Cold Weather and War

Detroit Police Chief: “Good Americans with Concealed Pistols Translates Into Crime Reduction”

Mac Slavo
Activist Post

It’s easy for supporters of anti-gun polices to suggest that all law-abiding citizens be disarmed and for gun ownership to be restricted, because most of them haven’t grown up in high-crime areas where they live under the constant threat of being assaulted, raped, mugged or murdered on a daily basis.

But when you see the reality of private gun ownership and how it actually helps to not only stop crimes in progress, but prevents them from happening in the first place, you can no longer ignore the necessity of having an armed citizenry, especially in cities and states where criminals will knowingly prey on innocents because they have absolutely nothing to lose.

Case in point: Detroit’s new police chief James Craig once worked in California, where it is a common occurrence for Sheriffs and Chiefs to deny concealed-carry weapons permits to their residents. They often do so without even reading the applications.

Concealed weapons permits at that time… it was an act of Congress to get one. Police chiefs just did not author or give approval for that.As Craig noted at a recent press conference, this was his orientation, because everyone was doing it. He was, by all accounts, one of those government officials who restricted Americans’ ability to protect themselves.

But he soon changed his tune when he realized that maybe these gun-toting radicals were on to something.

So I go to Maine and there are stacks of CCW’s, and I was denying them because that was my orientation.
What was interesting about Maine [is there are] lots of concealed weapons permits. 

My orientation changed very quickly. 

But here was the key with Maine… It’s one of the safest places in America. And it’s not like crime is non-existent. Certainly in Portland, Maine they had gangs, they had narcotics suspects, they had shootings.

But clearly suspects knew that good Americans were armed.

Craig made similar statements last month, where he specifically noted that law-abiding citizens carrying guns leads to lower crime rates.

There’s a number of CPL (concealed pistol license) holders running around the city of Detroit. I think it acts as a deterrent. Good Americans with CPLs translates into crime reduction. I learned that real quick in the state of Maine.” (WJR 760 AM) There’s a reason that self defense killings in Detroit spiked to2200% above the national average in recent years. Detroit’s bankruptcy proceedings have left their police force decimated, response times in the double digits, and criminals running rampant. This left residents, especially in poverty-stricken areas, with no other option than to depend on themselves.

How many innocent people who want nothing more than to be left alone have preserved their way of life because they had a firearm on them when they were assaulted by those who would do them harm?

According to Chief Craig, over 300 legally armed Americans successfully defended themselves in Detroit last year. Opponents of concealed-carry will group that statistic with criminal homicide in an effort to cook the numbers, but in fact those incidents are considered justifiable homicides. There were likely hundreds, if not thousands, of other unreported incidents in which a firearm was used to prevent a crime.

We often hear anti-gun proponents tout “common sense” policies that restrict the ownership and purchase of self defense firearms, but common sense dictates that by doing so law-abiding citizens will be the only ones without guns. When you restrict private gun ownership, only the criminals will have them. A perfect example of this is the city of Chicago, where private ownership is restricted. Cops are outnumbered 500-to-1 and have likened the city to tribal warfare in Iraq.

As James Craig suggests, when good Americans have access to firearms, and are allowed to carry and use them in situations where their lives may be threatened, most criminals will think twice before attacking a random person on the street.

Now, THAT’s common sense.


Credit to Activist Post

Top Historian Asks "Is It 1914 Again?"

Would You Prefer a Civil War or World War Three?

The Common Sense Show

America is on a collision course with a brutal civil war. We can argue if the coming civil war will be conventional or guerrilla. However, many of us feel that we have reached the point of no return and that civil strife is unavoidable.

A political solution to our multiple issues would have been my preferred choice, but that ship sailed a long time ago. I know that the cognitive dissonance crowd will not believe this, however, nobody from that mindset can answer the most important question in the debate based upon the present circumstances:

If a civil war was not inevitable, then explain how the military and this administration are going to get past the fact that this “false flag” President has fired over 200+ military command officers?

And there is a second important question:

Why have 14 state governors restructured their respective state military organizations so that they are not under the control of Obama?

A Military Rebellion Is Unavoidable

Whenever 200+ leaders of any organization are fired in a short period of time, the person doing the firing has formed a group which opposes them.

These military leaders had great influence and close ties over those that they have commanded. Obama just did not fire over 200+ military commanders, he alienated, tens if not hundreds of thousands of military personnel who based their professional loyalty to their military commanders, will resist their foreign born Commander-In-Chief.

This is not a question of some of us in the media who desire for this happen. We have no say in the matter. And father time is defeating many of as several of us are too old to fight and too fat to run! It is not up to us as these conditions, which are ripe for a civil war, were forced upon our nation by Obama and his handlers.

Some Questions for the Fence-Sitting Sheep

Do you not think the executive officers under the command of the fired military leaders understood the issues behind the firing of their commanding officers? Was not the entire command structure in Afghanistan alienated from Obama when McChrystal was fired, largely over rules of engagement? Do you not think that all service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan understand that this buffoon of a President increases their chances of not coming home alive, because of Obama’s treasonous rules of engagement which endangers American soldiers? Do you not think that if many of us in the alternative media can find evidence of a massive Russian troop buildup, including the presence of Russian heavy equipment on our soil, that the military is not already resentful of the fact that they have to wet nurse these future martial law enforcing troops and that they are from a nation that has repeatedly threatened to nuke America in the past 15 months? Do you think  our military commanders are looking forward to the participation of Chinese and Russian soldiers in the upcoming RIMPAC war games?

Do you not think that the upper echelon of the military is not scared to death that in a time of civil unrest, or civil war, that we have 200,000 troops, stationed in foreign countries, who will not likely get home? Do you think the Generals in the Pentagon do not know the commanders in Afghanistan, or Iraq? Do you not think there are not close personal relationships in and among our military leaders stationed around the world and there is not an overall awareness in the military that the President is playing for the other side? Do you sheep really believe that the next time our noncommissioned officers send another young American home in a body bag because of the President’s rules of engagement, that the resentment towards this administration does not grow exponentially? Do you not think that present active duty personnel do not hear from their veteran friends who have come back home, that the Obama administration now refers to veterans, in DHS documents, as domestic terrorists and that Obama is going after their guns because he fears them?

If we can find out about Obama’s fake birth certificate and his anti-American sentiment, do you not think that our troops have not learned these lessons a long time ago?

