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Why We’re Drifting Towards World War 3
The Economist argues that there are ominous parallels between the conditions which led to the first world war and today:
The United States is Britain, the superpower on the wane, unable to guarantee global security. Its main trading partner, China, plays the part of Germany, a new economic power bristling with nationalist indignation and building up its armed forces rapidly. Modern Japan is France, an ally of the retreating hegemon and a declining regional power. The parallels are not exact—China lacks the Kaiser’s territorial ambitions and America’s defence budget is far more impressive than imperial Britain’s—but they are close enough for the world to be on its guard.
Which, by and large, it is not. The most troubling similarity between 1914 and now is complacency. Businesspeople today are like businesspeople then: too busy making money to notice the serpents flickering at the bottom of their trading screens. Politicians are playing with nationalism just as they did 100 years ago. China’s leaders whip up Japanophobia, using it as cover for economic reforms, while Shinzo Abe stirs Japanese nationalism for similar reasons.
The New Republic points out that global downturns can lead to war:
As the experience of the 1930s testified, a prolonged global downturn can have profound political and geopolitical repercussions. In the U.S. and Europe, the downturn has already inspired unsavory, right-wing populist movements. It could also bring about trade wars and intense competition over natural resources, and the eventual breakdown of important institutions like European Union and the World Trade Organization. Even a shooting war is possible.
The Telegraph notes that the economic crisis in Europe is increasing tensions:
Tensions between European countries unseen in decades are emerging.
(Indeed, Europe is stuck in a downturn worse than the Great Depression.)
Well-known economist Nouriel Roubini tweeted from the gathering of the rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum in Davos last year:
Many speakers compare 2014 to 1914 when WWI broke out & no one expected it. A black swan in the form of a war between China & Japan?
And:
Both Abe and an influential Chinese analyst don’t rule out a military confrontation between China and Japan. Memories of 1914?
Paul Craig Roberts – former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, listed by Who’s Who in America as one of the 1,000 most influential political thinkers in the world, PhD economist – wrote an article about the build up of hostilities between the U.S. and Russia titled, simply: “War Is Coming”.
Similarly, Ronald Reagan’s head of the Office of Management and Budget – David Stockman – is posting pieces warning of the dispute between the U.S. and Russia leading to World War 3.
Trend forecaster Gerald Celente – who has been making some accurate financial and geopolitical predictions for decades – says WW3 will start soon.
Investment fund manager and adviser Martin Armstrong has charted the “cycles of war” back to 600 BC … and says that we’ll have major wars between now and 2020. He has written pieces recently entitled, “Why We will Go to War with Russia“, and another one saying, “Prepare for World War III“.
Investment adviser Larry Edelson – who has long studied the “cycles of war” – wrote last month:
This year … we will also be hit by another ramping up of the related war cycles.
***
All part and parcel of the rising war cycles that I’ve been warning you about, conditions that will not abate until at least the year 2020.
Former Goldman Sachs technical analyst Charles Nenner – who has made some big accurate calls, and counts major hedge funds, banks, brokerage houses, and high net worth individuals as clients – says there will be “a major war”, which will drive the Dow to 5,000.
Veteran investor adviser James Dines forecast a war as epochal as World Wars I and II, starting in the Middle East.
Bad Economic Theories
What’s causing the slide towards war? We discuss several causes below.
Initially, believe it or not, one cause is that many influential economists and talking heads hold the discredited belief that war is good for the economy.
Therefore, many are overtly or more subtly pushing for war.
Challengers Give Declining Empires “Itchy Fingers”
Moreover, historians say that declining empires tend to attack their rising rivals … so the risk of world war is rising because the U.S. feels threatened by the rising empire of China.
The U.S. government considers economic rivalry to be a basis for war. Therefore, the U.S. is systematically using the military to contain China’s growing economic influence.
