Eso’s Chronicles 249/ 35
Addendum 10—3^rd Post-WW4 Event
© Eso A.B.

While ‘deterrence’ (continuous arming) avoided WW3, it could not avoid a collapse of Western civilization due to a foreordained economic collapse, which is due to the costliness of maintaining the military.

While catastrophic collapses are not new, mass starvation, often lasting for years, is perhaps the event that resembles an economic collapse most closely. In hindsight, starvation appears survivable, because it leaves the cultural infrastructure more or less intact, while war and an economic (environmental) collapse may destroys it totally. Survivals due to starvation happened because starvations occurred when most of humankind still lived in wood or field, and cities were not over built and over populated. Economic collapse has caught humankind at a time when it has vacated the rural setting almost in toto and is living in cities and city suburbs, and has been brought up in the belief that urbanism represents a higher form of development than when humans lived on farms or countryside villages. Today the tragedy of Armageddon finds most urban dwellers firmly believing that consumerism is a Thousand Year Reich and the undereducated inhabitants of Kiev in the Ukraine, celebrate their ‘unshakeable’ belief in the rule of urban consumerism by calling for a ‘revoluciya’, and smashing a granite statue of Lenin, one of the first prophets to announce the coming of an economic apocalypse and taking himself seriously enough as an individual to do something about it.

While the West still does not believe that it is falling down, the early shocks are serious enough for the military to scurry and beat its chest. Since the President of Russia Mr. Putin is an heir of the westernized Tsar Peter the Great, he does likewise, though a better tactic would be to turn tractor factories into horse farms and shield Mother Russia with a cover of forests and its people living in a ‘primitive’ democracy instead of nuclear armed rockets which write ‘Primitive’ with a large P.

What makes the ongoing economic collapse so different from those that preceded it (a capitalist economy is said to resemble a wave pattern of high tides followed by low tides) is that most people have been taught to believe that the ‘pattern’ remains in effect, and that a recovery is bound to repeat itself http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/08/us-ukraine-idUSBRE9B60DH20131208 . Most analysts tend to forget that waves eventually reach shore, where they diminish, break down, and blend with the sand. The habituation of the public to expect the high and low pattern of capitalist economy to repeat itself ad infinitum has put fools in positions of leadership. The fools precipitating the catastrophe are not necessarily the ones in Ukraine, but are sitting at the board tables of the U.S. Federal Reserve and ECB of EU.

To return to the theme of a Nonaggression pact between the governments (states) of the East and the West (blogs 247 & 248), in the words of RT’s political analyst Nebojsa Malic: “President Vladimir Putin has said that attempts to tip or erode strategic balance in the world are continuing. “First and foremost, they are linked with the US plans on anti-ballistic defense, including those for Europe,”…. He also said that the possible setback of the 2014 NATO pullout from Afghanistan could destabilize Central Asia and provoke spillover into neighboring countries.” http://rt.com/news/line/2013-12-10/#53123

Putin’s statement can be understood in at least two ways. One--that ‘destabilization’ will be minimal if the West pulls out of Afghanistan and Asia, because China will then take care of re-stabilization (and relieve Russia’s anxiety over its relationship with China); two—in the event of ‘destabilization’ there will be reason why China, Russia, and India, all three countries, may be forced to inject themselves into the situation, which would make U.S. participation a crowd and minimize its influence and eventually extrude it by that fact alone.

One reason why even the legislators of the U.S. have a hard time understanding what has taken place in the Middle East is because what is taking place is actually a cultural clash (or war or change). As per Nebojsa Malic: “This is a clash between people who believe in the perception of the west, such as Europe or the US, and the people who are trying to make their future based on… actual work, based on the necessity to feed their families and live their lives every day….There is a cultural struggle across the west as well…. on one side are the people who are trying to join this globalist transnational union of governments, where there will be no nationalism but where there will be a supra-nationalist bureaucracy regulating everything for the greater good of it all.. And then there are people who want their national states to run whichever way they decide, but they want the choice to remain theirs.” http://rt.com/op-edge/ukraine-mass-rallies-script-003/
 

Eso’s Chronicles 248/ 34

Addendum 9—2^nd Post-WW4 Event

© Eso A.B.

 

While the U.S. was reluctant to make a hop-skip-and-jump to WW4 in the Middle East because European nations know the importance of Russia as a trading partner, the picture is not as clear in the Pacific regions. Unlike the disputes between France and Germany and England, which have over the centuries settled their borders into an acceptable status quo, in the Far East China and Japan continue to face each other as antagonist.

