The Why and The What For

With thanks to our writer, Jef Jelten and with some comments.

Ed Comments:  I thought at first we would have to edit Jef’s essay.  Then I changed my mind.  It’s been some time since I’ve tried to understand the soul of the real warriors in the US, and Jef expresses this here.  There may be detail that you are not in agreement with and other detail that you do agree with.  This is thus an unedited and raw grappling with the issues of coming out of a history of being a Norte Americano.  I gave up as I thought people like this do not exist any longer but to my joy, they do!  Well Done Jef!   

Nobody ever seems to ask or answers the question of why the US acts so belligerently and what for.

At best they simply say the US is bungling, incompetent, greedy, evil,violent, power hungry, deluded, or any one a dozen more excuses.

While all of that may be true it still does not adequately explain the why or what for? Most of the population in the collective West believes the official lies that they are constantly bombarded with that America is making the world safe for democracy and keeping the peace…BS! I am of the opinion that it is a grave mistake to dismiss all of these actions as mistakes especially when they have been happening so consistently for…ever.

It seems plain as day to me when you look at the results of all that belligerence. Don’t pay attention to what they say, pay attention what they do. They lie about the reason they do what they do, then we swallow those lies, then accuse them of failing when they don’t accomplish what they said they were going to do… so who is the idiot here? Just look at what they have done, what they have left behind in their wake. Let me explain.

In the 60’s Jay Forester a research professor, electrical engineer, and one of the first and most well known computer scientist at MIT was credited with the development of Random-Access computer Memory or RAM which kicked the computer age into high gear. He also developed the concept of System Dynamics and wrote a book titled “World Dynamics” using all of his capabilities. This was before the World3 computer run and the book that followed called “Limits to Growth”. One of Prof Foresters famous quotes was “Anyone who thinks you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist”. He also said “ “Many industrialized nations are now growing rapidly and placing ever-greater demands on world resources. Many of those resources come from the presently underdeveloped countries. What will happen when the resource-supplying countries begin to withhold resources because they foresee the day when their own demand will require the available supplies? … Will the developed nations stand by and let their economies decline while resources still exist in other parts of the world? Will a new era of international conflict grow out of pressures from resource shortage?” This was in 1971.

So first off you need to understand the hard cold physical reality that is the fact that we live on a finite planet with a finite amount of natural resources, I include the environment, the entire biosphere that supports all life on the planet as being finite too. If you want to argue this point then you need to check yourself into a mental facility.

Secondly you need to accept the hard cold physical reality that humans have been consuming those finite natural resources and degrading the finite biosphere at an accelerating rate for millennia. Sure some things we consume are renewable to a certain degree but even those resources diminish when over consumed. The biosphere too can heal its self to an amazing degree but not so much when it is constantly and increasingly bombarded. Bottom line is that even with all the science and technology applied, and efficiencies added there are still increasingly less finite natural resources available, they are getting more and more expensive to produce. Populations and therefore demand increases every year, and the biosphere becomes less able to absorb the waste stream of it all.

In fact by now the data is abundantly and overwhelmingly clear that science, technology, and efficiencies are drivers of increased consumption and pollution not the solution. This is a counter intuitive concept and all the worshipers of the magic of technology will vehemently disagree I’m sure, but just look at the facts. For example the fact that the increase in Hybrid’s, EV’s and “renewables” is increasing demand or at the very least maintaining high levels of demand on coal fired electricity not reducing it and we have only just begun to build out those “solutions”. The estimated increase of plastics and other petrochemicals ranges from 50 to 100%. They have also increased the demand for mining and processing of all metals and minerals increasing the use of heavy equipment and toxic waste.

This is not conspiracy theory or crack pot ideas. These irrefutable physical realities have been well understood forever. I absolutely guarantee you that TPTB are fully aware of every nuance of all of this. Most likely they are more aware than anyone else as they have the money, power, and connections to make certain they get ALL of the most important information in the world.

Now let all that sink in for a moment…then think about what you would do if you if you knew all this and had the money, power, and connections to shape and control the world. First rule is….like in fight club…you don’t tell anyone about this or there would be global chaos (more than usual that is) and it would make it more difficult to do what they intend to do. In fact you need to do everything you can to keep it from becoming common knowledge including taking down that info from the internet when ever possible and promoting lies talking about how there are no limitations.

Then you would do everything possible to control and limit the depletion of those finite natural resources ensuring total and long term access for yourselves.

