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U.S. Political Crisis: GloboCap Year Zero

27.12.20 | Duarte Pacheco Pereira

CJ Hopkins’ “Year Zero”

The Author

 

Year Zero

CJ Hopkins | December 16, 2020 
The Unz Review | Has Comments
Consent Factory, Inc. | Has Comments

2020 was GloboCap Year Zero. The year when the global capitalist ruling classes did away with the illusion of democracy and reminded everyone who is actually in charge, and exactly what happens when anyone challenges them.

In the relatively short span of the last ten months, societies throughout the world have been transformed beyond recognition. Constitutional rights have been suspended. Protest has been banned. Dissent is being censored. Government officials are issuing edicts restricting the most basic aspects of our lives … where we can go, when we can go there, how long we are allowed to spend there, how many friends we are allowed to meet there, whether and when we can spend time with our families, what we are allowed to say to each other, who we can have sex with, where we have to stand, how we are allowed to eat and drink, etc. The list goes on and on.

The authorities have assumed control of the most intimate aspects of our daily lives. We are being managed like inmates in a prison, told when to eat, sleep, exercise, granted privileges for good behavior, punished for the slightest infractions of an ever-changing set of arbitrary rules, forced to wear identical, demeaning uniforms (albeit only on our faces), and otherwise relentlessly bullied, abused, and humiliated to keep us compliant.

None of which is accidental, or has anything to do with any actual virus, or any other type of public health threat. Yes, before some of you go ballistic, I do believe there is an actual virus, which a number of people have actually died from, or which at least has contributed to their deaths … but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any authentic public health threat that remotely justifies the totalitarian emergency measures we are being subjected to or the damage that is being done to society. Whatever you believe about the so-called “pandemic,” it really is as simple as that. Even if one accepts the official “science,” you do not transform the entire planet into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare in response to a health threat of this nature.

The notion is quite literally insane.

GloboCap is not insane, however. They know exactly what they are doing … which is teaching us a lesson, a lesson about power. A lesson about who has it and who doesn’t. For students of history it’s a familiar lesson, a standard in the repertoire of empires, not to mention the repertoire of penal institutions.

The name of the lesson is “Look What We Can Do to You Any Time We Fucking Want.” The point of the lesson is self-explanatory. The USA taught the world this lesson when it nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. GloboCap (and the US military) taught it again when they invaded Iraq and destabilized the entire Greater Middle East. It is regularly taught in penitentiaries when the prisoners start to get a little too unruly and remember that they outnumber the guards. That’s where the “lockdown” concept originated. It isn’t medical terminology. It is penal institution terminology.

As we have been experiencing throughout 2020, the global capitalist ruling classes have no qualms about teaching us this lesson. It’s just that they would rather not to have to unless it’s absolutely necessary. They would prefer that we believe we are living in “democracies,” governed by the “rule of law,” where everyone is “free,” and so on. It’s much more efficient and much less dangerous than having to repeatedly remind us that they can take away our “democratic rights” in a heartbeat, unleash armed goon squads to enforce their edicts, and otherwise control us with sheer brute force.

People who have spent time in prison, or who have lived in openly totalitarian societies, are familiar with being ruled by brute force. Most Westerners are not, so it has come as a shock. The majority of them still can’t process it. They cannot see what is staring them in the face. They cannot see it because they can’t afford to see it. If they did, it would completely short-circuit their brains. They would suffer massive psychotic breakdowns, and become entirely unable to function, so their psyches will not allow them to see it.

Others, who see it, can’t quite accept the simplicity of it (i.e., the lesson being taught), so they are proposing assorted complicated theories about what it is and who is behind it … the Great Reset, China, the Illuminati, Transhumanism, Satanism, Communism, whatever. Some of these theories are at least partially accurate. Others are utter bull-goose lunacy.

They all obscure the basic point of the lesson.

