On The Eve Of GlobalRev

The Chinese say it is a curse to live in interesting times. I rather see it as my native environment.

I was born into the maelstrom known as the 60s in America. There was great social and cultural upheaval then.olitics split between the old and the new. Assassinations were common. The  coup d'etat was king.

I was only old enough to appreciate the change in tides. I listened go Dylan and Carlin, but it was years before I could put context with them. My parents were W
W2
 Making me a Boomer, but many of my contemporaries' parents were Korea or Viet Nam. That placed me solidly on tbe cusp of history.

All my life, i have come to various cultures either before or after thdy have convulsed. I lived in Dublin before the Great Boom. I arrived in Prague a year after the Velvet Revolution. I was in Belize and Guatemala during a truce. I was 43 miles outside Iran when the ayatolahs took over. Always a day late and a dollar short.

Until nos.

I've always wanted to be in the middle of interesting times, and it seems I've been thrust into the middle of them.

As ba kground, I have always wanted to come to Indonesia. I can distinctly remember the desire in 2nd grade sociology class. I was jealous of any acquaintance who got near here. One could say I was destined to be here now, as Ram Das would say.

And so it happens in my second half-century, I am consigned go be in Indonesia at the Turning Point. Like Brer Rabbit, I've been thrown into the briar patch.

For centuries, Indonesia has been dominated by other cultures and through the auspices of religion and economics, has been kept a superstitious and provincial land.  When I arrived here, I was hard pressed to find an Indonesian who had traveled abroad, nlw I'm equally hard pressed to find one who hasn't.

By the same token, the internet has brought a tidal wave of ideas and connections from the outside world that threaten the very fabric of life here. As a consequence, the leadership finds itself in a position of clamping down on society or facing their own irrelevance. As a result, it is seen as both authoritarian and archaic, neither of which engenders popular support. In fact, Indonesia is a perfect microcosm of the world at large at this crux of history.

Essentially what is happening here is a clash of ideologies not unlike the US in the 60s.  A younger generation, increasingly flush with money and with ideas they have picked up from a wide variety of sources, are looking at their traditional society and asking, "Why?"  For better or worse, they are going to change their country and their culture.  It is a foregone conclusion.  It is the embodiment of the old saying, "How are you going to keep them on the farm once they've seen Paris?"

A result of this growing wave of change is the authorities trying to control the level and pitch of the change.  For instance, recent government declarations have cut back on science, languages and arts in schools, and demanded more (Islamic) religious training.  The sense one gets from the ruling majority is that they are losing their grip on the young.  The kids are getting too much knowledge and not enough indoctrination.  The question remains how far the authorities are willing to go to contain what they view as a threat?

We have seen in history what happens when this sort of change occurs in society.  The Roman church launched the Inquisition and held bake sales with human dissenters.  The Protestant Revolution proved no less violent.  In more recent times, the 60s produced violent clashes between an old generation hell-bent on keeping the kids in line, and the kids who were hell-bent on erasing the line.

Indonesia is not alone.  The new prosperity is changing a lot of cultures throughout the eastern hemisphere.  Cultures which have been poverty-ridden and isolated for centuries are finding themselves flush with money and opportunities, and unwilling to sit still for the institutions perceived as having kept them in the dark for centuries, in many cases.

Curiously, the West is facing much the same forces of history, only at a much more advanced state.  In western countries, there has been a 100-year-long revolution taking place that began with World War 1.  It is a sweeping an fundamental upheaval in the fabric of society due to new technologies, new knowledge and new experiences.

The profundity of changes wrought by such inventions as the internet are severely overlooked by a great many people.  Gutenberg's press was the seed for the Protestant Revolution when it made the Bible accessable to the common man.  In the same way, the internet has brought the collected knowledge of Mankind to the screens of any computer or mobile device.  That kind of power injected into society cannot be underestimated.

There is no doubt we are facing a global cataclysm as the forces of control try to maintain their iron grip on masses of people who are now instantly privy to the vast body of knowledge and wisdom that has been kept hidden for centuries.  Furthermore, there is now a unique historical ability to generate global consensus outside the auspices of traditional power bases.  That is an awesome wave of destiny heading for our cultural shores.

In physics, it can be said that all of Creation is little more than manifest information.  All of reality is simply clumps of data acting semi-autonomously to seek more information and take part in the creative process of assembling that information into knowledge.