The oligarchs, power elite, I call them “the Owners”, Claus Schwab refers to them “the stakeholders”, basically those individuals who are extremely wealthy, have been for a very long time, and have the power and connections to make sure they stay that way. These people have been managing consumption for hundreds of years. They are not Illuminati, Masons, Baby Eaters, any particular race or organized groups meeting in secret, they are not necessarily all American either. They don’t even necessarily need to meet and plan as they all have basically the same agenda which is to destroy any chance of equality which poses the greatest threat to their existence, secure access and control of the worlds resources, and make certain no other country grows big enough to challenge any of their goals. America has become the greatest tool for implementing these goals but they have also incorporated other countries to execute their deeds too. I refer to this collective them as the West.

It has always been understood that it is not enough to just go out and grab what resources you can. It is also about controlling the global consumption of those resources so you don’t run out and so you don’t have competition acquiring them. They understand that historically not putting effort into managing growth and demand for resources always ends with one country or another striking out for MORE which ends in WAR. Real war, not the acts of terror and illegal invasions of nations that can.t possibly fight back that the US engages in. The West does not do war, they only do illegal invasions of small, weak countries that can’t really fight back or they hide behind some other country and push them into fighting for them. I believe that is the definition of cowardliness.

After WWII US claim for control over resources was rationalized as trying to keep struggles over finite resources from escalating into more ugly wars. Then it became about keeping resource rich countries from consuming more and more of their own resources leaving less for US consumption. Then it expanded into keeping any and all economies in check least they become strong vibrant economies and start to bid up price and bid against the US for the world’s finite resources. This was all done under the auspices of fighting communism but the truth was they didn’t care how you structured your government as long as you didn’t stop them from acquiring and controlling your resources and economy by nationalizing them, which was pretty much the main premise of a communist society. Bringing democracy to a country became a euphemism for destroying your economy and letting Western multinational national corporations divvy up what was left. They “did their thing” on plenty of capitalist, democratic countries as well when they threatened to nationalize their resources and critical infrastructure or just started to become too successful. Their preferred set-up is an overbearing president/dictator who would let them take whatever they wanted and enforced extreme crushing austerity on the population, killing everyone on the lists they gave them and as long as they made them ridiculously wealthy these “rulers” went along with it.

These downtrodden countries also became the dumping ground for the wealthy west to send their trash and dirty industry to so Americans could claim to be cleaning up it’s act…BS!. These countries were also mandated to be the place where labor would not be regulated so multinational corporations could use slave and child labor which by the way still happens to this day.

For the last 75 years or so US foreign policy, using a thousand military and intelligence installations all around the world, the CIA and other covert orgs., finance, central banking, trade “agreements”, agriculture, sanctions and dozens of other methods. The US has killed tens of millions, displaced hundreds of millions, destroyed infrastructure providing the basic needs for hundreds of millions more and destroyed the hope of a future for billions. The mere threat of doing any of this to a country that is not toeing the line is enough to change the entire direction of their economic development plan. The west has not bungled its military operations, they haven’t lost any wars, none of it was a waste of time or money, just look at how incredibly successful their efforts have been in DESTROYING DEMAND and managing consumption. Again they say they are going in to protect the people, defeat the bad guys, fight terrorism, bring democracy to the country. What they did was displace popular elected governments with tyrants, kill a thousand times more people than the “bad guys” ever did, and permanently destroy all the critical infrastructure including roads, bridges, sanitation plants, electricity plants, dams, schools, hospitals, and churches, suppressing economic growth for 80% of the worlds population.

Its like the mob enforcer going into a new business on the block and smashing a bunch of display cases and inventory then saying “ oops! Now see if you give us our weekly skim we can protect you from terrible things like this from happening”. Smedley Butler explained all this in the 1930’s.

Without going into details the US, The Leader of the Free World™ with the tacit support of its minions have dictated how most of the world functions or dis-functions as the case may be, for over 75 years and really ramped it up after 911. If you don’t understand this or if you reject this concept then you really need to start researching the truth. This is not about trying to lay blame. It is absolutely critical to understand that we, the collective we, all humanity, have no idea how it might be….how life on planet earth can and should be because a tiny faction decided for us and violently under the threat of great suffering and death dictated how it WILL be.

I can see it now in the comments, “that’s just human nature” , “humans are just bad and it was going to turn out this way no matter what”, “if it didn’t happen this way then it would happen another, there is no getting around from it”, “Humans have always done this throughout history”….. All of that is TOTAL BS! And I would happy to explain why but not here. I will just point to the fact that what is now being called the Rest of World or RoW representing some 80% of the world, are standing up proclaiming that they reject the US imperial way of managing the world and just want peaceful cooperative interaction.

