Capitalism in Decay

Can Trump Stop The Invasion?

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Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

In its lede editorial Wednesday, The New York Times called upon Congress to amend the National Emergency Act to “erect a wall against any President, not just Mr. Trump, who insists on creating emergencies where none exist.”

Trump “took advantage” of a “loophole” in the NEA, said The Times, to declare “a crisis at the border, contrary to all evidence.”

The Times news desk, however, apparently failed to alert the editorial page on what the top story would be that day.

“Record Numbers Crossing to U.S., Deluging Agents” was the page-one headline. The Times quoted Kevin K. McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection:

“The system is well beyond capacity, and remains at the breaking point. … This is … a border security and a humanitarian crisis.”

Reporter Caitlin Dickerson explained what is behind CPB’s alarm:

“The number of migrant families crossing the Southwest border has once again broken records, with unauthorized entries nearly double what they were a year ago.”

She continued,

“More than 76,000 migrants crossed the border without authorization in February, an 11-year high … newcomers continue to arrive, sometimes by the busload, at the rate of 2,200 a day.”

Only if one believes in open borders is this not an emergency, not a crisis. Consider the budgetary impact alone of this invasion.

The majority of migrants breaching the border are from Mexico and Central and South America. Most do not read, write or speak our English language, are not college graduates and arrive with few skills.

Almost all will enter the half of the U.S. population that consumes more in social benefits during their lifetime than they will ever pay in taxes.

With the U.S. debt over 100 percent of gross domestic product and the deficit running at nearly 5 percent of GDP, at full employment, the burden the migrant millions are imposing upon our social welfare state will one day collapse the system. For these folks are coming to a country where education K-12 is free and where, if the Democrats take over, pre-K though college will be free.

These folks will be eligible for city, county, state and federal programs that provide free or subsidized food, rent, housing and health care.

All were enacted for the benefit of U.S. citizens. Uninvited, the Third World is coming to partake of and enjoy them.

With 328 million people here now, approaching twice the number as in 1960, how many more can we take in before government sinks under the weight of its beneficiaries?

And there is a larger issue.

If, as appears probable, President Trump is not going to be able to build his wall and all the security measures taken in this century have proved inadequate to stanch the invasion of America, how does the invasion end?

Or is this the endless invasion, where the future is decided on our 1,900-mile border with Mexico and we, as the last superpower, are a pitiful, helpless giant too morally paralyzed to stop it?

The resolution and determination of Third World peoples to come to America, even if they have to break our laws to get in and stay, is proven.

And if there is no matching national will to halt the invasion, and no truly effective means that would be acceptable to our elites, the migrants are never going to stop coming. And why should they?

Politically, this invasion means the inevitable death of the national Republican Party, as peoples of color, who vote 70-90 percent Democratic in presidential elections, become the new majority of 21st-century America.

The bell will toll for the Grand Old Party when Texas votes like California in some presidential election. That is game, set, match.

What is remarkable is how our cultural elites are giddily embracing what most of the advanced world is recoiling from.

The Times that berates Trump for trying to secure the border with his wall constantly bewails the rise of ethnic nationalism, populism, tribalism and “illiberal democracies” in Europe. But the rising “isms” of the new Europe are driven by popular fear and loathing of the very future The Times cannot wait to embrace.

Japan’s population of 127 million, the second oldest on Earth, has begun to shrink. But there seems to be no desire in Japan to import millions of East or South Asians or Africans to replace the vanishing Japanese.

Does China look upon its diversity as its greatest strength?

Hardly. Beijing is repopulating Tibet with Han Chinese, and has set up “re-education camps” to de-program Uighur Muslims and Kazakhs in the west so they sever their birth attachments to their ethnicity and faith and convert into good communists.

In the U.S., the ball is now in Trump’s court.

If he cannot get a Democratic House to fund his wall and the forces now on the border are being overwhelmed by the migrants, as CPB reports, how does he propose to halt the invasion?

And if he does not stop it, who will? And what does failure mean for America’s future as one nation and one people?

Cultural/Ideological Divide

The Fourth Turning & The Case Against Cities

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Via HardScrabbleFarmer.com,

Historians spend a great deal of time on the subject of cities. Rome, Athens, Constantinople, London, Tokyo, Cairo, New York and Moscow. It is as if the stuff that is most worthwhile is the density of the population, those locations where people lived closely packed together rather than the substance of the people who lived everywhere in between. It would appear that all the significant events and accomplishments of a people throughout history are focused on urban centers and as a result we have convinced ourselves that it is and has always been the cities that define a society.

Our perception of urban living versus rural is often defined by the culture shapers — politicians, academics, corporations and media. Rarely are the populations who inhabit the different regions asked about the impact of those decisions on their quality of life. They accept the paradigm into which they were born or they convince themselves that the alternatives are much worse than what they face living in densely populated urban centers.

We seem to readily accept that economic advantages of living in a city far outstrip the opportunities of living in the country, that the benefits of culture — museums and symphonies, for example — are unavailable to anyone who does not live where these attractions are located. There is an almost equal enthusiasm for certain benefits of urbanity, like diversity, that manifest as many, if not more drawbacks to a good life depending on how the effects of that mix manifests itself in good times and in bad. What one gains in access to a varied selection of cuisines is offset by what one must deal with when communication between diverse groups is not possible due to language or cultural differences. While the former are often cited as beneficial, the latter is never mentioned except where it can be used to shame or ridicule anyone who objects. Under social and economic stresses those features such as clannish or tribal behaviors emerge and create fractures along a number of fault lines.

In reviewing the challenges of a stressed and divided society like America in the 21st century, we must consider which behaviors and choices bear the greatest responsibility for those problems. While experts most often point the finger at those who are resistant to change, as if change itself is always beneficial and stasis is always a negative, it doesn’t mean that they are correct in their estimation. While it is difficult to prove that there is a net benefit to de-urbanization, it is very easy to prove that there are far more negatives associated with increased urbanization.

Let’s start with a few basic facts concerning the variables between the two.

According to the US Census nearly two-thirds of Americans live in an urban environment. That area represents less than one fiftieth of the inhabitable land available for habitation and when we look at the numbers, it becomes far more stark. The population of large cities with over one million inhabitants is over 7,000 per square mile, while in rural areas that figure drops to 35.

200:1 is a variable that presents quite a few challenges, most of which are environmental.

Everyone who has ever visited or seen a CAFO where livestock are kept prior to slaughter for fattening can tell you that the single most recognizable factor is the waste. In rural areas where a single family inhabits the same amount of space that would fit 150 inhabitants in a city, there is adequate drainage and soil to accommodate their waste with little or no effect on the environment. In a city there exists no spare land to accommodate any waste disposal and so virtually all excess waste must be treated at an extremely high cost with an even greater amount of material that must be relocated away from the urban source. This goes for solid wastes as well as human waste. Urbanized setting cannot dispose of their detritus without reliance on rural areas to distribute those accumulated wastes. Because of the volume produced, there is virtually little chance of any of that being dealt with organically, i.e. allowing for nature to metabolize the wastes, rather they must be buried in landfills creating huge toxic storage issues that will take centuries rather than days to dissipate.

