Taking Care of the Aging Boomer Population During Western Socioeconomic Transition

Properly managing the physiological and psychological state of the vulnerable baby boomer demographic may not only avert a tragedy but make a large section of the boomer block politically useful during the long road towards a technocratic social system




The graying of the Northern Hemisphere is a unique historical social event much like agricultural or industrial revolutions were. Besides creating a massive demand (and eventually breakthroughs) for life extension and bio-cybernetic repair/augmentation technologies, the elderly in the world (and particularly in the Western world) also create a particular problem of adjustment.

Transition to a more technocratic, collaborative, cooperative, and supranational global arrangement will prove psychologically difficult for baby boomers in North America and within allied developed nations. In United States for instance, the numbers of people over the age of 62 are 50 million of which 41 million are over 65. The numbers of people in 18-24 block (that tends to be most aggressive and politically unclouded) are 30.7 million. In essence we have 41 million status quo force versus 31 million change agents.

The numbers of 25-44 olds are 82 million and those under 18 years of age are 74 million (of which 54 million are in 5-17 age range).

This simply means that when it comes to political struggles and domination, the 50 million boomer block only has 82 million people to try to coopt/use as reserve while the 31 million Millennial block has BOTH the 82 million to draw from (unconverted bitter Gen Xers) AND has a loyal reserve force of 54 million hyper tech savy individuals about to come online politically. It'll come down to boomer block using entrenched economic heights to slow socioeconomic change via quantity of money, experience, and established informational controls versus more mobile Millennial block accelerating change via quality of informational approaches and technological knowhow.

We can thus expect to see dramatic rise in the use of coping mechanisms among the elderly as they rapidly lose political power. We already see a rise in alcohol/comfort food abuse among those living deeper in the countryside and we saw a rare rise in annual boomer mortality in 2008 after the clear decline of Reaganism and election of a non-traditional appearing Gen-Exer. Previously such rare peculiar annual reversals in (usually declining) mortality occurred after the end of FDRism in the late 1970s.

During Soviet transition towards something else in the 1990s, there was the predictable decline in life expectancy primarily centered on the elderly. To prevent a similar demographic catastrophe and tragedy in the Western world (especially in USA since the notion of empire plays a large role in the ego and self esteem of the boomer population), preventive measures need to be thought of in advance.

A national network of rural detox facilities need to be rapidly constructed with the aid of some large corporate players (such as Wall-Mart which can house these clinics). These clinics should provide cutting edge full body detox from fast food and alcohol. Although top down education via propaganda outlets like CNN should of course be utilized, such clinics can bypass attempts at trying to educate the boomers on healthy lifestyles and go straight for marketing/offering finished full spectrum treatment. Cutting edge simply means seeing what rejuvenation practices the ultra rich use on a daily basis and using Fordist mentality to mass produce it and make it widely available in every clinic (remote areas can even have the clinics be within post offices, public schools, or fire stations).

The clinics need to be small, brand new and utilize environmental cues and marketing the way some pharmacies like Rite Aid have been using lately. Following Rite Aid's example, it is also prudent to localize the atmosphere of such clinics. Getting local community religious leaders involved can for instance result in southern regions having pleasant clinics with religious literature/themes, northwestern clinics having a more hippy feel, etc. The important thing is to preserve psychological sanity and thus life expectancy of the most vulnerable demographic block during a period of very rapid cultural and economic transition.

Major movie studios can be helpful in this effort by working with the government to produce a few all star cast informational movies which indirectly emphasize the benefits of these new clinics (love story taking place there, some drama of a person having a life turn around after multivitamin injections/blood oxygenation, etc). And of course it is easy to locate and pay a few major boomer role models to advocate these clinics via stories of personal use (Oprah, some former "bad boy" actor, etc).

Getting inside a clinic can require "tickets" (bringing to mind a celebratory event) and local governments can use lottery system for additional marketing  (winning to go to specialized clinic in a luxurious region of the country while emphasizing there is one nearby). Even within the capitalist framework, incentives can be provided so people earn points on purchase of healthy food to get additional trips to the clinics (above the standard number of provided tickets).

Starting to think of providing services like this is essential to reverse current depression born increase in mortality among boomers (1.6+ million a year currently). Informational and psychological counseling via television can also provide continuity between prior imperial era and the world of tomorrow. Russians and British have some experience with this. Moscow has been staging military parades recently to provide some cognitive continuity for the elderly while London uses the monarchy for that purpose. Future youthful American political leadership may think of linking FDRist, religious, and Reaganist themes to the technocratic developments that the post-Millennial generation will be engaging in.

In parallel however, top down informational campaigns should gradually begin to de-emphasize prior imperial propaganda of militarism and other less savory aspects of the 20th century socioeconomic system that existed. Once again, Hollywood and cooperative younger religious leaders should be heavily used.

