This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The Clash Of Civilizations
Submitted by Ben Hunt via Salient Partners' Epsilon Theory blog,
Thomas Cole, “The Course of Empire: Destruction” (1836)
In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.
– Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” (1996)
The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion … but rather by its superiority in
– Samuel P. Huntington (1927 – 2008)
The argument now that the spread of pop culture and consumer goods around the world represents the triumph of Western civilization trivializes Western culture. The essence of Western civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac. The fact that non-Westerners may bite into the latter has no implications for their accepting the former.
– Samuel P. Huntington (1927 – 2008)
Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.
– Samuel P. Huntington (1927 – 2008)
Q: What do you think of Western civilization?
A: I think it would be a good idea.
– Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948)
|
Adrian Veidt: |
It doesn't take a genius to see that the world has problems. |
|
Edward Blake: |
No, but it takes a room full of morons to think they're small enough for you to handle. |
– “Watchmen” (2009)
Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge.
– Ray Bradbury, “Fahrenheit 451” (1953)
Upon learning of Cardinal Richelieu’s death, Pope Urban VIII is alleged to have said, “If there is a God, then Cardinal de Richelieu will have much to
– Henry Kissinger, “Diplomacy” (1994)
Corrupt politicians make the remaining ten
– Henry Kissinger (b. 1923)
Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world.
– Henry Kissinger (b. 1923)
The most fundamental problem of politics is not the control of wickedness but the
– Henry Kissinger, “A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22” (1957)
Order should not have priority over freedom. But the affirmation of freedom should be elevated from a mood to a strategy.
– Henry Kissinger, “World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History” (2014)
A more immediate issue concerns North Korea, to which Bismarck’s nineteenth-century aphorism surely applies: “We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.”
– Henry Kissinger, “World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History” (2014)
In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by
– Henry Kissinger (b. 1923)
|
Isaac: |
Has anybody read that Nazis are gonna march in New Jersey? Ya know? I read it in the newspaper. We should go down there, get some guys together, ya know, get some bricks and baseball bats, and really explain things to 'em. |
|
Party Guest: |
There was this devastating satirical piece on that on the op-ed page of the Times, just devastating. |
|
Isaac: |
Whoa, whoa. A satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point of it. |
|
Party Guest: |
Oh, but really biting satire is always better than physical force. |
|
Isaac: |
No, physical force is always better with Nazis. |
– “Manhattan” (1979)
Lots of quotes this week, particularly from my two favorite war criminals – Sam Huntington and Henry Kissinger. Everyone has heard of Kissinger, fewer of Huntington, who may have been even more of a hawk and law-and-order fetishist than Kissinger but never sufficiently escaped the ivory towers of Harvard to make a difference in Washington. Like me, Kissinger bolted academia at his first real opportunity for a better gig and never looked back, which is probably why I always found him to be so personally engaging and fun to be around. Sam Huntington … not so much.
But Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” argument is not just provocative, curmudgeonly, and hawkish. It is, I think, demonstrably more useful in making sense of the world than any competing theory, which is the highest praise any academic work can receive. Supplement Huntington’s work with a healthy dose of Kissinger’s writings on “the character of nations” and you’ve got a cogent and predictive intellectual framework for understanding the Big Picture of international politics. It’s a lens for seeing the world differently – a lens constructed from history and, yes, game theory – and that’s what makes this a foundational topic for Epsilon Theory.
Huntington and Kissinger were both realists (in the Thucydides and Bismarck sense of the word), as opposed to liberals (in the John Stuart Mill and Woodrow Wilson sense of the word), which basically just means that they saw human political history as essentially cyclical and the human experience as essentially constant. Life is fundamentally “nasty, brutish, and short”, to quote Thomas Hobbes, and people band together in tribes, societies, and nation-states to do something about that. As such, we are constantly competing with other tribes, societies, and nation-states, and the patterns of that competition – patterns with names like “balance of power” and “empire” and “hegemony” – never really change across the centuries or from one continent to another. Sure, technology might provide some “progress” in creature comforts and quality of life (thank goodness for modern dentistry!), but basically technology just provides mechanisms for these political patterns to occur faster and with more devastating effect than before.
The central point of “Clash of Civilizations” is that it’s far more useful to think of the human world as divided into 9 great cultures (Huntington calls them civilizations, but I’ll use the words interchangeably here) rather than as 200 or so sovereign nations. Those cultures – Western, Orthodox (Russian), Islamic, African, Latin American, Sinic (Chinese), Hindu, Buddhist, and Japonic – are persistent and profoundly influential in ways that national borders and national institutions aren’t. Huntington argues that these 9 cultures are the most meaningful current expressions of the human animal’s inherent social imperatives, and that the logic of competition between these cultures explains and illuminates human history far better than competing notions, particularly those (like Marxism and liberalism) that assume an up-and-to-the-right direction to the arrow of history.
Marxism and liberalism are inherently optimistic visions of human society. Things are always getting better … or they will be better just as soon as people wake up and recognize their enlightened self-interest … as ideas of proletariat empowerment (Marxism) or individual rights as instantiated by free markets and free elections (liberalism) inexorably spread throughout the world. For realists like Huntington and Kissinger, on the other hand, this is nonsense. Free markets and free elections are good things (as is proletariat empowerment, frankly), but these central concepts of liberalism only mean what we Westerners think they mean if they exist within the entire context of Western culture. To insert the practices and institutions of liberalism into the Sinic culture, for example, might look awfully pretty to the Western eye and fill us with righteous pride, but it’s just a veneer. It won’t stick. The West may very well want to impose the practices and institutions of free markets and free elections for its own self-interest, and China may want to adopt the practices and institutions of free markets (but not free elections) for its own self-interest, but the logic of self-interest is a VERY different thing than the triumphalist claim that the liberal ideas of Western free markets and free elections are “naturally” spreading throughout the world.
