Jingoism originated during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, when many British citizens were hostile toward Russia and felt Britain should intervene in the conflict. Supporters of the cause expressed their sentiments in a music-hall ditty with this refrain:

We don't want to fight, yet by jingo if we do,

We've got the ships, we've got the men,

We've got the money, too!

Someone holding the attitude implied in the song became known as a jingo or jingoist, and the attitude itself was dubbed jingoism.

Jingoism

Lost Cause

This is ostensibly a critical review of Arta Moeini’s recent essay published at UnHerd: Is the West escalating the Ukraine war? Nevertheless, its purview extends far beyond Moeini’s isolated expression of the pervasive fallacies my critique addresses.

Moeini’s article emerges from the milieu of the past several weeks, during which time we have observed a pronounced rhetorical revolution in the popular western narratives regarding the NATO/Russia war in Ukraine.

“Lost cause” is in the air. Many who have privately known this to be the case for some time have finally been sufficiently emboldened to publicly embrace the obvious – albeit reluctantly, and often with a good measure of rationalization and lingering misinformation in tow.

To be clear, I found Moeini’s essay a worthwhile read; thought-provoking on multiple levels – although not always in the way I suspect he intended. And I more or less agree with the majority of his observations of matters as they currently stand.

But as the poet well-noted, “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Nor does it require an aspiring think-tank geopolitical “expert” to inform one at this juncture that the gambit to use Ukraine as a kamikaze bomber to mortally wound Russia has failed abysmally in every fundamental geostrategic respect.

Indeed, it has backfired in multiple largely unforeseen and now irreversible ways.

More on that below.

Meanwhile, I will address those of the author’s arguments that fail principally due to his apparently obligatory compulsion to echo American exceptionalist orthodoxy.

Of course, Moeini lives and breathes in the stultifying atmosphere of the Washington Beltway ideological miasma. His career aspirations are no doubt compellingly influenced by his environment, and therefore it comes as little surprise that he would be so pliant to its domineering imperatives.

He imagines that he is crafting a critique of the shortcomings of what is sometimes called The Chicago School of geopolitical realism, typified by the works of John Mearsheimer. In reality he is merely finding fault with one set of logical fallacies while embracing its seemingly more attractive cousins:

To understand Western decision-making and the peculiar inter-alliance dynamics of Nato, we need a more radical realism that takes seriously the non-physical, psychological, and “ontological dimensions” of security — encompassing a state or an organisation’s need for overcoming uncertainty by establishing orderly narratives and identities about its sense of “self”.

The incoherence of a call for “radical realism” in order to address the “ontological dimensions of security” and “overcoming uncertainty by establishing orderly narratives and identities” clearly eludes our young author, focused as he apparently is on the geopolitical relevance of the “sense of self”.

That said, it is to be expected that a mind cultivated by the current generation of imperial academicians would be loath to question their catechisms, foremost of which is the conviction that the “indispensable nation” is the one sovereign worthy to define the parameters of a “rules-based international order” and, by virtue of its unimpeachable self-perception, conduct the planet to a glorious destiny.

Moeini continues:

In a recent study for the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, which I co-authored, we investigated the structural reasons that drive Ukraine’s strategic calculus. We suggested that, as a “regional balancer”, Ukraine took a massive risk in defying the Russian redlines about Kyiv explicitly rejecting Nato overtures and stopping any military integration with the West. This was a maximalist gambit that presupposed Western military support and risked actively provoking Moscow to its own strategic disadvantage.

This is a distortion of what really happened in Ukraine over the course of the past quarter century.

The Ukraine

The inherently disharmonious nation-state currently assigned the toponym “Ukraine” on maps of Europe is incontrovertibly an artificial construction of relatively recent origin. The socio-political and cultural facts underlying this reality were ably exploited by the Germans in the Second World War when the Nazis successfully recruited large numbers of its western inhabitants (primarily from Galicia) to join them in a war of annihilation against the Poles, the Jews, and the more numerous and prosperous “Muscovites” who inhabited the agriculturally fertile and substantially industrialized regions of historical Novorossiya.

This was the polity within the geographic region known as the Ukraine that, beginning as early as the immediate aftermath of the war, was systematically cultivated by the Anglo-American western hegemon as a disruptive force to undermine Soviet power and influence in eastern Europe.

And in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union which occasioned the rise of the global American empire, this was the polity that was methodically groomed to eventually become a disposable proxy for imperial designs which explicitly aspired to dismember Russia and despoil its nearly limitless natural resource treasures.

Any set of arguments aiming to dispute this interpretation of events is demonstrably erroneous, logically fallacious, and historically revisionist – but I will set aside that debate for another day.

My point for now is that Moeini’s characterization of what happened since 2014 as Ukraine exercising its own agency to effect a geopolitical gambit against Russia is a tortured misrepresentation of the facts.

The reality is that the ruling junta in Ukraine – raised to its principality by imperial intrigues – was cunningly seduced into believing it was uniquely capable of becoming the tip of the empire’s spear to slay, once and for all, the subhuman “Muscovites” who had long-dominated the left bank of the Dnieper River, Crimea, and the regions bordering the Black Sea.

Moeini comes close to acknowledging this reality – apparently without apprehending its necessary implications:

“Practically all of America’s security alliances today are asymmetrical arrangements between the United States and regional balancers — a class of smaller, more peripheral regional states seeking to balance against the dominant middle powers in their respective regions. As a great power, America possesses an inherent capacity to encroach on other regional security complexes (RSCs). In this context, it is reasonable for regional balancers to attempt to coax and exploit American power in the service of their particular regional security interests.”

Running with the Devil

What he is describing is a hegemon/vassal relationship wherein the empire defines, measures, and imposes both the quid and the quo of every transaction between the parties.

In the case of Ukraine, this pact with the devil entailed the empire pledging to equip and train a military force which would become the vanguard in a bold maneuver to not only reclaim Novorossiya and Crimea for Ukraine, but also to substantially attrit Russian military capability; humiliate and depose the despised Vladimir Putin, and then, as their just reward, to assume their supposedly rightful place among the great nations of Europe and the world.

As it were, the emissaries of empire took their chosen Ukrainian aspirants to the top of an exceedingly high mountain, showed them all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory thereof, and solemnly vowed, “All these things will we give unto you, if you will fall down and worship us.”

And, without hesitation, the credulous Ukrainians replied, “Hell yes! We’ll take that deal!”

Enticed by disingenuous flattery and the imagined deliciousness of the promised prize, they worshipfully knelt to kiss the ring, and willfully blinded themselves to the inescapable reality that their reach would exceed their grasp.

For, as Moeini further states:

Setting such a lofty objective, however, effectively meant that Kyiv could never succeed without active Nato intervention shifting the balance of power in its favour. By virtue of its decision, Ukraine, along with its closest partners in Poland and the Baltic nations, became the classic “trojan ally” — smaller countries whose desire for regional clout against the extant middle power (Russia) is predicated on their ability to persuade an external great power and its global military network (here, the US and, by extension, Nato) to step in militarily on their behalf.

In this paragraph we are greeted at the door by a glaring tautology, only to then be treated to the first unmistakable specimen of Moeini’s fundamental miscalculation – and yet not his, for it has been the fundamental miscalculation of the exceptionalist gospel since its genesis: our dutiful author characterizes Russia as a “middle power”.

Herein lies the key to the entire exceptionalist fallacy.

I will expand upon this thought further below.

The Immovable Object

Meanwhile, Moeini continues (emphasis added):

Ukraine’s future as a sovereign state would now hinge on its ability to successfully engineer an escalation.

…

For it is in Kyiv’s interests to steer Nato into becoming more closely entangled in the war.

The essential premise of both phrases is false – preposterously so. If the author is not dissembling in stating them, then he is tragically disinformed as to the reality of events as they have transpired.

Ukraine is not a principal actor in this movie. They are playing the “cast of millions” part.

This is and always has been a power struggle between the current iteration of western empire and its favorite nemesis: Russia. That is the context in which it is being prosecuted, and defines the terms upon which it will be decided.

“Escalation” was always an essential parameter of the empire’s calculus. The dissolution and vassalization of continental Russia has never ceased to be the prime directive. The imperial suzerains simply failed to accurately perceive that the Russians possessed escalatory supremacy. They erroneously imagined themselves to be the irresistible force and dismissed the historical evidence that Russia is the immovable object.

That increasingly evident reality has now abruptly sobered the western masters of war and forced them to reassess the entire equation of the conflict.

Moeini continues:

… Ukraine cannot defeat Russia without Nato fighting on its side. The question now is whether the West should allow itself to be entrapped into that war and jeopardise the fate of the entire world in doing so.

What he apparently fails to comprehend is that the empire is already entrapped – precariously suspended between the Scylla and Charybdis of a scorched-earth tantrum or a humiliating retreat that will forever shatter the myth of American military supremacy, and greatly accelerate the transition to the historical norm of a multipolar world.

And yet he persists:

In the materialist framing of security offered by most realists, there is little upside for America and western Europe, and certainly no genuine national or strategic interest, in getting dragged into what is essentially a regional war in Eastern Europe involving two different nationalistic states.

<sigh>

I am compelled to repeat, this is NOT “essentially a regional war in Eastern Europe involving two different nationalistic states.”

Ukraine is NOT a principal actor in this movie. They are playing the “cast of millions” part.

This is and always has been a power struggle between the current iteration of western empire and its favorite nemesis: Russia. That is the context in which it is being prosecuted, and defines the terms upon which it will be decided.

Nevertheless, in the succeeding paragraph Moeini manages to indirectly affirm this perspective – although he frames the issue once again in the mystifying naïveté of his “ontological” construct:

From an ontological standpoint, however, an Anglo-American foreign policy establishment that strongly “identifies” itself with US unipolarity has been heavily invested in maintaining the status quo, and preventing the formation of a new collective security architecture in Europe, which would be centred on Russia and Germany rather than the United States.

In other words, he frankly acknowledges that this war is, at its root, about the preservation of the unipolar status quo – or restated in terms I have employed for many months now: this war is an existential struggle between Russian sovereignty and American imperial continuity.

Before I elaborate on this point, I want to digress into a brief discussion of vocabulary.

Moeini repeatedly employs the term “ontological” in his paper. Ontological refers to a metaphysical assessment of the nature and meaning of being. It relates to one’s sense of identity. It is abstract in the extreme, inherently subjective, and therefore susceptible to pronounced volatility.

Existential, on the other hand, is a term referring to one’s physical continuance in time and space. It is life reduced to its bare essence. Although it can be employed in an abstract sense, it is fundamentally concrete, and is instinctively perceived as an objective quality – especially when threatened with annihilation.