If management of the declining boomer population is done in a very restrained, humane, and methodical manner, besides averting a humanitarian catastrophe, a large portion of retired intuitive boomers can even be made to serve the national technocratic interest in the future (by minimum of not standing in the way of progress and maximum of encouraging it via word of mouth among peers).

United States Copying Germany in the Near Future?

State of the Union 2012: What A Journey It Has Been





It is election year in America and 18.3 million voters that matter are beginning to get involved in the future of planetary development:

(16 million households with $100,000-$1 million in assets worth $5.6 trillion total
2.2 million households with $1 million-$10 million in assets worth $6 trillion total
100,000 households with $10 million+ in assets worth $2.2 trillion total)

The other 96 million household block with less than $100,000 in assets worth $3.4 trillion total generally takes political cues from the movers/community role models and doesn't have enough cohesion and purchasing power to afford favors from the white house.

The Pragmatist was started in 2009, shortly after 16 million small time shareholder households showed surprising mobilization (possibly indirectly helped by factions in the military that got truly scared by the long term implications of the financial crisis and who thought McCain wont be prudent). Time to look back and see what this magazine got right, what wrong, and where we are today.

Obama had compared steering United States to making very small degree changes in direction of a large cruise ship. Short term, nothing appears to change but on a 2-3 decade horizon, tiny movements of the wheel to the left or right can bring the ship to surprisingly different destinations. The intensity of elite factions fighting over this wheel (and therefore their small shareholder auxiliaries/proxies also fighting) has been intensifying in first 2 years as predicted. However, The Pragmatist dramatically underestimated just how paralyzing and intense it got (troubling intra elite infighting that we haven't seen since the 1850s).

Scramble for resources saw well publicized spats between California and Texas, gridlock among shareholders' representatives in Congress to the point of using default as a bargaining chip(!), popular 4 star general fired for assuming resources for Afghanistan will continue indefinitely, Lockheed Martin relocating headquarters from California to DC, and CNN totally joining with NBC as propaganda outlet of the shareholder faction in control of the White House currently.
 It also appears that the White House was either unable or too incompetent to provide enough favors to friendly elite factions in swing states to aid in reelection (the Mormon from Detroit leads by 1% on average in swing states while the 16 battleground states have had an average 16% drop in housing prices without much specifically focused federal help).

Recently in 2012, this infighting has quieted down somewhat since the economy has been improving for some time now for the relevant voting blocks. Rather than using the cruise ship analogy again, lets use one of a B-52 Stratofortress taking a nosedive in 2008. It took years for the old but well built giant plane to be brought out of the nosedive, under some control, and to level its flight so it doesn't smash into the ground. Many, perhaps most of its parts have rusted and bolts have gotten lose (insufficient care was taken of the plane for some time). Recently, pieces of the plane were thrown out by the crew with plans to throw out more as the pilots frantically wrestle with the controls (military leaving Iraq and parts of Europe, Ares 5 program being abandoned, various cost cutting that would have been unthinkable before the nosedive, etc). This lightened the load and reduced the strain on the superstructure somewhat.

A process had also began to tighten the bolts in the engine room. We saw Putin-esque negotiating practices between federal center of force and auto industry, private deal making with British Petroleum,  and getting the 5 major banks to throw $25 billion to settle the fraudclosure investigation. Board of Bank of America alone handed over $12 billion to get feds off their backs. We even had Robert Gates begin to crackdown on business tie corruption among retired generals. It doesn't matter whether the executive branch finally has more room to maneuver or has been purposefully goaded to become more forceful, the fact remains that things are now moving along a bit quicker.

The Pragmatist predicted that IF Federal center of force:

a) does not attempt some sort of debt restructuring before 2012 elections and
b) does not purposefully and methodically begin the road towards emulating Germany's hybrid mid level state capitalist system (where major business shareholders, labor, and state always sit around the table to jointly negotiate national strategy)

THEN we may see social instability rise dramatically which would then make purposeful recovery and lifting of the plane into new heights a lot more difficult longer term (by late 2020s).

As for a), the feds have 1.1 trillion shortfall to fund this year and are getting creative again by announcing plans to introduce brand new floating rate treasury bills to try to bring new investors that are not currently content with near zero interest. Real meaningful debt restructuring is not talked about as there appears to be a wait and see attitude in terms of trying to outlast the Eurozone.

As for b), the recent state of the union speech hinted at the federal government becoming the navigator, enabler, conditional supporter, and even occasional manager of large business. Interesting proposals are mandating that high schoolers legally remain in school until age of consent and pushing companies to cooperate with local governments to begin blue collar training in while in school. It demonstrates that American elites have truly run out of their own ideas and are now resorting to catch up copying efforts of FDRist elite clusters in other parts of the developed world, (ironic if not tragic considering Washington DC educated and pushed more advanced FDRism on Germany and Japan).

