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Page added on April 10, 2017
The Flies of Summer
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| A portion of the Silk Road passing through Northern Fujian Province, October 2016 image by Albert Bates |
As national Republican political strategist Rick Wilson said on The Last Word, what we witnessed this past Thursday at the clown show in the White House was impulse, not policy. “Whoosh, whoosh, bang, bang, he got to turn the key and watch the pretty rockets go … this is a guy with the attention span of a gnat on meth.”
The cost of the whoosh whoosh bang bang, just in spent ordnance, not delivery, was somewhere north of $80 million. Damage on the ground has been estimated at $700,000. Raytheon, who makes Tomahawks for the Navy, saw its stock value jump $500 million.
The more important meeting took place in Rick Wilson’s home state of Florida, where POTUS continued to rack up Secret Service bills (some $30 million so far this year) at his Mar-A-Lago Resort where membership fees — that go to him — went up $100,000 since he took office.
That meeting was between Romulus Augustulus, the final Caesar (if you don’t count the Russian Czars), and the future Justinian. The president of a dying empire met with the president of its successor.
The world being handed off was concisely described 200 years ago by Edmund Burke:
“… [T]he temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity … act as if they were the entire masters; that they … think it amongst their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them, a ruin instead of an habitation – and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers.
“By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of summer.”
In the dying empire, both the left and the right share the same myopia. In the inner chambers of most of the world’s governments economic growth and environmental stewardship are viewed as an adversarial relationship. In fact, that need not be the case. It is not seen that way in Bhutan, Denmark or Iceland.
In the new empire there are no dichotomies; One Belt One Road (OBOR); Two Mountains. As yet, these remain completely obscure concepts in the West.
We described the Two Mountain policy here last fall. Xi Jinping himself described it in his January address to the UN plenary in Geneva:
“Man coexists with nature, which means that any harm to nature will eventually come back to haunt man. We hardly notice natural resources such as air, water, soil and blue sky when we have them. But we won’t be able to survive without them.
“Industrialization has created material wealth never seen before, but it has also inflicted irreparable damage to the environment. We must not exhaust all the resources passed on to us by previous generations and leave nothing to our children or pursue development in a destructive way.
“Clear waters and green mountains are as good as mountains of gold and silver. We must maintain harmony between man and nature and pursue sustainable development.”
China has staked its future now on preservation of nature. While POTUS erects his 2000-mile long, 100-foot-tall concrete barrier on the Mexican border, Xi is planting the 2800-mile long Three-North Shelterbelt or “Green Great Wall,” to halt and re-vegetate the Gobi Desert.
Erebus Wong, Lau Kin Chi, Sit Tsui and Wen Tiejun, writing for the independent socialist Monthly Review, observe:
The Chinese government has publicly stressed the lessons of the 1930s overcapacity crisis in the West that precipitated the Second World War, and promoted these new initiatives in the name of “peaceful development.” Nevertheless, the turn to OBOR suggests a regional scenario broadly similar to that in Europe between the end of the nineteenth century and the years before the First World War, when strong nations jostled one another for industrial and military dominance.
China is aware that it is the most likely candidate for leading world power to succeed the United States, whose role as the world’s leading empire began with the Spanish American War, peaked in the global economic boom following the Second World War and is now in steep decline. Wong et al write:
China is arguably only the third country in history, after Britain and the United States, with the capacity to shape and lead a global system of finance and trade. Of course, in the foreseeable future, China will not replace the U.S. dollar system; it could at most stand on equal footing. After the United States overtook the United Kingdom to lead the world in industrial production capacity in the late nineteenth century, it took another fifty years and two world wars before it could dominate global finance. China recognizes this reality, and has consistently promoted the AIIB [Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank] and other organizations as complements, not competitors, of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB).
***
Awkwardly for the United States—which launched the TPP with the original intent of blocking China—the AIIB marks the first time since before Bretton Woods that the United States has been excluded from an important international financial structure. When trusted European allies like the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, and others announced their participation, Obama called an emergency national security meeting. The reason is clear: the AIIB challenges, albeit still within an institutional framework, the U.S. financial hegemony that has prevailed since the Second World War.
Of course, these allies are not jumping ship from the U.S. dollar-dominated system just yet, but only hedging their bets, as that hegemony has shown clear signs of exhaustion. In setting up the AIIB, China has stressed shared interests and cooperation among member nations, the better to attract interested allies.
What the US and its allies see in China is a possible way to climb off the ledge they have found themselves on after the liquidity crisis of 2008 was resolved by issuing massive new debt and resuming the exponential derivatives trade. This time they have no margin left, so perhaps China will be there with a net to catch them, they hope. Switzerland, Luxemburg and Britain — strongholds of financial capital that have previously declined to join most international organizations — became the first to join AIIB.
The liquidity swap alliance formed in October 2013 among six central banks—the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve, and the Swiss National Bank—is designed to prevent another large-scale liquidity crisis in Europe and North America like the one that precipitated the financial crisis of 2008–09. Yet it is only preventive. The new global paradigm now needs new institutions and proactive propositions. The IMF and the World Bank (and its subsidiary, the ADB), constrained by U.S. interests, are not up to the task. Can China take this opportunity to oversee the development of a new global financial alliance? For a large industrial country just entering the phase of financial capitalism, increasingly roiled by domestic disturbances, the challenge is unprecedented and enormous.
