I don't need to tell you that we are living through world-historical times right now. The frequency of world-changing events is accelerating even as the impact of these events on our day-to-day lives is increasing.
As Lenin rightly observed: "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen." Perhaps there are years in which centuries happen.
With that in mind, I am taking my annual look at the year ahead and splitting it into three parts.
The first week I looked at the tectonic shifts that are taking place in the global monetary space and considered what these changes portend for the future of the world economy.
Last week I examined the ongoing (generated) COVID crisis and what we can expect as the Era of Biosecurity continues to unfold.
This week I will turn my attention to world geopolitics, analyzing the types of conflicts that we can expect to see over the course of this year and explaining how these conflicts will set the stage for even more dramatic events over the course of the decade.
The Fall of the American Empire
I know you've heard it before, but that's because it is relevant, it is happening, and it is momentous. The American Empire is falling.
If you want to know what it looks like when an empire falls, don't fret; we have a pretty handy template for that.
So if you're getting that fin de siรจcle feeling from all of this, rest assured that you're not alone. The feeling is everywhere and it's reflected in the "end of the world as we know it" stories that cross the newswires on a daily basis now:
- Pandemic aftershocks overwhelm global supply lines
- Job losses from virus 4 times as bad as '09 financial crisis
- World stands to witness greatest rise in inequality since record-keeping began
Yes, the dollar is still king, the American government can still happily issue bonds that other governments and institutional investors are happy to purchase, America's capital markets continue to be the place where hundreds of billions of dollars of (notional) wealth are sloshed around every year, and American-dominated institutions like the IMF and the World Bank continue to hold sway over the financial architecture of the planet. But as I demonstrated in the first edition of this series (and as I explored in my recent discussion with Catherine Austin Fitts), that era is coming to an end. What exactly will replace the current monetary paradigm is still open for discussion, but, as readers of my work will not need to be told, if the globalists get their way the next system will not be dominated by a sovereign American currency run by and for the people.
And yes, the American Empire has been the undisputed global military superpower for decades now. But the very fact that the US now has troops deployed in 177 countries around the world speaks less to its unquestionable might and more to the incredible expenditures of money, resources and manpower that are needed to keep the system of American hegemony functioning. The massive overextension that the US military has engaged in โ from the wars of terror in Afghanistan and Iraq to the "kinetic military action" in Libya and the failed overthrow of Syria to the secret war for Africa and the Asia-Pacific pivot โ has broken the spell that the myth of America! The Great and Powerful has cast on the public imagination since the end of World War II. Toto has pulled back the curtain and the man behind the curtain has been exposed for all to see. America no longer rules the world.
But if nature abhors a vacuum, geopolitics abhors it even more. So who will rush in to take the seat at the head of the table that the US is leaving vacant? Well, if you're a Democrat you think it's those evil Russkies. If you're a Republican, you think it's those evil ChiComs. But if you're a conspiracy realist, you know that absolutely all of the above (and many more) are working to create a truly global system of control.
The Players
We all know that the Democrats have spent the last four years promoting Russia as the greatest threat to free humanity. Yes, Russia. A country with a smaller GDP than Canada and a military expenditure 1/30th of the US that threatens global stability by interfering in Omidyar and Soros' colour revolution in Ukraine and by starting wars with Georgia โ or maybe the war was actually started by Georgia. Whatever. Boo! The Russian Bear is after you and is going to steal your (s)elections with hundreds of dollars' worth of Facebook Jesus memes!
...Not scared yet? Well, don't worry, the Republicans are now carefully building their own version of Russiagate: Chinagate! Yes, now it's the evil ChiComs who are lurking behind every bush, ready to pounce on unsuspecting politicians and steer the great and virtuous US of A into their commie trap! Get ready for the exact mirror image of the Russiagate fiasco to play out now, with intense focus on Xi Jinping and the CCP's moves, actions and ties in the right-leaning media in the coming years.
And you know what? They're right! All of them.
Russia is not a shining beacon of freedom and prosperity. President for Life Putin is an old KGB thug and New World Order advocate who rose to power on the back of false flags staged by his FSB pals, is besties with the worst globalists in the world and seeks to limit freedom of speech in Russia and generally control his citizenry.
