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https://www.globalresearch.ca/scripted-trump-biden-spitting-match-theater/5725303

Pre-Scripted Trump v. Biden Spitting Match Theater

The US political process is money controlled, Big Money running things.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), over $6 billion was spent by US presidential and congressional candidates in 2016.

A record amount is expected this year to be known post-November 3 elections — including dark money.

CRP calls it “spending meant to influence political outcomes where the source of the money is not disclosed.”

It comes from:

“Politically active nonprofits such as 501(c)(4)s are generally under no legal obligation to disclose their donors even if they spend to influence elections.”

“When they choose not to reveal their sources of funding, they are considered dark money groups.”

“Opaque nonprofits and shell companies may give unlimited amounts of money to super PACs.”

“While super PACs are legally required to disclose their donors, some of these groups are effectively dark money outlets when the bulk of their funding cannot be traced back to the original donor.”

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the Supreme Court ruled against government limits on corporate spending in elections, claiming a First Amendment right of “political speech.”

The ruling greatly exacerbated US money-controlled elections, mocking a free, fair, and open process, what democracy is supposed to be — absent in America from inception.

One party with two right wings runs things, each taking turns controlling the White House and Congress.

Duopoly power excludes independents. No one not on board for dirty business as usual continuity becomes president or holds key congressional posts.

Horse race journalism substitutes for a free, fair, and open 4th estate discussion of domestic and geopolitical issues mattering most.

Voter disenfranchisement is rife. Millions of Americans are shut out of the process because of past criminal records, including innocent people wrongfully imprisoned, others for political reasons or offenses too minor to matter.

Around half of eligible voters opt out most often because their rights and needs aren’t addressed or served by the US ruling class.

Corporate interests run elections with electronic ease.

This year the USPS is involved because of a likely record number of mailed in ballots.

The result perhaps will be delayed because of time needed to count them, especially if November 3 results are close.

So-called US presidential debates are pre-scripted, well-rehearsed, made for television theater.

They feature bombast over substance, slogans and one-liners over solutions, and promises made to be broken if elected.

Tuesday’s Trump v. Biden round one was a heated spitting match, slings and arrows substituting for give and take debating the way it should be — virtually never when US politicians face off with each other.

Last night’s matchup was near-no-holds-barred bare-knuckled rhetorical brawling.

Debating the way it should be is an ancient tradition.

As a junior high school student long ago in my mid-teens, I was involved in one on a topic I don’t recall — a civil give-and-take I do recall.

Socrates and Plato debated political, social, and other issues.

The Socratic method involves opposing sides asking and answering questions.

Ideas are freely aired. Beliefs are challenged. Truths are sought.

Critical thinking is stimulated, opinions formed.

Conclusions are reached through free and open dialogue and discussion.

Debates should let opposing sides air views and challenge those of others in a civil manner — ideally by the Socratic method.

Trump v. Biden round one — with likely more of the same coming twice more — was open warfare, back-and-forth mud-slinging ad hominem insults and shouting used as political weapons.

When post-“debate” polls come out, they’ll likely show that Tuesday night theatrics left the public mind on Trump v. Biden largely unchanged.

Neither figure rises to head of state stature the way it should be everywhere — notably at a time of economic collapse when responsible leadership is most needed.

No matter which wing of the US one-party state runs things, plutocrats, oligarchs, and kleptocrats are served exclusively at the expense of ordinary people everywhere.

Post-election next year, continuity is assured like virtually always throughout US history.

Rare short-term exceptions proved the rule — none since the Clinton co-presidency, notably not post-9/11.

Will Orwell’s dystopian vision unfold in the next four years, no matter whether Republicans or Dems control the White House and/or Congress?

Will harder than ever hard times worsen, forever wars rage with no resolution, and police state crackdowns on nonbelievers toughen?

What I remember as an adolescent and youth was replaced by a nation unsafe and unfit to live in — permanently at war on humanity, full-blown tyranny perhaps another major false flag away.

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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/09/30/russia-could-never-discredit-the-us-empire-the-way-these-guys-just-did/

Russia Could Never Discredit The US Empire The Way These Guys Just Did

Well.

Wow.

I mean, wow.

So in case you missed it, the first US presidential debate was everything the US empire deserves and a fair reflection of everything the US empire is.

If Vladimir Putin were every bit the election-meddling demon the Democrats say he is, and if he had unlimited time and unlimited resources to create the perfect ninety-minute propaganda video to discredit the US-led unipolar world order, he could not have designed one more effective than the performance that was just delivered by President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden with the help of moderator Chris Wallace.

I mean, it had everything. Both candidates yelling over each other the entire time, Biden telling the sitting president of the United States to shut up on live television, Trump at one point saying the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by“, Chris Wallace literally shouting to be heard over the unceasing interruptions, Biden getting confused and arguing that the Green New Deal would pay for itself and then turning around saying he does not support the Green New Deal, mountains of lies and nonsense, both candidates trying to out-right wing each other, and absolutely no meaningful discussion of policies that will actually help ordinary Americans at all.

It was crazier than any of Trump’s debates in 2016. It was crazier than any presidential debate that has ever happened. You seriously could not have designed a more perfect display to do everything we’ve been told for years that Russian propagandists are trying to do: depress the vote, encourage support for third parties, weaken public trust in America’s institutions, and humiliate the United States on the world stage.

The world is going to be talking about this for a while now. Clips from this debate are going to share widely all across the planet. It will be translated in many languages. Articles will be written about it for days. And people who’d never thought to question whether this is the government that should be leading the world into the future are suddenly going to find themselves contemplating that question.

And hopefully the next one will be even worse.

It is good for the US empire to invalidate itself in this way. The government that has encircled the planet with hundreds of military bases and snuffed out millions of human lives while displacing tens of millions since 9/11 in military interventions that were based on lies, which sanctions, sabotages and destroys any nation which dares to disobey its dictates, and which is escalating world-threatening cold war aggressions against not one but two nuclear-armed nations is not a government that should have any control over humanity’s collective future.

The uglier a face that appears on this murderous empire, the better it will be for everybody. In a government that is intrinsically evil and destructive from root to flower, an attractive face with competent management is the last thing anyone should want.

It doesn’t matter who won this accidental Kremlin propaganda performance of a debate. It doesn’t even matter who wins the election; the most evil aspects of the US government will continue unhindered regardless of which oligarchic puppet wins in November. What does matter is that the dark, ugly aspects of global power that people had previously not noticed are being drawn into the spotlight and seen by everybody. 2020 seems to be a good year for that.

