Tag: globalism

The Age of the Machine and the Vested Interest

photog Current Events, Trump

JM – The world is on the verge of new and great changes, Mr. Scrooge.  Some of them, of necessity, will be violent. Do you agree?

ES – Oh, l think the world is becoming a very hard and cruel place, Mr. Marley.  One must steel oneself to survive it.  Not be crushed under with the weak and the infirm.

JM – l think we have many things in common, Mr. Scrooge.

ES – l hope so, Mr. Marley.

Even in the 1820s the Industrial Revolution was dislocating people from their familiar environment.  A blacksmith now had to compete with a factory that could mass produce metal artifacts.  And textile mills were replacing hand-made garments to an astonishing degree.  These changes caused huge dislocations in the business world and also for craftsmen who previously could depend on their skills to earn a good living.

And now two hundred years later the breadth and scale of the tech revolution threatens to completely remake the commercial landscape again.  Globalization threatens the very existence of industries in the First World as manufacturing and even service industries are completely transferred to developing nations in Asia.

So, what does the future portend?  Well, we are reaching a point where rapacious capitalism has begun to undermine the existence of the middle class in both America and Europe.  What remains to be seen is whether national governments will step in to protect their citizens from impoverishment.  I think we’ve seen the beginning of this in the United States where Trump represents middle- and working-class interests with a sort of populism that questions the rights of the corporations to off-shore their manufacturing activities and now even their other employment opportunities.  It’s possible Trump will be successful in forcing the return of jobs for Americans.

But even if he is, the world will continue to change and evolve in response to the capabilities that advanced automation has provided and will continue to innovate at.  One of the challenges that everyone will need to recognize is that we’re all facing enormous competition that previously didn’t exist and an entrepreneurial instinct will have to be developed to allow people to compete with the lowest common denominator reality around us.  We’ll all have to get a lot smarter about how we find business opportunities and retain them.

Maybe a part of this change will be a strategy to capture local business.  After all those cheap knock-offs from China are often shipped by slow boat to keep their cost down.  If that means weeks of delay, a local metal shop could capture business by being able to provide same day delivery for some mission critical parts for a manufacturing business.

And even if AI allows foreign companies to compete in information sectors of the economy it is still the case that AI is far from fool-proof and still requires human oversight to clean up the inaccurate and inept mistakes that seem built into the machines.  And in those oversight positions foreign unfamiliarity with American culture could represent the disadvantage that allows local businesses to excel.

So, this is all a long-winded way of saying Americans are going to have to use all means at their disposal to survive the changes going on.  Government can certainly be part of the solution but we also have to recognize that we no longer have a guarantee of affluence.  We’re going to need to work harder and with our heads.

Global Revolt. Sort Of.

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The last few days the results of the EU elections came in and the “far right” parties did extremely well across the various countries of the Union.  There was a coinciding drop in the Green and Far Left parties across the EU.  And the national far right parties in France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Italy and even Belgium are all either increasing or have already become major parties.

Europe is not the United States.  But the same policies; runaway immigration, green policy sticker shock and woke repression, are souring the populaces of these countries against Leftist governments.  Of course, the globalists are fighting tooth and nail to suppress this revolt.  The various leftist and “centrist” parties band together to try and quarantine these populist parties and label them racist, fascist, reactionary and illegal.  Germany keeps threatening to shut down their AfD (Alternative for Germany) party for being anti-immigrant.

But slowly and surely it seems that things are swinging away from these policies.  Last year the Netherlands voted Geert Wilder’s party into power because they’re tired of the immigrants and the green assault on prosperity.  The Dutch are hardly xenophobic fascists.  They’ve just had enough of the madness.  And it looks like France is getting sick of it too.  After the French gave the highest vote total to their far-right party in the EU vote, Macron dissolved the French parliament and will call for new elections.  It is expected that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party will end up with the largest number of seats in the body and there is a slight possibility they could cobble together a coalition.  Italy already has a populist right government.  So do Austria and Hungary.  Even Belgium; the very heart of the globalist bureaucracy, has a growing populist right party.  Even in the lefty haven of Sweden the right has come to power although what passes for the right in Sweden still looks like woke communists from where I stand.

Now don’t get me wrong.  None of this progress means Europe is becoming conservative.  This is like the spasmodic flailing that a drowning man experiences just before he expires and sinks to the ocean floor.  I think the chances of any of these countries escaping the grip of their leftist elites at this point are vanishingly slim.  It would take a miracle.  But it does show that they haven’t completely lost all instinct for survival.  And it might allow for a real revolt when things become even more desperate.