Competition for Resources Is Heating Up
In addition, it is well-established that competition for scarce resources often leads to war. For example, Oxford University’s Quarterly Journal of Economics notes:
In his classic, A Study of War, Wright (1942) devotes a chapter to the relationship between war and resources. Another classic reference, Statistics of Deadly Quarrels by Richardson (1960),extensively discusses economic causes of war, including the control of “sources of essential commodities.”A large literature pioneered by Homer-Dixon (1991, 1999) argues that scarcity of various environmental resources is a major cause of conflict and resource wars (see Toset, Gleditsch, and Hegre 2000, for empirical evidence).
***
In the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), Chile fought against a defensive alliance of Bolivia and Peru for the control of guano [i.e. bird poop] mineral deposits. The war was precipitated by the rise in the value of the deposits due to their extensive use in agriculture.
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Westing (1986) argues that many of the wars in the twentieth century had an important resource dimension. As examples he cites the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), the Six Day War (1967), and the Chaco War (1932–1935). More recently, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was a result of the dispute over the Rumaila oil field. In Resource Wars (2001), Klare argues that following the end of the Cold War, control of valuable natural resources has become increasingly important, and these resources will become a primary motivation for wars in the future.
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan (and many world leaders) admitted that the Iraq war was really about oil, and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. And see this and this. Libya, Syria, Iran and Russia are all oil-producing countries as well …
Indeed, we’ve extensively documented that the wars in the Middle East and North Africa are largely about oil and gas. The war in Gaza may be no exception. And see this. And Ukraine may largely be about gas as well.
And James Quinn and Charles Hugh Smith say we’re running out of all sorts of resources … which will lead to war.
Central Banking and Currency Wars
We’re in the middle of a global currency war – i.e. a situation where nations all compete to devalue their currencies the most in order to boost exports. Brazilian president Rousseff said in 2010:
The last time there was a series of competitive devaluations … it ended in world war two.
Jim Rickards agrees:
Currency wars lead to trade wars, which often lead to hot wars. In 2009, Rickards participated in the Pentagon’s first-ever “financial” war games. While expressing confidence in America’s ability to defeat any other nation-state in battle, Rickards says the U.S. could get dragged into “asymmetric warfare,” if currency wars lead to rising inflation and global economic uncertainty.
As does billionaire investor Jim Rogers:
Trade wars always lead to wars.
Given that China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa have joined together to create a $100 billion bank based in China, and that more and more trades are being settled in Yuan or Rubles – instead of dollars – the currency war is quickly heating up.
Indeed, many of America’s closest allies are joining China’s effort … which is challenging America and the Dollar’s hegemony.
Multi-billionaire investor Hugo Salinas Price says:
What happened to [Libya’s] Mr. Gaddafi, many speculate the real reason he was ousted was that he was planning an all-African currency for conducting trade. The same thing happened to him that happened to Saddam because the US doesn’t want any solid competing currency out there vs the dollar. You know Gaddafi was talking about a gold dinar.
Senior CNBC editor John Carney noted:
Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power? It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era.
Robert Wenzel of Economic Policy Journal thinks the central banking initiative reveals that foreign powers may have a strong influence over the rebels.
This suggests we have a bit more than a ragtag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences. “I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising,” Wenzel writes.
Indeed, some say that recent wars have really been about bringing all countries into the fold of Western central banking.
Debt
Martin Armstrong argued that war plans against Syria are really about debt and spending:
The Syrian mess seems to have people lining up on Capital Hill when sources there say the phone calls coming in are overwhelmingly against any action. The politicians are ignoring the people entirely. This suggests there is indeed a secret agenda to achieve a goal outside the discussion box. That is most like the debt problem and a war is necessary to relief the pressure to curtail spending.
The same logic applies to Ukraine and other countries.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Kyle Bass writes:
Trillions of dollars of debts will be restructured and millions of financially prudent savers will lose large percentages of their real purchasing power at exactly the wrong time in their lives. Again, the world will not end, but the social fabric of the profligate nations will be stretched and in some cases torn. Sadly, looking back through economic history, all too often war is the manifestation of simple economic entropy played to its logical conclusion. We believe that war is an inevitable consequence of the current global economic situation.