Most  American military commanders are loyal to each other and have been trained to risk their lives on behalf of their fellow soldiers. Why do you think that when someone from the executive branch flies into Afghanistan, that the troops must be disarmed because of previous shooting incidents? Does anyone really believe that our military enjoys sleeping with the enemy? And who do you think they blame?

After considering all of these facts, do you sheep still believe that it will not take much provocation to get the troops to act against the modern day KGB in America (i.e. DHS)? Hell, even Ray Charles could see this is fertile breeding ground for a civil war!

If this was Stalinist Russia, these military officers would have been shot in the back of the head. Fortunately for these 200+ deposed military commanders, our modern communications system would make it impossible for Obama to purge the military in the same manner as Stalin did without incurring the ire of an entire nation. However, the end result is the same. The military is being purged because it will not act against the American people and you can take that to the bank.

The best we can hope for in the present set of circumstances, is a military coup and that , my friends, never ends well and I lose sleep over this possibility.

If we do not change course, our greatest fears will be realized because the sides are already drawn and it will not be long until all hell breaks loose across our country.

An Epic Struggle Is Taking Shape

In one corner, we have the DHS led federal agencies accompanied by their muscle; the Chinese, the Russians and the Canadians. If this group prevails in the upcoming struggle, Mao will have to forfeit his title as the most murderous dictator in world history.

There are members of the NWO who do not want two stones left together in this country. They want as many of us to die as possible (see the Georgia Guide Stones). They want to leave no trail of the traditional American notions of freedom and independence because these notions are a formidable roadblock to the lethal scientific dictatorship being installed on this planet. Americans are in the crosshairs of history. American Christians will soon become the most hunted game on the planet because we represent freedom, autonomy and obedience to God’s laws and not blind obedience to the dictates of genocidal leaders.

In our corner, the other corner, we have a large segment of the American military and some of the American citizenry, largely veterans, who will oppose the attempts to finalize the tyranny being installed across the planet.  This is an all-stakes, winner-take-all battle. Soon, even the sheep are going to be forced to choose sides.

No Pleasant Alternatives

The coming conflict will not have a good outcome no matter who wins. If the military and the American citizens prevail, all we will likely accomplish is to replace one brutal dictatorship with another. If the other side wins, there is nowhere that will be safe. All of us will become, by definition, an endangered species.

Fourteen Governors Have Acquired Some Temporary Courage Against Tyranny

I have previously written that I have recently spoken with a high ranking military officer who was fired because he would not help DHS to completely control a fully integrated state-to-state national guard organization. He was unwilling to voluntarily hand the keys to the car to a communist such as Obama whom he perceived as someone who was dedicated to the destruction of this country. This officer’s resolve was shocking, but now I understand why. In retrospect, he was lucky that he was only fired.

Why has DHS armed to the teeth? The answer is simple, Obama is facing opposition to not only his failed policies like Obamacare, he is facing the possibility of organized military resistance at the state level in several locations. There is presently an armed uprising directed at him by the select governors of 14 different states and that number is continuing to grow.

To the previous point I raised as to why Obama is moving to nationalize the National Guard Forces, the answer is simple. Fourteen governors are militarily organizing against Obama. States such as Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, Virginia, Louisiana and South Carolina, are saying no to the increasing level of tyranny. These state military entities have been structured in such a way that they cannot become federalized. This is highly significant because the vast amount of federal/DHS resources used to federalize local police forces is now being undermined in these 14 states.

Obama Is Not Just Facing An Armed Rebellion From the Military

Fourteen state governors have reestablished State Defense Forces which includes any and all militias and the national guard. The authority over these troops does not rest with the President and he is furious.

Obviously, these 14 governors are talking and planning amongst each other because their actions are so uniform and have happened in such a narrow time frame, that their actions are clearly an act of insubordination to Obama. In 14 states, the 10th Amendment still has life.

These actions by the 14 governors are one short step away from armed rebellion. I am confident that any and all attempts on the part of the Hessian troops on American soil to move against dissident Americans and to enforce martial law will be militarily opposed in these 14 states.

When will 14 governors militarily opposed to Obama become 30, become 40?

I cannot overstate how significant this development is. We are “One shot heard around the world” from all hell breaking lose.

Conclusion

It is clear that the people’s closest elected representatives have had enough of this criminal organization as have our military. All citizens in the 36 states who are not militarily rising up against Obama, need to demand the same actions from their respective governors. Obama cannot act against a nation that is unified against him. However, this does mean that the bankers will push for WWIII to bring about their desired result if an internal takeover of America cannot be accomplished.

There is even a third wild card factor that has not been discussed anywhere in the media. Does anyone really think that the military industrial complex supports Obama’s desire to bring down the American military? Will the conquering hordes of Chinese and Russian troops allow these capitalist pigs to make as much as they are under the existing system?

Which would you prefer, a civil war or WWIII?

2014, THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION

By Paul McGuire

2014 is the single most important year in America’s history because if we make the wrong decisions it can lead to a 1930s style economic crisis and authoritarianism from the right or left to manage the chaos. The right decisions will move us toward a Great Awakening and the rebirth of the American Dream. Beliefs have consequences and America’s rapid decline is not the result of the actions of one particular political party or leader, but rather a widespread belief in statism…the virtual worship of government. America, and along with it the entire world, is in a death spiral that results from a faulty worldview which has infected the elite and entire masses of people with an ideological virus that produces a collective brain death. That faulty worldview can be summed up in one phrase: “The State is God,” attributed to Trotsky. But what many people do not understand is that the State is simply a front for a secretive elite.

The mass media in America focuses in on how many times the f-word is used in The Wolf of Wall Street, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. But that misses the main point of the movie, which brutally depicts the immorality and lawlessness in the Wall Street culture and the danger that represents to the economic well being of our nation and world. Like the State, Wall Street is simply a front for a hidden economic elite. The middle class in America have not had a real real pay increase since 1965, primarily because the actual value or buying power of the dollar is significantly less than it was in 1965. In the early 1960s, when I was going to P.S. 69 in Queens, New York, I used to walk across the street from the elementary school, which looked like a prison by the way, and go the pizza place and get two slices of pizza and a coke for a quarter. Today, that same purchase could easily cost me $8.00!