Cities likewise are incapable of producing even a fraction of what they consume. Urban farming accounts for at best 5% of their total needs making them dependent upon their rural counterparts for 95% of their nutritional requirements. Cities, quite simply, cannot feed themselves nor dispose of their own waste while rural areas have close to zero dependence on urban enclaves for either of the two.

Rural areas of the United States of America enjoy a much higher quality of life than urbanized area by a large margin.Crime rates are three times higher in cities, while tax rates are doubled. The income necessary to maintain a standard of living in a city is 35% higher than someone living in a rural area. In terms of pure economics whatever advantage higher salaries provide to urban dwellers, it is offset by a factor of almost 3 to 1 and this is based only on six raw data points; energy, housing, food, medical care, taxes, and public services. It fails to take into account the radical differences in what urban people must spend on additional factors associated with urban dwelling, like additional security, fees, and medications (urbanites have a 40% higher incidence of anxiety and psychological issues than their rural counterparts as well as an STD rate over five times higher.

Overall the quality of life for rural inhabitants scores fifty percent higher than those who live in the city. While none of these are definitive proof that rural life is objectively better — there are people who thrive in high anxiety, isolation and close proximity to strangers at a higher cost, most human beings seem inclined to live in a peaceful setting with higher ratio of income to expenditures. Proponents of urban living will often point to areas that rural environments do not possess, such as public transportation, diversity (higher percentage of non-natives), and cultural institutions, they do not factor in the costs as opposed to their uses. For example people will tout the fact that the NYC Metropolitan Opera features a valuable resource for those who live in NYC. The truth is that with their 3,800 seat capacity and 200 performance season, less than 1 in 15 New Yorkers would ever have the chance to attend a single performance even if they wanted to, far less when you subtract season ticket holders and out of town ticket buyers. Just because a resource exists in an area does not mean that it will ever be utilized except by a small fraction of the urban population. And in no way are those from the rural regions unable to travel into the city for expressly those purposes, so such claims of urban advantage are specious at best.

It should also be noted that there are significant demographic aberrations in urban versus rural areas, especially in regards to age. Urban populations are much younger than rural ones and skewed to the advantage of younger females. Anyone who has ever made it to adulthood understands what draws young men to a specific place and that is available young females. As old courtship rights were eroded over the last century, especially in regards to the rise of feminism, and loosened standards in terms of sexual availability cities have acted as a magnet for unattached men and women. Similarly the numbers of in tact families is equally skewed with far more living in rural areas than their equal aged cohort in the city. Urban divorce rates are twice that of the country and people who live in the country are ten times as likely to live with a multi-generational extended family than in a city. In addition the number of newly arrived immigrants found in cities dwarves the number located in the countryside as well as second and third generation immigrants. To find someone who speaks the same language, shares the same values, and believes in the same principles you are far more likely to encounter them the further you move from the cities. There are few other considerations that show any of the correlating demographic idiosyncrasies than those demonstrated by the urban/rural divide.

Of course we can try to do what most economists would do in looking at this issue and most of them would point to the productivity and dollar value of each particular region. Cities, they will say, create more dollars per square foot than the rest of the country combined, but they never mention the difference between the source of those dollars. The country produces the ores that become raw materials to fulfill the demands of industry, they produce the overwhelming majority of sustenance, they produce the majority the energy that propels the engine of the economy and the vast majority of the tradesmen that build and maintain the infrastructure. Cities produce an overwhelming majority of those on various kinds of relief, government employees, attorneys and those who work in the financial service sector, none of which create anything of tangible value.One cannot survive long without nourishment but no lives are dependent on notional trading of derivatives or arcane regulations regarding tort law. Cities are the centers of specialization while the countryside is the seedbed of the generalist. Those who live in the city are five times more likely to call a plumber, electrician or tradesmen to perform basic tasks than a rural resident. The majority of all US Patents are held by someone who was born and raised in a rural environment and most of the greatest developments of the past two hundred years were the result of people reared on farms; Whitney, Deere, Bell, Edison, Ford, Browning, Eastman, Farnsworth and Howe are but a fraction of the names of those whose roots and generalist approach to life allowed them to create innovative and groundbreaking technologies, while most of what takes place in the cities is a form of refinement of those creations. Specialists have their place, especially in areas like surgery and engineering, but the origin of their fields always have their roots in the soil.

Human beings possess an innate and powerful drive towards concern for their fellow man. In the country if some sees an accident or a fire the first impulse is always to stop and render aid. It is a rare time when someone in need is ignored in a rural community. In the streets of most major cities the population has inured itself to the sight of human suffering and want. They step over the homeless, pretend they don’t notice the piles of human waste or puddles of urine, blithely stare off into space when someone exhibits signs of mental illness or emotional instability and walk away from random acts of violence. The internet is full of videos of beatdowns, assaults, meltdowns in public places, destruction of businesses, flash mobs and every other form of delinquency but only rarely do these occur in rural settings. It is the desensitized population that makes most of these acts possible despite the fact that the perpetrators are almost always far outnumbered by passerby. Their ability to compartmentalize the vast numbers of human interactions they have every day leaves them numb to their genetic predisposition towards altruism and empathy. People who lack empathy and concern for their fellow human beings cannot be expected to make decisions that would benefit anyone other than themselves. Part of the demographic slant in elections — the majority of Democratic voters live in urban areas while the majority of Republican voters live in rural areas with income, sex and age playing a distant second, third and fourth in terms of political affiliation. Interestingly enough the more dependent upon others someone is, the more likely they are to live in a city, thus the need to vote for increasing government involvement in their lives.

There are certainly more areas where the distinctions between the urban and the rural can be observed, but perhaps none more important than the disconnect between human beings and their natural environment. Human beings were adapted to live in accordance with the seasons and the environment in which they lived. The very advance of human civilization rested almost entirely upon his ability to create surplus food stores in order to survive in year round settlements. These centers became the hub of both agriculture and the domestication of animal species and from that came every conceivable advance and achievement we have ever made since then. The development of mathematics, written language, metallurgy, construction, engineering, medicine, all of them were a direct result of living in tune with the observable world of nature. Urban living divorces human populations of everything from the source of their daily nourishment to the elimination of their wastes. They turn on their lights without knowing where the source of that energy comes from, running in the rivers or buried in the coal seams of some distant wooded hillbillyville, they turn on their tap for their water unaware of its origins in the distant mountains of flyover country.

They are as dependent as babies on the material resources of the places they make fun of, incapable of feeding themselves or of cleaning up their own mess. They make more waste, use more resources, produce fewer necessities, consume more luxuries, have greater disparities between the economic classes, fewer intact families, experience far more crime and pay a higher price to adjudicate it, then ship off their offenders to prisons in the hinterlands where the rubes are hired as custodians to the human effluent of the cities. You can hear sirens 24/7 but you cannot see the stars at night. There is no such thing as silence, privacy is almost nil, personal space is reduced, self-reliance almost unknown. In most cities you do not have the right to arm yourself for defense against the criminal population that far exceeds that of the rural regions. Virtually every transaction in the city is economic with very few people doing business outside of their own very small circles. For all of their cosmopolitan posturing their social circles are 30% smaller than the average inhabitant of a town with 2,000 or fewer inhabitants. They are, in fact, the most provincial of peoples despite living in the most crowded environments.