A brief aside here on the distinction between personal beliefs and useful models. I’m not saying that I believe that authoritarian regimes and jihadist despots have some sort of moral equivalence to liberal governments, or that human rights don’t matter, or any of the other tired bromides used to tar realists. On the contrary, I personally believe that everyone in the non-Western world would be better off … MUCH better off … if their governing regimes gave a damn about individual rights and liberties in the same way that ANY governing regime in the West does. I believe that the principles of liberalism are the best ideas on social organization that the human animal has ever devised, and I’d like to spread these ideals into every corner of the globe. And you know what? On a personal level, Sam Huntington and Henry Kissinger believed exactly the same thing. Kissinger fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He won the freakin’ Bronze Star for his work tracking down Gestapo agents in Hanover. Does that sound like a moral relativist? Huntington served in the Jimmy Carter administration, for god’s sake. Talk about personal sacrifices …
But what a realist recognizes is that our personal vision of how we would like the world to be is not an accurate representation of The World As It Is, and – as Huntington wrote – it’s false, immoral, and dangerous to pretend otherwise. The World As It Is today includes the birth of an Islamic Caliphate, effectively erasing Western colonialist borders from Iraq to Syria to Libya as it spews anti-modern carnage. The World As It Is today includes the violent sundering of Ukraine along Orthodox/Western cultural lines. The World As It Is today includes an insane Sinic theocracy in North Korea with nuclear weapons. The World As It Is today includes a Japonic culture that is, in a very real sense, dying. Is a realist happy about any of this? Is a realist satisfied to shrug his shoulders and retreat into some isolationist shell? No, of course not. But a realist does not assume that there are solutions to these problems. Certainly a realist does not assume that there are universal principles like “free and fair elections” that can or should be applied as solutions to these problems. Some problems are intractable because they have been around for hundreds or thousands of years and are part and parcel of the Clash of Civilizations. They’re not going away no matter how hard some American President stomps his feet or how many drones he releases or how stern an op-ed piece is printed in the New York Times or how warm and fuzzy we feel when we see a picture of an Iraqi woman proudly displaying her finger freshly inked from voting. Yes, I know I’m an a-hole for criticizing the whole “purple revolution” thing. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
Kissinger wasn’t kidding when he said that there were two and exactly two solutions to international problems: 1) hegemony (i.e., empire) over the opposing Civilization, or 2) balance of power with the opposing Civilization. The problem, of course, is that Door #1 is awfully expensive. For example, if you’re not prepared to push Germany into recession and risk a lot of lives – and I mean a LOT of lives – by expanding the NATO umbrella over Ukraine, then there’s no way you’re going to reverse a basic balance of power reality like “Russia gets a warm water port on the Black Sea, no matter what the petty satraps in Kiev think about that”. Sorry, but that’s the “solution” if you’re not happy with Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, and I have yet to meet anyone who’s willing to pay that price. Are there aspects of The World As It Is where you ARE prepared to pay the high price of empire to prevent a balance of power equilibrium? It’s a short list for me, but yes, there is a list, headed by the preservation of Israel and South Korea as (largely) Western outposts in the middle of non-Western cultures. Is nation-building in Afghanistan on the list? Don’t make me laugh.
I think the crucial issue here (as it is with so many things in life) is to call things by their proper name. We’ve mistaken the self-interested imposition and adoption of so many Western artifices – the borders between Syria and Iraq are a perfect example, but you can substitute “democracy in Afghanistan” if you like, or “capital markets in China” if you want something a bit more contentious – for the inevitable and righteous spread of Western ideals on their own merits. This is a problem for one simple reason: if you think Something happened because of Reason A (ideals spreading “naturally” and “inevitably” within an environment of growing global cooperation), but it really happened because of Reason B (practices imposed or adopted out of regime self-interest within an environment of constant global competition), then you will fail to anticipate or react appropriately when that Something changes.
And here’s the kicker: change is coming. The Clash of Civilizations is not going to get better in 2015. It’s going to get worse. Why? Because for the past five years we have had a US government that was willing to pay the high price of empire to extend its monetary policy hegemony over the entire world to save the infrastructure of modern Western civilization: the US banking system and its collateral assets. Five trillion dollars later, the Fed has now declared victory and is demobilizing the QE troops. Is it a lasting victory? I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. It’s a useless question. In the immortal words of Bill Parcells, you are what your record says you are, and the Fed’s record looks pretty darn good. So they’re declaring victory and that’s how it will go down in the history books. The better question is: what now? What happens in the rest of the world now that the peace-keeping and price-raising and prosperity-bringing delivered by five trillion dollars in asset purchases … stops?
Part of the answer – a small part of the answer – is that other central banks with printing presses will try to take up some of the slack. The BOJ will continue to weaken the yen and monetize the government’s debt, and the ECB will do the same thing, although they will do less and will be forced to jump through bizarre hoops to preserve the pleasant fiction that they’re not monetizing government debt. I say that this is a small part of the answer to the question of “what now?” – even though if you listen to the prognosticators in financial media you would think that this is the entire answer – because monetary policy divergence, as important as it is, pales in comparison to political divergence. I don’t think it’s an accident that Ukraine starts ripping itself apart as the largest monetary experiment in the history of man starts to wind down. Or that ISIS starts to remap the entire Middle East. Or that North Korea attacks Sony. Or that the price of oil drops by half as OPEC faces its greatest existential threat. Did the Fed cause these events? Of course not. But they’re not unrelated. They’re all part of the fabric of global deleveraging. This is what happens when you have a global debt crisis and politicians respond to maintain the status quo by any means necessary – the political center does not hold. Whether you’re talking about the 1870’s or the 1930’s or today, it’s always the same story … domestic coalitions and sovereign nations and international alliances that were held together by mutual absolute gains in the good times are driven apart by relative gains and losses in the bad times, and those domestic coalitions and sovereign nations and international alliances that bridge two ancient civilizations are thrown into the centrifuge most of all.
The market flash points for 2015 are not limited to the obvious suspects, like Ukraine and ISIS. In fact, most of the obvious suspects are not terribly impactful on major markets, and some have the perverse effect of providing “good news” for markets the worse their situation becomes. For example, to the degree that Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia damage German growth rates, the market believes that this forces still greater ECB market accommodation and direct propping-up of financial asset prices in the Eurozone. The non-obvious suspects I’m looking at are countries that, like Ukraine, find themselves with one foot in one civilization and one foot in another but, unlike Ukraine, are much more central to global markets. Those countries are Greece, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and South Korea. I wrote about Greece two weeks ago, so won’t repeat all that here. Turkey, Iran, and Egypt are all the same basic story – ancient civilizations that had their day in the sun many centuries ago and are now being consumed by the Borg-like entity that is Islam. Persia, the most potent of the three cultures, is completely lost. Egypt is lost but hasn’t realized it yet, like a chicken running around with its head cut off. Turkey, the least of the three, has adopted enough Western antibodies to provide some resistance, but it’s just a matter of time before it becomes the Sick Man of Europe once again. South Korea … judging from how little it is discussed in the Western press it sometimes seems like no one cares about South Korea, and that’s a mistake. No country on earth is split between more civilizations, and no country is as sensitive AND vulnerable to the clashes that are coming down the pike.
