in 1983 with the stated goal of promoting democracy abroad. In principle, NED is a grant-making foundation, distributing funds to private non-governmental organisations for promoting democracy abroad. NED does not directly fund any political party, as this is forbidden by law. According to NED, it funds election monitoring and also civic education about voting, such as student-led “get-out-the-vote” campaigns.
However, according to American Conservative, in 1984, the year after it was founded, it channeled secret funds to a military-backed presidential candidate in Panama, gave US$575,000 to a right-wing French student group, and delivered nearly half a million dollars to right-wing opponents of Costa Rican president Oscar Arias—because Arias had refused to go along with our anti-communist policy in Central America.
- Is United States involved in the current civil unrest in Hong Kong via its National Endowment for Democracy (NED)?
The protesters’ stated goals remain vague. No one now knows what exactly they are protesting for.
HK Riot police can only take so much violence before some serious accidents will occur.
Joshua Wong, one of the most well known figures in the movement, has since put forward a call for the Chinese government to [1] “retract the proclamation that the protests were riots,” and [2] restated the consensus demand for universal suffrage.
Wong is a bespectacled 22-year-old who has been trumpeted in Western media as a “freedom campaigner,” promoted to the English-speaking world through his own Netflix documentary, and rewarded with the backing of the US government.
Hey! This kid is doing really well for himself. He's getting millions of dollars from various political American movements. He was up for the Peace Prize, and has his own Netflix documentary. Pretty good for a a young unemployed Hong Kong millennial. It's nice to see where all our campaign donations and tax dollars goes to.
Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong released from prison, vows to continue actions of violence.
But behind telegenic spokespeople like Wong are more extreme elements such as the Hong Kong National Party, whose members have appeared at protests waving the Stars and Stripes and belting out cacophonous renditions of the Star-Spangled Banner. The leadership of this officially banned party helped popularize the call for the full independence of Hong Kong, a radical goal that is music to the ears of hardliners in Washington.
Xenophobic resentment has defined the sensibility of the protesters, who vow to “retake Hong Kong” from Chinese mainlanders they depict as a horde of locusts.
The demonstrators have even adopted one of the most widely recognized symbols of the alt-right, emblazoning images of Pepe the Frog on their protest literature. While it’s unclear that Hong Kong residents see Pepe the same way American conservatives do, members of the US far-right have embraced the protest movement as their own, and even personally joined their ranks.
Protesters in Hong Kong have adopted the popular “Pepe the Frog” meme as one of their symbols of resistance amid ongoing demonstrations against a proposed extradition bill.
The frog’s familiar face has appeared on signs in various protests calling out violent police crackdowns against demonstrators.
One meme showing Pepe with an injured eye focused on a police assault which left a first responder blind after being shot with a bean bag round at close range.
Which brings us to the second key photo of importance. It is much more important to US citizens. It clearly shows a “Political Counselor” from the US Consulate General in Hong Kong with radical anti-government protestors at the HK Marriot hotel.
The official was formerly a State Dept functionary in the Middle East – in Jerusalem, Riyadh, Beirut, Baghdad and Doha, certainly not an area lacking in imperial intrigues and regime change ops.
People, it’s pretty obvious that Washington D.C. is involved in the HK protests, when you have photos of the protest leaders meeting with American presidential aides!
That photo graphically contradicted the contention that there is no US “black hand,” as China calls it, in the Hong Kong riots.
In fact, here the “black hand” was caught red-handed, leading Chen Weihua, a very perceptive China Daily columnist, to tweet the picture with the comment:
“This is very very embarrassing. … a US diplomat in Hong Kong, was caught meeting HK protest leaders. It would be hard to imagine the US reaction if a Chinese diplomat were meeting leaders of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter or Never Trump protesters.”
And that photo with the protest leaders is just a snap shot of the ample evidence of the hand of the US government and its subsidiaries in the Hong Kong events.
There is substantial and ample evidence that the United States government has been very active in funding, advising and supporting the anti-government protestors in Hong Kong.
Perhaps the best documentation of the US “black hand” is to be found in Dan Cohen’s superb article of August 17 in The Greyzone entitled, “Behind a made-for-TV Hong Kong protest narrative, Washington is backing nativism and mob violence.”
The article by Cohen deserves careful reading; it leaves little doubt that there is a very deep involvement of the US in the Hong Kong riots.
Of special interest is the detailed role and funding, amounting to over $1.3 million, in Hong Kong alone in recent years, of the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), ever on the prowl for new regime change opportunities.
Perhaps most important, the leaders of the “leaderless” protests have met with major US political figures such as John Bolton, Vice President Pence, Secretary Pompeo, Senator Marco Rubio, Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel, Nancy Pelosi and others, all of whom have heartily endorsed their efforts.
This is not to deny that the protests were home grown at the outset in response to what was widely perceived as a legitimate grievance. But it would be equally absurd to deny that the US is fishing in troubled Hong Kong waters to advance its anti-China crusade and regime change ambitions.
People! China is a serious, serious nation. They do not mess around. If you think that they will not take this meddling as some kind of physical attack, then you are living in a fantasy world. They WILL take action. You all just have no idea what it will be.Nor will you know when they will take action.
The people who are activating the events.
As has been demonstrated so far, there are various individuals who are playing the "global high-power" politics role in all this. This includes American Senators, Congressmen, and various American sponsored "freedom" organizations.
But there are also others. Other people who have their own personal interests for "stirring up the pot". Here we look at others, who have a bigger personal stake in all of these protests.
Jimmy Lai
Among the most central influencers of the demonstrations is a local tycoon named Jimmy Lai. The self-described “head of opposition media,” Lai is widely described as the Rupert Murdoch of Asia.
The United States is intimately involved in the HK protests.
For the masses of protesters, Lai is a transcendent figure. They clamor for photos with him and applaud the oligarch wildly when he walks by their encampments.
Lai established his credentials by pouring millions of dollars into the 2014 Occupy Central protest, which is known popularly as the Umbrella Movement. He has since used his massive fortune to fund local anti-China political movers and shakers while injecting the protests with a virulent brand of Sinophobia through his media empire.
Sinophobia - definition of Sinophobia by The Free Dictionary
Sinophobia synonyms, Sinophobia pronunciation, Sinophobia translation, English dictionary definition of Sinophobia. n. 1. Fear of or contempt for China, its people, or its culture. 2. Behavior based on such an attitude or feeling. Si′no·phobe′ n. Si′no·pho′bic adj.
Jimmy Lai (HK billionaire) meets with American VP Mike Pence. Politically he is a progressive leftist who became one of the most powerful men in HK. He desires to leverage his relationship and power to have the USA perform proxy interceptions within China and HK relationships for his own personal benefit.
Though Western media has depicted the
Hong Kong protesters as the voice of an entire people yearning for
freedom, the island is deeply divided. This August, a group of
protesters mobilized outside Jimmy Lai’s house, denouncing him as a
“running dog” of Washington and accusing him of national betrayal by
unleashing chaos on the island.
Days earlier, Lai was in Washington, coordinating with hardline members of Trump’s national security team, including John Bolton. His ties to Washington run deep — and so do those of the front-line protest leaders.
John Bolton
John Bolton – National Security Advisor to Donald Trump.
Jimmy Lai has been working with President Trump's national security advisor John Bolton in how to work with China.
In this relationship, it is obvious that both Jimmy Lai and John Bolton want to take a very hard-line with China. As such, we can well expect John Bolton to sabotage any tariff agreement between Xi Peng and Donald Trump.
Personally, I believe that for there to be any kind of mutually-beneficial trade relationship and agreement between the USA and China, John Bolton would have to step down from being an advisor to Donald Trump.
Millions of dollars have flowed from
US regime-change outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
into civil society and political organizations that form the backbone
of the anti-China mobilization. And Lai has supplemented it with his own
fortune while instructing protesters on tactics through his various
media organs.
With Donald Trump in the White House,
Lai is convinced that his moment may be on the horizon. Trump
“understands the Chinese like no president understood,” the tycoon told the Wall Street Journal. “I think he’s very good at dealing with gangsters.”
Born in the mainland in 1948 to wealthy parents, whose fortune was expropriated by the Communist Party during the revolution the following year, Jimmy Lai began working at 9 years old, carrying bags for train travelers during the hard years of the Great Chinese Famine.
Inspired by the taste of a piece of chocolate gifted to him by a wealthy man, he decided to smuggle himself to Hong Kong to discover a future of wealth and luxury. There, Lai worked his way up the ranks of the garment industry, growing enamored with the libertarian theories of economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the latter of whom became his close friend.
Friedman is famous for developing the neoliberal shock therapy doctrine that the US has imposed on numerous countries, resulting in the excess deaths of millions. For his part, Hayek is the godfather of the Austrian economic school that forms the foundation of libertarian political movements across the West.
Lai built his business empire on Giordano, a garment label that became one of Asia’s most recognizable brands. In 1989, he threw his weight behind the Tiananmen Square protests, hawking t-shirts on the streets of Beijing calling for Deng Xiaoping to “step down.”
It was a year after the Communist Party of China, led by Deng Xiaoping, put forward the policy of reform and opening-up. Under the policy, individuals nationwide were encouraged to run businesses and set up private companies. That meant that family enterprises like the Nian’s sunflower seed business became legal. Deng’s visionary move fueled the growth of private enterprise and set a milestone for China’s market-oriented economy.
In other words, Mr. Deng introduced China to Reganomics. And while President Bush stopped all of the Reaganomics that he started, Mr. Deng continued, creating the China that exists today.
Lai’s actions provoked the Chinese government to ban his company from operating on the mainland.
A year later, he founded Next Weekly magazine, initiating a process that would revolutionize the mediascape in Hong Kong with a blend of smutty tabloid-style journalism, celebrity gossip and a heavy dose of anti-China spin.
The vociferously anti-communist baron soon became Hong Kong’s media kingpin, worth a whopping $660 million in 2009.
Today, Lai is the founder and majority stakeholder of Next Digital, the largest listed media company in Hong Kong, which he uses to agitate for the end of what he calls the Chinese “dictatorship.” His flagship outlet is the popular tabloid Apple Daily, employing the trademark mix of raunchy material with a heavy dose of xenophobic, nativist propaganda.
In 2012, Apple Daily carried a full page advertisement depicting mainland Chinese citizens as invading locusts draining Hong Kong’s resources. The advertisement called for a stop to the “unlimited invasion of mainland pregnant women in Hong Kong.”
(This was a crude reference to the Chinese citizens who had flocked to the island while pregnant to ensure that their children could earn Hong Kong residency, and resembled the resentment among the US right-wing of immigrant “anchor babies.”)
Ad in Lai’s Apple Daily: “That’s enough! Stop unlimited invasion of mainland pregnant women!”
The transformation of Hong Kong’s economy has provided fertile soil for Lai’s brand of demagoguery. As the country’s manufacturing base moved to mainland China after the golden years of the 1980s and ‘90s, the economy was rapidly financialized, enriching oligarchs like Lai.
Left with rising debt and dimming career prospects, Hong Kong’s youth became easy prey to the demagogic politics of nativism.
Many protesters have been seen waving
British Union Jacks in recent weeks, expressing a yearning for an
imaginary past under colonial control which they never personally
experienced.
Many protesters have been seen waving British Union Jacks in recent weeks, expressing a yearning for an imaginary past under colonial control which they never personally experienced.
In July, protesters vandalized the Hong Kong Liaison Office, spray-painting the word, “Shina” on its facade. This term is a xenophobic slur some in Hong Kong and Taiwan use to refer to mainland China.
The anti-Chinese phenomenon was visible during the 2014 Umbrella movement protests as well, with signs plastered around the city reading, “Hong Kong for Hong Kongers.”
支那(Shina) is Japanese word for China that became derogatory during Sino-Japanese War. Post-War Japan gov ban its use in Kanji form (Chinese characters) in official document. Yet some people in Hong Kong and Taiwan use it to insult people from Chinese mainland. It=“Chink” in Eng https://t.co/Oe8LCXgak8
— Carl Zha (@CarlZha) July 22, 2019
This month, protesters turned their fury on the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, spray-painting “rioters” on its office. The attack represented resentment of the left-wing group’s role in a violent 1967 uprising against the British colonial authorities, who are now seen as heroes among many of the anti-Chinese demonstrators.
Edward Leung
Besides Lai, a large part of the
credit for mobilizing latent xenophobia goes to the right-wing Hong Kong
Indigenous party leader Edward Leung. Under the direction of the
28-year-old Leung, his pro-independence party has brandished British
colonial flags and publicly harassed Chinese mainland tourists. In 2016,
Leung was exposed for meeting with US diplomatic officials at a local restaurant.
Edward Leung Tin-kei (Chinese : 梁天琦 ; born 2 June 1991) is a Hong Kong student and activist. He is the former spokesman of Hong Kong Indigenous, a localist group. He took a leading role and was arrested in the 2016 Mong Kok civil unrest.
Though he is currently in jail for leading a 2016 riot where police were bombarded with bricks and pavement – and where he admitted
to attacking an officer – Leung’s rightist politics and his slogan,
“Retake Hong Kong,” have helped define the ongoing protests.
A local legislator and protest leader described Leung to the New York Times as “the Che Guevara of Hong Kong’s revolution,” referring without a hint of irony to the Latin American communist revolutionary killed in a CIA-backed operation. According to the Times, Leung is “the closest thing Hong Kong’s tumultuous and leaderless protest movement has to a guiding light.”
Andy Chan
The xenophobic sensibility of the protesters has provided fertile soil for Hong Kong National Party to recruit. Founded by the pro-independence activist Andy Chan, the officially banned party combines anti-Chinese resentment with calls for the US to intervene.
"I ask President Trump to bring full-scale of sanction on to Hong Kong. The sanctions brought on China must [be] brought on Hong Kong because China can escape sanctions through Hong Kong. I would like to take the chance to reiterate my advocacy again: to revoke the 1992 Hong Kong Policy Act passed by the United States Congress. It allows Hong Kong to enjoy a special status apart from China. However, it turns out to be a back door of the free world that could be accessed and manipulated by China. Moreover, over 70% of foreign direct investment goes in to China through Hong Kong. Hong Kong is the main window that China obtains U.S. dollars from. Therefore, shut it down."
-Andy Chan
Images and videos have surfaced of HKNP members waving the flags of the US and UK, singing the Star Spangled Banner, and carrying flags emblazoned with images of Pepe the Frog, the most recognizable symbol of the US alt-right.
It is a very small group. With only a handful of members. While the party lacks a wide base of popular support, it is perhaps the most outspoken within the protest ranks, and has attracted disproportionate international attention as a result.
“I ask President Trump to bring full-scale of sanction on to Hong Kong. The sanctions brought on China must [be] brought on Hong Kong because China can escape sanctions through Hong Kong. I would like to take the chance to reiterate my advocacy again: to revoke the 1992 Hong Kong Policy Act passed by the United States Congress.
It allows Hong Kong to enjoy a special status apart from China. However, it turns out to be a back door of the free world that could be accessed and manipulated by China. Moreover, over 70% of foreign direct investment goes in to China through Hong Kong. Hong Kong is the main window that China obtains U.S. dollars from. Therefore, shut it down.”
Chan has called for Trump to escalate the trade war and accused China of carrying out a “national cleansing” against Hong Kong. “We were once colonized by the Brits, and now we are by the Chinese,” he declared.
The risks if this manipulation cannot be constrained.
Such xenophobic propaganda is consistent with the clash of civilizations theory that Jimmy Lai has promulgated through his media empire. It is useful. It has a proven record of success, and is useful to obtain his objectives at this time.
“You have to understand the Hong Kong people – a very tiny 7 million or 0.5 percent of the Chinese population – are very different from the rest of Chinese in China, because we grow up in the Western values, which was the legacy of the British colonial past, which gave us the instinct to revolt once this extradition law was threatening our freedom,” Lai told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. “Even America has to look at the world 20 years from now, whether you want the Chinese dictatorial values to dominate this world, or you want the values that you treasure [to] continue.”
During a panel discussion at the neoconservative Washington-based think tank, the Foundation For Defense of Democracies, Lai told the pro-Israel lobbyist Jonathan Schanzer,
“We need to know that America is behind us. By backing us, America is also sowing to the will of their moral authority because we are the only place in China, a tiny island in China, which is sharing your values, which is fighting the same war you have with China.”
While Lai makes no attempt to conceal
his political agenda, his bankrolling of central figures in the 2014
Occupy Central, or Umbrella movement protests, was not always public.
To find out what is going on here, all you need to do is “follow the money”.
Leaked emails revealed that Lai poured more than $1.2 million to anti-China political parties including $637,000 USD to the Democratic Party and $382,000 USD to the Civic Party. Lai also gave $115,000 USD to the Hong Kong Civic Education Foundation and Hong Kong Democratic Development Network, both of which were co-founded by Reverend Chu Yiu-ming. Lai also spent $446,000 USD on Occupy Central’s 2014 unofficial referendum.
Lai’s US consigliere is a former Navy intelligence analyst who interned with the CIA and leveraged his intelligence connections to build his boss’s business empire.