Runaway Inequality
Paul Tudor Jones – founder of the Tudor Investment Corporation and the Tudor Group, which trade in the fixed-income, equity, currency and commodity markets – said this week:
This gap between the 1 percent and the rest of America, and between the US and the rest of the world, cannot and will not persist.
Historically, these kinds of gaps get closed in one of three ways: by revolution, higher taxes or wars.
And see this.
Distraction
Billionaire investor Jim Rogers notes:
A continuation of bailouts in Europe could ultimately spark another world war, says international investor Jim Rogers.
***
“Add debt, the situation gets worse, and eventually it just collapses. Then everybody is looking for scapegoats. Politicians blame foreigners, and we’re in World War II or World War whatever.”
Economist and investment manager Marc Faber says that the American government will start new wars in response to the economic crisis:
Martin Armstrong – who has managed multi-billion dollar sovereign investment funds – wrote in August:
Our greatest problem is the bureaucracy wants a war. This will distract everyone from the NSA and justify what they have been doing. They need a distraction for the economic decline that is coming.
War Is Destroying Our National Security, Our Democracy and Our Economy
We spent trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet a top Pentagon official say we’re no safer – and perhaps less safe – after 13 years of war. Indeed, war only PROMOTED the dramatic expansion of even worse terrorists.
Never-ending wars are also destroying our democratic republic. The Founding Fathers warned against standing armies, saying that they destroy freedom. (Update). Perversely, our government treats anti-war sentiment as terrorism.
The Founding Fathers – and the father of free market capitalism – also warned against financing wars with debt. But according to Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the U.S. debt for the Iraq war could be as high as $5 trillion dollars (or $6 trillion dollars according to a study by Brown University.)
Indeed, top economists say that war is destroying our economy.
But war is great for the bankers and the defense contractors. And – as discussed above – governments are desperate for war.
So it’s up to us – the people – to stop wider war.
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Let's celebrate being a nation of Assassins. Yeah that's the ticket. S/
And in the year 2002 the country known as 'Merica became very aggressive and greedy in business dealings. It was a very successful country in terms of military, politics, economy, trade, and finance. However like Rome before it, 'Merica became very corrupt in it's economy, costs were very high, and many lost their fortunes due to swindles. The greed lead to an Era where people would do anything for a chance to lift themselves to a wealthy lifestyle.
War became common. The highest moral values of the Geneva Convention were eschewed. Torture, Kidnapping, Assassination, and Dirty Wars became part of the 'Merican Culture of Greed.
Don't you have some anuses to tend to?
Me?
Prober.
What It MEANS To Be An American
You parasites at the GW impostor anti-America propaganda site are the same kind of "Americans" as the Boston marathon bombers.
Prober, you never studied Philosophy, Logic, or Cognitive Errors/Distortions.
I haven't either, but I understand a little about Bias.
What I see in you are Cognitive Distortions:
1) All or nothing thinking
2) Black and white thinking
3) Inflation of the Truth
4) Justification: you have .gov career or defense career or a job with government contractors or your father or family have advantages of a .gov career... like war funding or military funding
5) You see Aggression, Power, Global Supremacy as the POV, you see USA as Exceptional and Chosen by God (maybe), you see the globe as needing a power to guide or parent men (patriarch)
6) You Refute the idea that all Nations can be sovereigns, that they can rule themselves
7) Self Determinism is unknown to you, anyone that acts outside of cultural norms should go to Jail under your view, even if it is a personal decision about a lifestyle: sex, alcohol, drugs, perverse sex, perverse alcohol, perverse drugs (you want to judge all people)
8) Self Actualization requires freedom, liberty, and tolerance as well as equality, brotherhood, and justice, ... but you don't see this... you only see Regulation, Patriarchy, Matriarchy, and you feel strong leaders should rule, Loyalty should be rewarded with careers, and men & women are just dolls to be ruled... Freedom is a concept for Political Speeches and for Leaders to Decide, Men should fall under the Yoke of Laws, Men should be disciplined under laws, men should realize that the greatness of a country means that men should be almost as slaves or subjects... Pyramids were not built by free men but by slaves... the USA can't be great without cheap labor and Strong Patriarchs who control the Assets, land, Energy, and Military Power
Wrong on all points.