Nor is China a valiant crusader for peace and prosperity on the world stage. President for Life Xi heads a Chinese technocratic dictatorship that controls its citizenry with the latest whizzbang surveillance technology tied into cashless payment systems and social credit scores. As such, he serves as a hero to the politicians who are trying to normalize lockdowns, reeducation camps, social credit scores and other aspects of technocratic tyranny in the West.
Choosing between a world led by Russia and China or one led by the US and its allies is like choosing whether to eat excrement pudding or a feces sandwich. In other words, it's no choice at all.
As I have pointed out many times before (but apparently not nearly enough), the players at the global geopolitical table all have the same vision for the future: a world where a handful of oligarchs use a technocratic managerial class to rule over their compliant populations.
No better demonstration of this simple reality could be provided than the madness that has unfolded across the globe over the past year. Lockdowns of entire cities, regions and โ with the latest crackdown on international travel โ even countries. Brutal crackdowns on protest and blanket censorship of dissent. Politicians arbitrarily deciding which businesses can operate and which ones must shut their doors. The foisting of untested medical technologies on the public and the complete erasure of any pretense that you can control what happens to your own body. This is the world that the technocrats and eugenicists have always wanted to bring about.
And now that Pandora's Box has been opened and the biosecurity paradigm has been unleashed, we see that all of these governments are, at base, exactly the same. China, Russia, the US, the UK, Australia, Germany, South Korea, the Netherlands, Iran and nearly every other country you can think of has adopted the WHO's casedemic guidelines, embraced the lockdowns and surveillance of their population, brutally put down all dissent and scrambled to secure enough doses of the COVID "vaccines" to inject each and every one of their tax cattle.
There are so few examples of governments that have not leapt on the opportunity to introduce some form of medical martial law and jump on the vaccine bandwagon that you could count them with one hand. And, sadly, even those countries like Japan that have not engaged in the lockdown insanity are vying to outdo the rest of the world with their Orwellian vaccine compliance and registry schemes.
The world of COVID-1984 is what the future looks like to these technocrats, regardless of whether it's Uncle Sam in the driver's seat or Uncle Xi or any of the other misleaders.
Having said that, there is a war going on right now. At one level, it is a contest between the various players in this geopolitical game to secure themselves a better seat at the table of global power in the coming biosecurity age. But, as I have pointed out before, at a deeper level it is a war on you. It is a war on me. It is a war on all of us.
The difficulty for most of us is in understanding this war and the forms that it takes. It does not correspond in any way to what most of the public imagines warfare to be. There are no soldiers lining up on battlefields to shoot at each other. This is warfare of a fundamentally different kind.
The War
The War on You that constitutes the real Third World War takes many forms. Understanding these forms is essential to understanding the real nature of the threat facing free humanity.
Biosecurity Warfare
The battle lines between the (faux) contestants in the emerging biosecurity battlespace are already being drawn. The first indication of what this war will look like emerged, predictably enough, in the battle to field the first vaccine.
As I detailed last week, this is leading the world to the brink of the drawing of a New Iron Curtain. This Iron Curtain, however, does not divide NATO-dominated Western Europe from Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe. Instead, it threatens to take the form of what the Great Reset-ers at the World Economic Forum have referred to as "gated globalization," a system wherein countries form trading and travel blocs based on ideological affinity.
This could mean, for example, that the BRICS countries might mandate the Russian COVID injection for international travelers and refuse to accept travelers who have had the Pfizer/Moderna/AstraZeneca injections. The NATO countries, conversely, may mandate the opposite, effectively barring travel between the two blocs. One could imagine similar measures to restrict trade and commerce between nations on the other side of the New Iron Curtain, effectively forming a new geopolitical order based on two (or more?) competing power blocs.
Meanwhile, residents on either side of that curtain could expect largely the same thing. A "new normal" where all "non-essential" travel is tracked and regulated, vaccinations and experimental medical procedures are mandated, and all dissent is branded as a risk to public health and brutally suppressed.