Named Mark Simon, the veteran spook arranged for former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin to meet with a group in the anti-China camp during a 2009 visit to Hong Kong.
Five years later, Lai paid $75,000 to neoconservative Iraq war author and US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to organize a meeting with top military figures in Myanmar.
US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz believes that supporting the HK protestors will not have any adverse actions and that America will continue to be the most powerful and “free nation” on the planet.
This July, as the Hong Kong protests gathered steam, Lai was junketed to Washington, DC for meetings with Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Republican Senators Ted Cruz, Cory Gardner, and Rick Scott.
Bloomberg News correspondent Nicholas Wadhams remarked on Lai’s visit, “Very unusual for a [non-government] visitor to get that kind of access.”
Today: Hong Kong publisher and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai met National Security Adviser John Bolton in DC. After meetings with @SecPompeo and @VP, this is meant to send a signal to Beijing. Very unusual for a nongovt visitor to get that kind of access. pic.twitter.com/6rvqsGJzru
— Nicholas Wadhams (@nwadhams) July 10, 2019
Hong Kong publisher and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai met National Security Adviser John Bolton in DC. After meetings with @SecPompeo and @VP, this is meant to send a signal to Beijing. This continued as the proxy protests continued in HK. In this picture a protestor was arrested trying to sneak into the HK international airport.
One of Lai’s closest allies, Martin
Lee, was also granted an audience with Pompeo, and has held court with
US leaders including Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Joseph Biden.
Among the most prominent figures in Hong Kong’s pro-US political parties, Martin Lee began collaborating with Lai during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
A recipient of the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy’s “Democracy Award” in 1997, Lee is the founding chairman of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, now considered part of the pro-US camp’s old guard.
Policemen arrest a protester during a demonstration at the Airport in Hong Kong, Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2019. Chaos has broken out at Hong Kong’s airport as riot police moved into the terminal to confront protesters who shut down operations at the busy transport hub for two straight days. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
These latest groups of protests are not about HK law. They are about armed militarized conflicts against the HK government. They choose not to work with the government, instead they want to embrace violence.
After the extradition law was scrapped, the protests moved into a more aggressive phase, launching “hit and run attacks” against government targets, erecting roadblocks, besieging police stations, and generally embracing the extreme modalities put on display during US-backed regime-change operations from Ukraine to Venezuela to Nicaragua.
After the extradition law was scrapped, the protests moved into a more aggressive phase, launching “hit and run attacks” against government targets, erecting roadblocks, besieging police stations, and generally embracing the extreme modalities put on display during US-backed regime-change operations from Ukraine to Venezuela to Nicaragua.
AJE in position to cover HK protesters' "hit and run strategy."
Here's William Engdahl on Otpor!, the CIA-backed Serbian group that trained thousands of youth activists in countries around the world in color revolution swarming tactics: https://t.co/jvCk2QBNhKhttps://t.co/I8oGScbpsSpic.twitter.com/a3JZzGwDb9
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) August 13, 2019
The techniques clearly reflected the
training many activists have received from Western soft-power outfits.
But they also bore the mark of Jimmy Lai’s media operation.
In addition to the vast sums Lai
spent on political parties directly involved in the protests, his media
group created an animated video “showing how to resist police in case
force was used to disperse people in a mass protest.”
In addition to the vast sums Lai spent on political parties directly involved in the protests, his media group created an animated video “showing how to resist police in case force was used to disperse people in a mass protest.”
While dumping money into the Hong Kong’s pro-US political camp in 2013, Lai traveled to Taiwan for a secret roundtable consultation
with Shih Ming-teh, a key figure in Taiwan’s social movement that
forced then-president Chen Shui-bian to resign in 2008. Shih reportedly
instructed Lai on non-violent tactics to bring the government to heel,
emphasizing the importance of a commitment to go to jail.
According to journalist Peter Lee,
“Shih supposedly gave Lai advice on putting students, young girls, and
mothers with children in the vanguard of the street protests, in order
to attract the support of the international community and press, and to
sustain the movement with continual activities to keep it dynamic and
fresh.” Lai reportedly turned off his recording device during multiple
sections of Shih’s tutorial.
“Shih supposedly gave Lai advice on putting students, young girls, and mothers with children in the vanguard of the street protests, in order to attract the support of the international community and press, and to sustain the movement with continual activities to keep it dynamic and fresh.”
One protester explained
to the New York Times how the movement attempted to embrace a strategy
called, “Marginal Violence Theory”: By using “mild force” to provoke
security services into attacking the protesters, the protesters aimed to
shift international sympathy away from the state.
As I have repeated stated in this article, it seems like the protestors want the police and military forces to engage them. Per this quote in the use of "mild force", it seems obvious that this is their strategy.
As the protest movement intensifies, its rank-and-file are doing away with tactical restraint and lashing out at their targets with full fury. They have thrown molotov cocktails into intersections to block traffic; attacked vehicles and their drivers for attempting to break through roadblocks; beaten opponents with truncheons; attacked a wounded man with a US flag; menaced a reporter into deleting her photos; kidnapped and beat a journalist senseless; beat a mainland traveler unconscious and prevented paramedics from reaching the victim; and hurled petrol bombs at police officers.
A Hong Kong protester continued to attack Chinese reporter for @globaltimesnews with American flag even as Paramedics finally freed him from the crowd and tried to rush him to hospital pic.twitter.com/AIULKRW76t
— Carl Zha (@CarlZha) August 13, 2019
The charged atmosphere has provided a
shot in the arm to Lai’s media empire, which had been suffering heavy
losses since the last round of national protests in 2014. After the mass
marches against the extradition bill on June 9, which Lai’s Apple Daily
aggressively promoted, his Next Digital doubled in value, according to Eji Insight.
Meanwhile, the protest leaders show no sign of backing down.
Nathan Law, the youth activist celebrated in Washington and photographed meeting with US officials in Hong Kong, took to Twitter to urge his peers to soldier on: “We have to persist and keep the faith no matter how devastated the reality seems to be,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, the protest leaders show no sign of backing down. Nathan Law, the youth activist celebrated in Washington and photographed meeting with US officials in Hong Kong, took to Twitter to urge his peers to soldier on: “We have to persist and keep the faith no matter how devastated the reality seems to be,” he wrote.
Nathan Law
Law was tweeting from New Haven, Connecticut, where he was enrolled with a full scholarship at Yale University. While the young activist basked in the adulation of his US patrons thousands of miles from the chaos he helped spark, a movement that defined itself as a “leaderless resistance” forged ahead back home.
While there has been growing coverage of the unrest in Hong Kong, there has been minimal coverage of what may lie behind the pro-democracy protests.
As you will see in this posting, it is entirely possible that a
Washington-based and Congressionally funded institution is responsible,
at least in part, for the lack of calmness in Hong Kong.
American involvement in the affairs of other nations is well established. It should come as no surprise to anyone that America would fund and instigate protests and violence in China’s backyard.
American involvement in the affairs of other nations is well established. It should come as no surprise to anyone that America would fund and instigate protests and violence in China’s backyard. For more information, go to this posting on the National Endowment for Democracy or NED, America’s instrument of democratic promotion around the world, that is, democracy American style. NED was founded in 1983 during the Reagan Administration with the following Statement of Principles and Objectives:
“Democracy involves the right of the people freely to determine their own destiny.The exercise of this right requires a system that guarantees freedom of expression, belief and association, free and competitive elections, respect for the inalienable rights of individuals and minorities, free communications media, and the rule of law.“
NED is a unique institution. The Endowment’s nongovernmental character gives it a flexibility that makes it possible to work in some of the world’s most difficult circumstances, and to respond quickly when there is an opportunity for political change.
While NED touts itself as a “private” foundation, in other words, it
is independent of government. That could not be further from the
truth. Here’s what NED has to say about itself that belies its true
character:
“NED is a unique institution. The Endowment’s nongovernmental character gives it a flexibility that makes it possible to work in some of the world’s most difficult circumstances, and to respond quickly when there is an opportunity for political change. NED is dedicated to fostering the growth of a wide range of democratic institutions abroad, including political parties, trade unions, free markets and business organizations, as well as the many elements of a vibrant civil society that ensure human rights, an independent media, and the rule of law.
This well-rounded approach responds to the diverse aspects of democracy and has proved both practical and effective throughout NED’s history. Funded largely by the U.S. Congress, the support NED gives to groups abroad sends an important message of solidarity to many democrats who are working for freedom and human rights, often in obscurity and isolation….
From its beginning, NED has remained steadfastly bipartisan. Created jointly by Republicans and Democrats, NED is governed by a board balanced between both parties and enjoys Congressional support across the political spectrum. NED operates with a high degree of transparency and accountability reflecting our founders’ belief that democracy promotion overseas should be conducted openly.”
NED receives its funding through an annual appropriation from Congress through the Department of State making it little more than another mouthpiece for Washington’s agenda. NED promotes Washington’s global agenda through direct grants to more than 1600 non-governmental groups that are working for “democracy” in more than 90 nations around the world.
Despite its proclamation that it has a “nongovernmental
character”, NED receives its funding through an annual appropriation from Congress through the Department of State making it little more than another mouthpiece for Washington’s agenda. NED promotes Washington’s global agenda through direct grants to more than 1600 non-governmental groups that are working for “democracy” in more than 90 nations around the world.
Let’s look at NED’s activities in Hong Kong for 2018 according to its website. Here are the projects that were funded over the period from 2015 to 2018.
Notice that the 2018 funding to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs was granted to “facilitate engagement on Hong Kong’s growing threats to guaranteed rights”.
Policemen clash with demonstrators on a street during a protest in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2019. Hong Kong police have rolled out water cannon trucks for the first time in this summer’s pro-democracy protests. The two trucks moved forward with riot officers Sunday evening as they pushed protesters back along a street in the outlying Tsuen Wan district. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
That certainly sounds like promoting democracy to me. NED spent a total of $1,357,974 on grants to organizations that were promoting freedom, democracy and human rights in Hong Kong over the period from 2015 to 2018.
Unfortunately, we don’t know what NED spent on promoting democracy in Hong Kong in the time frame prior to 2015. While, in the grand scheme of what Washington spends this is not a great deal of money, it is the principle of what Washington is attempting to create in Hong Kong that is of concern.
This is a very clear example of meddling in the internal affairs of China and Hong Kong, actions that will only serve to anger China who is the also the recipient of a great deal of NED’s attention.
Protestors assault an international traveler near the subway in the HK airport.
It is also key to remember that there are likely other taxpayer-funded programs through which Washington is attempting to influence what happens in Hong Kong.
In my opinion, this tweet by the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner is a dead giveaway to the source of the unrest:
Video from Hong Kong shows pro-democracy protesters waving American flags and singing the American National Anthem. Demonstrations have shutdown the city's airport for a second consecutive day and put the entire Chinese city on edge. pic.twitter.com/ZrYE5DzZYU
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) August 13, 2019
While the ideals of democracy are admirable and desirable, Washington’s version of democracy is tainted by big money and has developed into a system where politicians are for sale to the highest bidder.
Meanwhile, the Chinese themselves are not falling for this (same old, same old) lie…
huaqiao (Expat in China)
The rioters are trying to force the police to act and then certain foreign media will report it as "police brutality" while ignoring the rioters' assault against the police. This is a planned, deliberate act to show the world China's system is not working.
But the fact is China's system is working and is the envy of many nations, but certain "free world" countries cannot accept that. The value of "democracy" is overstated and these rioters show the effect of being overdosed with "democracy" and act senselessly.
While the ideals of democracy are admirable and desirable, Washington’s version of democracy is tainted by big money and has developed into a system where politicians are for sale to the highest bidder.
This is not the democracy that most of the world wants.
Long-term Congressional meddling in other nations internal affairs through its funding of the National Endowment for Democracy is little better than the nation reengineering exercises undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency since the end of the Second World War.
Reactions and serious attempts to control the situation
This situation is in the process of being resolved. Much of what is going on is behind the scenes, but we can get some glimmerings of the various events.
Point One
As of 10 September 2019, the United States president Donald Trump tweets out that he no longer needs the services of John Bolton. John Bolton, the national security adviser.
So, obviously Bolton has been fired. (paraphrasing) “I told Bolton I no longer need his services. I disagreed with many of the suggestions that he has made.”
The president is saying he asked for Bolton’s resignation; it was not Bolton’s idea. So now people are trying to speculate, “What is this about?” He’s the national security adviser, and there are any number of things it could be and there’s no way of knowing. We just have to wait. It will come out at some point.
Oh, I’m sure it will. Though, I’d be really surprised if they would address the truth. Which is the fact that he has been working personally with the key super-billionaire oligarchy opposition forces in Hong Kong against China, and against any resolution to the China – USA trade disputes.
The Friggin' idiot. That's not his job. His job is to assist President Trump, not to oppose his efforts. No matter how impassioned he might feel about Neocon-ism.
Donald Trump fired John Bolton. He obviously felt that John Bolton was not “on the same page” in resolving the issues with China at this time.
As I have previously stated, John Bolton is a war-hawk and a neo-con from the “deep state”. He has opposed every effort that Trump has made to negotiate with China, North Korea, and Iran. In his world view these are all dictatorial nations and America must stand firm in opposing them in every way possible.
Trump loves meeting with these people because he’s got dreams of ending disagreements with these people, bringing peace and tranquility to the humanity of earth. Bolton doesn’t see eye-to-eye with any of that. It could also be about troop withdrawals in Afghanistan. You know, there are factions in the White House that want to get us out of there. It’s been announced that we’re getting out of there. We’ve been over there for I don’t know how many years, and some people say we don’t even know why we are still there.
Trump loves meeting with these people because he’s got dreams of ending disagreements with these people, bringing peace and tranquility to the humanity of earth. Bolton doesn’t see eye-to-eye with any of that.
Bolton would not want to pull out of Afghanistan. Bolton would not want to withdraw from any presence in places like Syria. So it could well be that this is just the culmination of systemic policy differences that have led to this.
Bolton has a reputation as a hardliner, doesn’t take any guff, is not one of these touchy-feely, politically correct guys. He’s a war hawk and fully supports all eight (x8) proxy wars that the United States is currently mired in.
“Let’s try to make ’em like us. Let’s find out why they don’t like us and change.” That’s not Bolton. He don’t care that they don’t like us. We just gotta beat ’em. We gotta pummel ’em.
That might not be appropriate at this time when dealing with China. China is a serious, serious nation that would absolutely take meddling in their own affairs very, very seriously.
Point Two
On Wednesday 4SEP19, President Trump reached out to China’s President Xi in a tweet:
“I know President Xi of China very well. He is a great leader who very much has the respect of his people. He is also a good man in a ‘tough business.’ I have ZERO doubt that if President Xi wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem, he can do it. Personal meeting? ”
-Donald Trump
So what is Donald Trump saying?
That’s he’s ready to stop the HK protests if Xi Peng negotiates.
Or, perhaps that China can use their military to enter HK.
Point Three
China has begun arresting American advisors to the protestors and their aides to the protest movements in HK. You see, China does not mess around. They know who all these players are, they know the funding sources, and have surveillance cameras everywhere. If you want to stir up a hornets next, do not allow yourself to get stung.
China has identified all the leadership of these protest groups, and their subordinates. They have since followed them and watched them. They have all been under observation. They have filmed these advisors instructing the protestors in behavior, and strategy.
Then, independently they have targeted these individuals and collected them in public near the protests. It's all on film.
What?
You haven’t heard about this? You mean it’s not reported on the American mainstream media? Imagine that!
Here is a video of a “so called” reporter instructing the HK protestors on how to behave. It’s all on video, and how the HK riot police comes after him and carts him off for “processing”. The video praises the HK riot police for nabbing these “instigators”, and claims that 53 CIA-related advisory staff have been arrested.
They say he’s CIA, but he’s really probably a member of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) or the National Endowment for Democracy’s National Democratic Institute (NDI) . All American front organization that receives Federal Funding for the purposes of disrupting the stability in other nations.
Here’s some of the arrests. The video shows three Americans arrested and being detained. I am sure that there are many more.
The point is that China knows full well what is going on and THEY DO NOT PLAY AROUND. China is a serious nation that does not pretend that everyone is playing on the same playing-field.
The root effects – trade renegotiation with China.
Anonymous (Italy)
This sudden chaos without major motivation is indeed a sign of interference. As a foreigner, I am Italian and married to a local, I do fully support Chinese mainland on this matter. People in Hong Kong that are doing this are ignorant and do not even know their own history.
It began as a promise to the American people. Donald Trump, if elected would renegotiate trade with the Chinese in such a way that it would be a two-way street to mutual respect and fairness.
When things were looking favorable, suddenly everything went to sh@t. There were rumors that some of the negotiators were hard-line deep-state plants that informed the Chinese to wait Donald Trump out. That he would not be reelected.
So the negotiations stalled, and Trump put full pressure on China. Simultaneously when he raised tariffs on Chinese goods 30%, protests broke out in Hong Kong. It appeared that the pressure was enormous on China, and (according to the United States media) China was really suffering.