 

Thus, the U.S., which claims that the Pacific region is important to it as a future trading partner, has just refused…

 

...to recognize  the ‘no fly zone’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25288268 recently declared by China, which zone includes a few pinhead sized islands: http://rt.com/usa/biden-seoul-air-dispute-849/
Amid growing tensions in the region, the U.S. Vice President Biden let the world know during a stop in Seoul, South Korea that the US rejects China’s self-declared right to control airspace above the Diaoyu islands — a small section of the sea off Taiwan’s northern coast which has recently attracted international tension due to a row that’s erupted between regional powers. Instead, the U.S. fearing the discovery of ultimate insignificance of Japan when compared to China, but seeing itself as a major supporter and benefactor of the relationship, decided for reasons of greater influence in the region to side with Japan.

“…. (quoted from link above) when Biden exited a marathon meeting with President Xi Jinping in the capital after he reportedly appeared ‘solemn’ and ‘weary-sounding,’ and refrained from commenting explicitly on the airspace dispute.

 

Once in Seoul, however, the vice president became vocal about the issue and rejected China’s claims while warning ‘The possibility of miscalculation, a mistake, is real.’”

 

Speaking at Yonsei University, Biden said, according to Reuters, "I was absolutely clear on behalf of my president: We do not recognize the zone. It will have no effect on American operations. None. Zero.”

 

So, how does one make ‘none’ and ‘zero’ happen? Apparently by ‘demonstrating’ that the Chinese challenge does not exist and sending two B-52 bombers over air space which the Chinese, in a challenge to Japan, have declared as their own.

 

One may argue whether the Chinese were wise to issue such a challenge. However, one reason for challenging the status quo in the Pacific is the economic deterioration in the region, especially Japan. So-called Abenomics is planning to pump into the Japanese economy 290 trillion yen + by the end of 2014 http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-12-07/why-japan-may-matter-more-tapering , which is not only a direct threat to China, but, if you will, war by other means. Since the memory of events in Nanking has not been forgotten http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre by the Chinese, they have little doubt that Japan is capable of making poverty as painful a tool as a samurai sword with a blade that cuts by no more than touch.

 

The secret Chinese Nonaggression Pact with the U.S. may be that it will not dump on the open market its huge holding of U.S. debt http://english.cntv.cn/program/china24/20131009/105125.shtml , which would turn the U.S. dollar into paper mulch. If so, this means that Abenomics is likely to turn into a Japanese form of seppuku (already having a head-start in Fukushima http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20131207_01.html ).

 

Anyway one looks at the situation, the ‘exceptional’ status that the U.S. acquired following its victories in WW2, and which status it turned into ‘deterrence’ of WW3, which deterrence was a form of war of its own. With WW3 delayed ad infinitum, due to its unpalatability to the government elite (it meant that unlike in earlier wars, it, too, would be killed), WW4 may occur not as an explosion, but an implosion.

 

As the poet T.S. Eliot wrote: “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.”

 

As I have argued throughout my blogs, the catastrophe that has befallen man is the city and its destruction of the community. The city has destroyed the values of a community even though to its own self it appears that it is gentler than the rough ways of the countryside or the wood. As it has turned out, this perception is based on urban leadership cancelling pain and death (as much as possible), which has resulted in an accumulation of unresolved problems, a deterrence of revolt and war, and the weakening of a community’s moral fiber unto where all that there is left of it is a wimper http://rt.com/news/kiev-protests-integration-clashes-873/ that calls for a “revoluciya”.

 

Eso’s Chronicles 247/ 33

Addendum 8—1^st Post-WW4 Event

© Eso A.B.

 

Given that in my previous post, I stated that the U.S. appears to have agreed to pull out of Europe and Asia, because though its military might may deter aggression against it, it is not strong enough, given modern weapons, to deter the destruction of its own or Europe’s infrastructure if it itself were to become the aggressor. The recent posturing by the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East gave rise to suspicions that indeed the West had chosen the aggressor’s path. This is also the reason why the sudden pull back from an outright attack on Syria and hence on Iran makes suspect that it was met with a warning by the powers native to Europe and Asia that was no less determined to prevent such an attack.

