SC259-14

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57098.htm

Behind the Tin Curtain: BRICS+ vs NATO/G7

Once upon a time, there existed an Iron Curtain which divided the continent of Europe. Coined by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the term was in reference to the then-Soviet Union’s efforts to create a physical and ideological boundary with the west. The latter, for its part, pursued a policy of containment against the spread and influence of communism.

Fast forward to the contemporary era of techno-feudalism, and there now exists what should be called a Tin Curtain, fabricated by the fearful, clueless, collective west, via G7 and NATO: this time, to essentially contain the integration of the Global South.

BRICS against G7

The most recent and significant example of this integration has been the coming out of BRICS+ at last week’s online summit hosted by Beijing. This went far beyond establishing the lineaments of a ‘new G8,’ let alone an alternative to the G7.

Just look at the interlocutors of the five historical BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa): we find a microcosm of the Global South, encompassing Southeast Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, Africa and South America – truly putting the “Global” in the Global South.

Revealingly, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s clear messages during the Beijing summit, in sharp contrast to G7 propaganda, were actually addressed to the whole Global South:

– Russia will fulfill its obligations to supply energy and fertilizers.

– Russia expects a good grain harvest – and to supply up to 50 million tons to world markets.

– Russia will ensure passage of grain ships into international waters even as Kiev mined Ukrainian ports.

– The negative situation on Ukrainian grain is artificially inflated.

– The sharp increase in inflation around the world is the result of the irresponsibility of G7 countries, not Operation Z in Ukraine.

– The imbalance of world relations has been brewing for a long time and has become an inevitable result of the erosion of international law.

An alternative system

Putin also directly addressed one of the key themes that the BRICS have been discussing in depth since the 2000s — the design and implementation of an international reserve currency.

“The Russian Financial Messaging System is open for connection with banks of the BRICS countries.”

“The Russian MIR payment system is expanding its presence. We are exploring the possibility of creating an international reserve currency based on the basket of BRICS currencies,” the Russian leader said.

This is inevitable after the hysterical western sanctions post-Operation Z; the total de-dollarization imposed upon Moscow; and increasing trade between BRICS nations. For instance, by 2030, a quarter of the planet’s oil demand will come from China and India, with Russia as the major supplier.

The “RIC” in BRICS simply cannot risk being locked out of a G7-dominated financial system. Even tightrope-walking India is starting to catch the drift.

Who speaks for the ‘international community?’

At its current stage, BRICS represent 40 percent of world population, 25 percent of the global economy, 18 percent of world trade, and contribute over 50 percent for world economic growth. All indicators are on the way up.

Sergey Storchak, CEO of Russian bank VEG, framed it quite diplomatically: “If the voices of emerging markets are not being heard in the coming years, we need to think very seriously about setting up a parallel regional system, or maybe a global system.”

A “parallel regional system” is already being actively discussed between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China, coordinated by Minister of Integration and Macroeconomics Sergey Glazyev, who has recently authored a stunning manifesto amplifying his ideas about world economic sovereignty.

Developing the ‘developing world’

What happens in the trans-Eurasian financial front will proceed in parallel with a so far little known Chinese development strategy: the Global Development Initiative (GDI), announced by President Xi Jinping at the UN General Assembly last year.

GDI can be seen as a support mechanism of the overarching strategy – which remains the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), consisting of economic corridors interlinking Eurasia all the way to its western peninsula, Europe.

At the High-level Dialogue on Global Development, part of the BRICS summit, the Global South learned a little more about the GDI, an organization set up in 2015.

In a nutshell, the GDI aims to turbo-charge international development cooperation by supplementing financing to a plethora of bodies, for instance the South-South Cooperation Fund, the International Development Association (IDA), the Asian Development Fund (ADF), and the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

Priorities include “poverty reduction, food security, COVID-19 response and vaccines,” industrialization, and digital infrastructure. Subsequently, a Friends of the GDI group was established in early 2022 and has already attracted over 50 nations.

BRI and GDI should be advancing in tandem, even as Xi himself made it clear during the BRICS summit that “some countries are politicizing and marginalizing the developmental agenda by building up walls and slapping crippling sanctions on others.”

Then again, sustainable development is not exactly the G7’s cup of tea, much less NATO’s.

Seven against the world

The avowed top aim of the G7 summit in Schloss Elmau at the Bavarian Alps is to “project unity” – as in the stalwarts of the collective west (Japan included) united in sustainable and indefinite “support” for the irretrievably failed Ukrainian state.

That’s part of the “struggle against Putin’s imperialism,” but then there’s also “the fight against hunger and poverty, health crisis and climate change,” as German chancellor Scholz told the Bundestag.

In Bavaria, Scholz pushed for a Marshall Plan for Ukraine – a ludicrous concept considering Kiev and its environs might as well be reduced to a puny rump state by the end of 2022. The notion that the G7 may work to “prevent a catastrophic famine,” according to Scholz, reaches a paroxysm of ludicrousness, as the looming famine is a direct consequence of the G7-imposed sanctions hysteria.

The fact that Berlin invited India, Indonesia, South Africa and Senegal as add-ons to the G7, served as additional comic relief.

The Tin Curtain is up

It would be futile to expect from the astonishing collection of mediocrities “united” in Bavaria, under de facto leader of the European Commission (EC), Fuehrer Ursula von der Leyen, any substantial analysis about the breakdown of global supply chains and the reasons that forced Moscow to reduce gas flows to Europe. Instead, they blamed Putin and Xi.

Welcome to the Tin Curtain – a 21^st century reinvention of the Intermarium from the Baltic to the Black Sea, masterminded by the Empire of Lies, complete with western Ukraine absorbed by Poland, the Three Baltic Midgets: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Czechia and even NATO-aspiring Sweden and Finland, all of whom will be protected from “the Russian threat.”

An EU out of control

The role of the EU, lording over Germany, France and Italy inside the G7 is particularly instructive, especially now that Britain is back to the status of an inconsequential island-state.

As many as 60 European ‘directives’ are issued every year. They must be imperatively transposed into internal law of each EU member-state. In most cases, there’s no debate whatsoever.

Then there are more than 10,000 European ‘rulings,’ where ‘experts’ at the European Commission (EC) in Brussels issue ‘recommendations’ to every government, straight out of the neoliberal canon, regarding their expenses, their income and ‘reforms’ (on health care, education, pensions) that must be obeyed.

Thus elections in every single EU member-nation are absolutely meaningless. Heads of national governments – Macron, Scholz, Draghi – are mere executants. No democratic debate is allowed: ‘democracy,’ as with ‘EU values,’ are nothing than smokescreens.

The real government is exercised by a bunch of apparatchiks chosen by compromise between executive powers, acting in a supremely opaque manner.

The EC is totally outside of any sort of control. That’s how a stunning mediocrity like Ursula von der Leyen – previously the worst Minister of Defense of modern Germany – was catapulted upwards to become the current EC Fuhrer, dictating their foreign, energy and even economic policy.

What do they stand for?

From the perspective of the west, the Tin Curtain, for all its ominous Cold War 2.0 overtones, is merely a starter before the main course: hardcore confrontation across Asia-Pacific – renamed “Indo-Pacific” – a carbon copy of the Ukraine racket designed to contain China’s BRI and GDI.

As a countercoup, it’s enlightening to observe how the Chinese foreign ministry now highlights in detail the contrast between BRICS – and BRICS+ – and the imperial AUKUS/Quad/IPEF combo.

BRICS stand for de facto multilateralism; focus on global development; cooperation for economic recovery; and improving global governance.

The US-concocted racket on the other hand, stands for Cold War mentality; exploiting developing countries; ganging up to contain China; and an America-first policy that enshrines the monopolistic “rules-based international order.”

It would be misguided to expect those G7 luminaries gathered in Bavaria to understand the absurdity of imposing a price cap on Russian oil and gas exports, for instance. Were that to really happen, Moscow will have no problems fully cutting energy supply to the G7. And if other nations are excluded, the price of the oil and gas they import would drastically increase.

BRICS paving the way forward

So no wonder the future is ominous. In a stunning interview to Belarus state TV, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov summarized how “the west fears honest competition.”