In 1965, a person without a college education could make $2.30 an hour in some jobs, which is the equivalent of $17 dollars an hour today. Today, the minimum wage is nine dollars an hour and it is next to impossible to find those high paying non-skilled jobs because they have all been outsourced to places like China, whose economy is booming. Who outsourced all those jobs? President Obama and the Democrats? As I recall, it was “God and country” Republicans and politicians like the “champion of conservatism” Newt Gingrich who championed GATT, NAFTA, the WTO, and other means of outsourcing American jobs all around the world. Who was really behind GATT,NAFTA and the WTO? The same secretive elite…an elite that our Founding Fathers like Jefferson, Washington and Hamilton wrote extensively about.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is also a front for the elite, is announcing ahead of time that the Western world will require defaults, a savings tax, and higher inflation as means to economic recovery because debt levels have reached a 200-year high. Do you really think that these debt levels reached a 200-year high by accident? Do you really think that the international bankers who controlled the central banks of Europe for centuries, and the Federal Reserve, simply forgot to balance their books for two centuries?

The six major corporations which control the entire global media don’t want us to know about God’s prophetic Word regarding the future, which foretells a coming one world economic system, one world government, and one world religion in the last days. The Book of Revelation predicted a global economic system along with the “Mark of the Beast,” which uncannily resembles a cashless society requiring a microchip implant placed inside every human being who chooses to accept it. If we simply compare this Biblical prediction with current economic and technological data, we see that the global economic system is on the verge of flipping from the U.S. dollar as the de facto world currency to a new international currency that will eventually be cashless and use some kind of chip. The world’s leading economic publications have been calling loudly for a “New International Economic Order” for about two decades now.

In order to prepare the way for a smooth transition into a “New International Economic Order” people must first be conditioned to perceive it as the only way their lifestyles, pensions, retirement, savings, and healthcare can be preserved. Yet ultimately, the means for the Draconian seizure of pensions, retirement, and savings by governments with too much debt will be this mass global conversion into a one world economic system.

Let’s go back to the beginning of Mankind somewhere in the geographic vicinity of modern Iraq and the Middle East where the Garden of Eden existed. For the moment, let us suspend the argument on whether or not there was a literal Garden of Eden with a literal Adam and Eve and look at it from primarily an economic perspective. In the Biblical text in the Book of Genesis there is an account of an original man and woman, whose names are Adam and Eve, and they enjoyed economic prosperity in an environmental and social Paradise. These original human beings were in some kind of close relationship to what the Bible calls the Personal Living God of the Universe, and this God empowered them to be rulers over Planet Earth. That rulership included the executive management of all of the Earth’s resources such as food, water, weather, and the environment. On a genetic level, they were created physically and spiritually in the image of God and were infused with a life force that was so powerful that death and disease did not exist in them. This had a tangible economic benefit because there were no health care or aging costs.

Adam and Eve were always young, healthy, and productive. In addition, due to the complete social and political freedom they had, reproducing and having children was an economic blessing. The Malthusian idea that society’s problems stem from overpopulation was not a viable concept for them because the idea of scarcity was non-existent. In addition, the living energy that poured through their beings was so intense that they lived in a far higher state of consciousness than contemporary man does and in all probability the reason that they were not “naked” before what was is termed the “Fall” was that their DNA energized the biophotons inside of them and they were clothed with light. They had no need for external energy sources like oil.

Now you may believe that the Genesis account is mythological or allegorical; I happen to believe that there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that it is literal, but for the moment this important debate can suspended and picked up at a later time. What is suggested in the Genesis account is the existence of perfect human beings who are rulers of the Planet, living in a constant state of economic and spiritual growth. Adam and Eve were given a primary directive by their Creator and that was to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over their world. The other primary directive was that they were to obey God’s Word, which was expressed in a single commandment, which was not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which would allow the death force into their world.

It is important to notice that in this original world there was no death, disease, psychological problems, economic shortages, political struggles, shortages of any kind, crime, or war. In addition, God said to them through His Word that they were to be fruitful and multiply. This meant not only biological reproduction, but continual creative, economic, artistic, cultural, and scientific advances. The only thing they could do to jeopardize that incredible prosperity would be to disobey His Word regarding the eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which they did when they were tempted to listen to another voice, which was the voice of Lucifer, who had inhabited the physical form of a Reptilian being. The result of their action was the entrance of the death force into their once perfect world, bringing death, disease, shortages, poverty, political struggles, war, and conflict.

From that point forward the history of the human race is essentially the account of Mankind taking one of two paths as individuals, tribes, and nations. One path is based on obeying and living in the truth of God’s Word and the other path is based on living according to manmade philosophies and belief systems. In both cases ideas have significant consequences. God chose the children of Israel, according to His will and not due to any inherent virtue of theirs, to be a testimony to His law or Word. Historically, God has used the descendants of Abraham as a form of living theatre to show what happens to a nation that obeys the law of God and what happens to a nation that disobeys the law of God. In Deuteronomy Chapter 28, there is an extensive outline of the specific blessings and curses that result from obedience or disobedience to the Word of God. These blessings and curses are very specific and deal with economics, war, immigration, agriculture, weather conditions, health, disease, political freedom, etc. A historical examination of the history of the Jews shows a cycle of thousands of years of blessing, captivity, and death based on their relationship to the law of God. It is a model for other nations to see.

When America was founded by the Pilgrims and Puritans who had escaped religious persecution in Europe, these early settlers decided to enter a similar relationship with the Personal Living God of the Universe. In short, the Pilgrims and Puritans clearly understood that it was God and not government that was the ultimate source of their well-being. It was from that set of ideas that a unique form of American government was birthed which included such radical ideas as “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” in the Declaration of Independence and the idea that a Creator, not government, gave Man these inalienable rights. In addition, the Bill of Rights included “Freedom of Religion,” “Freedom of Speech,” “Freedom of the Press,” etc., and it all came from this idea which originated from a Biblical worldview.

In contrast, the French Revolution, a humanistic revolution inspired by the forces of the Illuminati, ended in chaos, dictatorship, poverty, and mass murder. The French Revolution, as with all humanist revolutions, such as the Communist Revolutions, started with the premise that there is no God and that Man or the State is God.

Many of the governments of Europe were ruled by the elite in the form of both royalty and secret occult societies like the Illuminati which believe that is the State which grants men and women certain freedoms and it is the State which produces an economy. These ideas go back to ancient Babylon where Nimrod and his wife Semiramis had the divine right to rule as kings, because they were “gods.” The entire idea of the divine right of kings to rule over their subjects flowed from the belief that kings and queens were god-men and women and were genetically superior. When the children of Israel rebelled against the Word of God, they were sent into slavery to serve the god-king Pharaoh as economic slaves. They did not get to keep the fruits of their labor, nor were they given freedom. The principle is very clear: whenever the Word of God is rejected, from the Garden of Eden on to the present, slavery is the result.

