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%.