 

Not surprisingly, the U.S. change of mind not to press war (it may be interpreted to be a 2^nd version of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/230972/German-Soviet-Nonaggression-Pact , renamed as the Kerry-Lavrov Pact 75 years later, has upset many of its allies who had mistakenly believed that nothing could deter the U.S. from attacking if it so decided. Their mistake was to make-believe that the U.S. was not—for delusionary reasons—vulnerable. Now they know differently, which changes many things, and is cause for resetting many expectations as to the developments in the future.

 

It is not surprising; therefore, that many high officials of the U.S. and EU governments are currently in the Middle East and Eastern Europe giving reassurances. In this context, the following statement by US Defence Secretary Chuck Hegel, is interesting:

 

"Going forward, the Department of Defense will place even more emphasis on building the capacity of our partners in order to complement our strong military presence in the region." http://rt.com/news/us-mideast-iran-nuclear-hagel-878/

 

A nice try, but… it does not acknowledge the vulnerability (presumed by this author) of the country that stands behind “our strong military presence”. An admission of vulnerability, if not made in earlier times even in secret, is taken for granted today by every analyst, because time has done its levelling best to put everyone’s military hardware on a more or less equal footing. As for the “partners”, these are the six oil exporting nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Bahrain, one of the nations of said Council or Congress (aka Manama Dialogue security forum) and the host to the conference may indeed buy additional military equipment from the U.S. military industrial complex. However, the same reasons why the U.S. paid attention to Russian cautioning are also operative with regard to Bahrain. As the readers who may be sceptical with regard to this writer’s reasoning know best: We will believe only if we witness a demonstration of the ‘truth’; that is to say, a demonstration is pending and awaiting its day. All this writer can say to this is: We will see: after all, the predecessor to the suspected Kerry-Lavrov Pact is infamous for soon being betrayed.

 

Indeed, with the U.S. shifting “… its military attention, not to mention the bulk of its assets, to Asia,” as the RT article states, and because the secret agreement between Russia (and China) and the U.S. has not been officially announced, a demonstration may be an event one or all of six nations may expect to be the guinea pigs for. Just what form and shape a demonstration will take is for military experts to decide, but this author has always been impressed with the ability by some nuclear weapons to cause surges of electromagnetic pulse that may target a nation’s electric systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse , knocking out unprotected power grids. If such weapons may emit a directed  pulse, the demonstration may be a ‘test’ that deliberately ‘goes wrong’ yet provides the ‘proof’ for those who suspect but are uncertain of the existence of a secret treaty. Who will risk the prolonged (it may be years) recovery of one’s infrastructure?

 

The statements by Chuck Hegel are well within the bounds of face saving posturing—if such posturing is part of the agreement “with Iran”. It hurts no one if the cat scrapes the sand in his box obsessively: “We have deployed our most advanced fighter aircraft throughout the region, including F-22s, to ensure that we can quickly respond to contingencies,” he [the cat] said. “Coupled with our unique munitions, no target is beyond our reach.”

 

What the response of the F-22s may be to a ‘contingency’ that blows all the fuses and burns the electrical wiring of Saudi Arabia and Israel will be is unknown, but we may guess: nothing special, except for the panic in the offices of government historians that the first and last shot of WW4 went as unnoticed as the nonaggression pact proves itself (this time) to be trustworthy.

 

Still, we may expect that the Great Powers, knowing that a ‘test’ (just as a military manoeuvre) may metamorphose into the ‘real’ thing, will be watching events closely and tensely. The U.S. Defense Secretary has already told the world that all 40 naval vessels that were transferred to the Middle East are spending their time criss-crossing he Hormuz Straight and other bodies of water; while Russia advises the news media that it is withdrawing its naval fleet, even as everyone knows that ‘withdrawal’ is an ancient battle tactic; even as China, with its planned futuristic military base on the moon not yet ready http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2013/12/06/13/32/china-to-turn-moon-into-death-star , has  satellites or ‘death stars’ armed with missiles circling the globe for sure.

 

Eso’s Chronicles 246/ 32

Addendum 7—WW4

© Eso A.B.

In my blog 240/ “Addendum 3—Ecce Russia!” I ventured to suggest that Russia’s President Putin recently issued an ultimatum to the United States, re: stay out of Syria and Iran or else….

By all appearances the U.S. heard the message and desisted. How else is one to explain the sudden deflation of the war rhetoric, and the sudden unhappiness of Saudi Arabia and Israel, the two major hawks of war, both appearing disappointed  and threatening who knows what unilateral actions of their own.

