Barking At The Moon

The thing about empires is that they are very expensive to maintain.  It requires the ability to project force to any part of the empire in a short time.

The Romans built a massive empire based almost entirely on their ability to install well-built roads to the far-flung reaches of the provinces.  The roads were so well-built that many are still in use 2,000 years later.  Rome was able to move large armies quickly and efficiently anywhere there were signs of unrest.  They also allowed for efficient messaging between power centers and the most remote areas.

The British empire was built on its dominant navy.  Its warships allowed it to project irresistible force almost anywhere in the world quickly and efficiently.  That same prowess at sea also gave the British empire fabulous wealth and the ability to transfer information with relative speed.  See Rothschilds and Waterloo.

The American empire was built on its dominance of the air.  The first to recognize both the military and commercial benefits of air travel, America was able to project overwhelming force with near impunity.  That same technology also gave it the ability to transfer wealth and information at blazing speeds.

In all three cases, though, the empires collapsed because of failing economies caused by their inability to expand beyond the technology that brought them to power.  The Romans invested so much into their roads that they were unable to exploit the rising sea powers.  The British invested so much in their sea power that they were unable to exploit the rising air superiority.  And the US is failing because it has invested so much in air superiority that it doesn't have the resources left to exploit the next frontier - space.

In what has to be one of the silliest moves on the part of an incomprehensibly silly US Congress, a couple of Congresscritters have decided to introduce a bill making the Apollo landing sites on the Moon "national parks" and further declaring the Apollo 11 site a world cultural site, apparently forgetting the the UN does that sort of thing.

What makes this so amusingly silly is that America has not been able to project power beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) for nearly 50 years.  The move to declare these "parks" on the Moon is nothing more than an exercise in expanding the empire, but as we have seen, empires require the ability to move forces quickly and efficiently to any part of the territories.  However, the US has squandered its space superiority in order to pay for the monstrously expensive command and control apparati at home.

Not only has the US completely dismantled its manned space program, reduced now to hitching rides with other countries while waiting for private corporations to do the R&D necessary to have viable LEO technology, it has not returned a single human being to the Moon in 50 years.  That's two generations.  In other words, any claim it might have had is now defunct, since it has not returned to squat on its claim.  It's called abandonment.

Suppose I were a gold prospector.  I find a rich lode and run into town to file a claim.  I get a little distracted and start to get back out to the claim a couple of times, but by the time I really start to get concerned about it, I'm already old and now my grandson has to carry on, but my grandson is a babbling idiot because I didn't want him to get smart enough to outsmart me.  Consequently, he is unable to re-establish my original claim.  Should I really expect that no one else will come along and take the gold after 50 years with no one around to say otherwise?

Not only that, but in the 50 years I've been dicking around in town, I helped pass a law that says no one can stake a claim on the very land where I've staked a claim.

Thus, I'm too old to go back to the old land claim, my progeny are too stupid and controlled to think creatively about the problem, and I helped to make it illegal to have a claim in the first place.  BUT, don't you dare go digging gold on my claim!  Or I'll huff, and I'll puff and I'll hyperventilate.

In addition to all the above absurdities, these lunar landing areas are to be preserved as heritage sites, yet no one would be able to fly over them, set foot on them, or send robotic probes into them.  Huh?!  You mean like declaring Yosemite a national park and them forbidding people (the ones who actually own it by definition) to go into the park and look around at all that heritage?  Much less forbid Google Earth to fly over and take photos for us all to appreciate from our desktop command centers.

OK, I can see putting ropes around the Apollo 11 site and not allowing folks to trample on the First Footprint and all, but that will require people to erect the ropes and a permanent staff to man the ropes and control the crowds.  Then, there'll have to be parking areas and concessions and toilet facilities and visitor centers and interpretive guided tours and preservation teams...  After all, there's little patches of dirt in Big Bend, West Texas, that you're not allowed to touch under pain of jail time, despite the fact there's no one around for hundreds of miles.  C'mon.

At this point, if I decided to start a crowd-funding project to build a rover to go the the Apollo 11 site, the best the US could do is put a pile of engineers to work designing a program to investigate the design of a program to send two-and-a-half billion dollars worth of technology to fly around in circles and document in glorious detail how my little rover is destroying all of Buzz Aldrin's footprints.  Hardly projecting force, in my book.

So, to sum up all this foolishness, you have an empire.  You decide to make a claim on a piece of dirt that you once set foot on 50 years ago, but haven't been back to in all that time.  Furthermore, you don't have the money or ability to go back and stake out guards on that dirt.  On top of all that, you were the first person to sign into effect a law that forbids any nation from claiming ownership on that piece of dirt.  And finally, under long-established rules, anything abandoned on the high seas (especially for 50 years) is fair game for salvage.  Am I reading that right?

In other words, the White Star line still owns the Titanic and all the effects salvaged from that wreck, including photos and story rights, though the company was unable to return to the wreck and had abandoned it on the sea floor well over 50 years ago?  Furthermore, White Star wants to declare the wreck a 'park' now and no ship would be allowed to sail over that spot ever again, much less dive down and take photos or souvenirs?