I have lived in a multitude of places over the course of my life and have seen far more of the United States than the most seasoned travelers. I’ve lived in the center of the largest metropolis on the east coast and now choose to live in a New England village with a seasonal population that never exceeds 2,500 residents in an area twice the size of Manhattan. Our choice to live this way was predicated not upon an economic necessity, nor on an historic attachment to place, but rather as a deliberate choice based on what we wanted to best experience a better way of life. Our economic standard dropped significantly but so did our expenditures. Our physical health improved markedly, our relationships with each other and our children has been greatly enhanced, and our connection to those who live around us, friends, neighbors and the community at large has been nothing short of miraculous. Peace is plentiful, crime is not a concern, freedom to do what we want when we want to has increased and we feel like we have lost nothing in the exchange. Try as I might there are only a few things I can think of as being a loss to us; a good pizza, variety of restaurants, and the friends and family we left behind. Beyond that there is nothing I can think of worth noting and under no circumstance would we ever consider moving back.

The historians rarely concern themselves with life in the provinces, where the toil and sweat of the creator classes accumulated the surpluses that allowed cities to exist in the first place, to flourish and become the centers of civilization we think of today. Paris, Berlin, Los Angeles, Bangkok, Shanghai and Baghdad. They focus on the remnants of collapsed citadels, shrines and fortresses. Those places that served both to celebrate the accomplishments of the nations and principalities that gave birth to them, and their glory are all ruins today. As much as they were lighthouses to the young and the ambitious of each generation, so too were they the fire that drew attention from afar. Eventually the complex business of moving paper and money, of accumulating wealth and building shrines to their hubris always runs its eventual course. And as the lines of supply are cut off, either through inattention or rebellion, the dependent urban centers begin to feed on themselves, leaving them vulnerable to the predations of those who hunger for a taste of their flesh. And all that endures and comes to life amongst the derelict bones of an extinct metropolis are the sons and daughters of those who preserved their independence and traditions in the far flung country of the rural world.

Nothing lasts forever and the accelerating pace of domestic instability demonstrates just how fragile our social fabric is. As we enter the maelstrom of the Fourth Turning anything can happen. The Empire and its narrative struggle to maintain legitimacy in a time of universal corruption. All declines follow a similar path and once the collapse occurs events pick up speed leaving everyone who has failed to prepare caught unaware. The cities are the least secure location during such periods and only those who manage to find a place out of the reach of those who tear down the walls of our civilization will be safe.

Take everything into consideration, but prepare for anything. Your life may depend upon it.

Military Affairs

It’s Back to the Iran-Contra Days Under Trump

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WAYNE MADSEN in Strategic-Culture

Showing that he is adopting the neoconservative playbook every day he remains in office, Donald Trump handed the neocons a major win when he appointed Iran-contra scandal felon Elliott Abrams as his special envoy on Venezuela. Abrams pleaded guilty in 1991 to two counts of withholding information on the secret sale of US weapons for cash to help illegally supply weapons to the Nicaraguan right-wing contras, who were battling against the government of President Daniel Ortega. Abrams would have headed to a federal prison, but President George H. W. Bush, an unindicted co-conspirator in the scandal, issued pardons to Abrams and his five fellow conspirators – former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, and former Central Intelligence Agency officials Alan Fiers, Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, and Clair George – on Christmas Eve 1991, during the final weeks of Bush’s lame duck administration.

Abrams escaped being charged with more serious crimes by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh because he cut a last-minute deal with federal prosecutors. Trump, who has made no secret of his disdain for cooperating federal witnesses, would have normally called Abrams a “rat,” a gangster term meaning informant. The man who helped engineer the pardons for Abrams and his five convicted friends was none other than Bush’s Attorney General, William Barr, who has just been sworn in as Trump’s Attorney General. Trump, who is always decrying the presence of the “deep state” that thwarts his very move, has become the chief guardian of that entity.

During a recent hearing of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, newly-minted congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, reminded her colleagues and the world about the sordid background of Abrams.

Omar zeroed in on Abrams’s criminal history:

“Mr. Abrams, in 1991 you pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress regarding the Iran-Contra affair, for which you were later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. I fail to understand why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony you give today to be truthful.”

Abrams, as is the nature of neocons, refused to respond to Omar and cited her comments as “personal attacks.”

Abrams’s and his fellow criminals’ use of mercenaries and “death squads” to conduct secret wars in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala during the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s has made a re-entrance under Trump. Abrams was brought on board by neocons like National Security Adviser John Bolton, Vice President Mike Pence, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to oversee a US military build-up in Colombia, said to be 5000 US troops, to support Venezuelan paramilitary and military efforts to topple President Nicolas Maduro. Abrams and Bolton are also believed to have retained the services of another unindicted conspirator in the Iran-contra affair, Michael Ledeen, a colleague of the disgraced and convicted former Trump National Security Adviser, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. Ledeen and Flynn co-authored a book titled, “The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and its Allies.” The book contains nothing more than the standard neocon tripe one might expect from the likes of Ledeen.

An official investigation of the Iran-contra scandal by the late Republican Senator John Tower of Texas concluded that Abrams’s and Ledeen’s friend, Iranian-Jewish middleman Manucher Ghorbanifar, a long-time Mossad asset and well-known prevaricator, was extremely instrumental in establishing the back-channel arms deals with Iran. Ghorbanifar has long been on the CIA “burn list” as an untrustworthy charlatan, along with others in the Middle East of similar sketchy credentials, including the Iraq’s Ahmad Chalabi, Syria’s Farid “Frank” Ghadry, and Lebanon’s Samir “Sami” Geagea. These individuals, however, were warmly embraced by neocons like Abrams and his associates.

Abrams, whose links with Israeli intelligence has always been a point of consternation with US counter-intelligence officials, is part of an old cabal of right-wing anti-Soviet Democrats who coalesced around Senator Henry Jackson in the 1970s. Along with Abrams, this group of war hawks included Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Abram Shulsky, and Paul Wolfowitz. Later, this group would have its fingerprints on major US foreign policy debacles, ranging from Nicaragua and Grenada to Lebanon, Iraq, and Libya. Later, in December 2000, these neocons managed to convince president-elect George W. Bush of the need to “democratize” the Middle East. That policy would later bring not democracy but disaster to the Arab Middle East and North Africa.

Abrams and his cronies will not stop with Venezuela. They have old scores to settle with Nicaraguan President Ortega. The initiation of “regime change” operations in Nicaragua, supported by the CIA and the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami, have been ongoing for more than a year.

The Trump administration has already achieved a regime change victory of sorts in El Salvador. Nayib Bukele, the former mayor of San Salvador, who was expelled from the formerly-ruling left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation (FMLN) party and joined the right-wing GANA party, was recently elected president of El Salvador. Bukele has quickly re-aligned his country’s policies with those of the Trump administration. Bukele has referred to President Maduro of Venezuela as a “dictator.” He has also criticized the former FMLN government’s recognition of China and severance of diplomatic ties with Taiwan. It will be interesting to see how a sycophant like Bukele will politically survive as Trump continues to call hapless asylum-seeking migrants from his country, who seek residency in the United States, “rapists, gang monsters, murderers, and drug smugglers.”