So … am I terrified by the Clash of Civilizations? Am I getting out of the market and running for the hills? No. Not yet, anyway. So long as the market is dominated by the Narrative of Central Bank Omnipotence, any of these flash points that I’ve mentioned will inevitably be seen through the lens of monetary policy accommodation, making bad news in the real world good news for major stock markets, particularly here in the US. Global growth will get even more pathetic, of course, but that’s positive for major government bonds. Of all the flash points above I’m probably most concerned about Greece, but even then the concern is more for what Greece ultimately means for Italian politics than for what it means to Europe or major global markets directly.
What scares me about the Clash of Civilizations is that the three leaders of the three biggest civilizations – the US (Western), China (Sinic), and Russia (Orthodox) – will misplay their hands and take on another civilization directly or, worse, take on each other, and that will vaporize the Narrative of Central Bank Omnipotence in a nanosecond. The existential risk here for markets is not that China/Russia/Europe/America might “collapse”, whatever that means. No, the existential risk is that the great civilizations of the world will be “hollowed out” internally, so that the process of managing the ten thousand year old competition between civilizations devolves into an unstable game of pandering to domestic crowds rather than a stable equilibrium of balance of power. Don’t take my word for it. Take the word of America’s finest diplomat since Benjamin Franklin, writing in his final book and delivering his most important warning.
Side by side with the limitless possibilities opened up by the new technologies, reflection about international order must include the internal dangers of societies driven by mass consensus, deprived of the context and foresight needed on terms compatible with their historical character. As diplomacy is transformed into gestures geared toward passions, the search for equilibrium risks giving way to a testing of limits. …
Because information is so accessible and communication instantaneous, there is a diminution of focus on its significance, or even on the definition of what is significant. This dynamic may encourage policymakers to wait for an issue to arise rather than anticipate it, and to regard moments of decision as a series of isolated events rather than part of a historical continuum. When this happens, manipulation of information replaces reflection as the principal policy tool.
– Henry Kissinger, “World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History” (2014)
I can’t over-emphasize how important I think this passage is, and I’ll be returning to it again in future Epsilon Theory notes. For now, though, I’ll just introduce two key game theoretic concepts at the core of Kissinger’s warning.
First, the proliferation of the most dangerous game of all – Chicken. When Kissinger writes about how “the search for equilibrium risks giving way to a testing of limits”, he’s talking about how ordinary diplomatic maneuvers can deteriorate into brinksmanship, the hallmark of the game of Chicken. I’ve written a little bit about this game in the context of the Fed-inspired “Taper Tantrum” in the summer of 2013, when Bernanke et al misread the market impact of a change in the acceleration of monetary easing, but that little episode will look like a gentle spring shower compared to the market storm that could result from a full-scale game of Chicken between, say, China and Japan over trade, exchange rates, and offshore oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea. Chicken is such a dangerous game because it has no equilibrium, no outcome where all parties prefer where they are to where they might be. This constant cycling of one unstable outcome to another typically ends in disaster because the least worst outcome for each player – the “move” that each player makes to respond strategically to the other player’s most recent limit-testing actions – doesn’t remain constant but gets progressively worse over time. The game of Chicken is a mutual spiral into oblivion, and once you start down this road it’s really hard to stop because stopping means admitting defeat.
Second, the dumbing-down of all political games into their most unstable form – the single-play game. When Kissinger writes about how political leaders come to see “moments of decision as a series of isolated events”, he’s talking about the elimination of repeated-play games and shrinking the shadow of the future. Most games seem really daunting at first glance. For example, the Prisoner’s Dilemma is famous for having a very stable equilibrium where everyone is worse off than they easily could have been with some very basic cooperation. But there’s a secret to solving the Prisoner’s Dilemma – play it lots of times with the same players. Cooperation and mutually advantageous equilibria are far easier to achieve within a repeated-play game because reputation matters. The shadow of the future looms large if you’re thinking not only about this iteration of the game and the moves ahead, but also about the next time you have to play the game, perhaps for larger stakes, and the next, and the next. Imagine if you sat down at a poker table, were dealt one hand, and were then informed that everyone would have to get up and find another table with new players, at which point only one hand would be dealt there, too. That’s a series of single-play games, and it’s just as unpleasant as it sounds, whether you’re playing poker or you’re playing politics.
It won’t surprise many regular readers of Epsilon Theory if I say that I think much of what Kissinger warns about – “societies driven by mass consensus”, “gestures geared towards passions”, “manipulation of information” – has now reached, if not its full fruition, then at least a new quantum level of advanced and ubiquitous practice. And not just in the US, but also Russia and China and everywhere in between. Twenty-three years after Sam Huntington first presented his “Clash of Civilizations” argument, the conditions for that realist confrontation to be terribly severe are finally met. 2014 wrote an unpleasant story of nascent international splintering and conflict. Unfortunately, I think it was just an introductory chapter in a much longer book.
»
- 35624 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Your wife is obviously a Westerner (won't say "American" for meaning of that particular world often eludes me considering that true Americans are native Indians, and not you newcomers right?). Any half-wit would see and know that, but evidently not you, libtard!
// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })();]]>"True Americans" The only true anything are Africans if the Anthropologists are to be believed. Your true Americans came across on an Asian land bridge IMS..
Washington Consensus, which now is the West consists of these power groups: 1) Military Industrial Security Complex 2) Extraction industries such as Oil and Minerals 3) Farm Lobby 4) Zion and Israel lobby. 5) Electrical power, which is a subset of Extraction, as they use earths minerals to make energy.
There are four pillars of civilization: 1) Monetative 2) Law 3) Religion 4) Government
The West has allowed the four pillars to become unbalanced, especially with Monetative taking over. Russia was turned into an extraction economy due to Harvard Boys (Jews). Simultaneously, Russia was turned into an Oligarchy from Credit means borrowed in wall –street. This was another in-group Jewish attempt at control. Jewish maneuvering must be accounted for, as Zion is international banking.
Russia’s Orthodox Christianity did not die off in Bolshevik (Jewish) purges of the 20 Century, which may have killed 30 or 40 million White Christian Russians.
Putin sent the head of the Russian Orthodox Church to Syria, when he stated the West will no longer expand toward Russia’s borders. This also was to protect Syrian Christians. Putin has told Islamic adherents in the Crimea, norm to Russian civilization norms, or leave. The religious pillar is coming under rational formation.