If the imperialists who run things have any sense they will find a way to cancel future debates in the name of national security, because they’re the ones who will be worst affected by them. Here’s hoping they don’t, though.

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https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_election_has_already_been_hijacked_and_the_winner_decided_we_the_people_lose

The Election Has Already Been Hijacked and the Winner Decided: 'We the People' Lose

“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” ― Herbert Marcuse

Republicans and Democrats alike fear that the other party will attempt to hijack this election.

President Trump is convinced that mail-in ballots are a scam except in Florida, where it’s safe to vote by mail because of its “great Republican governor.”

The FBI is worried about foreign hackers continuing to target and exploit vulnerabilities in the nation’s electoral system, sowing distrust about the parties, the process and the outcome.

I, on the other hand, am not overly worried: after all, the voting booths have already been hijacked by a political elite comprised of Republicans and Democrats who are determined to retain power at all costs.

The outcome is a foregone conclusion: the Deep State will win and “we the people” will lose.

The damage has already been done.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has been tasked with helping to “secure” the elections and protect the nation against cyberattacks, is not exactly an agency known for its adherence to freedom principles.

After all, this is the agency largely responsible for turning the American republic into a police state. Since its creation, the DHS has ushered in the domestic use of surveillance drones, expanded the reach of fusion centers, stockpiled an alarming amount of ammunition (including hollow point bullets), urged Americans to become snitches through a “see something, say something” campaign, overseen the fumbling antics of TSA agents everywhere, militarized the nation’s police, spied on activists and veterans, distributed license plate readers and cell phone trackers to law enforcement agencies, contracted to build detention camps, carried out military drills and lockdowns in American cities, conducted virtual strip searches of airline passengers, established Constitution-free border zones, funded city-wide surveillance cameras, and undermined the Fourth Amendment at every turn.

So, no, I’m not losing a night’s sleep over the thought that this election might by any more rigged than it already is.

And I’m not holding my breath in the hopes that the winner of this year’s popularity contest will save us from government surveillance, weaponized drones, militarized police, endless wars, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture schemes, overcriminalization, profit-driven private prisons, graft and corruption, or any of the other evils that masquerade as official government business these days.

You see, after years of trying to wake Americans up to the reality that there is no political savior who will save us from the police state, I’ve come to realize that Americans want to engage in the reassurance ritual of voting.

They want to believe the fantasy that politics matter.

They want to be persuaded that there’s a difference between the Republicans and Democrats (there’s not).

Some will swear that Donald Trump has been an improvement on Barack Obama (he is not).

Others are convinced that Joe Biden’s values are different from Donald Trump’s (with both of them, money talks).

Most of all, voters want to buy into the fantasy that when they elect a president, they’re getting someone who truly represents the citizenry rather than the Deep State (in fact, in the oligarchy that is the American police state, an elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots in cooperation with a political elite).

The sad truth is that it doesn’t matter who wins the White House, because they all work for the same boss: Corporate America. Understanding this, many corporations hedge their bets on who will win the White House by splitting their donations between Democratic and Republican candidates.

Politics is a game, a joke, a hustle, a con, a distraction, a spectacle, a sport, and for many devout Americans, a religion. It is a political illusion aimed at persuading the citizenry that we are free, that our vote counts, and that we actually have some control over the government when in fact, we are prisoners of a Corporate Elite.

In other words, it’s a sophisticated ruse aimed at keeping us divided and fighting over two parties whose priorities, more often than not, are exactly the same so that we don’t join forces and do what the Declaration of Independence suggests, which is to throw the whole lot out and start over.

It’s no secret that both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry’s basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by Big Business, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty. Most of all, both parties enjoy an intimate, incestuous history with each other and with the moneyed elite that rule this country.

Despite the jabs the candidates volley at each other for the benefit of the cameras, they’re a relatively chummy bunch away from the spotlight. Moreover, despite Congress’ so-called political gridlock, our elected officials seem to have no trouble finding common ground when it’s time to collectively kowtow to the megacorporations, lobbyists, defense contractors and other special interest groups to whom they have pledged their true allegiance.

So don’t be fooled by the smear campaigns and name-calling or drawn into their divide-and-conquer politics of hate. They’re just useful tactics that have been proven to engage voters and increase voter turnout while keeping the citizenry at each other’s throats.

It’s all a grand illusion.

It used to be that the cogs, wheels and gear shifts in the government machinery worked to keep the republic running smoothly. However, without our fully realizing it, the mechanism has changed. Its purpose is no longer to keep our republic running smoothly. To the contrary, this particular contraption’s purpose is to keep the Deep State in power. Its various parts are already a corrupt part of the whole.

Just consider how insidious, incestuous and beholden to the corporate elite the various “parts” of the mechanism have become.

Congress. Perhaps the most notorious offenders and most obvious culprits in the creation of the corporate-state, Congress has proven itself to be both inept and avaricious, oblivious champions of an authoritarian system that is systematically dismantling their constituents’ fundamental rights. Long before they’re elected, Congressmen are trained to dance to the tune of their wealthy benefactors, so much so that they spend two-thirds of their time in office raising money. As Reuters reports, “For many lawmakers, the daily routine in Washington involves fundraising as much as legislating. The culture of nonstop political campaigning shapes the rhythms of daily life in Congress, as well as the landscape around the Capitol. It also means that lawmakers often spend more time listening to the concerns of the wealthy than anyone else.”

The President. What Americans want in a president and what they need are two very different things. The making of a popular president is an exercise in branding, marketing and creating alternate realities for the consumer—a.k.a., the citizenry—that allows them to buy into a fantasy about life in America that is utterly divorced from our increasingly grim reality. Take President Trump, for instance, who got elected by promising to drain the swamp in Washington DC. Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump has paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the rest of the Deep State (also referred to as “The 7th Floor Group”) to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic. The lesson: to be a successful president, it doesn’t matter whether you keep your campaign promises, sell the American people to the highest bidder, or march in lockstep with the Corporate State as long as you keep telling people what they most want to hear.

The Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court—once the last refuge of justice, the one governmental body really capable of rolling back the slowly emerging tyranny enveloping America—has instead become the champion of the American police state, absolving government and corporate officials of their crimes while relentlessly punishing the average American for exercising his or her rights. Like the rest of the government, the Court has routinely prioritized profit, security, and convenience over the basic rights of the citizenry. Indeed, law professor Erwin Chemerinsky makes a compelling case that the Supreme Court, whose “justices have overwhelmingly come from positions of privilege,” almost unerringly throughout its history sides with the wealthy, the privileged, and the powerful.