30% tariffs
HK protests
Banning Huawei
Diplomatic pressure on Europe
But, you know what? It’s all a big lie, or at the very most, an exaggeration. China wasn’t suffering like the American mainstream media reported.
Ah, it’s partially true. But, not as bad as most Americans believed. China’s exports are not 90% to the USA and 10% to the rest of the world. Nope. Its actually 11% to the Untied States. And 89% to the rest of the world. So China has dealt with it.
Meanwhile, the tariffs has pretty much put the global economy into a malaise and it has backfired and hit the American consumer. It will need to be resolved before the 2020 elections or else it is potentially feasible that it will effect the elections.
And China’s reaction?
Nothing. Ride it out. Don’t go on the offensive. Don’t go on the defensive. Let things sizzle for a while and ride it out. They realize that the present Trump strategy is to force China to agree to a range of demands.
Implement “democracy” in China.
Stop the reeducation of radical Muslim separatists.
Allow Tibet independence.
China said no, and won’t do anything. They want favorable trade but not at the risk of their national identity and global sovereignty.
The idea that liberal or Western-style democracy and the country’s long-term stability are incompatible is deeply entrenched in the Chinese mind. Most Chinese believe that the current level of maturity in Chinese society does not allow for a “one man one vote” system. It is broadly accepted that China will disintegrate if it recklessly adopts Western-style democracy.
- The construction of the Singapore Model in Mainland China
How would you feel, if China demanded that;
America implemented Communism?
Integrate Muslim extremists in key leadership roles in government?
Allow California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arazona and Texas to be an independent nation?
It’s all pretty silly. It’s obscene and an insult.
Well, that’s how the Chinese feels. They have plenty of trade relationships with other nations. Contrary to what the mainstream American news say, and they are healthy and chugging away just fine. You see, China realizes that they can under-price any American company on the global stage.
And so, they are just waiting everything out.
Thus the worst effects of the trade war backfired and are now squarely on the shoulders of America. John Bolton, of course is all happy about this. But there are far other considerations than the John Bolton Neocon narrative, and Donald Trump has a nation to take care of.
So, Donald Trump is regrouping and removing the Neocon planks from the trade demands and will continue to work with China on resolving this.
The end results…
The Trade war will end.
The HK protests will end.
Things will continue much as they had, only there would be more favorable trade terms for the United States.
Let’s see how correct my fortune telling ability is, shall we? Maybe I’m right or maybe I’m wrong. We will see. Eh?
Anyways about the video. He's going on in English about the "rule of law" and then switches in Cantonese. Anyways, his goose is cooked.
Once HK passed the insurrection law which permitted the arrest of agitators who forment revolution, regardless of nationality, and extration ot the mainland for lengthy prison sentences and organ harvesting… everything changed.
For months, if not years, the Chinese have documented everyting on video, and then seized the computers and technical data form the foreign newspapers operating inside of HK.
So it's over for this cat. He doesn't have a hope in Hell. In China, there isn't any court negotations between attorneys. Instead, they look over the documentation and evidence and assign punishment(s).
BTW. I don't know if I told you this. But a lot of retired men in HK and China participated in the protests because if they did so, they would get a $200 USD check. Well, of course, they all started to deposit it in their own individual bank accounts. Right? Guess what happened?
Every account that has a $200 USD deposit during a specific time period is assumed to be a paid-for-riot paycheck. So every person who got that money… young and old… suddenly has their social security balance set to zero and frozen for the rest of their life.
Finally, we conclude with a decent editorial
US fooling no one with claims of innocence in HK: Opinion
By Ian Goodrum
For no particular reason I’ve been thinking of Claude Rains in Casablanca
lately. You remember him; the Moroccan police captain who is “shocked,
shocked” to find gambling in Humphrey Bogart’s establishment during a
raid, only to be handed his winnings without missing a beat.
You might wonder at the relevance of that famous movie moment. I’ll explain.
Amid ongoing violence and turmoil in Hong Kong, Chinese media outlets
have brought up a few relevant facts: That “pro-democracy” opposition
heads had met with politicians in the United States, protest leaders had
been in contact with State Department officials and major figures like
Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have issued statements supporting the
demonstrators. With all this in mind, it’s been suggested the US has
been inflaming tensions in the city and encouraging escalation in an
already heated environment.
To wit, the Claude Rains moment: Members of the diplomatic corps were
“shocked, shocked” by this news. Why, it’s unthinkable that the US,
that bastion of democracy and freedom, would ever attempt to interfere
in the affairs of another country! China was called a “thuggish regime”
for even bringing this up — naturally, the “free press” was all crickets
when it came time to do their purported jobs and speak a little truth
to power.
Safe to say none of these faux-outraged government functionaries or
their lapdogs in the media bothered to ask a Libyan what they thought of
the idea. The NATO intervention there in 2014 turned the African
country with the highest standard of living into a disaster zone,
complete with open-air slave markets.
They wouldn’t have asked an Iraqi, either. I’m sure the families of
the million-plus people killed by the US military since 2003 would have a
few things to say about their invaders’ good intentions.
Or a Haitian. Or a Syrian. Or a Venezuelan. Or a Honduran. Or an Iranian. The list goes on.
The truth is US “diplomacy” has never been that innocent, and
everyone knows it. State Department personnel — in league with military
and intelligence agencies — have spearheaded countless interventions
since the turn of the 20th century, destroying countries or political
formations they saw as counter to US interests. After the Russian
Revolution of 1917 and especially after the Cold War began, this meant
subverting communists or socialists and materially supporting
anti-communists and fascists.
Among the best-known examples of this skullduggery are the hundreds
of assassination attempts on Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro —
none successful; he died at 90, probably laughing at the US as he went —
and the overthrow of democratically elected Chilean Marxist Salvador
Allende. The US loved democracy so much in the latter case they replaced
Allende with a military dictator. These and many other interventions
were overseen by the same sort of “diplomats” who now act offended at
the notion they may be doing something untoward in Hong Kong.
But things are a little different now. These clandestine activities
used to be the sole purview of the Central Intelligence Agency, and when
word got out the US’ definition of “liberty” really meant “not being
communists”, quite a few people were furious. So in a long process which
began in the 1970s, the CIA delegated its regime change
responsibilities to a host of organizations, each given a degree of
separation with some legalese and clever accounting.
Though the Agency remains a potent force for subversion — and you
would have to be truly naïve to think their cloak-and-dagger era is over
— the interventional landscape has been somewhat diversified, with a
host of non-governmental organizations taking the place of traditional
spies. The National Endowment for Democracy, the largest among them, has
of course given a great deal of money to “pro-independence” forces in
Hong Kong. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure.
Allan Weinstein, an early leader of one such think tank, admitted it
outright when he said “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25
years ago by the CIA.” While this makes US influence operations easier
to track, it also gives them a veneer of respectability among the
general public. It’s a bigger deal when a government agency is funding
rebellious elements in another country; much less so if it’s some
“non-governmental” cutout with a bit of plausible deniability.
When news of CIA activity broke in the past, it was big news. That
was bad for optics. Somewhere along the way, powerful government figures
and capitalists realized by doing all their influencing in the open —
and with a media that had long since stopped pretending to question
motives — the scandal brought by secrecy would go away. This has worked
wonders on a browbeaten population fed a steady diet of propaganda. It
turns out if you’re told every other country on earth is inferior to
yours, you’ll start thinking intervention is great for everybody else.
Some people normally skeptical of official US narratives look back on
this sordid history and conclude it’s a thing of the past, the stuff of
ancients. But what’s changed between then and now? Why would any empire
stop consolidating its influence if it had the ability to continue? In
fact, the US’ capacity for interference has only grown more
sophisticated since the end of the Soviet Union. With that country’s
dissolution in 1991, the world lost a counterweight against imperialism —
and logic dictates things would get worse rather than better in an era
of unilateral hegemony.
So the question remains: Why would the US’ well-established,
well-funded campaigns of subversion suddenly cease? Well they wouldn’t,
of course. There’s an equally bizarre notion from otherwise
right-thinking people that intervention stops at certain countries’
borders. This is patently ridiculous. If it can happen in Venezuela,
Iran, Libya, Cuba or Syria, it can happen in Hong Kong — a
geographically small Chinese territory with longstanding ties to the
West. It is, in fact, perfectly positioned as a pressure point for the
rest of China.
And it’s not just a question of economic or political systems
anymore. The US doesn’t trust anyone, even its own imperial allies;
recall that the National Security Administration had German Chancellor
Angela Merkel’s phone tapped for years. There’s no telling how they’re
keeping tabs on other NATO members. Because the US has the largest
economy and military many times over, however, leaders who might
otherwise speak out against this treatment stay silent. Yet the idea of
US benevolence still has a hold on the world’s imagination. I encourage
anyone on the fence to think about it this way: If this is how the US
treats its friends, imagine what it tries to do to its enemies.
And make no mistake, the US considers China an enemy. It says so in
official statements and policy briefings, and academics and journalists
uncritically launder these claims for a mass audience on their enormous
platforms. No matter how many times China says it wants peace and to
handle its own affairs, the myth of the “China Threat” persists — stoked
by US “diplomats” and their lackeys in the press.
These inflammatory statements serve a twofold purpose. On a personal
level, they attract attention to the authors’ work and better position
them for career advancement. More broadly, they further US interests and
provide cover for narratives that wouldn’t get consideration by the
public if they came straight from the military-intelligence apparatus.
It’s a win-win for everyone — except the US’ victims.
None of this is to say that things in Hong Kong are perfect, or that
everyone in the city was happy as a clam before the State Department and
NED came along. Severe inequality plagues the city, and must be
addressed for the government to enjoy continued support from the people.
But bad actors take advantage of existing negative sentiments and
amplify them, turning issues that could be handled peacefully into
profound existential crises.
This playbook has worked for decades now, undermining countless
sovereign governments whose existence ran counter to the interests of
the United States; it’s the height of foolishness to think it can’t
happen here.
The author is a copy editor with chinadaily.com.cn.
28NOV20 Update
It is pretty well established that the CIA has been well involved attempting a “color revolution” inside of Hong Kong as part of the Trump Trade Wars of 2017 – 2020. There are all sorts of articles on this subject. Here’s a worthwhile read…
A secret high-level committee of Hong Kong senior activists worked with Western agents from the CIA to coordinate and amplify the leaderless protests against the fugitive law amendment last year, Nury Vittachi claims in his book The Other Side of the Story: A Secret War in Hong Kong.
Vittachi, a veteran journalist and a columnist for The Standard, accused the CIA of funding anti-government activities in the SAR. He said Hong Kong protesters have received practical training in street-protest strategy and media control from members of the professional revolution industry since January 2013.
The book named three US-based groups - the Oslo Freedom Foundation, the Albert Einstein Institute and the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies - which were directly involved in last year's social unrest.
He added that public records had shown that the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA's regime-change arm, had sent HK$170 million to the mainland or Hong Kong since 2014 to "advance the cause of democracy."
https://lnkd.in/dwnSU-S
Here are
some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader,
might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.
China and America Comparisons
As an
American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United
States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Who
doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what
China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in
China.
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
What is China like?
The
purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world,
outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they
might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank
you.
And while
America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources,
and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has
done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and
you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
Summer in Asia
Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…
Some Fun Videos
Here’s a collection of some fun videos taken all over Asia. While
there are many videos taken in China, we also have some taken in
Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea and Japan as well. It’s all in fun.
Articles & Links
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.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
America has evolved. China has changed. But the mainstream media reporting has not. This post discusses how both China and the United States have changed. We look at how they have migrated away from the form of government they were first established as. We look at how they both started, how they both changed, and where they both are today.
For the United States, we study how it was first set up as a Constitutional Republic. We look at how it was changed through “progressive” alterations by President Wilson. We track the train of progressive change through FDR, to Clinton, and Obama. Finally, we follow the changes to the totalitarian police-state oligarchy America is today.
For China, we study how it was set up as a Marxist utopia, and how it failed miserably. We look at who orchastrated the movement away from hard-line communism, and what they replaced it with. For, surprisingly, it was replaced by a single-party traditional Chinese-conservative government. We discuss how Mr. Deng brought this transformation through the implementation of Reganomics in the 1980’s.
Of course, we use facts and history to support this history. But, it’s not a popular history. It’s a stealth history.
The Stereotypes of China and America
The actual history lies hidden. We never see it behind the paid actors and actresses that pretend to be reporters. We never watch the actors pretending to be “experts” on televised discussion boards. We never see the entire picture, ever. All we see are actors reading scripted lines. Lines that are cultivated to evoke emotional reactions from us.
All we see is what is being “reported” to us.
American news 18AUG19. This is a screen capture of CNN taken on 18August 2019. Our view of life and news is all colored by the news selectively presented to us, and how it is presented.
That’s because the mainstream American media is a propaganda arm for others who desire Americans live in a “fake reality”. It’s a reality where Americans can be easily manipulated, emotionally tugged upon, and cajoled to perform the bidding of others.
Have you ever wondered why some people think the way that they do? I mean, why is it “common knowledge” that Trump followers are “Deplorable” Nazi “Red-Necks” who are High School dropouts and uneducated bumbletons? Why is it “common knowledge” that Universities and Colleges are the perfect routes for success in today’s’ modern world? Why is it “common knowledge” that we need to pay income taxes or else our bridges would collapse and our telephones would explode?
The News Media told us.
The following link opens up in a separate tab…
I argue that in order to have a peaceful life, you need to tune out and turn off that screaming, screeching noise-maker. You need to divorce yourself from the news. Oh, and yes this means all news. Most especially the news that YOU WANT TO BELIEVE. For that is the most dangerous manipulations. For they have successfully tapped into your emotional tug-points.
Because of all this manipulation, Americans have a distorted view of the world, and their place in it.
American media is just propaganda. Nothing that you see is real and truthful. It is all distorted lies and partial-truths.
That is why many young people today feel that America is a horrible place, and needs to be replaced with a soft and kind socialist utopia. While, older Americans hold on to the belief that America is still the greatest nation in the world, and that it is full of “free” people living a life in liberty. Both points of view are framed upon the lies fed to them by the media.
With this there are two “camps” of belief;
Conservative. America is still a free republic. Liberty, while under assault, still exists. Any problems that America has are short-lived, and as long as a Conservative representative is elected, everything will be fixed, and people will once again be left alone as the normal order of things.
Progressive. America has problems because it is not progressive enough. It needs a strong leader to move to the “enlightened despotic” utopia. A utopia where the intellectually superior would tend to the rest of humanity much like a Shepard tends a flock of sheep. A Shepard sort of like a militarized Obama.
Let’s look at these two nations (USA and China) and two societies and compare them, shall we? Let’s start with America.
America Today
Liberty does not thrive when you must pee in a cup to get a job.
Here we are going to start with America. For simplicity, I have broken apart the various details into other posts. (All the statements made can be expanded upon in much greater detail by clicking on the links shown.)
Ron Swanson. I am an American. Know what this is all about.
How America was Changed.
How America was changed. It was changed purposefully. The America that we see today is what is the result of 100 years of progressive alteration in the hopes of achieving a utopia. Which is, on top of an earlier period of 100 years of evolution where those in government centralized power and control.
Wilson started the path towards progressive implementation. He turned Americans into serfs, and put bankers in charge of America’s economy.
FDR expanded upon it and had to rewrite and redefine the interpretation of key aspects of the Constitution. He pretty much started down the path to shredding the Bill of Rights.
Clinton altered the Justice department. Implemented forceful elements of social change and started the balkanization of America.
Obama radicalized all of the many agencies in Government. He armed them and made them a force to control the American people. He was the one who implemented the decisiveness and radical element of the progressive cause.
Freedom is never having to ask permission to eat, drink or do something with your own body.
This migration, the players who implemented this migration, as well as certain key changes to the American Constitution is covered in this link (it opens up in a separate tab);
Here is a little graph that I made about these changes, and no it is not precise. It is reflective of my own biases and not to scale. The horizontal axis represents time, the vertical axis represents the social-political organization of America.
Though, not completely accurate does not mean that it is nonsense. It does include the destruction of the tenth amendment during the civil war, and the progressive changes wrought on Americans by Wilson, FDR, Clinton and Obama.
Tracking the Changes that altered America.
Tracking how small changes made America what it is today. America has been under the assault of progressives, busy-bodies, fraudsters, and the evil for over two centuries. It's difficult to document and get the "big picture" without getting bogged down in the details.
Here we use a parable to show how well-meaning changes can severely alter what something is. It’s a fun parable. It is also directly applicable to America today. It also opens up in a separate link. And yes, that’s exactly what happened to America…
Ah… talking about the big picture…
The Big Picture
The Big Picture. Information overload. When dealing with a complex issue like two centuries of change in a large nation, such as America it becomes easy to get bogged down in the details and forget the big picture. Let's take a quick look at human nature, won't we?
But, again, now that you (the reader) can see the big picture, let’s get into some of the “nitty gritty”. First off, let’s look at the very first “showdown”. This was the American Civil War.