They are backing up this sentiment with serious agreements and actions. This is primarily why it is so important to understand the physical realities of the last several hundred years and how that applies to now.

The net effect of this mis-management is that only about a billion people live a comfortable life with all of what the modern world has to offer, the “Golden Billion” as it has been referred to for decades.

Some call the golden billion a conspiracy theory dreamed up by Putin but it is much older than that. Lets just do a quick quantification, consider that there are only about 1 billion people that can afford to fly, 1 billion who can afford to go on vacation, there are only a little over a billion cars in the world, a little over a billion spacious family homes with all the amenities, around a billion people who directly own stocks and shares. Sounds like a Golden Billion to me.

After the Golden Billion there is another billion who live a reasonable life of broad consumption although there is great anxiety and insecurity connected to it. The other 80% live on the very bare necessities or less. A full third of the population of the planet here in the year 2023 live lives of desperation where each day is a struggle…..a STRUGGLE for basic existence, water, calories (not for nutrition because the world organizations don’t count that) and about a billion and a half are slowly starving to death. Is that a win? Depends on what the stated goal is.

The fact is that most people in the west don’t understand this, or do but become willfully ignorant about it. Instead most believe, whether or not they admit it to themselves, that the greater populations of the Asia, the Middle East, global south, particularly Africa are poor and live like dogs is because they are incapable of doing any better.

Even those in the West that consider themselves “woke” or educated on the plight of the poor unconsciously think this way. This by the way is proof of the legitimacy of Critical Race Theory.

The other net effect is we now have a planet where toxic pollution is ubiquitous. From the tallest peaks down to the deepest depths of the oceans. Children born and growing up on second generation organic farms eating only fresh organic foods when tested have a whole host of toxins in their bodies, there is no escaping it. Pollution has already killed off 70% of fresh water vertebrates, half of insects, birds, I could go on and on. Male sperm counts are less than 40% of what they were just 50 years ago and dropping, womens fertility too There are dozen different ways in which toxic pollution is rapidly destroying life on the planet. The human microbiome is only a small fraction of what it needs to be to be healthy causing a whole host of chronic disease (and billion$ for big Pharma and the Owners). The ever present toxicity in humans opens us up to a whole world of infections that would otherwise not present such a threat.

There is a good chance that global warming is starting to hit feedback mechanisms that will trigger runaway climate change. All of these factors are increasing at a steady rate with no sign of slowing down.

Bottom line the “Owners” via America and its underlings have been the ones who have decided how the world operates over the last 75+ years and they have done a colossal clusterfuck of it. For some reason most people can not wrap their heads around this fact. It challenges their understanding of things too much or it threatens their way of life and mental state.

Another way of stating it would be, If the West had not aggressively controlled the worlds finite resources and instead allowed all the nations of the world to grow their economies and develop their infrastructure to modern standards the world would have reached peak oil and every other resource several decades ago and the ecosystem of the planet would be steaming pile of shit. I am not defending what was done, I am merely pointing out the owners twisted logic and reasoning for what they did, that and the fact that we are not now going to have peace and prosperity breaking out all across the world.

So why does this matter so much? Well it matters to me because it is the greatest human tragedy in the history of the world and may very well spell the end of life as we know it and I don’t think we should gloss it over. Sound extreme? It is extreme but it’s happening so pay attention or go dig a hole and stick your head in it because it isn’t going away or getting any better.

The other reason it matters is because everyone who is coming up with their masterful analysis of the current situation and making predictions and recommendations for the future are not factoring all this in to their calculations. You can’t plan for a future when you don’t understand where we are or how we got here.

Perhaps the most important reason ithis matters is because this dynamic of American hegemony is rapidly shifting and without understanding and factoring in the above information you can’t possibly understand or reasonably plan and properly respond to what is happening.

By the end of the 20^th century the Rest of the World, or ROW, was beginning to push for more freedom to determine their own destiny, in other words take control of their natural resources and grow their economies. Many saw this as a wonderful thing but the owners saw it as the worst possible outcome. They encouraged and empowered a small faction of global elite and government called the “Neo-Cons” who then produced a clear and concise manifesto called “The Project For a New American Century” that spelled out the problem, much of what I outline above only not so starkly written. They accused those in charge of maintaining global BAU of loosing their grip, and spelled out how they suggest we need address it. Then the 21^st century Pearl Harbor conveniently happened and America set out to reassert our dominance on the world stage…oh and do some massive bloody demand destruction too.