The Media. Of course, this triumvirate of total control would be completely ineffective without a propaganda machine provided by the world’s largest corporations. Besides shoveling drivel down our throats at every possible moment, the so-called news agencies which are supposed to act as bulwarks against government propaganda have instead become the mouthpieces of the state. The pundits which pollute our airwaves are at best court jesters and at worst propagandists for the false reality created by the American government. When you have internet and media giants such as Google, NBC Universal, News Corporation, Turner Broadcasting, Thomson Reuters, Comcast, Time Warner, Viacom, Public Radio International and The Washington Post Company donating to political candidates, you no longer have an independent media—what we used to refer to as the “fourth estate”—that can be trusted to hold the government accountable.

The American People. “We the people” now belong to a permanent underclass in America. It doesn’t matter what you call us—chattel, slaves, worker bees, it’s all the same—what matters is that we are expected to march in lockstep with and submit to the will of the state in all matters, public and private. Unfortunately, through our complicity in matters large and small, we have allowed an out-of-control corporate-state apparatus to take over every element of American society.

We’re playing against a stacked deck.

The game is rigged, and “we the people” keep getting dealt the same losing hand. The people dealing the cards—the politicians, the corporations, the judges, the prosecutors, the police, the bureaucrats, the military, the media, etc.—have only one prevailing concern, and that is to maintain their power and control over the citizenry, while milking us of our money and possessions.

It really doesn’t matter what you call them—Republicans, Democrats, the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that while they are dealing the cards, the deck will always be stacked in their favor.

As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, our failure to remain informed about what is taking place in our government, to know and exercise our rights, to vocally protest, to demand accountability on the part of our government representatives, and at a minimum to care about the plight of our fellow Americans has been our downfall.

Now we find ourselves once again caught up in the spectacle of another presidential election, and once again the majority of Americans are acting as if this election will make a difference and bring about change. As if the new boss will be different from the old boss.

When in doubt, just remember what the astute commentator George Carlin had to say about the matter:

The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork…. It’s a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. ...The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice…. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on…. It’s called the American Dream, 'cause you have to be asleep to believe it.

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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/09/25/americans-who-support-status-quo-politics-are-american-supremacists/

Americans Who Support Status Quo Politics Are American Supremacists

Trump is a bad president. He’s coddled oligarchs both in America and around the world, he made a mess of the pandemic response and lied about it, he’s incited violence and inflamed hate, he’s done nothing for ordinary Americans, he’s facilitated ecocide, any good decisions he’s made on foreign policy have been far outweighed by the bad, and his recent refusal to guarantee a peaceful transition of power if defeated in November is concerning.

That said, Trump is not a uniquely bad president. The only way to see him that way is to believe that American lives are far, far more important than those of the millions of mostly brown-skinned human beings who have been murdered by the US war machine under the leadership of both Trump and his predecessors.

Just since 9/11 several million people have been killed and tens of millions displaced by American military violence to shore up control of key geostrategic regions with the goal of total global domination. Trump has not been any worse in the facilitation of this butchery than his predecessors. Where he differs significantly is in the amount of stress that his presidency has been causing Americans.

I don’t mean to make light of the stress, disruption and anxiety that Americans have experienced during the Trump administration, but to suggest that it comes anywhere remotely close to the unbroken streak of blood staining presidencies long preceding this one is absurd. Millions of people brutally murdered for imperialist resource control agendas and war plutocrat profit margins is vastly more significant than the emotional discomfort of Americans. It just is. If you disagree with what I just said, you are wrong.

I am not saying who Americans should or should not vote for. What I am saying is that the belief that this election is uniquely important because this president is uniquely bad is the product of a worldview which sees American lives as much more important than non-American lives. It is the worldview of American supremacism.

American supremacism is like any other supremacist ideology which holds an empowered group as innately superior to disempowered groups, except since its consequences are exported overseas its adherents don’t have to look at those consequences. For this reason, most American supremacists are not aware that that’s what they are. Their politics don’t hold all people as equal, but they are able to compartmentalize away from that fact since its consequences are out of sight and out of mind.

If they were executing immigrants in American streets by the millions, there’d be a very conscious divide between those who support this and those who do not, because everyone would be constantly confronted with the fact that it’s happening and forced to come down on one side or the other on the issue. But since it’s an atrocity Americans don’t have to look at, and since their oligarchic news media are all too happy to passively conceal it from them, they wind up unconsciously selecting American supremacism as their default position by supporting the status quo which promotes it.

Americans who support status quo politics, whether by the oligarchic warmongering Democratic Party or the oligarchic warmongering Republican Party, are American supremacists. They might not know it, but they are. They support a political paradigm in which people in other parts of the world are violently butchered to protect a US-centralized power structure which exists solely for the benefit of the powerful. Their American supremacist worldview allows them to see their own emotional discomfort as more significant than human bodies getting ripped apart by explosives every day around the world in support of the status quo their mainstream political faction promotes.

And it’s just taken as a given that it has to be this way. It’s taken as a given by both of America’s mainstream political factions that endless military expansionism, bombings, starvation sanctions and cold war escalations are going to continue, and the only things up for debate are the specific details of exactly how it’s going to continue and whether or not saying “black lives matter” makes you a communist.

And of course it doesn’t have to be this way. America could just function as a normal country, minding its own affairs inside its own borders without murdering anyone for happening to live near fossil fuels. There’s no legitimate reason why it could not. The endless slaughter benefits no ordinary people in any way.

It would be one thing if Americans actually benefited from all the bloodshed; that would just be garden variety human predation. But it’s not even that; the American supremacist worldview serves nobody but a few elite sociopaths who’ve enmeshed themselves with the world’s most powerful government. Ordinary Americans consent to the interminable churning of the US war machine at their own expense and to their own detriment because they are kept ignorant, poor and propagandized so they don’t get any grand ideas about intervening in the empire-building of the manipulators.

Regardless of what happens in November, this is madness and it must not continue. Don’t let the sideshow of electoral politics distract from this vastly more important fact. Vote for whoever you want, but have no illusions about that vote addressing what is by far the most crucial issue with the US government.

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https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/justice_sleeps_and_we_the_people_suffer_no_the_u.s._supreme_court_will_not_save_us

Justice Sleeps and ‘We the People’ Suffer: No, the U.S. Supreme Court Will Not Save Us

“The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people.”—Justice William O. Douglas

The U.S. Supreme Court will not save us.

It doesn’t matter which party gets to pick the replacement to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The battle that is gearing up right now is yet more distraction and spin to keep us oblivious to the steady encroachment on our rights by the architects of the American Police State.  

Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice.

Although the courts were established to serve as Courts of Justice, what we have been saddled with, instead, are Courts of Order. This is true at all levels of the judiciary, but especially so in the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government interests than with upholding the rights of the people enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

As a result, the police and other government agents have been generally empowered to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

Rarely do the concerns of the populace prevail.

When presented with an opportunity to loosen the government’s noose that keeps getting cinched tighter and tighter around the necks of the American people, what does our current Supreme Court usually do?

It ducks. Prevaricates. Remains silent. Speaks to the narrowest possible concern.

More often than not, it gives the government and its corporate sponsors the benefit of the doubt, which leaves “we the people” hanging by a thread.

Rarely do the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court— preoccupied with their personal politics, cocooned in a world of privilege, partial to those with power, money and influence, and narrowly focused on a shrinking docket (the court accepts on average 80 cases out of 8,000 each year)—venture beyond their rarefied comfort zones.

Every so often, the justices toss a bone to those who fear they have abdicated their allegiance to the Constitution. Too often, however, the Supreme Court tends to march in lockstep with the police state.

In recent years, for example, the Court has ruled that police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits; police officers can stop cars based only on “anonymous” tips; Secret Service agents are not accountable for their actions, as long as they’re done in the name of “security”; citizens only have a right to remain silent if they assert it; police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes,” justifying any and all police searches of vehicles stopped on the roadside; police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime; police can stop, search, question and profile citizens and non-citizens alike; police can subject Americans to virtual strip searches, no matter the “offense”; police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home; and it’s a crime to not identify yourself when a policeman asks your name.

The cases the Supreme Court refuses to hear, allowing lower court judgments to stand, are almost as critical as the ones they rule on. Some of these cases have delivered devastating blows to the lives and rights enshrined in the Constitution. By remaining silent, the Court has affirmed that: legally owning a firearm is enough to justify a no-knock raid by police; the military can arrest and detain American citizens; students can be subjected to random lockdowns and mass searches at school; and police officers who don’t know their actions violate the law aren’t guilty of breaking the law.

You think you’ve got rights? Think again.

All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.

This is the grim reality of life in the American police state.

In fact, our so-called rights have been reduced to technicalities in the face of the government’s ongoing power grabs.

In the police state being erected around us, the police can probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

This is what one would call a slow death by a thousand cuts, only it’s the Fourth Amendment being inexorably bled to death by the very institution that is supposed to be protecting it (and us) from government abuse.

Remember, it was a unanimous Supreme Court which determined that police officers may use drug-sniffing dogs to conduct warrantless searches of cars during routine traffic stops. That same Court gave police the green light to taser defenseless motorists, strip search non-violent suspects arrested for minor incidents, and break down people’s front doors without evidence that they have done anything wrong.

Make no mistake about it: this is what constitutes “law and order” in the American police state.

These are the hallmarks of the emerging American police state, where police officers, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

Whether it’s police officers breaking through people’s front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching motorists on the side of the road, in a police state such as ours, these instances of abuse are not condemned by the government. Rather, they are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution.

The system is rigged.

Because the system is rigged and the U.S. Supreme Court—the so-called “people’s court”—has exchanged its appointed role as a gatekeeper of justice for its new role as maintainer of the status quo, the police state will keep winning and “we the people” will keep losing.

By refusing to accept any of the eight or so qualified immunity cases before it this past term that strove to hold police accountable for official misconduct, the Supreme Court delivered a chilling reminder that in the American police state, ‘we the people’ are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”

This is how qualified immunity keeps the police state in power.

Lawyers tend to offer a lot of complicated, convoluted explanations for the doctrine of qualified immunity, which was intended to insulate government officials from frivolous lawsuits, but the real purpose of qualified immunity is to rig the system, ensuring that abusive agents of the government almost always win and the victims of government abuse almost always lose.

How else do you explain a doctrine that requires victims of police violence to prove that their abusers knew their behavior was illegal because it had been deemed so in a nearly identical case at some prior time?

It’s a setup for failure.

A review of critical court rulings over the past several decades, including rulings affirming qualified immunity protections for government agents by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order, protecting the ruling class, and insulating government agents from charges of wrongdoing than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Indeed, as Reuters reports, qualified immunity “has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights.”

Worse, as Reuters concluded, “the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police.”

For those in need of a reminder of all the ways in which the Supreme Court has made us sitting ducks at the mercy of the American police state, let me offer the following.

As a result of court rulings in recent years, police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless searches. Police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless arrests based on mere suspicion. Police can claim qualified immunity for using excessive force against protesters. Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a fleeing suspect in the back. Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a mentally impaired person. Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits. Police can stop, arrest and search citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.  Police officers can stop cars based on “anonymous” tips or for “suspicious” behavior such as having a reclined car seat or driving too carefully. Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime.  Police can use the “fear for my life” rationale as an excuse for shooting unarmed individuals. Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes.” Not only are police largely protected by qualified immunity, but police dogs are also off the hook for wrongdoing.

Police can subject Americans to strip searches, no matter the “offense.” Police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home. Police can use knock-and-talk tactics as a means of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment. Police can carry out no-knock raids if they believe announcing themselves would be dangerous. Police can recklessly open fire on anyone that might be “armed.” Police can destroy a home during a SWAT raid, even if the owner gives their consent to enter and search it. Police can suffocate someone, deliberately or inadvertently, in the process of subduing them.

To sum it up, we are dealing with a nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat. In this way, the justices of the United States Supreme Court—through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency—have become the architects of the American police state.

So where does that leave us?

For those deluded enough to believe that they’re living the American dream—where the government represents the people, where the people are equal in the eyes of the law, where the courts are arbiters of justice, where the police are keepers of the peace, and where the law is applied equally as a means of protecting the rights of the people—it’s time to wake up.

We no longer have a representative government, a rule of law, or justice.

Liberty has fallen to legalism. Freedom has fallen to fascism.

Justice has become jaded, jaundiced and just plain unjust.

And for too many, the American dream of freedom and opportunity has turned into a living nightmare.

Given the turbulence of our age, with its police overreach, military training drills on American soil, domestic surveillance, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, wrongful convictions, profit-driven prisons, and corporate corruption, the need for a guardian of the people’s rights has never been greater.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People,, neither the president, nor the legislatures, nor the courts will save us from the police state that holds us in its clutches.

So we can waste our strength over the next few weeks and months raging over the makeup of the Supreme Court or we can stand united against the tyrant in our midst.