Another country heading for a US-installed “banana republic” dictator is Haiti. President Jovenal Moise has seen rioting in the streets of Port-au-Prince as the US State Department removed all “non-essential” personnel from the country. Moise, whose country has received $2 billion in oil relief from Venezuela, to help offset rising fuel prices, has continued to support the Maduro government. However, at the US-run and neo-colonial artifice, the Organization of American States (OAS), Moise’s envoys have been under tremendous pressure to cut ties with Venezuela and recognize the US puppet Juan Guaido as Venezuelan president. Moise’s refusal to do so resulted in armed gangs hitting the streets of Port-au-Prince demanding Moise’s resignation. It is the same neocon “regime change” playbook being used in Venezuela and Nicaragua.

There will be similar attempts to replace pro-Maduro governments in his remaining allies in the region. These include Suriname, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Abrams was also brought in as an adviser on Middle East policy in the George W. Bush administration. The carnage of Iraq is a stark testament to his record. In 2005, it was reported that two key Bush White House officials – Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams – gave a “wink and a nod” for the assassinations by Israeli-paid operatives of three key Lebanese political figures seeking a rapprochement with Syria and Lebanese Hezbollah – Member of Parliament Elie Hobeika, former Lebanese Communist Party chief George Hawi, and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

In 2008, a United Nations panel headed by former Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare later concluded Hariri was assassinated by a “criminal network” and not by either Syrian and Lebanese intelligence or Lebanese Hezbollah as proffered by Abrams and his friends in Washington.

Representative Omar was spot on in questioning why Abrams, whose name is as disgraced as his two fellow conspirators – Oliver North and John Poindexter – whose criminal convictions were overturned on appeal, is working for the Trump administration on Venezuela. The answer is that the neocons, who can sense, like raptors, Trump’s political weakness, have filled the vacuum left by top-level vacancies in the administration.

Economics/Statistics

5 Year Statistics and Exports

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Godfree Roberts says:

Have you ever investigated the results of a Chinese Five Year Plan? Just one? They’re all published online, as are the claimed results.

Have you ever dived deep into official Chinese statistics? If you did, did you find anomalies suggesting they’re inaccurate or misleading?

I’ve been paddling around at the shallow end in the deep pool of Beijing’s official figures since 1951. By now, I can now check almost any official statistic against several others, usually from open, multinational sources like the World Bank, the CIA and the OECD.

So far, the figures line up: claimed GDP growth matches (actually trails) observed wage rises of 6% a year compounded, for example. The WTO says the country’s exports and imports match its records, that its trade is in balance with the world and that exports are moving up the value chain as predicted.

Authorities as diverse as Mark Mobius, who invested billions in both countries, says China’s stats are as good as Canada’s. So does Hong Kong University’s Prof. Carsten Holz, who has devoted decades to verifying China’s stats.

I suggest you go to China regularly, as I do, and visit second, third and fourth tier cities to see if what you see lines up with the official stats.

China’s trade with the world, imports/exports, is in balance.

China is a below-average exporter. Compared to Germany, her exports account for less than half as much of GDP. China is even less export dependent than Canada.

You can see Chinese tariffs here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQMc9ieZYUOv6a4h3-cY0kBaX5XkARsqpbfY_5KNjdXRH4XMD8g7zSCYuXya0gSgxrukawPaf553doF/pub

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Soviet Technology

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One of the last American crown jewels of micro-electronics is fast losing its shine.

This is an important point. One of the few technological areas the US had a clear lead over the Soviets in was microelectronics, specifically mass produced microelectronics and thus increased transistor density which leads to the higher clockspeed of computers, signal processing capabilities, avionics, and stuff like adaptive optics (microcomputers are also directly applied in NC machine tools in industry). The Soviets made up for this one area by a much broader spectrum of high technology. The Soviets also could always batch produce small quantities of the very best microelectronics, since their expertise (in physics, chemistry, materials science) was higher. It was just a question of perfecting the mass production of it (the particular kind of precision tooling, clean rooms, quality control practices) to such a degree of uniformity so as to mass produce it cheaply – that was something American industry perfected in the period from WWII to the Apollo program. Also, due to economic problems Soviets did not build enough production plants for microelectronics, so there was a production bottleneck on top of it. But the “technology” was in fact developed (just that actual components were in short supply).

Basically, since the Bell Labs system was destroyed in the 70s/80s, the US has “invented” nothing comparable. No interesting mechanisms (like the advances in WWII electro-mechanical fire control systems, servomechanisms and automatic control), no fundamentally new devices, no really new materials, etc. The US decided to just completely exploit an existing area (microelectronics – in one of those rare situations in which tiny advances in one narrow area automatically lead to “revolutionary” capabilities elsewhere (towards lower weight and power consumption) just because they are all related to a common device, the transistor) until now when semiconductors have reached a physical dead end, and on the other hand import Japanese machine tools for producing its own military equipment (e.g., atomic submarines). Soviets were ahead in: the automatic docking of spacecraft, virtually all parts of robotics and electro-mechanical (as opposed to purely solid state electronic) systems, hybrid computers instead of purely digital computers, photodetectors (lead-salt detectors used in military and IRST systems) used in homing devices, portable power plants (like the Pamir-3U device). Fundamentally new device schemes and even whole parts of fundamental science close to technology – nonlinear optics, “chaos in dynamical systems”, sustained thermonuclear fusion (the tokamak fusion trap), and ion (Hall effect) electrostatic thrusters (that are still the key to deep space propulsion), the “synchrotron” method of particle acceleration, were invented by Soviets.

That is to say: the US altered the nature of its technology base around the 1970s. Instead of expanding on a very broad front as in WWII, it relied on a single technology (that of microelectronics) with the belief that this is the most important part of the “technology base”. This it true in some ways: it is the most important base for increasing the economic effectiveness of ordinary (not high-performance) products, and so the most important base for boosting the economy as a whole. It improves the vast majority of the products that circulate in the economy. Production processes get far quicker and more efficient, energy consumption is reduced, etc. It is also crucial for discovering oil prospects (which depends heavily on microelectronics and general information processing) — this is why Russia still inherits this dependence on Exxon (but also why it has no good reasons for continuing to do so).

Thus if the US loses its predominance in microelectronics, it has nothing left.

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Moral disgrace’: EU Parliament lectures world on rule of law, then destroys legality in Venezuela

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‘Moral disgrace’: EU Parliament lectures world on rule of law, then destroys legality in Venezuela

It’s a moral disgrace when the EU Parliament, which lectures the world on the need to respect the rule of law, uses legal language to tell lies about the legality of the situation in Venezuela, and to destroy that legality.

Exciting news from France: Marine le Pen is the country’s new president. After the Macron regime plunged the country into political crisis, Mrs Le Pen took the oath of office on Place de la Concorde on Friday before a small crowd of gilets jaunes (yellow vests) specially assembled – with the TV cameras – for the occasion.

Proclaiming that she was acting according to Article 7 of the Constitution of the 5th Republic, Mrs Le Pen announced that Emmanuel Macron is no longer in office. To be sure, the government and civil service, the police and the armed forces all continue to operate normally, and Mr Macron continues to work in the Elysée Palace as usual, while Mrs Le Pen is under investigation for financial irregularities. But as she has received official recognition from both Russia and China, she has now become the legitimate president of France.