Russia and China observed this and made a pact to not overtly confront it. They would passively resist and wait for the US to hang themselves. This is the best recipe to really pissed off the playground bully. Long story short, (seriously hundreds of books and papers have been written on this subject), after 15 or 20 bloody more years of this both Russia and Chinas resistance along with some occasional interventions started to really piss off the US. It also encouraged more and more oppressed countries to say no more to empire! Russia and China began to encourage this and begin building out the organizations of interconnections for a truly MULTIPOLAR world. The RoW with the assistance of Russian natural resources. Chinese money, technology, engineering, and production capabilities, and mutual security agreements are going into hyperdrive building out ultra modern infrastructure and increasing trade amongst themselves working around western systems and control, shaking off the shackles of Imperial oppression. By the way this has been going on steadily for over 10 years and much of the infrastructure is in place and active with dozens of super-mega infrastructure projects throughout Eurasia and the global south coming online on a regular basis. Many of which are coming in ahead of schedule and under budget. Sounds great right? Well……not quite.

Now as I said there are around one billion people living lives of copious consumption and energy use, the “Golden Billion”. There is about another billion consuming less than the golden billion but still 10X the what the 6 billion under them do. Then there is the 6 billion living lives ranging from just barely enough to live to not enough.

What the RoW is busy as hell building is a bigger better American dream style consumer capitalism economy for 6 billion people. It’s the only example they have to work with. The RoW have been watching how the wealthy West lives, how they get to consume, and they want a piece of it. The west has successfully conditioned the world that Western Style Capitalism is best or TINA, there is no alternative. Oh sure along with this new growth paradigm they will throw in the terms “sustainable”, “renewable”, “environmental”, but even if those terms were legitimate which is debatable, they all go out the window when applied to to the sheer magnitude of 6 billion people on a finite planet where the easy to get, economical to produce, half of all finite natural resources are already gone and the biosphere is already unable support the existing waste stream. If you still believe it can all work out then you believe in magic, the easter bunny, Santa Claus, and the parting of the seas.

What all this means is that the Owners have nothing to lose. If Russia succeeds in ridding the Ukraine of US/NATO then BRICS+ and the ROW will be free to say no to Empire at every turn and ramp up the feeding frenzy. This also means that Russia, China, Iran, and the ROW who have been constantly abused by the West will shun anything Western out of well deserved spite. If Russia just hangs out and keeps chipping away at Ukraine or the world just moves on with BAU the West loses because Russia, China, Iran, and the ROW will just keep on doing what they are doing, gradually then rapidly building out a global economy where the West is not invited and do I need to mention that this block of the global population has 2/3rds of all the finite natural resources with which to do it. Some countries may still do deals with the West but they won’t be the ridiculously unfair deals that the west is use to and those countries that do deals will soon realize that they need to save their resources for their own use just like Mexico is doing.

Another scenario that many around the world openly support and hope for and indeed believe it is now inevitable and unstoppable, is that the BRICS+, Eurasia, Middle East, global south, RoW, succeed in sidelining US hegemony and develop a strong and vibrant multipolar world of prosperity and equality. If 1 to 2 billion people can bring the planet so near to ecological destruction what would 4 billion, 5 billion entering the consumer economy portend?

What seems certain is that the US/NATO has zero chance of going against Russia and China in any sort of conventional way and a loss like that would end the West and all western claims on global resources and wealth for good.

Anyway you figure it the future is guaranteed to be all about LESS regardless of what we do. We could manage the transition ourselves making certain that everyone is ok. Or we could not do nothing and let LESS come about in its own chaotic, destructive way. Or we can let “the Owners” who have managed everything that got us in this mess, to manage the transition, which they are already doing. Or we can have total global war. It really is up to us.

WARNING! MAJOR SPECULATION COMING UP HERE. Although not at all unreasonable.

The only play left for the owners is to do what they did at the end of WWII, crank up the belligerents to 11, and drop nukes to re-establish themselves as the dominant force, show the ROW who’s boss, This way at least no matter how things shake out the West/US or more importantly the Owners will be able to continue to demand their cut of all resources, economic activity and possibly continue to tamp down demand/consumption. In fact it might even work out as histories largest demand destruction event bringing us down to a manageable population. No mater what …it is going to suck big time but what they intend, I believe, is to manage/control the suckyness in order to remain on top. In their mind they have successfully (in their minds) managed the World this far, so no way are they going to stop now.

There is a better than even chance that the first nuke they use is on America the Homeland but blamed on someone else…North K ?. I mean in a sense they have been slowly nuking America for decades, more and more each year anyway. This would mollify the domestic rabble, bring down the population a bit, and galvanize the West into attack mode rationalizing any and all of their future belligerents.

Buckle up Knuckleheads!