China has maintained their STATE BANKS and hence has not allowed Western Private Banking money power to take over their society. This form of private money power goes back to the Neolithic period and advent of metal money. China is playing a sophisticated game with Western Money Masters. Pay attention: China forgives debt instruments routinely, thus changing the nature of their money supply to have floating sovereign money. China spends this money into channels of production, thus stealing Western Jobs. They then cycle the dollars/euros back into capital markets buying up debt, keeping western bond holders quiet. Very Very Smart and playing Western Bankers for fools, while taking jobs and learning rapidly. Capital markets are enjoying the wage arbitrage and their parasitic existence, and they cannot let go of the rents. Ask yourself about China’s religious pillar?
Russia is in full control of her borders and now has money power and a powerful protector in China. Russia is re-asserting Orthodox Christianity and bringing her civilizational pillars into balance and alignment.
cf. http://www.amazon.com/Against-Our-Better-Judgment-History/dp/149591092X/...
{check out the comments}
Here is an outstanding book on the lead up to the Balfour Declaration:
http://www.balfourproject.org/balfour-and-palestine/
"One of the most shattering and shaming indictments of British Foreign policy ever framed has recently come to light in a collection of state documents compiled by Doreen Ingrams and entitled “Palestine Papers 1917-1922, Seeds of Conflict” (John Murray, 1972). As the Foreword very properly reminds us, ‘the (Palestine) conflict began not in 1948 but in 1917? with the publication of the Balfour Declaration, and to understand the intensity of the hatred which exists today between the Arabs and Israel, it is necessary to go back to that crucially important watershed in the history of the Middle East. But Mrs Ingrams does a lot more than merely recall how the eviction of the Arabs of Palestine to make way for the creation of the Israeli state began more than half a century ago. Letting the record speak for itself, she also lays bare the cynicism with which British Ministers at that time committed themselves to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, with a total and deliberate disregard for the rights and interests of the Arabs who then numbered 92 per cent of the country’s population."
http://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Papers-1917-1922-Seeds-Conflict/dp/19060...
What you will read in this book will end all the arguments of the Zionists, as it shows two things without equivocation:
- What the Zionist wants, the Zionist takes.
- Every word out of the mouth of a Zionist is a lie.
revoked ..... really bad mood
Are there aspects of The World As It Is where you ARE prepared to pay the high price of empire to prevent a balance of power equilibrium? It’s a short list for me, but yes, there is a list, headed by the preservation of Israel
Oh. Hey guys, I figured out what this essay is about!
All this is why the United States should exercise its right, per Article 16, of the obscure, globalist Cold War sop to Soviet paranoia...the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and unilaterally withdraw.
Then using "national sovereign powers" (Treaty forbids) go back to the Moon for fun, adventure, exploration, and PROFIT. Everyone wonders why we never went back...the answer was very simple: it was never a paying proposition, the UN bureaucrats (and LBJ Democrats) took away the risk--reward principle.
The article begins with a false premise,
argues with false logic,
and concludes with meaningless and misdirected generalization.
The foreign policies of the MIC & global finance, or Russia, or China
are NOT, as the article claimed, developed by the general public,
nor directed to "pander" to the general public.
The failure to acknowledge the real reasons how and why foreign policies
are made opens the door for all manner of imaginative wordplay and fantasies.
For example, Kissinger is not a "realist" as portrayed in the article, but instead is more accurately described as an elitist sociopath.
The crass pursuit of power in disregard of any morality should not be described as "realism".
Damnit!
You just sucked all the fun out of the party.
Yes, it's a very low brow imitation of real serious commentary on a subject like Civilizations. Agree aboiut Kissinger; the Author is counting on the poor general knowledge of the population to pull it off; as so many do now. Also the clanger about Israel being worth fighting for seriously, at high stakes, to maintain empire---as the poster above you points out; this is crazy. there's no way to parse this into a sensible statement.
excellent.
I'm not sure the term "realist" actually has much meaning. Is Zbig a "realist"
Probably
http://www.iep.utm.edu/polreal/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-intl-relations/
But is Zbig anything like Stephen Walt?
Samantha Powers is purportedly a "neoliberal" R2P type - but the net result is that both Power and Zbig are behind military intervention and violence in arenas that have nothing to do with American national security. Walt recognizes, with others, that interventionism creates blowback, and Israel, for example, actually endangers American national security and diplomatic power {if not the economy or electability and media coverage of obedient pols}. For the neocons, of course, no evidence, even out of the mouths of bin Laden and Sheik Mohammed, would convince them of any of that.
What motivated the 9/11 hijackers to attack the US?The realists, neoliberals, and neocons may have different alleged worldviews or plans - but the net result is inevitably a lot of death and destruction, and use of American military might in other than defensive sorties and incursions.
Ben Hunt takes his ramblings seriously, calling them “epsilon theory!!” Good grief – this is almost embarrassing? But I will concede one point. He is honest enough to reveal his true intent. “The preservation of Israel…...”
This is what “Epsilon Theory” is about. Everything else is distraction and slight of hand.
How does one respond this stuff?
Let me respond by bringing up a topic, which to mention is almost a breach of etiquette. But I will mention the topic anyway. 9/11. Where do the events of 9/11 fit into the clash of civilizations.
9/11 was a Mossad operation with lots of help from the locals, tribe and non-tribe alike. Thus, when Putin stands up to “my” government in Washington, he is standing up to the government that helped 9/11 happen, or that let it happen. This means that Putin is not the point man of an opposing civilization, but rather, he is a man who is doing something that might actually help me overcome a cabal of brutal and dangerous aliens.
Of course, Ben Hunt might think that 9/11 was pulled off by a man in a cave on a dialysis machine.
Well, in that case, let’s debate 9/11.
No, no, I take that back. that's not what I propose, this is: let’s have a real, open, honest debate about Israel. In this debate, let’s put the emphasis on ourselves by asking: what’s in it for us?
One clear benefit of an honest debate about our relations with Israel is that we could then dispense with the vapors of nine civilizations.
IN the final analysis, there is only profit from enslavement.
This is all very well, but: One Good sized EMP mode Nuclear bomb high over a continent, say USA, renders all devices void except those heavily shielded. 90% of the population dies within a year, by starvation, infighting etc. This whole world situation is a tense and escalating insane Mexican standoff, guns to heads, with many heavy hits like the EMP retaliation possible.
