The world at a precipice, while the US is lost
Time for a step back, and a broader look at what is going on
A lot is going on around the world, and it is easy to miss what has been happening, and where things are going.
This will not be my normal research piece, as I don’t have the time, and it would make this article way too long, so I hope you’ll forgive me taking a shorter approach today.
What is a fact we cannot deny, is that the equilibrium of power in the world is completely upended. What is worse, is that we cannot yet say where the new balance will end up falling. It is too early for that, and too much is still at play.
First, the US has completely fallen away from her #1 position in the world. Even her image as beacon of freedom has been rejected by an increasing part of the population. Case in point, Africa. Look at who African countries are more and more turning to for support. Not just financial or economic support, but also for military support, to help against local warlords/fundamentalists/extremists. The old European colonial powers are being rejected, such as France. That was to be expected, as an after-effect of the post-colonial world, but France had been working to position itself in that post-colonial world as a major partner for several of her former colonies, such as Mali. Among other strategies, it kept up relations with those former colonies (most in Western Africa), and set up the doctrine of ‘Françafrique’, French Africa. Another is the use of the CFA franc, where CFA stands for Financial Community of Africa. Under the guise of helping several African countries who are member of this monetary union, those countries have little to no sovereignty over their own monetary policies: Paris does.
Not mincing any words, the new Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, excoriated the French, in an attack on the open border policy the EU currently holds, allow millions of Africans to come to Europe, and settle there. Where the open border policies force all countries to accept them, once they get in. So Meloni attacked that, stating that letting Africans come to Europe was not the solution to the poverty those people try to escape, but to end the exploitation of their home countries, by countries such as France. And that she made clear by referring to the CFA franc, and the strings that come attached with it.
Earlier this year, after a second coup in Burkina Faso, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), consisting of 15 West-African countries, sent a commission to investigate the military junta. (Keep in mind that ECOWAS has been closely tied to France, and has been accused of acting in the interest of Paris, not in that of their own member states). In response, local people turned to the streets to protest: they yelled slogans against ECOWAS and against France, and they sported RUSSIAN flags.
Why Russian flags?
Why not American flags, which until very recently, were the universal symbol of freedom that protesters over the whole world would wave, as a sign that they wanted peace and freedom, and called for the US and their support, as the perceived beacon, example and defender of freedom. Remember the protests in Hong Kong in 2019? Also featured in that enigmatic recruiting video of the 4th POG, Ghosts in the Machine’.
So what happened?
The US is no longer seen as the guarantee of freedom, in more and more countries around the world. Military aid always came with strings, and wasn’t always what the countries needed or wanted. In Africa, for example, the struggle against different Jihadist groups is a bloody and urgent battle, but one the US did not always wage as strongly as they could.
Mali decided to kick out France, and even all NGOs that were either French or even supported by France: a complete closing of all avenues of influence of France in their country. Importantly, they called in Russian military aid. Some say it is through members of the mercenary unit Wagner, but Mali disputes that, and says that they have ‘Russian advisors’. For all intents and purposes: that is the same thing.
Russia is expanding weapon exports to Africa, taking in more and more the place of the US, and Wagner is present in Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, as well as in Chad, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Madagascar (as claimed by the CSIS).
Russia is also openly involved, militarily, for example by including Algeria in joint military exercises, both in Russia and in Algeria itself. This, as well as the sales of weapons, is nothing new, either, but part of a policy from USSR times, where each bloc in the Cold War exported tons of weapons to their own allies in every region of the world, Africa included. What is new, is the shift in perception, and the increase in Russian presence.
It isn’t just in Burkina Faso that people started waving Russian flags. Mali and Ethiopia are two other examples. It is merely a symbol, true, but a very telling one: the power of the Stars and Stripes is waning. We are no longer seen as the example and defender of freedom par excellence. The criticism that US foreign policy is not interested in freedom for anyone, except US financial gain, is nothing new. But what IS new, is this open change in symbols by people protesting against their own governments.
On monetary policy in Africa, I was talking with a good friend about this, and he pointed to two articles (here, and here), and replied: “This dovetails nicely with Russian connection of the ruble to gold. And I think BRICS is headed this way too.