Before the beginning of America there were two different plans for the nation based on two different ideas. First, there was the secret occult plan for America conceived by Sir Francis Bacon and then followed through by the Illuminati, who worked in partnership with the Central Banks of Europe, which later became the Federal Reserve System in America. The Bible clearly states “that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.” In 1913-1914 when the international bankers passed the Federal Reserve Act, this allowed the Illuminati banking families like Rothschilds to take over the monetary system and control America.
Christian leaders who should have been filled with the Spirit of the Lord and having their intellectual capacities enhanced by renewing their minds with the Word of God were in a religious stupor and had fallen asleep like the unfaithful Watchman that they were. While they slept America went into captivity through an economic system designed to make people slaves because of the Biblical principle that the “debtor is slave to the lender.” The global monetary system obviously did not exist in Eden, and even charging interest was forbidden in the Bible.

The Jews were forbidden by God to charge interest to other Jews; it was called usury. However, the surrounding pagan nations did allow for the creation of a money system where the charging of interest was allowed. As early as 5000 B.C. the Mesopotamians, Hittites, Phoenicians, and Egyptians charged interest, but it was fixed by the state. Jews were allowed to charge interest to non-Jews in order to sell and trade in their economic system. But the Jews were not allowed to exploit or take advantage of non-Jews in their business dealings, especially the poor. Their business dealings with those outside Israel were expected to be fair and just. Tragically, despite the warnings of the prophets, the Jews began to ignore this aspect of the law and over time many Jews as well as Christians abused the charging of interest to poor people, amassed great fortunes, and made people their slaves or serfs through debt.

Charging of excessive interest in an effort to exploit or enslave people was condemned by the Vedic texts of India and by Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, and in China and many other nations. The modern international banking system is now essentially built on a system of lies and is a means of stealing the assets of innocent people and transferring the wealth of the middle class and others into the hands of powerful international bankers. Many recessions, inflation, interest rate changes, and things like the Great Depression were essentially schemes to transfer massive amounts of wealth, inheritances, and property into the hands of the international bankers.

In the Old Testament God established the economic principle of the Year of Jubilee which occurs after seven sets of seven complete years are finished. This proclamation of a fiftieth "liberty" year occurs on one of God's annual feast days known as the Day of Atonement. Because God owns everything, He set up a special, regularly occurring time period where His will is that a man's possessions are returned to him. The purpose of this was to insure that men and women would be released from their debt and not have to lose their property and become slaves.

The takeover of our monetary system was accompanied by the occult symbol of the Illuminati pyramid on the back of the U.S. dollar, which is a bold declaration that the Pharaoh god-king system has been re-established and that the common man (middle class) was now a slave. This economic system began in ancient Babylon and that is why in Revelation Chapter 17 and 18, we see the return of what is called “Mystery Babylon the Great the Mother of Harlots.” When this global economic system is fully put in place, no person will be able to participate in the economic system or buy or sell, without the Mark of the Beast which will be a microchip implant either on the forehead or the right hand. This is the mark of a slave! There will be no free men or women in the New World Order; all men will become slaves. I explain this in greater detail in my book A Prophecy of the Future of America.

A number of years ago, I interviewed an author named Dave Hunt who suggested that in the days proceeding the return of the Lord, there would be some degree of prosperity. Hunt quoted Matthew 24:37-39:

“But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.” (Matt 24:37-39)

This brings us to our final question. Since all things are possible with God and God is the Source of all things, the ability of God to protect and prosper any people is not contingent on any manmade economic laws or conditions. It is not that we disregard those laws, but they do not limit what is ultimately possible. Going back to Genesis, reading the blessings and curses in Deuteronomy 28, and reviewing the Covenant the Pilgrims and Puritans made with God regarding America, the essential truth to be grasped is that God has the power to bless or curse any nation economically. The key to whether or not that nation experiences the blessings of God or the curse and judgment of God has to do with its obedience or rejection of the principles in the Word of God.

The Pilgrims and Puritans as well as ancient Israel understood that economic collapse and other conditions were signs that they had violated God’s Word. Therefore whenever they specifically repented of that sin and changed their ways, God often poured out a blessing and not a curse. This is the historical record going all the way back to Eden. There are many who say that our time period is different and that we are in the last days, and there is nothing we can do except to watch our nation collapse into economic chaos and authoritarianism because this is what the Bible predicts. In short, this is a theology of fatalism based on partial truth and an incomplete understanding of scripture.

It is true that God has written in His Word a specific end times’ scenario which cannot be changed by any act of human will. For example, people are not going to pray and stop the Antichrist from coming. Nor are they going to fast and stop the Tribulation Period or Armageddon. However, within the context of God’s end time prophetic program revealed in His Word, there are nations, places and times where God has not given us specific information. As such, we can only act on the general principles. For example, the Bible commands us that we are to pray for all those who are in authority above us, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life.

Clearly, God is indicating that effective prayer can release a blessing upon a people and prevent the full domination of evil, even if that prevention is temporal. God commands us to repent, fast and pray for our nation and its leaders in America as He would to believers in any other nation. Our responsibility is to obey God and not to try to be God. God is sovereign and He may choose not to answer our prayers and things may get worse. But we are commanded to “pray always.”

Another factor in repentance and prayer is that the repentance and prayer must be genuine. Repentance means the specific acknowledgement, confession, and turning away from specific sins that can block the power of God from being released upon a nation. I would suggest to you that one of the reasons we have not seen God move powerfully in our nation is because our repentance is false. Beginning with the Garden of Eden, God clearly shows us what the root problem always is. That root problem or sin is the rejection of God’s Word and replacing it with humanistic philosophies and occult beliefs, which are all in effect a counterfeit of the Truth or a counterfeit Gospel.

The reality is that the vast majority of Evangelical Christian pulpits in America, and many average Christians, have rejected the authority of the inspired and inerrant Word of God. Instead they have embraced humanistic philosophies, humanistic psychological motivational theories, and occult beliefs. This is the root sin and this is why we have not seen the power of God released upon our nation. It is only when we deal with the root sin, which is the rejection of and disobedience to God’s Word, and truly repent of this, that God will honor our repentance.

So now we stand on the eve of destruction. There are two paths before us. One is the path towards destruction which will come about by continuing to reject God’s Word. The other is the path to deliverance and freedom which will come from acknowledging the root sin and turning from it. There is no other way.