Reading the comments on a thread like this, the same thought always comes to my mind:
What are these people complaining about?
The Jews are smarter than us.
The Jews have tricked us.
The Jews are evil because they are smarter than us and have tricked us.
It's like listening to a sermon from the Nation of Islam-- who has the exact same viewpoint as you guys. Why don't you all get together and form a mass movement?
It is a simple matter of stripping the money power away from the "international' and returning it to the law. The law in turn must be equitable. This means sovereign money, properly formed. Alternative money systems can be designed and I and others have our hand in that.
It is not that Jews are smarter, it is that they are working as an in-group, funded by a pipeline of usury. Also, Kaballah and Talmud are formed to have in-group blood lines and psychopathy, hence allowing behaviors that are not within civilization norms. This includes Kol Niedre prayers, Crypto behavior, and taking a very long - centuries long view. Normal people have a hard time comprehending something so outside of civilizational norms.
That said, their weakest point is the funding tap root. The money system has to be re-formed. Credit mechanism should not fund the "international." This is making people pay for their own enslavement and dispossession. Anybody who has deep understanding of monetary history and how money works cannot but see these truths.
The movement should be around repairing the money system, which then defunds and strips away the oxygen.
The first step to fixing a problem is to understand it. Understanding means dispelling a lot of myths that have been funded with propaganda. If the usury mechanism is 40% of prices, then the amount of money pilfered in rents is astronomical. This is why people are working harder than ever, yet the industrial revolution was put into hyper-drive with advent of high speed telecommunications and computers. Where is the liesure dividend?
If usury funding goes to pay a power mad group at the world government, then that is bad for humanity. Humanity should not be ruled by unelected shadow masters in thrall to religious precepts that have psychopathy as a core value.
The Author of this article gets so many things wrong it is almost not worth replying. For example, Woodrow Wilson said, "I fear I have destroyed my country." If one does not know about the Aldrich ammendement, the machinations of bankers to get Woodrow elected, then WW1, then Balfour, Zionism and how they are all linked, then you get confusion in history. WW2 and clash of civilizations then follow and a huge amount of propaganda. Then add in a large dose of quoting Kissinger, a CFR operative, and shill for World Government, for crying out loud.
the male disease
Oh, cupcake,
EVERYBODY is smarter than you. That's your charm.
Hard to say if they are smarter since nothing they posit can be questioned lest you be labeled a anti-semite or, heaven forbid, a nazi. That has quite a chilling effect on critics. I know, I know, they have so many nobels......but they've only been giving those for what, 100 years or so, AND look at some of the winners - Krugman and Obama for fucks sake.
Thinking of Kissinger, maybe they are basically more sociopathic than most. Sociiopaths tend to be smart, charming, planners, etc.......
smarter is likely - by some degree, and it is likely more a contingent condition than a pure genetic or ineluctable one. That is, IQ is very greatly influenced by environment. Being a rich suburban kid and going to good schools, or even ones that are more 'expensive' than actually academically rigorous, is a pipeline to the Ivies - where Jews are wildly over-represented, at the expense of equally/better qualified non-Jewish whites and, of course, Asians....
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2014/09/steven-pinker-on-harvard-ad...
That is, Jews would likely be over-represented to some degree, and that's fine - but the degree of over-representation doesn't make much sense.
As for criticizing Israel, or Jewish power, or the Jewish religion - apart from absurd expressions of group hate/libel, which I would define out of 'criticism'. - yeah, I mean the first rule of Jewish Power is you do not talk about Jewish power.
Being Critical of Jews Is the Ultimate Taboo by Enza Ferreri
We should - not so much because of "Jewish" control of Hollywood and media, but the Zionist right, [so, a minority of a minority - probably around a third or so of Jews in the US - plenty of very reasonable Jewish liberals who are pro peace, and critical of the right wing form of Zionism] bolstered, of course, by 40-50 million Zionized "Christians" who worship "Israel" instead of Christ and pray for war and death rather than, you know, trying to make it disappear from the world.
well, then stick to COSMO, People or Marie Claire for your 'news'
I believe you insofar as you've represented that the same thought always comes to your mind.
To the ostentatious exclusion of any other.
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-Cll4RD9vvld9aC7f
https://archive.org/details/DouglasReedTheControversyOfZion
When you merely dismiss all criticism, with hackneyed ad hominem, without actually taking the time to apprehend that criticism... do you think that makes you a better or worse thinker?
Tarabel...if you took the time to do some reading of history, you wouldn't be so ignorant.
"What are these people complaining about?"
money-lending is parasitic and destroys the host
Russia and the US-UK-EU are the same civilisation, disagreeing over its direction.
The minor differences betweeen the two - Orthodox Christian vs. non-orthodox, internal colonisation vs. external colonisation - are noise on the s/n chart when one compares either to Asia/China/Sinic.
Maybe living in Asia has warped my perspective, but meeting a Russian here they may as well be from my immediate family we have so much more in common than with Asians. The differences are trivial.
Yes. Among it's many other failures the article tends to drive a wedge between Russian "Orthodox Christians" and the West, (US); to the benefit of whom ? The russian people are like Americans from 1949; self-reliant, tough, devoted to family and church, but they are us; not them.
The US has pushed Russia into an alliance with China. They have more to gain partnering with China than surrendering autonomy to the West.
I suspect that the US has miscalculated on an epic scale.
yes, that part of the article is standard "let's you and him fight".
A few years ago, when 2012 was trending, on a Financial blog, somebody asked, “Will the world come to an end in 2012?” The blogger replied, “No, the world will not come to an end in 2012, but the world as we know it will cease to exist.”
I take this to mean that wars, religious bigotry, hatred, suffering etc will come to an end. Not immediately. Give it time.
Ben Hunt
For some reason, you neglect to tell us that the major civilizations/chicken players have nuclear weapons.
Today Crimea IS Russia. A fait accompli. Russia has no interest in annexing Donbas in Eastern Ukraine. Only in seeing that they have some autonomy. And that they remain a demilitarized zone.
So far the Battle of Donbas as we have seen, is a battle for tactical position by the Ukrainian/NATO armies for their invasion of Crimea, which prolly ain't gonna happen. (somebody Go tell Aunt Rhody).
I wish that somebody, anybody would link me to to the rules and operating procedures of the Federal Reserve System that unequivocally states that before the Fed prints fiat, that there must be 3 readings of the motion. And that it must have a cutesy name.
Until I see how wrong I am about this, I will continue to believe that the Fed can print to its heart's delight and only tells the public when it is to its advantage to do so.