Hence, the apex of cancel culture, and “suppression of everything that contradicts in some way the neoliberal vision and arrangement of the world.” Lavrov also summarized the roadmap ahead, for the benefit of the whole Global South:

“We don’t need a new G8. We already have structures…primarily in Eurasia. The EAEU is actively promoting integration processes with the PRC, aligning China’s Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian integration plans. Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are taking a close look at these plans. A number of them are signing free trade zone agreements with the EAEU. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is also part of these processes… There is one more structure beyond the geographic borders of Eurasia.”

“It is BRICS. This association is relying less and less on the Western style of doing business, and on Western rules for international currency, financial and trade institutions. They prefer more equitable methods that do not make any processes depend on the dominant role of the dollar or some other currency. The G20 fully represents BRICS and five more countries that share the positions of BRICS, while the G7 and its supporters are on the other side of the barricades.” 

“This is a serious balance. The G20 may deteriorate if the West uses it for fanning up confrontation. The structures I mentioned (SCO, BRICS, ASEAN, EAEU and CIS) rely on consensus, mutual respect and a balance of interests, rather than a demand to accept unipolar world realities.”

Tin Curtain? More like Torn Curtain.

....

https://stephenlendman.org/2022/06/30/us-dominated-natos-forever-war-agenda/

US-Dominated NATO’s Forever War Agenda

The 30-member hostile to peace and rule of law war-making alliance — ahead to be 32 with Finland and Sweden added — is holding its annual summit in Madrid, Spain to plot more ways of supporting Nazism in Ukraine to challenge Russia more belligerently than already.

On Friday, an alliance press release falsely claimed to be dedicated to “defens(e) (while) pos(ing) no threat to any country (sic).”

That illusion was shattered during the 1990s by NATO’s belligerent dismantling and destruction of the former Yugoslavia — a similar scheme planned against Russia, China and other sovereign independent countries, wanting them transformed into US vassal states.

And this perversion of reality by NATO’s June 29 press release — falsely claiming that their US-dominated regimes are “commit(ted) to democracy, individual liberty, human rights, and the rule of law (sic)” — principles they abhor and tolerate nowhere, especially not in their own countries.

The so-called “rules-based international order (they’re) committed to uphold” was made-in-the-USA in flagrant breach of the UN Charter and other international law.

“(A)gression” is how US-dominated NATO regimes operate, not Russia on the right side of history and the rule of law.

“Responsibility for humanitarian catastrophe(s) (and) appalling cruelty” has been the American way since the 18th century — polar opposite how the Russian Federation operates on the world stage.

Permitting Nazi-infested Ukraine’s Zelensky — a US-installed puppet — to address the NATO summit broke its procedural rules, along with indelibly tainting the body and its member states with the scourge of how tyrannical Kiev operates.

And this bald-faced Big Lie by the war-making alliance, falsely calling Russia “the most significant and direct threat to allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area (sic).”

The above characterization applies to how NATO’s war machine operates — its ruling regimes comprising an unparalleled threat to world peace and humanity’s survival.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said the following about the scourge of US-dominated NATO:

“The Madrid summit asserts the alliance’s aggressive deterrence course in relations with Russia.”

“This will in no way influence our policies,” adding:

By agreeing to join the hostile to peace and rule of law war-making alliance, Finland and Sweden abandoned “their foreign policy and defense sovereignty to Washington and other senior partners in NATO.”

Russia is well aware of “aggressive (alliance) plans” against its sovereign rights.

The Russian Federation threatens no one.

Hegemon US-dominated NATO threatens everyone everywhere.

Moscow “condemn(s) NATO’s policy, which is irresponsible and ruinous to European security…or what is still left of it.”

Separately on Tuesday, Sergey Lavrov said the following on how hegemon US-dominated NATO is using Nazi-infested Ukraine as a platform for waging proxy war on Russia.

Their ruling regimes are “pump(ing) Ukraine full of new weapons.”

“These plans are carried out amid high-profile statements about the unacceptability of achieving peace on the Russian Federation’s terms and beginning peace talks until Ukraine reverses the momentum on the ground.”

“You read these statements and you hear them daily on television and in social media.”

“The more they pump Ukraine full of weapons, the longer the conflict and the agony of the Nazi regime supported by the Western countries will last.”

The longer this goes on in breach of international law, “the more tasks we will be carrying out on the ground.”

“All of them will be (successfully) completed.”

Russia, China and other nations free from US control are falsely called threats for refusing to sacrifice their sovereign rights to “the neoliberal world order.”

The announced buildup of NATO troops near Russia’s borders was planned long before the Madrid summit.

US-installed puppet Zelensky is a nobody with no decision-making power.

Decisions affecting Ukraine and the West are made in Washington by politicians, Pentagon commanders and CIA officials.

In sharp contrast to the US-dominated belligerent West, Russia complies with the rule of law.

Its officials “engage in business, not propaganda or ideology,” Lavrov stressed.

And this from Belgium’s so-called prime minister, Alexander De Croo, on the sidelines of NATO’s Madrid summit:

“We make it very clear that (all things Nazi-infested Ukraine) can only be won on the battlefield.”

“(W)e should continue to support (puppet) Zelensky and the Ukrainian population as much as possible to be able to win war on the battlefield” — what was lost straightaway after Russia’s liberating SMO began.

NATO regimes have been supplying Kiev with weapons et al for endless aggression against Donbass civilians since hegemon USA’s 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev.

Separately on Wednesday, Russia said it’s able to export tens of millions of tons of grain to world markets if illegal bans on its operations are lifted.

Global food crisis conditions were made-in-the-USA, Brussels and London, clearly not in Moscow.

And this from TS Lombard, a macroeconomic forecasting consultancy organization, saying:

EU nations imported about 155 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas last year.

No matter what conservation and diversification steps their ruling regimes take, they cannot replace needed Russian gas through alternative sources.

Its gas flowing through pipelines is 40 – 50% cheaper than expensive US LNG.

Yet European regimes are buying the latter in lieu of what’s far cheaper and readily available.

In May, Vladimir Putin accused Western regimes of “forgett(ing)” basic laws of economics.

Partially cutting themselves off from Russian energy, grain and other commodities undermined their own own well-being.

Commenting on blockage of Russian grain from reaching world markets, its UN envoy, Anatoly Antonov, said the following:

US/Western “anti-Russia restrictions” bear full responsibility for “global food crisis” conditions.

Things can be alleviated by permitting “free access of grain and fertilizers to global markets,” including from Russia.

As for the harebrained US-proposed imposition of a price cap on Russian oil to world markets, Moscow can circumvent it in various ways, including by holding firm on the market price — refusenik nations left to find alternative suppliers.

And at this time, Russia is focusing heavily on Asian markets to make up for what European regimes cut way back on or abandoned altogether.

According to head of the Energy Development Center, Kirill Melnikov:

The harebrained idea of capping the price of a global commodity like oil “has no chance of success.”

SC259-13

https://www.globalresearch.ca/nato-expansion-blunder-epic-proportions/5785021

NATO Expansion Is a Blunder of Epic Proportions

The whole war in Ukraine could and should have been avoided. Russia had simple demands:

• Don’t join NATO
• Be Neutral
• Recognize Crimea, a part of Russia

But it seems NATO, dominated by the United States wanted this war.

Just like Afghanistan invasion by USSR in 1979, they want to repeat that in Ukraine to weaken Russia. So, they are waging a proxy war using poor people of Ukraine as pawns. Not only provoking Russia by expanding NATO closer and closer to Russia’s eastern border has created this war resulting in global food and oil shortage affecting millions of poor people around the world, but it has brought the world closer to nuclear World War-III.

It is an utterly irresponsible policy by United States and its NATO allies. There was no need for this. Russia’s invasion is a very unfortunate act but NATO’s arrogant policy towards Russia over the past quarter-century bears a major responsibility for this terrible war.

In 1990, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to let both Germany unify provided America would not expand NATO one inch eastward towards Russia beyond the territory of East Hermany.

James Baker, US Secretary of State promised. So, both east and west Germany were unified while USSR collapsed. But soon after, United States broke that promise by expanding NATO towards Russia. Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. both kept expanding NATO by including former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO. In 1991, Bill Clinton added Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia into NATO. In 2004, George Bush Jr. welcomed seven more countries-Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia–to become NATO members.

In 1990, there were 17 countries in NATO. Today, there are 30. And now, they want to add Ukraine which is right on Russia’s eastern border. Naturally Russia has been provoked.

Ukraine has no strategic value for the United States except to encircle Russia.

