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WE LIVE IN A DANGEROUS PLACE AND TIME #179855
06/01/2023 11:09 AM
06/01/2023 11:09 AM
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 19,915
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ConSigCor Offline OP
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ConSigCor  Offline OP
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A 059 Btn 16 FF MSC
WE LIVE IN A DANGEROUS PLACE AND TIME – by Scipio

Everyone lives in their own history, but not everyone lives in historical times. Historical times are recorded as remembrances of significant events in the past. We are living in historical times; except they haven’t passed. If trouble is not knocking on your front door, or in your neighborhood, or down your street, it will be soon. The once vaunted and respected America is quickly becoming an object of derision and disdain around the world, and bewilderment by Americans at home.

The West in general and America in particular have become drunk in its unchecked powers since the collapse of the Soviet Union around 1990. The US thinks it can continue to steam roll over the rest of the world with its self-made “Rules Based Order” which tramples on long standing International Law. The old Soviet “Evil Empire” has been replaced with the new American “Empire of Lies”.

THE WEST IS BEYOND DECLINE, IT IS IN THE EARLY STAGES OF COLLAPSE

The West is beyond decline, it is in the early stages of collapse. The rest of the world smells blood in the water, and is turning away from the United States. New agreements and alliances are being made in Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, Budapest, Minsk, Dubai, Riyad, Khartoum, Caracas, Pretoria, Brasilia, Islamabad, Damascus, New Delhi, the Houtis in Yemen and most of the Global South, all bypassing the US.

When Ukraine’s Zelensky first entertained the idea of a cease fire a month ago, he first turned to China, not America. When Saudi Arabia sought reconciliation with Iran, it turned to China. The Arab League welcomed Syria back into their house against the protests of America. These nations and other alliances are reshaping the world order we have lived in for the last eighty years.

China, for example, has offered 23 interest free loans to 17 African countries. The US offers IMF suffocating debt loans meanwhile. China’s vision has been global, America’s has been provincial. It’s more like the little Dutch boy with his fingers plugging holes in leaking dikes and spending his energy on a failing structure.

THEY HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN

Regardless of what you think of these countries, their religion, and their culture, they are lining up in opposition to the declining American Empire. They saw Iraq and Afghanistan and are now watching Ukraine noting the US may no longer be able to militarily protect them. In addition, many in the Middle East; Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. who have seen their countries destroyed and families killed as the result of military “collateral damage”, want their day of payback. Americans say, “Never Forget” 911, and rightly so. Well, these people can multiply that sentiment on their part by one thousand times because of their dead husbands, wives, children, parents, relatives and friends and destruction of their way of life. They have not forgotten. They don’t think targeting families with death from above as being “righteous”, Gen. Milley. They see an American Marine who questioned those responsible for it go to jail. They haven’t seen anyone responsible for it go punished. It is as a moral standard they do not want to live by.

THE IMMIGRATION CRISIS IN EUROPE

The entire immigration crisis in Europe is the result of America’s wars of imperialism in the Middle East and North Africa. If Americans think they will get a fair hearing with these people in the newly forming multipolar world that is shaping up, they are delusional. The world is rapidly changing and, unfortunately, not in America’s favor.

COOPERATION vs COERCION

The new geo-political world order forming today is based on areas of cooperation rather than the current system of threats, coercion, financial blackmail, and violence of the American led collective West. The muscle behind the West’s threats is the projected power of the American Navy with its eleven aircraft carriers. As a reminder, those carriers can be sunk by eleven Russian Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. It was Kinzhal missiles that took out a Patriot Battery in the Kiev. The Patriot Battery fired all its 32 missiles in two minutes, $150 million dollars’ worth, and could not stop the Kinzhals. America’s risks are demonstratively no longer theoretical.

EXTRACTION AND IMPOVERISHMENT

Neither are any of these country’s economic systems patterned after the West’s current system of resource extraction resulting in the impoverishment of the locals all the while lining the pockets of the world’s ruling one percent. (Notice how that same strategy was applied domestically during COVID retractions resulting in the 1% getting richer the rest of the nation getting poorer?).

In the meantime, America’s numerous internal cancers such as; greed, narcissism, arrogance, ethnocentrism, “exceptionalism”, wokeness, cancel culture, stakeholder capitalism, institutional corruption, DEI, and left and right paradigms rots the West from the inside. The putridity of the situation can no longer be ignored or swept under the rug. The stench is smelled around the world.