For example when Wall Street banksters are stumbling around all wobbly and the fronts of their trousers are urine stained and reeking. That's when the Fed will say:
I like the painting you chose to illustrate your article. Thomas Cole, “The Course of Empire: Destruction” (1836).
I think this one by John Martin (1825) is also suitable but much moar timeless. It is Satan supervising the building the seat of his Empire, Pandemonium, as it rises out of the depths of Hell as described by Milton.
http://goldenagepaintings.blogspot.com/2010/08/john-martin-pandemonium.h...
Neither Israel nor South Korea are really "Western" - although you could make an argument for South Korea, but if Japan is on its own, so should be Korea.
You would think the author of Getting to War
https://www.press.umich.edu/15234/getting_to_war
Would have something to say about transnational Zionism - the influence of Israel lobbies and "Zionists" embedded within not only Western states, but Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere. particularly given their unquestionably disproportionately large role in the very mass media Hunt claims is vital, to distill the matter to its essence - to lie the public into wars for reasons altogether unrelated to the reasons motivating the Deep State.
As to the Iraq war, there is no question that the Kristols and Perles and Wurmsers ad Feiths were doing anything but acting as an Israeli 5th column. That isn't to say the Iraq war was 'just' about them or one reason - the petrodollar, central banking, and war profiteering also motivated some actors. The point is simply that the neocons, largely, even mostly Jewish Zionists, were primarily concerned with Israel, and facilitating some version of the Oded Yinon plan, basically regurgitated in PNAC documents.
The following is worth a perusal, as to the primordial motivation of the "neocons" - but is interesting in its own right.
The Beasts of the Apocalypse (1959)I wonder if either of the two junkers [so far] has anything even approaching a coherent thought regarding their junk.
The neocons weren't Israel Firsters? They didn't call for the destruction of Iraq for years before 9/11? Which fact is so odious to thee? lol.
The biggest problem is Americans just don't give a phuck.
"We'll go watch the made for TV movie" and that's about it.
If the war is REALLY BIG Americans might attention...but this is a country that has had entire Cities burn to the ground an no one really thought too much of that.
Atlanta is probably the only exception.
It was ok until the quotes from the war criminal Kissinger. Sort of lost its sense of purpose at that point. Ok so Huntington was a no good too. Now I get it.
Open Source Software government and Q99X2 as King. Since a King won't have much to do and won't be respected under such a government I'll pretty much get to be the same.
Just another tedious blogger plying his wares. All too common around here.
tl;dr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvd0aMEHsac&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Conspicuous in its absence from the author's short list: Taiwan.
Apparently we can't buck our Chinese friends.
or Japan. same reason.
Americans need to prepare for the great embarrassment of failure to repay debt. That will be a shameful time. After that it can get on with living, trading, and working. Hopefully our creditors will be more understanding than we have been humble.
The country has made very significant sacrifices for the world and has produced great men and ideas. We got tempted by the irresistible pull of easy wealth and went astray. The exorbitant privilege was exploited and now we see the truth of Triffin's paradox. It will play out as it must and only then can we return to our senses.
Of course, the right way to play this is to bait the other two into fighting each other, or have a their proxies fight each other. Like false flag Pakistan fight Iran.
that is the one to worry...
Civilization is collapsing and imploding economically which gives rise to the stealth of victimization on the part of every market participant in the entire World. Never mind external chaos and mayhem because every
economiy in the entire World will nosedive and decend into hyperinflation everywhere. When every economy in the World tanks, flatlines, and fails to be productive, people will revolt with internal strife resulting in the overthrow and dismantling of the superstructure that has bound economies all over the World with a dark pool derivatives universe of $1.5 Quadrillion petrodollars that will eat the systems of economics that allowed it to manifest unchecked. Mathematics is pretty elegant stuff when it is simply understood and not ignored. No form of rhetoric can displace what is about to manifest when hyperinflation hits every single country in the World except the USA. Do Americans honestly think that the USA is going to short every economy in the World and then pee on all our legs and tell us it's raining? Kissinger was exactly like Milton Freidman in that he did not understand expectations either. Kissinger is yesterday's man and his perspective has little merit with regard to what is manifesting with regard to civilization today. World War Three is not going to be anything like World War Two IMHO.
Guess what? Russia and Canada met last night via my American phone. It was Angus McHugePenis and Mrs, M. Angus is a Canada goose and Mrs. M is a Russian Mig Head. They had a great chat for like two hours and they got along very well. Angus actually made my wife laugh which is not easy to do but he is a ZHer so I expected that from him. I was getting worried it was turning into phone sex.;-) I just sat here and played the national anthems of all three countries for ambience. It seemed to me that everyone would rather sit down and have drink together.
So we had Russia, Canada and the U.S. all talking and having some fun together and getting along just fine. There is one thing that we all share in common and that is that we all hate our governments and central banks. Go figure.
1.) "two favorite war criminals – Sam Huntington and Henry Kissinger" - where could one read what trial has rolled out such judgment? Or is it simply author and in same time ZH fantasy?
2.) In this mape - Ukraine is in Russian world and not EU. Than how come Ukraine is full of EU flags, people hanging out their window and they now have actual war with so called russian rebels? So this map is misleading or simply wrong.
Not a Chris Hitchens fan, eh?
The author likely doesn't know that East Ukraine is Orthodox while the West is Roman Catholic - or that not all the Catholics are Latin rite, many being Eastern or Byzantine Rite.
There's little difference between Latin and Greek Catholics, and not much more of a difference between Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and for that matter Anglicanism/Episcopalianism/Lutherism, and your more reasonable and intelligent Protestant sects.
The map is bullshit, but if Ukraine is lucky, it will avoid the IMF Riot and NATO trenchworks which have been planned for it.
Get this one: Mrs M told me that she didn't want to have her Russian accent anymore because she thinks it screws her job prospects. Her English is just fine but I was blindsided by that one. Woman, you are fine the way you are. She can't change who she is and why should she? She is not doing anything wrong just because has a bit of an accent. I think I will send her this one and then maybe she will be OK about. Credit is due here for this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVe95s6gH1s
I think most morons in HR departments would be terrified of that video and it is indicative of Russians. HR wants droolers and Russians aren't for the most part. Russians are not stupid people. No one hires anyone who they think might be smarter than they are.
