Imitating To Death

I've seen a very particular change in Indonesians and the only cause I can make fit every case is food.  In the past six years, I have seen Indonesians get fatter and children become more hyperactive and distracted.  There are a number of possible causes, which we'll look at, but the one that seems to fit every case is a change in diet based on advancing economic conditions.

The three causes to which I can attribute the changes in folks here are electronic gee-gaws, maids and nannies, and food quality.  Each has its own distinct contribution to the way people are changing here, but food cuts all of them.

First, the electronic gee-gaws are a curse on humanity.  To a great extent, kids have become so engrossed in them that they hardly notice what most of us refer to as 'the real world'.  A bit of people watching at the local mall finds nearly everyone walking around in a daze as they focus on cell phones, tablets and other 'lights and wires in a box'.  They literally trip over each other or narrowly avoid colliding because they can hardly look up from their electronic revelry.

Watching TeeVee and movies causes folks to become bored with real life.  The act of writing and editing programs is one of distilling time.  All the little side-trips and time used to go from place to place are magically taken out so that only the most interesting and active parts of life are portrayed.  Having grown up on a steady diet of TeeVee, movies and games, kids become bored incredibly fast because real life is much slower and unfiltered by editing.  They grow bored almost instantly when they can't cut to the next action scene, or fast-forward through the slow bits.

They have lost the ability to communicate in analogue form.   I have witnessed my own family sitting at the dinner table texting and BBMing each other, rather than simply talk across the table.  Reality is no longer what we are all immersed in, it is what comes from a lighted box.  I also notice students, forbidden to use electronic devices (at least in my classes), going through a form of withdrawl.  They are distracted and agitated by the inability to text and BBM their classmates and whoever else is in their electronic universes.

The second problem is one that affects any group of economically advantaged folks.  The Western 1%ers have the same problem, there's just more of them here.  By long tradition, middle-class Indonesians on up hire entire armies of domestic servants.  There are nannies for the children, maids for Mom and drivers/valets for Dad.  No one has to do anything for themselves, they simply speak the command and *POOF* it is done.

The main problem are the nannies.  Parents wander through life oblivious to their children because young women are charged with chasing the kids around like 3D shadows.  Parents don't demand strict behavior and discipline from their children because it is the maid's duty to take care of all the mundane chores.  Instead of sitting at the table to eat, the nanny chases the kid around with a bowl of rice, taking every opporutnity to shovel in a spoonful when the child pauses long enough.  If the child gets dirty, the nanny whips out a fresh outfit from the ubiquitous backpack and *PRESTO*, all clean.  No need for self-discipline, since the parents only interact with the children for a few minutes of the day.  The rest of the time the 3D shadow is there.

Later, when the children enter school and are expected  to sit quietly and behave, they have no concept of how to do this.  They have spent their entire lives having every little inconvenience catered to and have come to see most folks other than their parents as servants who chase them around cleaning up their messes.

As a result of gee-gaws and nannies, young Indonesians have serious attention deficit and impulse control issues.  They have been raised like nascent stars with orbiting devices and servants to distract and entertain them.  When it come to paying close attention for 40 minutes at a time, or sitting in one spot and engaging in dialogue, they are nearly incapable of it.  Life moves too slow and they don't know how to respond without clicking something.

The worst influence on Indonesia's younger folks has to be food.  Above a certain income level, the diets have become almost exclusively processed foods.  Where once most Indonesians ate freshly picked or slaughtered foods, now they exist on canned diets and fast food junk.  They've gone from healthy living food to things that have been boiled, soiled and stamped.

Processed foods have the life cooked out of them.  All bacteria must be killed before canning, and long cooking times remove vast quantities of flavor and nutrition.  To compensate, artificial flavors, preservatives and other noxious chemicals are added: artificial flavors, color dyes, MSG, huge quantities of refined salt and sugar.

Consequently, Indonesian waistlines are rapidly expanding, heart disease and diabetes are on the rise, and children are becoming chemical waste dumps.  Overloaded by sugar and toxic chemicals, children's brains are forced into overload.  Added chemicals in the food break down into various toxins that affect brain function and autonomous body systems.  Fats, sodium and chlorine swamp the blood stream.  As a consequence, overall health declines and mental functions get short-circuited.  A child's body, overloaded with refined sugars, becomes a furnace cranking out energy to the point of nervous overload.

As Indonesians become wealthier and the middle class grows, they are adopting the absolute worst of Western culture, things they once watched with envy on TeeVee and in the movies are now within their reach.  McDonald's meals, once too expensive for the average Indonesian, became status symbols that now everyone consumes to show their newly obtained status. 

It's an unfortunate result of the infusion of Western media and entertainment that much of the world sees our unhealthiest habits as symbols of attainment.  One of the most successful exports of Western civilization is deadly food.  Complicite with media, the food industry has expanded (along with waistlines) into so-called 'emerging' nations.