Returning again to Moeini’s framing of Anglo-American foreign policy within an ontological construct, I fully acknowledge the presumed prerogatives associated with the various vainglorious imperial narratives:

• “the shining city on a hill”

• “the indispensable nation”

• “spreading freedom and democracy”

• “champion of the oppressed”

• et cetera

The Calculated Façade of American Exceptionalism

Of course, all of these expressions are variations on the more ancient western theme of “the white man’s burden”. And all are fundamentally jingoistic at their root. More meaningfully, all are illusory qualities of the empire, whose unbridled imperial avarice and moral hypocrisy have always been insuperable stumbling blocks to its holier-than-thou pretensions.

In any case, as it relates to imperial foreign policy, I adamantly assert that these ontological pretensions have never been more than a calculated façade. The imperial masters do not hold genuine aspirations to spread righteousness and prosperity around the world. As with all declining empires that preceded this one, the imperial elite aspire to dominion as an end per se. It is the self-satisfaction of unquestioned primacy that is the ultimate wellspring of all their actions – at least insofar as the apparatus of tribute and plunder remains adequately intact.

Therefore, in the context of a “collective security architecture” in Europe, it is not the alleged threat of despotic Russian expansionism that has motivated imperial actions, but rather the thought that the Europeans themselves would agree to a mutually satisfactory multilateral security arrangement, and then firmly request that the Americans finally take all their military toys and go home.

Concerningly, it has become increasingly evident that the empire would rather rule over the ashes and rubble of Europe than permit its constituent nations to reclaim their sovereignty on their own terms, and by their own volition.

To reign is worth ambition though in hell:

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.

Moeini correctly observes that the empire’s most acute concern in recent years had been the discernible advance of Russo-German reconciliation and economic collaboration. Going back over a century, this prospect has always been understood as the single greatest threat to Anglo-American dominance of the western world, and hence a development that must be arrested before it can ever gain momentum.

He then accurately characterizes the empire’s stratagem to nip Russo-German partnership in the bud:

… the US establishment has worked to destroy any possibility of a Berlin-Moscow axis forming by aligning itself with the Intermarium bloc of countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea, repeatedly opposing (and openly threatening) Nord Stream gas pipelines, and deliberately rebuffing Russian insistence on a neutral Ukraine.

The historical naïveté and impaired foresight of this imperial machination is a topic for another discussion. Suffice it for now to say it betrays an abject ignorance of the centuries-old frictions and volatile alignments of the disparate Slavic nations comprising the region in question.

As the often-prophetic Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote during the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War which contested the southern portion of the Intermarium:

Between themselves, these lands will forever quarrel, forever envy each other, and intrigue against each other.

In any event, the empire successfully enticed most of the Intermarium to seek its identity with the rest of the western European vassals – with Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic chihuahuas being most in thrall to the imagined bonanza.

While seemingly blind to the inevitable calamity for the Kiev regime, Moeini obliquely touches upon the cynical reality of how the empire designed to exploit Ukraine to further its own hegemonic goals:

In relation to Ukraine, the initial objective for an ideological Western alliance that is skewed toward “shared values”, as Nato has become with the dissolution of the USSR, was to turn that country into a Western albatross for Russia, to bog down Moscow in an extended quagmire to weaken its regional power and influence, and even to encourage regime change in the Kremlin.

Once again, Moeini inadvertently reveals his bias towards the delusions of western policy makers in relation to their ill-conceived Mother of All Proxy Armies gambit in Ukraine. But rather than crafting anew a response to this reference to the “best-laid plans” of the not-quite-geniuses in the Pentagon, Whitehall, Langley, and Foggy Bottom, I will cite a few paragraphs from my maiden commentary on this war:

I initially believed NATO military leaders must have had a sober view, far in advance, that their half-million-strong, well-armed, trained-to-NATO-standards Ukrainian proxy army had almost no chance of prevailing on the field of battle against Russia.

But watching drone video of Ukrainian fortifications has convinced me the US military brain trust effectively disdained the Russian military, and its commanders, in the course of their eight-year-long preparation of the eastern Ukrainian battlefield.

Their vanity persuaded them the Russians would mindlessly smash themselves to pieces against an entrenched well-armed force.

Indeed, they were so confident of the genius of their plan that they persuasively encouraged many hundreds of now-killed or captured NATO veterans to “share in the glory” of humiliating the Russians and bringing down the Putin regime once and for all.

They deluded themselves into believing the Russians lacked strategic and logistical acumen, a sufficiently well-trained force, and – arguably the biggest miscalculation of all – sufficient stockpiles of ammo to conduct a protracted high-intensity conflict.

In short, I have come to believe US/NATO commanders actually persuaded themselves that this “Mother of All Proxy Armies” had an excellent chance to soundly whip the Russians in a battle situated in their own back yard.

In other words, they disregarded centuries of European history that they somehow convinced themselves had no relevance to their 21st century aspirations to defeat Russia militarily and take a great spoil of its resources.

From Napoleon to Hitler to the amorphous contemporary entity I have dubbed the Empire At All Costs cult, the would-be imperial overlords have fantasized a Russia that is intellectually, organizationally, culturally, and – most consequentially – militarily inferior to its enlightened western cousins. And in every instance it has been proven to be a catastrophic miscalculation.

And yet here we are again.

<sigh>

The Inexplicably Unforeseen Return of Industrial Warfare

Moeini then proceeds to muse tendentiously over the possibilities of the empire somehow finding a way to snatch victory from the inexorable jaws of defeat.

First he imagines that continued deliveries of western weapons to Ukraine can freeze the conflict in a state of attritional stalemate from which some fashion of geopolitical victory can be forged. Apparently he is among those bewitched by the pervasive myths of two-hundred thousand Russian dead and thousands of units of destroyed armor, vehicles, and artillery – not to mention an allegedly impotent and all-but-invisible Russian Air Force whose radically diminished fleet of antiquated Soviet-era aircraft is barely combat capable; far beneath the supposedly lofty standards of the legendary western air armadas.

He, like so many in the overcrowded ranks of ostensibly “prudent and measured” western “experts”, seems to envisage rank upon rank of demoralized, under-trained, under-equipped, under-clothed, under-fed Russian conscripts trembling in frigid terror that yet another in a fictionally inexhaustible series of fearsome HIMARS strikes is about to blast them and their emaciated comrades to smithereens.

In a final leap of ludicrousness, he moots the consequences of even further western escalation in the form of longer-range missiles and F-16s which just might permit the Ukrainians to drive the depleted Russian forces out of the Donbass, and even eventually deliver Crimea from its Russian occupiers.

Consistent with the ontological imperatives of a perspective rooted in unquestionable imperial rightness and might, he cannot conceive that direct NATO intervention could result in catastrophic defeat at the hands of the “obviously inferior” Russian conventional military, but only finds himself capable of fretting over the possibility that, for Russia, the prospect of conventional military humiliation:

… would dramatically increase the likelihood of a nuclear event, given how Moscow regards protecting its strategic stronghold in the Black Sea as an existential imperative.

There are, as I have noted above and elsewhere, true existential imperatives at work in this conflict – for both Russia and the empire. But the essential difference is that Russia entered into this conflict cognizant of that reality, and – contrary to the misinformed delusions of almost everyone in the west – the Russians were much better prepared to prosecute a protracted conventional conflict than all of the atrophied NATO militaries combined.

And now, after a full year of the most high-intensity European war since 1945, the Russian economy is effectively on a war-footing. Latent Soviet-era armaments factories have been running round-the-clock shifts for months already, producing every type of weaponry the prior year of combat has proven to be most effective, and in quantities western military planners can only dream of.

Russian war-time production levels coupled with its now nearly mature half-million-strong mobilization of reservists — virtually all of them as yet uncommitted on the battlefield — projects the tableau of a Russian military substantially more potent than it was just one year ago, and growing stronger with each passing month. Anyone who continues to believe otherwise has simply been comprehensively propagandized by the pervasive western intel psyop that has operated on the cynical principle that:

“If you can’t win a real war, win an imaginary one.”

That works satisfactorily well so long as the narrative can be persuasively perpetuated. But imaginary troops, equipment, and ammunition do not win real wars.

Meanwhile, anything that could have been characterized as “surplus” NATO stores is all but exhausted. Oh, to be sure, there have been recent announcements of new mountains of NATO armaments to be shipped to Ukraine – hundreds of incomparable western main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, mobile artillery platforms, and a long list of other supposedly war-winning sundries.

The Arsenal of Democracy is just beginning to flex its muscles!

Or so the story goes.

However, upon closer examination, the “mountain” of awesome western stuff is revealed to be little more than a modest molehill of mostly antiquated equipment, along with woefully deficient quantities of additional ammunition.

To make matters worse, in the ensuing weeks, what was initially touted as hundreds of main battle tanks has become only a few dozen, most of them long out-of-service and requiring extensive repair to render them combat capable.

The “Arsenal of Democracy” is not a massive muscle waiting to be flexed in the eyes of an easily shocked and awed global public. It is a mirage.

As I described the situation in a succinct commentary published three weeks ago:

The US military is not built nor equipped for protracted high-intensity conflict. Nor can it supply a depleted proxy army with the means to prosecute a protracted high-intensity conflict.

The incontrovertible reality is that the US and its NATO allies are presently incapable of supplying the massive material demands of modern industrial warfare, as Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Alex Vershinin articulated so well in this essential June 2022 analysis: The Return of Industrial Warfare.

And yet the public discussion of potential war always includes convinced voices proclaiming that, just like in the Second World War, US industry could very rapidly ramp up to produce armaments of surpassing quality, and in overwhelming quantities.

This titillates the biases of American exceptionalists in general, and is a particularly seductive fantasy of the #EmpireAtAllCosts cult drones propagandizing for filthy lucre at the countless armaments-industry-funded “think tanks” in Washington and London.

But the notion that the rapidly declining empire can resurrect the Arsenal of Democracy band for one final farewell tour is a singularly delusional vanity.

You see, for all its massive plunder of the public purse, the US armaments industry is effectively a modestly scaled high-end boutique.

Building the Perfect Beast

Even more significantly, in a development I and many others have predicted for several years now – in the face of almost universal ridicule, I might add – the empire’s seemingly endless string of hubris-driven blunders has rapidly accelerated the formation of what is quite arguably the single most potent military / economic / geostrategic alliance seen in modern times: the tripartite axis of Russia, China, and Iran.

In its misguided and short-sighted gambit to thwart the long-dreaded Russo-German rapprochement — incomprehensibly punctuated by the late September 2022 sabotage of the Nordstream gas pipelines — the empire has astoundingly managed to jump from the frying pan of a regional proxy war against Russia into the fire of a global conflict all three of its steadily strengthening adversaries now view as existential.