This year we will see whether waiting this long to announce that German FDRist model is somewhat desirable was a prudent strategy for the factions backing Obama or whether they'll regret that they didn't go for somebody more forceful like Hillary (who proved herself recently as de facto second president by beginning worldwide decolonization while saving face. Here's a small example of the process happening in many parts of the world. Whether Japanese are telling to leave while allowing US to save face or US leaving while conveniently developing difficulties in maintaining imperial presence is irrelevant. The causal flux is hard to disentangle. What matters is that DC is finding ways/reasons to reduce spending.)

Obviously many high net worth shareholders in places like Texas will not be happy with a strategic shift towards a more German/French/ style capitalism. Their frustrations are further compounded by the total disintegration of GOP as a national party (which is being demonstrated in the current primary race by regional shareholder clans pushing their candidates to the last and possibly towards brokered convention and oblivion). The frustration becomes even more acute considering the dramatic demographic and economic shift to the south and west away from the regions of traditional power (northeast and north in general). It is not too far fetched that the financial backers from newly empowered states may ask their political appointees to seek greater economic autonomy for a number of states. It'll be interesting to see how accommodating the feds will be if Obama is reelected (even FDRist federal Germany has states like Bavaria whose shareholders are allowed to run their business a lot more freely from directives of Berlin).

Much will depend if the southern and western shareholders choose to behave themselves by not purposefully damaging the economy during the fragile "plane still sputtering and flying horizontally trying to gather momentum to eventually lift" phase. It may very well be that the plane is too decrepit/obsolete to reach certain altitudes anyway but purposeful undermining of the engine room (to get somebody like the phoney from Detroit in) may very well smash it. On a related note, prime minister Netanyahu knows all this and may wish to indirectly aid some American shareholders by creating a situation where provoked Iran drives the price of oil up, throws a wrench into the American recovery process, and thus allows a more militarist GOP candidate to win on the platform of Obama's weakness and insufficient economic management. Much will depend on how carefully Panetta manages to make clear that Netanyahu will clearly be on his own and perhaps even be given the Mubarak treatment if Netanyahu gambles with getting involved in US economy and election process.

So that's 2012 for now. Lots of egos involved and real economic recovery roots actually being seen JUST as people are finally becoming educated about the horror of it all. A delicate situation considering humans usually start getting restless just when things are perceived to be improving but are seen as not improving fast enough. That is classic political science (Soviet economy began to improve in 1989 after 4-5 years of major intra elite infighting). This time around there are major players in the world who want to help the plane chug along for at least a while longer while they help themselves to some spare parts. We'll see how it holds up.

Western Reindustrialization: Science Cities

When certain countries rediscover the political will to engage in macro level high tech industry and infrastructure building, they should keep in mind a few simple things. Physical architecture to spur creativity and plug and play integrated chains from concept to industrial production.




Western elites have a short amount of time to jump start a new wave of industrialization (to avoid being humiliated at international conferences). DARPA and Naukograds provide hints of how this should be done in the 21st century.

It is well known that a creative mind works best in a novel cutting edge environment. Google has long provided offices that could fit in The Jetsons, Steve Jobs knew it with his spaceship office building design, and president Medvedev intends to rapidly construct a hybrid of silicon valley and MIT in Skolkovo (the way IKEA packages a complex table). Chinese authorities are already constructing scientific campuses with top notch imported factory assembly lines as built in extensions.

For Westerners to begin catching up rapidly, the science-factory cities need to be rethought from the bottom up. The effort should be as holistic as the Apollo program was since it would stimulate and push the best of the human herd's abilities. How would an even larger concentrated effort to churn out 21st century machines look like? The science-factory (SciFac) cities can take on a multitude of forms and sizes but the basic framework may take on this form:

1) Location: A brand new dedicated area to house up to 200,000 people has to be set up in a region that is not too polluted by toxins from prior industrial thrusts. The climate conditions should not be depressing, distracting, or prone to too many natural disasters. Scenery should be inspirational for those who get mental breakthroughs from activities like hiking. Elevation above sea level and air dryness are additional considerations. The SciFacs should not be in the suburbs of any old design city (even if this makes resource logistics more difficult and costly, it'll end up being a blessing in disguise). A right country can of course be a giant plus when it comes to rapidly acquiring the right machines for SciFac's functioning. One can of course visualize Germany or Japan and parts of United States as being good candidates.