This is not to say that biological hazards do not pose a real threat that can be exploited by the technocrats. In addition to the 5G, GMOs, endocrine disruptors and various other pollutants and toxins that are being pumped into our environment on a daily basis, there is always the threat of false flag bioterror, pathogens released from the government's own military laboratories for the purposes of keeping their public afraid and compliant. This could very well be used as a way of keeping the momentum of the "Great Reset" going even as more begin to question the scamdemic narrative.
Cyber Warfare
In case you missed it, our new self-appointed overlord Klaus Schwab has already declared that the next big threat is likely to be a "cyber pandemic." Make what you will of that interesting concatenation of concepts, but it doesn't appear to be too difficult to read between the lines here. The next major false flag event could be the long-planned cyber false flag. In short, a major, disruptive "i9/11" type event could be used as the excuse to pass the cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, which would drastically change the way we access and use the internet.
Although my regular readers will be sick of hearing about it, I feel compelled to remind everyone once again that this is no mere theoretical threat. At a tech conference in 2008, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig informed the audience that there was indeed an "iPatriot Act" waiting in the wings, ready to be unleashed on the internet in the event of a major cyberterror event. The specific provisions of that act are unknown to all but those who wrote it, but one hardly has to go out on a limb to guess that they involve severe restrictions on internet access and the erosion of any pretense of online anonymity.
When and if the "cyber pandemic" is unleashed, it will undoubtedly be blamed on the "enemies" in the New Cold War and used as an excuse for escalation of real world hostilities. This is the beauty of virtual false flags; the only physical evidence of what happened that will ever exist will reside in the servers of those who were attacked, and those servers will never be yielded up for outside inspection. It is the perfect excuse to say "The Russkies did it!" or "The ChiComs did it!" or "Those dastardly North Korean hackers did it!" and to push that narrative on a credulous public through the usual mouthpieces and repeaters in the dinosaur media.
As always, any such cyber disruption โ however fake and staged that disruption might end up being โ will have very real consequences in the real world. It is not hard to imagine that โ in the wake of a concerted cyberwar โ the long-planned "driver's license for the internet" will be implemented and sites like this one will have their domains seized. (Did I mention my website server address is 77.235.50.111 and my IPFS backup is here?)
It is increasingly likely that the various firewalls that are going up to create country-specific, carefully gatekept "splinternets" will dominate in the future. As always, there will be technical workarounds for those who bother to learn them, but the online pirates of the future will be few and far between as the masses are herded into more and more carefully controlled lanes of the once-ballyhooed "information superhighway."
Space Warfare
Outer space presents yet another venue for geopolitical conflict to emerge, and it is likely to take a more prominent role in the coming years. As Bloomberg Businessweek observes: "President Biden will have to choose whether to confront China on its space initiatives or find ways to ease tensions and even increase collaboration." Hmmm. I wonder which he'll choose. Real stumper there.
Remember when the US began injecting billions of dollars into a "space war center" to "gird for a space war" with Russia and China? And remember when NATO declared that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's "operational domain" now includes outer space? And remember when Russia warned that US weaponization of space would lead to a spare war ? And remember when Trump confirmed that fear by creating the Space Force?
Yes, in case you haven't figured it out yet, space is becoming the next battlespace in the (phoney and rigged) battle between the "great" powers. Which of course means that it's the next convenient excuse for the military-industrial contractors to continue their never-ending multi-trillion dollar boondoggle of the planet.
Just last year, NASA tried to cement its space takeover into international law with the Artemis Accords, an attempt to allow countries and companies to establish exclusive zones on the moon. The extraterrestrial land grab was called out for what it is by the ChiComs through their Global Times mouthpiece: "The US is developing a new space version of an 'Enclosure Movement,' in pursuit of colonization and claiming sovereignty over the moon."
And now, with China having successfully landed on the dark side of the moon, set their own plans for manned missions to the moon and mars, and started construction on a space station that is slated to be completed next year, the ChiComs and the Americans will be able to engage in the exact same game as the Soviets and the Americans did 60 years ago. That game, in case you missed it, is to sink massive amounts of money into the crony-connected aerospace industry contractors even as each country advances their ICBM weaponry and other military gadgets in the name of the "peaceful exploration of space." All the while this exercise in fleecing the public will be cheered on by flag-waving patriots who believe it's really a contest between two opposing ideologies.