The point of the lesson is that GloboCap — the entire global-capitalist system acting as a single global entity — can, virtually any time it wants, suspend the Simulation of Democracy, and crack down on us with despotic force. It can (a) declare a “global pandemic” or some other type of “global emergency,” (b) cancel our so-called “rights,” (c) have the corporate media bombard us with lies and propaganda for months, (d) have the Internet companies censor any and all forms of dissent and evidence challenging said propaganda, (e) implement all kinds of new intrusive “safety” and “security” measures, including but not limited to the physical violation of our bodies … and so on. I think you get the picture. (The violation of our bodies is important, which is why they love “cavity searches” in prison, and why the torture-happy troops at Abu Ghraib were obsessed with sexually violating their victims.)

And the “pandemic” is only one part of the lesson. The other part is being forced to watch (or permitted to watch, depending on your perspective) as GloboCap makes an example of Trump, as they made examples of Corbyn and Sanders, as they made examples of Saddam and Gaddafi, and other “uncooperative” foreign leaders, as they will make an example of any political figurehead that challenges their power. It does not matter to GloboCap that such political figureheads pose no real threat. The people who rally around them do. Nor does it make the slightest difference whether these figureheads or the folks who support them identify as “left” or “right.” GloboCap could not possibly care less. The figureheads are just the teaching materials in the lesson that they are teaching us.

And now, here we are, at the end of the lesson … not the end of the War on Populism, just the end of this critical Trumpian part of it. Once the usurper has been driven out of office, the War on Populism will be folded back into the War on Terror, or the War on Extremism, or whatever GloboCap decides to call it … the name hardly matters. It is all the same war.

Whatever they decide to call it, this is GloboCap Year Zero. It is time for reeducation, my friends. It is time for cultural revolution. No, not communist cultural revolution … global capitalist cultural revolution. It is time to flush the aberration of the last four years down the memory hole, and implement global “New Normal” Gleichschaltung, to make sure that this never happens again.

Oh, yes, things are about to get “normal.” Extremely “normal.” Suffocatingly “normal.” Unimaginably oppressively “normal.” And I’m not just talking about the “Coronavirus measures.” This has been in the works for the last four years.

Remember, back in 2016, when everyone was so concerned about “normality,” and how Trump was “not normal,” and must never be “normalized?” Well, here we are. This is it. This is the part where GloboCap restores “normality,” a “new normality,” a pathologized-totalitarian “normality,” a “normality” which tolerates no dissent and demands complete ideological conformity.

From now on, when the GloboCap Intelligence Community and their mouthpieces in the corporate media tell you something happened, that thing will have happened, exactly as they say it happened, regardless of whether it actually happened, and anyone who says it didn’t will be labeled an “extremist,” a “conspiracy theorist,” a “denier,” or some other meaningless epithet. Such un-persons will be dealt with ruthlessly. They will be censored, deplatformed, demonetized, decertified, rendered unemployable, banned from traveling, socially ostracized, hospitalized, imprisoned, or otherwise erased from “normal” society.

You will do what you are told. You will not ask questions. You will believe whatever they tell you to believe. You will believe it, not because it makes any sense, but simply because you have been ordered to believe it. They aren’t trying to trick or deceive anybody. They know their lies don’t make any sense. And they know that you know they don’t make any sense. They want you to know it. That is the point. They want you to know they are lying to you, manipulating you, openly mocking you, and that they can say and do anything they want to you, and you will go along with it, no matter how insane.

If they order you to take a fucking vaccine, you will not ask what is in the vaccine, or start whining about the “potential side effects.” You will shut up and take the fucking vaccine. If they tell you to put a mask on your kid, you will put a fucking mask on your fucking kid. You will not go digging up Danish studies proving the pointlessness of putting masks on kids. If they tell you the Russians rigged the election, then the Russians rigged the fucking election. And, if, four years later, they turn around and tell you that rigging an election is impossible, then rigging an election is fucking impossible. It isn’t an invitation to debate. It is a GloboCap-verified fact-checked fact. You will stand (or kneel) in your designated, color-coded, social-distancing box and repeat this verified fact-checked fact, over and over, like a fucking parrot, or they will discover some new mutant variant of virus and put you back in fucking “lockdown.” They will do this until you get your mind right, or you can live the rest of your life on Zoom, or tweeting content that no one but the Internet censors will ever see into the digital void in your fucking pajamas. The choice is yours … it’s is all up to you!