Indonesia would do well to rethink its values.  Using gee-gaws as educational and developmental tools rather than mindless distractions would be a good start.  Reversing the trend of consigning their children to servants and taking a more active role in interacting and disciplining their children would help a lot, especially if they want their children to get the fullest benefit from their education.

Most importantly, Indonesians must rethink their diets.  One of the many benefits of living on the equator is fresh fruits and vegetables year-round.  Visiting the local pasar for fresh meats would bring immediate benefit, as well.  Finally, getting away from processed fast foods would have life-long benefits for health and mental well-being.

Indonesians must resist the temptation of using media as a guide to status.  Adopting the absolute worst habits of Western civilization as symbols of wealth is a dangerous habit in the long term.  Instead, apply the greater economic ability, increased educational options and increasing global attention to improve the best of native Indonesian life and export that to the world.

If Western lifestyles were so good, then there would not be the health crises, the economic decline and general cultural decay of the West seen today.  Yes, it is tempting because the media make it look like so much fun and so terribly interesting, but that is a function of Madison Ave. sales jobs, not reality.  All the gee-gaws you can imagine won't change the fact that we must exist in the here and now.

Once upon a time, cars were a status symbol for Indonesians.  With the advancing economy, now millions of people own at least one and Indonesia's cities are clogged to the point of grid-lock with cars.  What benefit is status if you can't get from one part of town to another to do business, which in turn pays for the better economy?  If this is happening to the cities, imagine what is happening to your body with the influx of chemicals and fats from a changing diet.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it only works until you follow the other guy off the cliff.

The Answer In Your Pocket

Source: Kompas, Wed., 10 April 2013

In just 15 short years, the world has gone from the Asian Contagion to the Western Festerin'.  Back in 1998, most Westerners sat back with satisfaction and not a little mirth as the Asian economy tanked, making imported cars and electronics dirt cheap for the average American or European.

Meanwhile, such stalwart Asian engines as Japan saw their markets crash, real estate prices tumble and imports slow to a trickle.  One can clearly see from the above graph, however, that the tables have turned a bit.  The only measure showing any weakness at all is Southeast Asia (Asia Tenggara) taken as a whole.  By nation, though, the Asian economies are red-hot (headline: Wages Driving Consumption [no shit Sherlock]).

How to explain this complete flip-flop of fortunes?  According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the so-called Advanced Economies will experience growth of 1.9% this year, while the so-called Emerging Economies will have 5.9% growth in 2013.  Those are regional averages (US/EU vs. BRICS), and that's if we don't question any fudging on the part of a Western-biased reporting agency.

First off, I question the terms "Emerging and Developing Economies" and "Advanced Economies".  Seems they belie a certain amount of undue hubris and self-aggrandizement, given the 4% difference in growth rates.  Second, these raw data imply that one group is doing something right, while the other is not.

So, how to interpret the numbers?

The standard biz school economic interpretation would be that the growth rate for 'developing' economies is due to the expansion of new industry in previously 'undeveloped' nations, combined with the fact that Asia experienced its depression back in the 90s, thus clearing debt and malinvestment, thus positioning those nations' economies for growth and expansion.

This is a neat and tidy explanation that avoids the true underlying situation, which is a taboo subject in Western academia and public discourse.  What it doesn't explain is why the Asian economies, supposedly dependent on exports to the West, are growing at such a massive pace when the West's imports are drying up.

Sure we can write it all off to China's thirst for raw materials that in turn is floating all boats in Asia, but what is driving China's expansion?  After all, aren't they completely dependent on Western demand and money?  And hasn't that market deflated like an old balloon in recent years?

What you are about to read is top secret, known only to the deepest insiders and requires you to destroy your computer immediately after reading.  Be sure and burn your hard drive as an additional safety precaution.

The simple truth is that China's, and many of Asia's central banks are state-owned and issue credit-based money based on the national GDP.  Inflation in these nations is based primarily on over-issuance of currency vis-a-vis production, though some amount is due to charging interest on loans - a trick learned from the Western banksters.

Here's the crux of the matter: in the West, central banks are owned by private corporate cabals which issue debt-based money at high (compounded) interest rates.  In China, Indonesia and other Asian countries, the national productive surplus is converted to credit and issued as currency.

Now, you may think this is the same thing, but it isn't.  The former is a closed economic system that creates unemployment, scarcity and ultimately ends in disaster.  The latter fosters open-ended growth, full employment and, if properly administered, has no preset disaster at the end of the line.

Before we get into how this works, let's first look at how the first system collapses.  Debt-based currency always entails compounding interest.  If you have an economy with $100 in it, and someone borrows $100 with 5% interest, then you have automatically created $5 out of nothing, and since the entire economy consists of $100, there is no conceivable way to pay back the $5 interest.  Furthermore, with compounding interest, the 5% rate is applied to the remaining balance on a regular basis, say every month.  In effect, the actual cost of the loan can be far above the actual 5% (as much as 50% or more), depending on the length of the repayment schedule.