After all, the president, the legislatures, and the courts are all on the government’s payroll.

They are the police state.

 

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/watching-cdc-nist-destroy-own-reputations/5724421

The Program to Mask Society is a Grotesque Governmental Manipulation of a Frightened and Confused Public.

From 9/11 to Covid-19: Watching as the CDC and NIST Destroy Their Own Reputations

“Anyone who believes anything the US government says is gullible beyond the meaning of the word.” –Paul Craig Roberts, 2014

The dramatic reversal in official U.S. policy regarding facial masking is epitomized by, first, the May, 2020 report of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in which facial masks are acknowledged to be ineffective in blocking viral transmission, this followed two months later by CDC’s inexplicable July, 2020 recommendation that the public be masked. The earlier report was based on a review of 14 randomized controlled trials and reviews since 1982. The radical change two months later was based on nothing that could in any way negate the dozens of earlier studies.

On the July, 2020 web page, a heading, ‘Evidence for Effectiveness of Wearing Masks’, shows a ridiculous artist’s rendition of the now familiar spiked spheres indicating viruses bouncing off a cloth surface like pingpong balls off concrete (although the text states “droplets”). It is a visual lie, purposeful and unforgivable. A link to “emerging evidence” of mask efficacy leads to a bibliography of 19 “Recent Studies” (scroll down). It is difficult to explain to non-scientists what do, and what do not, qualify as bona fide scientific studies, but, just to make a point, the first listed in this CDC bibliography is a report based on a single asymptomatic infection. This might qualify as an item to incorporate into a study, but it is not in itself a “study” by the 17 (no kidding) listed authors.

The other 18 (on the website’s August 7, 2020, “update”) consist primarily of reports of viral loads, the prevalence of asymptomatic patients, “presumed” transmission in a family of 5, rates of spread, fabric filtration efficiency, even laser light visualization of oral droplets (really). Only 4 deal with masks per se, and not one comes close to making a case for the efficacy of public masking. One actually ends with the authors support of

“…. surgical mask use as one of the recommended cough etiquette interventions” [their term]. Etiquette? Check them out (scroll down). The list, a pathetically limp effort by the CDC to justify its indefensible authorization of public masking, does absolutely nothing to overturn years of studies that, in sum, show public masking to be ineffective in preventing transmission of viruses. There are no new definitive scientific studies yielding the claimed “…. hard evidence that risk of transmission goes down dramatically when people wear masks.”

Masks, and only those of a professional grade, are intended specifically as protection for health professionals dealing with infected patients likely to spread pathogens in aerosol form. The program to mask society is a grotesque governmental manipulation of a frightened and confused public. The CDC, by its hawking of the public masking charade, betrays the public trust. The situation absolutely reeks of a concealed project of global scale, and if serious investigative journalism were a norm, there would be reporters all over the apparent political connections like flies on rotting meat. Instead, we have major media intent on eclipsing a vast source, authoritative but suppressed, of anything that counters the totalitarian “official narrative”.

The contemporary situation regarding the CDC and media is not unique. In 2009, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson reported on CBS that the CDC suddenly advised against testing for H1N1 “Swine Flu” virus (in disregard of its federal mandate) after having declared it an epidemic. The professed reason for the reversal was that further tracking during a known epidemic would waste resources. In an interview by Jon Rappoport, Attkisson added that she learned through the Freedom of Information Act that before the CDC halted testing, nearly none of the cases that had been reported as H1N1 had actually been Swine Flu, or any flu at all. And what then? CBS, and news media generally, ignored her discovery and continued to claim a Swine Flu epidemic. Attkisson summed up with “We aired numerous stories pumping up the idea of an epidemic, but not the one that would shed original, new light on all the hype [and] it meant that many in the public took and gave their children an experimental vaccine that may not have been necessary.”

There is now a doubling down on enforcement of public masking. Here, September 16, 2020 on C-Span, is CDC Director Robert Redfield [skip to 1:04:40] testifying before Congress: “Face masks are the most important powerful public health tool we have ….. We have clear scientific evidence they work, and they are our best defense. I might even go so far as to say that this face mask [he holds up a standard cloth mask] is more guarantee to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine, because the immunogenicity may be 70%, and if I don’t get an immune response, the vaccine’s not going to protect me. This mask will.” According to decades of scientific studies, the statement by the CDC Director is pure fabrication.

When it comes to conspicuous in-your-face lying, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may have set a bureaucratic record. Anyone still unaware that a third World Trade Center building, Building 7, collapsed later in the day on 9/11/2001 has either been in some form of solitary confinement or embalmed by TV reporting and America’s “newspapers of record”. Building 7 dropped suddenly and perfectly because it had been professionally prepared for destruction long before 9/11/2001, and a few minutes into this 15-minute presentation by A&E makes that very clear. The twin facts that Building 7 was (1) such a masterful controlled demolition that it has been called “a work of art”, and (2) its not having even been mentioned in the official 9/11 Commission Report (itself a shameless hoax), indicates not only the crime, but also an ongoing cover up with tendrils extending into many sectors of government, media and, most sadly, academia.

The 2008 release of NIST’s study, which offers the lie that office fires caused the collapse, is astounding in its brazenness and includes their computer simulation that bears no resemblance to what you actually see as 7 begins its drop with perfect symmetry at near free fall speed, as if thousands of tons of structural steel suddenly did not exist. The 4-minute video within the NIST release includes a governmental functionary lying into the camera as he most certainly was ordered to do. He is lying because the collapse of Building 7, in all of its naked obviousness, is the single event most likely to “open one’s eyes”, this leading to the discovery of an entire catalog of lies. From the standpoint of the creators of the 9/11 attack, the “office fires” lie must be protected at all cost.

The falsehoods being perpetrated by the CDC and NIST are not isolated within circumscribed strategies. Instead, both are enmeshed in a much larger, multi-faceted imperial project that has a global reach. For those who search out its disturbing details, there is a toll. William Pepper, who spent 40 years in pursuit of the truth regarding the King Assassination, wrote regarding the experience, “Its revelations and experiences have produced in the writer a depression stemming from an unavoidable confrontation with the depths to which human beings, even those subject to professional codes of ethics, have fallen.” That is a fair description of my own sentiments as I watch the pronouncements of medical experts from the CDC and engineers from NIST.

 

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55614.htm 

US Bully in Last Chance Saloon

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced this week the reimposition of international sanctions against Iran. Trouble is nobody is listening to Washington's remonstrations any longer. Not only has the emperor no clothes, he's lost bullying power too.