Or … I don’t know, this is just a crazy idea, you could turn off the fucking corporate media, do a little fucking research on your own, grow a backbone and some fucking guts, and join the rest of us “dangerous extremists” who are trying to fight back against the New Normal. Yes, it will cost you, and we probably won’t win, but you won’t have to torture your kids on airplanes, and you don’t even have to “deny” the virus!

That’s it … my last column of 2020. Happy totalitarian holidays!

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volumes I and II of his Consent Factory Essays are published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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U.S. Societal Collapse? (ii)

17.12.20 | Duarte Pacheco Pereira

R.I.P., Intellectual Dark Web (2018-2019)


R.I.P., Intellectual Dark Web (2018-2019)


 


2. Free Inquiry R.I.P.


Throughout the West, controlled explanations have replaced evidence.


Paul Craig Roberts | Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy | December 14, 2020


You can tell that the US presidential election was stolen the same way that you can tell that Covid is being hyped to serve an agenda. The way you know is that no explanation is permitted other than the official explanation.


Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and the presstitute print, TV, and NPR media censor all information that indicates a stolen election. Not even neutral election experts heavily armed with facts, and witnesses who have signed sworn affidavits under penalty of perjury, are interviewed by the presstitute media or permitted to post documentation of electoral fraud on social media.  It is simply out of the question to give any hearing to evidence.  Some Democrats and presstitutes have even called for the arrest of anyone who says Biden did not win or might not have won if the evidence could be weighed. They want to make challenging the official explanation a crime subject to imprisonment, just as in some Western countries any stated opinion or evidence contrary to the official Holocaust story results in a prison sentence.


The same for Covid. As far as I can tell there are more virologists, immunologists, and epidemiologists who question the seriousness of Covid than there are who see Covid as a threat that justifies lockdowns, mask mandates, and punishment for noncompliance. Yet, the dissenting experts are not permitted to present their evidence to the public. Keep in mind that Fauci and Redfield are not great scientists; they are merely administrators of public health organizations. They are not on the same level as their critics.


Think about it for a minute.  In neither of the two most important issues currently affecting the United States—indeed, one could say the Western world—the validity of the US presidential election and the reality of the Covid threat—is there any public debate.


Doesn’t it strike you as odd that only one opinion—the official opinion—is permitted. The two most important issues of our time only have official explanations. The public is not permitted the expert dissenting opinion.  This doesn’t bother you?


You would think that there would be a variety of views about such important subjects and that evidence would be presented and carefully evaluated.  Instead, all debate is foreclosed.  Only the official explanation is permitted.


This suggests that the evidence for Biden’s win and for a Covid threat that justifies an economic holocaust is suspect and cannot stand the light of day. Therefore, no debate is permitted in order to protect the lie.


An uninformed reader might say that the courts have examined the evidence and have rejected the evidence of electoral fraud as insubstantial.  And, indeed, the reader would have to be uninformed or misled by the lies of the presstitute media.


The fact is this: No court has examined the evidence. No state court and not the US Supreme Court. The reason that the courts have not accepted the cases is that they do not want to have to examine the evidence, because the evidence clearly establishes that the election was stolen and that the theft was carefully planned in advance. The state courts in the swing states where the election was stolen are protecting the Democrats. The US Supreme Court refused to accept the case on the grounds that Texas did not have standing to bring a case. Clearly, there has been no judicial ruling on the evidence that the election was legitimate. The US Supreme Court will protect the Establishment and the Establishment’s reputation before it will protect electoral integrity.


The evidence has been refused examintion by the state and federal judiciary.


So much for “American democracy.” So much for the “American Rule of Law.” No such rule exists. Law exists only for the purposes of the ruling Establishment. Power, not law, rules in America.


The US Supreme Court is an Establishment institution. It makes controversial rulings only when it has the media on its side.


Note that Hunter Biden’s laptop, which we know for a fact indicates both his and his father’s corruption in the sale of protection, is in the hands of the FBI and nothing is done about the Bidens’ criminal activity. The presstitutes claim that no such criminal activity exists. Apparently, the FBI agrees.