In my considered opinion, this is almost certainly the single most inexplicable and portentous series of geopolitical blunders in recorded history.

For the time being, the fighting will remain confined to Ukraine. But the entire complexion of this war has been irreversibly altered.

Ontological Insecurity Goes to War

Moeini then proceeds to wax tendentiously verbose about the compulsions of “ontological insecurity” under which the empire and its heretofore thoroughly indoctrinated vassals are now laboring on account of Russia having acted in direct contravention of the dictates of the “rules-based international order”.

He adopts an almost-Hofferesque “true believer” affectation as he characterizes America as an “ideological great power”. In a Manichaean rapture, he implicitly asserts that the greatness of the current hegemonic order is a direct byproduct of the “humanitarianism and democratism” he imagines to be at its core.

He bemoans his conviction that the “compulsion toward escalation” derives directly from an unforgivably aggressive Russia that has disrupted the “unified sense of order and continuity in the world.”

He then concludes with this remarkable rhetorical flourish:

As we begin the second year of the war, it has finally dawned on many in Washington that the likely outcome of this tragedy is stalemate: “We will continue to try to impress upon [the Ukrainian leadership] that we can’t do anything and everything forever,” one senior Biden administration official said this week. For all the talk of Ukrainian agency, that agency depends entirely on Nato’s commitment to continue to support Kyiv’s war effort indefinitely. Such a maximalist desire for “complete victory” is not only highly attritional and suggestive of yet another endless war, but it is also reckless; its very success could trigger a nuclear holocaust.

Moscow has already paid a high price for its transgressions in Ukraine. To prolong the war at this point in an ideological quest for total victory is both strategically and morally questionable. For many liberal internationalists in the West, the clamour for a “just peace” that is sufficiently punishing to Russia suggests little more than a thinly-veiled desire to impose a Carthaginian peace on Moscow. The West has indeed wounded Russia; now it must decide if it wants to let this wound fester and conflagrate the entire world. For unless Moscow is provided with a reasonable off-ramp that recognises Russia’s status as a regional power with its own existential imperatives of strategic and ontological security, that is the precipice towards which we are heading.

It is a breathtaking encapsulation of the analytical transgressions of this archetypal expression of American imperial exceptionalism.

I shall respond to the most noteworthy among them:

The “likely outcome” of this war is not “stalemate”. Rather, it is the all-but-certain scenario of Russia effectively annihilating the hybrid NATO/Ukrainian military force clinging to existence along the current line of contact, and then dictating new borders consistent with Russia’s conception of satisfactory “strategic depth”.

The notion that the US/NATO can “continue to support Kyiv’s war effort indefinitely” is a delusional conceit. As I have written above and elsewhere:

The US military is not built nor equipped for protracted high-intensity conflict. Nor can it supply a depleted proxy army with the means to prosecute a protracted high-intensity conflict.

Escalating the degree of US intervention in this war is not reckless because it risks backing the Russians into a corner from which they will feel compelled to use nuclear weapons, but rather because, in the face of catastrophic NATO losses on the ground and in the air of a conventional conflict, the United States government could very well find itself so desperately humiliated that it will yield to the enticings of the Empire At All Costs cult to sally forth boldly into the nuclear abyss.

The Persistent Myth of Russian Weakness

Moeini imagines that “Moscow has already paid a high price for its transgressions in Ukraine.”

To be sure, Russia has suffered losses in this war. Aggregating all the major components of the Russian military effort so far (Russian regulars, Donbass militia, Wagner PMC, and Chechen volunteer regiments), the Russians have very conceivably incurred as many as twenty-five thousand killed, and twice that wounded.

On the other side of the balance, it is now a near-certainty that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have suffered over two-hundred thousand killed, and at least twice that many irrecoverably wounded.

It is Ukraine that has paid a high price for the transgressions of the empire in its futile attempt to mortally wound Russia!

Utilizing a resolute “economy of force” strategy for an entire year — on both the offensive and the defensive — the Russians have exacted the most disproportionate casualty ratio of any major war in modern times.

Contrary to the propaganda-driven hallucinations of the overwhelming majority of western military analysts — as well as a surprisingly large number of Russian critics of Putin, the Kremlin, and the Russian Ministry of Defense — I remain thoroughly persuaded that future historians and war college professors will acclaim the past year of Russian military operations as the most impressive large-scale campaign of urban combat ever witnessed. It will be admiringly studied for centuries to come.

Meanwhile, as many as a half-million Russian combat effectives remain uncommitted in the theater — a mixture of battle veterans and mobilized reserves. They have been abundantly equipped with the finest armor, vehicles, and firepower yet fielded on the Russian side in this war.

Over 700 fixed-wing and rotary aircraft are dispersed within striking distance of the front.

Russian armaments production has proven all the imperial think-tank naysayers wrong. They have mobilized their latent but massive manufacturing capacity to such an impressive extent that it would take the west at least five years, and more likely a decade, to “catch up”.

The unadorned truth of the matter is that the US/NATO simply cannot and most assuredly will not win this war.

The Moment of Greatest Danger

Moeini concludes his treatise by musing that “unless Moscow is provided with a reasonable off-ramp that recognises Russia’s status as a regional power with its own existential imperatives of strategic and ontological security”, the world stands on the brink of a nuclear holocaust.

He correctly fears a nuclear calamity, but misattributes the source of the risk.

It is the empire that desperately needs an off-ramp at this point. The imperial potentates imagined up for themselves a world in which they commanded the sole “great power” on the planet. In casually dismissing the relative strength of the civilizational powers whom they have converted into mortal foes — Russia, China, and Persia — they have now consigned western civilization to an ontological and existential crisis of their own creation. (read more)

Misinformation #1: Natural immunity offers little protection compared to vaccinated immunity

A Lancet study looked at 65 major studies in 19 countries on natural immunity. The researchers concluded that natural immunity was at least as effective as the primary Covid vaccine series.
In fact, the scientific data was there all along — from 160 studies, despite the findings of these studies violating Facebook’s “misinformation” policy.

Since the Athenian plague of 430 B.C., it has been observed that those who recovered after infection were protected against severe disease if reinfected. That was also the observation of nearly every practising physician during the first 18 months of the Covid pandemic.

Most Americans were fired for not having the Covid vaccine already had antibodies that effectively neutralised the virus, but they were antibodies that the government did not recognise.

Misinformation #2: Masks prevent Covid transmission

Cochran Reviews are considered the most authoritative and independent assessment of evidence in medicine. And one published last month by a highly-respected Oxford research team found that masks had no significant impact on Covid transmission.

When asked about this definitive review, CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walensky downplayed it, arguing that it was flawed because it focused on randomised controlled studies.
But that was the greatest strength of the review! Randomised studies are considered the gold standard of medical evidence. If all the energy used by public health officials to mask toddlers could have channelled to reduce child obesity by encouraging outdoor activities, we would be better off.

Misinformation #3: School closures reduce Covid transmission
The CDC ignored the European experience of keeping schools open, most without mask mandates. Transmission rates were no different, evidenced by studies conducted Spain and Sweden.

Misinformation #4: Myocarditis from the vaccine is less common than from the infection

Public health officials downplayed concerns about vaccine-induced myocarditis — or inflammation of the heart muscle. They cited poorly designed studies that under-captured complication rates. A flurry of well-designed studies said the opposite. We now know that myocarditis is six to 28-times more common after the Covid vaccine than after the infection among 16- to 24-year-old males. Tens of thousands of children likely got myocarditis, mostly subclinical, from a Covid vaccine they did not need because they were entirely healthy or because they already had Covid.

Misinformation #5: Young people benefit from a vaccine booster

Boosters reduced hospitalisation in older, high-risk Americans. But the evidence was never there that they lower Covid mortality in young healthy people. That’s probably why the CDC chose not to publish their data on hospitalisation rates among boosted Americans under 50, when they published the same rates for those over 50.

Ultimately, White House pressure to recommend boosters for all was so intense, that the FDA’s two top vaccine experts left the agency in protest, writing scathing articles on how the data did not support boosters for young people.

Misinformation #6: Vaccine mandates increased vaccination rates

President Biden and other officials demanded unvaccinated workers, regardless of their risk or natural immunity, be fired. They demanded that soldiers be dishonourably discharged and nurses be laid off in the middle of a staffing crisis. The mandate was based on the theory that vaccination reduced transmission rates — a notion later proven to be false. But after the broad recognition that vaccination does not reduce transmission, the mandates persisted, and still do to this day. A recent study from George Mason University details how vaccine mandates in nine major U.S. cities had no impact on vaccination rates. They also had no impact on Covid transmission rates.

Misinformation #7: Covid originating from the Wuhan Lab is a conspiracy theory

Google admitted to suppressing searches of “lab leak” during the pandemic. Dr Francis Collins, head of the NIH, claimed (and still does) he didn’t believe the virus came from a lab. Ultimately, overwhelming circumstantial evidence points to a lab leak origin — the same origin suggested to Dr Anthony Fauci by two very prominent virologists in a January 2020 meeting he assembled at the beginning of the pandemic. According to documents obtained by Bret Baier of Fox News, they told Drs Fauci and Collins that the virus may have been manipulated and originated in the lab, but then suddenly changed their tune in public comments days after meeting with the NIH officials. The virologists were later awarded nearly $9 million from Fauci’s agency.

Misinformation #8: It was important to get the 2nd vaccine dose 3 or 4 weeks after the 1st dose

Data was clear in the Spring of 2021, just months after the vaccine rollout, that spacing the vaccine out by three months reduces complications rates and increase immunity. Spacing out vaccines would have also saved more lives when Americans were rationing a limited vaccine supply at the height of the epidemic.

Misinformation #9: Data on the bivalent vaccine is “crystal clear”

Dr. Ashish Jha famously said this, despite the bivalent vaccine being approved using data from eight mice. To date, there has never been a randomised controlled trial of the bivalent vaccine. In my opinion, the data are crystal clear that young people should not get the bivalent vaccine. It would have also spared many children myocarditis

Misinformation #10: One in five people get long Covid

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claims that 20% of Covid infections can result in long Covid. But a U.K. study found that only 3% of Covid patients had residual symptoms lasting 12 weeks. What explains the disparity?

It’s often normal to experience mild fatigue or weakness for weeks after being sick and inactive and not eating well. Calling these cases long Covid is the medicalisation of ordinary life.

What’s most amazing about all the misinformation conveyed by CDC and public health officials, is that there has been no apologies for holding on to their recommendations for so long after the data became apparent that they were dead wrong. Public health officials said “you must” when the correct answer should have been “we’re not sure.”