Focus your amateur psychoanalytical interests on the real & serious most dangerous people in this era:
the islamic cult worshipers and the russian gangster invaders
and the scum like the GW impostor propagandists who defend them and attack those who expose them
And who funds so called cult woshipers? Who provokes so called gangsta invaders?
Why it's the good ole' USA.
US citizens are so trapped in their world of propaganda. They cant move one inch out of it. Too much insecurity.
Ah, ah, made me laugh. Even when facts stare at them right in the face, US citizens sink into deep denial.
Thanks man.
“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
-Thomas Jefferson
Yeah, good link. Good Resource.
If dissent and even violence against a tyrannical governmnet is "terrorism," then according to Jefferson it is our right, it is our duty to be "terrorists."
The banksters need to repay us.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
THE JEWS NEED TO REPAY US.
Well my story will end in a dirt nap one way or the other.
World War is inevitable; the totalitarian bankster American Empire of debt is in complete control. The criminals will blow up the world rather than be brought to Justice.
The NSA is an extension of Professor Nash’s “Game Theory” with advanced computer technology “technocracy” which is the “dream come true” for the Washington Empire of totalitarian bankster fascist (merger of corporate monopoly with government).
The Washington Empire NSA is an arm of the bigger global bankster “vampire octopus on the face of mankind” totalitarian financial operation of debt servitude.
Americans are 60 Trillion dollars in debt to whom, the criminal banksters? The American Empire of debt didn’t just happen and no one in the Fed saw it coming; it was planned by the Washington criminal Rockefeller banksters via the Council on Foreign Relations and their traitor puppets in Congress.
Prosecute the criminals for treason, cancel the criminal debt and therefor save ourselves and the rest of the world from the criminal debt and world war.
Americans will regain the respect from the rest of the world by returning to business and dissolving the Federal Reserve. You kill the vampire octopus by cutting its beak out and it can do no more damage; than the octopus dies and you eat him.
The public executions for treason, televised to the rest of the world to prove that we are serious, will be widely received and cheered on as we chop the totalitarian, incurable psychopathic, criminal’s heads off.
I like your post… I might add my understanding that the model is more complex than what we are hearing or will ever likely be allowed to hear. In general, ‘World leadership’ even those portrayed by us to be at odds with one another, no matter their bickering, are far more aligned with one another than the population; which is merely a resource to be harnessed, used, then supplanted and disposed. They have armies of sycophants to run the permutations; and nearly unlimited ability to make preparations. The Soviets have been building a fully stockpiled Doomsday City within Yamantau Mountain in the Urals for over 20 years. The American and British elites have similar installations with cubic miles said to be carved out in subsurface rock formations. After looking at the situation for 15 years or so I came to the conclusion in 2004 that the ruling oligarchy with major control of the US government possessed technology roughly 200 years in advance of what ‘We the People’ were being shown.
There are levels to global analysis. What we hear is never the real story. The onion analogy (for layers of truth) is most fitting. These people are not stupid and long ago realized intuitional control was the prerequisite to their selfish, egocentric success.
The one thing that I know of that can possibly bring an end to their institutional control and stranglehold on humanity is when the people of this Earth become aware of what was discovered during the early space program, the curtain will come down. And that is not my opinion.
Cautioning against disclosure (and of course he knew) the world’s foremost expert on human behavior, Carl Gustav Jung stated in 1957 – the “reins would be torn from our hands and we would, as a tearful old medicine man said to me, find ourselves ‘without dreams’ that is, we would find our intellectual and spiritual aspirations so outmoded as to leave us completely paralyzed.”