Just wanted to make sure I had all this straight.

And what about the Russians?  Can they claim 'park' status for the sites where their hardware landed?  And the Japanese?  Can they claim a chunk of the lunar South Pole, since one of their craft crashed there?  And since the Apollo sites form a rough oval, can the US claim everything inside it?  And can the Russians claim the back side of the Moon, since they were the first to image it?  And what about Mars and all the rubble Mankind has strewn across it?  And while we're at it, why not declare the Frau Mare highlands a 'park', since Apollo 13 was supposed to land there and it made a great movie.  And let's not forget the proposed sites for Apollos 18 and 19, even though they got cancelled.  After all, we should preserve those sites the way they were back when the US almost landed there.  And what about Venus?  Can the Russians claim the whole planet since they're the only country to have successfully landed there?  And can Europe claim Titan?  Or do they have to share with the US, since they piggy-backed on the Cassini craft?

The problem gets really absurd really fast once you start thinking about it.  It's compounded by the fact that Apollo artifacts would fetch a pretty penny on eBay if someone was able to get up there and bring back some trinkets.  I'm sure come collector would pay a fortune for Neil Armstrong's poop bag.  Makes you want to go back and watch Salvage with Andy Griffith, and Isaac Asimov as the science adviser.  The pilot was really good, as I remember.

Car Wreck In Slow Motion

The smackdown has begun.

If you line up a couple of dozen headlines just right, you can see the Big Showdown coming.  There's increasing polarization along hemispheric and ideological lines.  The players are lining up for the key play that will decide the next 100 years of life (or lack thereof) on this planet.

The role of we, the audience, have been assigned is to choose sides, shut up and stay out of the way until called upon to throw our lives onto the pile.  We're supposed to buy our gee-gaws and banners, sit nicely in the stands and cheer politely for our side.  We have no role in choosing the plays or strategy.  That's beyond our simple minds and capabilities.

For the most part, we are all dead anyway.  The BurP Gulf disaster poisoned the Atlantic, and Fukushima poisoned the Pacific.  It's only a matter of time before we all start dropping like flies from a myriad of diseases and lack of safe food supply.  It's part of the design to cull the herd.  Those who survive the onslaught of environmental death will be deemed evolutionarily strong enough to breed labor stock for the master race.

You can bet that it those were not contrived events, if the master race didn't have a plan to save themselves, then the media would be absolutely beside itself getting us all riled up to fix things.  But since the silent death is their game plan, we hear only silence and condescending coos from the 'adults'.

"There, there, little useless eater.  Don't be afraid.  Just go quietly," they tell us.  Like the scene in "Saving Private Ryan," where the German soldier reassures his victim as he slides the knife between his ribs.

So, it's very easy to say these things, but what proof do we have that the Great Ideology War is coming?

China and Japan, as of today, have linked their currencies in direct trade.  Up to now, both nations have had to convert everything to dollars before paying each other for deals.  Now, the second and third largest economies on Earth have completely by-passed the dollar and started trading with each other using their own currencies.

This is historic on many levels.  China and Japan have a lot of bad blood between them.  Japan invaded China during WWII and took over a significant part of the country.  Even now, they occasionally get into dust-ups over certain chunks of ocean and some islands that have been trading hands for centuries.

This is just one of several examples over the last couple of years of China moving to create its own world order, seperate and apart from the more glitzy and famous New (very old) World Order.  They have done the same currency move with Russia, and have taken steps to cozy up with southern and eastern hemispheric countries.  In other words, China is positioning the yuan to be a world reserve currency, at least within its sphere of influence.

The US is showing its nervousness and displeasure by announcing that it is beefing up its naval presence in the South Pacific.  The US is deeply worried that China is slowly cordoning off the batteries of Western economic growth by wooing Korea, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam.  So far, Singapore is the sole redoubt of Western hegemony in Asia, but the significant Chinese population there could easily sway it the other way, especially if Western economies continue to implode leaving Singapore little choice for survival.

In answer to China's PR campaign, the West has been consolidating its interests in Africa and the Middle East.  Crashing Libya and Egypt were just the beginning.  Iran's closest ally on the Mediterranean is Syria.  There is now an all-out effort to invade and destroy Syria before launching into Iran.  If the West were to go straight into Iran, Syria would open a second front much closer to Israel, and that would be bad.

However, Russia nad China are both lining up on the side of Syria, and both have veto votes on the UN Security Council.  The West is trying hard to get Putin to play ball, but he's not buying it.  The West launched a massive campaign to discredit Putin ahead of the recent elections there, but obviously the Russian people are happy with the direction he is taking things.

Furthermore, China has been making in-roads into the US' traditional ally base with one simple tool...money.  Where the US goes in with strong-arm tactics and makes a few deals with dictators to lock up resources, China goes in with an army of engineers to construct roads and infrastructure, making friends by offering friendship and development, not fear and bombs.  As a consequence, South America and Africa have come increasingly under the sway of China, out of loyalty and respect, rather than fear and loathing.