Since many transactions in the economy bear interest (savings accounts, loans, bonds, etc.), it doesn't take long for the original $100 to be diluted to nothing and for the entire economy to be based on nothing, and for those at the center of the system (banksters) to collect the entire $100 in bits and pieces called interest payments.

Eventually, this system becomes unstable as all the real wealth is transferred to the hands of the few.  Unemployment soars as real wealth vanishes and companies forego hiring in order to make interest payments  Prices soar as those at the center control availability of resources and profit from the rising prices on their assets.

The result?  Complete and utter collapse without constant expansion, first in new markets, later in new sources of raw materials.  At this point in history, the closed Western economies must either exploit 'emerging' economies and steal their resources - becoming increasingly problematic - or expand into space to find new sources of raw materials and create new markets for labor.

This is what is behind Obama's recent pronouncements on asteroid mining and space commercialization.

By comparison, the Chinese government issues currency based on the growth of its economy.  The GDP grows 7%, the currency grows 7%, and so on.  They also offer very low-cost or free loans to farmers and small industry (and even other nations) to expand operations and increase output.

Granted, they do charge some interest on some loans, so there is inflation in the Chinese economy, but it is far more controllable since it is public institutions causing it and a simple policy change can stop it.  In effect, however, the interest in this case is more of a tax on projected increases in output rather than usury charged by private interests in a closed system.

None of this is to say that the Asian systems are perfect, but they are more flexible and have better long-term growth outlooks than Western economies.

Historically, however, the Western bankster cabals don't like state-owned currencies.  Obviously, they don't benefit and are unable to corner the market on wealth.  How much don't they like it?  Well, look at Libya, Iraq and Syria.  Listen to the rhetoric on Iran.  Witness the long-term castigation of North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.  Despite other short-comings, all these countries have/had open economies.

Want more examples?  How about the Continental Congress which preceded the current United States?  Or Lincoln's greenbacks, which financed his war against the break-away States.  Or Jackson.  Or Garfield.  Or Kennedy.  Jackson was impeached and nearly removed from office.  Lincoln, Garfield and Kennedy were both shot dead.  All of them had one thing in common: they wanted to issue credit-based currency controlled by the State rather than private interests.

How about Nazi Germany?  One of Hitler's first acts was to issue a state-owned, labor-based Reichmark that fueled Germany's astronomical growth in the pre-war years.

History argues that these men and countries were destroyed because they dared defy the bankster class, rather than any ideological differences.  Certainly, one look at the US today says that they had/have no issue with fascism, only who controls and benefits from it.  The same with genocide, since the US committed wholesale slaughter of the indigenous peoples of North America, thus negating any sanctimonious talk of holocausts.

From this argument, it would seem that the West has a vested interest in destroying the current systems employed in many Asian countries, including China.  So why haven't they?

As stated a number of times in these columns, one perceives a certain panic among the Western (read Anglo-American) oligarchies.  We must assume that this is so based on the threat that China and Asia pose to their closed economic system.  That panic can be laid at the feet any open war between China and the West would be one of attrition  and that the West would lose because its economy is imploding at a time when China's is soaring.

Therefore, direct confrontation is off the table.  Instead, we see covert cyberwars, proxy wars (North Korea, Venezuela) and other indirect attacks.  Some have speculated that scalar weapons affecting weather and geological processes have been deployed, and there is a good bit of circumstantial evidence in that regard.  In any event, the recent use of North Korea's lame rhetoric to position US military assets across the Pacific theater argues an increasing threat on the part of Asia towards Western hegemony.

The West cannot allow, under any circumstances, to let China's influence get out of control, especially in the southern hemisphere, where China has exerted the greatest influence.  The southern hemisphere not only contains a vast wealth of raw materials, it also is a major source of cheap, exploitable labor.  On top of that, China is exporting its open economics, which is the greatest threat to the Western oligarchies' long-term survival.

Most definitely, the oligarchies cannot afford to let the real people under their control figure out the benefits and problems of open and closed economics.  The ultimate nail in their coffins would be losing control of their own backyards (see note on Kennedy and EO11110).

Looking back at the chart at the top of the page, one can see that Asia is doing something right.  This article has attempted to put forth a reason for that astounding growth in an otherwise depressed global economy.  There is sufficient evidence in favor of the 'open economy' argument, but it does not argue that the extant systems are by any means perfect, only better.

For those interested in reviving the West economies and becoming competitive and prosperous once again, a thorough review of Continentals, Reichsmarks and Kennedy's silver certificates would be in order.  There is a better way and ironically, China is showing us the path.  We must deprogram the views foisted on us by the privately owned media that support the privately owned banks, and start examining the Iceland Miracle and other economic success stories for their common denominators.

Or we must face extinction quietly and with dignity, secure in the fact that we did nothing to change our lot in life.