If one listens the article contributed by Thierry Meyssan “The Abdication of Iran” at Voltairnet.com http://www.voltairenet.org/en one is led to think that the price of peace was that Iran was coerced into submission by the U.S. and Russia, both. Nevertheless, the events may have been more complex that that, because at the same time, not only did Russia stop the West from thrusting a spear into its own belly, but compromised the interests of Iran in such a way that, though it was needed to persuade the country to submit to certain U.S. demands, it was able to pull Iran back into its sphere of influence. That is to say, if Iran abdicated to the West, it could not do so without the acquiescence of Russia. Yet why would Russia acquiesce to the abdication of Iran to the West?

The answer is to be found in the fact, that it itself was put under threats by the west, especially by being surrounded by missile batteries ostensibly directed at Iran, but actually directed at Russia. Given this situation, Russia had no alternative but force the West to show its hand. Instead of a royal flush, all America held was a pair of aces, which was not enough of a trump to prevent, in case of a war, the infrastructure of its power lines from being knocked out, which would reduce the activities of it as a country to a standstill. In other words, all things considered, the West decided that it will not fight a war that leads to Armageddon.

This result is apparently understood by a broad circle of geopolitical strategists. For example, just a few days ago: a) NATO issued a statement that its forces will not stay in Afghanistan if the U.S. forces do not stay. I.E., Europe has no intention to confront either the Russian or Chinese military forces on its own; b) President Karzai of Afghanistan gave the U.S. something of an ultimatum of his own: no more drones, which suggest that Karzai is onto the fact that as a consequence of Putin’s challenge echoes are heard also in the East. If the West will not fight WW3 with Russia, why should it fight it with China? c) Europe and NATO issued an announcement that its forces will not remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014 if Afghanistan does not permit the U.S. forces to stay in its country http://www.nation.com.pk/national/04-Dec-2013/karzai-failure-to-sign-pact-would-end-mission-nato ; d) it did not take long for China to announce that http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25062525 it extended its air defense zone over East China Sea; and it was not many more days before it sent its only aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Straights. e) The Defense Department of the U.S. itself has issued an announcement that in five years time the military expenses would be reduced by 100 billion dollards. In other words, though unacknowledged by the Western Media, the news is going around that consumer economics has brought our planet to such a point that WW3 is at a practicalend and deterrence prevents WW4 from being fought.

As readers will know, it is my belief that WW2 and WW3 occurred within the brackets {[( )]} of WW1, which began a little more than a thousand years ago when the Goths (formerly Vikings) were forced out of the Black Sea area and reestablished themselves in the northwest of Europe, then began a prolonged war to recapture the East it had been forced to leave. The early wars of WW1&2 began as the Crusades. The last wars of WW3 are known as Wars of Arab Awakening or ‘Democracy Crusades’. These last of these wars centered on Syria with an aim to seize one of the flanks of Iran, then take advantage of the strategic location to make further inroads against the East. In short, by Russia calling the West’s bluff, WW1, WW2, and WW3 may now be considered as ended; and WW4 (unless…*) has been averted.

The short circuiting of WW4 brings to an end a major geopolitical threat waged against our planet by the West. It removes, once and for all, the U.S. sphere of influence from Europe and Asia, and returns these continents to the influence of Russia and China. The loss of these continents to the U.S. is acknowledged at this very time by the trip of the U.S. Vice-President Biden to China http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/05/21769284-biden-i-was-very-direct-with-china-president-over-air-defense-zone. No doubt, none of this could have happened without previous and secret agreements between the Russians and the Chinese as to the power arrangement over the area of their two adjoining continents.

Though military posturing may continue for some time http://rt.com/news/us-mideast-iran-nuclear-hagel-878/, we should expect significant changes in the tactics of European and Far East Asian countries. A notable event has already occurred when Ukraine chose to remain within the economic zone of Russia. Similar realignments of position are likely to occur in Moldova, the Baltic countries, and the German-Russian economic cooperation is likely to be renewed. Though the public may be puzzled over these changes, it can be brought to an understanding through the long overdue revelations about Europe’s ‘hidden’ history. This writers ‘rewrite’ of Oedipus Rex, re “Oedipus Rex Rewritten” may play a role in it, as its redacted ‘modern’ version is clearly designed to abolish the death penalty for the highest government officials of the West.