The protection of Hunter Biden is necessary to protect the “president elect.” Hunter will get away with his ill-gained millions of dollars, and his father will get way with his share.


Justice in America no longer exists. “Justice” is the retribution reserved for truth-tellers like Manning and Julian Assange, and “justice” means persecution and frame-up of those inconvenient for the Establishment even if the framed-up person is the President of the United States. Coverup for the Establishment and you will be rich. Criticize their growing power over American citizens and you will be made an example of what happens to those who are non-compliant.


This is America today.


But it is also the Western World today.


It is the same in Germany, for example. Germany has closed down the German economy based on allegations of a Covid threat —Non-essential services shut, no drinking in public & no fireworks: Germany rolls out tougher Covid-19 rules. There is little scientific basis for this drastic policy, and a great deal of evidence against it.  The German people themselves have strongly protested against it to no avail.


Our world is one of controlled explanations.  Consider the large number. For examples there are President Kennedy’s assassination, Martin Luther King’s assassination, Robert Kennedy’s assassination, the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of Chemical weapons, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Iranian nukes, Russiagate and the other orchestrated charges against President Trump.


The Western World emerged from the fall of the Roman World and the uncertainties of the Middle Age to become eventually a civilization based in science and evidence. But today evidence no longer counts.  What counts in the Western World today is emotion.  If you have the correct emotions, you are “woke” and know that Western Civilization is racist and misogynist and imperialist and that its white inhabitants are “systemic racists” who oppress black people for racist reasons. You know that the evil of the white race necessitates their overthrowing. If you are a white person, you are put in a position where “social justice” requires you to be put into a lower legal class with less rights. It is not considered hate speech to declare that whiteness must be erased.


The problem for the Western World is that many white people agree with their indictment. Deracinated white people lack the confidence to defend themselves, their history, monuments, and achievements.


In a diverse, multicultural society, deracinated races have little prospect.  The defense of whiteness is defined as racist and this is used to prevent the rise of leaders who would restore white confidence.  Jean Raspail’s novel, The Camp of the Saints, foretold the future of white peoples.


Original here.


 


Societal collapse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | Here


 


 


FIM


 

An Expert Military Analysis of War with China

16.12.20 | Duarte Pacheco Pereira

An Expert Military Analysis of War with China

Actually, None is Necessary.

Fred Reed | The Unz Review | December 13, 2020

The Correlation of Armed Forces: U.S. goods and services trade with China totaled an estimated $634.8 billion in 2019. Exports were $163.0 billion; imports were $471.8 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with China was $308.8 billion in 2019. Trade in services with China (exports and imports) totaled an estimated $76.7 billion in 2019. Services exports were $56.5 billion; services imports were $20.1 billion. The U.S. services trade surplus with China was $36.4 billion in 2019.

There is talk within the Washingtoniat of a possible war with China. Steve Bannon, who apparently was dropped on his head as a child, actually favors such a war. We hear the usual shoo-the-boobs alarm about how the Chinese are doing something terrible and we must gird our loins and American values and show them what for, bow wow, woof. The danger is that the current game of who-blinks-first in Asian waters might actually provoke a shooting war. You know the kind of thing: One warship refuses to get out of the way of another, a collision ensues, some retard lieutenant who signed up on waivers opens fire, and we’re off and running. It is not a good idea to let children play with matches.

The said war is discussed either in emotional terms by idiots or in purely naval terms by those familiar with such things, so we hear of the First Island Chain and the Second Island Chain and whose missiles against the other’s missiles and so on. This would be appropriate if we were fighting World War Two again. Which we aren’t. Let’s take a quick-and-dirty look at how such a war might go.

To begin the war, America would overestimate itself and underestimate China. This is doctrine in the Pentagon. There is probably a manual on it. Inside the DC Bubble, fern-bar Napoleons would assure us that it would be a short war, a cakewalk, a matter of days, not weeks. You know, like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. When it turned out that the Chinese had other ideas, among which surrendering was not, and the months dragged on, various fascinating things would happen.

Rand, a thinktank wholly owned by the Pentagon, at least mentally, has wargamed both the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, concluding that the war could be both very long and a loss for America. We no longer live in 1960.