The guy asks some great questions in that link.
really interesting comments, here
"Part of the answer – a small part of the answer – is that other central banks with printing presses will try to take up some of the slack. The BOJ will continue to weaken the yen and monetize the government’s debt, and the ECB will do the same thing, although they will do less and will be forced to jump through bizarre hoops to preserve the pleasant fiction that they’re not monetizing government debt."
mmmhhh... two very interesting details, here. first the "less", second, the "fiction" part. I'm puzzled about the author bringing them together
The banking mafia are using Washington to force allies to trash their currencies as a way of indirectly supporting the dollar.
We have been here before ......
The 1920s saw the end of the last globalisation phase.
The financial elite again were the weakest link in the global economy and everything changed after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 (2008).
Globalisation faded and nationalism rose, currency wars broke out.
Eventually this did lead to global war.
Wall Street is, as ever, the weakest link in the global economy.
Today's Western "Civilisation" = Grasping Totalitarian Talmudism
USSA, pUKe, IsraHell forming The Troika
How many of you has moved to live in Russia, China, North Korea?
That is the answer.
Russia and China are moving upwards and the West is moving downwards but the crossover isn't even visibly obvious yet let alone arrived. The only people currently in the process of moving to East Asia are the banking mafia because that is what they always do after destroying the previous tallest poppy from within.
This is BULLSHIT.
Kissinger believes that there is no good or bad - only interests.
He believes that the ruthless win and the meak inherit fuck all.
He believes that if you don't stomp on the weak somebody else will - and then they will stomp on you next because YOU are weak.
AND HE IS RIGHT. YOU may not like it but HE IS RIGHT.
Here is a summary of how the world works:
- The luckiest, fittest, smartest, with the capability for ruthlessness survive – always have – always will
- Resources are finite and therefore ownership is a zero sum game
- The strong always take from the weak – if they do not then that is a sign of weakness and a competitor will take from the weak and will usurp the formerly strong dropping them into weakling status
- Humans tend to group by clan or on a broader basis by nationality (strength in numbers bonded by culture) and they compete with others for resources
- Competition always exist (I want it all!) but it becomes fiercer when resources are not sufficient to support competing clans or nations
- Tribal societies understand these dynamics because they cannot go to the grocery store for their food – so they are intimately aware of the daily battle to feed themselves and the competition for scare land and resources
- Modern affluent societies do not recognize this dynamic because for them resources are not scarce – they have more than enough.
- One of the main reasons that resources are not scarce in affluent societies is because they won the battle of the fittest (I would argue that luck is the precursor to all other advantages – affluent societies did not get that way because they started out smarter --- rather they were lucky – and they parlayed that luck into advances in technology… including better war machines)
- As we have observed throughout history the strong always trample the weak. Always. History has always been a battle to take more in the zero sum game. The goal is to take all if possible (if you end up in the gutter eating grass the response has been – better you than me – because I know you’d do the same to me)
- And history demonstrates that the weak – given the opportunity – would turn the tables on the strong in a heartbeat. If they could they would beat the strong into submission and leave them bleeding in the streets and starving. As we see empire after empire after empire gets overthrown and a new power takes over. Was the US happy to share with Russia and vice versa? What about France and England? Nope. They wanted it all.
- Many of us (including me) in the cushy western world appear not to understand what a villager in Somalia does – that our cushy lives are only possible because our leaders have recognized that the world is not a fair place --- Koobaya Syndrome has no place in this world --- Koombaya will get you a bullet in the back --- or a one way trip to the slum.
- Religious movements have attempted to change the course of human nature --- telling us to share and get along --- they have failed 100% - as expected. By rights we should be living in communes --- Jesus was a communist was he not? We all know that this would never work. Because we want more. We want it all.
- But in spite of our hypocrisy, we still have this mythical belief that mankind is capable of good – that we make mistakes along the way (a few genocides here, a few there... in order to steal the resources of an entire content so we can live the lives we live) --- ultimately we believe we are flawed but decent. We are not. Absolutely not.
- But our leaders --- who see through this matrix of bullshit --- realize that our cushy lives are based on us getting as much of the zero sum game as possible. That if they gave in to this wishy washy Koombaya BS we would all be living like Somalians.
- Of course they cannot tell us what I am explaining here --- that we must act ruthlessly because if we don’t someone else will --- and that will be the end of our cushy lives. Because we are ‘moral’ --- we believe we are decent – that if we could all get along and share and sing Koombaya the world would be wonderful. We do not accept their evil premises.
- So they must lie to us. They must use propaganda to get us onside when they commit their acts of ruthlessness.
- They cannot say: we are going to invade Iraq to ensure their oil is available so as to keep BAU operating (BAU which is our platform for global domination). The masses would rise against that making things difficult for the PTB who are only trying their best to ensure the hypocrites have their cushy lives and 3 buck gas (and of course so that the PTB continue to be able to afford their caviar and champagne) …. Because they know if the hypocrites had to pay more or took at lifestyle hit – they’d be seriously pissed off (and nobody wants to be a Somalian)
- Which raises the question --- are we fools for attacking the PTB when they attempt to throw out Putin and put in a stooge who will be willing to screw the Russian people so that we can continue to live large? When we know full well that Putin would do the same to us --- and if not him someone more ruthless would come along and we’d be Somalians.
- Should we be protesting and making it more difficult for our leaders to make sure we get to continue to lead our cushy lives? Or should we be following the example of the Spartans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZeYVIWz99I
- In a nutshell are our interests as part of the western culture not completely in line with those of our leaders – i.e. if they fail we fail – if they succeed we succeed.
- Lee Kuan Yew is famous for saying ‘yes I will eat very well but if I do so will you’ Why bite the hand that whips the weak to make sure you eat well.... If you bite it too hard it cannot whip the weak --- making you the weak --- meaning you get to feel the whip….
- Nation… clan … individual…. The zero sum game plays out amongst nations first … but as resources become more scarce the battle comes closer to home with clans battling for what remains…. Eventually it is brother against brother ….
- As the PTB run out of outsiders to whip and rob…. They turn on their own…. As we are seeing they have no problem with destroying the middle class because it means more for them… and when the weak rise against them they have no problem at all deploying the violent tactics that they have used against the weak across the world who have attempted to resist them
- Eventually of course they will turn against each other…. Henry Kissinger and Maddy Albright bashing each other over the head with hammers fighting over a can of spam – how precious!
This is far more succinct:
http://www.maniacworld.com/big_fish.htm
Far too many conjectures here...
Are you advocating slave ownership? After all, it has been practiced for millennia...so it must be "human nature". Right?