Any faith that China would survive the coming financial crash and be standing at the base of the burning building with a fireman’s net is misplaced. Rob Mielcarski observes:
The Chinese are repeating all of our mistakes, but on a larger scale. It makes no difference how leaders are educated, they will eventually succumb to the inherited behaviors common to all humans.
The main difference between us and them now is that they are “borrowing to employ” and we are “borrowing to consume”.
The picture that emerges is quite extraordinary. Over the ten years between 2005 and 2015, GDP grew at rates of between 9% and 14% annually, not even stumbling materially during the 2009 global downturn. But debt has grown by between 17% and 35% of GDP each year, with the exception of 2009, when debt increased by 47% of GDP.
Tianjin (Ghost City) built to employ underemployed construction workers What this means is that, over a period in which reported GDP increased by RMB 40tn, debt expanded by RMB 129tn. This is a borrowing-to-growth ratio of 3.2:1, still reasonably modest by Western standards, but a far cry from past Chinese practice – back in 2005, the trailing ten-year (T10Y) ratio was only 1.67:1.
Unlike the Western economies, whose vice-of-choice is to use debt to fund consumption and inflate property markets, the Chinese bias is towards using debt for investment in capacity. In theory, capacity investment should be “self-liquidating”, because capacity increases should increase income, and thus fund the paying off of the initial debt. (This is contradistinction to consumer borrowing, which is “non-self-liquidating”).
But the self-liquidating characteristic of business investment depends on capacity expanding without depressing margins, something which happens when expansion creates major capacity surpluses. It is abundantly clear that Chinese PNFC borrowing has followed the course of excess, depressing returns in the process.
As a result, much of the Chinese business sector earns returns which appear to be well below the cost of debt capital. In this situation, an obvious remedy is to convert debt into equity. This, however, seems to have been tried, and failed, because it showed clear tendencies to crash the equity market.
The final sting in the tail of this analysis is that, if underlying GDP is a lot lower when stripped of the borrowing effect, debt ratios are correspondingly higher. On the SEEDS basis of computation, aggregate debt already stands at 385% of GDP (rather than the reported 246%), and is growing a lot more quickly than publicly available numbers indicate, adding around 43% of GDP (rather than 20%) annually.
The void that China attempts to fill with OBOR and AIIB is deeper than merely technical insolvency. Since at least the Second World War, the United States based its economic empire on its military power. The only reason that the dollar has not already been replaced by the Yuan as the standard international currency is that the former is backed by overwhelming force. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined and the current administration is willing to beggar its domestic programs to double down.
That cloak is showing tears in its fabric, however. “Bringing democracy to the Middle East” has been revealed for what it really is — chaos and mayhem; internecine regional conflicts; and death and displacement on a massive, economic-community-destroying scale.
China plans to replace military bluster with “peaceful development” — to sponsor infrastructure investments, promote cooperation and minimize conflict. It will find that difficult.
For instance, how can the AIIB avoid the damage done by the World Bank and others to the environment and indigenous livelihoods? How can China promote infrastructure investments that drive local development through diversity and sustainability, and not simply serve its own need for export outlets? The challenge, in other words, is to ensure that the AIIB and Silk Road Fund do not simply become East Asian counterparts of the IMF and World Bank.
***It should be clear that this discursive power will depend on deeds as much as words. If China continues to absorb excess capacity through rapid urbanization without regard for rural culture or ecological sustainability, and if the government fails to address the severe social contradictions caused by rising wealth inequality, labor disputes, environmental deterioration, and official corruption, then the slogans of “infrastructure-based developmentalism” will have little persuasive power overseas.
Jack Goldsmith, writing for Lawfare, sums up our predicament:
Two months into the Trump administration, we are witnessing the beginnings of the greatest presidential onslaught on international law and international institutions in American history.
***An in-your-face attitude toward international law and institutions will invite blowback — from international and domestic actors — not unlike what Trump has been experiencing in response to his controversial attacks on domestic courts and the press. There is a quiet way to pull back from international law and institutions, and a loud way. The loud way has heightened symbolic impact, and for that reason invites heightened resistance and retaliation.
This is what we are witnessing. We are over the peak on the Limits to Growth and into the slide. There is a jockeying for position for the quickly vanishing scraps on the false premise that there is still some way to regain the peak we only just experienced. The prosperous way down is to downsize population, expectations, and mechanistic productivity.
None of that is yet being done and so a hard reckoning is inevitable. Whether that hard reckoning comes to blows remains to be seen, but our side is not taking its gloves off. It likes to poke sticks at hornets’ nests.
It is doing that now, with Tomahawks hurled at Russian MIGs.
Burke also said in his Reflections:
“Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.”
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| Village Tofumaker, October 2016 by Albert Bates |
Perhaps Xi Jinping’s best contribution is one that is most overlooked. As part of his Two Mountains policy Xi is sponsoring creation of 100 ecovillages in 5 years. The key to social adoption of climate ecoforestry is ecovillage. The social glue of ecovillage depends upon cognitive semantics training and permaculture. The economic engine will be, in most cases, small (village-scale, even in urban contexts) microenterprises, particularly the Cool Lab, which we described in last week’s post.
