May 31
seen from Canada
seen from Ukraine
seen from Malta
seen from Sweden
seen from United States
seen from New Zealand
seen from South Korea
seen from Malaysia
seen from Singapore
seen from Netherlands
seen from Sweden
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from Malaysia
seen from Netherlands
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seen from United States
seen from Sweden
seen from Türkiye
seen from Australia
A reader sent me a link to the following: Hungary’s Orban: World is Heading for a Clash Due to U.S. Decline. July 23, 2023 Hungarian Prim
Russia Did In A Month What The USA Couldnt Accomplish In 10 Years. Defeat ISIS.
The Humiliation Is Complete: ISIS Fighters Cut Off Beards And Run Away As Russia, Iran Close In Put yourself in the following situation for a moment. You're a Sunni extremist and your regional and Western backers have just abandoned you. You are now under siege by the Russian Air Force. If you survive the air strikes you will soon have to come face to face with the fiercest, most experienced Shiite militia on the planet in Hezbollah. Would you cut off your beard and run? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-16/humiliation-complete-isis-fighters-cut-beards-and-run-away-russia-iran-close
Gun Carnage in America As Society Decays.
“I USED to love the summer,” says Elizabeth Dozier in the CNN documentary “Chicagoland”, which aired last year. “Then, once I became the principal of the school, I just started to hate summer. I have lost kids over the summer. I have had kids hurt and shot over the summer….I can't wait for the fucking summer to be over.” Ms Dozier is the principal of Christian Fenger Academy High School in Roseland, a troubled neighbourhood on the South Side of Chicago, where violence flares up as soon as temperatures rise.
The mayhem gets especially bad on public holidays, and this year was no exception. Mayor Rahm Emanuel made sure more police officers were on the streets over the long July 4th weekend, but ten people still died and at least 55 were wounded in shootings between the evening of July 2nd and the early morning of July 6th. Among the dead was Amari Brown, a sweet-faced seven-year-old African-American boy, who was gunned down in Humboldt Park on the West Side, and 17-year-old Vonzell Banks, who was shot while playing basketball with his cousin in a park in Bronzeville on the South Side. "I am both saddened and sickened by what happened," said Mr Emanuel yesterday.
By switching police officers from eight-hour to 12-hour shifts over the weekend, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) had increased police presence by 30%. The CPD seized one illegal gun per hour, on average, during the three days. Both Mr Emanuel and Gary McCarthy, the head of the CPD, blame the “gun lobby” for the lax gun laws that enable these outbreaks of fatal violence. They have repeatedly called on state and federal legislators to restrict gun sales and severely punish those convicted of gun crimes—to little avail.
The carnage this year was grim, but last year was bloodier still, when 16 people died and 80 were shot.
Decline of Superpowers; USA Crumbling at Home And Ineffectual Abroad.
The Superpower Conundrum. Ignoring it's own collapse.
The rise and fall of great powers and their imperial domains has been a central fact of history for centuries. It’s been a sensible, repeatedly validated framework for thinking about the fate of the planet. So it’s hardly surprising, when faced with a country once regularly labeled the “sole superpower,” “the last superpower,” or even the global “hyperpower” and now, curiously, called nothing whatsoever, that the “decline” question should come up. Is the U.S. or isn’t it? Might it or might it not now be on the downhill side of imperial greatness?
Take a slow train -- that is, any train -- anywhere in America, as I did recently in the northeast, and then take a high-speed train anywhere else on Earth, as I also did recently, and it’s not hard to imagine the U.S. in decline. The greatest power in history, the “unipolar power,” can’t build a single mile of high-speed rail? Really? And its Congress is now mired in an argument about whether funds can even be raised to keep America’s highways more or less pothole-free.
Sometimes, I imagine myself talking to my long-dead parents because I know how such things would have astonished two people who lived through the Great Depression, World War II, and a can-do post-war era in which the staggering wealth and power of this country were indisputable. What if I could tell them how the crucial infrastructure of such a still-wealthy nation -- bridges, pipelines, roads, and the like -- is now grossly underfunded, in an increasing state of disrepair, and beginning to crumble? That would definitely shock them.
And what would they think upon learning that, with the Soviet Union a quarter-century in the trash bin of history, the U.S., alone in triumph, has been incapable of applying its overwhelming military and economic power effectively? I’m sure they would be dumbstruck to discover that, since the moment the Soviet Union imploded, the U.S. has been at war continuously with another country (three conflicts and endless strife); that I was talking about, of all places, Iraq; and that the mission there was never faintly accomplished. How improbable is that? And what would they think if I mentioned that the other great conflicts of the post-Cold-War era were with Afghanistan (two wars with a decade off in-between) and the relatively small groups of non-state actors we now call terrorists? And how would they react on discovering that the results were: failure in Iraq, failure in Afghanistan, and the proliferation of terror groups across much of the Greater Middle East (including the establishment of an actual terror caliphate) and increasing parts of Africa?
They would, I think, conclude that the U.S. was over the hill and set on the sort of decline that, sooner or later, has been the fate of every great power. And what if I told them that, in this new century, not a single action of the military that U.S. presidents now call “the finest fighting force the world has ever known” has, in the end, been anything but a dismal failure
From; http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-03/superpower-conundrum-rise-and-fall-just-about-everything
How Ya'll Goin To Pay This Off Part II
5 Things You Need to Know About America’s 18 Trillion Dollar Debt. ________________________________
1) “They can get it under control.”
What a massive lie. Politicians have been saying for decades that they’re going to cut spending and get the debt under control.