Credit to News with views

Growing human organs inside pigs

Meiji University professor Hiroshi Nagashima is creating chimeric pigs, which carry genetic material from two different species, BBC Newsreports. It starts off by making what Nagashima calls “a-pancreatic” embryos. Inside the white pig embryo, the gene that carries the instructions for developing the animal’s pancreas has been “switched off.”

The Japanese team then introduces stem cells from a black pig into the embryo. What they have discovered is that as the pig develops, it will be normal except for its pancreas, which will be genetically a black pig’s.

In a lab at Tokyo University, Professor Hiro Nakauchi is taking the next step. He takes skin cells from an adult brown rat. He then uses gene manipulation to change these adult skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) cells, which can develop into any part of the animal’s body.

Nakauchi has succeeded in using these iPS cells to grow a brown rat pancreas inside a white mouse. He is hoping to develop a technique to take skin cells from a human adult and change them in to iPS cells. Those iPS cells can then be injected into a pig embryo.

Island of Dr. Moreau or the end to organ shortage?

The result, he hopes, will be a pig with a human pancreas or kidney or liver, or maybe even a human heart. Not only that, the organ would be genetically identical to the human from which the skin cells were taken.

This is one of the holy grails of medical research: the ability to reproduce a human organ that is genetically identical to the person who needs it. It could mean an end to donor waiting lists, and an end to problems of organ rejection.

But there are many potential obstacles ahead. The first is that pigs and humans are only distantly related. The other problem is getting approval. In Japan, it is illegal to make human-animal hybrids. And animal rights activists object to the idea of pigs, sheep or goats being used as human organ factories. Many more feel uncomfortable about the idea of pig-human hybrids. It brings to mind H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic, The Island of Dr Moreau.

Prof Nakauchi said his research is completely different. The pigs would still be pigs; they would just be carrying some human tissue inside them. He said there has always been resistance to new scientific breakthroughs. He points to widespread objections to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) when it was invented in Britain the 1970s. Today, IVF is used across the world, and no one thinks it is strange or unethical.

Credit to Kurzweil

Jim Kunstler's 2014 Forecast = Burning Down The House

Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com,

Many of us in the Long Emergency crowd and like-minded brother-and-sisterhoods remain perplexed by the amazing stasis in our national life, despite the gathering tsunami of forces arrayed to rock our economy, our culture, and our politics. Nothing has yielded to these forces already in motion, so far. Nothing changes, nothing gives, yet. It’s like being buried alive in Jell-O. It’s embarrassing to appear so out-of-tune with the consensus, but we persevere like good soldiers in a just war.

Paper and digital markets levitate, central banks pull out all the stops of their magical reality-tweaking machine to manipulate everything, accounting fraud pervades public and private enterprise, everything is mis-priced, all official statistics are lies of one kind or another, the regulating authorities sit on their hands, lost in raptures of online pornography (or dreams of future employment at Goldman Sachs), the news media sprinkles wishful-thinking propaganda about a mythical “recovery” and the “shale gas miracle” on a credulous public desperate to believe, the routine swindles of medicine get more cruel and blatant each month, a tiny cohort of financial vampire squids suck in all the nominal wealth of society, and everybody else is left whirling down the drain of posterity in a vortex of diminishing returns and scuttled expectations.

Life in the USA is like living in a broken-down, cob-jobbed, vermin-infested house that needs to be gutted, disinfected, and rebuilt — with the hope that it might come out of the restoration process retaining the better qualities of our heritage. Some of us are anxious to get on with the job, to expel all the rats, bats, bedbugs, roaches, and lice, tear out the stinking shag carpet and the moldy sheet-rock, rip off the crappy plastic siding, and start rebuilding along lines that are consistent with the demands of the future — namely, the reality of capital and material resource scarcity. But it has been apparent for a while that the current owners of the house would prefer to let it fall down, or burn down rather than renovate.

Some of us now take that outcome for granted and are left to speculate on how it will play out. These issues were the subjects of my recent non-fiction books, The Long Emergency and Too Much Magic (as well as excellent similar books by Richard Heinberg, John Michael Greer, Dmitry Orlov, and others). They describe the conditions at the end of the cheap energy techno-industrial phase of history and they laid out a conjectural sequence of outcomes that might be stated in shorthand as collapse and re-set. I think the delay in the onset of epochal change can be explained pretty simply. As the peak oil story gained traction around 2005, and was followed (as predicted) by a financial crisis, the established order fought back for its survival, utilizing its remaining dwindling capital and the tremendous inertia of its own gigantic scale, to give theappearance of vitality at all costs.

At the heart of the matter was (and continues to be) the relationship between energy and economic growth. Without increasing supplies of cheap energy, economic growth — as we have known it for a couple of centuries — does not happen anymore. At the center of the economic growth question is credit. Without continued growth, credit can’t be repaid, and new credit cannot be issued honestly — that is, with reasonable assurance of repayment — making it worthless. So, old debt goes bad and the new debt is generated knowing that it is worthless. To complicate matters, the new worthless debt is issued to pay the interest on the old debt, to maintain the pretense that it is not going bad. And then all kinds of dishonest side rackets are run around this central credit racket — shadow banking, “innovative” securities (i.e. new kinds of frauds and swindles, CDOs CDSs, etc.), flash trading, insider flimflams, pump-and-dumps, naked shorts, etc. These games give the impression of an economy that seems to work. But the reported “growth” is phony, a concoction of overcooked statistics and wishful thinking. And the net effect moves the society as a whole in the direction of more destructive ultimate failure.

Now, a number of stories have been employed lately to keep all these rackets going — or, at least, keep up the morale of the swindled masses. They issue from the corporations, government agencies, and a lazy, wishful media. Their purpose is to prop up the lie that the dying economy of yesteryear is alive and well, and can continue “normal” operation indefinitely. Here are the favorites of the past year:

• Shale oil and gas amount to an “energy renaissance” that will keep supplies of affordable fossil fuels flowing indefinitely, will make us “energy independent,” and will make us “a bigger producer than Saudi Arabia.” This is all mendacious bullshit with a wishful thinking cherry on top. Here’s how shale oil is different from conventional oil:

• A “manufacturing renaissance” is underway in the US, especially in the “central corridor” running from Texas north to Minnesota. That hoopla is all about a few chemical plants and fertilizer factories that have reopened to take advantage of cheaper natural gas. Note, the shale gas story is much like the shale oil story in terms of drilling and production. The depletion rates are quick and epic. In a very few years, shale gas won’t be cheap anymore. Otherwise, current talk of new manufacturing for hard goods is all about robots. How many Americans will be employed in these factories? And what about the existing manufacturing over-capacity everywhere else in the world? Are we making enough sneakers and Justin Beiber dolls? File under complete fucking nonsense.