Meanwhile, those who would be best situated to understand and call out this massive charade are being psyoped into believing that the earth is flat and that space doesn't exist. Chalk up another victory for the information warriors who are playing the online conspiracy reality community like a lute.
Information Warfare
The most important aspect of this New Cold War / WWIII / war on humanity is the infowar. This should be readily apparent to readers of these pages, but the past year provided ample evidence (if any were needed) that control over the public narrative is tantamount to control over the direction of humanity. If you can convince enough of the population that there is a new Black Death going around and that you have to lock them in their own homes, shoot them up with experimental gene therapy technologies and track and trace their every movement for the rest of the lives "for their own good" then there is almost nothing you can't accomplish.
The worst part is that you think you've already seen the worst of online censorship, what with the purging of the American president from Twitter and the shutdown of Parler and other social media theatrics. But you haven't seen anything yet.
In the latest sign of what is to come, everyone's favourite comic book supervillain, Bill Gates, has emerged from his crime lair to issue a new pronouncement that he is shocked (shocked I tell you!) to discover that he's the subject of "really kind of evil" conspiracy theories that dare to point out that he has profited from the pandemic and even accusing him of being behind the scamdemic. I mean, of course he demonstrably has profited from the pandemic, has steered every aspect of the global public health response to it and was a co-sponsor of the Event 201 that was simulating just such a global pandemic at the very moment we are asked to believe it was breaking out, but come on! Didn't you hear? He called that "conspiracy theory" so it's automatically wrong!
But you may have missed the most chilling part of his latest media blitz: "We're going to have to get educated about this over the next year and understand, how does it change people's behavior."
There it is in his own words. A promise to "get educated" about these theories, how they spread and how the change people's behaviour over the course of this year. And what will Bill and his co-conspirators do with this information once they "get educated" about it? Well, he has suggested that "working with the social media companies" may be necessary, and I think we all know what that means.
We are heading into a new digital dark age. They have not rolled out the "domestic terror" propaganda and created such hype around online extremism and the dangers of COVID conspiracies for nothing. By the end of this year the world wide web may look like a very different place. And remember: this is a literal (not figurative) information war, employing real military cyberwarriors whose mission is to shape public perceptions and control the online conversation in the ways they are directed. And if you are reading these words, then you are the target of these cyber soldiers.
Our Role
Yes, we have entered into a new phase of global geopolitics. This phase will be dominated by "gated globalization" and the solidification of competing power blocs. The narrative of the "New Cold War" is only going to be picking up steam from here. But that narrative is largely designed to hide the fact that the war is already engaged, and that you are the designated enemy combatants that the globalist technocrats are setting their sights on.
As you may have noted, all of these new forms of warfare that we have just explored as potential avenues for the New Cold War share some key characteristics:
- They are out of the hands of the average individual;
- They are situations where accusations made without evidence can serve as the basis for increased aggression;
- They will lead to the further enrichment of the crony corporations of the military-information-industrial complex;
- And they are all ultimately directed not at some enemy bogeyman, but at us.
This war is not starting now. It will not be completed this year. It has been developing for years if not decades now and will take years to play out. But this year very well could be a pivotal one. It is absolutely imperative that we do not lose sight of who the real enemy is in all of this is. It's not the average Chinese citizen living under the yoke of the Chinese government, or the average Russian living under the yoke of the Kremlin, or the average American living under the yoke of Washington or any other average person.
The real enemies are the technocrats themselves who are steering their respective countries into the same ditch. They will not rest until all of their citizenry are tagged, tracked, vaccinated, compliant cattle living on the new global plantation. Our job is to maintain our humanity. To withdraw every ounce of support that we can from this system and to demonstrate โ not through our words but through our actions โ that another way of life is possible.
It's time to recognize the geopolitical shadows on the cave wall for what they are and start enacting new modes of living for all to see, next door neighbours and people halfway around the planet alike.
2021 is the year for turning off the propaganda, tuning out the would-be dictators and playing a different game entirely. Who's with me?
Reader Comments
But I agree with you, โimperial guyโ is a documented pool pisser and his brand of vitriol is difficult to unsee.
I came here in late 2008, and I would say Iโve read about 80% of the articles, everyday, for twelve years. In my opinion, the only thing which isnโt up to sott.netโs impeccably high standards is the quality of the comment section.