Early on, in the absence of good data, public health officials chose a path of stern paternalism. Today, they are in denial of a mountain of strong studies showing that they were wrong.

At minimum, CDC should come clean and the FDA should add a warning label to Covid vaccines, clearly stating what is now known. A mea culpa by those who led us astray would be a first step to rebuilding trust. (read more)

While Garland said he wouldn't oppose the reclassification, he warned it may cause diplomatic problems with the Mexican government.

GRAHAM: "Would you oppose some of us trying to make [Mexican drug cartels] foreign terrorist organizations?"

GARLAND: "I want to point out, there are diplomatic concerns. We need the assistance of Mexico in this..." pic.twitter.com/DZKNNUX7WE

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) March 1, 2023

Interesting, why would that be? Because many Mexican government officials are in bed with the cartels and benefit handsomely from their billions made through drug and human trafficking to the United States.

And why exactly are there diplomatic concerns about taking out Mexican cartels? Very curious to hear the Mexican government’s reservations about this, outside of their corrupt members no longer profiting from and being part of the cartels of course https://t.co/EqvtK1qqV7

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) March 1, 2023

In January, Republican Congressmen Michael Waltz and Dan Crenshaw, both veterans, introduced legislation that would allow for the use of military force against Mexican cartels.

“The situation at our southern border has become untenable for our law enforcement personnel largely due to the activities spurred by the heavily armed and well financed Sinola and Jalisco cartels,” Waltz released in a statement at the time. “It’s time to go on offense. Not only are these paramilitary transnational criminal organizations responsible for killing an unprecedented number of Americans, but are actively undermining our sovereignty by destabilizing our border and waging war against U.S. law enforcement and the Mexican military. An AUMF would give the President sophisticated military cyber, intelligence, and surveillance resources to disrupt cartel operations that are endangering Americans. The U.S. was successful in assisting the Columbian government dismantle cartels in the 1990s and must do the same now.”

Trump is absolutely right: Mexican Cartels are paramilitary groups running our Southern Border & defeating the Mexican Army.

That’s why I’ll be introducing Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) legislation to go on the offense with military, cyber, intel & drones. pic.twitter.com/Af1HX1y8cV

— Rep. Mike Waltz (@michaelgwaltz) January 8, 2023

“The cartels are at war with us–poisoning almost 80,000 Americans with fentanyl every year, creating a crisis at our border, and turning Mexico into a failed narco-state,” Crenshaw added. “It’s time we directly target them. My legislation will put us on a war footing against the cartels by authorizing the use of military force against them. We cannot continue to allow heavily armed and deadly cartels to destabilize Mexico and import people and drugs into the United States. We must start treating them like ISIS–because that is who they are.”

During a hearing on Capitol Hill Tuesday, a mother who lost her two boys to accidental fentanyl poisoning begged lawmakers to treat the influx of the drug "like a war."

Gut-wrenching opening statement from Rebecca Kiessling, who lost two sons to fentanyl poisoning, at border hearing:

"You talk about children being taken away from their parents. My children were taken away from me...It’s not about race, fentanyl doesn’t care about race." pic.twitter.com/Kgn4rGvgTg

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) February 28, 2023

Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot blamed racism and her gender for her landslide defeat in her re-election bid, as Chicagoans weary of the rising crime on her watch celebrated her fall from “political rock star to rock bottom.”

“I’m a black woman in America. Of course,” she replied when asked by a reporter if she had been treated unfairly.

But she called being Chicago’s mayor “the honor of a lifetime.”

“Regardless of tonight’s outcome, we fought the right fights and we put this city on a better path,” Lightfoot said, as she urged her fellow mayors around the US not to fear being bold.

Amid heavy criticism for the crime wave, homelessness and other troubles plaguing the city, the mayor had also injected race into the run-up to the election.

“I am a black woman — let’s not forget,” Lightfoot, 60, told the New Yorker in a piece that ran Saturday. “Certain folks, frankly, don’t support us in leadership roles.”

The Chicago Tribune called her loss a “political embarrassment” and argued that crime “skyrocketed” on her watch.

“Lightfoot campaigned for mayor in 2019 by arguing crime was too high, saying she wanted to make Chicago the ‘safest big city in the country,’” the Tribune said in its analysis of how she went from “political rock star to rock bottom.”

“But homicides, mostly from gun violence, spiked dramatically in 2020 and 2021 from 500 murders in 2019 to 776 and 804 in the next two years, respectively. Shootings and carjackings also skyrocketed.”

Violent crime in the city spiked by 40% since she promised during her inaugural address to end the “epidemic of gun violence that devastates families, shatters communities, holds children hostage to fear in their own homes,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The paper attributed some of her woes to bad timing — due to the pandemic and civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

“She almost embraced playing the heavy, shutting down the lakefront and admonishing people to stay home. It played into her dictatorial personality, inspiring an avalanche of hysterical memes the mayor was smart enough to embrace,” the paper said.

Chicago City Alderman Anthony Beale said that for Lightfoot, it was “‘My way or the highway’ coming out of the gate.”

“Trying to destroy people instead of trying to work with people. Politics is a game of addition. It’s not a game of subtraction. All she did was subtract from Day One,” Beale told the Sun-Times.

“Coming out of the gate at inauguration, she tried to embarrass the entire City Council as being this corrupt body, and she was here to save the day. But it turns out she was the least transparent, least productive, least cooperative administration I have ever seen in my life.”

Diana Dejacimo, who was robbed at gunpoint in December in the upscale neighborhood of Lincoln Park, said good riddance.

“I believe that people have just had enough,” Dejacimo said Wednesday morning on “Fox & Friends First.” “My message has been, ‘Go out and change.’ Regime change is the only way we’re going to fix this, and I think this was a loud and clear message that this woke agenda is not working for Chicago.”

Dejacimo said the crime surge was her prime concern in casting her vote.

“We have two very different approaches now of the two guys that are having the runoff,” she said. “One is very much police protection and support the police and the other one is more of a defund the police and self-rule. So we’ll see how it turns out, but I’m glad the city spoke out and said no more Lori Lightfoot.”

Meanwhile, business owner Sam Sanchez said the crime wave was hurting the city’s economy and suggested that Lightfoot’s loss will spur additional investment.

“We’re looking for businesses to come back,” Sanchez said on the show. “We’re headed in the right direction… the idea of coming to the city and being afraid should not be the reason you don’t come in.

“We definitely have to address the prosecution and accountability of the crime,” he added.(read more)

Some think that less educated and lower-skilled immigrants would be easier to manage, and this explains why powerful elites have schemed so hard to open America’s borders to the entire world. There may be some truth to this, and I would not be quick to discount it as a possible factor. Yet it seems more likely that powerful and influential Jews — such as Emmanuel Celler, Chuck Schumer, and many others – have worked tirelessly to make America less White for the past seventy years primarily for ethnic reasons.

Jews tend to view White racial solidarity as a bad thing, a threat to their ethnic and religious survival and their main enemies in the struggle for power in America. Is it any wonder why the current U.S. Attorney General who also happens to be Jewish, Merrick Garland, has publicly declared “white supremacy” as America’s greatest threat? In a speech given at the Justice Department, he stated:

In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race (June 15, 2021).

In their minds, Jews want to prevent another repeat of state-sponsored violence against Jews perpetrated by the ethnically and culturally homogeneous Germans. A most effective strategy of theirs against “white supremacy,” then, is to flood the nation with non-Whites. It’s reasoned that if racial demographics within the U.S. reflect more of the third world than of the Northern European Continent, Jews will be safer. They will be one minority group among many others. This will also prevent Jews from being so noticeable and possibly from being directly targeted by Whites who might want to preserve the racial and ethnic makeup of their country.

Jews can’t come out in the open and admit this, of course, so they cloak their true intentions by claiming that it’s being done to help the poor, weak and disadvantaged peoples of the world. They want to promote justice among the nations by means of a Talmudic teaching referred to as ‘Tikkun Olam’ (“repair the world”). They want to help the sojourner, the ‘stranger’ who yearns for freedom. They argue that this is only right since they were themselves once strangers in Egypt. It’s a ruse that many gullible non-Jews, including many ordinary Jews themselves, fall for.

Yet, once again, Jews have taken a leading role in fomenting immigration policies that are disastrous toward White Americans. Not so surprisingly, the very immigration schemes that Jews push for the U.S. are ones they would never push for Jews in Israel. This only makes sense when one understands their reasons, the lies behind them, and the complete hypocrisy of it all.

Thus, when Schumer pushes for amnesty on behalf of millions of illegal aliens (comprising mostly of Mexicans, Hondurans, El Salvadorians, and other groups illegally living in the U.S.), he is being disingenuous at best. He realizes, I think, that there’s a growing suspicion among many White Americans that they are being uniquely targeted for discrimination and racial hostility by their own government. Racial questions that only seven years earlier would not have been entertained by most Whites are now being openly discussed by a growing number of them. Along with skyrocketing levels of violent crime, including soaring inflation rates, the mood of the country is beginning to change. Liberal social policies have proven costly and utterly disastrous throughout Blue states.

The stage, it appears, is being set for what may be a great and inevitable backlash that will likely be led by Whites who oppose ‘the Great Replacement.’ Many Whites are no longer afraid of openly discussing secession and there is a growing disgust among them over widespread corruption in Washington. This deeply concerns Jews like Schumer who are pushing full steam ahead for a mass amnesty that’s destined to racially and culturally displace White Americans even further.

Thus, a nation comprised of a non-White majority along with a racially neutered White minority would hardly threaten Jewish power. The kinds of liberal-left social policies that most Jews vote for would largely go unopposed (even more so than they do now). Government policies deemed beneficial to Jewish interests — especially if ‘anti-Semitism’ were completely outlawed — would find little if any resistance.

Senator Schumer may argue that he wants illegals to become citizens to ensure an adequate work force, but never mentions the idea that workers could come to the U.S. on a contract basis, often for a defined period, and then return to their homelands after the contract ends, as Israel does, thereby preventing the workers from becoming citizens. This would be seen as racist in the extreme.

What he really wants is more Democrat voters who will overwhelm any Republican opposition. Granted, illegal aliens can still vote because of lax voter ID restrictions in some states. Yet, by granting a mass amnesty for illegals with full voting rights and citizenship, any hesitation on their part would be removed. There is little doubt who most of the illegals would be voting for and what kinds of government policies they will support.

Although it’s true that a larger segment of the Hispanic population in America voted for Trump in 2016 than expected, most Hispanics voted just as Democrats thought they would. This trend may change in future elections (and there are some promising indicators it will), but for now most Hispanics remain committed to voting Democrat.