2) Lay Out: The SciFac city is optimal if it has a shell within a shell within a shell Matryoshka doll set up. The city as a whole can be viewed as a giant biophysical assembly line. Even the working teams can be further arranged via "psychological assembly" and management to fully utilize abilities of different creative breeds.

a) The inner most central "research-brain storm" core is a well known basic DARPA layout where fundamental science research is done to create a bridge between current breakthroughs and long term potential breakthroughs. Various fundamental science laboratory complexes are to be integrated with novel housing for quick foot travel and each lab complex to have an immediate proximity communal club area where egos of the researchers can play off each other meaningfully. Obviously both the labs and their attached clubs would be like spokes on a small wheel so interdisciplinary brain storming can be unleashed via individualized healthy one upsmanship and tapping into NT narcissism.

b) The secondary "engineer and engineering research" shell would be a series of institutes for developing practical application of the fundamental research breakthroughs from the core. These institutes can be looked at as continuation of the spokes from the core. Same system of clubs and interdiscipline friendly architecture is present in this middle layer.

c) Tertiary shell is to have a network of modular easily replaceable factory floors to build and test prototypes as well as tools to make these prototypes. Real working technologies conceived within the core (brief biking distance at this point) are to be made available to continually inspire the humans in the core and secondary layer.

d) Supporting final shell where personnel that maintains the SciFac city lives and constructs needed supplies. This shell includes high tech automated vertical farm buildings, clothing factories, grooming item factories, security, raw material processing for tertiary layer assembly lines, etc. The reason why things like clothing, food, toothpaste, medicine are built/assembled on site is because it is incredibly easy to do so and because part of the tertiary prototype layer can actually continuously improve these facilities. In fact, a thin pizza slice of a given SciFac (extending almost to the core) can be tasked with just conceptualizing improvements and constructing augmentation of the actual SciFac itself.

This constant renewal is essential to avoid stagnation and to promote the efficiency, culture, and psycho-physical health of the residents. Modularization of the city's buildings and infrastructure aids in this. Additionally, a small city owning the means of production and distribution and providing for its own needs can rapidly become a role model even before first prototypes roll off the assembly lines. Everybody understands that human primates have essential needs like grooming and an automated small factory can easily stamp out enough haircombs, socks, hats, dental floss, slippers, toys, etc for 200,000+ residents. The SciFac can of course be given ownership rights by the public over certain regional mines and agricultural lands to ship the raw resources to itself and streamline the process. Vertical and horizontal integration would not be just for robber barons anymore. Industrial 3D printing even allows consumers within inner layers to design and order batches of unique goods (if a specialized nanolined jogging sweater helps somebody in the core think better by all means let the person have it).

3) Culture and governance: Obviously Soviet or Chinese style regimentation would be stifling for creativity and a substantial amount of social libertarianism is to be the norm. Compartments within each layer, each layer itself, and the city as a whole can easily have direct council democracy with today's communication technology. A scientific polis in action may be more inspiring for outside observers than any TED conference. As with DARPA, the red tape would not only be cut to the bone but scientifically reimagined. Non-hierarchal flat management structures and direct participatory democracy would of course further aid in psychological productivity by reducing damaging ego clashes, providing healthy feeling of autonomy, and even allowing invention of new more humane and efficient governance (within guiding limits naturally so the core city mission is not jeopardized by endless political infighting).

Besides helping in rapid reindustrialization of the Western world, the SciFac functions to groom future cadres of technocratic political leaders. The exclusivity of the SciFacs may seem elitist and scary (raising some people's fears of scientific dictatorship) but it is a definitive improvement over the current oligarchic/lawyer/playboy elitism and parasitic dictatorship of finance capital. It definitely creates much needed experimentation for a more meritocratic and progressive society during a time of great planetary transition and danger.

A properly constructed SciFac city of course can function in parallel with the old society rather than hatching an embryonic socioeconomic replacement but it may be a futile exercise to stop its role model leadership once it begins. Ecole Polytechniques of the world and profit/patent based silicon valley type constructions would pale in comparison if we get a small holistic bubble of the 21st century up and running. Yes, purposefully killing the patent culture within city limits will do wonders for brainstorming while reducing individual neuroticism and jealousy based interpersonal barriers. Out of 7 billion people on earth, staffing will not be a problem. Conceptualizing proper incentives to work within SciFac (besides getting to live there) is the easy part.

Conclusion:

Rather than a massive shake up of society or dictatorial large scale top down attempts at modernization, for some countries a SciFac City provides a rather benign foot in the door towards eventually rebooting the entire socioeconomic system. The public via state credit can easily set up a number of different highly automated relatively self sufficient SciFacs which share and learn from each other while keeping competition friendly.

The militaries of the world have engineer divisions that can quickly clear the needed areas and set up resource feeds for the SciFacs. The aesthetics and actual creativity inducing architecture are for the artistic breeds, organizational psychologists, and potential residents to decide upon. Soviets managed to rapidly catch up in technology and infrastructure using the shell within a shell compact living, researching, designing, and building Naukograd clusters. Dedicated Western power elite factions can do even better and overshoot rising competitors to the East when it comes to getting a top notch idea and getting it to the factory floor to take advantage of economies of scale. Of course SciFacs would function even better if they are international and cooperative in nature. In that case, China can aid in rapid construction of them in return for resource swaps as it has promised with high speed rail.