The Trump administration asserts it has the legal right to invoke "snapback" UN sanctions on Iran over Washington’s baseless allegations that Tehran is in breach of the 2015 international nuclear accord. This is in spite of the fact that the American side forfeited its legal rights when it unilaterally quit the nuclear deal in May 2018.

It is also in spite of the fact that the UN Security Council last month rejected Washington's "snapback" presumption in what was a huge diplomatic "slapback" to the Trump administration's arrogance.

Even normally indulgent American allies, Britain, France and Germany, rejected the audacity of Washington's demands to reimpose sanctions on Iran. The Europeans have remained committed to upholding the nuclear accord along with Russia and China which mandates the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran in reciprocation for Iran's compliance with restrictions on its nuclear activities barring weaponisation.

Undeterred by the debacle at the Security Council, Washington is now insisting that a self-declared deadline has been reached this week for snapback punitive measures on Iran.

Iran has scorned the US, saying that the Trump administration avowed "maximum pressure" campaign has backfired and has only resulted in "maximum isolation" for the United States. It's hard to contest the Iranian view when you look at the predominant support for the accord among signatories.

Russia, China and the Europeans have all insisted the US has no legal right to avail of mechanisms contained in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the nuclear pact is formally known. President Trump took the US out of the accord with an executive order. It really is parallel-universe-style delusional thinking for his administration to somehow claim at a later stage that it is still a participant with rights of redress.

But what is significant is how little bullying power the US is able to apply. The US has been threatening to wield secondary sanctions on any nation not complying with its ultimatum for snapback measures.

"We are not afraid of US sanctions, we are used to them", said Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in response to Pompeoэs threats of extraterritorial US restrictions.

He added that Russia and Iran would continue partnering in trade and defence development.

It is the European defiance of Washington's demands that seems more indicative of American impotency. Their past habitual willingness to comply with US abuse of power is contemptible. We only have to look at how the European members of the Security Council have long been sheepishly complicit in Washington's illegal warmongering.

However, have we reached a point in history where even European minions are now viewing Washington's rogue conduct as unacceptable? The brazen trashing of the nuclear deal by the Trump administration was a full-frontal assault on an international rules-based system. The subsequent diktat by Washington for everyone to abide by its diplomatic vandalism under pain of sanctions is a sure sign that the lunatic has taken over the asylum.

Supine though the transatlantic Europeans are, even they must know that further indulgence of the American sociopath would mean their own eventual doom. Russia and China have had a better, more accurate critical appraisal of Washington's hegemonic hubris. The European nations seem to be finally catching on to the awareness that Washington’s tyranny is toxic. Continued tolerance of its rogue delusions is a path to nihilism and destruction.

The Europeans are standing up to the US over the Iran nuclear deal not so much out of a sudden conversion to principles and integrity. They have had more than five years to implement the accord with Iran, but instead have dragged their feet. They are standing up to the US – at last – for their own self-preservation. They know that the absurd hypocrisy and double-think that flows out of Washington is because Uncle Sam is slumped on a stool in the Last Chance Saloon, and can't even control his bladder anymore.

 

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https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/09/23/reaching-the-end-of-early-stimulus-whats-ahead/

Reaching the End of Early Stimulus – What’s Ahead?

Many people thought that COVID-19 would be gone with a short shutdown. They also thought that the world’s economic problems could be cured with a six month “dose” of stimulus.

It is increasingly clear that neither of these assumptions is correct. Despite the claims of epidemiologists, our best efforts have never been able to reduce the number of newly reported COVID-19 cases for the world as a whole for any significant period of time. In fact, the latest week seems to be the highest week so far.

Figure 1. Chart of worldwide COVID-19 new cases, in chart prepared by Worldometer with data through September 20, 2020.

At the same time, the economy, despite all of the stimulus, is not doing very well. Airlines are doing very poorly. The parts of the economy that are dependent upon tourism are having huge problems. This reduces the “upside” of economic recovery, pretty much everywhere, until it can be corrected.

Another part of the world economy doing poorly is clothing sales. For example, many fewer people are attending concerts, weddings, funerals, out-of-town business meetings and conventions, leading to a need for fewer “dressy” clothes. Also, with air travel greatly reduced, people don’t need new clothing for visiting places with different climates, either. Most clothing is bought by people from rich countries but made by people in poor countries. This cutback in clothing purchases disproportionately affects people who are already very poor. The loss of jobs in these countries may lead to an inability to afford food, for those who are laid off.

Besides these difficult to solve problems, initial programs set up to help mitigate job losses are running out. What kinds of things might governments do, if they are running short of borrowing capacity, and medical solutions still seem to be far away?

In Section A of this post, I outline what I see as some approaches that governments might take to try to “kick the can down the road” a while longer, as well as some general trends regarding near term outcomes.

In Section B, I explain how our current problems seem to be related to the more general “overshoot and collapse” problems of many prior economies. I show that historically, these overshoot and collapse situations seem to have played out over a number of years. In many ways, the outcome might look more like “overshoot and decline” than “overshoot and collapse” from the point of view of an observer at the time.

In Section C, I explain two different types of “breakage” we can expect going forward, if we are really dealing with an overshoot and collapse situation. In the first, oil production is likely to fall because of the collapse of some of the governments of oil exporters. In the second, the international trade system breaks down because of problems with the financial system and countries no longer trusting each other’s currencies.

[A] Ideas for “Sort of” Addressing the Economic Problems at Hand 

The following are a few ideas regarding possible mitigation approaches, and the expected results of these attempted solutions:

[1] Programs to keep citizens in their homes will likely be extended. Mortgage repayment programs will be extended. Renters will be allowed to stay where they are, even if they cannot afford the rent.

[2] New programs may be added, allowing those without adequate income to pay for electricity, heat, water and sewer connections. These programs may be debt-based. For example, homeowners and renters may be given loans to pay for these programs, with the hope that eventually the economy will bounce back, and the loans can be repaid.

[3] More food bank programs will be added, with governments buying food from farmers and donating it to food banks. There is even an outside chance that people will be given loans so that they can “buy” food from the food bank, with the hope that they can someday repay the loans. All of these loan-based programs will appear to be “cost free” to the government, since “certainly” the crisis will go away, and borrowers will be able to repay the loans.

[4] Loans to students will increasingly be put in forbearance, to be repaid when the crisis is over. Auto loans and credit card debt may be also be put into forbearance, if the person with the debt has inadequate income.