While it is too early to predict how these changes will revise the map http://htekidsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/World-Map-1.gif , we may venture a guess: 1) Russia will draw its borders along a line that begins at Vladivastok, moves west across northern China, then curves down the eastern border of Afghanistan, then curves west again along the Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, Iraq, on to the Mediterranean, then along the eastern borders of Egypt, Sudan, then the southern borders of Chad and Cameron, to the Atlantic Ocean, and then in a broad curve that moves north and embraces Europe to Russia’s own part of the Arctic Circle. China, for its part, may include in its sphere everything to its immediate east and south as far as and including Indonesia and Australia, and may include Madagascar and the southern half of Africa. As to the continent of South America, it may be left for the future to decide whether it attaches to the North American continent or prefers to retain its links with Europe.

* Saudi Arabia and Israel are two countries which find this realignment onerous to say the least, which is reason to be wary that they may instigate an incident that, they hope, may lead to broader conflict.

 

Eso’s Chronicles 245/ 31
Addendum 6—A Jackass Revolution
© Eso A.B.

No, I am not writing of the Ukrainian ‘Revolution’*.  Though more than a hundred thousand pretended to be ‘revolutionaries’, all fall on their face, because their anger is mere frustration and caprice that would not go away of its own accord. I am turning my attention in this blog to the ‘Greens’ or Greenpeace specifically. The answer to the failure of the latter is because they do not take their enemy seriously, who, as Pogo says: “Is us!”; re: Greenpeace is its own greatest enemy—because it refuses to recognize itself in the mirror.

What should Greenpeae see when the mirror is shoved in its face? I venture to suggest that it is not the color green, or trees, or wood, but ‘the most beautiful of them all’: the consumerin (with apologies to German), a society as it is at the present and which cannot be parted from its other significant, because Greenpeace is too much part of it. To make my point clearer, I will again quote Paul Virillio and his friend Sylvere Lotringer. Lotringer states (p253):

“There is at lest one sure thing: that politics now passes through nuclear power.” Virillio responds: “Yes. Through the military, in other words nuclear power, because the military is nuclear power. There is no civilian nuclear power. It’s obvious.”

I reply that it is not obvious at all when it comes to saving the wood. To save the wood, the enemy is not nuclear power, but the motor powered chain saw (I hear it even as I write this, as poor people of the countryside must resort to it to survive. What is obvious is that to stop the chainsaw one may have to sacrifice one’s arm or fingers, and maybe sit a decade or more in jail, not to mention be memorialized  by name on a Vietnam style monument in every capital city of the world. The last ought to be a contribution of those who currently put up the bail money in order not to turn the Greenpeace ‘heroes’ into martyrs.

If we bother to remember that chainsaws are made by the ‘workers’ on whose behalf the Bolsheviks fought the Russian Revolution, it might occur to us that the chainsaw is an invention and product of an urban mindset. Also, to stop producing of chainsaws and forbid their sale does not stop the utilization of trees, but results in its replacement by the two-man crosscut saw https://www.google.com/#q=two+man+saw+image , significant reduction in unemployment, and health improvement for a large segment of the population.

There are many critical pathways for Greenpeace to consider, and here is one:

     1.    Green is a Revolution waiting to happen, but is led by people who largely identify with an urban life style, and, therefore, will not let it happen;

2.    An identification with an urban lifestyle leads to a presumption that it is the leading lifestyle for all times, which necessarily leads to a repression of a rural or woods based lifestyle;

3.    An urban lifestyle fails in imagination, which failure leads it to identify the middle class with civil society;

4.    Which identification leaves the rest of society to join the “Potato Eaters” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Potato_Eaters as portrayed by a well-known painting by Van Gogh;

5.    ‘The potato eaters’ are then further reduced in relative importance and become the non- or undeveloped class of our species, a kind of white worm because it is never sees daylight;

6.    While the middle class or ‘civil society’ increasingly identifies with the military elite, it avoids military service except it joins the officer class by way of military academies, which makes it, on the theoretical level, immune to death;

7.    Which class leads ‘Civilization’ into the dead-end of endo-colonization or colonization of one’s own people and causing them to under develop;

8.    Which under developed are then reduced en masse to a dictated to ‘minority’, somewhat along the lines of an ant or termite colony, but with pheromones replaced by pharmaceutical drugs and the ear of a spy in ever cell phone;

9.    This guarantees that everyone forgets that Civil Society has already been exterminated along with the oral culture of the countryside and wood.