Schumer argues that Americans are simply not reproducing and, therefore, the U.S. must loosen its immigration restrictions and allow everyone to come. It seems strange that the Senator would be concerned over matters of reproduction and birthrates when he has been such a strong abortion supporter with no legal restrictions attached to it. But, again, the man is not being honest with the American people.

In Schumer’s beloved promised land, Jewish birthrates are declining as well (see Hili Yacobi-Handelsman, “Israeli Birthrate on Decline, Government Data Shows,” Israel Hayom, February 22, 2022). Yet, I seriously doubt he would ever call for non-Jews to flood Israel’s borders in order to rectify the situation. No, such remedies are for racially naïve Americans who have been so duped by multicultural dogma that they imagine having their nation flooded by low-skilled foreigners to be a good thing.

Conservative Jew, Ben Shapiro, on his YouTube channel recently called out Schumer for his mass amnesty proposal. Although Shapiro raised some valid criticisms against the New York senator, he made it clear that he was not threatened by an America that looks less White each and every day because “ethnicity is not destiny,” “demography is not destiny,” and “I don’t really care where people come from so long as they actually reflect the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States” (“Chuck Schumer’s Great Replacement Theory,” Episode 1613, November 17, 2022).

Recall that Shapiro also declared on Twitter the following: “And by the way, I don’t give a good damn about the so-called “browning of America.” Color doesn’t matter. Ideology does” (June 16, 2017).

Yet Shapiro like his fellow Jew, Schumer, would most certainly care if that same “browning” were occurring in Israel. Suddenly, color would matter! They certainly would care where people came from if they were to land on Israeli soil. And there’s little doubt that Shapiro and Schumer would find any increasing ethnic group in Israel other than their own to be a direct threat to their Jewish survival. In such a case, demography really would determine destiny! For a people who require proof of one’s ethnicity in order to rightfully return to their land (“aliyah”), Shapiro’s dismissal of “color” and “demography” prove to be less than candid and truthful. It’s the kind of thing you say to a Gentile audience who doesn’t know any better and who isn’t likely to discern the hypocrisy in it.

Shapiro doesn’t care what racial group immigrates to the U.S. so long as they “reflect” the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution — a view that is depressingly common, even dominant, among White American conservatives. But how likely is this when massive numbers of American citizens themselves either don’t care or actively work in various ways to jettison the rights of free speech, religious freedom, and the Second Amendment? Seems to me that most foreign immigrants wouldn’t care in the least about such matters. The current mood of much of the country wouldn’t encourage them to see our founding documents as all that relevant or necessary. The kind of immigrants Schumer and his cohorts seem to prefer are those who will mindlessly vote Democrat, and who will care more about obtaining government goodies than about the principles established by dead White guys in August of 1776 at Independence Hall. (read more)

The future of humanity will be decided on a battlefield in Ukraine. That’s no exaggeration. The conflict between the United States and Russia will determine whether global economic integration will expand within an evolving multi-polar system or if the “rules-based order” will succeed in crushing any opponent to its Western-centric model. This is what’s taking place in Ukraine today, in fact, all of the recent government-prepared documents related to national security identify Russia and China as the greatest threats to US hegemony. For example, take a look at this brief clip from the 2021 Congressional Research Service Report titled Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress:

The U.S. goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia… is a policy choice reflecting two judgments: (1) that given the amount of people, resources, and economic activity in Eurasia, a regional hegemon in Eurasia would represent a concentration of power large enough to be able to threaten vital U.S. interests….

From a U.S. perspective on grand strategy and geopolitics, it can be noted that most of the world’s people, resources, and economic activity are located not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere, particularly Eurasia. In response to this basic feature of world geography, U.S. policymakers for the last several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U.S. national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia.” (“Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress”, US Congress)

That sums up US foreign policy in a nutshell; “prevent the emergence of a regional hegemon” at all cost. Now check out this summary of the 2022 US National Defense Strategy by Andre Damon at the World Socialist Web Site:

These documents, which were not seriously discussed in the US media, make clear the fundamental falsehood that the massive US military buildup this year is a response to “Russian aggression.” In reality, in the thinking of the White House and Pentagon war planners, the massive increases in military spending and plans for war with China are created by “dramatic changes in geopolitics, technology, economics, and our environment.”

These documents make clear that the United States sees the economic rise of China as an existential threat, to be responded to with the threat of military force. The United States sees the subjugation of Russia as a critical stepping stone toward the conflict with China.” (“Pentagon national strategy document targets China”, Andre Damon, World Socialist Web Site)

These two excerpts are by no means a comprehensive summary of US foreign policy objectives, but they are a pretty effective thumbnail sketch. Bottom line: The war in Ukraine is not about Ukraine. America’s clearly articulated strategic objectives are as follows: To weaken Russia, topple its leader, take control of its vast natural resources and move on to containing China. Simply put, Washington’s escalating aggression in Ukraine is a Hail Mary pass aimed at containing emerging centers of economic power in order to preserve its waning position in the global order.

This is the geopolitical chess match that is being played behind the cover of “a war against Russia’s unprovoked aggression.” People should not be hoodwinked by that absurd deception. This war was concocted as a desperate attempt for the United States to defend its flickering global hegemony [and to restore the homeland of the Khazars]. That’s what Ukraine is really all about. It’s a clash between the warmongering western oligarchs who have a stranglehold on the US media and political establishment and the emerging economies that are using the market system to link their resources and manufactured goods to countries around the world through “high-speed” infrastructure and cooperative development.

So, the question everyone must ask themselves is this: Do you want to see more economic integration, lower prices, more shared prosperity and less war or another 80 years of onerous and arbitrary sanctions, color-coded revolutions, regime change operations, genocidal interventions and bioweapon warfare (Covid-19)? Which do you want?

Perhaps, you are one of the millions of Americans who believe that China is an enemy of the United States. Perhaps, you are also unaware of the role the US played in creating modern China. Here’s a question for you: Did the US and western corporations move their operations en masse to China to escape the high costs of production in the US?

answer– Yes, they did.

And, did they betray US workers because they didn’t want a fair wage to interfere with their excessive profit-making?

answer– Yep.

And, did they offshore their businesses, outsource their product manufacturing and do everything in their power to make themselves winners while robbing American workers of the opportunity of making a decent wage so they could put food on the table?

answer– They sure did.

Then who is actually responsible for the rise of China?

answer– Western corporations are responsible. If Americans want to blame someone, blame them!

But now the corporate mandarins and other elites are unhappy with China because China will not allow them to take control over their markets, financial system and currency as they have in America. So now these same cutthroat corporations want us to fight a war with the monster that they created?

Can you see that? Can you see that the relentless provocations against China have nothing to do with US national security or US interests. We are being led by the nose to fight and die for the cadres of voracious western oligarchs who have settled on China as the next target of their grand looting operation.

But let’s forget the past for a minute and focus on the future, after all, that’s what really matters, right?

Well then, which country has a more “positive vision” for the future: China or the United States?

Have you ever heard of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the massive, multi trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that is the centerpiece of China’s foreign policy? It is the biggest infrastructure program in history and more 150 countries have invested in the plan already. It is a development-oriented project aimed at increasing connectivity through high-speed rail, shipping lanes and ports, skyscrapers, railroads, roads, bridges, airports, dams, power stations, and railroad tunnels. By increasing the speed of travel, China’s products and merchandise will get to markets faster generating greater prosperity for itself and for the other countries involved. And, keep in mind, the BRI will link countries around the world in a high-speed system that will not require its participants to follow a specific economic model dictated by Beijing. In other words, the Belt and Road Initiative is free market economics without the politics. It’s a “win-win” situation for everyone, a guarantee of mutual prosperity absent political manipulation, coercion or exploitation. 

The venal oligarchs that run the US can’t even imagine a project of this scale or potential. In fact, they can’t even pony-up enough money to keep the trains on the rails in America. The profits these billionaire parasites extract from their activities invariably come from stock buybacks, tax evasion, and other sleight-of-hand, debt-layering ponzi-scams that benefit no one and merely shift more of the nation’s wealth into their own bulging bank accounts. Of course, ripping off the country would be bad enough, but now we see how this same class of miscreants have settled on public health as a means for amplifying their political power so they can impose repressive, police-state measures that greatly curtail the freedom of the entire population. In short, they want absolute social control and they aren’t going to let-up until they get it.

Where is the “positive vision” in this behavior?

There isn’t one. America used to be a country of ideas, ideals and vision. Now it is an oligarch-run detension center in which all hope for the future has been ruthlessly extinguished by a handful of mercenary billionaires.

At least, in the case of China, we can imagine a better, more prosperous world that is interconnected and more accessible to everyone. But what about the United States? Are we supposed to believe that fighting a war in eastern Europe is going to improve our lives? Are we supposed to believe that the only way “we can stay on top” is by pushing everyone else down? Are we expected to hate China and Russia even while our own government demonizes 80 million of us for voting for the wrong presidential candidate or for not supporting the terrorists who burn and loot our cities or for believing that the people in East Palestine are more deserving of our support and assistance than the Nazi stormtroopers in Kiev?

The fact is, our leaders cannot imagine devoting public resources to a giant interconnected infrastructure project like BRI, because that would mean less lucre for themselves. So, they’ve decided to destroy it just like they destroyed Nord Stream. Just read the press reviews on this groundbreaking project. Western journalists can’t find a ‘good word’ to say about it. A vast area in the center of America was fiendishly nuked with vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate and isobutylene, but the western media would rather criticize China’s ambitious BRI project than hold their paymasters accountable. Go figure.

The same rule applies to Russia. The Biden team and their wealthy allies don’t want closer relations between Germany and Russia because closer relations mean more prosperity for both countries, and Washington can’t have that, which is why they blew up the pipeline that was Germany’s lifeline to cheap fuel. That’s how Washington solved the problem. It pushed Germany and Russia down so the US could remain on top. Who doesn’t see this?

In contrast, the Belt and Road Initiative provides a positive vision for the future, which is an idea that the majority of the world supports. It puts us on a path to an interconnected world in which people can raise their standards of living, make a meaningful contribution to their communities, and enjoy their own culture and traditions without fear of being sanctioned, incarcerated or bombed to death. This is an excerpt from China’s Global Times:

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has already become a well-received international public good and an important platform for international cooperation…

“BRI transcends the outdated mentality of geopolitical games, and created a new model of international cooperation. It is not an exclusive group that excludes other participants but an open and inclusive cooperation platform. It is not just China’s solo effort, but a symphony performed by all participating countries….