It is interesting that the United States, England and France are all about to have major elections within months of each other.  What I’m interested in seeing is what tell-tale clues can be gleaned from the results of the elections and the reactions of the citizens to these results.  In each case there will be quite different results and different reactions but, in each circumstance, we may learn a lot about what the future holds based on these reactions.

For instance, in the United States I’m expecting Joe Biden to be re-elected.  And I expect this result to produce widespread shock, anger and disillusionment with the political system here.  And that disillusionment may be a better result for bringing about change than a Trump win.  But a Trump win would also be an opportunity to learn about the state of our country.  Could the elites be very worried by how angry the populace has become over their manipulation of the government?  An honest election might show that to be likely.  So, there are things we could learn from this election either way.

And likewise with the British and the French.  Each of these countries is suffering from stress and are very angry at their leaders.  With the correct new leadership large changes are possible.  So, I look forward to all this activity.  But I confess I’m impatient for the results to be known.  I don’t want the drama.  I just want to read the end of the book.

US, NATO and Ukraine Organize Peace Summit Without Russia

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This is hilarious.  Apparently the West will end the Ukraine war without involving the Russians.  Maybe they’ll leave a transcript of the terms in Vladimir Putin’s e-mail in-box so he won’t accidentally violate them.  I’m sure he’ll want to know that he’ll be handing back the provinces that he’s annexed and surrender himself to the Hague for war crimes prosecution.

“Kyiv has made a concerted effort in recent months to engage with countries such as China, Brazil and India. Ukraine is ready to talk with all countries and hear their opinions, Yermak said, including representatives of China and Brazil, who visited this month.
Zelensky’s 10-point peace plan calls for restoring Ukraine’s control over its territory, returning prisoners of war and prosecuting war crimes. It also proposes addressing nuclear safety, which it says is compromised by Russia’s occupation of a nuclear power plant, and food security, by protecting grain exports that are hampered by Russia’s invasion.”
I kind of doubt China will be coming on board for this farce.  I’m not so sure about India either.
This is my favorite line:

“The process is not possible without the whole world, including the leaders of the global south,” said Yermak, who is Zelensky’s top adviser.”

The whole world except the country they’re actually at war with.  Delusional and in fact embarrassing.

ArthurinCali Has a Conundrum for Us to Ponder

photog ArthurinCali, Current Events, Guest Contributors , , ,

It’s the story of a Ukrainian mayor who had the choice of handing over a downed Russian pilot to the Russian troops occupying his city or committing cold-blooded murder.  And it gets even more complicated.  If he decides to spare the man’s life then he will be branded a traitor and punished if the Ukrainians retake the territory.

As I commented on Arthur’s site, it seems to me that the Ukrainians who find themselves living permanently under the Russian authority are the biggest winners in this whole thing.  They’ll end up under a more stable and slightly less corrupt government.

The Ukrainian war is a taste of things to come.  Globalists are looking to eliminate nationality.  Russia and China are the thorniest problems.  They have nuclear weapons and they don’t like the rainbow coalition stuff that Washington and Brussels are so enamored with.  If Russia manages to have its way in the Ukraine it will be a powerful refutation of the inevitability of the New World Order.  And from my point of view that would be “a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.”  It would give hope to countries like Hungary that want to maintain their identity and ways of life in the face of globalism’s creepy anti-normal beliefs.  And it would give hope to us that the progressives have overreached in our own country.

Kudos to Arthur on his thought provoking post.

In the Long Run

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We are living in a reductionist endgame scenario that some bright boys must have thought up for us.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union the brain trusts that advise Wall Street and the US government decided that they already controlled enough of the military and monetary power on the planet to take over everything.  And by everything, I mean total control of the human population of this planet.

They bought out the Chinese by turning their country into almost the entire manufacturing base for the United States.  And they control everything else by distributing or withholding credit needed for the other countries to survive in the 21st century environment.  Sure, places like Afghanistan and Iraq acted up a little twenty years ago.  But once their infrastructure was taken out by the US Air Force the resistance they could muster was very limited.  And we then made a point of inviting people from these countries to immigrate to the United States and Europe just to show their brethren back home that it was better to join us than fight us.  And the biggest success of the endgame scenario was their reducing much of rust belt America into a dead zone with no jobs and no hope.  They knew that if they could break the middle class, they’d be able to steamroll the rest of the world without much of a fight.

Lately Eastern Europe; Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and especially Russia have resisted the culture war that goes along with the globalist endgame.  Shockingly these places have refused to embrace the mandatory LGBTQ indoctrination.  It should be fairly interesting to see if these places along with China hold the line on refusing this nihilistic behavior.  I find it a fairly hopeful sign that there are still some places even in Western culture that haven’t been cowed by the globalists into sacrificing their families and children in order to qualify for first class berths on the Titanic.  Maybe these clear-eyed places will be able to show the rest of the West that the emperor has no clothes.