• The USA is “the cleanest shirt in the laundry basket,” “the best house in a bad neighborhood,” the safest harbor for international “liquidity,” making it a sure bet that both the equity and bond markets will continue to ratchet up as money seeking lower risk floods in to the Dow and S & P from other countries with dodgier economies and sicker banks. In a currency war, with all nations competitively depreciating their currencies, gaming interest rates, manipulating markets, falsely reporting numbers, hiding liabilities, backstopping bad banks, and failing to regulate banking crime, there are no safe harbors. The USA can pretend to be for a while and then that illusion will pop, along with the “asset” bubbles that inspire it.

• The USA is enjoying huge gains from fantastic new “efficiencies of technological innovation.” The truth is not so dazzling. Computer technology, produces diminishing returns and unanticipated consequences. The server farms are huge energy sinks. Online shopping corrodes the resilience of commercial networks when only a few giant companies remain standing; and so on. Problems like these recall the central collapse theory of Joseph Tainter which states that heaping additional complexity on dysfunctional hyper-complex societies tends to induce their collapse. Hence, my insistence that downscaling, simplifying, re-localizing and re-setting the systems we depend on are imperative to keep the project of civilization going. That is, if you prefer civilization to its known alternatives.

Notice that all of these stories want to put over the general impression that the status quo is alive and well. They’re based on the dumb idea that the stock markets are a proxy for the economy, so if the Standard & Poor’s 500 keeps on going up, it’s all good. Themaster wish running through the American zeitgeist these days is that we might be able to keep driving to Wal-Mart forever.

The truth is that we still have a huge, deadly energy problem.Shale oil is not cheap oil, and it will stop seeming abundant soon. If the price of oil goes much above $100 a barrel, which you’d think would be great for the oil companies, it will crash demand for oil. If it crashes demand, the price will go down, hurting the profitability of the shale oil companies. It’s quite a predicament. Right now, in the $90-100-a-barrel range, it’s just slowly bleeding the economy while barely allowing the shale oil producers to keep up all the drilling. Two-thirds of all the dollars invested (more than $120 billion a year) goes just to keep production levels flat. Blogger Mark Anthonysummarized it nicely:

…the shale oil and gas developers tend to use unreliable production models to project unrealistically high EURs (Estimated Ultimate Recovery) of their shale wells. They then use the over-estimated EURs to under-calculate the amortization costs of the capital spending, in order to report “profits”, despite of the fact that they have to keep borrowing more money to keep drilling new wells, and that capital spending routinely out paces revenue stream by several times… shale oil and gas producers tend to over-exaggerate productivity of their wells, under-estimate the well declines…in order to pitch their investment case to banks and investors, so they can keep borrowing more money to keep drilling shale wells.

As stated in the intro, these perversities reverberate in the investment sector. Non-cheap oil upsets the mechanisms of capital formation — financial growth is stymied — in a way that ultimately affects the financing of oil production itself. Old credit cannot be repaid, scaring off new credit (because it is even more unlikely to be repaid). At ZIRP interest, nobody saves. The capital pools dry up. So the Federal Reserve has to issue ersatz credit dollars on its computers. That credit will remain stillborn and mummified in depository institutions afraid of lending it to the likes of sharpies and hypesters in the shale gas industry.

But real, functioning capital (credit that can be paid back) is vanishing, and the coming scarcity of real capital makes it much more difficult to keep the stupendous number of rigs busy drilling and fracking new shale oil wells, which you have to do incessantly to keep production up, and as the investment in new drilling declines, and the “sweet spots” yield to the less-sweet spots or the not-sweet-at-all spots… then the Ponzis of shale oil and shale gas, too will be unmasked as the jive endeavors they are. And when people stop believing these cockamamie stories, the truth will dawn on them that we are in a predicament where further growth and wealth cannot be generated and the economy is actually in the early stages of a permanent contraction, and that will trigger an unholy host of nasty consequences proceeding from the loss of faith in these fairy tales, going so far as the meltdown of the banking system, social turmoil, and political upheaval.

The bottom line is that the “shale revolution” will be short-lived.2014 may be the peak production year in the Bakken play of North Dakota. Eagle Ford in Texas is a little younger and may lag Bakken by a couple of years. If Federal Reserve policies create more disorder in the banking system this year, investment for shale will dry up, new drilling will nosedive, and shale oil production will go down substantially. Meanwhile. conventional oil production in the USA continues to decline remorselessly.

The End of Fed Cred

It must be scary to be a Federal Reserve governor. You have to pretend that you know what you’re doing when, in fact, Fed policy appears completely divorced from any sense of consequence, or cause-and-effect, or reality — and if it turns out you’re not so smart, and your policies and interventions undermine true economic resilience, then the scuttling of the most powerful civilization in the history of the world might be your fault — even if you went to Andover and wear tortoise-shell glasses that make you appear to be smart.

The Fed painted itself into a corner the last few years by making Quantitative Easing a permanent feature of the financial landscape. QE backstops everything now. Tragically, additional backdoor backstopping extends beyond the QE official figures (as of December 2013) of $85 billion a month. American money (or credit) is being shoveled into anything and everything, including foreign banks and probably foreign treasuries. It’s just another facet of the prevailing pervasive dishonesty infecting the system that we have no idea, really, how much money is being shoveled and sprinkled around. Anything goes and nothing matters. However, since there is an official consensus that you can’t keep QE money-pumping up forever, the Fed officially made a big show of seeking to begin ending it. So in the Spring of 2013 they announced their intention to “taper” their purchases of US Treasury paper and mortgage paper, possibly in the fall.

Well, it turned out they didn’t or couldn’t taper. As the fall equinox approached, with everyone keenly anticipating the first dose of taper, the equity markets wobbled and the interest rate on the 10-year treasury — the index for mortgage loans and car loans — climbed to 3.00 percent from its May low of 1.63 — well over 100 basis points — and the Fed chickened out. No September taper. Fake out. So, the markets relaxed, the interest rate on the 10-year went back down, and the equity markets resumed their grand ramp into the Christmas climax. However, the Fed’s credibility took a hit, especially after all their confabulating bullshit “forward guidance” in the spring and summer when they couldn’t get their taper story straight. And in the meantime, the Larry-Summers-for-Fed-Chair float unfloated, and Janet Yellen was officially picked to succeed Ben Bernanke, with her reputation as an extreme easy money softie (more QE, more ZIRP), and a bunch of hearings were staged to make the Bernanke-Yellen transition look more reassuring.