Since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was proposed in 2013, the initiative has always been development-oriented, and consistent efforts have been made to ensure that it is high-standard, sustainable and people-centered….

By August, China’s goods trade with countries participating in the BRI had reached around $12 trillion and the country’s non-financial direct investment in those countries surpassed $140 billion. … By the end of 2021, Chinese enterprises had invested $43 billion in the construction of economic and trade cooperation zones in BRI countries, creating more than 340,000 local jobs, official data showed…

China is open to other countries’ and regions’ participation in the BRI and is considering connecting with infrastructure initiatives proposed by other nations to provide more good-quality public goods for the world…. China hopes to join hands with all partners to advance the high-quality development … stressing that China aims to strive for global connection rather than fragmentation, for mutual opening-up rather than shutting doors, for mutual integration rather than zero-sum games. (“BRI remains open, inclusive for all, transcends the outdated mentality of geopolitical games“, Global Times)

What is the American-led project that rivals the Belt and Road Initiative?

There isn’t one. The US allocates over $1 trillion per year for lethal weaponry and war-making, and trillions more to bail out the Wall Street banksters, and trillions more to shut down all the businesses across the country that were forced to comply with the diktats of billionaire elites who wanted to inject the population with their toxic slurry, but zero for any global infrastructure project that would peacefully bring the world’s people closer together through commerce and recreation.

No one is saying that China is perfect, at least, I’m not. Nor do I want to live in China. I don’t. I’m an American and I plan to die here.

In my previous piece “Systematically Erasing America,” I explained how evil, insidious, and destructive the longstanding practice of changing the definitions of words is, to both the foundations of freedom and liberty, and even the rewriting of Holy Scripture in an overt attempt to mislead well-intentioned citizens and believers.

Since the mass distribution of that piece, the content at a link provided has been altered, making it appear as though the information provided was inaccurate. In this piece, I explained how definitions of words were being intentionally amended and how direct internet access to original online definitions were being eliminated.

Specifically, I referenced the replacement of the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary by an evangelical group and I used the word “citizen” to demonstrate the extent and purpose of the alterations, linking to the word in the newly published Webster’s Dictionary.

When I placed the link to the word “citizen” in the new amended Webster’s Dictionary, the following words were indeed omitted; “a freeman of a city, as distinguished from a foreigner, or one NOT entitled to its franchises.”

Today, this sentence now appears at the same link provided.

Within a couple days of releasing my previous piece, the new site was updated to add the above statement that was missing at the time I originally linked it in the column. It appears there now.

However, this event sent me on a deeper search resulting in the following information. Again, as of this writing, “a freeman of a city, as distinguished from a foreigner, or one NOT entitled to its franchises” remains missing in the online dictionaries used most often by American citizens.

DICTIONARY.COM

MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM

DICTIONARY-CAMBRIDGE.ORG

Most importantly, it is also missing from BLACKS LAW DICTIONARY. This is a dictionary most often used to settle disputes in every court in the USA. (This time I took screen shots to prove that the phrase is missing as of this writing.)

How important is this issue?

By simply changing the definition of words in reference dictionaries, our government and their paid “scholars” have undermined the Constitution and Bill of Rights to the point that neither actually exists in practice today.

In the case of the word “citizen,” by eliminating the most critical part of the definition, the part that distinguishes “legal citizens” from “non-citizens” – – who are mere “inhabitants” allowed to reside in the USA “illegally,” are now viewed by our legal system as equal to “legal citizens” entitled to all of the Rights secured for “legal citizens” alone.

This is why today, “illegal aliens” actually have more Rights and more access to taxpayer-funded benefits than any legal American citizen does. It’s on this basis that democrats are rushing to pass legislation to “legalize” voting Rights for “illegal aliens” before the 2024 election cycle.

But far worse is the reality that the highest political office in our land is no longer reserved ONLY for “Natural Born Citizens,” as required by Article II.

As of the 2008 elections, anyone from anywhere on earth, without so much as an authentic U.S. Birth Certificate, can occupy the Oval Office and serve as Commander-in-Chief of our entire national security agencies and U.S. Military. (This explains how our entire national security operations have been turned against legal American citizens since 2008, (aka “Right-wing Extremists” and “insurrectionists”).

The courts have refused to hear any evidence of Constitutional ineligibility for office or issue a Supreme Court decision on the true meaning of Natural Born Citizen. So, non-Natural Born Citizens (and soon non-citizens) can occupy the office, and they (can) have flooded our country with somewhere between 30-60 million “illegal aliens” that are now considered “equal citizens” of the USA with all the same Rights once held by legal American citizens alone.

In short, the altering of definitions has made it possible for our federal government to replace legitimate legal citizens of the USA with “illegal invaders” of the USA, and even let them hold the highest offices in our land.

Some states, like California, have gone so far as to allow “illegal aliens” to occupy law enforcement and judicial offices, wherein those with no legal right to be here at all, now sit in judgement of legal American citizens.

Barack Hussein Obama has never been able to provide an authentic U.S. Birth Certificate, because he was not born in the USA, nor was his Father ever a legal citizen of the USA. Obama was born in Kenya to a citizen of Kenya. Since 2008, other “constitutionally ineligible” people from both political parties have run for President and Vice President. Republican Nikki Haley is “constitutionally ineligible” by the proper definition of Natural Born Citizen.

But under the amended definitions in use today, everyone on earth is eligible.

That’s how critically important this issue is…

So, when thinking and complaining about how our country is being, or has already been stolen right out from under 300-million legal Americans, all paid for by American taxpayers, remember how easy it was to do, by simply creating new definitions to old words, and erasing all access to the real meaning of words in place at the time of our Founding.

Good luck fixing this at this late stage of utter destruction! Goodbye America! Our country was stolen by lawyers, scholars, and experts. By the way, our nation was bankrupted by the same!

As of today, our Constitution and Bill of Rights are NO LONGER in force or effect! Let that sink in! Our country has been carefully prepared to become a member of the “Great Reset” global commune, while Americans were asleep at the helm.

“Noah Webster’s (original) 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language was produced during the years when the American home, church and school were established upon a Biblical and patriotic basis. Webster made important contributions to an American educational system which kept the nation on a Christian Constitutional course for many years.”

Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary Ellen G White estate

(read more)

Jews were in fact the first trans-Westerners. They acquired that fake identity when they began to be accepted as true citizens of Western nations in the nineteenth century. Those early trans-Western Jews were a wedge of darkness in another sense: a wedge of evil and malice, small in size but strong in cohesion and will-to-power. Jews began to split Western identity with anti-White and anti-Christian activism, then succeeded in overturning bans on non-White immigration throughout the West. After their success with that wedge hammered into Western identity, they created transgenderism, another wedge for hammering into sexual identity. That’s why the Jew Richard Levine, a minister for health in Joe Biden’s Jew-heavy administration, is such a perfect symbol of Western dissolution. Levine is both transgender and trans-American, claiming to be both female and American. In both cases, he’s lying. As a male, he can’t be female; as a Jew, he can’t be American. And just as transwomen harm the interests of real women, so trans-Americans like Levine harm the interests of real Americans. The sinister trans-American Jew Alejandro Mayorkas, so-called Secretary for Homeland Security, is hammering the wedge of darkness even harder into America’s White roots by massively increasing already disastrous levels of non-White immigration. The even more sinister trans-American Jew Merrick Garland, US Attorney General, is waging war on “white supremacy,” which is the Judeo-leftist code for “white nationhood.”

"We believe that the American people and their institutions are under attack
and that Covd-19, BLM, and the planned demolition of the economy are part
of a 3-pronged offensive designed to splinter the country, rewrite its history,
enslave its people, and set the stage for an alternate system in which the
bulk of the nation’s wealth will be controlled by a handful of power-mad
[Khazar] Mandarins who will stop at nothing to achieve their ambitions."

In America, we have an oligarch problem, and it’s much bigger than the oligarch problem that Putin faced when he became president in 2000. The entire West is now in the grips of billionaire elites who have a stranglehold on the media, the political establishment and all of our important institutions. In recent years we have seen these oligarchs expand their influence from markets, finance and trade to politics, social issues and even public health. The impact this group has had on these other areas of interest, has been nothing short of breathtaking. Establishment elites and their media not only stood foursquare behind Russiagate, the Trump impeachment, the BLM riots and the January 6 fiasco, they also had a hand in the Covid hysteria and the host of repressive measures that were imposed in the name of public health. What we’d like to know is to what extent this group is actively involved in the shaping of other events that are aimed at transforming the American Republic into a more authoritarian system?

In other words, are the mandated injections, the forced lockdowns, the aggressive government-implemented censorship, the dubious presidential elections, the burning of food processing plants, the derailing of trains, the attacks on the power grid, the BLM-Antifa riots, the drag queen shows for schoolchildren, the maniacal focus on gender issues, and glitzy public show-trials merely random incidents occurring spontaneously during a period of great social change or are they, in fact, evidence of a stealthily orchestrated operation conducted by agents of the state acting on behalf of their elite benefactors? We already know that the FBI, the DOJ and the intel agencies were directly involved in Russiagate –which was a covert attack on the sitting president of the United States. So, the question is not “whether” these agencies are actively involved in other acts of treachery but, rather, to what extent these acts impact the lives or ordinary Americans, our politics and the country? But before we answer that question, take a look at this quote from from a recent interview by Colonel Douglas MacGregor:

I was reading a document that was authored by George Soros over 10 years ago in which he talks specifically about this all-out war that would ultimately come against Russia because he said this ‘was the last nationalist state that rests on a foundation of orthodox christian culture with Russian identity at its core. That has to be removed. So I think that the people who are in charge in the west and the people in charge in Washington think they have successfully destroyed the identities of the European and American peoples, that we have no sense of ourselves, our borders are undefended, we present no resistance to the incoming migrants from the developing world who essentially roll over us as though we owe them a living and that our laws do not count. Thus, far I would say that is an accurate evaluation of what we’ve been doing. And I think that’s a great victory for George Soros and the globalists, the anti-nationalists; those who want open borders what they call it an “Open Society” because you end up with nothing, an amorphous mass of people struggling to survive who are reduced to the lowest levels of subsistence … (Soros) even goes so far as to talk about how useful it would be if it was east Europeans whose lives were expended in this process and not west Europeans who simply won’t take the casualties. This is not a minor matter. This is the kind of thinking that is so destructive and so evil, in my judgement, that that’s what we’re really dealing with in our own countries and I think Putin recognizes that.” (Douglas Macgregor – A Huge Offensive”, You Tube;, 11:20 minute)

The reason I transcribed this comment from MacGregor was because it sums up the perceptions of a great many people who see things the same way. It expresses the hatred that globalist [ Khazar ] billionaires have toward Christians and patriots, both of which they see as obstacles to their goal of a borderless one-world government. MacGregor discusses this phenom in relation to Russia which Soros sees as “the last nationalist state that rests on a foundation of orthodox Christian culture with Russian identity at its core.” But the same rule could be applied to the January 6 protestors, could it not? Isn’t that the real reason the protestors were rounded up and thrown into the Washington gulag. After all, everyone knows there was no “insurrection” nor were there any “white supremacists”. The protestors were locked up because they’re nationalists (patriots) which are the natural enemy of the globalists. The MacGregor quote lays it out in black and white. Elites don’t believe that nationalists can be persuaded by propaganda,. They must be eradicated through incarceration or worse. Isn’t that the underlying message of January 6?