I think the Russian position, at least on the European landmass, is even stronger than you suggest. Putin has driven a wedge between the political elite and the people. The elite are determined to enforce suffering and operate policies to ensure it continues and increases. The people have little appetite for military adventure and want only sane energy/monetary polices.
Ukraine has soaked up the materiel that Europe (and the USA for that matter) may have otherwise been tempted to use in other proxy adventures. The USA and Europe retain their strategic deterrence and defensive capabilities, but their ability to project power, especially in any sort of a sustained manner, is constrained. A significant replenishment of arms is required, a challenge for economies that are contracting.
There appear to be a number of stalemates emerging on the global scene. In an environment of multiple stalemates, rather modest amounts of leverage may well have more significant effects than in a scenario where the geopolitical players have more options and room to manoeuvre.”
Next, we hear more and more stories about social unrest in China. Protests, people tearing down Covid lockdown measures and gates. Something has reached a boiling point, and the recent fire that broke out in an apartment building in Xinjiang, killing many people who were locked up inside it because of Covid Lockdowns, was the literal spark of this new wave of unrest, where people are calling for an end of the CCP. The videos about this fire are absolutely heart-wrenching. People with doors locked from the outside, screaming for help, as the fire starts to engulf their apartment. Firemen trying to hose down the fire, from way too far (you know, because of Covid, they had to distance themselves), with the water visibly fallen several yards short of the building, let alone the fire… Several people, including children, burned to death in a completely avoidable disaster, created by the deep distrust of the State towards her own people, and the urge to be in complete control of the State.
Rumors about instability among the CCP leadership are also going around. Those seem unfounded, in the form they were presented, but might mask a reality within China of a power struggle between different factions. To see open protests and clashes in a society with such high decree of control, a social credit score, and so on, means that stepping out of your door, into the protest, means you are all in, risking everything… And to see that in Wuhan, Xinjiang, Shangai and many other places? This cannot be dismissed!
When even CNN calls the unrest historic, you know something is up.
”In one video, a university official could be heard warning the students: “You will pay for what you did today.”
“You too, and so will the country,” a student shouted in reply.
The campus protests continued on Sunday. At Tsinghua University, another elite university in Beijing, hundreds of students gathered on a square to protest against zero-Covid and censorship.
Videos and images circulating on social media show students holding up sheets of white paper and shouting: “Democracy and rule of law! Freedom of expression!”
Leaving the East, let’s look to the West: In Europe, people are facing very dire prospects. The energy crisis that was sparked by the economic sanctions against Russia in the wake of their Special Military Operation in Ukraine, has backfired massively. The sabotage of the Nordstream Pipeline made that energy shortage a fait accompli, and now Europe is lacking a huge portion of the energy they need for heating and for commerce/production. Prices soar sky-high, and food and other industries are also impacted, together with inflation.
Some people blame the US, as a false friend who is killing their rival, Germany, so they would profit. They point at the fact that American military complex companies are profiting from this war, while Europe suffers, more and more. But this makes little sense to me: if the US was really backstabbing Germany and Europe, to gain influence and income and a better trading position, why would Biden be destroying the US economy as well, with his own green energy folly?
This is the red thread, both in the EU and in the US: the Green movements demands, against fossil fuel and against nuclear energy, in favor of unsustainable and insufficient ‘green energy’, has severely ham-stringed both the EU and the US. Germany, for example, was negotiating with Qatar about a contract to deliver LNG at advantageous rates. The negotiations broke off, because Qatar wanted the contract to be long term, and Germany could not make that fit in her own policies to step away from fossil fuels and gas. So they lost that contract (China profited), and now have to pay more for less…
No, something else is going on. The US is not behind the decline of Europe, that is the direct result of Western green policies, shutting down nuclear facilities, and going all in on green energy, by 2030, 2050, all very strict and close deadlines like that. With the result that they are now fully dependent on other countries, outside of the EU, for their own energy needs. The US is struggling with her own diesel fuel shortage (a perfect storm, in part made possible by the lack of new and more efficient refineries), which threatens to impact the whole supply chain in the US itself. The Biden policies are damaging the whole fracking industry, as well, leading to no new wells being drilled, as no company dares to take on that risk, given the complete uncertainty about where things are going, and the increasing regulation against it.