You see, back then the Federalists wanted a central government (like we have today), and those who read the constitution realized that the nation was founded on small government, locally governed. They used the issues of the day (which progressives want to politically realign to slavery) in order to battle with the big government folk. They fought and lost.
Today the elements of such a “showdown” are popping up here and there, and there are very close parallels to the American civil war. Let’s look at this…
The First Rupture
The first rupture. While the Constitution migrated away from a Republic in the first twenty years after ratification, the first signs that America did not represent it's people on a local level was evidenced by the first American Civil War. Here we look at this, and study how the exact same process is used contemporaneously to control American citizens.
Now, what is the nature of the people who want to discard liberty and freedom? What makes them tick, and why are they so “Hell bent” on changing things…
Who Changed America
Who changed it. We ask what the nature of people who want to implement change is, and look at specific examples. In this post we look at the personality aberrations that cause this kind of behaviors and why they despise the concept of liberty and freedom. Again, the link will open up in a separate tab for your reading clarity.
One of the problems that Americans have with this entire bout of change is that they are unable to categorize the absolute mind-blowing array of changes. And since they are unable to follow the entire wide breadth and scope of all the efforts that the progressives are doing, they fail to grasp the enormity of all the intent.
Yet, it need not be so complex.
America changed from a Republic to a Democracy early on.
Once a Democracy, evil and wealthy men used mob rule to get into positions of power.
They centralized the power in Washington D.C..
When the people revolted there was a Civil War and the powerful and wealthy won.
But, that power was not enough.
They wanted more. They wanted to live like Kings over serfs.
Thus progressive politics was implemented.
Subsequent Presidents expanded upon this and it changed society.
America changed from a K-strategy majority rule to a r-strategy control center.
Here we talk about this.
How the changes affect society
Americans have become so accustomed to the progressive onslaught that they do not realize what the assaults on liberty are.
How the changes affect society. Here we look at how the changes in the government structure results in how people behave. This tracking and association of behavior with environment is well known and quite remarkable in it's consistency. What people are loathe to associate is how exactly it is following the American model.
To put it clearer…
The state doesn't get to put up a hoop - not any hoop - for anyone to jump through before deciding their constitutional rights will be granted.
- Aesop at Raconteur Report
The Assault on Liberty. America has been dying a long slow death through million of tiny little cuts. Here we try to document just some of the many ways that America is being attacked. For each time you ban something, the government takes away a freedom. Freedom is the opposite of a ban. Here we look at this...
The cultivation of ignorance. In order to subjugate a people, you need to keep them ignorant, disarmed, drugged or otherwise helpless. There are many techniques, and many are being used on Americans today. Here we look at this aspect…
A looted America. Over the last 100 years, with the implementation of a progressive reality, America went from a nation of strong independence, to a dependent society that must ask permission from the government to function.
Since them, Americans have been treated as money-making machines, and fleeced over and over again.
Everything in the United States is monetized, taxed, regulated and utilized. The people are serfs serving the global ultra-wealthy. Here we study the American HST program as a perfect example of this…
Culture Wars. There is a fundamental clash between the very two disparate cultures in America.
One is the “nationalism” movement. They want [1] to be left alone, [2] a much smaller government, and [3] a return to the Constitution as written back in 1776.
The other is the “modern progressive” movement. It has elements that are desirous of [1] “enlightened despotism” and is [2] implementing Marxism to achieve their preferred utopia. It is a King and slave relationship.
Here we discuss this… “the culture wars”…
Hyper regulation of everything. In America you have expensive medical care, that if you track it back to it’s source, you will find that all the costs (in one way or the other) originated in various ways by government programs.
For instance, you have expensive cars that in one way or the other requires testing, and registration of all of the millions of components that make up the vehicle.
You have to ask an agency for permission to do anything. It wasn’t always this way.
It is this way because FDR scrapped out the SCOTUS who ruled that the 9th amendment will not permit the formation of any federal agencies. He did not like this. So he overhauled the SCOTUS and staffed it with closet Marxist wanna-bes. They then started ruling in favor of rolling waves of Marxism.
How Americans are controlled. Americans are the most manipulated, regulated, taxed and regulated people on the planet. Of course, many don’t think so.
They look at the shiny newness of their shackles and view that as a sign of freedom. Here we look at how Americans are manipulated and kept in a state of fear.
Under a progressive liberal agenda, Americans have come to accept the cleanness and newness of their shackles as a sign of advancement and modern enlightenment. It is what was intended by President Wilson when he rewrote the Constitution to implement enlightened despotism as a prelude to full-on Marxist control by the richest people in society. You can see how this works with the two tiered justice system, and the rampant abuse of young girls by the richest elite.
Some long over due changes. Here we discuss some of the key things that MUST be changed to have America move back to the Constitution as it was intended to be.
These are not a comprehensive list of items, it’s just some of the many, many problems that MUST be radically changed or else the United States will be no longer in the near future…
Personally, I would erase EVERYTHING, and start all over again, but with the Constitution as originally written. I would undo all the alterations, scrap the current crop of players, and start fresh and new.
I would put everything in the hands of the individual states. I would pull the federal government out of everything except the most limited and necessary functions.
I would defang every government entity, and then implement a fourth branch – the OVERSIGHT branch of corruption police constantly keeping the officials transparent and honest. This group would be very powerful and have it’s own court system, police, prisons, and torture rooms.
And yes, I would follow the Chinese model and implement torture for abuse by leadership. They will not be given a free pass. After all, if they want their own laws, they will have to have their own punishments as well.
I would nuke the progressive government from orbit, and set up corruption police to make sure that these monsters never raise their ugly heads ever again. I would do exactly the same thing that the Chinese do to their SJW problem.
But that is just me.
Today America is so far removed from what it once was that Americans have NO IDEA what freedom actually is. Hey! Wake up! These are CRITICAL characteristics of a FREE SOCIETY, how many exist in America today? Eh?
No taxes on anything.
No regulations except the most critical infrastructure.
No agencies.
Property means “YOURS.”
Privacy is absolute.
One set of laws that are applied equally.
In a free land, you can smoke and kill yourself with drugs and drink. No one will stop you.
In a free land, your property is yours, and no one can seize it, tax it, regulate it or claim it from you.
In a free land there are no laws against “vices” and no laws on behavior.
Starting all over from scratch is the only way to be sure.
How different America is today from the founding? It is terribly different from what the Constitution was originally set up as.
In fact, aside from keeping the same names and titles, the nation resembles the exact opposite as what it was set up as. Here, we go Right by Right (in the Bill of Rights) and look at the tattered remains of what exists.
What America is today. Finally, we conclude with a study of what America actually is. We look at the organization, the history, the changes and the functional rearrangements that made America what it is. Then we come to conclusions as to what it functionally is.
Spoiler alert: It’s an oligarchy run by non-Americans.
Which pretty much explains this comment…
According to the experts, America is a country whose most fearsome enemy is not only the majority of its people—the majority of its people are also the nation’s biggest threat and its ultimate outsiders.
-Jim Goad at Taki's Magazine
China
Lets look at China.
It’s common knowledge that China is communist. We know this, because
the progressive American mainstream media has told us this. We know this
because this was the case as recent as the 1980’s. We know this because
Mr. Mao proudly committed to communist ideals back in the 1940’s. We
know this because his picture is still on the Chinese currency.
And… and, we believe this is still the case, well because, we don’t know any better.
The failure of communism
However, that has all changed. You know, there have been many, many
changes since Richard Nixon was in office. A lot has happened since the
1960’s. First, communist China collapsed in the 1970’s. (Though, it
didn’t get the American media attention that it deserved. It’s almost
like the American media were pining away for the success of communism.) Communist Cambodia collapsed shortly afterwards, followed by the collapse of the communist Soviet Union.
In the tail half of the last century, just about every communist
nation imploded in upon itself. With the exception of Cuba and North
Korea.
Of course, the American mainstream media wouldn’t like to admit any
of this. In their minds, it is still useful (for distraction purposes)
to manipulate the more mainstream and conservative members of their
(shrinking) audience. They do this by treating Americans as fools and
playing Don Quixote chasing “communist” windmills.
It serves their “Neocon” audiences.
What they have left out, in their news casts and discussion panels,
was that communism in China was a terrible failure. When communism was
implemented in China, it caused devastation, deaths, starvation, and the
destruction of centuries of culture and society. Not just a few deaths,
mind you. But whole-scale mass starvation. Not just the destruction of
one or two museums, but most of the history of China. Not just the
unwritten traditions, but really all aspects of Chinese life was
adversely corrupted.
We
well know about how the Soviet Union and that brand of communism fell.
What was little reported was how the Chinese were able to avert a
similar catastrophe. In China, they had heroes who experimented with
non-Communist methods to bring about economic success. Mr. Deng and his
Chinese version of Reaganomics was the most successful.
China, due to Mr. Mao and his advisors, was riding the bullet train towards catastrophic collapse.
In the 1970’s serious and drastic action needed to be taken to undo
the ravages of communism. So numerous leaders “stepped up to the plate”.
Each one acted as a hero in an attempt to stop the collapse of the
Chinese government, and the resulting foreign intervention.
(You all know, don’t you, that once the Chinese nation collapsed,
that rich and wealthy American elite would offer to “rebuild” the
nation. You know, out of kindness…)
Implementation of Reaganomics in China in the 1980’s
So the Chinese all stepped up. One of the most famous was Mr. Deng.
He and his stunning successes are known all over China. He implemented
wide-scale Ronald Reagan economic policies. Only this time, he didn’t
have Mr. Bush Sr. snapping at his heels. He didn’t have a media making
fun of his actions calling it “Zombie Economics”, and he didn’t have
Beijing reverse his polices as soon as they started to bear fruit.
All of which happened in the United States.
You see, back then, China was in a state of an emergency. It was a
serious and a dangerous time. Thus, anyone trying to play political
games for their own personal benefit, did so at the peril of the entire
nation and race.
So, Mr. Deng was permitted to implement a Chinese-version of
Reaganomics. He was given a small and tiny fishing village. He was given
the tiny hamlet of Shenzhen to use as a “test bed”. And, it took off.
The growth was astounding.
Downtown
Shenzhen China when Mr. Deng took over, and what it looks like today.
This is what the “miracle” of Reaganomics does, and it was this force
that was used to completely transform China. However, in doing so, they
HAD to move away from communism. For Reaganomics is wholly incompatible
with communism.
Today, Shenzhen is populated by 14 million busy inhabitants. To put
that in perspective, New York has pretty much had a constant population
of 4 million people over the last three decades.
Seeing the success of this, and other initiatives, too numerous to mention here, we have seen an evolution of China.
China moved from hard-line communist to something else.
China still calls itself “communist”
The Chinese refer to this new way of doing things as “Socialist with Chinese characteristics“, but what it really and functionally is is something quite different. It’s much the same way that Americans still claim that America is a Republic.
We, as Americans, can easily recognize the policy positions as near identical clones to Mr. Ronald Reagan’s “free market” policies. The most that you would ever… ever… ever, hear this reported is when the media begrudgingly admits that China is capitalist.
Though, the progressive mainstream media would NEVER admit to it. Though the hard-line Neo-cons would never say anything positive to their “dog and pony” show that narrates a communist enemy that needs to be opposed at every turn.
Ignorance about China
Yes. You can tell just how knowledgeable any “talking head” is in America when they refer to China as “Chicom’s” (Chinese communist), when in all actuality they are HARD-LINE CONSERVATIVE, and that they INSIST on tradition, and merit.
You know that Americans are manipulated when a Conservative American frets about…
China doing things…
China imprisoning and reeducating radical Uighar Muslims.
Cracking down on “free democracy” movements by SJW folk.
Worrying about “junk” products made in China.
To which, I must say that China’s stance is very American Conservative on these issues…
America doing things…
Radical Muslims must be vetted and kept out of America.
Antifa, BLM, and other SJW’s are not permitted to disrupt day to day life.
Make the products in America instead of importing them.
So, when I see and hear an American conservative take the “talking points” right out of FOX, or CNN, I know that they are just regurgitating the nonsense programming that is used to keep Americans dumb, stupid and living in fear.
If the American government was truly functional, they would have taken immediate steps to control the Antifa, and BLM riots, and mass SJW attacks and disruptions. They would have identified the leaders of the movement and arrested and detained them. They would have isolated the riots and attacks with trained forces and collected the agitators and sent them off to discover what their malfunction was.
Preventing ambulances from helping people.
Damaging stores and public works.
Looting stores and communities.
Throwing chemical milkshakes and beating innocents with bikelocks.
People! This is what a functional and responsible government looks like; Pay attention!
Pay attention!
Today, China is [1] a single-party government. One single party often means totalitarian. But, in my mind it sure as heck beats “pretend democracy” with is mob rule manipulation.
Oh, and by the way, the Chinese do not mess around. They are a serious, serious nation that is run as a meritocracy. Their leaders got there through merit, not by a popularity contest, or through political placement. This is a serious cold-hard fact that many Westerners need to grasp their heads around.
China is not what you think.
The government is [2] nationalist with [3] “China First” objectives. The government is set up to support the Chinese people. Not a global one-world order. As such they know that they must police their leadership. From 1997 though to 2013, the local government leaderships as well as the wealthy business owners started to take advantage and corruption became rife and problematic.
So the president Xi Peng implemented the “Corruption Police”.
This group is as powerful as the IRS in America and answers to no one except the President. No 9th circuit court or judge in Hawaii is going to block or postpone any actions that they take. As such, the bad guys in China are scared shitless. You either come clean with transparency or you WILL suffer the consequences. And believe you me, you don’t want to do Hard Time in China.
The Chinese “Corruption Police”…
The Chinese “Corruption Police”.
They [4] believe in free-market economics, and [5] vigorously defend the traditionally conservative Chinese social way of life. That being said, the Chinese culture is “Chinese conservative”, not “American conservative”. They are similar, but NOT identical.
Statue
of Deng Xiaoping at Lianhuashan Park. Mr Deng brought Reaganomics to
China., and single handedly helped to move China away from rigid formal
communism to the nation that it is today.
China is a traditional conservative nation.
Not, American conservative, mind you. They are Chinese conservative.
Which means that they hold many of the same beliefs and ways of doing
things that an American Conservative would agree with. But not all of them.
Mother and Father are parents.
Father works and supports the family.
Mother takes care of the home and children.
Education is important, and merit based.
Success is achieved through hard work, and merit.
Vices are normal and need social outlets.
Any person who does not agree to the above are ill and need to be medically corrected and isolated from society.
As such, the Chinese family and relationships look like they came right out of the American 1950’s. The man goes out and works hard, has a beer or two with his buddies after work, and then comes home to his family.
And when the man comes home from a hard day’s work, he will give 100%
of his pay to his wife. She will use this money to take care of the
household, invest in the education of the children, and maintain the
social standing of their family with the rest of society.
She in turn, will have his house clothes washed and laid out on the
bed for him. His slippers will be ready for him when he gets inside, and
after he takes his after work shower, he will find a nicely laid out
dinner waiting for him. Often (depending on the person) with a alcoholic
libation waiting for him.
China is a Traditional Nation.
Here is a handy chart that I composed describing the differences between American Progressive Liberal belief, and Chinese beliefs. It goes a long way to illustrate how close modern China is to the traditional American Conservatism. As well as how far removed it is from the progressive reality of America today, and the communist ideal that China came from.
A comparison between the United States and China. Here we compare various elements of culture, society, with the way that things are conducted in China as compared to the United States.
While most of America is enjoying the progressive themed Hollywood
movies (women in leadership roles, people with superpowers granted to
them through luck, and diversity in every scene), the Chinese produce
movies and videos around more traditional themes. The music, even the
more up-beat, aren’t as harsh. The women are sweeter, and they aren’t
wagging their enormous trashcan jugged assess at the screen.
Culture and society are a reflection of what the nation is. In a like vein, Hollywood is a reflection of what America is today. To understand what China is like, all you need do is pay attention to their culture…
What does this mean
The traditional notions of America being the land of “Democracy”
against the evil Communists is wholly outdated. The “cold war” ended
with Ronald Reagan. He finished off the success and rule of communism.
Yet, the oligarchs would have none of this. They argue that it wasn’t
implemented properly. Maybe Pol Pot wasn’t harsh enough. Maybe they
weren’t diverse enough. Maybe they weren’t ruthless enough. They write
about this, and announce their intentions quite openly.
For instance…
Make no mistake, the globe is forming into two sides. Sides, mind
you, that are so diametrically opposed in fundamental belief systems
that the ability to coexist will not be possible.
Here is a map of the world today. The conservative traditionalist
nations are colored in RED, and the “enlightened” progressive globalist
oligarchy are in BLUE. Most other nations are unknown in this regard,
and are left bare and uncolored.
This
is a partial map showing known polarization around the globe.
Traditional conservative nations are colored in red and progressive
socialist nations controlled by an oligarchy are in blue. There is
evidence that many Muslim nations are also traditional, and
conservative, but they differ in some fundamental ways and deviate in
such a way that they are not included in this calculus. In short, if you
look at the map, you can easily see that the former “free world” of
“democracy” have all devolved into mob-ruled oligarchies under the
progressive socialist banner.