Key to the kind of capital formation that is needed, and redirection from the kinds of capital that are not, is the training of trainers, particularly in Cool Schools, and the development of even better varieties of social benefit (B-type) enterprises to share profits in order to spread wealth more evenly and achieve the more difficult measures required to stabilize climate and return us to the Holocene in which we all have a safer space to argue.
This post is part of an ongoing series we’re calling The Power Zone Manifesto. We post to The Great Change on Sunday mornings and 24 to 48 hours earlier for the benefit of donors to our Patreon page. Albert Bates offers ecovillage apprenticeships, including Cool Lab trainings, this year at The Farm in Tennessee April through July.
The Great Change by Albert Bates
54 Comments on "The Flies of Summer"
Plantagenet on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 1:44 pm
China is the leading CO2 on the planet …. by far. Their air pollution is mainly caused by burning coal ….. which is one of the reasons they produce so much CO2.
Hailing China as a “Green Leader” is the height of absurdity. China’s rapidly increasing CO2 production is one of the the main reasons the world is heading towards unstoppable global warming.
Cheers!
BobInget on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 2:10 pm
America’s fate, now in the hands of the world’s wealthiest gangsters, V.Putin and Goldman Saks.
What could possibly go wrong?
US seems committed to ‘regime change’ in North Korea, Yemen, ISIL, Syria, Venezuela.
I certainly hope Canada doesn’t build a wall before I sneak in.
deadlykillerbeaz on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 3:02 pm
The worldwide yearly coal consumption is currently at 7.5 billion tons. China burns 3.6 billion of them, 47 percent of the world’s total.
They go big, then they go home.
Coal provides 43 percent of their electricity, so it is and will be burned like there is no tomorrow in China.
http://www.mining-technology.com/features/featurecoal-giants-the-worlds-biggest-coal-producing-countries-4186363/
Doesn’t the International Space Station house Russian cosmonauts working with American astronauts?
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition50/index.html
This talk of war with Russia is all bunkum and bosh.
Why the hell would the US flirt with nuclear war with Russia? Washington, DC would be the dead center, the bull’s eye, the prime target. A fool’s maneuver to go to war with Russia. Laughable, only stupid idiots with suicidal tendencies would attempt such a pyrrhic victory.
Trump might be stupid, a dunce, a dullard, dumb enough to fall for some neocons stunt pulled off in Syria, I doubt he is as dumb as a box of rocks and then go to war with Russia. I could be wrong, but probably not.
War with Russia? I suppose you could send some sidearms up to the Space Station to arm the Russians and the Americans up there.
War with Russia is ludicrous.
Trump might be off his rocker, worse than the drunk Nixon demanding Hanoi be nuked, however, war with Russia is out of the question.
He’s also been duped big time. Driven to distraction.
Might as well blow up the Space Station.
The deaths of six members of the Space Station crews would be a tragedy, 400,000 dead Syrians, a statistic.
It is absurd and insane both, this living.
makati1 on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 4:41 pm
As the imperial switch-over takes place, one country’s standard of living goes down. The other increases. Barring a major war, China will be the one calling the shots in another 10 years. Power always moves West.
makati1 on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 4:53 pm
deadly, 2015 coal consumption PER CAPITA:
China – 2.3 tons per person.
US – 6.8 tons per person.
https://yearbook.enerdata.net/
Seems that the US is the Number One coal consumer PER CAPITA in the world, which is the number that counts. Not total coal use.
dooma on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 5:07 pm
Has anybody here though for a second that China’s CO2 emissions are linked to their population size?
They are doing what the West once did when they discovered that with accelerated industrial output came increased pollution. Realising this, they made rules and regulations to protect the environment.
Then they (west) just sacked their environmental police.
dooma on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 5:09 pm
Thanks for trying to explain per capita Mak. Australia is pretty high on the per capita list as well, unfortunately.
onlooker on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 5:10 pm
Mak, not really it is the total coal use. For the pernicious effects of coal use such as acid rain and smog/particulate pollution will invariably affect an entire country and spread out over a vast region on air and water currents
makati1 on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 5:31 pm
Onlooker, you mean like in the U$? Acid rain was common for a long time in PA and is still a problem. A lot of forests were killed before the dirty coal use dropped when the U$ shipped its industry to China.
As for China, yes it will cause problems until they get it under control, but they have to compete with the U$ if they want to survive as a sovereign nation. China is the U$ 30 years ago, before American manufacturing moved to Asia and took pollution with it.
Americans buy the pollution causing junk and then complain about the terrible situation there. Hypocrites.
Davy on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 6:00 pm
Makati and his per capita crusade again. Hey makati, is that going to save the planet dumbass? Does doing better than the US (per capita) yet still by far the highest emitter somehow make it ok? Laughing
Davy on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 6:02 pm
Makati, are you OK? You have been agitated lately
makati1 on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 6:17 pm
Davy, Agitated? Nope I have been enjoying my posts greatly. Watching the U$ disintegrate at an ever faster rate. Reading the patriotic crap comments of some of its less informed citizens. Or maybe I should say, over informed by their MSM propaganda mills. Brainwashed. In deep denial that their country’s time is about over and other countries time is beginning.