We have our own inflation, and our own energy crisis, albeit not nearly as acute and severe as in Europe. The US is suffering, just as the EU and NATO, of increasing international isolation: the successive votes in the UN about the Ukraine conflict see an increasing portion of the world vote the opposite of the West, or abstain, as a more neutral way to show disapproval. China, India, as well as large parts of Central Asia and Africa, abstained, together representing more than half the world population.
The isolation becomes clear when you look at countries who actually joined in the US and EU levied sanctions. Talk is cheap, and the vote in the UN is a farce. Look at where it really counts: countries that effectively join the EU/US in their sanctions. Almost NO ONE is left… They simply don’t care, or don’t see how that war is relevant. Or perhaps because they don’t see how that war in Ukraine is all that different from other military excursions by the US, backed by NATO or not, elsewhere in the world…
Fact is: the West is increasingly isolated, and this includes the US. The US is NOT profiting from the current crisis in Europe. Some swamp-connected companies, perhaps, who benefited from any of the protracted wars that have continuously been fought since 2001, but not the US as a whole. No, since Biden took over, and returned many of the Trump policies to the Bush/Obama norms, things have slid back downwards fast.
As an aside: the G20 is loosing influence, while BRICS is turning into BRICS+, and has a lot more international leverage. Leverage and (economic) power, all outside the influence sphere of the US and the West…
Even the Economist is realizing this:
I explored some of this in more detail in a previous post, ‘US Betrayal of Germany and Europe?’
In that article, I ended with this summary: “China is behind the virus, the stolen election, and now the destruction of the European Union and NATO, while attempting to weaken Russia even as it supports it, eliminating all the powerhouses that could potentially stand up to stop China’s rise to world power.”
That brings us to a last topic: elections.
What is happening in Brazil is incredible. On October 2nd, 2022, general elections were held in Brazil. On the ballot were candidates from a multitude of different parties, for the positions of president, vice president, member of National Congress, governors, vice governors, and legislative assemblies of all federative units, as well as for the District Council of Fernando de Noronha (a special ‘State District’, under the control of the state of Pernambuco).
Among the candidates for President, were Jair Bolsonaro, the current president, at times described as a Brazilian Trump, who was seeking a second term, and his main challenger, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a 2-term former president (2003-2010) plagued by corruption and other scandals, and of decidedly left-wing signature (part of the WEF).
Since no single candidate reached the threshold of 50% of the votes in the general election, the top 2 candidates (Lula and Bolsonaro, who each received 48.43% and 43.20% of the votes, respectively) continued to a runoff election on October 30th, this past Sunday. During that election, Lula is said to have won with 50.90% of the votes, compared to 49.10% for Bolsonaro.
Immediately, leaders from states congratulated Lula. Within half hour of the result becoming known, Biden reached out to Lula with a congratulatory message. The UN invited him to the COP27 United Nations climate summit in Egypt, later this month, and the WEF is planning to make Lula one of the keynote speakers on their Davos World Economic Forum gathering in 2023, if Lula accepts the invitation.
But even before the last votes were counted and reported, the people in Brazil realized that this election was not kosher. During counting, on Sunday evening, Bolsonaro was in the lead, from very early on. But at some point, Lula started a comeback, with reports that each new batch that came in, broke in favor of Lula. Every single one of them. A statistical impossibility.
All this must sound very familiar to Americans who have followed the elections in 2020 and 2022… But the similarities don’t end there. In response to these strong allegations, Lula and his party/allies, the media, and the highest courts, jumped in, and made ‘election denial’ a crime. De Moraos, president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), among other things, demanded the removal of critics from social media, in effect silencing the opposition. Or when given a request by the party of Bolsonaro to look into reported issues and problems with the recent election, and the violations of current Brazilian electoral laws, de Moraes simply rejected the request out of hand, and instead wants to fine Bolsonaro and his party, while freezing all their funds. Federal deputy Junio Amaral (PL-MG) criticised that decision strongly in an interview with Jovem Pan radio's Jornal da Manhã, calling it "ludicrous": "I'm not even talking about the rejection of the request or the indifference to the facts presented, but the contempt with the facts, with the information contained in the report. He didn't even dwell on the report to give his opinion and to give his decisions." He added: "Similar things only happen in countries that are clearly dictators. There is not in a democracy what this gentleman is doing."