OK, the war: On day one, all the multitudinous American factories in China shut down. Example: Apple loses its factories, products from those factories, and the Chinese market of 1.4 billion consumers. Its stores close. Tim Cook’s gratitude will know no bounds. American auto manufacturers sell googolplexes of cars in China (or at least lots), mostly made in China. Overnight they will lose factories, cars, and Chinese customers. Overall, China buys many more cars than does the US. This analysis, if anything so obvious may be called analysis, can be repeated for industry after industry after industry. Goodbye, business vote.

Within weeks, Walmart’s shelves go bare. Walk down the aisles and read the “Made in” labels. We are not talking only plastic buckets and mops but chain saws, pharmaceuticals, motorcycles, and blood-pressure cuffs. So much for the blue-collar vote. The US buys 472 billion in goods annually from China, high-tech, low-tech, consumer goods, manufacturing components. No more.

China buys over $163 billion annually in American goods: petroleum, semiconductors, airline engines, soybeans, airliners, on and on. No more. It is hard to underestimate the joy this will cause in influential boardrooms. And of course the American workers who would have produced these things for China will be laid off. As electoral politics, this will prove suboptimal.

China produces a great majority of the rare earth elements crucial to the manufacture of electronics, such as semiconductors. No quick substitute is in sight. Just about everything in America uses these, to include the computers that run the electrical systems of cars. Though I haven’t checked, it is quite possible that the computers themselves are made in China. If you want a new and deeper understanding of the word “hostile,” check the influential CEOs of businesses on their second chipless day.

In a real war, it is likely that China, having thought of the foregoing, would (intelligently) destroy Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs, notably those of TSMC, as well as other factories of electronics. This would hardly be difficult since the Taiwan Strait is only a hundred or so miles wide. Losing these industries would be exceedingly painful for the US since its high-end chips come from Taiwan. It would take America years to replace this capacity domestically. Some of the necessary equipment, extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, is not made in America and in any event cannot be stamped out like beer cans.

In America it would quickly be discovered that the country is rather more dependent on China than some might think. If I may make up an example: The automotive industry finds that its sparkplugs come from China. While America could certainly make spark plugs, it turns out that a decade back the industry found that China could make them for forty percent less. In the cooperative commercial world pre-Trump, this was no problem. Not now. So much for sales of cars. And for the jobs of the workers who make them.

I will bet you all my diamond mines in South Africa and cattle lands in Argentina, that if you went through a parts list for, say, Boeing’s airliners, you would find lots of them made in China. Sure, the US could manufacture most of them, eventually. But companies need parts now, not eventually.

The effects on other countries of a large war against China would be catastrophic if not worse. Other countries also get many things, from China or Taiwan, such as semiconductors. Google on “country x largest trading partner.” A strong pattern quickly becomes clear: China is huge in trading with practically everybody. “Everybody” includes Germany, Japan, Australia, Russia, and South America as a whole. The world economy in its entirety would collapse.

How smart would this be? The United States is already in serious trouble, what with a currency rapidly being debased, a sinking middle class, businesses dying of Covid, jobs disappearing abroad, people living paycheck to paycheck, and social unhappiness resulting in continent-wide riots. Do you suppose the public will gladly support an unfathomably stupid war causing an instant, profound, and murderous economic depression? If so, you probably already have a collection of bridges.

This can be inflicted on the entire earth by a half-dozen loons in or circling around the White House unhindered by a worthless Congress. Six loons. Yes, I know, Trump is unlikely deliberately to start a Third world War, even as a publicity stunt. No, the generals in the Pentagon are not nearly stupid enough. (They might even refuse, pointing out that starting a war requires a declaration by Congress.) The problem is that for years America has been, if not actually looking for a fight, at least daring other countries to start one. For example, murdering Iranian officials, pulling out of arms-control treaties, pushing NATO ever closer to Russia, sanctioning countries far beyond anything that can be called a trade war, and playing chicken with China in the South China Sea. Under these circumstances you can get a fight without quite looking for one.

Write Fred at jet.possum@gmail.com. Put the letters pdq anywhere in the subject line to avoid heartless autodeletion.