This doesnโt depend on the editors, theyโve got enough work already. It depends on us, the readers. Your comment, FWIW, is 1000x more dangerous and and damaging than Yoemanryโs. Bandwagon, dog piling, fabricated suspicion wrapped up in a warped sardonic tone.
Iโve privately expressed my concerns about comment board vitriol with the editors. No response, and okay. Live and let live. All the more reason to support members of the community who have the courage to say โshut up and let me readโ to those bad actors who add NOTHING to the discourse.
twiceyes youโre right. I was thinking that anyone new to this site might be led to think things contrary to the thoughts and opinions of sott editors and readers by imperials incessant anti Semitic comments.
You're completely entitled to your own opinion, as is everyone else. But you should probably get to know me a bit better before voicing my intentions or opinions for me. I do *try* not to write anything before having coffee. But, being human, do not always succeed.
Iโve been reading SOTT day in and day out since 2004. Iโve never left because there simply isnโt anything better. Iโve never left despite the fact that the founder of the site thinks she channels with beings from the 5th dimension. This place is fantastic, most of the commenters here have provided angles and links that have opened my eyes even more than the site does. Imperial (he/she isnโt the first and wonโt be the last) is the latest in a long line of annoying shitposters who contributes absolutely nothing to the conversation.
But something to think about, in an "abyss stares back" kind of way: What effect do you think all of the other commenters have on TheImperialYeomanry. Why is he choosing THIS site to spend so much time on? (Same goes for you, smert...)
Itโs already tough enough to promote Sott, most people go to snopes or whatever and tell me that Lauraโs a witch or some other bs they read about this place.
Batshit crazy comments with parenthetical emphasize on the letter โJโ donโt help.
But that is a minor reason. The primary reason is that I MYSELF read these articles and there is no way to ignore (not see) the first or second ass-clown comment on the board. Iโd sign-in or sign-out (donโt care which) just to read articles with NO COMMENTS beyond the editorsโ.
All the talk about โexternal considerationโ is totally lost on some members. Technically there is no way to adjust settings, down-vote the worst comments, or hide comments from users who waste my precious eyeballs.
Until the next design overhaul with updated message board tech, Iโm with you: bad comments ruin more than just the comments section.
You make a good point regarding how our comments shape Imperials comments and thoughts. I have wondered both about Imperial and Smertzasmert, where they are from, what brought them to their outlook etc. Sometimes I put on the tin foil hat and start to think theyโre paid trolls, though thatโs unlikely.
More on astronomer Avi Loeb's approach to intelligent design inferences
Avi Loeb, Harvard astronomer and outspoken advocate for searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, has a new trade book out making his case: Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of...Think about it, youโve spent your whole life getting your news from HuffPo, a friend occasionally sends you articles from this site. Nine times out of ten you just roll your eyes, but one day you finally decide to click on an article. You read it, the cognitive dissonance begins to percolate, youโre beginning to wake up, ever so slightly, to how full of shit your preferred media is aaaand then you start to read comments by Imperial saying the author of the article is a tool of elite Jewish power and bam, you dismiss the article, the site and sink back into your fantasy. Is this situation Iโve described a stretch? Possibly. Though Iโd make a decent bet that through the years that this site has existed that these types of things have happened.
The flip-side is recognizing the opportunity to practice the old saw "the only thing you can control is your reaction."
"Not liking" something isn't unusual. "Not liking something and expending emotional energy unnecessarily" is something that might bear investigation.
Eleanor Roosevelt is supposed to have said "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." (By extension: no one can make you feel ANYTHING without your consent.) Others have expressed similar ideas; the gist of which is that you have a part in "allowing" an emotional reaction.
The place to start is usually: Why?
As I noted somewhere when his existence was discussed, I guessed that he was a 17 year old Russian student away at college in a former Eastern Bloc country, which still feels, for a raw guess, more likely than the above claims. If that's true, we've got to give the pup room to grow up.
I particularly disagree with the claim, absent more, that he is behind the repeated "My mom makes $5k a week as a MILF on porn show" or whatever. Cui bono? Any proof on that point? If it's merely a hunch, I'd submit that's unfair disparagement.
