America 2.0

 

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  • #39858

    Dorothea Lange Farmers’ supply co-op. Nyssa, Malheur County, Oregon 1939     It’s Dr. D again. Told you he’s on a roll. He remains convinced
    [See the full post at: America 2.0]

    #39859
    bluebird
    Participant

    Dr. D – I agree what you are saying, that our way of life cannot go on forever. But how long is the big wheel of time? Can U.S. manufacturing be started up again to produce those necessary items that people use every day, before the wheel stops in another bloody world war.

    #39862
    zerosum
    Participant

    “…The empire collapses from within, to the total surprise of historians of the 1%, and the total lack of interest of the 99%, for whom it had already collapsed decades before….”
    …what do we do with 200 million unemployed?…

    @ Dr. D
    Good! You have an optimist message.
    You are also part of the 99%
    We, bloggers, will not live long enough to experience your projections.

    #39863
    Dr. D
    Participant

    I guess that’s the question. They are certainly trying everything to start a war now, and yet another group within the same institutions is trying just as hard to stop them. That’s why foreign and even domestic policy seem so schizophrenic. But China is on top and doesn’t want a war. Napoleon said “Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.” If the West is losing, why act? That’s not the Art of War, the Eastern way. They’ll calmly let us fall apart and enjoy the peaceful use of the brand-new cities and high-tech that we’ve lost because our oligarchs are violent mouth-breathing dummies who steal too much.

    The West tried to have a nuclear war with incendiary provocations against Russian allies Libya, Syria, Ukraine, put nuclear missiles 10 minutes from Moscow, (apparently) staged fake chemical attacks a dozen times, bombed Russian soldiers in Syria, and ambushed a Russian MIG and shot down the Russian rescue helicopter, illegally embargoed them, attempted to throw them off the Security Council, is right now breaking the Chemical Weapons treaty, and told China to get out of the China Sea. That’s just some and just the last few years. You know, if Russia had the slightest interest in war, we’d have one.

    And that’s why they have to start this idiotic, suicidal war virtually no one in any western nation wants: BECAUSE they are losing every minute to China and Russia, then Turkey and Iran, and now even embarrassing midgets (no offense) Philippines, Pakistan, Hungary, Ecuador, and so many more. When Pakistan tells you to suck it, you know you’re a has-been. And like I said, once you’ve destroyed everything, the military and your violent reputation is all that’s left. When countries laugh at that, your currency is dead, and with it your power. Then your own people come and get you.

    In my opinion, in their psychosis of entitlement they both believe that the West is far stronger than it is, and the East is far weaker than it is, and they would consider it an absolute benefit-only-to-be-dreamed-of to kill most of their own annoying western population. “You can’t oppress me, I got rights, why did you steal my house and drive my daughter to prostitution, blah blah blah.” This is like every. empire. ever. And like every empire ever, they are completely, catastrophically wrong being such pencil-necked chicken hawks that never got a bloody nose in their life. Luckily, although they are EVEN STUPIDER – so far, far stupider! — than the dumbest MAGA supporter from southern Indiana, the population at large is smart enough to know which way the wind blows and to get out of the rain. They don’t want war, and voted against it the last 4 Presidents. The generalized business interests don’t want war either, which leaves only the achingly dumb entitled apparatchiks, the billionaires, and *some* of the military against everybody else in America. That’s why step by step they’re losing, will lose, and in fact lost some years ago, but it’s ugly and very slow.

    Europe is not so lucky. As we see in Britain, and indeed France sending troops 2,500 miles to fight Turkey, the single largest army in Europe(!!) who will happily shoot the crap out of them, the European people are frighteningly less able to resist — savaged by a 50% unemployment rate and a dead economy — against the warmongers in Brussels who are taking all wealth, making every instigation even against even their own members, and making any form of open discussion more illegal than Goebbels and Stalin ever dreamed. Unseating the elected Italian P.M in minutes without discussion or redress, felony charging the top French candidate, imprisoning comedians at will, are you kidding me? What does it take to get you guys alarmed?

    The U.S. has cycles of isolationism (i.e., realizing we shouldn’t be in other people’s business) while we figure things out, and this will be one of those times. Asia will be happy to exist and prosper until they too get so drunk on power they colonize the Pacific rim and take MENA. But Europe, I fear for you. This looks like one of those collapses of ethnos vs ethnos you have, and with no structure within and no way to project power without, will be dark days indeed. You may know better than I, but I don’t see anything pulling you back from the edge but us and we can’t even help ourselves right now.

    And that’s the optimist’s message. It can get worse than that real easy.

    #39864
    regionswork
    Participant

    Core nations began their ascent with deep natural capital. The cedars of Lebanon are long gone. Italy’s environmental recovery from the Roman Empire took a thousand years. Spanish, French and English forests went to sea and never came back.

    I live in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Reforestation began in the 1920s to protect the water supply of Washington, D.C. the Shenandoah River was a running sewer where it met the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, The Potomac Highlands ov WV polluted as well, including more mining waste. The rich soils found by settlers all went to the Chesapeake Bay, silting up the early harbors. Settlers depleted forests and soils State by State.

    Without liquid nitrogen fertilizer, there would be little natural agricultural production. Real soil must be alive. Deer over graze in Bambi protected suburbs making home gardening quite expensive. The payback on a ten foot electrified fence is long. HOAs don’t allow them.