RISE OF NEOLIBERALISM

It was famously said at the end of World War I, “The lights of Europe are going out to never be seen again.” What was meant by that was the reign of monarchies were now relegated to the dust bin of history. A new post World War I order emerged led by neoliberal democracies. Currently we see the US at the zenith of the neoliberal world order created after World War I.

The 19th century was the age of European Colonialism dominated by Great Britain. Later, the 20th century was an age of Neo-Colonialism. In particular, US neo-colonialism was manifest in its application through the IMF, USAID, UNICEF, United Nations, NATO, NGOs, US Military, and the CIA.

The counter party Soviet System during the first half of the 20th century was neither Colonial or Neo-Colonial but one of ideological slavery. Its fundamentally flawed confiscatory Marxist basis resulted in self-cannibalization of everything it controlled. Enforcement of its ideology was by brutal mass murders and exterminations. By the end of the 20th century communism was an abject failure. Its flag ship citadel, the Soviet Union, had collapsed. Its dependent satellites in Eastern Europe and Central Asia followed shortly.

Communist ideology is no longer a significant factor shaping international alliances today. Paradoxically, just as communism was collapsing worldwide toward the end of the 20st century, it began to grow rapidly in the USA. It currently flourishes in the American Democrat Party. On the other hand, there is a rise in authoritarianism worldwide; witness Putin, Xi, and Turkey’s Erdogan’s long held control of power in their respective countries. Yet this is not to equate to a rising tide of authoritarian communism.

LIGHTS GOING OUT IN NEOLIBERLISM

Piggy backing on the “lights going out” after World War I theme, so are the lights of neoliberal democracy going out in the West. Perhaps at some future date, students will study neoliberal democracies the way they do monarchies today; an anachronism of the past. Where American style democracy stands in the future is anyone’s guess given its current demise.

THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND SURVEILLANCE STATE

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently aptly summarized the manifestations I have described above. He said (paraphrasing), “…in addition to becoming an empire abroad in post WW II, the US has simultaneously become a police surveillance state domestically”. (The police/domestic surveillance state is a topic for another time).

NEW WORLD ORDER GUPPY vs NEW WORLD ORDER WHALE

The New World order of Klaus Schwab, the WEF, the Devos crowd, the Bilderbergers, etc., is a guppy compared to the whale of the new developing multipolar world. Yet, that WEF guppy will swallow the rudderless and fragile West unless it rapidly reverses course. Regardless, the rest of the world moves on to other things.

PARADIGM SHIFTS HAVE HAPPENED BEFORE

If you were a blacksmith in 1908 and you saw the growing trend in motor cars after Henry Ford’s Model T started hitting the roads, you would have been wise to learn the new trade called “auto mechanics”. There are more job opportunities today as an auto mechanic (technician) than there are farriers. If you were stuck in a stifling tenement in a crowed east coast city of the 19th century, you would have been wise to heed Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune headline, “Go West Young Man. Go West!” AI is shifting the ground under many traditional jobs.

Just as in Henry Ford and Horace Greeley’s time, opportunity knocks in the form of uncomfortable world formational changes. The upheaval is far greater than Henry Ford or Horace Greeley’s time. Besides, the direction has changed today, its “Go East!” Remember, these are historical times we live in.

BARBARIANS ARE INSIDE THE OPEN GATES

Like the collapsed empires of old, America will be sacked just as the Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, and Barbarians did Rome. It is already happening as millions of vandals and clandestine terrorists cross America’s north, south and coastal borders daily. The Fentanyl epidemic in the USA make’s China’s Opium Wars look trivial in comparison. Major US city streets are flowing with human manure. Meanwhile, their schools are graduating high school students where 100% cannot function at grade level and will be doomed to low paying jobs at best, or a life of crime on the streets or on your front door at worst. Top universities and employers have lowered standards of competencies for their professions to meet arbitrary social engineering goals. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is raising theirs. America has lost its wars on so called weapons of mass destruction, poverty, drugs, crime, and hunger. Shockingly, when Obama became President he proclaimed, “We are going to fundamentally change America”. That process is well underway.

The average American is not fully aware of the extent of their own looming demise and the shape of the new multipolar world and how it will affect their liberties and standard of living. They can either catch the wave of the new multipolar world or be drowned in its wake.