RC
Hence the suspicion.
As to the "unfair disparagement:" I'd plead nolo. But as "unfair disparagement" constitutes 90%+ of smert's "body of work" I must say that I don't really feel that bad about it. And you may have noticed I've not been hounding* him quite so much lately; mainly due to what you've pointed out. And either the SoTT editors have been getting better at weeding out the job spammers OR the job spam posts are occurring in an inverse relationship with smert's "astute observations of his own."
* It may be delusion but I liked thinking of it as a combination of 'constructive criticism' and 'catharsis.' No one but smert can say whether my antagonism was helpful or not for him.
It of course goes without saying*, that emojis well serve in place of a formal "(Sarcasm.)" Duh.
*So why the fuck are you saying it, RC?)
** In my review, I happened to notice that is almost universally understood sarcasm, which originally meant that it has a big chance to be correct, etc.
RC
I do appreciate responses like RC did on this one, which indicates that the TIY post is not likely to be true or the view held by most Sott readers; that is helpful. Also to a newcomer it indicates tolerance of varying viewpoints which is important.
The only comments which are a total turn off are those with personal attacks; and that is more likely to discourage newcomers. Fortunately there are only a few of those.
As a learner I appreciate everyone who contributes to the discussion with their own views and other links; it has been very helpful - so thank you all.
Here's what I just saw: at the SOTT article, infra, and you've gotta say that's better than his oldest stuff.
FINALLY! As I do not ascribe to him internet omniscience, if we report in on Smertz here (VIA REPLIES ONLY!!! Not original comments here - that way they don't scroll down the right column.) he probably will never even become aware of this discussion.
I look at this the way that parents should look at a willfully wayward kid and I'd hate to have been a fly on the wall when they were bitching about me - I've learned that much. I'll call this effort "How Do You Solve a Problem Like
Maria?Smertz?" [Link]Thanks all in advance.
R.C.
P.s.,
Hey, Smertz: If you stumble across this, based upon my 'experience', or whatever, IMHO you should help clarify these questions and comments above about you - I ain't gonna go off on those reasons, but I will if you do post a request for them here - simply because I think it's the reasonable thing to do. But only do so for your own reasons, not for any of us and least of all because you 'owe' it to me, or somesuch BS.
COVID lockdown policies will disproportionately hit black Americans for decades, new study finds
"Follow the science" exclaimed every virtue-signaling talking head as left-leaning authorities/officials clamped down on Americans' rights nationwide... "wear a mask", "shelter at home", "no...RC
Call me Margarita, for now at least. (I grew up hearing that; my big sister loved that film.)
RC
'Loud & unmasked': Democratic rep moves office citing 'safety' concerns after accusing GOP upstart Taylor Greene of 'berating' her
Democratic Rep. Cori Bush said she was forced to move her office for her own safety after Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene allegedly "berated" her on Capitol Hill, a charge the GOP...I've bookmarked this story and named it Smertz Alerts.
RC
Media outlets falsely claim that Jordan Peterson has schizophrenia
Mikhaila Peterson told The Post Millennial that "we were misrepresented in a very disturbing way and that's causing serious stress to our family." Dr. Jordan B. Peterson has been recently making...RC
It seems he tried to follow my above advice.
SOTT Focus:Carlson: 'American Establishment is Now at War Against Its Own Population'
Tucker Carlson warns Democrats' suppression of dissent, divisive rhetoric will lead to scary repercussions. Labelling multiple millions of Americans 'terrorists', establishment spokespeople are...Absent any replies here, I'm done reporting. I'll also note that while I've seen the above, which are WAY better than his first era here, I've not seen any of the standard spam BS.
RC
Well, despite my above statement, here I am again. Now maybe it's because I've never watched a kid learn, but Smertz damn sure seems to be doing better. The article:
Kushner and Berkowitz nominated for Nobel peace prize, joins Greta Thunberg and Alexei Navalny
Former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and his deputy, Avi Berkowitz, have been nominated for the Nobel peace prize for their role in negotiating four normalisation deals between Israel...Smertz's comment? (I know, it would be better directed at Obysmal or Bribem, but don't y'all think that he's been doing better?)
RC
RC