When you place Fukushima into the context of geo-political maneuvering, it could not have been better timed or placed to undermine eastern economic growth.  Not only did it strike at the heart of any economy - energy - but it has ensured an ongoing poison pill in the heart of an economic engine that has slowly been backing away from its Western masters.

In fact, Japan has been quietly off-shoring its manufacturing and intellectual base.  They have been buying up companies, specifically factories, all over Southeast Asia.  I would not be surprised to learn that Japan has made deals vis-a-vis the 'ghost' cities in China, as part of the recent currency moves.

Interestingly, what seems to be happening at the highest levels is the same game the West used on the Soviet Union.  The USSR, bogged down in Afghanistan for a decade, was hemorrhaging money.  Reagan famously threw into the mix Star Wars and a massive military build-up, causing the USSR to bankrupt itself trying to keep up.

In a twist of fate, the same strategy seems to be in play against the West now.  China is pursuing a massive military build-up, while Russia is supplying Syria and Iran with weapons and political backing.  Concurrently, the US and EU are financially imploding in their attempts to solidify their resource bases in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.  The tables have been turned, and by all appearances, it is working.

The EU is in complete financial decay.  It is beyond rescuing now.  The end is inevitable, though the exact landing place and time are still matters for bookmakers in Vegas and Fleet Street.  The Swiss are slowly distancing themselves.  The British are trying to cauterize the blood ties to the tumor.  Germany is pulling the drapes closed while trying very hard to appear engaged.  In fact, if you view Germany as the heart of the EU, then the situation looks just like a living organism, in that the extremities are being cast off in a bid to save the trunk.

Meantime, the US is in the midst of a St. Vitus' dance.  As promised, Ben Bernanke is all but literally taking to the skies to dump dollars on the world in a bid to puff up inflation, and thus face value.  Certainly, the dollar has been on the rise of late as the euro crashes and burns.  But this can only last until folks wise up to the fact that there is no carry value in the dollar.  As fast as you can amass them, they become worthless, much like the Mark in the Weimar Republic.

All this sets up a rally in gold, the likes of which no one has ever seen.  At the moment, it may appear counter to trend, but one must keep in mind that the gold market is the oldest shell game on Earth, and prices are being artificially lowered to, 1) prevent folks from seeing the decay in progress, and 2) to give insiders a chance to load up at bargain basement prices.  As prices drop, us little guys panic and sell off.  When the insiders are satisfied that they have a good chunk of our wealth, then they will pump gold up and trash the currencies into which you converted your metals.

In summary, what we are seeing now is the West panicking and falling into defensive mode.  The New (very old) World Order had a time-table for crashing the world and consolidating power, but there were variables that they either didn't plan for, or didn't gave low odds of happening.  They didn't figure on Russia recovering so quickly or so much, by throwing off the Rothschild banks and issuing state-controlled currency.  They didn't expect China to out-maneuver them by hedging the pile of western debt it had amassed.  They didn't expect a serious and concerted effort on the part of major power blocs to link up in a bid to create an anti-NWO, if you will.

The one economic tool left in the US' box is to repudiate the huge mass of gold bonds it has issued, especially in the eastern hemisphere, since the late 1800s.  Many Asian economies are quietly built on these bonds and pulling the plug is a last-ditch effort to let the air out of the balloon.  This is why you occasionally catch news stories about 'counterfeit' bonds being captured in Italy, the Philippines and elsewhere.  By claiming they are fake and forcefully withdrawing them, the US is trying desperately to pull its gold out from under Asia's feet.  Will it work?  Stay tuned...

What we do know, though we have to discern it from carefully stitching together a dozen loose ends, is that a chess game of monsterous proportions is playing out.  At the moment, the West has backed into defense, while the East is launching a major offernsive on the least protected flank.  Armies and navies are being pushed around the map.  Currencies are being deployed.  Propaganda has been ramped up on both sides.

As pawns, it is difficult for us to get a clear view of the board.  We can see those pieces closest to us, but which way they will go, and which ones will be sacrificed, are hard to discern.  All we can do is extrapolate by knowing what has happened, and what the overall goal of the game is.

Needless to say, whoever wins and whatever their long-term goals are, it will not be pleasant for us little folk.  We are tossed around as human resources, deployed to best advantage for the master race.  The only true and effective weapon we have is to walk away and refuse to take part in this charade.  The only way we can do that is to remove ourselves from their economies and turn off the channels of ceaseless mind-control they use to manipulate our thinking.

What have we got to lose?  We're all dead already.  Just a matter of whether we want to go with our boots on, or with bloody knees begging for scraps from their tables.

The beauty of it is, we don't have to fire a single shot or throw a single punch.  Just turn off the TeeVee and start bartering with our neighbors.  We are suffering already doing their bidding, why not chose our suffering for our own ends?

Call is return on investment.