Per capita is the ONLY number that counts and is the one the U$ does NOT want you to think about. Complain about China burning coal when the U$ burns 3 times as much per person to support its obese, greedy, spoiled population. Hypocrites all. And your only comeback is name calling. Typical American.
I am prepared for the day that the ATMs shut down permanently, the internet is shut off and the U$ is in lock-down. Are you?
eugene on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 7:24 pm
It’s pathetic to watch untold millions of Americans twist reality in a maddening effort to convince ourselves all is well.
Davy on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 7:36 pm
Yeap, agitated, I guess club p’s is not all its cracked up to be.
Boat on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 7:48 pm
mak,
The US did cut coal consumption 9 percent last year. We’re working on it. The world’s energy growth next year is expected to be 80 percent renewables. Let’s all thank Obama for that. Lol
makati1 on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 7:53 pm
Davy, does insanity run in your family? Or do you like to make out like you are stupid? You have a broken record for a mind. Worthless.
I can live anywhere I want to live, and I chose to NOT live in a police state dictatorship that is committing suicide daily. Where privacy is a word in the dictionary only. Where no true freedoms exist anymore. I live where those things still exist. You don’t.
Since you have no REAL firsthand knowledge of the PS except what you read and what your warped mind conjures up, you are just trying to upset me. Not going to happen. I laugh at your attempts. Keep it up. You only prove my point. ^_^
I feel sorry for your family if they get the same treatment. Go look after your goats. They are on the same mental level. You can relate.
makati1 on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 8:02 pm
Boat, renewable stats are as fake as you can get. ALL of them require fossil fuels to exist, ALL of them and always will.
While the US may cut its coal use, it has a long way to go to get down to the world average per capita use. ~1.8T/per person world average in 2015 vs U$ ~6.8T per person. When the U$ gets close to 1.8T, get back to me, if you can. lol
Anonymouse on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 8:31 pm
Boat has trouble with basic math, reading, comprehension, and, numerous issues with reality as well mak. How many times does he have to prove it? Like that ass-pull of his above. Nothing in that statement is remotely true, or sourced, or even relevant.
He doesn’t even know what attribution or a source is, or why they matter lol.
Sissyfuss on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 8:32 pm
Mak, insanity does run in my family but me and my invisible 6 foot rabbit don’t let it bother us.
Boat on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 9:09 pm
annoy much,
Learn to Google and even you might learn to keep up. Learning to use information is a Jewish tradition. Not to Google is a Canadian raghead tradition. This why ya’lls hate is extream. A hand me down tradition.
Boat on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 9:30 pm
mak,
As time marches on we will see about those facts you deny. Much like short your shadow views of the world will continue to dissapare by mere reality.
GregT on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 9:42 pm
Boat,
“Learning to use information is a Jewish tradition.”
What’s with your bizarre fixation on the Jewish people?
“This why ya’lls hate is extream. A hand me down tradition.”
WTF are you babbling on about now Kevin. Hire yourself a translator.
makati1 on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 10:41 pm
Boat, I live in the real world, not the fantasy one most Americans like you inhabit. I think YOU will be the one that gets smacked in the face by that reality 2×4. Your arrogance and stupidity is blatant.
Sissyfuss on Mon, 10th Apr 2017 11:40 pm
I am impressed with Xi’s address especially if it is sincere. He must see the ravages done to the air and water in his country and knows that the path to sustainability is far from the one China travels.Even if it is lip service it is standard deviations above anything being emitted from the Buffoon’s lips.
Anonymouse on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 1:55 am
Think a translator will help any?
Hey, does anyhere here speak retard? Boaty is trying to communicate again, and its pretty bad. Planty can speak retard fluently, maybe he can help.
Anonymouse on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 2:02 am
Actually, in a strange roundabout way, the retard is correct about googling being a Jewish tradition. But you can rest assured, it was entirely by accident. Not unlike an infinite room filled with monkeys pounding away at typewriters…
Or in this case, one merikan retard drooling on his keyboard.
Anyhow, Goggle owners Sergei Brin and Larry Page….guess which tribe of the chosen people those two belong to….
Jewish tradition indeed, lol.
GregT on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 2:08 am
“Planty can speak retard fluently, maybe he can help.”
plantocrite is a post menopausal ‘she’ Anon. At least she has an excuse.
Cloggie on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 2:12 am
Boat said This why ya’lls hate is extream.
…end lern too spel, Meauron.
Xi said “Man coexists with nature, which means that any harm to nature will eventually come back to haunt man. We hardly notice natural resources such as air, water, soil and blue sky when we have them. But we won’t be able to survive without them.
“Industrialization has created material wealth never seen before, but it has also inflicted irreparable damage to the environment. We must not exhaust all the resources passed on to us by previous generations and leave nothing to our children or pursue development in a destructive way.
“Clear waters and green mountains are as good as mountains of gold and silver. We must maintain harmony between man and nature and pursue sustainable development.”
The Chinese represent the oldest civilization on earth and know how the future will look like:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/ten-largest-wind-turbines-to-date/
They would never attack a US ally during a dinner attended by the US and Chinese president. Xi remained polite during the visit, but when he returned home…
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/china-mocks-trump-missile-strike-after-xi-leaves-us-a-weakened-politician-who-needed-to-flex-his-muscles/
Xinhua, the state news agency, on Saturday called the strike the act of a weakened politician who needed to flex his muscles,” The New York Times reported. “In an analysis, Xinhua also said Mr. Trump had ordered the strike to distance himself from Syria’s backers in Moscow, to overcome accusations that he was ‘pro-Russia.