The public is hungry for state aided experimentation like this as the vacuum of ideas within elite circles becomes more noticeable by the day. The return on these investments stands to overshadow even the space race when it comes to ripple effects of emulation. Simple concepts like a city owning its own factories, farms, and energy sources to provide for basic resident needs (the way they provide police, the courts, and firefighting) will be revolutionary in terms of logistics and living efficiency. People will have a hard time believing it took this long and how they managed to live before such basic common sense practices.

Russian Legislative Election 2011: End of an Era

A now familiar scene in Northern Hemisphere

Since it has served its purpose of stabilizing and consolidating the 20 year old country, Putinism is officially on the decline. Its future, if it is to survive, is either coalition governance with communists or radical transformation towards long term construction of a post-scarcity societal model.





The ruling rich man's party in the Kremlin has just gotten badly egged in the face by suffering a 25% drop in the Duma. It is the first reversal for regime's party since a number of prominent robber barons created it in 1999 to support their macho puppet at the time (when Putin was successfully used to divert nation's attention from collapsing economy towards a secessionist terrorist threat). The history of United Russia's seats in 450 person Duma in 1999: 73, in 2003: 225, in 2007: 315, in 2011: 238.

It was to be expected that people would not go for a lukewarm quasi FDRist reactionary policy of United Russia during a paradigm shifting global economic downturn (some members of Putin's party have pictures of FDR on their walls for inspiration). Although survival and additional expenditures on welfare and social safety nets were enough to avoid Greek style riots, they were not nearly enough to maintain (much less gain) popularity.

While it may appear paradoxical that citizens may punish a regime that kept them afloat as some economies have imploded throughout Europe, it is not surprising given human psychology. Whenever the elites actually empower the wage slaves by growing the economic pie, the people get empowered (duh) to demand more and more (see 1960s United States and numerous blue collar worker strikes in China today). If there are sudden reversals that clash with ego expectations, the amounts of hatred released can be dramatic (note Beijing's fear of annual growth dropping to under 7.5%).

Thus the popular shift to the promises of a high tech welfare state that the Communist Party of Russian federation (CPRF) offers. Zyuganov's Communists expanded their delegation's representation in the legislative by a respectable 61%. It is no longer a secret that CPRF stopped being just a platform for nostalgic elderly. The youth are joining the party in droves out of genuine conviction as well as a protest vote. "Business as usual" within CPRF is changing by the month.

It is to be noted that the 3 main opposition parties (including CPRF) are only allowed to exist by the Kremlin in order to have an effective feedback mechanism from the people that wasn't present until 1991. This allows the financial and industrial cartels that rule the country to be relatively flexible, avoid stagnation, and respond to wage slave needs in a relatively timely manner.

If the emerging Chinese princeling leadership (comfortable soft children of the old guard) ever democratize towards party pluralism, it may be along these lines. Similar system of feed back also exists in Syria where pro-Assad party allows some minor friendly parties to openly express popular discontent within structured channels. Multi-party (more than 2) rich man's democracy may even come to places like United States in the years to come as it appears that the power elites in Washington DC have lost the ability to measure and comprehend the sheer levels of peasant hatred against them. One can imagine a controlled monkey like Kucinich being allowed a small political block so frustrations can be channeled and systematically co-opted.

Having said that, CPRF remains the most autonomous oppositional entity with greatest potential for unpredictable action especially if its aging leadership is suddenly replaced internally. Kremlin's strategists may find it necessary to dramatically increase or restructure their psychological, informational, and financial warfare and co-option approach towards CPRF. The leading theorist of Russian managed democracy and "brains behind the throne" Vladislav Surkov, already helped create a fake opposition center-left party Just Russia to try to drain votes from CPRF. The other fake opposition party Liberal Democrats (LDPR) does a marvelous job sucking in the less pleasant crypto-fascist and militarist elements of society (think a special party to catch and compartmentalize the Michele Bachman and Rudy Gulliani lovers).

Surkov's goal is to have one "steering" party rule for 30-50 years the way Sweden and Japan were in the second half of the 20th century. The tiny parties may even be allowed to become substantially more independent (if they continue to take small amount of seats that is..). This would allow implementation of 5,10,20, and 30 year economic plans. Unfortunately, some current long term plans are paper shuffling jokes (building financial center to rival London) rather than being tangible herd improving ones. An example of the latter is the Northern River Reversal water project which would really glue Central Asian and possibly Persian elites to Kremlin's leadership and provide enough regional jobs to neutralize the fires of Islamic radicalism being currently fanned by Anglo geopolitical strategists.

It will be interesting to see:

1) How Putin modifies his position before the presidential election in response to this pie on the face
2) If Medvedev will even stick around
3) Which one of the 3 smaller party gremlins the papa gremlin will choose to cooperate with the most.