[5] Even with all of these actions, families will tend to move back together into a smaller total number of residences. This will happen partly because citizens won’t want to be burdened with even more debt, if they can avoid it. Also, older citizens won’t want to move into facilities offering care for the elderly because they know that COVID restrictions may limit who they can have contact with. They will much prefer moving in with a relative, if anyone will take them in return for a suitable monthly payment.

[6] As extended families move in together, the total number of housing units required will tend to fall. Prices of homes will tend to fall, especially in areas where citizens no longer want to live. Governments will encourage banks and other mortgage holders to look the other way as prices fall, but as homes are sold, this will be increasingly difficult to do. In many cases, when homes are sold, the selling prices will fall below the balance of the debt outstanding. Governments will pass laws not allowing financial institutions to try to obtain the shortfall from citizens, at least until the crisis is over.

[7] Some businesses, such as restaurants without enough patrons and colleges without enough students, will need to close. Clothing stores without enough sales will also need to close, as will retirement homes without enough residents. All of these closures will lead to a huge amount of excess commercial space. It will also lead to the loss of more jobs, raising the number of unemployed people.

With these closed businesses, the price of commercial real estate will tend to fall. Lenders will be encouraged to “extend the loans” and “pretend that asset prices will soon recover,” when renewing loans. Even this approach won’t be enough in many cases, as businesses file for bankruptcy.

[8] With fewer residences and business properties occupied, the amount of electricity required will fall. Wholesale prices for electricity will tend to fall, pushing ever more fossil fuel and nuclear electricity providers out of business. Electricity outages will become an increasing problem, as renewables become a larger share of the electricity mix and are unable to increase supply when needed. Rolling outages will become more common.

[9] Pensions of all kinds will become more difficult to pay. Government programs, such as Social Security in the US, will have less revenue to pay pensions. There are funds set aside in the Social Security Trust Fund to cover a shortfall in funding, but these funds are simply non-marketable US government debt. In theory, the US government could add more debt to the Trust Fund and make payments on the basis of this added debt. Otherwise, the US will likely need to either raise taxes or increase the “regular” government debt level, in order to continue to pay Social Security pensions as planned.

Private pensions, backed by bonds and shares of stock (and perhaps other assets), will find the values of their available assets are falling. Governments, if they are able to, will try to hide this problem. For example, regulators may develop a new way to value assets, so as to make pension funding shortfalls mostly disappear.

In the case of pension bankruptcy, government insurance is often theoretically available. In the US, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation provides coverage; other countries may have similar programs. Unfortunately, this program is not set up to handle a large influx of new bankrupt plans, without raising taxes. The problem then will be raising taxes enough so that one year’s pension benefits can be paid, pushing the problem down the road a bit longer.

Bank accounts have similar guarantees, with similar funding problems. The guarantee organization has very little funds available, without raising taxes or somehow increasing debt.

[10] Stock market prices will tend to fall, leading those who have purchased shares using debt to want to sell quickly, pushing the stock market down further. Currency relativities will fluctuate wildly. Derivatives of many kinds will encounter payment problems. Many ETFs likely won’t work as planned. Governments will try to figure out ways to somehow mitigate these problems to the extent possible. For example, stock markets may be closed for a time to hide the problems. Or, additional time may be given to settle purchases, so that perhaps the deficiencies can be corrected. Eventually, some banks may be taken over by governments, to assure the operation of the parts deemed essential.

[11] Eventually, governments may find it necessary to nationalize a wide range of essential businesses. These could range from trucking companies to banks to oil companies to electricity transmission repair companies. If the balance sheets of these companies are too bad, governments may simply stop publishing them.

[12] These types of actions will mostly be available to “rich” countries. Poor countries can tap their “rainy day” funds, but these will soon be exhausted. In this case, poor countries will find that there is little they can do unless international organizations bail them out. Because of cutbacks in tourism and in orders of finished goods, such as clothing, these countries are likely to encounter high levels of unemployment. Without aid, the poorer citizens of these countries will find it impossible to afford an adequate diet. With inadequate nutrition, the health of low income citizens will decline, and they will easily succumb to communicable diseases, such as tuberculosis and malaria. Death rates are likely to skyrocket.

[B] What Happens When an Economy Outgrows Its Resources? 

Most people think that the issue we are dealing with is a temporary problem associated with a new coronavirus. I think that we are dealing with a much worse problem: The world’s population has outgrown the world’s resource limits. This is why our current problems look so difficult to solve from a financial point of view. This is part of the reason many people feel that shutting down the economy for COVID-19 is a good choice. There are really many reasons for the shutdowns, besides preventing the spread of COVID-19: Keeping people inside stops the many protests related to low wages. The shutdowns appear to restore order to a troubled system. Broken supply lines from shutdowns elsewhere reduce raw materials availability, making it more difficult to keep production in one part of the world operating, when others are closed.

Overshoot and collapse is a problem that many smaller economies have encountered over the years. If I am right that we are now encountering a similar situation, there is a big change ahead. The change will not be instantaneous, however. The big question that arises is, “Over what time scale does such a collapse take place?” If it takes place over a number of years, it may look more like “overshoot and decline” than “overshoot and collapse” to those who are living through the era.

A recent partial collapse was that of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union was an oil exporter. Oil prices had hit a high in 1981 and had been declining for 10 years when the Soviet Union collapsed. With low oil prices, it had been difficult to earn enough revenue to reinvest in new oil fields to replace the production that naturally declines as oil is extracted. Oil, directly and indirectly, had provided many jobs for the Soviet Union. After ten years of stress, the central government of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Low oil prices first slowed production growth between 1982 and 1987 (Figure 2). Oil production began to decline in 1988, three years before the government collapsed. Production gradually rose again in the early 2000s, as oil prices rose again.

Figure 2. Oil production and price of the former Soviet Union (FSU), based on BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.

What was surprising to me was the fact that consumption of all types of energy by the Soviet Union fell at the time of the central government collapse in 1991, even hydroelectric. The overall level of energy consumption never bounced back to its previous level.

Figure 3. Former Soviet Union energy consumption by fuel, based on data of BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2018.

What happened was that many inefficient industries were forced to close. Some of these industries were in the Ukraine; others were in Russia and elsewhere. As they closed, less electricity and less oil and gas were used.

The loss in energy consumption was pretty much permanent. The manufacturing that left the Soviet Union was replaced by other, more efficient, manufacturing elsewhere. Also, without their previous manufacturing jobs, the people of the former Soviet Union were poorer. They could not afford to buy cars and homes, keeping fuel consumption lower.