With the insane strike, Trump alienated himself from the greatest potential ally he could have, Putin. All US right-wingers are shocked and distance themselves from Trump. The two kosher traitors Ivanka and Jared Kushner can be proud of themselves…
https://altright.com/2017/04/10/america-first-becomes-beautiful-babies/
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/04/trump-jared-kushner-passover
Cloggie on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 2:39 am
Everybody with a walnut-sized brain can figure out that in war, “information” provided by parties involved, doesn’t count, only cui bono.
In Syria 400,000 people and counting were killed. The military importance of poison gas is low, all parties involve know how to kill without it anyway. Assad knew that poison gas would cause an outrage… and so did his opponents. Assad knew that his winning streak, thanks to Russian intervention and contrary to US objectives, had raised anger and resentment within the West, that was waiting for an opportunity to hit back.
This (somewhat neutral) Indian source offers an interesting new insight in who might have been behind the poison gas attack (if there was one in the first place): Turkey.
http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2017/04/10/turkeys-role-in-idlib-chemical-attack-needs-to-be-probed/
Why is there a “civil war” in Syria in the first place? Because Syria wasn’t yet a meek member of the US empire, that’s why. Just like Ukraine, Syria needed to be dragged from the Russian into the US sphere of influence. The US could exploit the good services of Turkey, KSA and Qatar, already meek members of the Empire, who were for purely local reasons keen to reduce Iranian influence in the region by toppling Assad and turn Syria in a Sunny dominated country.
That motivation is still alive with the Turks, who are fighting tooth and nail against an investigation.
The civil war began in Turkey bordering Idlib, where the attack supposedly took place. Idlib was before 1922 part of the Ottoman empire and Turkey wants Idlib back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idlib
makati1 on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 2:40 am
Cloggie, it might snow in Manila today. I totally agree with your observation. The U$ has a child egomaniac with his finger on the Red Button. I am glad I do not live there anymore.
GregT on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 3:01 am
Completely agree as well, except for the Ivanka/Kushner angle. There are far more powerful forces at work here. I would also give religion a little bit more credit.
Cloggie on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 3:48 am
Isn’t kosher traitors Ivanka and Jared Kushner religious enough?
Jared Kushner is the direct channel between Trump and the “far more powerful forces at work”.
Kushner is to Trump what David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel were to Obama.
Cloud9 on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 7:57 am
Given a choice the between perceived lessor of two evils, Middle America, myself included, made its choice. When all is said and done, we still picked evil. We are stuck with the outcome. If any of you rubes think any of us control any of this you are out of your mind. We are all part of the chattering class. If our chattering had any import, we would be shut down. We all strut and fret our hour upon the stage, then the curtain comes down and the lights go out and the ever changing audience moves on.
AFDF on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 11:43 am
Once again this is an myopic view of China. I said previously that China is a homogeneous society and it implies that their armed forces is incompetent. What more, and increasingly the US too, the world is moving toward laziness and dictatorship. It means electing strong men to mediate their affairs for them. This is dumb because the guy is a nobody. He’s only somebody if you give him the title.
Trump is a nobobdy
Putin a nobody
Duterte a nobody
Xi Jingping is a nobody
The problem is they’re not acting as a nobody.
The solution is electing a nobody like myself. I will actually be a nobody.
This will allows de-focus attention on a nobody and encourages the general population, technocrats, farmers, and armed forces commanders more room to excel.
Would you want war with Nobody’s army? No! I, a nobody would have thousands of capable commanders at my disposal and you will get a beating so severe you would never think of electing a strong nobody again.
But you will not learn and the cycle of history will repeat.
GregT on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 12:00 pm
“Jared Kushner is the direct channel between Trump and the “far more powerful forces at work”.”
Not buying it Cloggie. Jared and Ivanka have been together for a decade. I’m sure that the Donald was well aware of his ‘heritage’. Besides, Trump was already well connected with the central bankers, Hollywood, and the globalist network long before Jared ever came onto the scene. Likely long before he was even born.
IMO, Trump isn’t the man that you believe him to be. More of the same, in all likelihood worse.
Cloggie on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 12:42 pm
AFDF, perhaps it is time to define a “nobody”. And not shying away from a constructive contribution myself, I would propose you as an example of the yet to be formally defined “nobody”.
Trump isn’t the man that you believe him to be. More of the same, in all likelihood worse.
Now I’m not buying THAT. That leaves unexplained why the entire political system went *TILT* on the election night and after.
I’m still willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt and that he was simply overwhelmed by the relentless hostility and resistance from the globalist mafia aka Establishment.
Cloggie on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 12:53 pm
One of the giant pluses of the internet is that we have a global public that for a significant part has spent the last 27 years reading internet resources that were not available elsewhere and this public could do this without sanctions.
Oh boy, is this bad news for the “NWO”, the power of which consist for the largest part of brain-programming via the globalist media.