Now imagine that reality suddenly being infused with massive amounts of new information.  It would be like thrown gasoline on a fire.  It is a catalyst for change (and one assumes...growth).  In a sense, we are witness to a sudden swarm of insects due to past rainfall and the availability of increased food sources.  Though we experience the swarm as a 'sudden' event, the variables which created it have taken a year or more to accumulate.

Where we are now is a very delicate stage in history.  Authorities are happy with their cushy and exclusive roles in society.  It is a given that power is a drug, and a very addictive one at that.  The authorities always react by first trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and failing that, they clamp down violently on their power bases.  The inevitable result, of course, is their own destruction and replacement.

History is replete with examples where a massive infusion of information into society has caused profound long-term upheaval and change.  We are at that point now, but on a scale never before witnessed.  The changes are not regional, but global, and the response from authorities will be equal in scale and scope.  There is no doubt that the forces of change will win out, but it remains to be seen how far the power elite will go to preserve their stations of privilege.  Given past experience, mass killings and bloody rebellion are not unthinkable.

What we can hope is that the infusion of all this information brings with it a certain kind of mass wisdom.  Perhaps the authorities will see the futility of their efforts to maintain control, and perhaps the masses will see the futility of mass destruction we call revolution, but I hardly doubt it, human nature being what it is.

In many ways, current events are very exciting.  It is the birth pangs of something redically new in our common experience.  However, anyone who has experienced birth knows the pain, conflicting emotions and mess involved.

As for Indonesia, the power structure here has been based on Islam for the past 600 years.  Furthermore, Islam is the last remaining major religion that has not gone through a major reformation.  As such, Islam is facing its reformation at a time when the entire world is changing in a myriad of ways.  A billion people may soon be battling changes to their religion, as well as to society as a whole on a global scale.

It is now inevitable that the changes begun during World War 1 with the end of monarchy will continue apace for the next several decades.  The scale and scope of the changes ensures that virtually no one will escape the turmoil.  And we can safely assume that the structures and methods of power and control will not stand in the face of what is coming.  So there can only be one conclusion...

Hold on!

Repatriate Games

For some time now, Joseph Farrell has been monitoring the ongoing gold repatriation efforts worldwide.  if you've been under a rock for the past two years, allow me to fill you in.

A while back, Germany politely asked to audit its gold holdings in the Federal Reserve of New York.  Seems that after World War 2, one of the requirements to keep Germany in its place was that it had to store a fair amount of its gold in France, Britain and the US.  For the past 70 years, this hasn't been much of an issue, until the Federal Reserve began printing dollars like two-ply toilet paper and handing out bundles of 'bailout' to all their buddies.

Naturally, the Germans, being the second largest gold owner in the world (as far as we know), wanted to check up on its gold.  Naturally, the Federal Reserve, being the nastiest bunch of liars in the world, hemmed and hawed over this request.

Smelling a rat, German then decided to call back a portion of its Federal Reserve holdings.  If memory serves, they wanted 300 of their 3,000 tons of booked reserves sent home.  The answer?  No problem!  We'll get that to you in seven years or so...

?!

Seven years to collect and send over one-tenth of the gold that Germany supposedly has on deposit in New York.  Wait a minute...do you catch the sent of rotting fish here?  Even if you don't smell it, a lot of other countries did, and now they want their gold returned, as well.  And the chorus of nations is growing almost daily across the planet.

Something is rotten in the state of New Amsterdam and its making plenty folks nervous.

Farrell speculates, and I agree, that Germany would not be making this much noise if it didn't have a back-up plan.  The Germans know that a significant amount of its energy resources come from Russia, and that China is one of its largest trading partners.  Meantime, the US debt is running at 107% of GDP and the dollar is showing significant long-term weakness.

If you were Germany, what would you do?  Why, pack up the Chancellor and her Cabinet and head for China for extended talks, of course.

This whole gold repatriation thing might be a one-off event without a whole lot of context until you add in a few more data points.

After 9/11, there were numerous reports of dump trucks hauling gold (or something) out of the basement of the World Trade Center, which just happened to be one of the Federal Reserve's main vaults.  At the time, this was easily dismissed as 'conspiracy theory', but in light of recent events, it deserves closer scrutiny.

Another recent development that is just starting to gain notice, and which I have been tracking here and on UrbanSurvival since last year is the wave of currency revaluations going on in Asia.

It began when I heard about the Indonesian rupiah revaluing to lop off three zeros from the exchange rate.  Currently, it trades at roughly 10,000 to 1 with the dollar.  By itself, this sounds like the Indonesian government is trying to simplify trade calculations using US dollars, until you look at something else.