But let’s assume that they fail.  Let’s even assume that China eventually bends the knee to Washington and joins the globalist bandwagon.  The logical endpoint is a world where climate policy eliminates fossil fuels, curtails human reproduction to a one child per family quota and government institutes almost total control of political speech over everyone on this planet.

It’s not that hard to imagine what this kind of system would look like.  The rudiments of it are already on display right now all around you.  The Green New Deal and tech companies are already instituting large chunks of it and the rest will be rolled out once the pesky MAGA people are rounded up and put through an indoctrination camp or two.  And with everybody on board around the world the people in charge are probably thinking there won’t be any barbarians to invade and muck things up in a century or two.

But they’re wrong.  What they don’t understand is that humans aren’t uniform.  You can corral 99% of them and through fear and routine get them to toe the line.  But somewhere out there is a Napoleon or a Caesar.  Someone with dreams grandiose enough that he’ll knock over the apple cart because he doesn’t like apples.  Now this is cold comfort.  None of this will guarantee that the global American empire will implode in time to warm my heart.  In fact, I sort of doubt it will happen in my lifetime.  But at least I don’t have to despair for the whole of humanity.  I’ve always hated reading dystopian stories like 1984 and Brave New World.  The anthill uniformity of these societies is so anti-human that it repels me viscerally.  And that’s what I resent so much about things like the nonsensical energy policy like battery powered cars recharged from a grid powered by fossil fuels.  The patent illogic insults my intelligence.  It’s like watching a scene out of Idiocracy.  It’s just that annoying.

I like to think that in a century or so, someone will rise up and take control of one of the provinces and provide such a better deal to a few of the provincial governors that they declare him emperor (or let’s say first citizen) and after sacking Martha’s Vineyard and the Napa Valley he’ll shut down the Federal Reserve and send the Deep State home without jobs.  I don’t know if this makes sense to any of you but I felt like expressing my hope for the future.  Whatever the outcome of any particular political struggle I just want to convince myself that I don’t believe in a world where Joe Biden is the template for the future.

Cold Thoughts

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The weather has turned cold.  There was some sun today but temperatures were in the fifties.  We got out for a walk and there was enough to do around the house but for some reason I couldn’t get a handle on anything interesting in the news.  I guess things will have to percolate for a while.

I watched an old John Barrymore movie called Counsellor at Law.  It was really pretty good.  I hadn’t seen it for a few years and I even forgot the ending.  It had all the stock characters for a movie taking place in 1930s Manhattan.  And it occurred to me that the despised European immigrants that were the downtrodden denizens of the criminal courts in this movie have moved three generations later to the position of despised oppressors of the new downtrodden.

But the funny part is they did this without ever being rich or powerful in between.  Our parents and grandparents struggled to become good Americans in the hope that their descendants would get to live in the working and middle classes by following the rules and believing in the civic nationalism that said that a man was judged by his deeds and not his pedigree.

And now we are told that all that was a mistake.  Everything they did and we believed in was wrong.  All that talk about freedoms and inalienable rights was just a dodge.  It turns out that the Communists and the Fascists were right.  Power comes from the barrel of a gun.  We have no more right to freedom and happiness here than we did back in the old country where some patron or mafioso decided who got to work and who got to starve.  In fact, at least back in the old country there was some sense of loyalty even toward the peasants by those in charge.

So, we’re all expendable now.  Just a bunch of spare parts that are no longer needed in the new American economy.  A giant game of musical chairs where they turn off the music and there’s no place left for you.  It seems to me this explains why the Latinos are starting to gravitate toward the Republican party.  They’re basically the new version of the southern Europeans of a hundred years ago.  They came here expecting to work their way up and now they’re seeing the same dead end.  And they’re figuring out that the Democrats aren’t the party that helps families.  They’re the party of trans-gender indoctrination for their kids and of working women with no time for raising families.

I was reading Putin’s speech about the absorption of the Donbass regions into Russia.  It was very long and had a lot about Russian history and the fall of the Soviet Union.  But there was also a lot about the West.

I’ve copied some sections that I found interesting:

“In fact, they spit on the natural right of billions of people, most of humanity, to freedom and justice, to determine their own future on their own. Now they have completely moved to a radical denial of moral norms, religion, and family.