There have already been signals that the militarist LDPR may be the ally of choice as Putin returns to foreign affairs duties next year. That is since there is the matter of taking advantage of shrinking perimeter of American empire and consolidating regional economic blocks (Eurasian NAFTA-esque entities) to help make Kremlin friendly corporations even more profit. When it comes to choosing allies for domestic policy however, things will get a lot more complicated as Internet literate population has sensed blood in the water after dealing Kremlin a broken nose.

Continuing decline of American influence may briefly boost the Kremlin for a short time. Ultimately however it would further and even more thoroughly discredit current form of Putinism which is basically intensely trying to copy what American empire did right in the 1950s-1970s period (vibrant soft power, incredibly cold and restrained diplomacy, attracting foreign investment, social democratic architecture, allowing sufficient democratic input to bypass oligarchs, becoming example for elites in poorer parts of the world, building cutting edge energy infrastructure, etc). CPRF as ruling coalition partner may be the only realistic choice for United Russia in the next few years as American neoliberal model continues to nosedive (occupy the Kremlin anyone?).

As much as some Western dissidents would like to see the desires of their own ruling imperialist Kleptocrats tempered by those in Beijing and Moscow, it is not the sort of strategy where the little people ultimately win. Imperialism from DC being replaced by economic imperialism from Berlin, Moscow, or Beijing is not what humanity needs to preserve social stability in the 21st century.

As of today, 4 political units stand out in terms of having the preconditions to provide leadership for the whole world. They are Germany and Japan (once they figure out a way to constructively end foreign occupations of their soil) and China and Russia. Japanese elites have the most high tech and egalitarian "human farm" to work with, China has the raw economies of scale to construct for large swaths of the world, Germany of course can lead in supranational integration, while Russia may be the first to demonstrate combination of democratic functioning and popular blatantly communist aspirations that are being rekindled daily. Those robber barons still buying London property (and thus political protection) understand this.

P.S. Once again, regional militarism born out of imperial power vacuum is to be avoided at all costs.

10 Signs That American Empire is Collapsing

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The imperial perimeter is shrinking and inevitably leaving power vacuums to be filled. As that occurs, actors outside the perimeter expand their force.  How can we tell?








1) Switzerland, one of the ablest money changers, has thrown its support behind the Eurozone by pegging the Swiss franc to the Euro. As explained previously, this may signal that E.U. is beginning to win the currency wars. Shorting the Euro has resulted in financial massacres as of late (hilarious considering talk of parity a year ago).

2) US abandons plans to extend presence of its troops in Iraq, thus ceding the country to the influence of much hated Tehran. Iraqi Shiite political coalition increases its autonomy having benefited from return to high oil prices. This occurs even as violence against US troops has increased this year compared to last (possibly stirred by Tehran).

3) Alexei Kudrin, one of the last and most entrenched neoliberals (ideological pro Anglo-Saxon cadres) in the Russian government, has been publicly fired by president Medvedev. This occurred after Kudrin criticized Russian Federation's plan to invest an unprecedented $700 billion to modernize its military over the next 10 years. Moscow is preparing to deal with possible instability within new power vacuums in central Asia and Europe. Putin's return to presidency (external affairs duty versus prime minister's internal affairs) next year goes well with this as he is familiar with key world leaders on a personal level.

4) Attempts to create tensions between Saudis and Persians via stories of ridiculous Tehranian "plots" in an effort to keep house of Saud under Washington's wing. Saudis no longer trust US to protect them (seeing wider Anglo-led attempts to create general instability in the region) and have began strategic autonomous dialogue with Pakistan and other players.

5) Irrational moves to prevent violence backed dollar from devaluation by starting more policing actions in weaker regions (Africa) to make up for disappearance of influence in relevant regions (like central Europe). This loss of influence is demonstrated by the defeats dealt in the Russo-Georgian conflict fiasco, cancellation of anti-ballistic missile installations in Poland, and Moscow feeling secure enough to increase pressure on its once regional ally Belarus for pure economic gain. As for Africa, besides the tragic murder of Libya, there's the hypocritical and superficial increase in policing deeper within Africa. Washington is engaging in laughable attempts to displace Libya as Africa's moral leader (after having destroyed one of the better competing socioeconomic guidebooks for the continent via siding with homicidal NTC "rebels").

6) Hugo Chavez's recent decision to pull the gold that Venezuelan central bank stores abroad from its storage in NYC and London vaults.

7) Signs of belligerence between supposed Washington allies in the Middle East. Turkey and Israel increasingly hostile to each other as they cut military cooperation over the murder of Turkish citizens during the raid on Gaza flotilla. This demonstrates inability and/or lack of resources to properly mediate by DC strategists.

8) Continuing sales of US bonds by Beijing and Moscow (centers of more efficient predatory capitalism). Expanding interest by non-BRIC countries to bilaterally deal in their own currencies. Fears of abandoning the dollar are gradually fading as NATO forces are showing logistical cracks in their operations. Regional economic summits are starting to lock out and not invite DC observers.