Buy Fred’s Splendid Books!

They prevent Covid, cure baldness, and make you more attractive to the opposite sex. You can even read them.

Original and comments here.

 

NATO and the EU are sending a “message” to Russia. Again.
The Saker | The Vineyard of the Saker | December 10, 2020 | Here

 

 

FIM

 

U.S. Societal Collapse? (i)

15.12.20 | Duarte Pacheco Pereira

straitjacket


straitjacket


 


1. Are Americans Rational?


Dmitry Orlov | Club Orlov | Monday, November 30, 2020


I've been holding back on commenting on current events because they are far too silly. At this point it is safe to say that the elections in the US have been thoroughly botched and that, no matter who is ultimately chosen as president for the next for years, enough questions will remain in the minds of enough people to thoroughly delegitimize the national leadership in the eyes of at least half the country.


Just this morning I got a missive from Paul Craig Roberts containing the following bullet points:



  • Joe Biden’s Twitter account has 20 million followers. Trump’s Twitter account has 88.8 million followers.

  • Joe Biden’s Facebook account has 7.78 million followers. Trump’s Facebook account has 34.72 million followers. How likely is it that a person with four to five times the following of his rival lost the election?

  • Joe Biden, declared by the biased presstitutes to be president by landslide, gave a Thanksgiving Day message and only 1,000 people watched his live statement. Where is the enthusiasm?

  • Trump’s campaign appearances were heavily attended and that Biden’s were avoided. Somehow a candidate who could not draw supporters to his campaign appearances won the presidency.

  • Despite Biden’s total failure to animate voters during the presidential campaign, he received 15 million more votes than Barack Obama did in his 2012 re-election.

  • Biden won despite underperforming Hillary Clinton’s 2016 vote in every urban US county, but outperformed Clinton in Democrat-controlled Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, the precise cities where the most obvious and most blatant electoral fraud was committed.

  • Biden won despite receiving a record low share of the Democrat primary vote compared to Trump’s share of the Republican primary vote.

  • Biden won despite Trump bettering his 2016 vote by ten million votes and Trump’s record support from minority voters.

  • Biden won despite losing the bellwether counties that have always predicted the election outcome and the bellwether states of Ohio and Florida.

  • Biden won in Georgia, a completely red state with a red governor and legislature both House and Senate. Somehow a red state voted for a blue president.

  • Biden won despite the Democrats losing representation in the House.

  • In Pennsylvania 47 memory cards containing more than 50,000 votes are missing.

  • Pennsylvania 1.8 million ballots were mailed out to voters, but 2.5 million mail-in ballots were counted.


Roberts is a Republican and therefore believes that the Democrats stole the election. A Democrat, once it turns out that Trump won after all, would believe the opposite. But that makes no difference because, as I keep repeating, the US is not a democracy and it doesn't matter who is its president.


It is not a democracy because the vast majority of votes—all Democratic votes in Republican states and all Republican votes in Democratic states—are simply thrown away. That's roughly half the electorate who have no chance of making their vote count in the state where they live. Of course, they could move to a different state, in which case their vote would be thrown away for the opposite reason—lost as part of a superfluously large majority.


This is easy enough to explain to any rational person—but not to the vast majority of Americans, for whom such logic goes in one ear and comes out the other. In short, they are not rational. Worse than that, their leaders are not rational either. This brings us to the second point—that it doesn't matter who is president.


Trump keeps talking about making America great—by bringing manufacturing back from China. Except that the opposite has happened over the past four years: China's industrial production has continued to grow (although more slowly than before) while in the US it has continued to decline. Nor is is there any reason at all to think that this is going to change over the next four years.


Biden keeps talking about America continuing as the leader of the free world—except that America is no longer the leader of much of anything and there is no reason to think that anything can be done to reverse this slide. Thus, no matter who becomes (or remains) president, the US administration will continue to wallow in nostalgia while steadfastly refusing to admit defeat.


This defeat has multiple elements.