This is now 55 years later … contained within the publicly available Apollo photographic data set is proof positive that the US Astronauts in missions 16 and 17 were being accompanied on the lunar surface by neighboring civilizations… and I don’t care how many backflips some of the Chimps make or how loud they screech, this is the gravity of the matter… the control is all based on a lie.
In reply to benb: I agree with much of what you have to say except I am not a fatalist because a fatalist accepts what another evil human is doing to them without resistance.
A fatalist deserves his own bad fate.
I have no scientific proof that there are intelligent beings from outer space or a master god that is going to save America by prosecuting the criminal banksters anymore than I think that Zeus will reappear to straighten the evil ones out horizontally.
Do not go quietly into the night- resist and challenge!
COPS keep the Federal Reserve parasites safe from US.
They won't let us access THEM.
BUT WE ALL HAVE ACCESS TO THE COPS.
DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Maybe we should setup some kind of global organization where all the nations of the world are members and they can come together and be united, so they don't have to go to war?
sarc.....I HOPE
'too busy making money to notice the serpents flickering at the bottom of their trading screens."
There are squid flickering as well.
Nice Post GW, the writing is on the wall now, particularly with the west joining the Asian Bank, the US will not be able to fudge the GDP numbers this year, not with an appreciated currency and continued poor domestic demand. I sense a 'formal' recession by the end of 2015, definetly 2016, that is based on the FED not introducing a round of QE. I just think that they are running out of options other than complete world war at this stage, otherwise it will be civil war.
Civil war would at least not kill all of humanity. There would be a few less fat lazy americans after its all over though.
Can't see your winky-wee? Have a hard time touching your toes? Are you embarrased to go shirtless? You too can lose weight with the revolutionary new civil war diet!
Warning, side effects include dismemberment, broken bones brain damage and death.
I don't know if it'll be a world war so much as a planetary riot, comeplete with rape, pillage and burn......
Nope. They are picking teams now. Winners and loosers too.
Remember, Hitler and Stalin were allies too.....
Oh one more thing. Its not a New World Order. Its the Same World Order.
Yep thats the plan. Kill off most of the people on the planet and enslave the rest.
Just so ya know we could take a new dirrection. A global stall. Honest people lose every war. But know this no honest labor = no war.
Now for the bad news. All the leaders of the major powers want this war. If one uses basic logic its plain to see. Every one of them has access to the truth and is hiding it.
The thing they don't realize is, they will pollute the biosphere to such a degree, that there won't be anywhere that will be able to sustain life. After all the nukes go off, the remaining nuclear reactors will all go critical, and then the storage fuel ponds at all of those reactors dry up and the fuel in them will burn. Talk about a bunch of dirty bombs going off. There won't be an island on the planet that these fuckers will be able to hide on. Sure, they might live for awhile, but ultimately, they will be signing their own death warrants as well. And for the rest that think they are going to run to their mountain bunkers, they will be sealed in there, buried alive. Because they won't be able to come out for centuries.
Most of that waste in pools doesn't need to be in pools. It is simply there because there is no politically feasable place to put it. Yucca mountain was killed and reprocessing it to fuel reactors is not allowed. So it sits there, long after it has cooled down enough to be exposed to open air.
I am sure there is more than enough hot fuel in the pools around the globe to make more than enough pollution to kill everyone if they all burned off. How much plutonium is out there? And how many pools sitting next to major population centers would be destroyed by a nuclear bomb going off that would scatter the contents whether hot or cold? One way or another WW3 will be the end of it, for everyone.
Can't allow a mineshaft gap.
https://youtu.be/so8NQficzZg?t=2m18s
Two Trillion dollars was "missing" from the Pentagon pre 9/11. That can dig alot of tunnels and bunkers for "chosen" people.
A. They like wars of attrition too much. B. They want to keep the control system in place.
There won't be much to control when both master and slave are dead.
Agreed.
WWII has not been resolved yet, and it will be a fight till death. One side or the other will be completely eliminated.
This is all so depressing I'm gonna grab a beer, hit the couch, turn on my Sony, and watch Big Bang Theory.