And then on December 18, outgoing chair Bernanke announced, with much fanfare, that the taper would happen after all, early in the first quarter of 2014 ­— after he is safely out of his office in the Eccles building and back in his bomb shelter on the Princeton campus. The Fed meant it this time, the public was given to understand.

The only catch here, as I write, after the latest taper announcement, is that interest on the 10-year treasury note has crept stealthily back up over 3 percent. Wuh-oh. Not a good sign, since it means more expensive mortgages and car loans, which happen to represent the two things that the current economy relies on to appear “normal.” (House sales and car sales = normal in a suburban sprawl economy.)

I think the truth is the Fed just did too darn much QE and ZIRP and they waited way too long to cut it out, and now they can’t end it without scuttling both the stock and bond markets. But they can’t really go forward with the taper, either. A rock and a hard place. So, my guess is that they’ll pretend to taper in March, and then they’ll just as quickly un-taper. Note the curious report out of the American Enterprise Institute ten days ago by John H. Makin saying that the Fed’s actual purchase of debt paper amounted to an average $94 billion a month through the year 2013, not $85 billion. Which would pretty much negate the proposed taper of $5 billion + $5 billion (Treasury paper + Mortgage paper).

And in so faking and so doing they may succeed in completely destroying the credibility of the Federal Reserve. When that happens, capital will be disappearing so efficiently that the USA will find itself in a compressive deflationary spiral — because that’s what happens when faith in the authority behind credit is destroyed, and new loans to cover the interest on old loans are no longer offered in the non-government banking system, and old loans can’t be serviced. At which point the Federal Reserve freaks out and announces new extra-special QE way above the former 2013 level of $85 billion a month, and the government chips in with currency controls. And that sets in motion the awful prospect of the dreaded “crack-up boom” into extraordinary inflation, when dollars turn into hot potatoes and people can’t get rid of them fast enough. Well, is that going to happen this year? It depends on how spooked the Fed gets. In any case, there is a difference between high inflation and hyper-inflation. High inflation is bad enough to provoke socio-political convulsion. I don’t really see how the Fed gets around this March taper bid without falling into the trap I’ve just outlined. It wouldn’t be a pretty situation for poor Ms. Janet Yellen, but nobody forced her to take the job, and she’s had the look all along of a chump, the perfect sucker to be left holding a big honking bag of flop.

We’re long overdue for a return to realistic pricing in all markets.The Government and its handmaiden, the Fed, have tweaked the machinery so strenuously for so long that these efforts have entered the wilderness of diminishing returns. Instead of propping up the markets, all they can accomplish now is further erosion of the credibility of the equity markets and the Fed itself — and that bodes darkly for a money system that is essentially run on faith. I think the indexes have topped. The “margin” (money borrowed to buy stock) in the system is at dangerous, historically unprecedented highs. There may be one final reach upward in the first quarter. Then the equities crater, if not sooner. I still think the Dow and S &P could oversell by 90 percent of their value if the falsehoods of the post-2008  interventions stopped working their hoodoo on the collective wishful consciousness.

The worldwide rise in interest rates holds every possibility for igniting a shitstorm in interest rate swaps and upsetting the whole apple-cart of shadow banking and derivatives. That would be a bullet in the head to the TBTF banks, and would therefore lead to a worldwide crisis. In that event, the eventual winners would be the largest holders of gold, who could claim to offer the world a trustworthy gold-backed currency, especially for transactions in vital resources like oil. That would, of course, be China. The process would be awfully disorderly and fraught with political animus. Given the fact that China’s own balance sheet is hopelessly non-transparent and part-and-parcel of a dishonest crony banking system, China would have to use some powerful smoke-and-mirrors to assume that kind of dominant authority. But in the end, it comes down to who has the real goods, and who screwed up (the USA, Europe, Japan) and China, for all its faults and perversities, has the gold.

The wholesale transfer of gold tonnage from the West to the East was one of the salient events of 2013. There were lots of conspiracy theories as to what drove the price of gold down by 28 percent. I do think the painful move was partly a cyclical correction following the decade-long run up to $1900 an ounce. Within that cyclical correction, there was a lot of room for the so-called “bullion banks” to pound the gold and silver prices down with their shorting orgy. Numerous times the past year, somebody had laid a fat finger on the “sell” key, like, at four o’clock in the morning New York time when no traders were in their offices, and the record of those weird transactions is plain to see in the daily charts. My own theory is that an effort was made — in effect, a policy — to suppress the gold price via collusion between the Fed, the US Treasury, the bullion banks, and China, as a way to allow China to accumulate gold to offset the anticipated loss of value in the US Treasury paper held by them, throwing China a big golden bone, so to speak — in other words, to keep China from getting hugely pissed off. The gold crash had the happy effect for the US Treasury of making the dollar appear strong at a time when many other nations were getting sick of US dollar domination, especially in the oil markets, and were threatening to instigate a new currency regime by hook or by crook. Throwing China the golden bone is also consistent with the USA’s official position that gold is a meaningless barbaric relic where national currencies are concerned, and therefore nobody but the barbaric yellow hordes of Asia would care about it.

Other nations don’t feel that way. Russia and Switzerland have been accumulating gold like crazy at bargain prices this year.Last year, Germany requested its sovereign gold cache (300 tons) to be returned from the vaults in America, where it was stored through all the decades of the cold war, safe from the reach of the Soviets. But American officials told the Germans it would take seven years to accomplish the return. Seven years ! ! ! WTF? Is there a shortage of banana boats? The sentiment in goldville is that the USA long ago “leased” or sold off or rehypothecated or lost that gold. Anyway, Germany’s 300 tons was a small fraction of the 6,700 tons supposedly held in the Fed’s vaults. Who knows? No auditors have been allowed into the Fed vaults to actually see what’s up with the collateral. This in and of itself ought to make the prudent nervous.

I think we’re near the end of these reindeer games with gold, largely because so many vaults in the West have been emptied. That places constraints on further shenanigans in the paper gold (and silver) markets. In an environment where both the destructive forces of deflation and inflation can be unleashed in sequence, uncertainty is the greatest motivator, trumping the usual greed and fear seen in markets that can be fairly measured against stable currencies. In 2014, the public has become aware of the bank “bail-in” phenomenon which, along with rehypothication schemes, just amounts to the seizure of customer and client accounts — a really new wrinkle in contemporary banking relations. Nobody knows if it’s safe to park cash money anywhere except inside the mattress. The precedent set in Cyprus, and the MF Global affair, and other confiscation events, would tend to support an interest in precious metals held outside the institutional framework. Uncertainty rules.