FOREIGNERS DISBELIEF AND AMERICANS’ BEWILDERMENT

The rest of the world looks on in disbelief, Americans look on in bewilderment. The time for “looking” is over. It’s time for preparation followed by action. Ignore the daily circus of distractions, petty rabbit trails, and time bandits. Pray for direction.

Proverbs 27:12 “The prudent see danger and take precautions, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.”


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Re: WE LIVE IN A DANGEROUS PLACE AND TIME [Re: ConSigCor] #179857
06/01/2023 04:21 PM
06/01/2023 04:21 PM
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 24,349
Tulsa
airforce Online content
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airforce  Online Content
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Tulsa
Thanks to the bipartisan House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, it just got a little more dangerous. We should support Taiwan with free trade, diplomatic recognition, and perhaps weapon loans. Committing U.S. forces to the defense of Taiwan is unlikely to be in our best interest.

Quote
The U.S. government's "strategic ambiguity" over whether it will defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion got a little less cloudy last week when the bipartisan House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party published Ten for Taiwan, a list of observations, concerns, and recommendations regarding a potential assault of Taiwan by Mainland China.

"Taiwan is a cornerstone of the global economy and a vital partner of the United States," the report opens. "It is in the political, security, and economic interests of the United States to deter an act of military aggression from the [People's Republic of China] toward Taiwan." But how much deterrence can the U.S. provide without compromising its own interests—namely, avoiding war with the second-most powerful country on Earth?

The committee's report is part capabilities assessment, part call to action. Its recommendations to Congress and the U.S. government are numerous: increase the number of "long-range strike assets" in the Asia-Pacific region; combine military training with Taiwan; provide Taiwan with the military equipment and weapons it has already purchased; establish a standing Joint Task Force; enhance the "cyber resiliency" of U.S. infrastructure; strengthen Taiwan's cybersecurity; create a combined planning group for the U.S. and Taiwan; strengthen U.S. bases in the region; and expand Taiwan's military stockpiles.

"You could regard these policies as the next step in fulfilling what the committee believes to be our obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act," says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. The Taiwan Relations Act states that "the United States shall make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability."

Galston notes that Biden "has replaced the U.S. policy of deliberate ambiguity concerning our response to a Chinese attack with a much more full-throated promise to come to the aid, including military aid, of Taiwan."

In May 2022, Biden responded affirmatively to a question about whether the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily during a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The White House denied that Biden's statement deviated from the U.S. government's historical position, and Biden reasserted this position in a September 2022 interview, clarifying that the defense would include U.S. forces.

Acquiring weapons is part of the island country's "porcupine strategy," which uses a stockpile of anti-air, anti-ship, and anti-tank weapons to "prick" Chinese invaders. As Galston explains, "You're not going to beat a Chinese invasion with F-16s. But if you really focus on the most effective defensive tactics, then that will shape the kinds of missiles that would also be emphasized in shipments to Taiwan."

The provision of self-defense weapons to Taiwan is the correct approach, Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute argued in a piece for the American Institute for Economic Research. This strategy supports Taiwan by deterring a Chinese invasion while also allowing the U.S. to avoid getting pulled into a costly war with China. "Today the US and democratic states should be making conflict less likely by arming Taiwan, insisting that it take its own defense seriously," Bandow wrote. "That should highlight the urgency of selling Taipei arms today."

Bandow also encourages the U.S. and its allies to coordinate an economic, not military, response to a Chinese invasion. "Washington also should organize allies and friends in Asia and Europe to prepare a set of economic sanctions to impose on China if the latter attacks the island, and to communicate that intention to the [People's Republic of China] now," Bandow wrote.

Taiwan is a free and democratic state. America can celebrate and bolster that status with free trade, diplomatic recognition, and weapons loans, but committing forces to a deadly conflict with Mainland China is not in America's best interest.


Onward and upward,
airforce

Re: WE LIVE IN A DANGEROUS PLACE AND TIME [Re: ConSigCor] #179867
06/05/2023 12:26 PM
06/05/2023 12:26 PM
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 24,349
Tulsa
airforce Online content
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airforce  Online Content
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 24,349
Tulsa
The GOP won't vote to reauthorize the FISA spy laws ... without reforms. Oh, for God's sake, just abolish the damn thing. Republicans sure love to talk about freedom, but they sure are slow to advance it.

Onward and upward,
airforce


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