The Implications
The implications of such a realization are astounding. By
looking at the globe in this manner, we can clearly see that philosophy
and ideologies are what frame the way that the globe operates today.
Almost every democracy has devolved into mob-rule controlled by a rich oligarchy.
Almost every former communist nation has evolved into a traditional conservative nation.
The
oligarchy owns the media in the regions they control. As such they try
to keep the “cold war” alive through fear to control their people.
Oligarchies help each other out. It is almost like they share the same blood-lines or something.
Conservative nations tend to be populist and nationalistic. They only make agreements that serve their own interests.
Important Note
These are only my opinions. Perhaps, you the reader, have
other ideas. That is fine. This is nothing more than a very simplistic
overview of but one equation of a very complex calculus. For all that I
did was simply map out conservative belief structures against
progressive belief structures globally.
The reader should note that there are cultural differences that also
come into play. For instance, a conservative American would believe that
everyone should own firearms, while a conservative Chinese would
believe that civilian ownership of firearms should be banned.
To the American, it might seem that it really isn’t conservative at all.
After all, the right to self-defense is a role liberty enshrined in
the Bill of Rights. But to the Chinese that seems strange, as in China,
all children are given basic military training at an early age. By the
time they are 16 they know how to work together as a team, and how to
perform the most basic of military disciplines. When the time comes to
undergo more rigorous training, they can opt out with parental consent.
However, with consent, they are able to learn the more martial skills
expected of a soldier.
While the implementation of the right of self-preservation differs,
both conservatives maintain the importance given in this liberty. How it
is implemented is different, that’s all.
In American conservatism, the individual has the Right to exercise
that right and train on his own dime. In Chinese conservatism, everyone
must learn how to protect themselves and the nation if called upon to do
so.
Here is a handy dandy chart of the comparisons between Chinese and American Conservatism. As I have repeatedly stated, Chinese conservatism is similar to, but not identical to American conservatism. (Remember, however, that the Chinese government operates under Chinese Conservative rules, while the American government operates under progressive Marxist rules.)
A comparison between American conservatism and Chinese conservatism. They are similar, but not identical. Never the less American conservatism has much more in common with Chinese conservatism than with the progressive reality that America is today.
The effect of these changes on America…
All of the progressive changes has come at a price for Americans. It has lowered so many of the attributes that made America the fore-most leader in the world…
The United States enjoys the highest degree of personal freedom in the world
Once again, a variety of indicators are used by various study groups to determine the level of personal freedom enjoyed by citizens across the world, including economic freedom (the ability to earn a living wage, and retain it for personal use), political freedom, access to education, religious freedom, and many others.
The evaluation is then compared between nations, and in the final comparison the United States routinely ranks in the second ten. America’s neighbor to the north, Canada, invariably finishes with a higher ranking of personal freedom than the United States. So do New Zealand (consistently first among numerous rankings), Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.
The all too frequent response from Americans ill-disposed to accept such rankings is to huff “If you don’t like it leave,” or some similar retort, as well as denial of the accuracy of the ratings.
After all, the phrase “land of the free” is included in the national anthem, and is far more accurate than any intellectual studies. As with many facts which are in conflict with accepted myths, they are inconvenient, and thus to many must be considered inaccurate.
Nonetheless, the rankings, some of which are far less laudatory of American freedom, exist, there existence is a fact, and whether or not one agrees with their findings they are easily available for study.
The rest of the world may see them as well, and a student in Wellington may well wonder why American leaders claim to live in the greatest degree of freedom in the world, when the facts before their eyes indicate otherwise.
-TopTenz
As well as..
The United States is the richest country in the world
Besides the belief that the United States is the best educated country in the world enjoying the highest standard of living in the history of humanity is the belief that America is the richest nation in the world, evidenced by the vast reserves of minerals still untapped within its borders and off its shores.
Again, the ranking of nations by wealth is subject to the variations of the means used for evaluation, but the United States again does not crack the top five in many rankings. Using the standard of Gross Domestic Product per capita, or GDP by individual, the United States ranked seventh in 2018, trailing international leader Luxembourg by almost half. It also trailed Norway, Switzerland, Ireland, Iceland, and Qatar.
Fox Business used another mix of criteria to list what it called the world’s wealthiest countries in May 2019, but even by its standard, which gave Monaco the top spot, the United States did not crack the top five.
When using privately held wealth as the standard of measure, as did Visual Capitalist in May 2019, the United States jumped all the way to number one, a piece of data which offers a meaty bone of contention for those prone to enter into spirited discussions of what it means for society.
Fortune Magazine listed the fifteen richest countries in the world in November 2017, and in its list it included the United States, ranking it above Iceland, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia in 12th.
The argument over which nation is the richest in the world can be made using a variety of data as the facts for supporting it, but by most objective evaluations the United States is not in the top five.
-TopTenz
Not to omit…
The United States has the highest standard of education in the world
The United States has the admiration and respect of the civilized world for the availability and quality of education it offers all of its citizens. Such is a belief held by many to the point that it is an irrefutable fact of the modern world. It is incorrect.
Though the United States ranks near the top in expenditures for education, at all levels, when compared to other civilized nations it is quickly apparent that money spent does not equal education achieved. In the percentage of students completing primary education the United States does not make the top five (Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico).
For secondary education (that is, completing high school) the USA again does not make the top five. Nor does the United States rank in the top five for completion of post high school degrees, though in fairness such degrees mean different things in different parts of the world.
The World Top Twenty Project looked at post education success as well as other indicators to rank civilized nations by education in 2018, with the United States absent from the resulting list of the top twenty, which was led by South Korea.
The United States own Center on International Education Benchmarking, a project of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), lists the top performing nations of the world in terms of education and does not include the United States among the top ten, instead reporting on the progress made in the listed nations and the changes which could be adaptable to American education systems.
When CNBC listed the top ten most educated nations of the world in February, 2018, it listed the United States as sixth, a ranking bolstered to some extent by the number of foreign students completing advanced degrees at American institutions.
-TopTenz
Conclusion
The last fifty years has seen an absolute role reversal for both the United States and China. The United States today is an oligarchy that treats it’s citizens as serfs in a land with a two-tiered justice system.
Anyone who does not see this is a FUCKING IDIOT.
When you have some poor sop getting 70 years in prison for having a picture of a single nude 14 year old girl on his computer, and a serial pedophile rapist who has repeatedly raped over 1000 children under 14 (Epstein), who got the most lenient sentence in the history of law, should be obvious to everyone except the most partisan hack.
And, let’s not even talk about Hillary Clinton, and Lois Learner. Eh?
Meanwhile, China is a meritocracy. It is advancing forward using the exact same formula that made America the strongest nation in the world in the 1700’s.
To pretend that contemporaneous China, and the United States fit the tired old stereotypical narrative as portrayed by the mainstream media is to play the village idiot. It’s not the same, and does not, in any way, resemble that narrative.
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Earlier today I was musing about life. I thought about the craziness on the news, or at least what passes for news these days. I thought about life, and my grandparents. I thought about buying my first hamburger when I was six years old; my father gave me a few dollars and pointed me in the direction of the local diner. I was on my own. I wonder if you could do that today, in the hyper-PC culture that America has become.
All of these thoughts jumbled together when a commercial came on promoting an “in depth” study on how bad Trump is. With this and the latest local news, I suddenly came to the thought; What would the founders of the United States think about the nation as it is today?What would they think?
Obviously they wouldn’t be happy.
I've told this story a thousand times...
I once made a pot of chili. It was on a lazy Saturday afternoon. It was something that I had been looking forward to having all week long, and Saturday was just perfect for making it.
I added the ground beef, the peppers, the tomatoes, the onions, and let it cook for hours on the stove. I then lifted up the lid and added some salt and pepper.
I reached for the parsley container. I wanted to add small amount for flavoring.
When the entire lid fell off the container.
There, in a nano-second was a huge pile of green parsley slowly sinking into the chili.
I knew that I had to take action and fast. So, I reached in and with a ladle, I managed to remove about 80% of the parsley. Yet, as successful as I was, it was too late. The chili was far too polluted, and all you could do when you tasted it was the strong and noticeable taste of parsley.
What to do? What to do?
I didn't want to throw away the chili. There was good ground beef in it. It took time to cut up all the vegetables, and I had the beans all ready and added. I did not want to toss it all away when the house still held the wonderful aroma of cooking chili.
So my plan was to keep on adding things.
I figured that if the pot of chili was larger, by adding more and more things, eventually the effect of the parsley would be so diluted to be unnoticeable. As a result I would have double or triple the amount of chili, at no negative consequence to the taste, I believed.
So...
I made and added more sauce. No change.
I cooked and added more meat. No change.
I added more tomatoes. No change.
I added more beans. No change.
I added more garlic, leeks, onions. No change.
I added more salt, and more pepper. No change.
By the end of the day, I had a much larger pot of chili. Of which was just as uneatable due to the pollution of the parsley.
------
Sometimes, small changes greatly alter content. You end up with something completely different. Often, it is not what you intended, but "the cat is out of the bag, and there is no way to put it back." Further changes and alterations do not help. You end up with a "Frankenstein monster".
What I should have done was scrapped the chili. Started all over again. I should have stuck to the original recipe, as explicitly stated to me by my grandmother, and avoided such embellishments such as parsley that a well-meaning friend insisted upon.
When I look at the mess that the United States is today, a scene from the movie “Aliens” come to mind. Do you know which one that I am referring to?
You know, they just discovered a “nest” of horrible alien insect-like killing machines that almost completely wiped out the military platoon of Space Marines. They are all there in the APC, and wondering what to do about this horrible situation. And then Ripley suggests…
Sometimes, when things are so bad, you just don’t take any chances. You get far, far away from the danger, and then you eliminate it completely. This scene has long since became a meme that is used in many different situations. It is not intended to be taken literally, but rather suggestive of how to handle a particular issue.
In the case of the United States, the “well meaning” (and not so well-meaning) changes has resulted in a real mess for us citizens that have to live inside it. This is a truth, whether you want to believe it or not. The only people that thrive in the United States today is the wealthy elite class. For they enjoy their own laws, their own communities, and their very own protections.
Hillary Clinton emboides what America is today. It is a land where the rich and wealthy live as they please and lord over everyone else. They have their own rules, laws, and behaviors and they are untouchable. They are the elite; the 1%, or the 1% of the 1%.
In my mind, I would like to revert America way back to the Constitution AS WRITTEN, and include ONLY the first ten amendments. Personally, I see an uneducated populace, that even when they attend university, remain under-educated. They behave in group-think, or better yet a “mob mentality” where popularity, as defined by news, polls and tweets define action.
I know that it is intended to be this way. I know that total control over a population is best served when they devolve into emotional-laden mob physiology. I wish that we could revert to more traditional ways of living, and one in which the rich and powerful were held in check.
But, ah, that’s just me.
So anyways, musing about life and my “Rights”, has got me to thinking. I wonder, what would the founders think about specific issues? You know about “LGBT rights”, illegal aliens as opposed to citizens, and a moral-less society based on social constructs as opposed to natural biology. What would they think?
What, if you could teleport one (or more) of the founders here, somehow erase the shock of modern-day life, and query them in a calm and safe environment. What would they think? What would their views be?
The 1980’s comedy “Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure” was all about carting famous historical figures back from the past to the present so that we could benefit from their teachings and knowledge. What would they have to say about life today?
Here, I try to address those thoughts.
Let’s start with elections. It’s one of those things that we are all taught back in grade school. Oh, you know “Our nation is great because we have popular elections. It is what makes our democracy so great and wonderful.” Um, yeah, but we are not a “democracy”, at least we weren’t ever intended to be one.
[1] Popular Elections
When the United States was first founded, it was intended that ONLY the heads of a family would be able to vote. They would vote for their local governance, and they would also vote for their national representative. Aside from that, no one else would be able to vote.
Thus the profile of a voter was…
Male head of a family.
Educated.
Member of a local church.
Responsible for the welfare of his family.
This was from a practical perspective. The heads of families were responsible for others. It was a huge burden that (at that time) was taken quite seriously. Therefore, only those people that had others that relied on them, could be permitted to vote.
This, of course, ended with the passage of the various amendments 11 – 27, which almost all expanded the voting pool while making no changes in the representation structure. Thus, diluting the individual voter influence.
What would the founders think?
I believe that they would think something like this…
Without governance under the control of people with a “stake in the game”, the entire government can be gamed in favor of mob rule. Thus the idea of a pure Republic becomes meaningless.
Instead, you have a democracy by mob rule. This is a fundamental principle that must be adhered to, in order to maintain consistency and quality in governance.Otherwise, under “mob rule” an oligarchy can take over and manipulate the people to fit their desires.
It is easy to control mobs, as mob psychology is a very mature subject. You just control the news media. You control public discourse by popularity, and control polls, tweets, and fashion. All of which lie within reach and within the domain of the wealthy.NOT in the domain of the general population.
[2] Taxation
Today, in America taxation is broken down into four classes.
Federal taxation,
State taxation,
Local taxation,
Fees, and other charges, that originate from the government.
Any mechanism that extracts money from citizens to a governmental body, no matter the form or name is a tax. Additionally, you have the ObamaCARE which is a mandated item that MUST be purchased by citizens.
What would the founders think?
We made it very and specifically clear. There shall be NO taxation on any American citizen in any way, shape or form. There is no excuse or reason what-so-ever that can justify the taxation of Americans.
The moment that Americans are taxed is the moment that they lose their freedom and become slave and serfs for someone else.
[3] First Amendment
Today the freedom of speech and religion are under constant assault. There is something called “PC, which stand for “Political Correctness”, which means that there are limits what you can say and what you cannot say. This means that there are limits on your thoughts and what you can or cannot believe. It all must be approved by others.
What would the founders say?
We were very explicit in this. We specifically explained in the preamble to the Bill of Rights that the government shall have NO (that means zero) ability in altering or changing, or influencing a persons’ thoughts, religion or beliefs. Nor shall they place any limits on it, for any reason what so ever.
People, you need to read the PREAMBLE to the Bill of Rights. You need to read the Federalist Papers. It explains everything so plainly.Anyone who is trying to limit your ability to speak your mind is a tyrant in sheeps’ clothing.
There’s a reason Feinstein appears on Reason ‘s list of ” enemies of freedom.” Ultimately, Feinstein’s objection to protecting controversial speech is that of the bureaucrat disguised as the concerned nanny. When people intent on violence show up at protests, other people can get hurt.
Second Amendment
Today, we see a nearly unending media hype on banning guns and all sort of ways and means to restrict it’s usage. Every day, it seems that there is some sort of “event” involving gun. From the mob abuse in Chicago to the latest in “false flag” mass slaughter events.
I am sure that the founders would have some very serious and harsh words to say on this subject.
What would the founders say..
We specifically put the words “shall not be infringed” in the specification. It is very clear. This is as clear as night and day.
The people; the citizens of the United States WILL have the ability to procure and operate any and all sorts of weapons. And, yes, that means the latest in military technology.It is the ONLY way that people can control their government. Take that away and the people cannot redress their government.They just cannot.
America was founded on one basic premise. That is that man is created by God, and given Rights. Governments are made by men. For a government to be long-lasting, it must recognize that it can NEVER replace God.
If the Constitution was being followed as intended, every person in the USA would have access to fully automatic Stoner weapons.
Third Amendment
The third amendment is very clear. The government shall not use your property for their purposes. In worst case, even in times of war, your property is yours. The government shall not infringe on your property.
Today, of course, your property can be taken away if you owe taxes. It can be seized by the police. It can be utilized as needed, and it can be occupied. What would the founders have to say about this?
Property is owned by citizens. The government shall have no say what so ever in using it, renting it, taxing it, or anything else. Including banning it. The moment when you need to discuss your “property” with the government is the moment that you are a slave. For you have no property.
Fourth Amendment
The fourth amendment prohibits The United States government from going into people’s private lives, collecting their personal papers and documents, and using that against them. It’s what it says.
However, that is pretty much how it is done today.
Oh, there are of course, “excuses”, and alterations in methodology, but the fact is pretty plain. There are no longer any fourth amendment protections for Americans today. Zero.
After all, if the Fourth Amendment was being followed there wouldn’t be anything called the “Utah Data Collection Center”.
Utah Data Center. The National Security Agency (NSA) leads operations at the facility as the executive agent for the Director of National Intelligence. It is located at Camp Williams near Bluffdale, Utah, between Utah Lake and Great Salt Lake and was completed in May 2014 at a cost of $1.5 billion. The highly-classified project is responsible for intercepting, storing and analyzing intelligence data as it zips through both domestic and international networks. The data may come in all forms: private e-mails, cell phone calls, Google searches – even parking lot tickets or shop purchases.
“This is more than just a data center,” an official source close to the project told the online magazine Wired.com. The source says the center will actually focus on deciphering the accumulated data, essentially code-breaking. This means not only exposing Facebook activities or Wikipedia requests, but compromising “the invisible” Internet, or the “deepnet.” Legal and business deals, financial transactions, password-protected files and inter-governmental communications will all become vulnerable. Once communication data is stored, a process known as data-mining will begin. Everything a person does – from traveling to buying groceries – is to be displayed on a graph, allowing the NSA to paint a detailed picture of any given individual’s life.