It is very unfortunate that Ukraine War is going on. Ukrainians are suffering a horrible situation. Thousands of Ukrainians and Russian soldiers are dying. The Russian invasion is brutal and horrible. Ukraine is being destroyed.

But could this horrible war had been avoided? Of course, yes.

Russia had simple demands: “Don’t join NATO and be a neutral country.” This was a fair demand as Ukraine is right on Russia’s eastern border.

Russia rightly does not want a militarized Ukraine on its border which it will be if it joined NATO. NATO is a military organization created on April 4, 1949, to counter the “Russian threat” as perceived by the Truman administration during the beginning of the cold war. The cold war was the creation of Truman administration.

By the way, unlike what the United States and European Union claim, NATO is not a defensive organization. It is an offensive military pact with a purpose of controlling and dominating the world.

It has been involved in many wars such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Syria, or Libya. It is not a benign, benevolent organization as its members and its leader the USA want the world to believe.

As NATO was created to counter the “USSR Threat”, once USSR collapsed in 1989-90, NATO’s existence became obsolete, and soon it should have been dissolved. The so-called Russian threat was no more. But not only NATO remained but it started expanding eastward encircling Russia.

If Ukraine joined NATO, soon NATO will install offensive missiles and other offensive weapons there directed against Russia. No major country would allow that. This was a “red line” drawn by Russia…rightly so. We have had the example of Cuba allowing Russian nuclear weapons installed in its territory in 1962. What happened? America threatened Russia with military strike if it didn’t remove those weapons. Kennedy Administration risked a nuclear third world war if Russia did not remove these weapons. Russia wisely complied.

The same way, would America allow Russia to have a military pact with Mexico? Would it allow Russia to put offensive weapons in Mexico near American border? Of course not.

America even has the so-called Monroe Doctrine of 1823 which held that “Any intervention in the political affairs in the Americas (North and South America) by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act against the U.S.” That meant “No interfering in the internal affairs of these countries. If that happens, then United States will fight back. These countries are in the sphere of influence of the Unties States.”

Would China allow Pakistan or Mongolia to have a military pact with USA resulting in offensive weapons directed against China in these countries? Absolutely not.

Would India allow China to have a military pact with Nepal or Bhutan? No; That will be a red line for India. United States, China or India will act militarily if put into such situations. But this is what United States, and its NATO member allies are trying to do against Russia.

Militarizing Ukraine was a red line for Russia. But America and the NATO countries poked the Russian bear in the eyes by constantly expanding the NATO towards Russia’s border. They have been doing that for many years.

On June 26, 1997, some 50 prominent foreign policy experts that included former Senators, retired military officers, diplomats, and academicians, sent an open letter to President Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion, saying, “We believe that the current U.S. led effort to expand NATO…is a policy error of historic proportions”. But to no avail. Bill Clinton went on to expanding NATO.

Many foreign policy experts warned against NATO expansion. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in Wall Street journal in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea pointing out that Ukraine cannot act as an outpost for either party but rather should act as a bridge between the West and Russia. He said that Ukraine is an inalienable part of Russia’s history and identity—similar but in varying degrees to what Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed in his speech before the so-called ‘military operation’ in Ukraine.

“To treat Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would scuttle for decades any prospect to bring Russia and the West—especially Russia and Europe—into a cooperative international system,” Kissinger opined in Wall Street Journal.

The highly knowledgeable Political Scientist and professor John Mearsheimer has rightly said:

“The United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the Ukraine crisis. The taproot of trouble is NATO expansion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president—which he rightly labelled a ‘coup’—was the final straw.”

NATO, led by the United States with its European surrogates have shown utter neglect and disregard for Russia’s strategic interests and security by NATO’s eastward expansion for two decades.

More than two decades ago, Western policy makers and Russian leaders were warning that NATO expansion was a bad idea, ending in a new cold war at best and a hot one at worst. George Kennan, the architect of America’s containment policy during the cold war, perceptively warned in 1998 that NATO expansion was tragic mistake.

The Obama administration shockingly meddled in Ukraine’s internal political affairs in 2013 and 2014 to help demonstrators overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected, pro-Russia president. That was a brazen provocation and it caused tension to spike. Moscow immediately responded by seizing and annexing Crimea, and a new cold war once again created by the United States had begun with a vengeance.

Ukraine even violated the 2014 Minsk agreement with Russia.

Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in his 2014 memoires conceded that “trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.” That expansion of NATO, he concluded, was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.”

The famous linguistic scholar -turned-social/political commentator Noam Chomsky has called this Ukraine war America’s proxy war to the last Ukrainian, though he criticizes Russia’s brutal invasion. But he maintains that Russia was provoked into this invasion like John Mearsheimer. Biden’s overtures to Ukraine, according to Chomsky, inviting Zelenskyy and company to join NATO, were intended to provoke Russia to invade Ukraine.

By 2021, Kremlin’s patience and restraint had run dry. Moscow issued demands for security guarantees that included a draw-down of military forces already deployed in NATO’s eastern members. But with respect to Ukraine, the demand was absolutely clear and uncompromising: Ukraine should never receive membership invitation and NATO weapons and troops would never be deployed on Ukrainian soil. But West, led by the United States failed to provide those guarantees. So, Putin launched his devastating full-scale war.

Yes, Moscow’s cruel reaction is unfortunate. But did Putin have any other choice? He was provoked time and time again by the West. Except America and its European allies, no other country of the world in Asia (except Japan and Australia), Africa, Middle East (except Israel) or Latin America have joined the West and condemned Russia. China and India did not join the West. China even sided with Russia and India rightly stayed neutral.

The United States conveniently forgets how it reacted during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when Russia deployed nuclear weapons in Cuba? The world at that time came very close to the nuclear third world war. Thanks to Khrushchev that he rightly backed out.

President Biden’s CIA director William J. Burns has been warning about the provocative effect of NATO expansion on Russia since 1995. When President Bill Clinton’s administration started accepting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO, burns warned that the decision was “premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst.” He continued further, “As Russians stewed in their grievance and sense of disadvantage, a gathering storm of ‘stab in the back’ theories slowly swirled, leaving a mark on Russia’s relations with the West that would linger for decades.”

In 2008, Burns, then the American ambassador to Moscow, wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from Knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

United States is addicted to wars everywhere. How many countries has Russia invaded and how many were invaded by the United States since World War-II? To keep its arms manufacturing industry going and to maintain its global hegemony, these wars are necessary. The so-called defense industry doles out millions of dollars for the reelection of America’s politicians. By creating wars, they payback their paymasters as in every direct or proxy war America engages in, these defense contractors make billions of dollars’ profit.

It is interesting to note that when Putin came to power, in 2000 he wanted to join the European Union and NATO. What a wonderful opportunity it would have been to unify the world! But NATO led by America and the European Union rejected the idea. Why? Is it because the United States needed an enemy to keep its arms manufacturing and selling to continue for enormous profits? If Russia became a friend, America would lose a huge block of European NATO member customers for its arms.

To justify these wars, America needs a boogeyman. Remember Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, Assad in Syria, Gadhafi in Libya and now Putin in Russia. All American media always join in demonizing these “monsters”, toeing the government line. You will never find dissenting opinion in all our mainstream news media–TV, newspaper, or radio network.

History will note that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of U.S.S.R. was a policy blunder of epic proportions. It was entirely predictable that NATO expansion towards Russia would ultimately lead to a tragic, dangerous, and perhaps violent breach of relations with Moscow. Many Russia experts warned of the likely consequences. But those warnings went unheeded by the Biden administration. The American people, the world and especially the Ukrainians are now paying the horrible cost of the United States’ myopic and arrogant foreign policy.

....

https://scheerpost.com/2022/06/27/hedges-fascists-in-our-midst/

Fascists in Our Midst

Supreme Court rulings, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, herald the ascendancy of Christian fascism in the United States.  