Of course, this fictitious scenario is ridiculous. But it is no more ridiculous than the recognition of Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela, voted by the European Parliament on January 31, one week after the recognition of him by US President Donald Trump.

Indeed, Brussels’ vote in favour of recognition is even more absurd than recognising Marine Le Pen because, unlike her, Juan Guaido has never been a candidate in his country’s presidential election, let alone been elected to it, and until a few weeks ago no one, not even in Venezuela, had even heard of him.

The resolution voted by the European Parliament is actually worse than President Trump’s “recognition” of Guaido on January 23. Four political groups in the European Parliament, acting independently of one another before later agreeing on a common resolution, sat down to formulate their texts, in legal language, which state that Juan Guaido is the legitimate president “according to Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution.”

That they did this, and that the common resolution was then voted by all but 100 or so MEPs, is a frightening illustration of power of groupthink. Or perhaps it is just dishonesty. No one who has ever read Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution could possibly conclude that it says anything of the kind.

On the contrary, Article 233 is precisely what Juan Guaido violated when he performed his little stunt of proclaiming himself president in a public square in Caracas on January 23.

Most countries’ constitutions have articles like Article 233 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. It deals with what happens if the president of the Republic does not, or cannot, fulfil his duties.

It lists six circumstances in which his term can be cut short: if he dies; if he resigns; if he is removed from office by a ruling of the country’s supreme court; if he is proclaimed physically or mentally unfit after a formal medical procedure validated by the National Assembly and by the supreme court; if he abandons his office; or if he is impeached by a popular referendum.

Not a single one of these conditions has been fulfilled: President Maduro has not resigned; he is not dead or unfit; he has not been impeached by the courts or by the people. Worse, Article 233 goes on to say who takes power if the presidency falls vacant – which it has not – and, guess what? It specifies that it is the vice-president who takes over, in this case Mrs Delcy Rodriguez, not the president of the National Assembly (Guaido).

The only circumstance in which the president of the National Assembly takes over is if the president has not been inaugurated. As Maduro has been president since 2013, it is impossible to pretend that this is the case. He took the oath of office for his second term on January 10, in front of the president of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice.

Maduro’s opponents in the European Parliament, like the head of the Spanish conservative Partido popular delegation, Esteban Gonzalez Pons, claim that the inauguration of 10 January was invalid. In support of this claim, in an open letter sent to the president of the European Parliament on January 24, Mr Pons quotes Article 231 of the constitution: “The candidate elected shall take office as President of the Republic on January 10 of the first year of his constitutional term, by taking an oath before the National Assembly.”

If one took Mr Pons at his word, one might perhaps believe that Maduro’s inauguration had indeed been invalid. But Mr Pons’ dishonesty is easily demonstrated: he does not quote the next sentence of this same Article 231 which says: “If for any supervening reason, the person elected President of the Republic cannot be sworn in before the National Assembly, he shall take the oath of office before the Supreme Tribunal of Justice.”

So, the form of inauguration which Maduro’s enemies from Venezuela’s former colonial power in Europe claim is anti-constitutional is, in reality, specifically provided for in the constitution.

As Mr Pons also knows perfectly well, although he chooses to hide this too from his readers, there is a very good “supervening reason” why Maduro could not be sworn in before the National Assembly. It is that it was dissolved in 2017 for electoral fraud. The assembly had sworn in members whose elections had been declared invalid by the Supreme Court, which incidentally is the guardian of the constitution when it comes to electoral disputes.

In all other circumstances – in Poland, for instance, or in Hungary – members of the European Parliament typically demand that judges be given total independence and the right to overrule the decisions of elected assemblies if they deem laws anti-constitutional.

On Venezuela, by contrast, MEPs deploy precisely the opposite argument: the European Parliament pronounced in its resolution that the (dissolved) National Assembly was the only legitimate body in Venezuela, i.e. that the Supreme Court has no legitimacy.

It is obvious that there is a serious political crisis in Venezuela, between a presidency elected by universal suffrage and a political class in the parliament which opposes him. For foreign powers to wade into such a crisis is politically foolish and incidentally quite illegal under international law. But when a body like the European Parliament, which lectures the whole world on the need to respect the rule of law, uses legal language to tell outright lies about the legality of the situation in another country, and to destroy that legality, it is a moral disgrace.

By John Laughland

Capitalism in Decay

Trump Is A Pied Piper For The New World Order Agenda

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Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

In my last article, ‘The Fed Is A Suicide Bomber With A Deeper Agenda’, I explored and dismantled recent propaganda surrounding the Federal Reserve’s tightening actions, including the propaganda that Jerome Powell is some kind of rogue central banker who is rebalancing the system for the good of the nation. To summarize the points made in that article:

The Fed deliberately created the “Everything Bubble” so that it could be deliberately imploded at the proper time – in other words, the crash we have been witnessing so far during the final quarter of 2018 and continuing into 2019 is a controlled demolition of the economy. Jerome Powell is not some “rebel” going against the easy money dictates of the Fed. Jerome Powell is playing the role that has been given to him. Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen’s job was to inflate the bubble. Jerome Powell’s job is to crash the bubble.

This is a tactic used by the Fed and the globalists that run it for over 100 years – conjure a debt bubble, deflate the debt bubble, cause a crisis, siphon up hard assets for pennies on the dollar, use the panic to gain more power and centralization, introduce new control measures while everyone is distracted, rinse, repeat.

This process of controlled demolition needs a considerable distraction so that the central banks and the globalists ultimately avoid blame for the painful consequences of the event.

Enter Donald Trump and the false Trump vs. Globalist paradigm.

As I mentioned last week, the Fed is only one side of the equation for the crash; Trump is the other side.

Confidence games are highly varied affairs. They can be extremely simple and often obvious to everyone but the most inept and unobservant, or, they can be highly complex with many moving parts of deceit combined into a single elaborate con-machine. It is important to understand that confidence games are not just a means to steal money or valuables from unwitting people; they are also a vital part of economic manipulation, government dominance, and warfare in general. Almost all mainstream economic “authorities,” politicians, military tacticians and covert operatives are con men in one way or another.

With the exception of military tacticians acting in defense against an aggressor, con men are predominantly sociopaths. In order to carry out a “grift” against innocent people, an extreme lack of empathy is required. Understanding the mind and motivations of sociopaths and narcissistic sociopaths makes it possible to identify them faster and allows us to see their con games ahead of time.

In terms of social control, elitist con men are highly preoccupied with preventing spontaneous organization of rebellion. But this does not always involve the outright crushing of dissent. Instead, the elites prefer to use co-option and misdirection (con games) to lure rebellious movements to focus on the wrong enemy, or to trust the wrong leadership.

I am often reminded of the infiltration of the Tea Party movement by neo-conservatives in the years after the 2008 election. Neo-con-men exploited the desire among Tea Party activists for mainstream legitimacy and more widespread media coverage. They gave the activists what they wanted, by injecting their own political puppets into the movement. It did not take long for the Tea Party to abandon its initial roots in individual sovereignty and the Ron Paul campaign and adopt a decidedly statist tone. The smart people left the movement early and went on to launch their own efforts, but the goal of the establishment had been accomplished — the grass roots organized threat of the Tea Party was no more.