The rupiah trades at approximately 1,500 to 1 with the Chinese renmembi.  Lop off three places and you get a near perfect parity with the Chinese currency.

Reports are that at least Vietnam and SKorea are also rolling out revaluations.  I would not be surprised to see those currencies come closer to parity with the remembi than with the dollar in the aftermath.

To my mind, this is a clear signal that the Chinese economy is quickly supplanting the US as the global standard.  The revaluations also reveal a possible long-term plan to issue a singleAsian currency along the lines of the euro, but perhaps with some adjustments to avoid the calamity sweeping the Euro Zone.  One of them being realigning Asian currencies to be at parity before the debut of the single currency.  That is something that was not done in Europe with the Greek drachma or the Italian lira, and guess which countries are having the biggest fiscal problems right now...

So, if we align all these dots - dump trucks full of gold, financial crisis, gold repatriation movement, Asian currency revaluations, German high-level visits to China - what is clearly emerging is a crisis of confidence in Anglo-American hegemony and a global realignment with the new top dog, China.

Even without other side issues, such as George Ure's Resource Wars and Richard Dolan's Breakaway Civilizations, we are seeing a massive shift in the basic power structure of the globe.

The only thing the US has to back up its economic hegemony is a powerful military, but its not enough to keep the whole world in line.  In the wake of World War Parts 1 and 2, there was a similar shift that left the US as the only major Western economy with any strength, and Russia as the only Eastern bloc (China had not yet emerged from its dark ages).  But the US sold out its underlying strength of manufacturing and innovation to the low-cost bidders, who in turn have taken the economic mantle with them.

Whether there is a bigger picture here is a matter of great speculation among a lot of thinkers, but one thing is quite clear: the Anglo-American empire is dying.  It is losing traditional allies at an alarming pace as they bail out of a sinking ship and cozy up to stronger and more stable partners.  The US response has been to deploy a global fleet of flying robots that can strike targets at will as a means of terrorizing nations into submission.

At home, the US is trying to keep the locals in line with similar, though more egregious means because it can not afford to allow its tax base to revolt, which would be a huge propaganda nail in its coffin.

The only ace in the Anglo-American hole is space, and we are seeing some interesting developments there, as well.  Things like the Curiosity rover are not just scientific programs, they are technological displays of superiority in the new frontier.  They are also the 21st century equivalent of running around planting flags in other people's lands, or really just a high-tech version of pissing on fire hydrants.

The current decade will see major changes in how the world works, with traditional leaders fading and new ones emerging.  Currently, the sun rises in the East where low debt and manufacturing are creating wealth, while in the West they have sat on their laurels and diluted their wealth to the point of self-destruction.

It is safe to safe the West will act increasingly belligerent and desperate, which will in turn lead to more and more war fronts opening up (see Africa).  The race now is to commercialize space before the king's coffers are completely empty.  However, even those efforts can backfire like the influx of New World gold and silver into the Spanish economy in the 15th century.

It's a game of very delicate balances and one which is a fool's errand.  History tells us these kinds of power shifts happen on a regular basis (even if the time spans seem quite long by human reckoning).  The question is, what will be the tipping point?  And when it all tips over, how many folks will die in the shift?

If, like George Carlin, we step back and become spectators no longer having a stake in the outcome, it is a fascinating process to watch, painful though it is to so many unsuspecting folks.  The normalcy bias can be destructive when we refuse to observe and accept reality.

The forces are stronger than any one individual, or even groups of individuals, but as individuals, we can prepare to ride out the storm as best we can, if we admit to ourselves that these things are happening.  The wheels are in motion and they will either run us over or offer us a lift, depending on whether or not we see the bus coming.

Now is the time for clear vision and thinking on the part of us regular folk.  We need aware of what's happening and acknowledge the forces swirling around us without prejudice.  If we can do this, we have a chance to change things for the better.  If not, we are doomed to repeat history until we do get it.

In the meantime, watch the gold games, the currency manipulations and the movements of 'leaders'.  Also, watch the space game.  There is a major shift there, as well.  Controlling the high ground will have a profound affect on the outcome of current events.

In any event, it might be a good idea to sell stocks at the top of the market and buy a little gold as speculation.  Certainly seems that markets are doomed and metals are favored in this environment.

Happy, happy, joy, joy, as Stimpy likes to say....