In his “Pure War 25 Years Later”, Paul Virillio makes a crushing statement (p104): “Before [the age of deterrence—auth.] civilian society was bled dry by war, now it’s crushed to death by peace.” Most of my fellow countrymen (Latvians) would identify with the first part of the sentence, but do not have enough experience with ‘westernized’ peace and democracy to agree with the latter part. In fact, they do not at present time agree with the latter part at all—and neither do the Russians or the Ukrainians. They identify consumerism with effortless scavenging and, coming as they are from an exploited minority, are readily identify with de facto thieves.

But here is a twist that can make the statement instantly acceptable to anyone living in a country where the majority has not yet joined the urban class or is being forcefully removed to it as the Chinese urbanites are reported to want to do with the inhabitants of their countryside: Civilian society is bled dry by urbanism, and now is crushed to death by the overbearing power of an urbanized ‘democratic’ dictatorship.

Imagine that all along the crisis that we live in and with is not the cause of war (though war plays a significant role in it), but is a consequence of the drive to urbanize, which is one with the dream to become a prince or princess. This in the name of ‘techne’ + ‘science’ or technoscience, and of courses those few who cannot live without presenting themselves to others as their superiors.

The last, of course, pull the purse strings of even the most dedicated opposition, which obliges them by changing the subject from ‘preservation of the wood’ to ‘climate change’: http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/97377 (Play this clip in your Computer's media player) . Just a few minutes of listening to Greenpeace spokespersons like Kumi Naidoo, the group’s international chief, proves that the organization is lurching from one issue to another [climate change-fossil fuels-global warming-CO2 emissions, but not leaving the planet greener or limiting urban sprawl] and after many years of wobbling on its axis failing to discover that at the root of its failure is the failure to stick to the subject of the death of the biosphere. It submits to the urban based corporations at any price; and attacks the weaker culprits rather than the stronger as in the case of choosing Russia for the ‘heroes’ on the Arctic Sunrise as their object of attack.

When in a difficult situation, as in the case of the arrest of its thirty (30) activists http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/From-peaceful-action-to-dramatic-seizure-a-timeline-of-events-since-the-Arctic-Sunrise-took-action-September-18-CET/, Greenpeace commits huge sums (3.6 million euro on bail) for legal fees to ensure that the Russians release their pseudo soldiers, rather than allow them (having received from them agreement) to be martyred in the name of a do or die issue (which Greenpeace claims its cause). In short, Greenpeace is playing games and jerking the public off with fairytales that tell that what it does results in ‘real’ orgasms and babies.

I would put up to Greenpeace a mirror with the image of Ludwig Wiebo, re: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_saboteurs_20131201. What do you say to this man, green ‘heroes’?

The tactics of Greenpeace activists is in sharp contrast to the suicide soldiers aka terrorists standing up to the Crusaders come to globalize the world in the name of the Pop ‘civilization’ of the West of which Greenpeace is part. While the word ‘terrorist’ has about the same meaning as ‘sin’ and NSA can find one guilty of it as readily as a priest can find a heretic, the real trouble is that Greenpeace is an organization writing (as the late Norman Mailer did) “Advertisements for Myself” while pretending to be some kind of heavy weight champion.

*An intelligent interview at RT http://rt.com/op-edge/continuing-protests-in-ukraine-706/ regarding the events in the Ukraine:

RT: Yanukovich said there are plans for further discussion of the shelf deal with EU. Has he caved in to the protesters then?
ST[Srdja Trifkovic]: No, he has not caved because he’s been saying all along that the road to European integration is not over and negotiations will continue. He is simply unhappy with the fact that at this moment of the time the EU didn’t offer a sufficient economic and financial inducement for Ukraine to take this path because the cost of Ukraine adjusting itself to European rules and regulations would be enormous and the benefits would become visible only 10 years down the road. And God only knows if the EU will even exist in 10 years hence.

This blogger willvouch for the correctn ess of ST's response, as Latvians are barely surviving EU's geopolitics in the Baltics.

Eso’s Chronicles 244/ 30
Addendum 5—Ecce Russia  IV?
© Eso A.B.

Though at this time Russia appears to have chosen the capitalist road to recovery and President Putin appears to be opposing the U.S. and NATO incursions into the territories of Russia’s former Empire as a reactionary and face-saving measure, perhaps for that very reason it carries little weight with anyone who looks at the future of capitalism with a critical and skeptical eye.