That said, the principles of conservative economics, small government and personal liberty remain entrenched in the American psyche and continue to grow. These ideals have a life of their own, and almost seem to act autonomously at times from any particular group or leader.

The single most important dynamo behind the rise of sovereignty activism has actually been the liberty media, or what some might call the “alternative media.” This group of people has been working tirelessly for years to inform the masses on the REAL news and data behind global events. Over time we have earned the trust of millions based on honest reporting and accurate predictions. It was only a matter of time before the establishment attempted to co-opt us as well…

The downfall of the Tea Party was a lack of cohesive leadership. There was no one there to put a stop to the neo-con infiltration. There was no one in a strong enough position to vet incoming influencers and prevent poison pills from entering the bloodstream of the movement. The problem with leadership, though, is that it denotes centralization and a bottlenecking of decisions and action. It’s quite a quandary for advocates of decentralization.

The most effective method for the establishment to sabotage a rebellion is to place one of their own puppets into a leadership position in that rebellion. This exploits the movement’s subconscious appetite for top down leadership. It neutralizes activists by tricking them into waiting for orders from on high instead of acting on their own individually. It makes a movement lazy and impotent.

The con game of false leadership goes beyond this, though. A charismatic puppet leader can trick activists into following a path completely opposite of their foundational ideals. He can turn the movement into something they would have originally despised (like turning a limited government pro-sovereignty movement into a big government pro-state cult). He can also take actions which are self-destructive, thereby making the movement appear insane or foolhardy by proxy.

I warned of this potential dynamic with Donald Trump long before the 2016 election. In fact, I predicted that Donald Trump would win the election based on the premise that the globalists were planning a grand con; to not only use Trump as a scapegoat for the crash of the “everything bubble” they had been inflating for the past 10 years, but to also use him as a pied piper to lure conservative movements into individual inaction, as well as being named as co-conspirators in the economic collapse that Trump was about to be involved in.

In my article ‘Clinton vs. Trump And The Co-Option Of The Liberty Movement,’ published in September 2016, I noted:

“To summarize, the elites need a patsy for the breakdown of the financial system they have engineered. That patsy will not be Trump per se, but conservatives in general. Whether Donald Trump is aware of this program or not, I do not know. I have no hard evidence indicating that Trump is anti-constitution; then again, I don’t have much evidence indicating he is pro-constitution. All I have at present to go by is his rhetoric, and rhetoric counts for nothing.

What I do know is that triggering a fiscal crisis under the watch of Trump and blaming conservatives is far more useful to the elites than triggering a crisis under Clinton and risk blame falling on international banking syndicates.”

The crash has now begun in the final quarter of 2018, with housing markets, auto markets and credit markets in steep decline, as well as stock markets trending into bear territory. In the same article I also stated:

“I believe Clinton is meant to lose. If this is the case and Trump is inaugurated in January of next year, the liberty movement needs to ask itself if Trump is truly an obstacle for the elites, or if he is an ally to the elites.

The Left is already salivating over the possibility that the Trump campaign will devour the liberty movement and turn it into something unrecognizable. Just take a gander at this editorial from Bloomberg called ‘The Tea Party Meets Its Maker,’ which announces the death of the “Tea Party” at the hands of Trump…”

After two years of witnessing Trump in action, it is clear to me that he is an active participant in the new world order agenda, and not just an unwitting patsy for the economic crisis.

Trump started out his presidential campaign with two very important issues. First, he argued for the need to “drain the swamp” in Washington D.C.; which included a sharp criticism of Hillary Clinton’s ties to banking elites and globalists. Second, he criticized the fraudulent state of the U.S. economy, pointing out that the stock market was in a massive bubble created by the Federal Reserve using near zero interest rates.

Trump’s first action upon entering the White House was to invite multiple “swamp creatures” into his cabinet, going against his core campaign promise. This was not all that surprising considering his past.

Trump was saved in the 1990s by Rothchild banking agent Wilber Ross, who bailed him out of his debts tied up in his failing Taj Mahal casino. Wilber Ross is now Trump’s commerce secretary. I ask, who is Trump going to be loyal to? The American people, who can offer him nothing of consequence, or the Rothschilds, who saved his public image and his billion-dollar empire?

Trump is also currently “advised” by the likes of Steven Mnuchin formerly of Goldman Sachs, Larry Kudlow formerly of the New York Fed, and John Bolton of the CFR, among others.

Trump has since flip-flopped on his economic position. Instead of warning about the huge financial bubble the Fed had created, he adopted a Twitter campaign TAKING CREDIT for the bubble for the past two years.

Some people will argue that Trump has placed blame on the Fed and exposed their operations, but this is theater based on selective observations. Trump continues to set himself up as the fulcrum or source of the current crash. Just this week his administration called the market decline a “little glitch” which would be solved once a trade deal with China was solidified. In other words, Trump is saying the trade war is the cause of the crash, not the Fed. Trump then at the same time blames the Fed.

Confusing? Not really, when you understand that Trump is part of a grand con game.

If Trump was truly interested in bringing down the globalists, then he would not be consistently providing them with such perfect cover for their crimes. I have been warning for the past year that the trade war is a perfect distraction for the public as the Fed unwinds QE and raises interest rates to kill the Everything Bubble. Trump continues to attach his administration to stock market performance while also blaming stock declines on his own trade conflicts with China. But what about Trump’s supposed battle with the Fed? It’s all wrestle-mania.

As the stock rally crumbled in the final quarter of 2018, the script that Trump would follow in response was also rather predictable.

In my article ‘In A Battle Between Trump And The Fed, Who Really Wins,’ published in February 2017, I reminded readers that the goal of the Fed is a controlled demolition of the U.S. economy and the dollar to open the door for the “global reset.” The reset is the event that the globalists hope will allow them to introduce a single global currency system and single world economy with the IMF and perhaps the BIS at the helm.

In my article ‘Trump vs. The Fed: America Sacrificed At The NWO Altar,’ I outlined the details of the con game. The globalists WANT to sacrifice the Fed and the dollar to make way for their new world order system, but they cannot do this in a vacuum. They need a distraction. Trump’s “battle with the fed” will likely escalate into a full-blown war. But Trump’s position against the Fed is not honorable.

According to the narrative, Trump is not going after the Fed because it has created the everything bubble and is now deliberately imploding it. Trump is going after the Fed because he wants the Fed to make the everything bubble even bigger by continuing to prop up a stock rally that Trump has attached to the success of his presidency. Trump will be painted as a spoiled baby in the mainstream, throwing a tantrum and attacking the “innocent” central bankers who were only trying to “normalize markets.”

In the meantime, the globalists can slowly kill the world reserve status of the dollar while avoiding the blame for the severe economic consequences this will produce. A conflict between the White House and the central bank will be presented as a sign that faith in U.S. debt and the longevity of the dollar is a bad bet. Foreign holders of dollars and T-bills, already quietly dumping these assets, will accelerate the decoupling. Trump’s trade war activities add to the distraction, creating a brilliant theater in which conservatives are conned into supporting a puppet leader on the verge of collapse, and confirming the crazed arguments against conservative principles in the minds of globalists and leftists.