FACT: The last time the US debt actually decreased from one fiscal year to the next was back in 1957 during the EISENHOWER administration.
FACT: For the last several years, the US government has been spending roughly 90% of its ENTIRE tax revenue just to pay for mandatory entitlement programs and interest on the debt.
This leaves almost nothing for practically everything else we think of as government.
2) “The debt doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves.”
This is probably the biggest lie of all. Two of the Social Security trust funds alone (OASI and DI) own $2.72 trillion of US debt.
The federal government owes this money to current and future beneficiaries of those trust funds, i.e. EVERY SINGLE US CITIZEN ALIVE.
I fail to see the silver lining here. How is it somehow ‘better’ if the government defaults on its citizens as opposed to, say, banks?
3) “They can always ‘selectively default’ on the debt”
Another lie. People think that the US government can pick and choose who it pays.
They could make a bing stink about China, for example, and then choose to default on the $2 trillion in debt that’s owed to the Chinese.
Nice try. But this would rock global financial markets and destroy whatever tiny shred of credibility the US still has.
Others have suggested that the government could selectively default on the Federal Reserve (which owns $2.46 trillion of US debt).
Again, possible. But given that the Fed (the issuer of the US dollar) would become immediately insolvent, the resulting currency crisis would be completely disastrous.
4) “It’s the NET debt that’s important”
Analysts often pay attention to a country’s “net debt” instead of its gross debt. If you have a million bucks in debt, and a million bucks in cash, then your ‘net debt’ is zero. It washes out.
Problem is, the US government doesn’t have any cash. The Treasury Department opened its business day on Friday morning with just $71.9 billion in cash, or just 0.39% of its total debt level.
Apple has more money than that.
5) “They can fix it by raising taxes”
No they can’t. Just look at the numbers. Since the end of World War II, US government tax revenue has consistently been roughly 17% of GDP.
They can raise tax rates, but it doesn’t move the needle in terms of revenue as a percentage of GDP.
In other words, the government’s ‘slice of the pie’ is pretty consistent.
You’d think with this obvious data that, rather than try to increase tax rates (ineffective), they’d do everything they can to help make a bigger pie.
Or better yet, just leave everyone the hell alone so we’re free to bake as much as we can.
But no. They have to regulate every aspect of people’s existence: How you are allowed to educate your children. What you can/cannot put in your body. How much interest you are entitled to receive on your savings.
All of this costs time, money, and efficiency. So do never-ending wars. The bombs. The drones. The airstrikes.
This isn’t about any single person or President. The problem is with the system itself.
History shows that every leading superpower from the past almost invariably fell to the same fate.
Great powers often feel that their wealth and success entitles them to spend recklessly and wage endless, arrogant wars. The Romans. The Ottoman Empire. The British.
History may not repeat but it certainly rhymes. And the lesson here is very clear: debt weakens a nation. It weakens a society.
Generations that will not even be born for decades will inherit these debts by complete accident of birth.
And the people in charge of the system have backed themselves into a corner where there is no way out other than to default– either on their creditors (creating a global financial crisis), the central bank (creating a currency crisis), or on the citizens themselves (creating an epic social crisis).
Bottom line: this is not a consequence-free environment. And while you can’t fix the debt problem, you can certainly reduce your own exposure to what happens next. From: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-02/5-complete-lies-about-americas-new-18-trillion-debt-level
Geo Politics & The Decline Of America.
The Emerging German-Russian Axis Vladimir Putin commented at a German-Russian official function: “We value the accumulated potential of Russian-German relations and the high level of trade and economic cooperation. Germany, one of the European Union leaders, is our most important partner in enhancing peace, global and regional security.” We would contend that we are seeing a decisive shift in the political character of Eurasia as 'continental empires' are starting to challenge the monopoly of 'legal' international violence that the US has exercised for the last 25 years. Such struggles have the potential to become major regional problems, but what is intriguing is the emerging continental alliance between Russia and Germany - a combination of German industrial might and Russian raw materials and military strength would instantly create a colossus. From; http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-02/emerging-german-russian-axis
USA, The Worlds Newest Third World Country
According to one recent survey, 26 percent of all Americans have absolutely no emergency savings whatsoever.-Approximately two-thirds of all Americans do not have enough money saved up to cover six months of expenses if an emergency arose.-Close to half of those living in Detroit cannot pay their water bills. It is being reported that the United Nationsmay step in to help.-One report discovered that 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.-One out of every three grocery store workers in the state of California is currently receiving public assistance.-According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about one out of every six Americans is now living in poverty. The number of Americans living in poverty is now at a level that has not been seen since the 1960s.-Even if you do have a job that does not mean that you are able to escape poverty in the United States today. In fact, about one out of every four part-time workers in America is now living below the poverty line.-According to numbers provided by Wal-Mart, more than half of their hourly workers make less than $25,000 a year.-At this point, one out of every four American workers overall has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.-It is a number that does not seem right, but it is actually true that half the country makes $27,520 a year or less from their jobs.-Right now, one out of every six men in America in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job.-Half of all college graduates are still financially dependent on their parents even when they are two years out of school.-One study discovered that nearly half of all public students in the United States come from low income homes.-It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.-It is hard to believe, but right now 1.2 million studentsthat attend public schools in America are homeless. That number has risen by an astounding 72 percent since the start of the last recession.-According to a Feeding America hunger study, more than 37 million Americans are now being served by food pantries and soup kitchens.-Numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that49.2 percent of all Americans are now receiving benefits from at least one government program. From; http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/hillary-clinton-has-got-to-be-joking-this-is-what-dead-broke-actually-looks-like