9) Increase in autonomy seeking behavior among key NATO allies. Although still occupied, Germany maintains non-participation in Washington backed military adventures abroad. Berlin is actually dramatically slashing its defense force expenditures. France's proactive role in continental affairs and the Libya fiasco as it tries to maneuver itself to better position within NATO decision making process. Rise in belligerence in British press towards the American empire shows possible desire to decouple London's parasitic relationship with Washington (in the beginning of 20th century, up to 40% of British foreign investments were in US industry and Britain successfully destroyed two major superpowers by pitting American empire against the Soviets in the 1950s).

10) Rise in calls for an "American perestroika" in major imperialist publications. There is worry among Washington's geopolitical theorists that the subject population in North America is becoming too malnourished and psychologically weak/unstable to continue energetically maintaining (much less expanding) the global force perimeter.

Demands of Occupy Wall Street Movement Protesters

Part 2: Dignity, respect, autonomy, living standards in line with what technology of second decade of the 21st century allows (or at the very least as good as those of an average Swede).







With the parabolic expansion of the OWS across the country (as of today, occupations in over 70 cities and hundreds of small towns), the powers that be are now attempting to co-opt the energy of OWS for Obama's re-election. The spike in media attention and sudden friendly non-condescending tone of rich man's mouthpieces like NYT and CNN is an indicator of this. Co-option appears to be the stage between ridicule and fight you stages. This may prove more difficult than was co-opting Ron Paul's people via building a corporate sponsored "tea party" (elderly obese peasant crypto-fascists on scooters) around them. Part of this process will be Obama proxies within the media, intelligence, and think tanks trying to channel the energy towards electing a gaggle of corporate democrats in the next election cycle. This means trying to entangle the protesters within a broken, draining, futile, and illegitimate political process and pitting them against an ocean of corporate advertising money.

The protesters need to understand that voting is used by the ruling oligarchic American regime (whether democratic or republican wing of finance capital) to bring itself legitimacy. In fellow oligarchic "democracies for the rich" like Russia, ruling parties always try to mobilize youth to vote for this reason. It is sign of rapidly increasing third worldification of the US when political parties feel compelled to also have artificially propped popular movements behind them. Perhaps Obama is jealous he doesn't have Putin's NASHI equivalent. As Latin America moves north, the protesters need to adopt tactics used by their comrades in the rest of the so called "developing world" (who exactly is developing around this planet?).

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Upon visiting the occupied park, the demands become crystal clear and in a pleasant surprise, they appear rather compatible with what The Pragmatist has been proposing. These demands fall into two categories of punishment and socioeconomic rebuilding which could be categorized as follows:




A) Stopping the looting on Titanic's upper deck.

1) Punishing and deconstructing ruling transnational financial cartels via Glass-Steagall, grand investigation, prosecution and arrest of thousands of banksters, and a Tobin tax on financial transactions to throw a wrench in the high frequency trading casino floor of Wall Street.

2) Bringing back 1950s style 90% tax on the ultra rich and steeply raising capital gains taxes to begin redistributing the wealth down across the ridiculously steep caste based pyramid.

3) Stripping corporations of legal personhood and nationalizing as needed. Reversing the process of privatization and corrupt public-private "partnerships" (a.k.a. peasant stompingships)

4) Creating a permanent awakening and class consciousness and thus the process of neverending push back against the desires of the ruling class, no longer venerating the oligarchs (or venerating abstract myths like "The Market"). In other words no longer licking the boots of the rich and kowtowing at every opportunity.

B) Slowing down the sinking of the Titanic and creating mechanisms to rescue the poorer passengers in the bottom decks. 

5)  W.P.A. 2.0 to engage in large scale infrastructure projects, technological modernization, and infrastructure development.

6) Providing cutting edge education to the largely illiterate peasant mass  (definition of illiteracy in the 21st century goes well beyond not being able to read or write). This will make it increasingly harder to swindle bottom castes out of their resources.

Eventually, as the OWS crowd socially polarizes, they will understand that the only language rich people understand is the language of the general strike and mass scale disobedience. That is, when business as usual and quarterly profits are interrupted. That is when the oligarchs start calling their butler/personal lawyer/puppy dog in congress to demand that business resume and they do something. When and if the radicalization reaches the level of mass desire for the general strike, a new set of better demands will emerge (better since they will present a lot more "radical" break from the rotten status quo and thus a halfway compromise will result resembling what's listed above).