The con game is to get liberty advocates to invest themselves fully in Trump, to the point that we end up owning every mistake he makes, and every disaster that is pinned on him. There is a concerted propaganda campaign targeting the liberty movement which is telling us that Trump is playing “4D Chess;” that Trump is planning a “coup” against the banking elites, that Trump is planning to bring down the Fed as a means to save the U.S., and even that Trump is working with Jerome Powell to crash the globalist system as a means to “restore the Republic.”

While Trump throws a bone to conservatives at times, including promises of a border wall, or a pull-out in Syria, there is no evidence to support the fantasy that Trump is some kind of ingenious tactician battling the the forces of evil using his wits while inside the system. But, there is considerable evidence as I have linked above supporting my position that Trump is controlled opposition working with the globalists to initiate a collapse that will be blamed on conservative ideals and limited government liberty activists. We shall see in due course. It is unfortunate though how many otherwise very intelligent people within the liberty movement have bought into Trump as a hero on a white horse.

The activists and alternative media are the real heroes. They are the people that pushed liberty philosophy into the mainstream. Trump merely rode the wave that they created. Even if he was a legitimate conservative and constitutionalist (which he is not), the movement doesn’t need his leadership. It never did. The globalists know this and hope to chain us to Trump as he sinks into historical oblivion, destroying us all in the process.

Western Hegemony's Collapse

America’s Defeat In Syria Is A Crisis Of Empire

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Authored by Tom Luongo,

The U.S. lost in Syria. Donald Trump finally had the courage to admit that to the world when he ordered the pull out of all U.S. troops there.

Syria was to be the sparkling jewel in the Empire of Chaos’ Crown. A masterstroke of realpolitik which would advance every major U.S., Israeli and Saudi objective while thoroughly destabilizing the Levant and setting the stage for wiping out Iran and eventually Russia.

If the Assad government fell, Syria would become something worse than Libya. It would become a source of abject chaos for decades to come. And the formation of greater Kurdistan would put advanced U.S. and Israeli military assets on Iran’s doorstep.

Carving up Syria, Iraq and possibly even Turkey, once Erdogan was removed from power, would put the U.S. and Israel in control of the oil assets to fund a jihadist-led insurgency across all of central Asia.

Moreover, the chaos would ensure a steady stream of refugees into Europe to destabilize it. That chaos would lead to further political integration of Europe under EU control.

You can see the remnants of this plan all around you today. In fact, a great deal of it is still on auto-pilot. Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron’s tag-team calls for ceding national sovereignty to the EU are a perfect example of this.

They can all feel the project slipping away from them. Despite their failing political power they are pushing their legislatures to ignore the people, calling them traitors.

Orwell would be proud of Macron for saying, “patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism [because] nationalism is treason.”

The generals Trump just fired over his decision are another example. They still believe they can win a balkanization of Syria and Iraq. They just need more assets and more time.

Israel’s childish and disgusting antics sending missiles at the Damascus airport using civilians as human shields is the most damning.

If you look around the game board right now all of the people who were the architects of the Syrian war are either out of power or losing it rapidly — Hillary Clinton, Obama, Merkel, Macron, Netanyahu, David Cameron.

Russian Rescue

This is why Russia’s entrance into Syria was so important. It was a moment the entire geopolitical narrative turned. Someone stood up to the U.S. successfully.

Institutional confidence is based on the perception of invulnerability. And Putin moving air assets into Syria to assist the Syrian Arab Army was a declaration that Russia had reached its limit, just like with Crimea, with U.S. meddling in its long-term goals.

Remember, in 2015 the narrative was ISIS just sprang up out of the desert. And they would need a full invasion to defeat.

Then the Russians send in some 30 planes and change everything about the conflict within six weeks.

All of a sudden ISIS was beatable. All the U.S. could do was attack Putin for going after Al-Qaeda, not ISIS.

But, why were we protecting Al-Qaeda? Didn’t they blow up the Twin Towers?

Trump will never admit this in public but in some ways he does owe his election to Putin. By forcing open the truth, Putin set the stage to blow up the Syria narrative in late 2015/early 2016.

Trump used that to catapult himself to the Presidency. And that is truly what has everyone in The Swamp angry; the reality that the rubes aren’t buying their lies anymore.

And the wars need to end.

As the losses for Al-Qaeda and ISIS mounted thanks to a Russian air campaign they will write military logistics textbooks about, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all got cold feet.

The Russian intervention prompted the Saudi King to change the line of succession as it became obvious they would never get their spoils from Syria — a gas pipeline into Turkey.

Turkey quit the moment Erdogan realized he was being set up to take the blame for the entire mess. After all, he and his son were selling the oil ISIS was smuggling in plain sight across the Syrian desert to Turkey.

And somehow an all-powerful U.S. military and surveillance system which can read license plates from space couldn’t find convoys of Toyota pickup trucks ferrying tons of oil to Turkey.

Imperial Retreat

Once someone stands up to the Empire successfully once it creates the opportunity for someone to do it again. Putin’s interventions in Syria, both in 2013 diplomatically and in 2015 militarily, told the world Russia was no longer afraid of the U.S.’s ability to project power around the world.

And that’s what truly changed the narrative. And that’s why we’re where we are today with Trump rightly acknowledging the Empire is bankrupting not only the U.S. but, truly, the rest of the world.

His challenge will be surviving the backlash from the entrenched powers in D.C. and Europe. They will push for his head, literally and figuratively.

By declaring victory over ISIS and leaving Syria Trump puts a period on the end of a shameful period of U.S. history. And the loss to the empire will not be easily overcome.

Syria represented the worst kind of imperial over reach. And in some ways it was a quagmire the U.S. and its allies could never win because the assets needed to take it were never available.

And those assets were political. The appetite for endless war had been spent with Obama’s election, no less Trump’s. So, absent a casus belli which could make Americans feel good about intervening in Syria, we were never going to give either President the mandate for a full-blown NATO intervention.

The only question surrounding it in hindsight was whether those that stood to lose the most — Russia, Iran, Lebanon — would stand together and convince China to support them in saving Syria, and, by extension, themselves.

Once it became clear that they would, with Russia’s intervention and China’s tacit approval and financial support, the end was then written in the sand, as long as they would keep their eyes on the big prize.

Winning by surviving. Syria was a war of attrition in which the pro-Syria coalition, step-by-step, made U.S. occupation more untenable. Eventually, that plus deft diplomatic maneuvers to advance a political solution led to this point.

This loss will beget others. Unbridled U.S. aggression has successfully been countered with mostly passive resistance. Afghanistan and Ukraine are on deck.

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Moving Abroad: Is It for You?

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On the airplane seat next to us, returning to his new home after a short visit with family in California. On her way to meet her fiancé on the catamaran where he conducts daily sunset tours. Behind the counter in the organic t-shirt store just across from the beach. They were seemingly everywhere: people who had chucked it all and moved to Costa Rica.

The first gentleman fell in love with the country while on vacation. The second fell in love with a native. The last followed a friend who fell in love with, “Pura Vida,” the unofficial slogan of the Costa Rica that loosely translates to “the simple life.”

Having experienced Costa Rica for the first time last summer, it’s not hard to see why people would choose to stay here forever. But, it’s only one of many countries around the world that are increasingly turning Americans into expats. According to USA Today, “There are an estimated 56 or 57 million expats worldwide.”