Likewise, the current demonstrations in Kiev, Ukraine http://rt.com/news/ukraine-protests-court-ban-538/ , in opposition to Ukraine President Yanukovich’s decision not to integrate into the EU economy fails to carry conviction for an outside observer opposed to globalization. There are several reasons for skepticism:

1)    on a superficial level centralization seems to have its advantages in the sense of being able to impose its authority over a wide area and, therefore, has wider support at least among the elite groups who share benefits with the center. However, its authority is weak, and appears to be choking on a fish bone stuck in its throat, because all the economic measures governments appear to be able to take involve diminishing returns for the public at large;

2)    while the EU and the West as a whole appear to be putting their bets on a future that continues to reflect an urbanized ‘Pop’ culture, there are good reasons to believe that this era of our ‘future’ has spent itself and is about ready to drop dead;

3)    from the geopolitical point of view, it is hard to deny that it appears that the West is expending an enormous amount of its resources in an attempt to surround Russia and China with military bases, and that it behooves the self-interest Russia and China to push back, even if at the expense of the nations along their borders, which, for reasons of their own, may prefer to be in the Western camp.

It is for reasons like the above why this writer, whose family roots are deeply set and identified with the spiritual, cultural, and economic recovery of one of these ‘border’ countries –Latvia—looks with expectant eyes more to the East than the West. At the same time, I see the call of some Ukranians for a “Revolution” http://rt.com/news/ukraine-protests-court-ban-538/ as nihilism of the nondeveloped (Paul Virillio’s term; see previous blog) readily subcumbing to capitalisms advertisement for itself as a result of overexposure to an urban lifestyle.

The fact that the city has replaced the nation (see blog 243) has set the stage for a Civil War, except that the war cannot be waged in terms of defense (because that war has already been lost), but must be waged to win. To win this civil war means for one of the sides to wait for the circumstances when the present victor falls to his knees through a lucky stroke delivered by an existential circumstance that is fortuitous for the health of our planet and decisively persuasive of the failure of liberal capitalism as an incontrovertible economic necessity. Of course, if one is able to analyze the existential weakness of the opponent with sufficient perspicacity http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-30/russell-napier-we-are-eve-deflationary-shock  for it to be persuasive, then the stroke against the back of the opponents’ knees may be delivered before the ‘act of God’ happens.

My readers know that for a long time now I have put the city and the wood at opposite poles. This is because I perceive the wood as a cross of animal and human characteristics, while I see the city as an artifice, where the latter is escaped (to some degree) only by the ruling elites, because these can indulge their animal instincts, whereas the majority of the city’s inhabitants are either slaves-castrates, soldiers, priests-astrologers, or concubines. It is in the artifice of the latter elite that politics has its beginnings as a dream-remembrance of life in the wood. Unfortunately, in the city the dream of democracy, unlike democracy in the wood, must always remain an ideal and beyond anyone’s ability to actually achieve.

Interestingly, life in the city imposes itself and imitates reality so persuasively that—even if the individual has spent his-her early years in the wood or the countryside—the community presumes its self-absorbtion to be natural and to always have been so. It is for this reason why the difference between life in the wood and the city does not become immediately apparent to those who live in one or the other sphere exclusively.

The above was dramatically illustrated by the Bolsheviks vs the peasants in the Russian Revolution, and is ever so briefly mentioned in the movie “Stalin” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxP7FNX2nqk (57-1:2.30), starring Robert Duvall. We note that as far as Stalin is concerned, it is the city people who have the priority over the people of the countryside and the wood. Though one can argue, with justification, that the reason the city had priority was because it was in the city that the factories were located and factory workers lived, and these had priority, because unless the Soviet Union industrialized quickly the West would soon take the opportunity to destroy it, yet an opposite perception was never advertised or allowed to surface either in the Soviet Union or in the West. The only ‘revolutionary’ deed enforced by the Bolshevik Party is that it never permitted consumerism (a capitalist priority) to ever take hold in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the prioritization of the city over the countryside and the wood became so ingrained in the Soviet mentality that as soon as the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the consumer mentality of its city people by way of Khrushchev seized the day, and party apparatchiks became the billionaires of ‘renewed’ Russia.

Even today, the Russian Times (RT), an internet news service, assumes that post-Soviet Russia is essentially in the capitalist camp, re: http://rt.com/op-edge/globalization-us-china-rivalry-478/ “…both Russia and China understand(ood) that as an economic, political and social program, Western Marxist ideology does not work, and both did well to rid themselves of it, even if in different ways.”

Which raises the question: Is an economy distinguished by whether it is East, West, North, or South, or whether it is between those who live in the wood or the city?