And then you get this…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4401966/Kushner-facing-onslaught-anti-Semitic-hate-speech.html
…because large parts of the public interpret the Bannon-Kushner standoff as a conflict between alt-right and neocon-right. And unless you have been living under a stone, everyone meanwhile knows what a neocon really is.
The globalist media like the German Die Zeit hate Trump and say so, but all of a sudden they see that there is hope for them: Kushner:
http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2017-04/jared-kushner-donald-trump-steve-bannon-weisses-haus
(Kushner = “superman”)
There can be no doubt that Kushner won a victory over Bannon, through the usual way these sneaky folks fight:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2017/04/05/roger-stone-jared-kushner-leaking-anti-bannon-stories-msnbcs-joe-scarborough/
Trump is not a big intellectual light, but he has instinct and is a fighter. But compared to Putin-2000, the task of Trump-2017 is incomparable more difficult for Trump. Putin didn’t have to fight an entire establishment, only US-protected oligarchs. What Trump is facing is comparable to what the Austrian was facing.
Anonymouse on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 1:02 pm
Cloggied sink is a fraud Greg, he never believed president hair-piece was the second coming of Vladimir Putin, regardless of the all the electrons he’s spent trying to convince everyone.
I mean, how many billionaires, neo-liberals, oil-execs and rabid russo\islmaphobe pentagon insiders do you have appoint before clogged will just admit his elaboratly constructed image of trump is simply false?
clogged is little more than a fraud and possibly a shill. Though what he has to gain from trying to push his fabricated image of trumpfy here is a bit of a mystery. If trumpf were to appoint George Soros head of the federal reserve and kissed his hand at the press conference, clogged here would still insist it was all part of trumpfs cunning long-term plan to beat the globalists at their own game.
You can give it up now clogged. Maybe, if you are lucky, the trumpy will deny human-induced climate change again. That part of his personality, at least, is the real deal. As for the rest of it, you can stop beating that dead horse now, really.
Cloggie on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 1:26 pm
clogged is little more than a fraud and possibly a shill.
Everybody who has a different opinion than you is a “fraud” and a “shill”, right? I’m btw much longer here (5+ years) than you, so perhaps you tone down a little with your baseless accusations. You are a complete nobody, probably driving a car and living in a fossil fuel heated apartment, admiring his own beautiful opinions and for the rest does absolutely nothing.
he never believed president hair-piece was the second coming of Vladimir Putin, regardless of the all the electrons he’s spent trying to convince everyone.
Not an entire coherent sentence, so I repeat what I have consistently said since the elections: Trump is no Putin, he can’t be in the present (end-phase) state of the US empire. I have always said that Trump can be best compared with Gorbachev; both were/are undertakers of their respective empires, although both didn’t/don’t want this to be true; both hoped/hope that through reforms a turn-around could/can be found, an illusion. Gorbachev and Trump were the last gasps of a dying empire, but all the signs are that the US empire won’t go down without a fight, because the economy still more or less functions.
Cloggie on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 1:50 pm
What about you sub human Germans Nazi fucks? The more homogenised you became the closer to collapse they got. In the end there were nothing but a broken incompetent nation of inbred losers wandering around their rubble.
Seriously? So what was in hindsight so great about the US empire? The moonlanding, OK. And what genius did accomplish that? 121 postwar German engineers, using the resources of the US tax farm, giving America an undeserved cachet:
http://tinyurl.com/jluvxse
Inbread? Pure Germanic race for sure. And all the signs are that your Bananaboat scientists are boldly going nowhere, regardless how much you promote race-mixing. Basically too stupid to properly close NASA down. Poor America, ran out of Nazi-scientists to outsource sexy projects to. In fact, we in Eurasia only have to wait until you folks run America in the ground for us through mass immigration, so that in the end only an incompetent 3rd world “nation” remains that nobody has to take seriously anymore. Keep up the good work, Apneasnot. We’ll send an expedition army by the time a large chunk of the European-American population is begging for support from the Mother Civilization, just like in 1776. All you kosher folks achieved is destroying the very weapon you had to attempt to conquer the world. What is so great about a country where in the big cities large numbers of people can’t read and write:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/07/detroit-illiteracy-nearly-half-education_n_858307.html
No wonder you are so depressed and nihilistic, because you know you are going to fail and that on a geopolitical level your tribe is going to receive the biggest kick in teeth since Spain-1492. Or worse. You don’t have China, nor Russia and you could lose France next month as well and if not, than at the next elections at the latest.
Watched yesterday a US vassal German documentary about how well-organized the European Right is, including strong links with Russia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a_kWo5DFPg
A central theme is the small town of Donzy in the center of France, that ALWAYS votes like the French average. Nobody these days hides his sympathy for the Front National anymore in Donzy and all the signs are that a Trump-surprise is possible in France. The French, German and Russian Right are in agreement about a “Europe of the Fatherlands” as a follow-up of US-subsidiary EU. Paris-Berlin-Moscow will be anything but a US-subsidiary. In fact, once a European Confederation is in place, we can begin playing the protector of European America and systematically begin to encourage the Euro’s in the US to leave the Union. There are quite a few Americans these days who no longer have any qualms calling themselves “European”. That’s a bad sign for your tribe. Enjoy your coming demise.