Last year’s “Top 10 Countries for Expats” from HSBC is led by a somewhat surprising choice. “Singapore landed the top spot for the third year running in 2017, thanks to its strong performance across the full range of economic, experience and family criteria,” said CNBC. “The city scored especially highly with regards to improving earnings and job prospects. The average annual salary comes in at $117,904. This is $18,000 higher than the average expat income globally. However, this higher earning potential also reflects a higher cost of living. Just 31 percent of expats own homes in Singapore.” Also in the top five: Norway, New Zealand, Germany, and Canada.

But higher earning potential isn’t the only driver for those choosing to leave the country. Some have been driven out by a Trump presidency, making good on their promise to bolt if he were elected. This New York Times story details the path of several families who left the U.S., traveling the world by backpack, earning money through remote work and renting out/Airbnbing their stateside home. For the curious: “Paul Kortman, who, with his wife, Becky Kortman, wrote “Family Freedom: A Guide to Becoming a Location Independent Family,” estimates that a family could travel indefinitely on $60,000 a year, a salary he says could be earned with a little ingenuity.”

Many others have chosen to leave for affordable retirement options or simply for the adventure of it all. Another recent “best of” list, Expat Insider 2018 from InterNations, which surveyed 18,135 expats living in 187 countries or territories, had a top three of: Bahrain (for the second year in a row); Taiwan, which “keeps impressing with quality of life;” and Ecuador, which “has recovered from its 25th position in 2017.” Mexico and Costa Rica are also in the top 10, as well as Spain, Portugal, and, again, Singapore.

This Thrillist list has another mix of “best of” countries for expats, with some familiar names like Germany, Costa Rica, and Canada. Their list is based on “the price index from the website Expatistan to quantify costs of living in each country’s major city,” so it’s great for those who are seduced by affordability.

When you’re weighing prices and lifestyle there are some other important things to consider if you’re looking to make a move:

Where will you live?

We may all have dreams of a pad on the sand or with a panoramic view of rolling hills and tile rooftops, but that’s not always the reality when moving overseas. (For more proof of this, catch House Hunters International sometime, and watch a young couple’s dreams get crushed when they see that their $1,200/month rental budget can only afford them a two-bedroom apartment far from the beach instead of the four-bedroom villa on the sand they were envisioning.)

It’s also a good idea to make temporary living arrangements until you arrive in your chosen city. “Saying that there are ‘so many bad stories’ around renting apartments before arrival, Liz Carlson, travel blogger behind Young Adventuress, recommends staying at a hotel or even a short-term airbnb while scouring the local real estate market,” said Forbes. “You’ll have a better idea of what neighborhood you’re interested in and will avoid possibly being overcharged.”

Where will you work?

Many people who move abroad intend to work, at least part time, while others take their savings and move to a place where they can stretch their dollar. And, interestingly, “People who live abroad make more money on average than their domestic counterparts, according to a survey released by HSBC earlier this year,” said Travel and Leisure.

If you do plan to work in your adopted country, it’s best to learn about work permits abroad ahead of time.

Where are the best schools?

A growing trend as reported by the New York Times article is homeschooling (or world schooling, as they call it), rendering the search for local schools unnecessary. But, for many, the idea of immersing their children in local schools (and in the native language of their chosen country) is part of the appeal of moving abroad. Keep in mind that there may not be buses or other transportation provided by foreign schools.

Access

A few things to ask yourself:

  • How easy is it to get to your new country, and get back (presuming you’ll want people to visit you and you’ll want to visit the States). If travel there and back is difficult and/or expensive, that could be an issue.
  • What about access within the country? Do you intend to travel within your new home or to other nearby countries? This will be a consideration of budget but also transportation. In countries like Costa Rica, which don’t manufacture cars, importing can be expensive. Also, because many of the roads were built for oxcarts, not automobiles, there is no room for expansion, which means traveling from one city to another can be painful.

Can you really afford it?

Back to Costa Rica for a minute. That expat working at the tourist-driven t-shirt shop who up and moved to Costa Rica—he’s not exactly living the dream, at least not by conventional American standards.

The apartments are expensive, even for older ones that don’t have a view. The local jobs don’t pay much and are dependent on year-round tourism. Food is costlier than he’d imagined. And if he ever needs a dishwasher, a washing machine, or anything else that has to be imported, he knows he’ll need to pay big. But, he’s made lifelong friends who want nothing more than to spend the day on the sand. The restaurant next door has a killer burger special. And he gets to see the sunset every day from work. Would he move back: “No. Not a chance.”

Cultural/Ideological Divide

Angela Merkel: “Nation states must today be prepared to give up their sovereignty”

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by Tapainfo.com
“Nation states must today be prepared to give up their sovereignty”, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who told an audience in Berlin that sovereign nation states must not listen to the will of their citizens when it comes to questions of immigration, borders, or even sovereignty.

No this wasn’t something Adolf Hitler said many decades ago, this is what German Chancellor Angela Merkel told attendants at an event by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin. Merkel has announced she won’t seek re-election in 2021 and it is clear she is attempting to push the globalist agenda to its disturbing conclusion before she stands down.

“In an orderly fashion of course,” Merkel joked, attempting to lighten the mood. But Merkel has always had a tin ear for comedy and she soon launched into a dark speech condemning those in her own party who think Germany should have listened to the will of its citizens and refused to sign the controversial UN migration pact:

“There were [politicians] who believed that they could decide when these agreements are no longer valid because they are representing The People”.

“[But] the people are individuals who are living in a country, they are not a group who define themselves as the [German] people,” she stressed.

Merkel has previously accused critics of the UN Global Compact for Safe and Orderly Migration of not being patriotic, saying “That is not patriotism, because patriotism is when you include others in German interests and accept win-win situations”.

Her words echo recent comments by the deeply unpopular French President Emmanuel Macron who stated in a Remembrance Day speech that “patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism [because] nationalism is treason.”

The French president’s words were deeply unpopular with the French population and his approval rating nosedived even further after the comments.

Macron, whose lack of leadership is proving unable to deal with growing protests in France, told the Bundestag that France and Germany should be at the center of the emerging New World Order.

“The Franco-German couple [has]the obligation not to let the world slip into chaos and to guide it on the road to peace”.

“Europe must be stronger… and win more sovereignty,” he went on to demand, just like Merkel, that EU member states surrender national sovereignty to Brussels over “foreign affairs, migration, and development” as well as giving “an increasing part of our budgets and even fiscal resources”.

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Future Jim

I’m pretty sure Merkel’s role now is to take down Germany–much like how I’m pretty sure Hitler’s job was to take down Germany, which he did–spectacularly well. He had to intervene repeatedly and emphatically when his armies were about 24 hours from winning on the Russian front, and again when they were about 24 hours from winning on the western front. When he was much younger, he went to England to the hometown of the Stanleys (England’s most powerful family) “to study art”, but this fact seems to be getting scrubbed from history. There’s more, of course.

As I was saying: I’m pretty sure Hitler’s job was to take down Germany–much like how I’m pretty sure Trump’s job is to take down America.

The Beer Hall Putsch

Hitler’s Genealogy

Marx’s Wife

Myth of Trump

Trump’s Genealogy