Eso’s Chronicles 243/ 29
Addendum 5—Ecce Kiev, Ukraine?
© Eso A.B.

When the stock market bubble of 1929 corrected itself, it fell 48%. I have heard say that when the present QE caused bubble corrects itself, it will fall by 40%. I believe that it is too optimistic an estimate by far. So, to set the reader up to be receptive to my ideas, I suggest the reader take 32 minutes and view the following clip with Grant Williams, dubbed an investment expert. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-30/grant-williams-flushing-impurities-qe-system . Though Mr. Grant’s perspective meshes with mine, I believe that in spite of his ‘realistic’ assessment of the present investment climate, he is far too optimistic; which means that I expect the economic climate in the world to deteriorate by some 80%. This of course means that our future will not look anything like what most of us know as the past in our lifetimes and that many of us, in fact, have no future to look forward to.

As I have been pointing out through many blogs, the foundations of the coming disaster were first constructed by the ‘liberalist’ princes about a thousand and a little more years ago, originating with the Viking robber barons, who—came fall and winter time—left their abodes in harsh northern Europe en masse to go Viking (wading) south—down the Volga, the Dniepr, the Don, Danube, and other Europeans rivers flowing south. As these Goths went south, they not only plundered, but took captive many sacred kings and held their life for a ransom. In time, the ransom evolved into a system of taxation, which held up the human population for ransom to whoever did the tax ordering and collecting.

If—as I theorize and suggest—the time before the Vikings was what Western anthropologists call the ‘dream time’ of the East and the West https://www.google.lv/search?q=aboriginal+dreamtime&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=FgSbUrPAJ4PPhAeCw4HgCQ&ved=0CEoQsAQ&biw=1093&bih=415 , a name first used for the space-time of the Australian aborigines, this ‘dream time’ (perhaps also ‘sweet sleep time’) was interrupted with a spear point thrust to the sleepers’ throats and, in case we moved and protested, actually thrust into our ribcage.

By today the descendants of this dream time have discovered and built by traveling down a highway known as Colonial Times another ‘dream time’ called America; and youths of Eastern Europe, including the Ukraine, riot for more of it http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25173719 in great numbers with a great number of politicians supporting them. The demonstrators in Kiev, Ukraine increasingly look like Black Friday consumer rioters at a Walmart in the U.S.

The rioters who are rioting today in the Ukraine and elsewhere, are--whether they know it or not--rioting in support of the violent tactics of the Vikings, re: violence to remove the peace, calm, and in-the-wood environment for that of the consumer product trashed deserts of modern cities and surrender the future of our planet for the que sera sera of an opium pipe dream.

For a brief look at the history of the city: it began as a temple in the wood: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2252364/The-lost-churches-Russia-The-abandoned-wooden-buildings-left-forgotten-forests.html Sometimes other buildings began to accrue around the church, perhaps of people seeking the protection of the gods on whose behalf the temples-churches were built, perhaps as convenient meeting places for men and monks about to defend their homeland. In the images of the abandoned Russian churches at the link above, we clearly see that their builders perceived them as existing in dream time. Indeed, the dream time (without being acknowledged as such) continues to exist at the very center of today’s Moscow as part of the Kremlin complex: Pokrovsky or St. Basil’s Cathedral http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil's_Cathedral .

Unfortunately, it did not take long before ambitious princes perceived the tactical advantages of a centralized place, re temple, fortified temple, castle, walled city, until today the city, having deforested its surround, is protected by the fact that it is a humongous entity of stone, bricks, concrete, and glass. As Paul Virillio says: “…the city has replaced the nation;”* moreover, the city is not only killing the nation (Riga in Latvia—despite its shrinking population--is a good example) and devouring our biological planet.

Now the progression from temple in the wood to a megalopolis may not make any sense, except when we realize that its momentum comes from its violence and ability to force the biological countryside (including people residing in it) to its will. If we take the American spy agency NSA as an example, the city today has progressed to the point that it can extend nodes of itself into even the wood or field http://nsabackups.com/about/_images/pg_hi_res/nsa_aerial.jpg , and use these ‘hidden’ nodes to invade the last abode of the wood and the wild: the subjective mind of human beings and cause its elimination by subjecting it to terror by exposure that is as  powerful, aka deadly as the eye of the Holy Trinity.

*Paul Virillio/ Sylvere Lotringer, “Pure War 25 Years Later” (p211).