The Supreme Court is relentlessly funding and empowering Christian fascism. It not only overturned Roe v. Wade, ending a constitutional right to an abortion, but ruled on June 21 that Maine may not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program. It has ruled that a Montana state program to support private schools must include religious schools. It ruled that a 40-foot cross could remain on state property in suburban Maryland. It upheld the Trump administration regulation allowing employers to deny birth control coverage to female employees on religious grounds. It ruled that employment discrimination laws do not apply to teachers at religious schools. It ruled that a Catholic social services agency in Philadelphia could ignore city rules and refuse to screen same-sex couples applying to take in foster children. It neutered the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It watered down laws allowing workers to combat sexual and racial harassment in court. It reversed century-old campaign finance restric­tions to permit corpor­a­tions, private groups and oligarchs to spend unlim­ited funds on elec­tions, a system of legalized bribery, in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission. It permitted states to opt out of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. It undercut the ability of public sector unions to raise funds. It forced workers with legal grievances to submit their complaints to privatized arbitration boards. It ruled that states cannot restrict the right to carry concealed weapons in public. It ruled that suspects cannot sue police who neglect to read them their Miranda warnings and use their statements against them in court. Outlawing contraception, same-sex marriage and same-sex consensual relations are probably next. Only 25 percent of those polled say they have confidence in Supreme Court decisions.

I do not use the word fascist lightly. My father was a Presbyterian minister. My mother, a professor, was a seminary graduate. I received my Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. I am an ordained Presbyterian minister. Most importantly, I spent two years reporting from megachurches, creationist seminars, right-to-life retreats, Christian broadcasting networks and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with members and leaders of the Christian right for my book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,” which is banned at most “Christian” schools and universities. Before the book was published, I met at length with Fritz Stern, the author of The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the German Ideology, and Robert O. Paxton, who wrote The Anatomy of Fascism, two of the country’s most eminent scholars of fascism, to make sure the word fascist was appropriate.

The book was a warning that an American fascism, wrapped in the flag and clutching the Christian cross, was organizing to extinguish our anemic democracy. This assault is very far advanced. The connecting tissue among the disparate militia groups, QAnon conspiracy theorists, anti-abortion activists, right-wing patriot organizations, Second Amendment advocates, neo-Confederates and Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol on January 6 is this frightening Christian fascism.

Fascists achieve power by creating parallel institutions – schools, universities, media platforms and paramilitary forces – and seizing the organs of internal security and the judiciary. They deform the law, including electoral law, to serve their ends. They are rarely in the majority. The Nazis never polled above 37 percent in free elections in Germany. Christian fascists constitute less than a third of the U.S. electorate, about the same percentage of those who consider abortion to be murder. 

This flagrant manipulation of law was displayed in two of the most recent Supreme Court decisions, where those who support this ideology have a five to three majority, with the less extremist Chief Justice John Roberts often adding a sixth vote. In overturning Roe v. Wade, the court, in a six to three decision, argued that states have the power to decide whether abortion is legal. The same court conversely came down against “states’ rights,” in striking down strict restrictions on carrying concealed firearms.  

What the ideology demands is law. What the ideology opposes is a crime. Once a legal system is subservient to dogma an open society is impossible.  

Blow by blow autocratic power is being solidified by this monstrous Christian fascism which is bankrolled by the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism. It looks set to take control of the U.S. Congress in the midterm elections. If Trump, or a Trump-like clone, is elected in 2024, what is left of our democracy will likely be extinguished.

These Christians fascists are clear about the society they intend to create.

In their ideal America, our “secular humanist” society based on science and reason will be destroyed. The Ten Commandments will form the basis of the legal system. Creationism or “Intelligent Design” will be taught in public schools, many of which will be overtly “Christian.” Those branded as social deviants, including the LGBTQ community, immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims, criminals, and those dismissed as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible—will be silenced, imprisoned, or killed. The role of the federal government will be reduced to protecting property rights, “homeland” security and waging war. Most government assistance programs and federal departments, including education, will be terminated. Church organizations will be funded and empowered to run social-welfare agencies and schools. The poor, condemned for sloth, indolence, and sinfulness, will be denied help. The death penalty will be expanded to include “moral crimes,” including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and witchcraft, as well as abortion, which will be treated as murder. Women, denied contraception, access to abortion, and equality under the law, will be subordinate to men. Those who practice other faiths will become, at best, second-class citizens. The wars waged by the American empire will be defined as religious crusades. Victims of police violence and those in prison will have no redress. There will be no separation of church and state. The only legitimate voices in public discourse and the media will be “Christian.” America will be sacralized as an agent of God. Those who defy the “Christian” authorities, at home and abroad, will be condemned as agents of Satan.

How did the historians of Weimar Germany and Nazism, the professors of Holocaust studies, the sociologists and the religious scholars manage to miss the rise of our homegrown Christian fascism? Immersed in the writings of Hannah Arendt, Raul Hilberg, Saul Friedländer, Joachim Fest, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Theodor Adorno, they never connected the dots. Why didn’t church leaders thunder in denunciation at the grotesque perversion of the Gospel by the Christian fascists as they sacralized the get-rich-with-Jesus schemes of the prosperity gospel, imperialism, militarism, capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and other forms of bigotry? Why didn’t reporters see the flashing red lights that lit up decades ago?

Most of those tasked with reporting on and interpreting history, social movements and religious beliefs have failed us. They spoke about the past, vowing “Never again,” but refused to use the lessons of the past to explain the present. It was not ignorance. It was cowardice. To confront the Christian fascists, even in universities, meant career-canceling accusations of religious bigotry and intolerance. It meant credible threats of violence from conspiracy theorists who believed they were called by God to murder abortion providers, Muslims, and “secular humanists.”

It was easier, as many academics did in Weimar Germany, to believe that the fascists did not mean what they said, that there were strains within the movement that could be reasoned with, that opening channels of dialogue and communication could see the fascists domesticated, that if in power the fascists would not act on their extremist and violent rhetoric.  With few exceptions, German academics did not protest the Nazi assumption of power and the wholesale dismissal of their liberal, socialist, and Jewish colleagues.

Although my book was a New York Times best seller, Harvard told my publisher it was not interested in my appearing at the school. I gave a lecture on the book at Colgate University, where I had earned my undergraduate degree, organized by my mentor Coleman Brown, a professor of ethics. I held a seminar, also organized by Coleman, with the professors of philosophy and religion after the talk. These professors wanted nothing to do with the critique. When we left the room, Coleman muttered, “the problem is they do not believe in heretics.”

I was asked in 2006 to speak at the inauguration of the LGBT center at Princeton University when I was the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies. To my dismay, the faculty facilitators had invited representatives from the right-wing Christian student group who see any deviation from heterosexuality as a psychological and moral abnormality. Christian fascist pastors in Texas and Idaho, who have driven countless young people struggling with their sexual identity to suicide, have called for the execution of gay people as recently as a few days ago.

“There is no dialogue with those who deny your legitimate right to be,” I said, looking pointedly at the LGBTQ students. “At that point it is a fight for survival.”

The faculty member organizing the event leapt from her chair.

“This is a university,” she said to me curtly. “Your talk is over. You can’t say those kinds of things here.”

I sat down. But I had made my point.

All those tasked in our society with interpreting the world around us forgot, as philosopher Karl Popper wrote in The Open Society and Its Enemies, that “unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

These scholars, writers, intellectuals, and journalists, like those in Weimar Germany, bear much of the blame. They preferred accommodation over confrontation. They stood by as the working class was stripped of rights and impoverished by the billionaire class, fertilizing the ground for an American fascism. Those who orchestrated the economic, political, and social assault are the major donors to the universities. They control trustee boards, grants, academic prizes, think tanks, promotion, publishing, and tenure. Academics, looking for an exit, ignored the attacks by the ruling oligarchy. They ascribed to the Christian fascists, bankrolled by huge corporations such as Tyson Foods, Purdue, Wal-Mart and Sam’s Warehouse, attributes that did not exist. They tacitly gave the Christian fascists religious legitimacy. These Christian fascists are an updated version of the so-called German Christian Church, or Deutsche Christen, which fused the iconography and symbols of the Christian religion with the Nazi party. The theologian Paul Tillich, the first non-Jewish German professor to be blacklisted from German universities by the Nazis, angrily chastised those who refused to fight “the paganism of the swastika” and retreated into a myopic preoccupation with personal piety.

Victor Klemperer, stripped of his position as a professor of Romance languages at the Technical University of Dresden when the Nazis came to power in 1933 because he was Jewish, mused in his diary in 1936 what he would do in post-Nazi Germany if  “the fate of the vanquished lay in my hands.” He wrote that he would “let all the ordinary folk go and even some of the leaders…But I would have all the intellectuals strung up, and the professors three feet higher than the rest; they would be left hanging from the lamp posts for as long as was compatible with hygiene.”