Another indicator regarding the speed of collapses is the analysis done by researchers Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov, regarding collapses of eight agricultural economies from earlier periods. I compiled the information they provided in the book Secular Cycles in the chart shown in Figure 4. In the cycles they analyzed, the “crisis period” seemed to last 20 to 50 years. One thing that is striking in their analysis is that epidemics often played a major role in the declines. As wages disparity grew, poorer workers ate less well. They became more vulnerable to epidemics and often died.

Figure 4. Chart by author based on information provided in Turchin and Nefedov’s book, Secular Cycles.

In these early cycles, the major industry was farming. These collapses were in the days before electricity use. In these situations, collapses tended to play out over 20 to 50 years. Our more modern economy, with its just-in-time supply lines, would seem likely to collapse more quickly, but we can’t know for certain. This analysis is thus another data point that suggests that what may be ahead could be closer to “overshoot and decline” than “overshoot and collapse.”

[C] What May Be Ahead

[1] We are likely to experience the collapse of central governments of several of the oil exporting nations, in a manner not entirely different from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Oil prices have been low for a very long time, since 2008, or at least since 2014.

Figure 5. Weekly average spot oil prices for Brent, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.

Most OPEC oil producers seem to require prices in the $100+ per barrel range in order to be able to fund the programs their people expect (Figure 6). One important program provides subsidies for imported food; other programs provide jobs. Without these programs, revolutions to overthrow the current leaders seem much more likely.

Figure 6. Estimate of OPEC break-even oil prices, including tax requirements by parent countries, from APICORP. Figure is from 2014.

At this point, oil prices have been below $100 per barrel since 2014, a period of 6 years (Figure 5). Stress is increasing; OPEC producers have cut production in an attempt to try to get prices up. Prices are now in the low $40s.

We should not be surprised if, over the next few years, oil production starts to fall in several areas around the world because of internal problems. Another possible impetus for the drop in production may be wars with other nations. Some such wars might be started simply to try to get the price of oil up to a more acceptable level.

We have been falsely led to believe that oil is not important; renewables can handle our needs in the future. In fact, oil is essential for today’s farming. It is essential for transportation of goods and services of all kinds. It is essential for the construction industry and for mining. Researchers in academic institutions have received grants, encouraging them to put together models regarding what could be ahead. These models tend to be extremely unrealistic.

One of the most absurd models is by Mark Jacobson. He claims that by 2050, the world economy can operate almost entirely using wind, solar, and hydroelectric. Unfortunately, we don’t have until 2050; world oil, coal, and natural gas supplies look likely to decline in the 2020 to 2025 timeframe because of low prices. Another problem with this approach is that there is not very much fossil fuel to extract, because most of what appears to be available from resource studies cannot really be extracted at the low prices set by physics. 

The underlying problem is confusion about which direction prices go, as an economy reaches limits. Economists assume that scarcity will cause prices to rise; the real story is that fossil fuel prices are set by the laws for physics because the economy is a dissipative structure. As the economy approaches limits, prices tend to fall too low for producers, rather than rise too high for consumers.¹ The sad truth is that we can’t even count on the continued extraction of the small amount of fossil fuels that Jacobson assumes will exist after 2050.

[2] We are likely to see a huge change in the international financial system and in the international trade system in the next few years. 

As long as there were plenty of resources, relative to the world population, the optimal approach was to do as much international trade as possible. This approach would maximize world GDP. It would also add jobs in developing areas of the world without too huge an impact on jobs availability in the countries moving their manufacturing to lower-cost areas.

In the last few years, it has become increasingly evident that there aren’t enough jobs that pay well to go around. This is really the underlying problem with respect to the increased hostility among nations, such as between the US and China. Tariffs are being used to try to bring jobs that pay well back to those who need them. Strange as it may seem, it takes fossil fuels to create jobs that pay well.

Figure 7. World Trade as a percentage of GDP, based on data of the World Bank.

Figure 7 shows that international trade was rising as a percentage of GDP for many years, and it hit a high point in 2008. Since then it has bounced around a little below that high point. In 2020, it will clearly take a big step down because of all of the cancellation of trade related to COVID-19 restrictions.

We saw earlier that commodity prices tend to fall too low for producers. Indirectly, this means that profits tend to fall too low. Interest rates tend to follow these low profits down, since businesses cannot afford to pay high interest rates.

With these low profits and low wages, the financial system gets strained. “Debt and more debt” seems to be the way to fix the system. Growing debt at ever-lower interest rates is encouraged. These low interest rates tend to raise asset prices because monthly payments to buy these assets fall with the falling interest rates. Stock markets tend to rise, even when the economy is doing poorly.

If the many strange approaches I outlined in Section A are used to add even more debt to keep the system afloat, eventually some part of the system is going to “break.” For example, banks will stop issuing letters of credit with respect to purchases made by buyers that don’t seem sufficiently creditworthy. Banks may stop trusting other banks, especially if the banks do not really seem to be solvent. At some point, the international financial system seems likely to start “coming apart.” Eventually, the US dollar will stop being the world’s reserve currency.

My guess is that a new two currency system will develop. Governments will issue a lot of currency for local use. It will not be useful for buying goods from other countries. Much of it will be used for buying locally produced food and other locally produced goods.

Very little international trade will be done. Any international trade that will be done will occur between trusted partners, at agreed upon exchange rates. Perhaps a special currency will be used for this purpose.

In this new world, individual countries will be very much on their own. With very little fossil fuel, countries will tend to lose electricity availability very quickly. Transmission lines will go unrepaired. It will become impossible to fix existing wind turbines. Road repair will become impossible. Electric cars will likely be as unusable as gasoline powered ones.

There will likely be fighting about resources that are available, leading to countries subdividing into smaller and smaller units, hoarding what little resources they have available.

Note:

¹Energy prices tend to fall too low because, as the economy gets more complex, wage and wealth disparity tend to grow, reflecting differences in training and responsibility. The problem occurs because low-paid workers cannot afford to buy very large quantities of goods and services produced by the economy. For example, many cannot afford a car or a home of their own. The spending of high-paid workers does not offset the loss of demand by low-paid workers because high-paid workers tend to spend their wages more on services, such as advanced education, which require proportionately less energy consumption. Ultimately, the lack of demand by low-paid workers tends to pull down the prices of oil and other commodities below the level required by producers.

....

Add to this the quickly increasing catastrophic climate change events, growing tensions between nuclear armed powers which could easily ( almost happened already numerous times ) precipitate an extinction level event, the drastic loss of animals, fish, insects, rising ocean levels which will decimate coastlines and their human built infrastructure, etc, etc, the list of converging dire repercussions is very long.