    A lot of the early productivity of the U.S. was due to depletion of the natural capital built up prior to neolithic agriculture and settlements. Empires boomed and busted. The technosphere built-enviroment mass accumulated, now 30 trillion metric tonnes, over 4,000 metric tonnes per capita. Is it sustainable into the ever more technological future, where repair is not a big concern. Just throw it away; the new model will be better.

    Depreciation is an accounting notion. It really doesn’t encompass depletion. Selling below the true cost of production is what busts empires. The cascade is in play. Will human civilization be able to wake up and save itself, or will its tribes fight to exhaustion, Earth a scaled up Easter Island?

    #39865
    Patricia
    Participant

    What do you think of China’s new Silk Road Dr D? And their ginormous population? And the huge under populated agricultural land in Central Asia through which it is to pass? And their fast railway along side? I see that as the future for the world. If the world’s future is to be consumption…. i think that China’s economic system is very different from the West. Neot right or wrong just different.

    #39866
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Patricia
    There is an excellent 4 part series by FEDERICO PIERACCINI that I would consider most important to answer your question.
    The key here is MacKinder + Spykman + Mahan, who fully understood the true center or heartland of the world.
    The link below will take you to the first of 4 articles; it’s quite an education.
    The importance of the BRI will be clear, as will the current geopolitical situation.
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/12/19/geopolitics-globalization-and-world-order.html

    #39874
    Patricia
    Participant

    Thank you V Arnold. I have read the first part and it is so good but how do I get the other three. I have tried but the must be stupid or is it dementia coming on.!

    #39875
    Patricia
    Participant

    Found it!

    #39876
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Patricia
    Dementia worry/concern is my constant companion as well; so far so good @73. 😉
    Good, you found it. I had trouble as well.
    But well worth the effort.
    It is good isn’t it?
    Gave me a whole new perspective on the world at large.

    #39877
    Patricia
    Participant

    V. Arnold. It was such good reading and explained so much. Really everything in reality is very simple. It is just us humans who like to make things worse by over analysing. If only we would just live and let live.

    #39878
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Patricia
    Indeed; but, it seems, not our nature; to live and let live…
    Cheers, and very happy it resonated with you as well….

    #39879

    So where are those 3 chapters?

    The Heartland/Rimland theories are essential to the whole Wolfowitz worldview. Putin is very aware of them, obviously. Still, interesting theories, but to what extent do they still apply?

    I keep on having my doubts about the Silk Road. Someone has to finance it.China can’t, it’s going broke as is. It wants the countries along the Road to pay for it, by buying Chinese steel etc. With monopoly money borrowed from Beijing, no less.

    I can see China withdrawing within itself, for purely economic reasons at first, then for political ones as well, to keep control of the population that gets restless as the growth fades away and the empty apartments fall to pieces but the loans fro them must still be paid.

    #39880
    Patricia
    Participant

    You have to search for them through the authori’s name but they do explain such a lot. I don’t see that China will go broke as you say. They can just print their own money and spend it internally. They still have industries that produce and we don’t. They are selling and buying oil with yuan as well as other products it seems. I see it as their way of getting out of the control of American domination. It is a country that plans and we don’t.

    #39881
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    I’ll e-mail you my attachments for the remaing 3 installments; unlike Patricia, I couldn’t find them, but I C&P’d them to Open Office.

    #39882
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Okay, done.
    Please let me know if they were okay.

    #39883
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Patricia
    Well done you.
    I agree; China will be fine.
    The BRI will happen…

    #39885
    SteveB
    Participant

    “What is this whole imbalance based on?”

    It’s based on our cultural belief in the concept of exchange. Always has been, regardless of the lack of awareness of that fact.

    #39886
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Apparently Ilargi knew nothing about MacKinder + Spykman + Mahan.
    Critical history of the great game played out as this is written.
    History is so deep and far reaching; to not know it is a fatal flaw.
    I’m still in my infancy, but striving on in the great adventure, that is history…

    #39887

    Apparently Ilargi knew nothing about MacKinder + Spykman + Mahan.

    Only as much as Putin.

    #39888
    bluebird
    Participant

    I haven’t yet read Federico Pieraccini articles, but what is BRI? I get confused with so many acronyms.

    #39892
    Patricia
    Participant

    Bluebird. I don’t know what BRI means but all you need to know is that it is referring to China’s new Silk Road so just look up that. It ifollows the old trading route. It is quite amazing where it is going to go. I think it has got as far as and into Kazakhstan. The aim is to get goods to Europe. Apparently the time saved in transit of goods is quite great.

    #39893
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    BRI is the Belt Road Initiative
    It’s the acronym for the whole project, which is vast.
    The U.S. is scared to death of it; because it will leave the U.S. as second fiddle in world trade.
    Given the U.S. is already on the way down, it will be the coup de grace…

    #39896
    Ken Barrows
    Participant

    For any country to be on top, it will still have to increase debt faster than income. I don’t know how long that will last–perhaps decades–but in the end the industrial way of live will go. The “United States” and “China” won’t matter to anyone.

    #39898
    Nassim
    Participant

    “Earth a scaled up Easter Island”

    I fully agree with what you said, however Easter Island is a case of fake history.

    The idea that the inhabitants of these islands were totally reckless and that they did not try to protect their environment is pure nonsense – derived from Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse”

    “Easter Island’s “ecological suicide” – myths and realities”

    Easter Island’s “ecological suicide” – myths and realities

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