Miscellany

I get a lot of email on the subject of Bitcoin. Here’s how I feel about it.
It’s an even more abstract form of “money” than fiat currencies or securities based on fiat currencies. Do we need more abstraction in our economic lives? I don’t think so. I believe the trend will be toward what is real. For the moment, Bitcoin seems to be enjoying some success as it beats back successive crashes. I’m not very comfortable with the idea of investing in an algorithm. I don’t see how it is impervious to government hacking. In fact, I’d bet that somewhere in the DOD or the NSA or the CIA right now some nerd is working on that. Bitcoin is provoking imitators, other new computer “currencies.” Why would Bitcoin necessarily enjoy dominance? And how many competing algorithmic currencies can the world stand? Wouldn’t that defeat the whole purpose of an alternative “go to” currency? All I can say is that I’m not buying Bitcoins.

Will ObamaCare crash and burn. It’s not doing very well so far. In fact, it’s a poster-child for Murphy’s Law (Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong). I suppose the primary question is whether they can enroll enough healthy young people to correct the actuarial nightmare that health insurance has become. That’s not looking so good either now. But really, how can anyone trust a law that was written by the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry? And how can it be repealed when so many individuals, groups, companies, have already lost their pre-ObamaCare policies? What is there to go back to? Therefore, I’d have to predict turmoil in the health care system for 2014. The failure to resolve the inadequacies of ObamaCare also may be a prime symptom of the increasing impotence of the federal government to accomplish anything. That failure would prompt an even faster downscaling of governance as states, counties, communities, and individuals realize that they are on their own.

Sorry to skip around, but a few stray words about the state of American culture. Outside the capitals of the “one percent” — Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, etc. — American material culture is in spectacular disrepair. Car culture and chain store tyranny have destroyed the physical fabric of our communities and wrecked social relations. These days, a successful Main Street is one that has a wig shop and a check-cashing office. It is sickening to see what we have become. Our popular entertainments are just what you would design to produce a programmed population of criminals and sex offenders. The spectacle of the way our people look —overfed, tattooed, pierced, clothed in the raiment of clowns — suggests an end-of-empire zeitgeist more disturbing than a Fellini movie. The fact is, it simply mirrors the way we act, our gross, barbaric collective demeanor. A walk down any airport concourse makes the Barnum & Bailey freak shows of yore look quaint. In short, the rot throughout our national life is so conspicuous that a fair assessment would be that we are a wicked people who deserve to be punished.

Elsewhere in the World

Globalism, in the Tom Friedman euphoric sense, is unwinding.Currency wars are wearing down the players, conflicts and tensions are breaking out where before there were only Wal-Mart share price triumphs and Foxconn profits. Both American and European middle-classes are too exhausted financially to continue the consumer orgy of the early millennium. The trade imbalances are horrific. Unpayable debt saturates everything. Sick economies will weigh down commodity prices except for food-related things. The planet Earth has probably reached peak food production, including peak fertilizer. Supplies of grain will be inadequate in 2014 to feed the still-expanding masses of the poor places in the world.

The nervous calm in finance and economies since 2008 has its mirror in the relative calm of the political scene. Uprisings and skirmishes have broken out, but nothing that so far threatens the peace between great powers. There have been the now-historic revolts in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and other Middle East and North African (MENA) states. Iraq is once again disintegrating after a decade of American “nation-building.” Greece is falling apart. Spain and Italy should be falling apart but haven’t yet. France is sinking into bankruptcy. The UK is in on the grift with the USA and insulated from the Euro, but the British Isles are way over-populated with a volatile multi-ethnic mix and not much of an economy outside the financial district of London. There were riots in — of all places — Sweden this year. Turkey entered crisis just a few weeks ago along with Ukraine.

I predict more colorful political strife in Europe this year, boots in the street, barricades, gunfire, and bombs. The populations of these countries will want relief measures from their national governments, but the sad news is that these governments are broke, so austerity seems to be the order of the day no matter what. I think this will prod incipient revolts in a rightward nationalist direction. If it was up to Marine LePen’s rising National Front party, they would solve the employment problem by expelling all the recent immigrants — though the mere attempt would probably provoke widespread race war in France.

The quarrel between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands is a diversion from the real action in the South China Sea, said to hold large underwater petroleum reserves. China is the world’s second greatest oil importer. Their economy and the credibility of its non-elected government depends on keeping the oil supply up. They are a long way from other places in the world where oil comes from, hence their eagerness to secure and dominate the South China Sea. The idea is that China would make a fuss over the Senkaku group, get Japan and the US to the negotiating table, and cede the dispute over them to Japan in exchange for Japan and the US supporting China’s claims in the South China Sea against the other neighbors there: Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

The catch is that Japan may be going politically insane just now between the rigors of (Shinzo) Abenomics and the mystical horrors of Fukushima. Japan’s distress appears to be provoking anew mood of nationalist militarism of a kind not seen there since the 1940s. They’re talking about arming up, rewriting the pacifist articles in their constitution. Scary, if you have a memory of the mid-20^th century. China should know something about national psychotic breaks, having not so long ago endured the insanity of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-71). So they might want to handle Japan with care. On the other hand, China surely nurtures a deep, deadly grudge over the crimes perpetrated by Japan in the Second World War, and now has a disciplined, world-class military, and so maybe they would like to kick Japan’s ass. It’s a hard one to call. I suspect that in 2014, the ball is in Japan’s court. What will they do? If the US doesn’t stay out of the way of that action, then we are insane, too.

That said, I stick by my story from last year’s forecast: Japan’s ultimate destination is to “go medieval.” They’re never going to recover from Fukushima, their economy is unraveling, they have no fossil fuels of their own and have to import everything, and their balance of payments is completely out of whack. The best course for them will be to just throw in the towel on modernity. Everybody else is headed that way, too, eventually, so Japan might as well get there first and set a good example.

By “go medieval” I mean re-set to a pre-industrial World Made By Hand level of operation. I’m sure that outcome seems laughably implausible to most readers, but I maintain that both the human race and the planet Earth need a “time out” from the ravages of “progress,” and circumstances are going to force the issue anyway, so we might as well kick back and get with the program: go local, downscale, learn useful skills, cultivate our gardens, get to know our neighbors, learn how to play a musical instrument, work, dine, and dance with our friends.

Credit to Zero Hedge