A high ranking member of party of Lula (the Workers’ party, Partido dos Trabalhadores or PT), Gleisi Hoffman, in a very willing media, added to that attempt at demonizing any protest or even questioning, and tweeted this in defense of de Moraes:
“Judge Alexandre (de Moraes) is 'Pedagogical'! With coup plotters applies the law, evil is rooted out. Democracy wins and Bolsonaro will be in the trash in history.”
Meanwhile, Paul Serran reports: “CROOKED JUSTICE MORAES TO BE INVESTIGATED BY BRAZILIAN CONGRESS: House deputies have gathered the necessary 171 congressmen signatures to open a Parliamentary Investigation Committee to look into alleged crimes committed by out of control Justices from Supreme Court and Electoral Court.”
In another ruling, as reported by Tupi Reports, de Moraes “gave the Liberal Party (PL) 24 hours to include in its report on the alleged malfunctioning of the ballot boxes in the second round of elections, information on potential failures also in the first round of elections.
The electronic ballot boxes mentioned in the initial petition were used in both the first and second rounds of the 2022 elections. Thus, under penalty of rejection of the initial, the author must add the initial petition so that the request covers both rounds of elections, within 24 (twenty-four) hours, ''said Moraes.”
Very short notice, unreasonable requests, silencing and literally criminalizing opposition and criticism, rejecting fair requests out of hand, even penalizing the requesters,…
It is going so far, that the military is stepping in. Nothing official about the elections yet, but their report on the election integrity was very clear, stating that fraud cannot be excluded given the many problems they encountered.
Or consider this story:
After a meeting between (still) President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday morning last week with General Braga Netto and commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force, the General of the Army, Roberto Câmara Senna, made harsh criticisms directed at Justice Alexandre de Moraes: 'JUDICIAL DICTATORSHIP'. (Notice the ‘Disinformation warning’ at the bottom, per the TSE of Moraes, making sure everyone knows who won! Also very familiar to most Americans.)
The media in Brazil, meanwhile, is basically silent about the hundreds of thousands of people who are daily out in protests, all over the country. The only thing they cover, are the road blocks, in the most critical terms possible, condemning the ‘violence’. Not a word about the other protests, about the hundreds of thousands on the streets… Lying by omission, that is. In support of Lula and the leftist direction he wants to take Brazil in, where the people are actively protesting such turn to communism, which they have seen fail in all their neighboring countries.
While this is playing out, with the Brazilian army getting involved and the legal process that is being followed, we have our own electoral crisis. We all know the ‘shenanigans’ that plague our elections, the abuse of Covid to make mail-in ballots omnipresent and much easier to send out, the machines, the voter rolls, etc.
But I want to point out the following: this time around, a lot more eyes were on the actual election proceedings. Arizona seems to be ground zero, and today, Monday 28th of November, the Maricopa County has a deadline to hand over election data, but is expected to certify the election in their county one hour before that deadline ends, making the request moot. This, despite strong urges to NOT certify, as other counties in Arizona have decided, until the irregularities have been checked and explained/corrected.
This should start a ripple effect through the whole of the United States, with increased outraged demands to check election proceedings everywhere.
Where the Brazilian fraud aims to install Lula, to facilitate the aims of the leftist Puebla Group, and bring communism to Brazil, the US fraud aimed to install Biden, and now in 2022 cement his presidency, to facilitate the decline of the US, paving the way for China, in effect heralding in the end of a sovereign and strong, self-confident United States.