Apneaman on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 3:06 pm
Brexit latest: Food inflation hits highest rate in three years in March
The figures confirm that a long period of food price deflation, helped by a supermarket price war, is over thanks to the slump in the pound since last Summer’s Brexit vote
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-ons-food-inflation-highest-three-years-a7677761.html
Apneaman on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 3:10 pm
Unprecedented Harm to Great Barrier Reef From Back-to-Back Bleaching Confirmed
“It’s becoming more and more clear that the Great Barrier Reef has been pushed onto the ropes by human-caused climate change. That its very future is now in serious jeopardy.”
“During 2016 to 2017, the Great Barrier Reef experienced an unprecedented back-to-back bleaching event. In 2016, more than 60 percent of the corals of the reef’s northern section experienced bleaching. Ultimately, roughly 2/3 of the shallow water corals along this section of the reef perished.”
https://robertscribbler.com/2017/04/11/unprecedented-harm-to-great-barrier-reef-from-back-to-back-bleaching-confirmed/
It’s a goner along with many other ecosystems. Then the humans.
Apneaman on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 3:17 pm
Melting glaciers caught in incredible time-lapse photographs show climate change in action
James Balog documents impact of global warming with astonishing images on behalf of Geological Society of America
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/melting-glacier-time-lapse-photographs-climate-change-greenland-antarctica-global-warming-a7666141.html
Apneaman on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 4:06 pm
Hair clog you are making contradictory assertions again.
“No wonder you are so depressed and nihilistic, because you know you are going to fail and that on a geopolitical level your tribe is going to receive…bla bla bla”
A nihilist could not possibly be depressed about the supposed future failings of his/her tribe because a nihilist would not have have a tribe because a nihilist believes in nothing, has no loyalties, and feels no purpose.
Much of that is true for me except for the people I have relationships with. The other part of nihilism is a supposed desire to destroy. I have no such desire and the humans are doing a fine job as it is, so the best thing anyone with a destructive desire could do is let them carry on. Fact is the only way the humans could bring on their extinction faster is to let the nukes fly. No super volcano or asteroid has come close to destroying life on this planet as fast as the troop of rapacious apes has. After the asteroid hit 66 million years ago it still took another 33,000 years for the last of the dinosaurs to go extinct and they were already dying back/off for a few million years as it was. Unprecedented. The speed of the destruction the humans are doing is exactly that – Unprecedented. Since the humans have mountains of evidence that clearly shows it is their behaviour which is destroying the living biosphere, yet they will not change, then I can only conclude that the species is, by nature, nihilistic.
Apneaman on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 4:08 pm
Oh and clog…….
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/
just in case you want to stop looking so unlearned.
Anonymouse on Tue, 11th Apr 2017 8:38 pm
No clogtard, having a different ‘opinion’ is just that, a differing opinion. That does not make one a fraud, or a shill, necessarily, though that is entirely possible of course. That is not what is happening with you.
You have, and continue to insist your man-baby ‘president’ is ‘X’.
For brevitys sake, X = your sum collective bullshit about his supposed motivations, loyalties, and goals etc.
Problem is, even a cursory examination of his actions words and deeds to date, show him to have none of the attributes of ‘X’ you keep crediting him with. Quite the contrary in fact, and this is easily verified by simply watching any news source, even uS propaganda.
You have changed tack slightly and now that he is acting exactly like every other amerikan president before him, and not at all like the fantasy version you’ve been protecting non-stop, all you can offer up is the evidence-free assertion that he has been forced to act contrary to his wishes.
Shillary would have attacked sooner, and without any hesitation. The fact trump needed his rubber arm twisted ever so slightly, does not make him amerikas answer to Vladimir Putin. The intended plan was for shillary cunton to be the one to cheer-lead and ‘sign-off’ on a wider amerikan war in Syria, and ramped up aggression against Russia, China, North Korea etc, not DJT. So things went off script when trumpy accidentally ‘won’, big deal. Both trumpy and his deep state frenemies seem to be adjusting to one another, if a little awkwardly.
Cloggie on Wed, 12th Apr 2017 2:25 am
Perhaps Greg and Anonytard, both supporters of the “Trump=political BAU” thesis, would care to explain away this:
https://redice.tv/news/trump-we-re-not-going-into-syria
Now Trump claims that ISIS, not Assad, is the party that needs to be defeated and that he has no intention of invading Syria.
My explanation: the reaction of his supporter base has scared the hell out of him and he now deplores his stupid action in Syria. Trump has only one source of support in the US and that is his electorate (and Putin and the European Right, until last week at least). It were the two traitors Ivanka and Jared who had pushed Trump into the strike, according to Trump’s son Eric:
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/04/11/eric-trump-ivanka-convinced-president-trump-to-strike-syria/
Apparently Trump is now backtracking, as he should. Every former ally/supporter of him has condemned the insane action: Farage, le Pen, Putin, Ann Coulter, Justin Raimondo, Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson as well as every other altright source:
https://www.counter-currents.com/2017/04/god-emperor-no-more/
https://altright.com/2017/04/10/america-first-becomes-beautiful-babies/
What Trump promised during the election and the reasons why he was elected against all odds were:
– build that wall
– no foreign wars and certainly not with Russia
– jobs, meaning “America First”, meaning mercantilism, now that the US has lost the competition on most foreign markets
– drain the swamp, meaning get rid of special interests determining US (foreign) policy
It is still not too late to write off Trump’s presidency, but boy was this a bad week.