Let’s answer some very simple questions for ourselves. I now want to return to what I said, I want to address all the citizens of the country – not only to those colleagues who are in the hall – to all the citizens of Russia: do we want to have, here, in our country, in Russia, instead of mom and dad there was “parent number one”, “number two”, “number three” – are they completely crazy already there? Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed on children in our schools from the primary grades? To be drummed into them that there are supposedly other genders besides women and men, and to be offered a sex change operation? Do we want all this for our country and our children? For us, all this is unacceptable, we have a different, our own future.

I repeat, the dictatorship of the Western elites is directed against all societies, including the peoples of the Western countries themselves. This is a challenge for everyone. Such a complete denial of man, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, the suppression of freedom acquires the features of a “reverse religion” – outright Satanism. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ, denouncing the false prophets, says: By their fruits you will know them. And these poisonous fruits are already obvious to people – not only in our country, in all countries, including for many people and in the West itself.

The world has entered a period of revolutionary transformations, they are of a fundamental nature. New development centers are being formed, they represent the majority – the majority! – of the world community and are ready not only to declare their interests, but also to protect them, and see multipolarity as an opportunity to strengthen their sovereignty, which means to gain true freedom, a historical perspective, their right to independent, creative, original development, to a harmonious process.

All over the world, including in Europe and the United States, as I said, we have many like-minded people, and we feel, we see their support. A liberation, anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony is already developing within the most diverse countries and societies. His subjectivity will only grow. It is this force that will determine the future geopolitical reality.”

Now I have no illusions about Vladimir Putin.  He is a cold-blooded killer.  He will use whatever means he needs to achieve his goals.  He was the architect of the Second Chechen War, a brutal conflict.  He is a Russian partisan.  He has no love for America.  And yet most of what I copied above from his speech is demonstrably true.  Our government is erasing normalcy from our society and substituting a sick twisted anti-human creed.  The family is denigrated and mocked.  Freedom is being erased as a hate crime.  Prosperity for most people is being outlawed.  Even Vlad the Impaler can point to us and name our sins.  They’re that mortally clear.

It’s a cold, kind of bleak day, but I found illumination in an old black and white movie and the words of a modern-day autocrat.  The United States has abandoned the principles that made it great.  It has broken faith with the people who fought for it and believed in it.  It remains to be seen if it can be prodded back on the high road again.  But at least I found a little clarity.

What the Hell is Really Going On?

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When I read about the Nord Stream sabotage, I was thinking that the CIA and the State Department were figuring a way to force the Europeans to back their play in the Ukraine.  After all, if there was no way to get gas to Europe except through the Ukraine pipelines then effectively, they would have to go along with beating Russia to get the gas back.  But suddenly it seems like there’s more going on here.

What it is, I’m not sure.  Will it be some kind of October Surprise to sway the Mid-Term election?  Will these maniacs go to the brink with Russia to try and win the mid-term elections.  Is Creepy Uncle Joe going to go on television before the election and tell us that war with Russia is imminent and the only way he can win that war is to have a united Congress to rubber stamp his every action in the war?  It’s hard to believe he would do something that crazy.  But then again what’s crazy nowadays?

But what else could be going on?  Could this really all be about not letting the Germans buy natural gas from Russia?  That seems absurdly trivial when questions of nuclear war are being considered.  Surely war and peace are at a much higher level of US foreign policy than commercial relationships between European nations even if one of them is Russia.  But that is the claim of some people.  That we are trying to prevent Europe from cozying up to Russia because we want to prevent anything interfering with our hegemony over the West.

All of these actions and motives are bizarre to say the least.  It no longer seems that our foreign policy is being run by people who are grounded in reality.  Brinksmanship in the Ukraine is the height of dangerous behavior.  Sabotaging critical infrastructure that our closest allies depend on for the energy supply for their homes and businesses seems insane.  Having Joe Biden repeatedly state that the United States would get into a shooting war with China over Taiwan when the Chinese weren’t making an issue of it is just plain stupid.  But maybe that’s the point.  Maybe very stupid people are running our foreign policy now.  Maybe this is the best they could come up with to stave off the collapse of their “new world order” which seems to be coming apart at the seams everywhere we look.

After all, the EU is seeing defections from their immigration policy in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and now also in Sweden and Italy.  The BRICS and some other countries have rejected Washington’s embargo of Russian petroleum and mineral products.  And more and more Americans are tired of the madness that’s been going on for the last two years over COVID, crime and the destruction of the economy.

So if this is the Elites flailing around to distract us from the shambles they’ve made of everything, then my only fear is that we may not survive to see them rejected at the polls.  After all it’s still about forty days until election day and at this rate they’ll have triggered nuclear Armageddon and a Great Depression simultaneously before they can be fired.