So to sum up the article, Israel and the central banking mafia yay and everyone else nay buried among a cloud of chaff.
no soup for u!!!
There has been great civilization and the tribe of miscreants has been systematically dismantling it through their systems of degenerative music, art, etc. All set out in the protocols.
I read (too long) until it became clear that the author is a windbag who is blowing the wind of yet other windbags.
Order should not have priority over freedom. But the affirmation of freedom should be elevated from a mood to a strategy.
– Henry Kissinger, “World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History” (2014)
Either Kissinger is coming to his senses in his old age or he's trying to fuck me in the brain.
Too many quotes from Kissinger... the butcher of Chile (9/11/1973) and perpetrator of so many other black bag war crimes.
I believe with all my heart that the next "book" has already been written, and it's rather short:
The Book of Revelation, last book of the New Testament. Read it sometime.
If you like the taste of irony, consider this:
The average citizen of New York is more like the average citizen of Moscow than he is like the average citizen of either country's "flyover-country".
More ironic:
The average "Flyover-country" citizen in either Russia or the US more resembles one another in culture than either resembles their respective urbanites.
Spoken as a citizen of US "Flyover" country who has spent time in Russian Villages.
it cannot be! their respective flags look very different.
And consider this: the average citizen of New York is libtard trash, and we from the Russian culture do not want to have anything to do with those Zionist humanoid creatures... those animals! They are on their own.
// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })();]]>Little understood by mainstream economists, businessmen, politicians or media organizations is that social mood causes social action, not the other way around. I try to talk about this fact as often as possible because it is contrary to the way most of society believes things occur. For instance, people don’t get fearful and angry because war breaks out, war breaks out because people are already fearful and angry. That is no small distinction.
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/negative-social-mood-causes-geopoliti...
" war breaks out because people are already fearful and angry "
since when do people declare wars? or do wars somehow constitute themselves when there is fear?
people get fearful and angry because of conditioning aka social programming. there's nothing "endogenously regulated”, or subconscious about it. one just can't disregard the propaganda. what a load of crap!
The map is a rough approximation, but obviously you sense there is a lot of truth there, don't you? Germany should not be included in Western culture, as the Germans today are mostly made of Slavs who embraced German culture when those true Germanic tribes left and spread all over Roman Empire in 4th century. Today north Italians are for example all ethnic Germans, part of Spaniards are ethnic Germans (northwestern region of Asturia was Visigoths' creation e.g.), and some Germanic tribes even settled in Middle East (today Turkey and part of Syria). Lets also not forget that Saxons left for Britania. That said, it would be only natural to include Germany into our Russian culture and bring Germany into Russian fold. For too long have we battled amongst ourselves, it has to stop somewhere.
// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })(); // ]]>// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })(); // ]]>// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })();]]>p.s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs
There are some of our people in Germany even today which have not gone with us when we left for Balkans in 7th century.
p.p.s.
But we'll leave you Polocks, so don't be sad. They want to be part of your Western culture, so it's not for us to stop them. But we have to take Germany because of strategic balance you know. And don't you worry, we shall come to save you when the time comes. :)
// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })(); // ]]>// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })(); // ]]>// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })();]]>we, Slavs, have been dominant in Germany in the prehistoric and medeieval ages. Germany is today dominated by immigrants from Asia and Africa, moslems.
Germany, as you might know it from movies, picturing afterwar period, does not exist any more.
We, Slavs, are happy not being a part of western "culture".
We have a problem with western culture, based on jewism, talmudism and zionism.
You, western people, better keep it for yourself.
What is it which so frustrates dear Western cousins, hm? Something I said is not to your liking -- is it that? Well, I am sorry if I offended your myths by revealing some historical truths, dear cousins. That is exacly why we do not wish to be a part of that "Western culture." What is that anyway? Western culture. Never heard of such thing before WW2...
// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })(); // ]]>// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })();]]>Have any of you ever wondered why Syrian president Assad has blue eyes, and yet he is supposed to be a Semite, hm? You will find the answer in his Germanic origins. But I digress here. If you want us to be united, you'll have to accept our Russian culture for we will never accept that Zionist "Western" whatnot. Russian culture is by its very origin a Varangian culture, the Rus were all those who united under Rurik's banner. I think all you in the West can accept being part of Varangian culture, can't you? You should be able to. Anyway, if you want us to be united, you'll have to accept our Russian culture, for we shall never accept some Zionist "Western" myth.
// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })(); // ]]>// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })(); // ]]>// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })(); // ]]>// '; filtry.appendChild(div); }); })();]]>What a load of self righteous deluded nonsense...very funny and ignorant. The map of so called 9 civilisations alone will tell you this guy has head up Kissinger's rectum e.g how do you describe Argentina as 'Latin American civilisation' while claiming Spain is 'Western civilisation'? Or Korea is 'Sinic-Chinese civilisation'; Saudi Arabia and Iran are 'Islamic civilisation' and not Arab and Persian. He then goes ahead to make conclusions based on such false information. There is nothing more tragic than the illusion of knowledge.
From the article...
"I personally believe that everyone in the non-Western world would be better off … MUCH better off … if their governing regimes gave a damn about individual rights and liberties in the same way that ANY governing regime in the West does."
My theory is that the model of government that provides the most economic growth will be adopted outright or emulated via stealth measures. China, with its free markets and one party system have dealt the Western economies a blow by leaving them in the dust when it comes to growth.
Ok- what has been happening in the U.S. since 9/11? Are our individual rights and liberties expanding or contracting? Most on this site do not believe the 9/11 narrative and neither do I. This event, I believe, was the first step in moving the country closer to the winning economic model. On matters that really count we have a one party system. Neither the right or left challenges the banking sector, the justice system (corporations are people whose freedom of speech must not be inpinged- buy both parties, no problem,) the endless wars, free trade treaties designed to move market share not increase trade (TPP and TTIP.)
What about the NSA- spying on us, collecting info on us. Then we have the Dept. of Homeland Security providing military grade equipment to our police departments. Are these agencies part of giving a damn about our individual rights and liberties? Are we supposed to believe that the Patriot Act- an incredibly complex document- was not already written and just waiting to be rolled out?
So I really don't understand how the writer of this article can make the above statement unless he is referencing the way he perceives it to be, because America is looking more like China everyday and if the citizens don't start demanding representation soon then the transformation will be completed. If Bush and Clinton are offered up as our choices for president in 2016 then we are screwed unless we all grow a pair and send anyone else.