Fraud. Yes, all over. Not a defeat of Trump and the MAGA movement, either, despite gleeful claims in the media, both from leftist side and from GOP side (look at The New York Post, for example). No, Trump did not lose influence. The GOP actively worked AGAINST several of the MAGA candidates, even going as far as starting new PACS against GOP candidates! Look also at the amount of money the Senate and House election chests gave to some of those MAGA candidates: pennies, or even completely absent! In very competitive races, where the extra money for adds and such could have made a difference!
This was proven when the whole FTX scheme came to light: it did not just funnel money back to the Democrats, but apparently also to people like McConnel! (FTX donated $1 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC associated with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) [led by his former Chief-of-Staff], per the National Review). Not as much, but still. He is clearly part of the same swampy machine…
Again: Arizona is ground zero, but it is not the answer.
Brazil is: the continued protests by hundreds of thousands, demanding that the ostensible fraud is dealt with, and their country protected from that steal, sets the stage, and gives us an example. “The people have spoken” only counts when we actually speak, and not wait for a silver bullet or a savior.
Steve Bannon realizes that, too, and tweeted:
China, with their citizens showing up to protest all over the country, in such tightly controlled police state, and the risk of such open action, and in Brazil, where people tirelessly, sun or rain, have been out in the hundreds of thousands, millions even (!!!), for 27 days straight, to peacefully protest, and force the system to react and respond to their legitimate concerns and demands.
Truly, a Master Class on courage and true democracy.
And while they revolt and risk their lives, our own president is conspicuously absent…
To underscore that point on the example that Brazil sets for us, through the massive participation in peaceful protests, read this this incredible article by Conservative Treehouse, titled “Big Picture, 2022 Midterm Elections Highlight the Distinct Difference Between Ballots and Votes“.
It talks about the difference between ballots and votes, and it states laconically “Where votes were the focus, the Biden administration suffered losses. Where ballots were the focus, the Biden administration won.”
It expands on that, and gives two examples: “Perhaps the two states most reflective of ‘ballots’ being more important than ‘votes’ are Michigan and Pennsylvania. Despite negative polling and public opinion toward two specific candidates in those states, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman achieved victories.”
It doesn’t stop at pointing this out, it doesn’t lament it, but it continues with hard truths:
“Since the advent of ballot centric focus through mail-in and collection drop-off processes, votes have become increasingly less valuable amid the organizers who wish to control election outcomes. As a direct and specific result, ballot collection has become the key to Democrat party success.
The effort to attain votes for candidates is less important than the strategy of collecting ballots.”
People like Jack Posobiec posted this on Telegram, echoing the same idea as other Republicans:
I strongly and absolutely reject that. We can never surrender the importance of a vote, over the expedience of a ballot. That would be to surrender our democracy, and buy into the fraud that is perpetrated upon us. It would reject ‘We, the People’, for ‘We, the Counters’. No, we stand for actual democracy, and not the games and electioneering that the Democrats and swampy Republicans tried to install as the new norm, to give them total control.
Conservative Treehouse continued:
“Campaigning, advertising, promoting, debating, hand-shaking, crowd attendance and venues for rallies, along with physically meeting people and convincing them of your worth, are only important if you are trying to win votes. Fortunately for Democrats, modern electioneering via ballot collection does not require these arcane efforts. So, in the larger picture of what you now see in elections, Democrats have stopped wasting time doing them.
Republicans are running around trying to convince people and win votes. Meanwhile, who needs voters? Democrats have skipped all of that old fashioned stuff and modified all of their electioneering systems to quietly and efficiently collect ballots. Yesterday you saw the outcome.
Haven’t you noticed?
It really is that simple.”
Are we going to follow the Dems, running way behind their scheme that they have perfected by now? Giving up core values in the process? No. We can’t, ever.
Luckily, there is an answer, as an incredible article by Joe Hoft on Crime of the Century 2020 laid out, in an article titled “Anonymous Wisconsin Heroes Demonstrated How to Collapse the Democrat Ballot Gathering Apparatus”.
Hoft starts with a reference to the above cited article by Conservative Treehouse, about the difference between votes and ballots.
It then points out a central truth:
“The raw material of the ballot-gathering strategy is the phantom voter or address. Every ballot needs to tie to someone – even if only a name on a list.