Fascists promise moral renewal, a return to a lost golden age. They use campaigns of moral purity to justify state repression. Adolf Hitler, days after he took power in January 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual organizations. He ordered raids on homosexual clubs and bars, including the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, and the permanent exile of its director, Magnus Hirschfeld. Thousands of volumes from the institute’s library were tossed into a bonfire. This “moral cleansing” was cheered on by the German public, including German churches. But the tactics, outside the law, swiftly legitimized what would soon be done to others.

I studied at Harvard with theologian James Luther Adams. Adams was a member of the underground anti-Nazi Confessing Church in Germany led by the Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller. Adams was arrested in 1936 by the Gestapo and expelled from the country. He was one of the very few to see the deadly strains of fascism in the nascent Christian right.

“When you are my age,” he told us (he was then 80), “you will all be fighting the Christian fascists.”

And here we are.

The billionaire class, while sometimes socially liberal, dispossessed working men and women through deindustrialization, austerity, a legalized tax boycott, looting the U.S. Treasury and deregulation. It triggered the widespread despair and rage that pushed many of the betrayed into the arms of these con artists and demagogues. It is more than willing to accommodate the Christian fascists, even if it means abandoning the liberal veneer of inclusiveness. It has no intention of supporting social equality, which is why it thwarted the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. 

In the end, even the liberal class will choose fascism over empowering the left-wing and organized labor. The only thing the ruling oligarchy truly cares about is unfettered exploitation and profit. They, like the industrialists in Nazi Germany, will happily make an alliance with the Christian fascists, no matter how bizarre and buffoonish, and embrace the blood sacrifices of the condemned. 

SC259-12

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

Everybody’s Guilty: To the Police State, We’re All Criminals Until We Prove Otherwise

“In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught.”—Hunter S. Thompson

The burden of proof has been reversed.

No longer are we presumed innocent. Now we’re presumed guilty unless we can prove our innocence beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Rarely, are we even given the opportunity to do so.

Although the Constitution requires the government to provide solid proof of criminal activity before it can deprive a citizen of life or liberty, the government has turned that fundamental assurance of due process on its head.

Each and every one of us is now seen as a potential suspect, terrorist and lawbreaker in the eyes of the government.

Consider all the ways in which “we the people” are now treated as criminals, found guilty of violating the police state’s abundance of laws, and preemptively stripped of basic due process rights.

Red flag gun confiscation laws: Gun control legislation, especially in the form of red flag gun laws, allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats. These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, will put a target on the back of every American whether or not they own a weapon.

Disinformation eradication campaigns. In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.” The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association. In the government’s latest assault on those who criticize the government—whether that criticism manifests itself in word, deed or thought—the Biden Administration has likened those who share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” to terrorists. This latest government salvo against consumers and spreaders of “mis- dis- and mal-information” widens the net to potentially include anyone who is exposed to ideas that run counter to the official government narrative. In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly. In this way, government and corporate censors claiming to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns are, in fact, laying the groundwork now to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

Government watch lists. The FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have increasingly invested in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior. Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention. In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, or appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom.

Thought crimes. For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous. It’s not just what you say or do that is being monitored, but how you think that is being tracked and targeted. There’s a whole spectrum of behaviors ranging from thought crimes and hate speech to whistleblowing that qualifies for persecution (and prosecution) by the Deep State. It’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.

Security checkpoints and fusion centers. By treating an entire populace as suspect, the government has justified wide-ranging security checkpoints that subject travelers to scans, searches, pat downs and other indignities by the TSA and VIPR raids on so-called “soft” targets like shopping malls and bus depots by black-clad, Darth Vader look-alikes. Fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, track the citizenry’s movements, record their conversations, and catalogue their transactions.

Surveillance, precrime programs. Facial recognition software aims to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. Coupled with surveillance cameras that blanket the country, facial recognition technology allows the government and its corporate partners to warrantlessly identify and track someone’s movements in real-time, whether or not they have committed a crime. Rapid advances in behavioral surveillance are not only making it possible for individuals to be monitored and tracked based on their patterns of movement or behavior, including gait recognition (the way one walks), but have given rise to whole industries that revolve around predicting one’s behavior based on data and surveillance patterns and are also shaping the behaviors of whole populations. With the increase in precrime programs, threat assessments, AI algorithms and surveillance programs such as SpotShotter, which attempt to calculate where illegal activity might occur by triangulating sounds and images, the burden of proof has been turned on its head by a surveillance state that renders us all suspects and overcriminalization which renders us all lawbreakers.

Mail surveillance. Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts. Headed up by the Postal Service’s law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with “inflammatory” posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid “potentially volatile situations.”

Threat assessments and AI algorithms. The government has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state. Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score. It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.

No-knock raids. No-knock, no-announce SWAT team raids are what passes for court-sanctioned policing in America today, and it could happen to any one of us. Nationwide, SWAT teams routinely invade homes, break down doors, kill family pets (they always shoot the dogs first), damage furnishings, terrorize families, and wound or kill those unlucky enough to be present during a raid. No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters such as serving a search warrant, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day. Police carry out tens of thousands of no-knock raids every year nationwide.

Militarized police. America is overrun with militarized cops—vigilantes with a badge—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.” It doesn’t matter where you live—big city or small town—it’s the same scenario being played out over and over again in which government agents, trained to act as judge, jury and executioner in their interactions with the public, ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry. This is how we have gone from a nation of laws—where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat “we the people” like suspects and criminals.

Constitution-free zones. Merely living within 100 miles inland of the border around the United States is now enough to make you a suspect, paving the way for Border Patrol agents to search people’s homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. Nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, 197.4 million people) now live within that 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.

Asset forfeiture schemes. Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Hard-working Americans are having their bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash seized by police under the assumption that they have been associated with some criminal scheme. As libertarian Harry Browne observed, “Asset forfeiture is a mockery of the Bill of Rights. There is no presumption of innocence, no need to prove you guilty (or even charge you with a crime), no right to a jury trial, no right to confront your accuser, no right to a court-appointed attorney (even if the government has just stolen all your money), and no right to compensation for the property that's been taken.”

Vehicle kill switches. Sold to the public as a safety measure aimed at keeping drunk drivers off the roads, “vehicle kill switches” could quickly become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to put the government in the driver’s seat while rendering null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. As such, it presumes every driver potentially guilty of breaking some law that would require the government to intervene and take over operation of the vehicle or shut it off altogether. The message: we cannot be trusted to obey the law or navigate the world on our end.

Bodily integrity. The government’s presumptions about our so-called guilt or innocence have extended down to our very cellular level. The debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws and forced breath-alcohol tests to forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, and forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no real privacy, no real presumption of innocence, and no real control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. The groundwork being laid with these mandates is a prologue to what will become the police state’s conquest of a new, relatively uncharted, frontier: inner space, specifically, the inner workings (genetic, biological, biometric, mental, emotional) of the human race. “Guilt by association” has taken on new connotations in the technological age. Yet the debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—is really only beginning. Get ready, folks, because the government has embarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.

Limitations on our right to move about freely. We think we have the freedom to go where we want and move about freely, but at every turn, we’re hemmed in by laws, fines and penalties that regulate and restrict our autonomy, and surveillance cameras that monitor our movements. For instance, license plate readers are mass surveillance tools that can photograph over 1,800 license tag numbers per minute, take a picture of every passing license tag number and store the tag number and the date, time, and location of the picture in a searchable database, then share the data with law enforcement, fusion centers and private companies to track the movements of persons in their cars. With tens of thousands of these license plate readers now in operation throughout the country, police can track vehicles and run the plates through law enforcement databases for abducted children, stolen cars, missing people and wanted fugitives. Of course, the technology is not infallible: there have been numerous incidents in which police have mistakenly relied on license plate data to capture suspects only to end up detaining innocent people at gunpoint.

The war on cash and the introduction of digital currency. Digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with a mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient. This push for a digital currency dovetails with the government’s war on cash, which it has been subtly waging for some time now. In recent years, just the mere possession of significant amounts of cash could implicate you in suspicious activity and label you a criminal. The rationale (by police) is that cash is the currency for illegal transactions given that it’s harder to track, can be used to pay illegal immigrants, and denies the government its share of the “take,” so doing away with paper money will help law enforcement fight crime and help the government realize more revenue. A cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—plays right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners).