Is this all just Joe playing “tail wagging the dog” or are these people so delusional that they think they can do any crazy damn thing and get away with it?  Maybe it’s too much to hope to know what’s really going on but I assure you I’m not the only one thinking that we’ve descended into a mad house.  The slogan that the Republicans should use for both 2022 and 2024 is, “Had enough yet or do you want the crazy to keep going?”

The World is Changing

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The world is changing.  Of that there is no doubt.  Look at the realignment that is going on in this country and around the world.  The Democrats have abandoned their former allies in the working class and embraced the plutocrats that run corporate America.  The Republican voters have abandoned establishment Republicans and are embracing populism and nationalism wherever they can.  And around the world the post-WWII military, financial and cultural hierarchy is in a shambles and is desperately trying to resist the forces of change that are breaking out in places like Poland, Hungary, Russia, China, India, Brazil and elsewhere.

What remains to be seen is whether this crisis is part of a well thought out plan by those in charge of the globalist order or just something they’ve cobbled together to control the reaction by the victims of the excesses that have ravaged post-industrial America and Europe.  Right now, they’re working to eliminate the descendants of the people they think they no longer need.  Part of that program is to eliminate the parts of the economy that used to support these people.  So, manufacturing jobs have been off-shored to China and now we have the attempt to eliminate fossil fuels and make energy much more expensive.  Also, the personal ownership of farmland and other valuable commodities is being made unattainable for all but the truly wealthy.

So far, the program is moving along at a rapid clip.  The oligarchs have managed to collapse the economic basis of the working class using the COVID “crisis” as an excuse.  The election fraud in 2020 was unchallenged except for the January 6th protest and that has been stifled using gestapo tactics to intimidate and silence all resistance.  Basically, all the levers of power have been captured and even the military has been captured by the Democrat regime.

But what hasn’t been taken into account is that the basis of America’s strength as the global hegemon was its strength, both militarily and economically.  And both those strengths have been degraded as part of the global program.  During Obama’s fundamental transformation of the military, he was instrumental in replacing white men who were the backbone of the officer corps with women and minorities who weren’t selected based on merit but rather for their race or sex.  This has had a corrosive effect on the whole military structure.  Currently there are indications that military preparedness in each of the branches of the military is below the level needed to be able to win a war against a modern army.  This means that the deterrence that formerly prevented second tier militaries like Iran and North Korea from getting involved in military adventurism against their neighbors may no longer hold.

And having transferred our industrial base to China our status as an economic superpower is also unjustified.  Look how the sanctions we levied against Russia over the Ukraine war have boomeranged back against us.  With the US once again dependent on foreign oil and gas we are the ones suffering from the consequences of trying to embargo Russia’s energy products.  The skyrocketing cost of fossil fuels is crippling American and European economies and impoverishing their citizens.

So, it may turn out that the New World Order has become a house of cards that will fall without the people it thought it could dispense with.  If our economy and military have been hollowed out by the elimination of the deplorables then maybe it’s not too late to head off the whole rotten project.

Of course, that’s a pretty big maybe.  And even if it happens there is going to be hell to pay when the American Empire falls off its perch.  So, we’re going to see very interesting things in the next few years.  The regime has lost the support of about half its citizens.  And that will alter this country in a profound way.  You’ll notice it and it will alter the way you feel about America and how you live your life.

The times they are a changing.

H’T to the Conservative Treehouse for this Neil Oliver Video

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Sundance over at the Conservative Treehouse started featuring Neil Oliver’s videos during the COVID  madness and I’ve become addicted to his talks.  This one is a good example of his style.  He weaves a tapestry of words that tell the story of a world being forced down a chute like cattle to the slaughter.  Kudos to Neil and kudos to Sundance.

Neil Oliver, The Great Resetters are Intent on Retaining Post-Pandemic Power and Control Through Fear and Finance

Russians End Gas Supply to Europe

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Russia announced a week ago that after the economic sanctions that had been levelled against it would demand to be paid in rubles for all gas deliveries into Europe.  After the Europeans refused it was assumed the Russians would back down.  It appears that was mistaken.

“After European nations imported the most gas from Russian sources yesterday in months, scrambling to stock up on supplies as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deadline to either pay for gas in rubles (or be cut off) came and went, Russian gas giant Gazprom has officially halted all deliveries to Europe via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, a critical artery for European energy supplies.”

This is a very interesting situation.  Will Germany back down and pay Russia in rubles?  Will this signal the beginning of negotiations between NATO and Russia?  Will Biden advise Zelensky to negotiate a quick settlement?  We shall see.