Live, votable ballots accumulate at addresses where the indicated voter does not reside. Those ballots gathered, are the inventory of electoral victory. He who gathers them can vote them.”
But it goes a very important step further than the Conservative Treehouse. It details how in Wisconsin ‘anonymous heroes, working in a small office, virtually unfunded’, showed and proved how to collapse this Democrat ballot gathering apparatus: flag thousands of phantom names, identify hundred thousand incorrect addresses, and have them removed from the voter rolls. With that, the pool of ‘phantom voters’ needed to harvest sufficient ballots to cast votes to overturn elections in a predictable way, is drained, leaving this fraud without it main resource: blank, official ballots, to harvest.
Hoft gives away the how:
“Our Wisconsin election heroes applied Fractal Programming technology, funded by Mike Lindell, at scale to find and challenge phantoms. The process is explained at www.Omega4America.com.”
And states strongly (emphasis from Hoft):
“Republicans have a different, less steep hill to climb – keep voter rolls as clean as possible. Identify in advance where ballots will be mailed to addresses where nobody lives – and shut those ballots down.
For the Republicans, any friction injected into the ballot-gathering system has disproportionate benefits – so they have asymmetric advantages.
“Votes require people, ballots require systems. Republican officials, Republican politicians and the Republican voters need to switch the emphasis from people (votes and poll watchers) to systems in these states.”
Conservative Treehouse November 2022”
Read both articles.
Apply the content and ideas they set forth.
As I sketched above, the world is changing dramatically, and the balance of power is severely disrupted. Normally, looking at this from the point of view of a historian, this is corrected by a war: this draws the necessary hard lines, shows who is stronger, has the better economy, the better ideas, the stronger people, to force their will unto others, through winning the war. To the victor the spoils.
This was true at the beginning of 1913, when Germany waged a war with France, showing it’s strength, which led to the official unification of Germany in 1871. Not a war of conquest, it was a war to show to the world the strength and resolve of the new German state. In 1913, Germany’s economy was booming, their technology top notch, they started to found their own colonies, and their new fleet, although still very much smaller than the British war fleet, was much stronger, with their brand new battle ships carrying all the latest technologies, over the obsolete war machines of the British Navy (as the Battle of Skapa Flow proved, despite the indecisiveness of the German Admiralty, choosing the certainty of fleeing and preserving their fleet, over exploiting their victory).
The result? Every nation in Europe wanted a war in 1913. See who was stronger. Redraw the maps accordingly. A short war. Einen frischen, froehligen Krieg. A fresh, joyful war. So when that fateful shot rang, killing Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, all those countries happily called in their various agreements, off to the war! A quick one, back home by Christmas! Not for conquest, but about domination in the international and economic spheres. What a miscalculation!
Today, again, we are at a similar precipice. Power is shifting dramatically, and the ‘police’ of the world, the US, isn’t but a shadow of what it once was, now plagued by accusations of violence, biological warfare and crimes, color revolutions in enemy and friendly countries alike at the cost of thousands of lives, etc. China has her own issues, internally, and Russia, while seemingly weathering the international storm and sanctions pretty well, has no clear path forward either, yet. Europe, the once great powerhouse, and with their self-styled moral superiority, learned from the lessons of WWII, is just about as dead as a door-nail. So is NATO, their military arm. They have proven their greed and stupidity, actively driving towards war with Russia, denying peace and negotiations in Ukraine. At the cost of their own economies, and the consent of their own populations (proving also their complete democratic deficit in their own nations: what the people think, is irrelevant for the European rulers!).
Where does that leave us?
In a place where we best regain control of our own nation again, doing away with the fraudsters, both in the DNC AND in the GOP. So we can face this coming storm united and strong, from a position of virtue, taking responsibility for US wrongdoing, while offering a strong and sincere hand to the international community, not surrendering a position of strength so we can regain a position of influence in the world for the better, and once again stand for freedom and liberty. Hopefully, also under God, yet again.
Last paragraph is encouraging!
So much happening yet most people have no idea!! Our ‘news’ is a travesty of the word. An entire shift is happening and people are going to wake up one day and say how and when did that happen?