First, the shale oil gamble is over. Drilling rates have collapsed, many shale oil companies are bankrupt, and US oil production is set to plummet from over 12 million barrels per day at its peak to around 5 million by next June (according to Art Berman, whose opinion I trust). After that point the US will once again become a major oil importer, and since no other swing producers are available this will drive up oil prices, perhaps beyond the previous all-time record of $150/barrel, resulting in a US oil import bill of half a trillion dollars a year. But it is doubtful whether that much extra oil can be produced at almost any price.


Second, national bankruptcy is looming ever closer. The federal government now overspends its revenues by a factor of two or more, meaning that for every dollar of federal revenue it borrows and spends at least two. Previously, despite its already ridiculous size and exponential growth rate, US federal debt could be given an appearance of legitimacy because enough foreign buyers could be found for it; but this is no longer the case. And so this debt is looking less and less legitimate because it is being monetized—simply printed into existence—as the Federal Reserve degenerates into a pure pyramid scheme.


Third, the US dollar (along with some other currencies to which it is tied) is poised on the edge of a hyperinflationary wipe-out. In an effort to shore up the economy a great deal of money has been unleashed into the economy and it went chasing after stocks, keeping it from triggering hyperinflation. Thus we have the truly bizarre combination of a record-high stock market along with record-high bankruptcies, foreclosures and evictions. At some point confidence in the stock market will evaporate and all of this notional money will go chasing after anything that isn't made of paper (with the possible exception of toilet paper). Much of this notional money will evaporate as people liquidate their stock holdings, but enough will remain to result in hoarding and hyperinflation. The US dollar will devalue internationally and the US will lose access to imports.


Fourth, the US has lost its lead militarily, definitely to Russia and possibly to China and Iran. Its major military asset is its aircraft carrier fleet, which is by now completely useless because it can be destroyed using conventional weapons from a safe stand-off distance which is greater than the reach of its aircraft. Consequently, it cannot be deployed close enough to an enemy shore to make its aircraft useful. US military bases, hundreds of which are scattered all over the globe, but mostly clustered along Russia's and China's borders, are also useless militarily, as demonstrated by Iran's rocket attacks against two of them in Iraq. In short, the entire US military is by now more of a liability than an asset—likely to draw the US into a military confrontation which it cannot win.


Now, do you hear these points discussed in the national media, in the course of the election campaign or otherwise? Do these points come up at all in conversations with colleagues, neighbors, friends and family? Are these topics of discussion in high school civics classes? (Wait, what high school civics classes?) No? And yet they are real, and their consequences are at this point unavoidable, and refusing to acknowledge them will only exacerbate their effects.


Collapse is bad enough when you and everyone around you can acknowledge it. But if everyone from the president (pick either one) to the lowliest convenience store clerk is incapable of accepting it as real and thinking through some of the immediate consequences, that makes it much, much worse. I refuse to accept any of the responsibility for this dreadful state of affairs; I've been doing all I can to warn people for a decade and a half now. It is now pointless for me to issue any more warnings. All I can do now is watch the inevitable unfold.


Original here.


 


Societal collapse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | Here


Dmitry Orlov (writer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | Here


 


 


FIM


 

A Rejeição da Democracia

13.12.20 | Duarte Pacheco Pereira

Hillary Clinton 2016: Discurso de concessão (de reconhecimento da derrota).Hillary Clinton 2016: Discurso de concessão (de reconhecimento da derrota).


 


A rejeição da democracia


João Pedro Marques | Diário de Notícias | 04 Dezembro 2016 — 00:03


A eleição de Donald Trump desencadeou uma verdadeira enxurrada de manifestações de surpresa, pesar, medo, o que se percebe porque ele é bombástico e imprevisível. Têm-se escrito milhares de linhas sobre o assunto e escutado milhares de opiniões. Surgiram previsões catastrofistas e iniciativas anti-Trump: cartas abertas a afirmar que o mundo o rejeita; petições para que resigne ao cargo; e, claro, agitação nas ruas. Nos últimos dias têm-se sucedido, em várias cidades dos Estados Unidos, manifestações alimentadas sobretudo por gente jovem que sai de casa e do campus universitário para se insurgir mais ou menos violentamente contra o que resultou das urnas eleitorais. Em Portland, por exemplo, a manifestação descambou em confrontos físicos, destruição de carros, montras partidas. A polícia considerou que estava perante um motim e agiu em conformidade. Acabo de ver na televisão uma jovem manifestante explicar, muito compenetrada, que estava ali a manifestar-se (violentamente) contra Trump, um tipo perigoso porque incita à... violência. Confusões e incoerências de gente que perde o norte e o nexo no calor da militância e da luta. Nada de novo nem de preocupante.