The Security-Industrial Complex. Every crisis—manufactured or otherwise—since the nation’s early beginnings has become a make-work opportunity for the government to expand its reach and its power at taxpayer expense while limiting our freedoms at every turn. What this has amounted to is a war on the American people, fought on American soil, funded with taxpayer dollars, and waged with a single-minded determination to use national crises, manufactured or otherwise, in order to transform the American homeland into a battlefield. As a result, the American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, denied due process, and killed.

These programs push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.

The ramifications of empowering the government to sidestep fundamental due process safeguards are so chilling and so far-reaching as to put a target on the back of anyone who happens to be in the same place where a crime takes place.

The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

In effect, you will disappear.

....

https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-bad-will-food-shortage-get/5784726

How Bad Will the Food Shortage Get?

Two years ago in May 2020, I predicted the COVID-19 pandemic would be followed by famine, thanks to the intentional shutdown of businesses and global supply lines.¹

Depending on where you live, you’re now starting to see shortages to a greater or lesser degree. But regardless of how things appear right now, expect changes, potentially drastic ones, over the coming months and into 2023, because that’s when the diminished yields from this current growing season will become apparent.

With each passing week, it’s becoming increasingly clear that severe food shortages are going to be inevitable, more or less worldwide, and whatever food is available will continue to go up in price.

The cost of agricultural inputs such as diesel and fertilizers is skyrocketing due to shortages — caused by a combination of intentional and coincidental events — and those costs will be reflected in consumer food prices come fall and next year.

On top of that, mysterious fires, alleged bird flu outbreaks and other inexplicable events are killing off livestock and destroying crucial infrastructure. Since the end of April 2021, at least 96 farms, food processing plants and food distribution centers across the U.S. have been damaged or destroyed by fire (see below).^2,3

An estimated 10,000 cattle also perished in Ulysses, Kansas, in mid-June 2022,⁴ under mysterious circumstances. The official claim is that the cattle died from heat stress, but that seems highly unlikely. Heat could conceivably kill some weaker cattle, but 10,000 on the same day? Recorded temperatures were said to be around 100 degrees Fahrenheit at the time of the loss,⁵ but other states have also had 100-degree temperatures, with no recorded cattle deaths.

Combined, all of these factors set us up for guaranteed food shortages, food inflation and, potentially, famine in some places. If you’re still sitting on the fence, I would urge you to get off it and begin preparations. Those who fail to prepare are likely to find themselves in an incredibly difficult situation this fall and next year. Don’t let that be you.

How Bad Is It?

In May 2022, a number of experts started speaking out about the inevitability of coming food shortages. The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned of “the specter of a global food shortage in coming months” unless international action is taken,⁶ and The Economist featured “The Coming Food Catastrophe” on its cover.⁷

During the 2022 World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, told attendees that “the anxiety about access to food at a reasonable price globally is hitting the roof,”⁸ and President Biden, in March 2022, told reporters that food shortages are “going to be real.”⁹

A May 30, 2022, Reuters report¹⁰ showed the global food price index had risen 58.5% above the 2014-2016 average as of April 2022, due to a convergence of “post-pandemic global demand, extreme weather, tightening food stocks, high energy prices, supply chain bottlenecks … export restrictions and taxes” combined with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Together, Russia and Ukraine account for as much as 12% of all globally traded calories,¹¹ making the timing of the conflict a particularly perilous one for the world. Not surprisingly, countries that are heavily reliant on imports have seen the steepest food price increases.

In early April 2022, Rockefeller Foundation president Rajiv Shah and Sara Menker, founder of Gro Intelligence, published an op-ed¹² in The New York Times blaming “Putin’s war” for the looming food crisis but, clearly, we were already on the path toward global famine long before Putin entered Ukraine.

Weather, for example plays an important role. As noted by Shah and Menker, “historic drought” plagues many parts of the world, including the U.S. Midwest, Brazil, Argentina, North Africa, the Middle East¹³ and India.¹⁴ Meanwhile, China’s agricultural lands are drowning under the “heaviest rains in 60 years.”¹⁵

How Bad Will It Get?

While it’s difficult to predict just how bad it will get in any given area, it seems safe to say that everyone should prepare for some degree of food shortages, regardless of where you live, as we’re staring at a perfect storm of confounding factors that are global in nature and therefore can cause far-reaching and somewhat unpredictable ripple effects.

As noted by David Wallace-Wells in a June 7, 2022, New York Times op-ed, referring to the price index charts published by Reuters and Shah and Menker:¹⁶

“… one thing charts like these do not obviously signal is mass starvation. And yet, according to David Beasley, the former Republican governor of South Carolina who now leads the U.N. World Food Program [WFP], that is what they imply:

[T]he possibility that, as a result of an ongoing food crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, climate change and the continuing effects of the coronavirus pandemic, 323 million people are ‘marching toward starvation’ as we speak, with 49 million ‘literally at famine’s door’ …

[It] is worth keeping in mind that 49 million is not the number facing ‘acute food insecurity,’ to use the W.F.P.’s technical category distinction.

That number is the much higher one: at least 323 million, which is up, Beasley says, from 276 million before the war, 135 million before the pandemic and 80 million when he joined the W.F.P. in 2017 — a fourfold increase in a single leadership term. Forty-nine million is just the number of those at most immediate risk of death.

Before the war, ‘I was already warning the world that 2022 and 2023 could be the worst two years in the humanitarian world since World War II,’ Beasley says, speaking with me from Rome on last Friday.

‘I’m trying to tell everybody how bad it is — how bad it’s going to be. And then, the next week, I’m like, you know, wipe that clean — it’s worse than what I was saying’ … Beasley believes that 2023 could take a still darker turn.

This year’s price crisis could be succeeded by a genuine supply crisis, in which food is pushed out of reach for many millions not just by price but by ongoing structural conditions (including the failure to plant next year’s harvest in Ukraine and the surge in the price of fertilizer, which can be one-third or more of farmers’ total annual cost), and the world could experience the once-unthinkable: a true shortfall of food.”

According to Menker, the current problem is “not cyclical” but rather “seismic” — “It’s not a moment in time that’s going to pass.”¹⁷ Wallace-Wells writes:¹⁸

“She cites a longer list of causes, including not just the demand shocks caused by the pandemic and related supply-chain issues but ‘a record number of supply shocks’ that are ‘all climate related,’ such as the rebound of China’s pig population from swine flu and the resulting increase in demand for feed, the problem of public debt in poor countries, the spillover effect of the price of one commodity driving up another and that driving up a third, and so on.

‘Any one of those issues on their own would be considered a big market event. But when you have five of them happening at the same time, that’s what makes it seismic,’ she says.

Russia and Ukraine’s transformation into ‘bread baskets of the world’ was ‘the agricultural miracle of the last sort of 30 years,’ she says, invalidating cataclysmic predictions made by people like Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome.

To take that supply off the market — ‘it’s not an inconsequential fuel to the fire,’ she says. As for the ultimate scale of the impact? ‘I think it’s going to be as big as we make it.'”

Globalization Is a Failed Model

That said, Wallace-Wells points out that agricultural economists appear somewhat more optimistic, as “most food is consumed domestically, not traded on international markets.” So, in many areas, there may be substitutes available for shortages.

According to agricultural economists, “at baseline, there is no true global food shortage, only that unassuming-sounding ‘price crisis,'” Wallace-Wells says,¹⁹ and price problems are fixable. It can take time, however, that many won’t have. Personally, I’m not so sure relying on agricultural economists’ optimism is a good idea.

Even though a lot of food is produced and consumed locally, farmers everywhere are struggling with soaring overhead and shortages of required inputs. And, if local farmers can’t grow food because of it, there won’t be any substitutes available when imports lag.

As by Daniel Greenfield with the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council notes, globalization has left the United States extremely vulnerable, as globalization “globalizes the ineptitude of the global order”:²⁰

“Globalization advocates … just recreated Marxist central planning with a somewhat more flexible global model in which massive corporations bridged global barriers to create the most efficient possible means of moving goods and services around the planet …

What an interdependent world really means is Algerian Jihadists shooting up Paris, gang members from El Salvador beheading Americans within sight of Washington D.C., tampon and car shortages caused by a war in Ukraine …

The technocratic new world order of megacorporations consolidating markets and then doling out products with just-in-time inventory systems now flows through a broken supply chain. Rising inflation and international disruptions makes it all but impossible for even the big companies to plan ahead, and so they produce less and shrug at the shortages.