What would the founders of the nation have to say about this?
One of the fundamental characteristics of being a free man is the idea of having privacy. That is you can have your thoughts, you documents, you life, and your family private and free from scrutiny. The failure in having this most basic of needs is to live the life of a slave.
We are not going to put it any other way. Only SLAVES have their personal papers, business and privacy invaded by governments.Nor violated by private companies who operate as proxies for the government.
Well, you do need to protect yourself from the government. Here’s a good way to do it…
Fifth Amendment
You know that the things that you do, your habits, and your lifestyle cannot be used against you. Funny, apparently the United States government has forgotten this most basic of rights.
The United States was founded under British common law. Which means that there can be no crime without a victim.
You steal an apple from someone, you have a victim.
You kill someone. That dead SOB is a victim.
You slander someone, you have a victim.
There is no such thing as a "victim-less" crime.
Thus, all the crimes against drugs, vices, personal behaviors, and the sort that are often promoted by progressives "to make the world a better place", and to do things "for the children" would NEVER be permitted if the Constitution was being followed as written.
This amendment requires that procedure be followed in bringing a person to trial. It mandates that the government cannot seize land and property from citizens without “due cause” and compensation. Thought today, this happens pretty darn regularly.
Not to mention their wanton abuse of access to social media.
People need to be protected from the government.In our view, the government was constructed to be a rather weak entity. One that had little power aside from organization, and could in no way interfere in the lives and property of the citizens. A government that is TOO POWERFUL is one that can take away things and lifestyle from it’s citizens.
In a free society, vices are not banned, taxed, suppressed or prohibited.A “vice” is simply something that a busybody wants to limit YOUR access to, so that they have power and control over you.
Sixth Amendment
The sixth amendment is in regard to fair, and speedy trials. Yet we know that today, most criminal prosecutions do not go to trial. ” and that way are resolved outside the court system.
In doing so, the entire protections of the Bill of Rights are circumvented. Those accused are faced with either fighting an enormous bureaucratic entity with an unlimited funding source, or accept a minor charge by pleading guilty.
Unfortunately, most accused people are set in the situation where they would rather than go through the “grinder” of the legal justice system in favor of a light or lighter sentence.
The judicial system was set up to be fair. There should be ZERO opportunities for a person to avoid the criminal prosecution system. The system was set up to be fair. It protected those who were wrongfully accused, and punished those who did wrong.
Abuses of this is evidence in that either [1] Criminals are in charge of the justice system, or [2] The laws are unrealistic and do not reflect the needs of society as a whole.
Seventh Amendment
The idea behind that the seventh amendment is that a person’s peers would determine what to do with a person who exists within their circle of associations. While, over the years, society has expanded and communication methods have greatly expanded, the need still persists.
People need to be judged by their peers. Their behavior outside of their social constraints could be misconstrued. People who live in urban areas shouldn’t be judged by people who live in rural areas. Everything should be handled at the local level. The entire concept of this resides in the fundamental idea that everything must be resolved at the local level.
Eighth Amendment
Well, Americans are protected from “excessive” punishment, and “excessive” bail. Though I would be hard pressed (in my case) to equate that 300x my bank savings for bail is within these guidelines.
But that is just me. Obviously I am a “unique” case. No one else had this problem. Eh?
The Government should remain small and manageable.The idea behind the eighth amendment was to offer a “level playing field” between the accused and the government. All too often, though out history, the government had the power an resources to overwhelm the average citizen. This amendment was a way to prevent the government from being far too powerful.
Let’s say this plainly. The govern CANNOT lay claim to any ability, right or process that lies outside of the Bill of Rights. They cannot expand up statutes for “the public good” or any such nonsense.
People have a large number of Rights that the government should never infringe upon. This was intended to a be protection of the people. It was intended to be a protection from the citizens from their government.It specifically states quite clearly that American citizens have RIGHTS that are not specified within the Constitution. Therefore, any new law, or policy from the government extracts from the Rights of Citizens.
Like, perhaps, the right to drink from a straw…
The Tenth Amendment
People. Know your history.
On the night of April 14, Powell and another conspirator, David Herold, made their way to the Secretary of State’s residence. Seward was inside, recovering from a concussion, broken jaw, and other injuries following a recent carriage accident.
Powell entered Seward’s house pretending to deliver medicine while Herold waited out front. Powell pushed his way past Seward’s butler, who ran into the night to get help. This frightened Herold, who immediately took off.
Once inside, Powell attempted to shoot Seward’s son Frederick, but his revolver misfired. Powell beat him to the floor and made his way to the room where Seward was recovering. The Secretary of State was being tended to by his daughter and by Sergeant George F. Robinson, an army nurse. Powell slashed Robinson and punched Seward’s daughter in the face. He then climbed atop Seward and stabbed and slashed at his head and neck.
Because of his injuries from the carriage accident, Seward was wearing a metal splint around his jaw. This protected him from any would-be fatal blows, but Powell managed to slash his cheek and face. Though he survived the attack, the scars would remain with Seward for life.
Seward’s other son Augustus burst into the room and wrestled with Powell. Powell slashed at Augustus and got away, but not before encountering a messenger in the hallway (who Powell stabbed, as well).
Powell escaped, but he was a stranger on the run in Washington, D.C. Helpless without Herold, he disappeared for three days, wandering the streets or hiding alone. Finally, he returned to the boarding house where Booth and the other conspirators rendezvoused before the assassination. As he got there, police were taking the owner of the house and others away for questioning. Powell claimed he was just a laborer there to dig a gutter, but the police were suspicious because he was wearing expensive clothing, so they took him into custody when he was positively identified.
Yeah. I know. Tenth amendment. “States Rights”.
Anything not specified in the Constitution is reserved for the States. At least that is what it says. Of course, we all know that this is just nothing; it’s all just meaningless words. The Civil War pretty much settled this issue.
It’s a hard sell.
The issue of “Federalism” pretty much was killed in favor of a centralized government operating out of Washington D.C..
To really understand a person, their motivations, and the issues of the day, you need to look closer. When you do, you start to see things that you were not aware of, and how all the pieces start to fit together. It becomes frightening and a tad horrific.
We can parse this trivial issue or that one, all by carefully waltzing around the elephant in the room; you know which one. Don’t you?
Let me spell it out to you. If States have no ability to dissolve their bonds with Washington, they have zero power in anything substantive.
But going beyond that. Let’s look at the issue in more depth, shall we. Well, people, where does it explicitly state that there should be a FCC, a FDA, or a ATF in the Constitution? According to the tenth amendment, these are state’s issues.
And even more perplexing, is that these are issues that infringe on the inherent Rights of citizens within the states where they reside. Since when can the federal government create an agency that places limits on the freedoms of any citizen in any of the states? Well?
Today, we have an American empire run by an oligarchy. Many of who’s members aren’t even Americans. (You can see who they are by looking at all the non-American interests being funded in the yearly federal budget.) They engage in endless wars around the globe, and treat American citizens as ignorant sheep to be fleeced every April.
What would the founders have to say about all this…
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with
another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and
equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle
them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
The truths…
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Then, men create governments to make sure that people RETAIN these God-given Rights…
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
However, take note and warning…
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
This should not be taken lightly…
Accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
How much can people take before they start to yell “STOP!”?
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these citizens; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The history of the present United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations… all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the citizens.
Conclusion
The United States today in zero ways resembles what it was established to be in 1776. It has changed.
America has changed substantially in many, many ways from what it was first established as. Traditionalists, and conservatives lament these changes. While progressive socialists embrace the changes.
It is no longer a Republic.
It was altered from a Republic to a Democracy, to an Empire, and now exists as a oligarchy that serves the interests of the richest people on the globe. Many of whom aren’t even Americans in the first place.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants America to fight a war with Iran. To this end he is very active in providing financial enticements (bribes) to leading American Senators and Congressmen to support yet another military action, only this time in Iran.
The only way that we can change America from what it has become is …
Posts Regarding Life and Contentment
Here are
some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this post, you
might like these posts as well. These posts tend to discuss growing up
in America. Often, I like to compare my life in America with the society
within communist China. As there are some really stark differences
between the two.
Posts about the Changes in America
America is
going through a period of change. Change is good… that is, after it
occurs. Often however, there are large periods of discomfort as the
period of adjustment takes place. Here are some posts that discuss this
issue.
More Posts about Life
I have
broken apart some other posts. They can best be classified about ones
actions as they contribute to happiness and life. They are a little
different, in subtle ways.
Stories that Inspired Me
Here are
reprints in full text of stories that inspired me, but that are nearly
impossible to find in China. I place them here as sort of a personal
library that I can use for inspiration. The reader is welcome to come
and enjoy a read or two as well.
Articles & Links
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.
This is going to come as a surprise to many people, but it’s the sad truth. The world today has fractured into two decidedly unique factions. Both factions are polar opposites. There is the progressive globalist oligarchy, and there are conservative traditionalists. This is the entire world, mind you. Not just the United States.
The factions are as clear as night and day. They stand unique and are self-evident to anyone who hasn’t lived under a rock for the last twenty years. And, here, yeah, here, we talk about this situation.
Today the world is polarized. It’s like the polarization of the United States, only on steroids. As, today, this includes the entire globe.
No, it’s not Republicans against Democrats. No, it’s not. No, it’s not “democracy” on one side and “communism” on the other. That is a very out-of-date way of looking at the world. The world has greatly changed, or evolved, since then. Today, things are quite different.
Today, there are the conservative traditionalists on one side, and the progressive globalists folk on the other.
They are diametrically opposed on so many issues that it is a fallacy to think that there is any bridge of commonality between them.
One side believes that the purpose of government is to protect the family, traditions, and lifestyle of the nation. The other side believes that the purpose of government is to enact change towards a utopia for all.
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Of course looking at the world in this manner is considered heretical. Americans have been so dumbed down that they don’t know how many amendments are in the Bill of Rights, what Rights are guaranteed in the first amendment, or where Boston Massachusetts is (People in Arkansas think it’s bout 100 miles East of Memphis.) So this is all going to be a surprise…
The United States
Let’s start with the United States. As that is where the bulk of my readership resides.
Today, the United States, I am sorry to say, is functionally a progressive globalist oligarchy.
Of course, the reader is free to disagree. You can hold up that torn-up, tattered, and soiled American Constitution, and point out the words “Republic government” in the body of the text, but that was changed by amendment. (The 12th and the 17th to be exact.) As what has happened many, many times in the past. I guess that many true-believers never got the memo, eh?
I discuss this matter elsewhere.
I am sorry to hold this belief. You know, I want to believe that the American Constitution will endure. Others, such as myself agree. We do not like what the United States has become. The United States is a progressive globalist oligarchy.
A progressive oligarchy is rule by the wealthy elite over a manipulated mob. The mob is fractured into smaller subgroups of “mini-mobs” (for lack of a better term) which are best kept Balkanized and driven by a fear of outsiders.
It’s a reluctant reality, no doubt. With many citizens in direct opposition to the direction and policies of the nation. But, whether you like it or not, the United States, as a nation is functionally fully immersed in the progressive globalist agenda.
The schools, from elementary to university, are all progressive.
The government, aside from a handful of elected officials, are all progressive.
The mainstream media, the advertising media, and Hollywood are all progressive.
Industry, what still exists, are mostly progressive.
Budgets, finance, and banking are all progressive.
Science, and academia are all progressive.
Judicial appointments, and most enforcement activity, are mostly progressive. With some Circuit Courts, such as the ninth, completely immersed in progressive ideology.
Of course, there are always exceptions.
The lone non-progressive media outlet; FOX helps to offset the progressive steam-roller. There are also a handful of independent conservative media outlets, though it’s pretty difficult to find them online as they are shadow-banned by American search engines. There is President Trump, and his handful of his”wild cats”. There are factories and industries that won’t pull a “Gillette” or promote diversity hijabs.
Yet, today, America has fully implemented progressive globalist policies…
Gender is an artificial construct.
Children should be raised by the government.
Education and work are not merit based.
Color of skin, race and gender define diversity quotas.
Non-working people should get fully paid government benefits.
Balkanization of the USA is preferred and funded.
Conventionally, this is referred to as the “American culture wars”. The thing is, it is not limited to the Untied States. The war is raging all over the globe. From the “Yellow Vest” protests in France, to the “Far Right” protests in Germany.
Rather than get sucked into a long and lengthy discussion about the culture wars in America, let’s just keep it simple. Let’s just simply agree that [1] there is a cultural war that is [2] on-going. [3] How it will pan out is unknown.
What is known, however, is that for the last ten years the United States has been a fully-enabled progressive-socialist oligarchy. This is true and in defiance to the United States Constitution as written. This is true, even though huge swaths of the public refuse to accept this horrible reality.
Today, like it or not, America is a Progressive nation.
America today is the result of many, many years of progressive change. However, the last ten years have been instrumental in making America that land that it is today; a progressive utopia owned and controlled by the global elite; the oligarchy of the West.
China
Lets look at China.
It’s common knowledge that China is communist. We know this, because the progressive American mainstream media has told us this. We know this because this was the case as recent as the 1980’s. We know this because Mr. Mao proudly committed to communist ideals back in the 1940’s. We know this because his picture is still on the Chinese currency.
And… and, we believe this is still the case, well because, we don’t know any better.
However, that has all changed. You know, there have been many, many changes since Richard Nixon was in office. A lot has happened since the 1960’s. First, communist China collapsed in the 1970’s. (Though, it didn’t get the American media attention that it deserved. It’s almost like the American media were pining away for the success of communism.) Communist Cambodia collapsed shortly afterwards, followed by the collapse of the communist Soviet Union.
In the tail half of the last century, just about every communist nation imploded in upon itself. With the exception of Cuba and North Korea.
Of course, the American mainstream media wouldn’t like to admit any of this. In their minds, it is still useful (for distraction purposes) to manipulate the more mainstream and conservative members of their (shrinking) audience. They do this by treating Americans as fools and playing Don Quixote chasing “communist” windmills.
It serves their “Neocon” audiences.
What they have left out, in their news casts and discussion panels, was that communism in China was a terrible failure. When communism was implemented in China, it caused devastation, deaths, starvation, and the destruction of centuries of culture and society. Not just a few deaths, mind you. But whole-scale mass starvation. Not just the destruction of one or two museums, but most of the history of China. Not just the unwritten traditions, but really all aspects of Chinese life was adversely corrupted.
We well know about how the Soviet Union and that brand of communism fell. What was little reported was how the Chinese were able to avert a similar catastrophe. In China, they had heroes who experimented with non-Communist methods to bring about economic success. Mr. Deng and his Chinese version of Reaganomics was the most successful.
China, due to Mr. Mao and his advisors, was riding the bullet train towards catastrophic collapse.
In the 1970’s serious and drastic action needed to be taken to undo the ravages of communism. So numerous leaders “stepped up to the plate”. Each one acted as a hero in an attempt to stop the collapse of the Chinese government, and the resulting foreign intervention.
(You all know, don’t you, that once the Chinese nation collapsed, that rich and wealthy American elite would offer to “rebuild” the nation. You know, out of kindness…)
So the Chinese all stepped up. One of the most famous was Mr. Deng. He and his stunning successes are known all over China. He implemented wide-scale Ronald Reagan economic policies. Only this time, he didn’t have Mr. Bush Sr. snapping at his heels. He didn’t have a media making fun of his actions calling it “Zombie Economics”, and he didn’t have Beijing reverse his polices as soon as they started to bear fruit.
All of which happened in the United States.
You see, back then, China was in a state of an emergency. It was a serious and a dangerous time. Thus, anyone trying to play political games for their own personal benefit, did so at the peril of the entire nation and race.
So, Mr. Deng was permitted to implement a Chinese-version of Reaganomics. He was given a small and tiny fishing village. He was given the tiny hamlet of Shenzhen to use as a “test bed”. And, it took off. The growth was astounding.
Downtown Shenzhen China when Mr. Deng took over, and what it looks like today. This is what the “miracle” of Reaganomics does, and it was this force that was used to completely transform China. However, in doing so, they HAD to move away from communism. For Reaganomics is wholly incompatible with communism.
Today, Shenzhen is populated by 14 million busy inhabitants. To put that in perspective, New York has pretty much had a constant population of 4 million people over the last three decades.
Seeing the success of this, and other initiatives, too numerous to mention here, we have seen an evolution of China.
China moved from hard-line communist to something else.
The Chinese refer to this new way of doing things as “Socialist with Chinese characteristics“, but what it really and functionally is is something quite different. We, as Americans, can easily recognize the policy positions as near identical clones to Mr. Ronald Reagan’s “free market” policies. Though, the progressive mainstream media would NEVER admit to it. Though the hard-line Neo-cons would never say anything positive to their “dog and pony” show that narrates a communist enemy that needs to be opposed at every turn.
Statue of Deng Xiaoping at Lianhuashan Park. Mr Deng brought Reaganomics to China., and single handedly helped to move China away from rigid formal communism to the nation that it is today.