O mesmo já não direi desta inclinação para rejeitar ou desconsiderar aquilo que resulta do sufrágio eleitoral ou de outras formas de consulta legítima às populações. Já vimos isto, aliás, no pós-brexit, na Grã-Bretanha, onde uma parte da população não gostou do resultado do referendo e começou de imediato a tentar revertê-lo ou anulá-lo. Alegou-se que a decisão tinha emanado dos grupos etários mais velhos e de populações rurais pouco ou mal informadas – como se isso de alguma forma invalidasse ou desautorizasse a decisão colectiva do país –, houve pedidos para que o referendo fosse repetido ou que as pessoas se mobilizassem contra ele. Um dos mais notórios agitadores dessas águas tem sido Tony Blair.


E vemos agora algo de equivalente nos Estados Unidos e no mundo que observa o que lá se passa. Logo que se soube que Trump fora eleito, as redes sociais encheram-se de vozes indignadas com o resultado, atribuído, novamente, a matarruanos (do Midwest e do Deep South), quase se sugerindo que o voto das pessoas incultas ou com baixas qualificações não deveria valer tanto como o de um académico de Harvard. Surgiram vozes a sugerir que o resultado era menos válido ou legítimo porque, tudo somado, Hillary Clinton tinha obtido maior número de votos dos eleitores do que Donald Trump, o que, como sabemos, não é inédito, pois nos Estados Unidos as eleições são indirectas, elege-se estado a estado e não pelo somatório total à escala nacional. Os eleitores de cada estado escolhem delegados que formam um colégio eleitoral e é esse colégio que, num segundo momento, elege o presidente. Ora, num derradeiro esforço para torcer o destino, ouvem-se agora apelos para que os delegados pró-Trump, chegados ao colégio eleitoral, reneguem os eleitores de base que lá os puseram, virem a casaca e votem, à última hora, em Hillary Clinton.


É com base nessas e noutras ideias equivalentes que os media, as redes sociais e as ruas se agitam. Eu apoiaria esta agitação, este esbracejar, se as eleições norte-americanas (ou o referendo do brexit) tivessem sido objecto de falcatruas ou vícios, como os das antigas “chapeladas” do século XIX. Ou, então, se tivessem sido condicionadas por meios violentos e intimidatórios. Mas não foi o caso. As pessoas que agora esbracejam fazem-no contra um processo que foi correcto e dentro da lei, mas cujo resultado não lhes agradou. Ao fazê-lo, movem-se contra a democracia, rejeitam-na, e atingem directamente o tronco central da organização política dos nossos países democráticos. Ora isso é, a meu ver, ainda mais preocupante do que a eleição de um presidente errático que os norte-americanos poderão substituir daqui a quatro anos, se assim o entenderem. Mas o espírito não-democrático que tem vindo a crescer nas nossas sociedades abertas, este espírito de desrespeito pelas escolhas das populações e de não-aceitação de eventuais derrotas, não será tão fácil de inverter ou de extirpar.


Historiador e romancista


Escreve de acordo com a antiga ortografia


Original aqui.


 


Hillary Clinton's concession speech full transcript
The Straits Times | Nov 10, 2016, 1:21 AM SGT | Here


Hillary Clinton: ‘This Is Painful, and It Will Be for a Long Time’
Susan Milligan | U.S. News | Nov. 9, 2016, at 2:13 p.m. | Here


Commentary: How It Went Downhill For Hillary Clinton
Dan Payne | WBUR | November 10, 2016 | Here


Hillary Clinton deserved to lose
Ed Smith | New Statesman | 16 November 2016 | Here


 


Original publicado aqui, eliminado hoje pelo Facebook e recuperado a partir de uma segurança que, por acaso existia.


 


 


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