We’re in a wartime economy because our system has become too vast and too inflexible to adjust to chaos. Biden keeps trotting out the Defense Production Act for everything until, given time, the entire economy has been Sovietized. The more that the government tries to impose stability on the chaos, the less responsive and productive the dominant players become.

Market consolidation due to government regulations has left a handful of companies sitting atop the market. When one of them, like Abbott for baby formula, has a hiccup, the results are catastrophic …

Behind all the brands on the product shelves is a creaky Soviet system in which a handful of massive enterprises interconnected with the state lazily crank out low-quality products from vast supply chains that they no longer control and feel little competitive pressure to perform better …

Under stress, the failure points are all too obvious, and what is less obvious is that the system has no intention of repairing any of them … An out-of-touch elite responds to problems with meaningless reassurances, glib jokes and wokeness. Like Soviet propaganda, the only thing corporate statements communicate is the vast distance between the lives of those running the system and those caught inside its gears …

Biden and the Democrats have been eager to blame companies for ‘profiteering’ from the inflation created by federal spending … The Democrats were the biggest champions of globalization. Their regulations led to record market consolidation and domestic job cuts.

Corporations were pressured to export dirty Republican jobs to China and keep the ‘clean’ Democrat office jobs at home. The devastation wreaked havoc on the working class and the middle class, and rebuilt our entire economy to be dependent on China and a worldwide supply chain only globalists could believe was bulletproof … After selling off American economic sovereignty, globalists proved unable to maintain global stability.”

Don’t Panic. Prepare

While the prognosis is grim, panic is not the appropriate response. Taking clear-headed action to get prepared would be far better. Once you’ve shored up some basic supplies and backups, you’ll feel more at ease, knowing you’re prepared to handle whatever crises crop up next.

As for how to prepare and what to stock up on, that’s going to depend on your individual situation, location and financial means. A person living in the country surrounded by farmers and clean, freshwater brooks is facing a very different situation from someone living in a concrete jungle.

So, assess your surroundings and personal situation. Then, go through and determine how you can solve some of your most pressing needs, such as:

• Securing a potable water source and the means to purify less-than-ideal water sources —Examples include stocking up on water purification tablets or drops, and/or independent water filtration systems such as Berkey that can filter out pathogens and other impurities (meaning a filtration system that is not tied to the tap in your home, in case pumps go down and you have no tap water).

Even a small survival water filtration system is better than nothing, as drinking contaminated water can result in serious illness and/or death. Having a rain barrel connected to your gutter downspout is a good idea. You can use it to water your garden, and in a worst-case scenario, you have a source of fresh water to drink, cook and take sponge baths in.

• Buy shelf-stable and nonperishable foods in bulk — Freeze dried foods, for example, have a shelf life of 25 years or more. Canned foods and dry staples such as rice and beans can also stay viable long past their expiration date under the right conditions.

Other good options include canned salmon, canned cod livers, sardines in water (avoid ones preserved in vegetable oil), nuts, powdered milk and whey and other nutritional powders you can mix with water.

Ideally, you’ll want to store food in a cool, dark place with low humidity. Bulk packs of rice and beans are best stored in a sealed food-grade bucket with some oxygen absorbers. Vacuum sealing food can also extend shelf life.

• Energy backups — To prepare for eventual energy shortages, brownouts, rolling blackouts or a complete shutdown of the power grid, consider one or more power backups, such as gas-powered generators and/or solar generator kits such as Jackery or Inergy. Having backup power can prevent the loss of hundreds of dollars worth of food if your home loses electricity for more than a couple of days.

Scale up and diversify according to what you can afford. Ideally, you’d want more than one system. If all you have is a gas-powered generator, what will you do if there’s a gas shortage and/or if the price skyrockets into double digits? On the other hand, what will you do if the weather is too overcast to recharge your solar battery?

• Cooking backups — You also need some way to cook water and food during a blackout. Here, options include (but are not limited to) solar cookers, which require neither electricity nor fire, small rocket stoves, propane-powered camping stoves and 12-volt pots and pans that you can plug into a backup battery.

• Start a garden and learn some basic skills — The more food you can produce at home, the better off you’ll be. At bare minimum, stock up on sprouting seeds and grow some sprouts. They’re little powerhouses when it comes to nutrition, they’re easy to grow and are ready to eat in days rather than months.

If you have the space, consider starting a garden, and if local regulations allow, you can add chickens for a steady supply of eggs. (Just remember that they too may need additional feed.)

Also, start learning some basic food storage skills such as canning and pickling. While it can feel intimidating at first, it’s really not that difficult. For example, raw, unwashed, homegrown eggs can be preserved in lime water — 1 ounce of lime (calcium hydroxide, aka “pickling lime”) to 1 quart of water — thereby extending their shelf life to about two years without refrigeration.²¹

The lime water basically seals the eggs to prevent them from spoiling. Before using the eggs, be sure to wash the lime off. This does not work with commercial eggs, however, as the protective coating, called “bloom,” is stripped off during washing.

Fermented vegetables are also easy to make and will allow you to store the proceeds from your garden for long periods of time. For inspiration, check out my fermented veggie recipe. In the video below, I explain the benefits of using starter culture and kinetic culture jar lids. They’re not a necessity, but will cut the odor released as the veggies ferment.

Expect Drastic Changes

Remember, The Great Reset includes the recreation of the global food system. That’s why we can be so sure that none of the current problems will be effectively addressed or counteracted.

They intend for the current food system to fall apart, so they can then “solve” the problem by introducing a new system based on patented lab-grown synthetic and genetically engineered foods, along with digital identity, carbon footprint tracking and a programmable centralized digital currency to track not only what you eat but also everything else you do.

The end game is total control of the global population, and this will require the destruction and dismantling of current systems, including the food system. The only way out of this intentional chaos is to become more self-sufficient and create alternative parallel systems locally, outside of the globalists control.

SC259-11

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57089.htm

Exile on Main Street: the Sound of the Unipolar World Fading Away

Let’s cut to the chase and roll in the Putin Top Ten of the New Era, announced by the Russian President live at the St. Petersburg forum for both the Global North and South.

The era of the unipolar world is over.

The rupture with the West is irreversible and definitive. No pressure from the West will change it.

Russia has renewed its sovereignty. Reinforcement of political and economic sovereignty is an absolute priority.

The EU has completely lost its political sovereignty. The current crisis shows the EU is not ready to play the role of an independent, sovereign actor. It’s just en ensemble of American vassals deprived of any politico-military sovereignty.

Sovereignty cannot be partial. Either you’re a sovereign or a colony.

Hunger in the poorest nations will be on the conscience of the West and euro-democracy.

Russia will supply grains to the poorer nations in Africa and the Middle East.

Russia will invest in internal economic development and reorientation of trade towards nations independent of the U.S.

The future world order, already in progress, will be formed by strong sovereign states.

The ship has sailed. There’s no turning back.

How does it feel, for the collective West, to be caught in such a crossfire hurricane? Well, it gets more devastating when we add to the new roadmap the latest on the energy front.

Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, in St. Petersburg, stressed that the global economic crisis is gaining momentum not because of sanctions, but exacerbated by them; Europe “commits energy suicide” by sanctioning Russia; sanctions against Russia have done away with the much lauded “green transition”, as that is no longer needed to manipulate markets; and Russia, with its vast energy potential, “is the Noah’s Ark of the world economy.”

For his part Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller could not be more scathing on the sharp decline in the gas flow to the EU due to Siemens’ refusal and/or incapacity to repair the Nord Stream 1 pumping engine: “Well, of course, Gazprom was forced to reduce the volume of gas supplies to Europe by 20%+. But you know, prices have increased not by 20%+, but by several times! Therefore, I’m sorry if I say that we don’t feel offended by anyone, we are not particularly concerned by this situation.”

If this pain dial overdrive was not enough to hurl the collective West – or NATOstan – into Terminal Hysteria, then Putin’s sharp comment on possibly allowing Mr. Sarmat to present his business card to “decision-making centers in Kiev”, those that are ordering the current shelling and killing of civilians in Donetsk, definitely did the trick:

“As for the red lines, let me keep them to myself, because this will mean quite tough actions on the decision-making centers. But this is an area that shouldn’t be disclosed to people outside the military-political leadership of the country. Those who deserve appropriate actions on our part should draw a conclusion for themselves – what they may face if they cross the line.”