Today, China is [1] a single-party government. The government is [2] nationalist with [3] “China First” objectives. They [4] believe in free-market economics, and [5] vigorously defend the traditionally conservative Chinese social way of life.
China is a traditional conservative nation.
Not, American conservative, mind you. They are Chinese conservative. Which means that they hold many of the same beliefs and ways of doing things that an American Conservative would agree with. But not all of them.
Mother and Father are parents.
Father works and supports the family.
Mother takes care of the home and children.
Education is important, and merit based.
Success is achieved through hard work, and merit.
Vices are normal and need social outlets.
Any person who does not agree to the above are ill and need to be medically corrected and isolated from society.
As such, the Chinese family and relationships look like they came right out of the American 1950’s. The man goes out and works hard, has a beer or two with his buddies after work, and then comes home to his family. Yes. It’s Fred Flintstone style. Yes. Wally and the Beaver style. Yes. The Brady Bunch style.
China is a very conservative traditional nation that is run as a single party with nationalist objectives. It is always and foremost “China first” and they vigorously defend their culture and way of life against all assaults, especially progressive and Muslim assaults.
And when the man comes home from a hard day’s work, he will give 100% of his pay to his wife. She will use this money to take care of the household, invest in the education of the children, and maintain the social standing of their family with the rest of society.
She in turn, will have his house clothes washed and laid out on the bed for him. His slippers will be ready for him when he gets inside, and after he takes his after work shower, he will find a nicely laid out dinner waiting for him. Often (depending on the person) with a alcoholic libation waiting for him.
China is a Traditional Nation.
Here is a handy chart that I composed describing the differences between American Progressive Liberal belief, American conservative belief and Chinese beliefs. It goes a long way to illustrate how close modern China is to the traditional American Conservatism. As well as how far removed it is from the progressive reality of America today, and the communist ideal that China came from.
Issue
Progressive
Conservative
Chinese
Welfare
Entitled
Must Work
Must Work
Immigration
Entitled
Show Value
Show value
Taxes
High
Low
Low
Muslims
Welcome
Keep out
Keep out
Food / Drugs
Ban & Tax
Own Risk
Own Risk
Guns
Full ban
Right to own
Full ban
Military
Wars all over
Last Resort
Last Resort
Healthcare
Government
Privatize
Regulated
While most of America is enjoying the progressive themed Hollywood movies (women in leadership roles, people with superpowers granted to them through luck, and diversity in every scene), the Chinese produce movies and videos around more traditional themes. The music, even the more up-beat, aren’t as harsh. The women are sweeter, and they aren’t wagging their enormous trashcan jugged assess at the screen.
Culture and society are a reflection of what the nation is. In a like vein, Hollywood is a reflection of what America is today. To understand what China is like, all you need do is pay attention to their culture…
To decide if a given culture or society is progressive or traditional, all one need to do is watch their movies and listen to their music.
By comparing media, entertainment, and culture you can get a glimpse of a nation in “snapshots of culture”. With that in mind, and with the 2019 Chinese pop video excerpt above, compare that to American culture below…
In America, overt sex, huge asses and aggressive behavior on the behalf of women are considered the norm. It is considered to be beautiful, attractive and desirable. The above is from the Black Entertainment Television network and depicts Cardi B.
Today, America culture is firmly progressive as are most all American media outlets.
Russia
I could go on and on along this vein. Let’s consider Russia, for instance. They too used to be communist. Used to. But of course, we know how the former Soviet Union broke up and now we have the Russian federation. What of it?
They are a conservative, and traditional nation.
The President of the Russian Federation with the Russian version of Saint Nick. In a conservative nation, no one is afraid to say “Merry Christmas”, or associate with religious icons. This is in contrast to the Obama America with industry has effectively (via Obama effort) made saying “Merry Christmas” a terrible thing and an insult.
Well, contrary to what you might read in the progressive American media, Russia also is now a traditional conservative nation. You will not find fat welfare mothers on the dole in Russia. You will not find kids getting good grades in schools because they were diverse. You will find that it is ok to drink and engage in vices, and that families will revolve around a father and mother.
Grass-roots protestors against Muslim immigration. They do not tolerate it as they rightfully view it as an assault on their communities, their way of life, and their religious beliefs.
They will not tolerate Muslims. Nor will they tolerate Gays, LGBQ or radical fat feminists. They have zero tolerance for this. Being on the dole is a shameful thing in Russia, and you could get yourself beat senseless if you try to push the issue. Russia today is a very traditional nation with zero tolerance for progressive values and ideas.
President Putin wishing all of Russia a “Merry Christmas” and a happy holidays. This announcement was reacted to poorly by the Muslim communities in Eastern Europe as a sign of how old-fashioned and dangerous Russia is.
To “hammer” this understanding down. Let’s compare a traditional Russian conservative; Mr. Putin, to a Progressive Oligarch; Obama. It’s an easy comparison. But, let’s take the time to compare and contrast. I think that it helps us get a better understanding of the differences between a conservatively run traditional nation (regardless of the political structure) and a progressive one.
First, let’s see how Mr. Putin conducts his meetings…
Now, let’s look at the American President, Barrack Obama. Here’s a great GIF that got tons, and I do mean tons, of accolades from all over America about how stunning and “manly” Obama is. Here he is dancing “Gundam Style”.
The UK & England
Leaving Russia, let’s go to England. What do you, the reader suppose their leanings are?
Well, the UK and all of England is very progressive.
You can tell by reading the various newspapers out of the region as well as the various problems that they are dealing with. It is considered “progressive” to import non-assimilatable foreigners who refuse to work. It is considered to be a sign of progressive realities to ban knives, suppress news of Pakistani rape grooming, and to permit the Balkanization of the nation.
As a result, you can commonly see the prevalence of alternative lifestyles, and the welcome integration of progressive values and progressive censorship. This includes such things as hard-line fundamentalist Muslims to LGBQ mega-queer indoctrination in the public education system.
Progressive England today. They tolerate new progressive values that allow child brides, and female genital mutilation. They enjoy making fun of traditional Christian values, and openly and brazenly promote diversity efforts towards changing the nation.
The progressive leadership in Britain believes that this is the natural order of things. That their world will change and become a great place for diversity; for a utopia where the people can live within the new life… a progressive life.
Poland
We can go on and on. Poland, unfortunately for them, joined the EU before they discovered what a trap it was. When the progressive EU demanded that Poland accept non-Christian Muslims, Poland said NO!
“With regards to Britain, we have already told them on several occasions they need to deport, not tolerate, radical migrants. “If a radical Muslim cleric in a mosque calls on his brothers in the faith … to fight the infidels, well, I think that there are grounds to expel such an imam.”
When the EU said that the Muslim religion was the same as the Christian religion and Catholicism, Poland said Fuck-you.
“Other countries have led to a situation in which those trained on Islamic State territory in Syria, Iraq – young people with French, Belgian, Dutch, British, German citizenship – return to Europe … and somehow [the authorities] were incapable of monitoring them,”
When the EU wanted Poland to permit diversity quotas, and overhaul their education and media to police against (anti-progressive) dissent, the Polish government told them to pound sand. In fact, the government told the EU that they report to the people of Poland, and not to some bureaucrats far away in Brussels. No matter what the EU contracts want to enforce.
Their assessment of the European situation is an accurate one. The migration of Muslims from the Middle East to Poland is not one of assimilation. They are migrating to Poland which is over 90% Catholic and refuse to integrate. They instead intend to breed like cockroaches, live off the public dole, and impress their ideas of society on those around them.
Welcome to Poland where women doing housework is considered to be very sexy…
In a truly conservative society, the Muslim immigration issue is a dangerous assault on the values, life and society of the host nation. It is unacceptable, and will not be permitted to happen. Not in Poland.
For in Poland, not only are they Christian, but they are very traditional. As such traditional women are looked up with respect and even their physical labor is considered to be sexy…
Poland is a traditional conservative nation.
Other Nations
Do you see where I am going with this? If you look at the other nations, on an individual basis, if you look at them in regards to their own traditional values, it becomes quite clear. There is a globalist progressive oligarchy that has pretty much effectively taken over most of the West.
Progressive
Traditional
France
Romania
UK
Switzerland
Sweden
Denmark
Canada
Brazil
Germany
Iceland
What does this mean
The traditional notions of America being the land of “Democracy” against the evil Communists is wholly outdated. The “cold war” ended with Ronald Reagan. He finished off the success and rule of communism.
Yet, the oligarchs would have none of this. They argue that it wasn’t implemented properly. Maybe Pol Pot wasn’t harsh enough. Maybe they weren’t diverse enough. Maybe they weren’t ruthless enough. They write about this, and announce their intentions quite openly.
For instance…
Make no mistake, the globe is forming into two sides. Sides, mind you, that are so diametrically opposed in fundamental belief systems that the ability to coexist will not be possible.
Here is a map of the world today. The conservative traditionalist nations are colored in RED, and the “enlightened” progressive globalist oligarchy are in BLUE. Most other nations are unknown in this regard, and are left bare and uncolored.
This is a partial map showing known polarization around the globe. Traditional conservative nations are colored in red and progressive socialist nations controlled by an oligarchy are in blue. There is evidence that many Muslim nations are also traditional, and conservative, but they differ in some fundamental ways and deviate in such a way that they are not included in this calculus. In short, if you look at the map, you can easily see that the former “free world” of “democracy” have all devolved into mob-ruled oligarchies under the progressive socialist banner.
The Implications
The implications of such a realization are astounding. By looking at the globe in this manner, we can clearly see that philosophy and ideologies are what frame the way that the globe operates today.
Almost every democracy has devolved into mob-rule controlled by a rich oligarchy.
Almost every former communist nation has evolved into a traditional conservative nation.
The oligarchy owns the media in the regions they control. As such they try to keep the “cold war” alive through fear to control their people.
Oligarchies help each other out. It is almost like they share the same blood-lines or something.
Conservative nations tend to be populist and nationalistic. They only make agreements that serve their own interests.
Important Note
These are only my opinions. Perhaps, you the reader, have other ideas. That is fine. This is nothing more than a very simplistic overview of but one equation of a very complex calculus. For all that I did was simply map out conservative belief structures against progressive belief structures globally.
The reader should note that there are cultural differences that also come into play. For instance, a conservative American would believe that everyone should own firearms, while a conservative Chinese would believe that civilian ownership of firearms should be banned.
To the American, it might seem that it really isn’t conservative at all.
After all, the right to self-defense is a role liberty enshrined in the Bill of Rights. But to the Chinese that seems strange, as in China, all children are given basic military training at an early age. By the time they are 16 they know how to work together as a team, and how to perform the most basic of military disciplines. When the time comes to undergo more rigorous training, they can opt out with parental consent. However, with consent, they are able to learn the more martial skills expected of a soldier.
While the implementation of the right of self-preservation differs, both conservatives maintain the importance given in this liberty. How it is implemented is different, that’s all.
In American conservatism, the individual has the Right to exercise that right and train on his own dime. In Chinese conservatism, everyone must learn how to protect themselves and the nation if called upon to do so.
The Chinese believe that being trained to defend yourself, and to fight for your country is a necessary skill. It is one that is instilled in Chinese children at an early age. In America, Conservatives that the right of self-defense (both personal and for society to prevent tyrannical governments) is an option that is given as a Right, but it is up to the individual to exercise that Right.
Never the less, both the American and the Chinese conservative would agree that a family is comprised of a man and a woman. They would both agree that the man is the head of the home, and that the wife would raise the children and take care of the home.
These facts are global, and are persuasive throughout cultures as diverse as the pygmies in Papua New Guinea to the urban upwardly mobile in Moscow.
How to Survive
Now, this being stated, it becomes evident that there are populations of people (often enormous populations) that are trapped within a nation where they do not belong.
For instance, there are the progressive lesbian feminists of Hong Kong that hate conservative Chinese rule. There are the followers of Donald Trump that are known as “Deplorables” that live within the United States. There are the “Gender Queers” that want to live in Norway. What are they all to do?
Unless you are careful, there will be an upset. It will be disturbing and might even be cataclysmic…
There are but three courses of action. And, there are ONLY three paths that one can take.
Shut up and adapt. If you live in a society that does not accept white heterosexual males, then you pretend to be a member of an “approved” group or culture, and adopt homosexual behaviors to blend in.
Leave. To can migrate to a nation or region where there are others that share the same values that you have. Whether they are progressive or conservative.
Enact Change. Change is very uncomfortable. Especially since the two ideologies are so different, I rightly fear that conflict is pretty much a foregone conclusion. If you wish to stay and enact change, then you MUST be willing to sacrifice everything for your ideology. There is no half-steps in this effort. You must either be 100% committed or not. There are no “shades of grey” in this matter.
What ever course of action you, the reader might decide to take (if you are in this situation), you must commit to it 100%. There will be no success for any half-way measures or any half-hearted attempts.
American women making a point about how liberated they are in the new progressive reality. They show and act in a way that defines them, and as such they are beloved by the beta males that cater to their professed needs.
I personally believe that people feel comfortable around people who share the same ideals and philosophies that they do. In my mind, as a boy who grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I witnessed first hand how the feminist movement devastated American traditional households. I saw how society changed. And, it hasn’t been for the best.
For me, I find that the conservative culture in China quite refreshing. I know that it is long gone from America, and will never return unless serious changes are made. In the meantime, it is wonderful to be around people who share the same values and lifestyles that I do.
A Chinese mother with her son at the airport. Compare how they live, walk, act and behave with a similar family in an American airport. American women would describe this as a scene out of the fictional movie “A Hand Maid’s Tale”. But I find it just hyperbole and nonsense spouted forth by the pathetically jealous.
Finally, let me share this micro-video of a Chinese gal singing. The culture in conservative nations tend to be softer, more polite and respectful. While the culture in progressive nations tends toward the loud, the brash and the crass.
2019 Chinese music video in the form of an abbreviated micro-video.
Posts Regarding Life and Contentment
Here are some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this
post, you might like these posts as well. These posts tend to discuss
growing up in America. Often, I like to compare my life in America with
the society within communist China. As there are some really stark
differences between the two.
More Posts about Life
I have broken apart some other posts. They can best be classified
about ones actions as they contribute to happiness and life. They are a little different, in subtle ways.
Stories that Inspired Me
Here are reprints in full text of stories that inspired me, but that
are nearly impossible to find in China. I place them here as sort of a
personal library that I can use for inspiration. The reader is welcome
to come and enjoy a read or two as well.
This is a multi-part posting. The amount of content is enormous and the scope is too broad for a couple of paragraphs. Please follow the arrows to move between the different sections. Also note that this article covers a very politically-incorrect subject matter, and supporting photos and writings are very graphic. This is not for children or people of tender sensibilities.
...there are periods in history when the entire paradigm you’ve been accustomed to living under changes rather abruptly and for good. A change of this nature alters the entire game on a global basis and happens perhaps once in a lifetime. The last such shift happened during World War 2 and we’re living in the next one. How big of a change this will represent in the context of human history remains unknown, but we know it’s big. Really, really big.
The most significant challenge most of us face when confronted with such a moment is to remain focused and emotionally stable during the transition. This doesn’t suggest apathy, but it does mean staying grounded and not giving in to the constant news and pundit cycle of incensed outrage and anger about every single event that unfolds. After all, it’s important to recognize that almost everything you see in the news is a symptom of something far bigger happening in the background. Namely, that the global order most of the planet has known in the post-WW2 period is coming apart at the seams. If you don’t stay focused on the big picture, you’ll be easily and hopelessly manipulated without even knowing it.
-Liberty Blitzkrieg
What I intend to lay out here is that historically, there are predictable elements of societal evolution. These elements can be unsavory and distasteful, but that does not mean that they do not exist.
They do exist.
Historically, we know what has happened when there is conflict between a traditional society and a progressive socialist movement that has (or is in the process of gaining) the reigns of power in government.
We know what happens. It is a predictable, and well understood process. It is well documented.
When one side has the guns, and the other side does not, there can only be one outcome.
So we know what will happen… eventually when a progressive socialist movement tries to gain control of a government.
We are in the middle of the very beginnings of this in the United States. Here we discuss some very important points that other articles of this SHTF theme all leave out…
You will not know you are in danger until it is too late.
You will not know.
Once you are told to turn around and put your hands behind your back it will be too late. You will be lead politely into the vehicle. Then as door after door closes behind you, you will discover yourself in a position of disadvantage and you will be killed. It will happen and you won’t be aware of it until it is too late. Do you think this fellow was anticipating being killed the morning when he put on his shoes?
You will not know that you are in danger until it is too late.
You will NOT know you are in danger.
I had been living in Germany since 1988 and was living there when the shelling of Sarajevo, "my city" started. The best description of the state that I was in when the news reached me is simply: shock!
I always wonder how the people in Bosnia must have felt at this time. I was really panicked and kept phoning my friends in Sarajevo which remained possible for a couple of weeks after the bombing started.