The other underlying message of January 6, is that ordinary people are no longer allowed to challenge the authority of the people in power. Again, political legitimacy in the US has always been determined by elections. What January 6 indicates, is that legitimacy no longer matters. What matters is power, and the person who can have you arrested for questioning his authority, has all the power he needs. Check out this excerpt from a post on Substack by political analyst Kurt Nimmo:

“Klaus Schwab, a student of the war criminal Henry Kissinger, is a mentor to power-hungry and narcissistic sociopaths. The WEF “Great Reset” is designed to turn the world into an impoverished social concentration camp, where destitute serfs “own nothing” and this, in true Orwellian fashion, will set them free…

I challenge people to investigate the WEF’s Global Redesign Initiative. According to the Transnational Institute in the Netherlands, this “initiative” proposes

a transition away from intergovernmental decision-making towards a system of multi-stakeholder governance. In other words, by stealth, they are marginalizing a recognized model where we vote in governments who then negotiate treaties which are then ratified by our elected representatives with a model where a self-selected group of ‘stakeholders’ make decisions on our behalf. (Emphasis added.)

In other words, large transnational corporate “stakeholders” will be deciding where you live, what you eat (insects and weeds), how you reproduce (or not reproduce; children produce carbon emissions), and what you can “rent” from them, or not be allowed to rent if you complain about an unelected globalist “economic” cartel driving humanity into serfdom, worldwide poverty, and depopulation.” (“WEF Calls for Destruction of America’s Middle Class“, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics)

What Nimmo is saying is that these billionaire elites are now so powerful, that they can openly say they’re going to “transition away from intergovernmental decision-making” (i.e.– representative government”) to a system of “multi-stakeholder governance.” If I’m not mistaken, that is a pretty unambiguous declaration of a new form of supra-national government, in which only the billionaire stakeholders have a vote in what policies are implemented. But isn’t that the way things work already? On any number of topics from ESG, to digital currencies, to vaccine passports, to AI, to gain-of-function research, to 15-minute cities, to transhumanism, to war with Russia; the decisions are all being made by a handful of people of whom we know every little and who were never voted into office.

And that brings us back to our original question: How many of these oddball events (in recent years) were conjured up and implemented by agents of the deep state to advance the elitist agenda?

This seem like an impossible question since it’s hard to find a link between these dramatically divers events. For example, what is the link between a Drag Queen Children’s Hour and, let’s say, firebombing a food processing plant in Oklahoma? Or the relentless political exploitation of gender issues and the January 6 public show trials? If there was a connection, we’d see it, right?

Not necessarily, because the link might not have anything to do with the incident itself, but instead, with its impact on the people who experience it. In other words, all of these events could be aimed at generating fear, uncertainty, anxiety, alienation and even terror. Have the intelligence agencies launched such destabilizing operations before?

Indeed, they have, many times. Here’s an excerpt from an article that will help you to see where I’m going with this. It’s from a piece at The Saker titled Operation Gladio: NATO’s Secret War for International Fascism.” See if you notice any similarities with the way things have been unfolding in America for the last few years:

Yves Guerin-Serac: the Black Ops Grandmaster behind Operation Gladio…. wrote the basic training and propaganda manuals which can be fairly described as the Gladio order of battle.”…

Guerin-Serac was a war hero, agent provocateur, assassin, bomber, intelligence agent, Messianic Catholic, and the intellectual grandmaster behind the ‘Strategy of Tension’ essential to the success of Operation Gladio. Guerin-Serac published via Aginter Press the Gladio manual, including Our Political Activity in what can aptly be described as Gladio’s First Commandment:

“Our belief is that the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favoring the installation of chaos in all of the regime’s structures…In our view the first move we should make is to destroy the structure of the democratic state under the cover of Communist and pro-Soviet activities…Moreover, we have people who have infiltrated these groups.”

Guerin-Serac continues:

“Two forms of terrorism can provoke such a situation [breakdown of the state]: blind terrorism (committing massacres indiscriminately which cause a large number of victims), and selective terrorism (eliminate chosen persons)…

This destruction of the state must be carried out under the cover of ‘communist activities.’ After that, we must intervene at the heart of the military, the juridical power and the church, in order to influence popular opinion, suggest a solution, and clearly demonstrate the weakness of the present legal apparatus. Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation.”

Anarchic random violence was to be the solution to bring about such a state of instability thus allowing for a completely new system, a global authoritarian order. Yves Guerin-Serac, who was an open fascist, would not be the first to use false-flag tactics that were blamed on communists and used to justify more stringent police and military control from the state….” (“Operation Gladio: NATO’s Secret War for International Facism”, The Saker)

Repeat: the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favoring the installation of chaos in all of the regime’s structures… This destruction of the state must be carried out under the cover of (communist) activities…. Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation.”

In other words, the objective of the operation is to completely disrupt all social relations and interaction, cultivate feelings of uncertainty, polarization and terror, find a group that can be scapegoated for the societal-wide collapse, and, then, present yourself (elites) as the best choice for restoring order.

Is this what’s going on?

It’s very possible. It could all be part of a Grand Strategy aimed at “wiping the slate clean” in order to “transition away from intergovernmental decision-making” to a system of “multi-stakeholder governance.”

That could explain why there has been such a vicious and sustained attack on our history, culture, traditions, religious beliefs, monuments, heroes, and founders. They want to replace our idealism with feelings of shame, humiliation and guilt. They want to erase our past, our collective values, our heritage, our commitment to personal freedom, and the very idea of America itself. They want to raze everything to the ground and start over. That is their basic Gameplan writ large.

The destruction of the state is being carried out behind the cover of seemingly random events that are spreading chaos, exacerbating political divisions, increasing the incidents of public mayhem and clearing the way for a violent restructuring of the government.

They can’t build a new world order until the old one is destroyed.

You time your break to fall outside of your three daily hours of wind-powered internet. Forbidden by the World Economic Forum from owning your own car, you flag down a quick ride share from your leased living quarters in a stacked shipping container on the near side of your 15-minute city. After dropping off the seven other people in your ride share, you arrive at the fake meat distribution point, where you wait in a long queue, hoping to trade in a few of your remaining carbon ration credits for more provisions. 

You worry that your transaction might be rejected by the central bank digital currency network. After all, there was that one moment where your wrinkled brow showed slight unhappiness. You wonder if the facial recognition AI picked it up during one of your masked Zoom calls. 

But for the elites, things will be better than ever. Private jets, cars, ultra wagyu beef tenderloin (for their dogs), and large estates. Life-extension drugs will make them nearly immortal. They will vacation at 5-star hotels, a short limo trip from the Louvre, but without the crowds. 

The WEF – an infinite source of technocratic malapropisms – says that you will “own nothing” and be happy (the happiness perhaps will be a drug-induced state as Yuval Hariri suggests). Many independent researchers who have looked into the WEF’s plans have reported similar findings. For example – see James Corbett, Patrick Wood, Whitney Webb 2, Tessa Lena 2, Jay Dyer, and Catherine Austin Fitts. 

Aaron Kheriaty, who says much the same in his book The New Abnormal, calls the oncoming system “communist capitalism.” Jeffrey Tucker calls it “techno-primitivism.” He describes the system as: 

a combination of digital technology plus a rollback into previous ages of existence to a time without fossil fuels and meat plus geographical isolation and limited choices for average people. In other words, it’s a step back to feudalism: the lords of the manor are digital titans and the rest of us are peasants toiling in the fields and eating bugs when the food runs out. 

The researchers that I have cited have done a deep dive into the GI tract of the beast. While I don’t dispute the truth of their findings, my problem with much of the commentary on the Great Reset is that it takes the Grand Plan at face value. Indeed, a group of elites have a plan. They are open about some parts of it (and most likely, less open about others). 

One can imagine something, plan for it, and even try to bring it into being. However, in order to succeed, the laws of reality must be observed. The laws of cause and effect apply to all things. Grand utopian visions always fail in the implementation – if they even get that far.

How It Works Or Does Not Work

The idea of a totalitarian control grid is familiar to science fiction fans, but imaginative fiction stretches boundaries for artistic purposes. Utopia (including dystopia) is a form of science fiction. There are crucial aspects in the plan for a technocratic dystopia that, as fearful as it is, cannot be realized. 

Technocracy imagines a world where elites have all the good things in life for themselves, much as the middle class in the developed world does today. Internal combustion engines, reliable wall power, air travel, consumer electronics, beef, alcohol, dentistry, stable dry and well-insulated buildings, books, and video streaming services are all readily available. At the same time, a much reduced population of dispirited, drugged worker-slaves will own nothing. That is a vision but it is not a possible version of reality. 

To be elite in this world means to be wealthy. Wealth is created through the production of goods and services. There are many forms of what could be called “second-order elites” – wealthy people who parasitize off privately created wealth. But their ability to do that depends on true wealth, which is created by production. Once you have enough goods for your own needs, additional wealth is held in the form of assets. Assets can be reduced to a few categories: land, equity, debt, commodities (below ground in the form of deposits and above ground such as inventories of metals). Without going through each asset class in detail, equities and debt derive their value from businesses, which exist only because they have customers. After they have impoverished everyone and confiscated all of our property, their assets will be worth nothing. You will be worth nothing, and you will wonder why.

I have seen dystopian predictions for how the rich will get richer by trading futures contracts on our biometrics. Futures contracts are a bet with a zero-sum outcome. The winning side makes a profit and the losing side takes an equal loss. Who will the losers be? And what good is the money unless there are goods and services for sale to spend it on? 

Kheriaty cites some elite policy wonk who thinks that “funding to the public sector must increase.” By what? Who will pay the taxes? Even if the public sector had unlimited access to money, who will produce the goods and services that the public sector needs to buy, in order to build their control grid? With what will they pay the workers who operate it? 