Baby please, stop breaking down

Alastair Crooke has masterfully outlined how the collective West’s zugzwang leaves it lumbering around, dazed and confused. Now let’s examine the state of play on the opposite side of the chessboard, focusing on the BRICS summit this Thursday in Beijing.

As much as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and ASEAN, now it’s time for a reinvigorated BRICS to step up its game. In conjunction, these are the key organizations/instruments that will be carving the pathways towards the post-unipolar era.

Both China and India (which between them were the largest economies in the world for centuries before the brief Western colonial interregnum) are already close and getting closer to “the Noah’s Ark of the world economy”.

The G20 – hostages of the Michael Hudson-defined FIRE scam that is the core of the financialized neoliberal casino – is slowly fading away, while a potential new G8 ramps up: and that is directly connected to BRICS expansion, one of the key themes of this week’s summit. An expanded BRICS with a parallel G8 configuration is bound to easily overtake the Western-centric one in importance as well as GDP by purchasing power parity (PPP).

BRICS in 2021 already added Bangladesh, Egypt, the UAE and Uruguay to its New Development Bank (NDB). In May, at Foreign Ministry-level debates, Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Senegal and Thailand were added to the 5 BRICS members. Leaders of some of these nations will be connected to the Beijing summit.

BRICS plays a completely different game from the G20. They aim for the grassroots, and it’s all about slowly “building trust” – a very Chinese concept. They are creating an independent Credit Rating Agency – away from the Anglo-American racket – and deepening a Currency Reserves Arrangement. The NDB – including its regional offices in India and South Africa – has been involved in hundreds of projects. Time will tell: one day the NDB will make the World Bank superfluous.

Comparisons between BRICS and the Quad, a U.S. concoction, are silly. Quad is just another crude mechanism to contain China. Yet there’s no question India treads on tightrope walker territory, as it’s a member of both BRICS and Quad, and made a vastly misguided decision to walk out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – the largest free trade deal on the planet – opting instead to adhere to the American pie-in-the-sky Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).

Yet India, long term, skillfully guided by Russia, is being steered to find essential common ground with China in several key issues.

BRICS, especially in its expanded BRICS+ version, is bound to increase cooperation on building truly stable supply chains, and a settlement mechanism for resources and raw material trade, which inevitably has to be based in local currencies. Then the path will be open for the Holy Grail: a BRICS payment system as a credible alternative to the weaponized U.S. dollar and SWIFT.

Meanwhile, a torrent of bilateral investments from both China and India in the manufacturing and services sector around their neighbors is bound to lift up smaller players in both Southeast Asia and South Asia: think Cambodia and Bangladesh as important cogs in a vast supply wheel.

Yaroslav Lissovolik had already proposed a BEAMS concept as the core of this BRICS integration drive, uniting “the key regional integration initiatives of BRICS economies such as BIMSTEC, EAEU, the ASEAN-China free trade agreement, Mercosur and SADC/SACU.”

It’s only (BRICS) rock’n roll

Now Beijing seems eager to promote “an inclusive format for dialogue spanning all the main regions of the Global South via aggregating the regional integration platforms in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America. Going forward this format may be further expanded to include other regional integration blocks from Eurasia, such as the GCC, EAEU and others.”

Lissovolik notes how the ideal path from now on should be “the greater inclusivity of BRICS via the BRICS+ framework that allows smaller economies that are the regional partners of BRICS to have a say in the new global governance framework.”

Before he addressed the St. Petersburg forum on video, President Xi called Putin personally to say, among other things, that he’s got China’s back on all “sovereignty and security” themes. They also, inevitably, discussed the relevance of BRICS as a key platform towards the multipolar world.

Meanwhile, the collective West plunges deeper into the maelstrom. A massive national demonstration of trade unions this past Monday paralyzed Brussels – the capital of the EU and NATO – as 80,000 people expressed their anger at the rising and rising cost of living; called for elites to “spend money on salaries, not on weapons”; and yelled in unison “Stop NATO.”

It’s zugzwang all over again. The EU’s “direct losses”, as Putin stressed, provoked by the sanctions hysteria, “could exceed $400 billion a year”. Russia’s energy earnings have hit record levels. The ruble is at a 7-year high against the euro.

It’s a blast that arguably the most powerful cultural artifact of the entire Cold War – and Western supremacy – era, the perennial Rolling Stones, is currently on tour across a “caught in a crossfire hurricane” EU. On every show they play, for the first time live, one of their early classics: ‘Out of Time’.

Sounds much like a requiem. So let’s all sing, “Baby baby baby / you’re out of time”, as one Vladimir “it’s a gas, gas, gas” Putin and his sidekick Dmitry “Under My Thumb” Medvedev seem to be the guys really getting their rocks off. It’s only (BRICS) rock’n roll, but we like it.

....

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjun22/age-discord6-22.html

The Age of Discord

Today's topic echoes Peter Turchin's 2016 book, Ages of Discord, which I have often referenced in blog posts.

I'll also discuss two other books I've often referenced, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century by Geoffrey Parker and The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History by David Hackett Fischer.

Turchin proposes repeating cycles of history of social integration (people finding reasons to cooperate) and disintegration (people finding reasons to not cooperate).

Clearly, we're in a disintegrative stage.

Fischer proposed a repeating cycle of history in which humans expand their numbers and economy to consume all available resources.

Once all the low-hanging fruit has been consumed, scarcities arise, pushing prices above what commoners can afford, and the result is economic stagnation and social/political revolution.

Either humans exploit a new energy source at scale to provide for the larger population and higher consumption per person, or the population and consumption decline to fit available resources.

Parker covers the mutually reinforcing climate, political, social and economic crises of the 17th century. A long cycle of cold, wet summers reduced crop yields, leading to hunger and strife.

Parker also identifies another cause of the tumultuous, war-plagued 1600s: political leaders had consolidated too much power, enabling them to pursue disastrous wars without any restraint from competing domestic social-political interests.

Clearly, we're in Fischer's stage of overshoot and resource scarcity and Parker's extremes of centralized power free to pursue catastrophic wars of choice.

In the 1600s, those launching wars reckoned a clean, decisive victory was within easy reach. In every case, the wars dragged on inconclusively or generated even wider conflicts.

In the end, all the wars were settled diplomatically, not by military victory. The military gains were nil while the destruction was widespread and devastating.

Fischer details how poorly humans respond to scarcity and higher prices, also known as inflation or more. accurately, as the decline in purchasing power of money and labor. As scarcities and higher prices take their toll, society unravels: crime and social disorder accelerate.

What we're seeing in real time is a "circle the wagons" mentality of weeding out everyone but the True Believers in every movement. Litmus tests are handy for this test: answer wrong on any question and you're cast out: heretic!

It's not enough to tick one "progressive" or "conservative" box; you have to tick them all or you're a heretic who cannot be trusted. If you leave one box unticked, you might untick a few more in the days ahead.

This puts pressure on everyone to declare their loyalty to the "party" even if the loyalty is just for show. This dishonesty pleases those demanding every box be ticked but this forced loyalty creates an illusion of solidarity that unravels under pressure.

Officials vie to offer pledges of loyalty to Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of 20th Party Congress

Exacerbating this is social media, which rewards those promoting the most extreme and divisive positions and deranges the populace by substituting recognition online, which encourages disintegration, for real-world engagement, which encourages moderation and cooperation.

Online, it's easy to be all-or-nothing: there should be no restrictions on social media, or we should just pull the plug and shut the whole mess down.

In the real world, these are knotty, nuanced problems. The Founding Fathers would not have tolerated sedition under the guise of free speech. The social order can only be maintained if every participant adheres to standards of civility and the common good.

When put under stress, humans harden their positions as a defensive measure. They become more argumentative and less tolerant, more strident in insisting that the One True Thing is the answer to our problems.

This leads to magical thinking, for example, that we can replace hydrocarbons with fusion or wind and solar. When the physical and cost limits of minerals are presented as impassable obstacles, people respond with denial: there must be a way to keep everything the same.

Humans have an easy time expanding their population and consumption per person and a hard time consuming less.

It's very difficult to find common ground that supports cooperation in the disintegrative stage of scarcities, rising prices, catastrophically centralized power and social discord.

This requires accepting that we can cooperate with people on one issue even though all the other boxes of our group/party/movement are left unticked.

History suggests the disintegrative stage will run its course and consumption will realign with available resources one way or another, and the best we can do is preserve our own sanity, community and willingness to nurture small patches of common ground that support productive cooperation.