I kept asking them what to do and what the situation was like over there. They told me about relatives of theirs who had fled into Sarajevo from smaller towns and villages throughout Bosnia and Hercegovina where they had witnessed the torturing and killing of people including small children.
They had witnessed the installing of concentration camps and other horrors. During these first months of the war in March, April and May 1992.
I was paralyzed - I spent weeks and weeks sitting on the couch watching television and reading the newspapers . I was totally unable to understand what was going on and I was waiting for someone to come and stop it.
-Biserinternational
When SHTF happens, it will be a very dangerous times. Do not be caught in the target hot area. Do not be caught unarmed. Do not try to hide in easily located places like attics or basements. Be ready.
One of the keys in socialist and Marxist control of a region is to get the citizenry to comply to their rules. They lie. They tell falsehoods. They set up false senses of security. They use children. They use the media.
Do not believe any of it.
Historically speaking, the lies will result in people dying.
1994 genocide in Rwanda. This followed the well documented model. Demonize a class of people. Then disarm them. Finally, herd them together under a blanket of lies, and kill them all.
The Outcome is Absolute and Predictable
The outcome of all state-sponsored genocide against a certain group of people is well recorded and predictable. Here is a photo from the Sierra Leone Civil War.
The outcome is absolute. Historically, with the exception of China (with the SJW uprisings), most progressive socialist movements eventually take over the reigns of government and mold it to their will. Those whom follow the traditional and often “old Style” of political discourse are eventually overwhelmed.
Once they gain power, they take over the government and mold it to their will. Suddenly the traditional symbols of government are co-opted and remolded into other purposes. This leads many traditionalists confused. This confusion sets up a perfect environment for the FULL implementation of their agenda.
German woman demanding her “Rights” when the German Federal Police come to take her and her family to a “resettlement farm” for their “safety” and “protection”. You know the places like Auschwitz. She obviously don’t want to go. Note that here were many other camps in German occupied Poland including Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Chelmno.
When the new progressive socialist government takes control, one of the first things that they do is hunt down and slaughter their opposition. Historically, that has been the conservative and traditional elements of the society. I am sorry to say this, but this is the historical truth.
Consider Bosnia…
"There used to be a law about weapons here, where I live, before the war. And yes, you could own a weapon but it was such a hard law that actually not too many people owned legal weapons.
And right when the (Shit Hit The Fan), first thing that happened was the confiscation of legal weapons, based on lists of who own legal weapons.
Now what people could do then was to say, “This is my legal weapon. I have a right to own it, by the law.”
...And those who did that usually got shot.
There were 20 heavily armed guys at your door asking nicely for your weapon, to be turned over to them in the name of “law” as an effort of a government that wanted to calm down a chaotic situation.
Sometimes if you said no, those guys would simply destroy the whole house with RPGs and bombs.
And guess what that meant?
Folks who owned legal weapon lost them even before the big SHTF. And a lot of guys who owned them in an illegal way hidden somewhere still own them when SHTF.
Illegal and legal have different meanings in different times and based who says those words, so think about it.
I am not saying that it will go like that there where you are. What I do say is you that you need to think a bit outside the box when it comes to owning things."
-Organic prepper
When the Khmer Rouge emerged from the civil war victorious and marched down the streets, thousands of terrified people fled, some rushing for the border with Thailand while others flooded the gates of the French Embassy. The massacres soon began and the Cambodian genocide was underway. The fighters who had stood up against the Khmer Rouge were executed en masse. Then the Khmer Rouge turned on civilians, driving the people into the countryside and killing thousands in the process. Soon, the Khmer Rouge was rounding up anyone who did anything that could be seen as capitalist. Selling a product or talking to anyone from the world beyond Cambodia’s borders was treated like an act of treason. Those caught were sent to so-called re-education camps like Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek, a fate that nearly always meant getting tortured and killed.
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon or rocket scientist to figure this out. All you need to do is read one or two history books. Nothing being said now should be any shock to anyone even remotely versed in history. It’s a very well established progression of history.
Every progressive liberal socialist movement eventually goes full-on Pol Pot.
Do not think that in today’s “modern” and “enlightened” society that we are beyond mass genocide against a particular race, or group of people. Here are people who were seized out of their homes at the dead of night by militarized police (the Federal Police), handcuffed with wire-ties (behind his back) and then killed and dumped in a mass grave. Like this poor fella. I am quite sure that the person putting the wire-ties on his clasped wrists was very polite and nice about it. Cool and professional, most certainly. Then he was handed over to others. Those others then killed him like one would step on cockroach. And, with just as much care. What? You think America can’t relive the Bosnia experience?
What should be a shock is that the United States is destined to be one such nation. And you, dear boys and girls, are just about ready to be placed smack dab in ground zero for conflict. It will not be comfortable. It will not be pleasant. And, there will be those who will absolutely refuse to believe that it is happening.
They will come up with all kind of excuses. Such as “Sessions is playing 5D chess…you’ll see”, “Firearms confiscation will never occur in America.” and that great knee-slapper “Snopes fact checked it, and says that you are full of it.”
The genocide in Cambodia followed the well known and well defined pattern. Marxists take control. They disarm everyone. They propagandize against certain kinds of people. They use lies to escort them to “safe areas”. Then they kill them.
Remember when the Marxists took over Cambodia…
April 17, is a date that sends shivers down the spines of most Cambodians. On that day in 1975 the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh and took control of the country after almost five years of bitter fighting in the countryside.
Only a few photographers ventured onto the streets of Phnom Penh on April 17 and captured images of the victorious Khmer Rouge fighters entering the besieged city, taking enormous risks to photograph the mysterious communist guerillas who had a well-deserved reputation for brutality and taking no prisoners.
As the battle-hardened Khmer Rouge made their way into the city on the morning of April 17, none of the remaining foreign reporters and photographers who took refuge in the grounds of the French Embassy knew what to expect.
“I had seen the badly decomposed or disfigured corpses of Khmer Rouge soldiers on several occasions on the front line, but this was the first time I’d seen one alive,” said Neveu.
“At first nobody moved as we knew it was not a simple case of being brave of foolhardy. Then, just across the road, a few excited children holding hastily-made white flags above their heads walked out of a side street to meet the approaching guerrillas.
The Marxists now have complete control of the nation of Cambodia. They can do whatever is necessary to bring their idea of utopia to fruition. Most of which requires killing large number of “impure” and evil citizens.
“The ice was broken. Walking cautiously across the road, we approached the group, keeping an eagle eye on the whole area, feeling not entirely safe. The Khmer Rouge soldiers were probably enjoying their first moments of relative safety in many days since the operation to seize the city had begun.”
The calm did not last long. By early afternoon the Khmer Rouge were ordering all residents to leave the city with a minimum of belongings, the start of what turned out to be a death march for thousands. The city remained mostly empty until the Vietnamese invasion almost five years later.
“Some soldiers were shooting in the air in order to force the inhabitants to flee the city,” said Neveu.
When Marxists take over a city, crowd control will be very aggressive. The chances of survival is very slim. If you are caught in the middle of SHTF, do whatever is necessary to escape, survive and use evasion to protect you and your loved ones. Trust no one.
It has been estimated that at least 20,000 people perished during the evacuation of the capital. It marked the start of what the Khmer Rouge leaders called the “Year Zero” campaign, emptying towns and cities and forcing city-dwellers to become slave laborers in the countryside. By some accounts, Phnom Penh’s population dropped from two million to 25,000 in only three days.
Foreigners were ordered to move to the large grounds of the French embassy, and Neveu, Mabuchi and Rockoff joined them after spending the day roaming the city, talking photos of various Khmer Rouge units and government soldiers surrendering and handing over their arms, which were being piled up on street corners, overseen by Khmer Rouge cadres.
-The Day the Nightmare Started
Leadership will scurry.
When it seems like everything is beyond hope of redemption, the instigators of the conflict with evacuate and scurry to their “safe havens”. In the case of the United States, it will mean well fortified, and guarded locations, outside of the country. Such as underground lairs in NZ for the Software billionaires, and well fortified chateaus in Europe for the corrupt politicians.
This is not a win for team Trump, but it was inevitable, just as it was with Reagan. Conservatives would love to cut down our deficit and trim our budget back to size, but with three-quarters of our budget going to entitlements, there is no way forward without cutting those. Even if we halve the military budget (20%) we will achieve nothing. Even if we cut all programs across the board by 10% we will achieve nothing except debilitating them.
This is how democracy ends: it spends itself into oblivion, collapses the society, and a few rich industry leaders, union organizers, and politicians board planes for Switzerland with suitcases full of cash.
-Periscope
Do not expect any of the instigators to remain in the USA when SHTF. They never do.
Once the conflict escalates, those that sponsored the event will move to safe areas. These will be pre-prepared locations where they can continue their plotting without worry about repercussions. In Cambodia, the entire genocide was the end result of American and CIA machinations. Here is a last chopper leaving the nation.
In Cambodia, the American elite and their CIA covert operatives were bundled up by the United States Marines and evacuated out of the “Hot Zone”. They flew away and watched the nation burn.
Twelve helicopters, bristling with guns and U.S. Marines, breached the morning horizon and began a daring descent toward Cambodia's besieged capital. Residents believed the Americans were rushing in to save them, but at the U.S. Embassy, in a bleeding city about to die, the ambassador wept.
Forty years later, John Gunther Dean recalls one of the most tragic days of his life — April 12, 1975, the day the United States "abandoned Cambodia and handed it over to the butcher."
"We'd accepted responsibility for Cambodia and then walked out without fulfilling our promise. That's the worst thing a country can do," he says in an interview in Paris. "And I cried because I knew what was going to happen."
Five days after the dramatic evacuation of Americans, the U.S.-backed government fell to communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas. They drove Phnom Penh's 2 million inhabitants into the countryside at gunpoint. Nearly 2 million Cambodians — one in every four — would die from executions, starvation and hideous torture.
This happens EVERY TIME.
The instigators gather up their belongings, and what ever they can grab and flee. This has happened time and time again, and it just starting to happen in America RIGHT NOW.
That was the moment when serious reform and severe consequences for the criminal perpetrators of economic collapse could’ve reset the system and brought the world back to a sustainable path, but we all know that’s not what happened.
Instead, the “elites” in charge of addressing the situation decided instead to temporarily prop up a broken system while ensuring they’d be the primary beneficiaries of the specific polices that supposedly “saved the economy.”
In fact, nothing was saved. A dead system was put on life support while our self-proclaimed heroic elite grabbed everything not nailed down. A stealth crime spree that is ongoing to this day.
-Liberty Blitzkrieg
U.S. Marines come under Khmer Rouge fire while they were on the ground near the U.S. embassy during Operation Eagle Pull which evacuated American and embassy personnel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on April 13, 1975. (Tea Kim Heang/AP)
What to expect
The first thing that can be expected is mass disarming of the populace.
Once the Khmer Rouge took over and capture Phnom Penh in 1976, the disarmed everyone. Those that refused, that stood on their Rights as Cambodian citizens, were shot, and the entire family arrested. The weapons were collected in major road intersections and put in display so that everyone could see that the new Marxist government was fully in charge.
I am not going to rehash history. You should know this. The only thing that I must underline is that YOU are not immune from the steam-roller of historical events. They will occur whether you want them to or not.
Factory workers, with their company name badges, in the parking lot of their employer. Two dead and one dying with his legs shot off. He and his co-workers had no idea that “world war III” would break out while they were trying to clock in at work. When one group of people identify another group, and target them with hate, and violence, it only escalates. It gets worse. Eventually there is whole-scale blood shed. Do not be under the illusion that it will never happen in America. There are enormous groups of people just chomping at the bit to attack conservatives and traditionalists. All in the name of a progressive utopia.
If you haven’t read any history books by now, any statement from myself will be meaningless. So, I’m not going to do so.
Instead, I will lay out some of the characteristics that are common with every single progressive liberal socialist takeover of government. I will put them in terms that are applicable to Americans today…right now.
In the Country…
Urban youth, armed with fully automatic weapons, and RPG’s will burst forth and stream out of their protective enclaves. (Enclaves where their ideology has been nurtured for decades to hate one type or class of person.) They will ride forth in new cars and trucks. Sort of like how the ISS managed to get all those brand-new white Toyota trucks and turn them into “mechanicals”.
The people in the rural sections will have to fend for themselves, and they will have a tough go at it. There will be local Marxists in just about every village and town reporting on who to target and who has guns, etc. They will compile lists and they will provide those lists to their leadership in the cities.
The people in the rural areas, will be forced to go on the defensive. They will try to block the roads from whence the urban youth streams from, and they will have road-blocks and barriers as best they can, so that they can move their loved ones to safety.
The people, isolated and undefended, in the rural regions were dangerously exposed. Large packs of armed “militia”, actually ideological youth armed with military arms and on drugs and in an frenzy against perceived slights (“privilege” and “advantage”) as promoted by the media prior to the SHTF event. This is a scene in front of a “road block” that was set up by local residents to slow down the roving bands of armed urban youth. Their hope was that it would give them enough time to stream into the nearby cities for protection. The only thing was that the cities were all controlled by the very same people who set all the attacks in motion.
Paradoxically, this will mean that they will stream as refugees to apparent “safe areas” within urban areas. These areas will be controlled by the very people who have unleashed the terror.
In the cities…
The people, now pouring into the cities will be collected by the armed forces there. Most likely given to the Marxists who fully intended for this to occur.
The men will be separated from the women and the children.
During times of great turmoil, the odds of living after being handcuffed are mighty slim. Once you are in a confusing war zone, DO NOT EVER allow yourself to be handcuffed. The odds of survival are very slim. Know your history.
Most of the men will be killed immediately. Those rare exceptions would be those who would be tortured for various reasons to make a point to the remaining captives.
S 21 refers to “Monti Santesok S 21,” the main “security office” of Democratic Cambodia of the Khymer Rouge. Nearly 17,000 prisoners where imprisoned, tortured, interrogated and executed there between 1975 and 1979.
Only three of them are still alive.
All of the women will be dehumanized, raped and sent off to “collection centers”. There they will be provided dehumanizing clothing and attire, and raped until they are of no further use.
German Nationalist Socialists (Nazi’s) collected Jewish women. Stripped them, and provided them a roughly hewn sackcloth to wear, and a scarf to cover their head with. An uncovered woman is considered to be a threat. And used them as they felt necessary.
Everyone, and every moment will be documented to excess. It doesn’t matter if it was the Nazi’s with the Jews, the Soviets with other Soviets, the Khmer Rouge with their fellow citizens, or Americans against Americans. Each person will be interviewed, indexed, photographed, sheared, and categorized prior to execution.
Know your history.
Everyone, and every moment will be documented to excess. It doesn’t matter if it was the Nazi’s with the Jews, the Soviets with other Soviets, the Khmer Rouge with their fellow citizens, or Americans against Americans. Each person will be interviewed, indexed, photographed, sheared, and categorized prior to execution.
Prisoners, who included everyone from infants to grandparents, were brought in and tortured until they confessed they were either CIA or KGB operatives - even though many did not know what the CIA or KGB were. They were then further tortured until they "named" at least one other person who was also a CIA or KGB operative.
Then they were executed.
Nhem En, who was 16, was the house photographer. As each prisoner was brought in, he took their picture - a classic mug shot, the prisoner staring into the camera. He estimates he photographed 6,000 prisoners, knowing that all were about to die.
Cambodian soldier who turned in weapons as directed by his commander when the Marxists took power. Once disarmed, he was tied up and bound. Still in his army uniform. Photographed before being killed. This is the price you pay for not qualifying to live in a Marxist paradise. He was demonized for his “privilege”, attacked for his social irresponsibility, and tortured, well… because it was fun. He was then photographed and killed.
So much for the introduction.
The next six pages break down, in detail, how America is primed for a progressive Marxist genocide. Everything is in place. And make no mistake, many conservative politicians are on board with their Marxist confederates. We look at such things from the point of view of history and how it WILL manifest in the USA.
History can teach us a lot. But, it’s not a very pretty sight.
The election of Donald Trump has only postponed the genocide. I describe in depth why this is the case, and show clearly why this genocide SHTF CWII train-wreck is going to happen whether we want it to happen or not.
My you-tube video on this article
I created this video years after this article was first written. It serves as a perfect match for the contents of this article. It discusses the idea that societies collapse before governments do, and that is reason to be concerned (if you are an American.)
Keep in mind that I am an American expat living inside China. I took the “life boat” to a much safer place, and I wish and want those who have decided to “stay put” and “duke it out”, great success in your efforts to survive the present conditions of chaos and insanity. Hang in there! I believe in you!
You can view it on my you-tube channel. Here’s the video…
The following six articles will cover;
How your Human Resource manager will determine the future of your family.
How to defend yourself; the rule of three.
How the media is used to demonize; and then communicate to the Marxists.
How to avoid innocent but dangerous situations.
How the “lone wolf” mentality will get you killed.
What not to do, and what to do, to prepare realistically from a historical perspective.
How to get your family and loved ones to protection.
Avoidance of being a target.
How to take down a technical.
If you want to go to the start of this series of posts, then please click HERE.
If you want to see my MEGA-Index about the collapse of America click here…
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