How will the elites get stuff for their personal use when it is not available to the masses? Modern goods depend on a vast base of accumulated capital. To take one example, consider airplanes and airports. Airports, including the runways, are complex capital goods requiring intensive maintenance by skilled labor. Air traffic control requires a combination of capital goods, skilled labor, and energy to run. This documentary tells of the 30,000 parts that an airport must have on hand to keep the planes from having downtime. At the same airport, the airline runs a separate facility where the jet engines are broken down by skilled mechanics, serviced and rebuilt. 

Who Builds the Systems?

Is this all going to be done by AI and robots? Computer networks and servers depend on complex supply chains. CPU chips are made mostly in Taiwan, memory chips in South Korea, and hard drives at several places including North America. A single factory to produce semiconductors costs over $1 billion to construct and involves technical expertise from many different fields. 

The robotic control grid rests on a base of energy and mining. Robots are made out of metal as are data centers and computers. Energy is extracted from underground deposits of coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium. Once mined metal must be extracted from the rock and formed into bars, pipes, wires or whatever the intended use. Even “green energy” requires enormous amounts of metals. Copper and iron are not so hard to find, but some of the minor metals required for batteries, such as cobalt and niobium are much harder. An operating mine is depleted, and then retired, as minerals are extracted. New deposits must be located and developed. Within the mining industry, there is a division of labor between prospecting for new deposits, building mines, operating mines, and financing them. 

Who will operate the control grid? Technology requires skilled labor to operate. AI can only imitate skills that people have already demonstrated. AI models must be trained by operators vetted by humans. Data scientists decide when the training is complete, or, when the model requires retraining. Many decisions are made during this process and it can only be initiated with a goal in mind. Will robots do it all? Who will build them? Where will the metals come from to make them? The power to run them? Who will write the software to control them?

The control grid will require a massive amount of skilled labor. People obtain skills by working in the same field – or several different fields – over the course of a career. Most people enter the labor force in their early 20s and many remain for five decades or more. People learn how to do complex things, such as building a semiconductor factory or flying an airplane, by working under more experienced colleagues, and taking on increasingly difficult challenges as they gain experience. Most commercial airline pilots start out with flight training they receive in the military, and from there make the step to short-haul regional carriers with the aspiration of one day sitting in the cockpit of a major airline. 

I could go on with my series of examples, but they only illustrate that there is a deeper principle at work here. The wealth that makes technology possible to run the control grid and provide the elites with the good things requires a market economy. 

“The economy” – that thing which has an on//off switch, that we could flip for two weeks, and then flip back. Do you remember how, we all dug in, we wore our masks, we socially distanced, we sheltered in place? That curve didn’t know what hit it. We flattened that poor curve’s sorry backside. Then we turned the switch back to the “on” position. Once the economy finished rebooting, we picked up right where we left off. Actually it did not happen that way. In that hallucination, no one lost their business, their home, friends, family relationships, years of their childrens’ education, their careers, or anything else meaningful. 

There Is No Switch

The production of goods and services is not a machine with a switch. “Economy” is a name for the process by which we all produce things and provide them to others. Not only does this process create cool stuff like mobile phones and air travel, it is what enables us all to stay warm, dry and alive. It is an interconnected network of billions of individual decision-makers, firms, goods in process, capital goods, energy generation, transportation systems, and people who operate them. 

The most compelling explanation of the necessity of the market was discovered by the great economist of the Austrian School, Ludwig von Mises. Mises in his 1920 paper examined the problem of central planning. The ownership of all productive capital by the state – socialism – was a popular idea at the time. It was thought by the intellectuals to be inevitable. With ownership comes responsibility. A central planning board would take on the task of planning the entire economy. What should be produced? How much? By whom? To be distributed where? 

The starting point is understanding that productive assets are “scarce.” In normal English, scarce means that a good is difficult to find. Economists use the word to mean there are more potential valued uses for the asset than the amount of that asset that currently exists. To use the asset in one way comes at a cost of less of it to use for some other purpose. Any decision that involves using more bricks to build houses means fewer bricks to build walls. 

Mises observed that the number of possible uses of all existing capital goods to produce consumer goods and services is unimaginably large. Given the vast numbers of capital goods, skilled workers, known types of consumer goods, and different production processes to create them, the possibilities are almost infinite. 

Not only must the choice be made between producing more capital goods and fewer consumer goods, or the opposite, but there is an incalculable variety of choices within each category. 

On the capital goods side – do we need more power generation? Should the planner invest in nuclear, coal, natural gas, LNG, or pipelines? Factories? Of what type? Or transportation networks, ports, terminals, or logistics? Do we need more specialized capital goods such as machines that etch circuits into silicon chips, or more general purpose tools like trucks and computers? The planning must look years into the future. The extraction of minerals from the ground and the generation of energy takes years of planning and development so that, when the small business owner needs an iPad, it is available at the local Apple Store. 

For consumers, which is better? More shoes and fewer mobile phones? More burgers and better furniture but fewer kitchen sinks and bicycle tires? The number of plans is infinite. There are always entrepreneurs with ideas for goods that do not yet exist, that they would like to bring to market. More production of well known goods means fewer new inventions. Even subsequent generations of the “same product” differ as subtle improvements (or in the case of Microsoft Windows, not-so-subtle retrogressions) are introduced. 

Mises asked, how would the central planner decide between alternative uses of productive resources? He startled the economics field with his conclusion: production of goods and services as we know it would be impossible under central planning. In my opinion, Mises’ breakthrough is the greatest and least well known contribution to social sciences in the last century. It sparked a great deal of debate in professional economic circles at the time, but remains to a large extent unknown today outside of scholars. 

If central planning is impossible, how is it that we have all the things that we have now? Who decides what to produce? In a market economy – with private ownership of the means of production and a sound monetary system – business firms decide what products they will offer. They are in competition with each other, and they compete with entrepreneurs who would like to enter their markets. 

In order to choose between one thing and another, there must be a way to compare alternatives. This is accomplished by what Mises called “economic calculation.” Before starting, expected monetary costs are compared against expected monetary revenues. Profits consist of the differential between realized costs and revenues. Owners in the market economy are looking for profit opportunities. The more profitable opportunities are undertaken, the less profitable or loss-making options are not. 

To compare alternatives, profits may be compared to costs using ratios. Financial ratios, such as internal rate of return, or return on equity are dimensionless: they contain monetary units in both the numerator and the denominator. These metrics attempt to capture the economic efficiency of any particular decision. Without a means of comparison, who could say whether society will benefit from more shoes and fewer shirts, or the opposite? Using dimensionless ratios, alternative uses of scarce resources can be compared against each other. 

Costs and revenues are always estimated because the full costs of production cannot entirely be known until after production, nor can sales revenues be known until the goods are sold. It may be more (or less) expensive than expected to hire the workers needed, supply chain issues may crop up, a space may open up at a lower than expected rent, demand for the product may be stronger, or weaker. The ability to estimate future costs and prices is a key to success in earning profits. 

Awareness, or imagination of what can be produced, how, and with what originates in the diversity of human knowledge, experience, and the way in which all of us are situated differently in the world. Within a business firm there resides an accumulation of knowledge about that industry. That firm may be well positioned to bring new products to market similar to their current product line. The company that makes motorcycles will have a good idea of customer preferences in that market. Someone else may have regional or local knowledge of market conditions. That person notices on his drive to work how far you have to go from his home to a dry cleaner. That local knowledge gives him insight into where a dry cleaner might fill an unmet need. 

Prices Must Be Market Prices

Market prices are a key to the process. Mises was building on developments in price theory by the Austrian School in the decades prior. It had been discovered a few years before Mises that market prices of capital goods and labor come about because entrepreneurs and business firms are able to place a definite monetary value on each resource that they wish to use in production. Each worker hired, each space rented, each machine or office product purchased, every advertisement purchased, and each gallon of gas used in transport has a specific monetary value to each entrepreneur. 

Each business, each entrepreneur must determine the amount they are willing to pay for the labor and assets they plan to use. Their buying prices are based on the way in which the asset contributes to the selling prices they expect. The process of competitive bidding ensures that scarce resources are used by those entrepreneurs and businesses who place the greatest monetary value on their use. 

The value of the resource to the business originates in the value that the consumer at the very end of the supply chain places on the final product. Business firms must be able to sell into a consumer market (even if several layers downstream) in order to value their components in the supply chain. At the end, the consumer decides on the trade-offs between more of one thing and less of another through their willingness to buy at a given price.

The price system functions as a collaborative system to pool the knowledge, experience and ideas of everyone about how to put available resources to their best use. The price system gives the entrepreneur an idea of how the rest of society values specific economic resources in monetary terms, enabling economic calculation so that production decisions can be made. 

Other than the free market economy, sound money, and private property, what alternatives are there for the use of existing finite resources in creating useful things? None. None at all. Mises emphasized that he was not saying that capitalism is a better economic system than socialism. Socialism is not an economic system at all because it does not offer a solution to the problem of how to economize the use of scarce resources. Economic calculation with money prices is the only way that has been discovered to do this. 

The elites’ version of the world where Bill and Klaus have nice things with a high tech control grid crushing everyone cannot be built in the form which they imagine. Bill and Klaus cannot possibly make all the stuff they want on their own, even with robots. Their vision does not include economic calculation. 

Stuff does not make itself. Making stuff must occur prior to having stuff. Making all the nice things takes a lot of people, and a lot of capital goods. The scale and division of labor required to fill the supply chain for even one complex product, such as a mobile phone, requires economic calculation, which would be abolished as part of their mad plan.

To build high tech systems there must be widespread ownership of private property. Private property must be under the control of competing business firms and their investors. Labor must be free to move around, to change jobs, and to acquire skills. And people must be paid competitively determined wages. Wages are prices, which demonstrate the contribution of the worker within the framework of economic calculation.

If the dystopian control grid is not possible, what will happen when they try to bring it about? As economist Joseph Salerno wrote, a dedicated attempt at central planning would result in a complete disintegration of human society. We saw the beginnings of this in the massive supply-chain shocks and labor market disruptions in the past two years. We have not seen a full recovery from that brush with disaster. There are pilot shortages, an oncoming food shortage, healthcare worker shortages, and frequent business closures due to staffing issues.

Unconstrained Reality

Utopian visions wipe the slate of the world clean so that it may be rebuilt perfectly. Grand utopias cannot be realized because, while imagination is unconstrained reality has limits. What is a dystopia other than the role of an NPC in someone else’s utopia? In this case, the utopia is the dream of psychotic elites who imagine that they can have the end products of mass cooperation without the open society that enables it. Much damage can be done in the attempt, but it is only a question of how far it can get before it cancels itself.