The most hopeful thing one discovers is the increasing desire for a grand alliance between Ron Paul's people and the OWS umbrella for numerous other dissident groups. This will make it harder for a faction of ruling elites to make an alliance with OWS crowd first and will thus isolate the 1% further (put them under sudden siege which they aren't prepared for unlike elites in say, Latin America). An example of this fusionistic tendency is the federal reserve system increasingly becoming the target amongst many non-Ron Paul people in Liberty Plaza. Many countries around the world had to resort to a "popular front" of groups which normally hate each other but which have discovered a common enemy at the very top of the pyramid.

More to come as this develops.

Occupy Wall Street Movement

Part 1: Occupy Wall Street movement: The background of the spark to talk that millions have been waiting for





It has been 3 weeks already so time is ripe for a first report on this historic process (sorry Wisconsin). This well may turn into a few part series.

As explained in a January article Economic Development Alternatives for United States, the fusionistic groundswell of dissident movements will start shopping for ideas on moving forward. Ron Paul's 19th century reactionaries (and the oligarch backed crypto-fascist republican flavored tea party that co-opted and grew around them) obviously do not provide any real framework when it comes to replacing the current imperial regime of finance capital. Being against something is not being for and therefore it was only a matter of time until the youthful intelligentsia provided another tea party type movement (only from the "left" this time if you're helped by a reference to that dead paradigm).

A catalyst like September 17th gathering was a matter of time considering the amount of various fed up manifestos and declarations that came out last year from organizations that now deserted Obama's power coalition (as the last 3 years have radicalized them and brought them into fusionistic/synergestic contact with post-scarcity and post-capitalist dissident groups and opinion makers).

Occupation of Liberty Park (formerly Zuccotti park) represents a qualitative divergence in tactics. Unlike a typical ineffectual temporary protest (that could be ignored even if there's millions marching such as during the run up to the aggression against Iraqi people), an occupation of a piece of parasite landlord's property is a direct primal drawing of a political border between "us" and "them". One must not forget that the Brookfield Office Properties that owns the park also owns 20 billion dollars in other assets and is now having a self sacrificial energetic crowd lay indefinite trespass claim on one of its properties.

In this regard, the occupy wall street project is similar to those incidences of laid off workers taking over (and continuing to operate) factories in United States and managing to keep the police from dislodging them. A post-financial collapse country like Argentina demonstrates such occupations on a much larger scale. Of course there's also been numerous cases of Americans refusing to leave their fraudulently foreclosed homes and actually managing to beat the cops back via community neighbor support.

This is different.

Liberty Park is in the middle of intense tourist and yuppie traffic and is just a block from the Federal Reserve itself. It is not a factory or some commune on the edge of town that can be left alone by powers that be. It is located in a city of millions that is heavy in talented and disgruntled youth regardless whether it is technical talent, artistic, informational, etc. The city functions as a magnet for key breeds necessary for a revolutionary wave. The emotionally idealistic ENFPs, the entertaining and physical ESFPs, the aggressive and risk taking ESTPs, the pragmatic aggressive ENTPs, and all others who provide critical logistical organization. And cavalry in terms of human resources is still flooding into the city perimeter to escape the economic desperation of the heartland. Thus the Liberty Plaza can continuously draw upon cutting edge skills from an endless pool of the unemployed, underemployed, and otherwise pissed off New Yorkers. Only limitations to sleeping space are the limit which present interesting further possibilities.

The occupiers secured support from a few unions and there is now 50,000+ union members to count on for some form of logistical and legal help. The recent debacle and total humiliation for police commissioner during the arrest of hundreds on the Brooklyn bridge has even shown class based break downs in chain of command. The NYPD armed police force numbers roughly 35,000 members (with roughly 5,000 unarmed ready to help if needed). Most of them are the poorly paid "blue shirts" who've been migrating to other boroughs for better pay for years. Thus we saw the higher paid "watch me guard this park and get paid $60 an hour for it" "white shirt" management having to tackle the demonstrators. The blue shirts are in the force often out of poverty and desperation themselves and are not as vigilant and energetic when it comes to arresting fellow poor people (ranging from elderly to war veterans).

This week we heard about the numerous copycat occupations beginning. This means we'll now see numerous pundits and reporters try to frame and describe this "tea party with brains" (props to MarketWatch for taking the time out for carrying water for financial establishment to try to frame in such positive manner). We'll hear various reports from journalists that could be copy and pasted from their previous reports on Tea Party's early days (no message, too many mixed messages, just venting rage, no clear goal, blah blah blah. Shut up mainstream imperial press and go off into the night already, that includes you NYT, New Yorker, and The Atlantic). Interestingly enough, on the ignore you/ridicule you/fight you/ you win sequence, by week 3 the movement rapidly went to the establishment ridicule phase. Just watch the popularly despised CNN (Fox News with brunettes) take on it. It's a hoot and a holler when 1% rich TV pundits report on anything.

More Occupy Wall Street stories and picture series to come. Yours truly was on the scene trying to do gonzo journalistic research on this shindig like many others. I better get into this framing business early on eh friends? ;) We're the 99%.