Nevertheless, we know in advance that Trump is going to fail in the end, just like Gorbachev. Trump will be the last president of European America (in its old shape). In 4-8 years time at the latest, demographics will have defeated the Euro’s in America and the swamp will be back in power, for ever, making sure that this Trump stunt won’t be repeated and neo-Bolshevik repression will be implemented. From then on there will be only one way out: breaking up the country, just like happened to the USSR. That will be the real drama unfolding, not peak oil or climate change. Just don’t forget to bring suntan oil to the battle field.
Cloggie on Wed, 12th Apr 2017 4:59 am
just in case you want to stop looking so unlearned.
Wtf, why post a link to the Oxford Dictionary?
Meanwhile in unrelated news, it is official, according to the US government the holocaust didn’t happen, because you see, “not even Hitler used chemical weapons against his own people”.
This is of course true if you have read a little about WW2, but you are still not supposed to say this in polite company.
The Russian government (or at least RT) still wants to keep up the old Nuremberg lies and posts this hilarious intended rebuttal:
https://www.rt.com/usa/384406-spicer-chemical-weapons-hitler/
The real news though is how in the comments section the vast majority of hundreds of posters respond: they no longer believe the holotale. Such is the enormous significance of more than 25 years of internet, resulting in the undoing of the tales of the WW2 Al(l)lies.
American revisionist Bradley Smith summed up decades of Holocaust revisionism by asking a single question: “give me a single name and proof that this person was gassed in a gas-chamber in one of the alleged 6 extermination camps”.
Nobody answered that question. Nobody can.
All Putin needs to do to finish off the US empire is to open his war archives and release the truth, namely that the Alllies made the holo-story up to justify the conquest and division of Europe by total demonization of the Germans.
Nobody will close this Box of Pandora ever again. American right-wingers know exactly where the weak spot of the US deep state really is. Time to lit the fuse.
Theedrich on Wed, 12th Apr 2017 5:18 am
Cloggie is right. The U.S. is sinking fast. Nihilists like the man-ape and Anon desperately want the death of the White race, and cannot tolerate the fact that a few of us want to survive. On the issue of China the basic fact is this: The average White IQ in America is 100, but with the 85-IQ Negroids and the muds from Suramerica and elsewhere, the average of the country is probably around 92 and clearly declining. Yes, the average Ashkenazi is about 112 or so, but those Yids are disappearing due to low average birthrates, as is typical of higher IQs everywhere. Meanwhile, the average Chinese/eastern Mongoloid IQ is about 105 or so, and their enormous numbers mean that China has a vast population in the range 140 and above, which is where the top-level scientists, physicians, mathematicians, and other high-echelon professions reside.
Ultimately, it is median intelligence which makes the difference in the fate of nations and populations. Life proceeds through evolutionary epistemology — the development of knowledge, incarnate in body, brain, behavior and soul, of various species. Christianity hates this fact, and America with its egalitarianism and love of subhumans is perforce genosuicidal. (It is no accident that it was and is Christianity which has fought the science of evolution ever since Darwin.)
Due to its nuclear armaments, the U.S. can impose its will on its European vassals for a little while longer. But ultimately it is doomed by its own choices. There will be no “new American century”; there will only be a new Mongoloid millennium. And perhaps, if the Europeans can shake off their American shackles, a truly great White power like the one envisioned by the Austrian can arise from the imperial ashes.
Davy on Wed, 12th Apr 2017 5:49 am
Clog, look in your own backyard when considering which nation is going to collapse first.
For years now the majority on this anti-American site have been saying the US is going to collapse and look around the US is doing as good or better as the rest. The US in all likelihood could be the last man standing. Too bad anti-Americans because egg is on your faces. You are emotional failures and that translate into your intellectual leanings. I am not here to say the US cannot collapse and I am here to say it will collapse as we know it along with a general collapse. I am spitting on dumbass.
“Geert Wilders And The Suicide Of Europe”
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10179/geert-wilders-suicide-europe
“More broadly, the Netherlands is a country where the Muslim community shows few signs of integration. There are now forty no-go zones in the country; riots easily erupt, recently in Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Nijmegen. People recently from other countries repeatedly attack Dutch-born citizens. Some are so sure of their impunity that they publish online videos of their crimes. Throughout the country, an ethnic cleansing that Europeans are too scared to name is taking place in the suburbs, and non-Muslim residents often say they feel harassed.”
“Non-Muslim women are encouraged by local authorities to dress “modestly”. As in Islam dogs are haram (impure), dog owners are asked to keep their pets indoors. In 2014, 2015 and 2016, Islamists demonstrated and shouted slogans in support of Hamas and the Islamic State.”
“Daily life has become particularly difficult for the 40,000 Jews still living in the country; districts long inhabited by members of the Jewish community have become almost entirely Muslim. Authorities recommend that Jews avoid any “visible sign” of Jewishness to avoid creating “unrest”. Muslim delinquency is high; the percentage of Muslims sent to jail for various crimes is notably higher than the percentage of Muslims in the population. Six percent of the country’s population are Muslim; about 20% of all inmates are Muslim. None of this is secret.”