Category: Foreign Policy

While American Empire Goes Even More Reactive, Russia Stays Pro-Active

In a totally NON-surprise move, the Russian Navy bolsters its naval presence off Syria to the highest level since 2015 when it first was asked by Syria to aid in fighting various rebel groups in their country.

As noted by a recent Reuters article:

On Saturday, the Admiral Grigorovich and Admiral Essen frigates sailed through Istanbul’s Bosphorus towards the Mediterranean, Reuters pictures showed.

The day before, the Pytlivy frigate and landing ship Nikolai Filchenkov were pictured sailing through the Turkish straits that connect the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. The Vishny Volochek missile corvette passed through earlier this month.

This is a NORMAL buildup to protect Syria as it continues in the negotiation stage and subsequent clean-up and liberation of the Idleb governorate in Syria’s northwest. The public announcement of this was made to let the rebel forces in this area know that they have limited time to respond to offers from the Syrian military that emphasized a September 7 deadline, the date when the Turkish, Russian and Iranian presidents will meet.

A Moon of Alabama article from three days ago shows the area about to be set free from rebel control, and the sensitivity here has to do with the US/UK/Israel backed rebel forces that have effectively been cornered:

There are signs that al-Qaeda in Syria and similar groups will try to preempt the upcoming attack on them by an offense of their own. The U.S., UK and France prepare for another chemical incident in support of the Jihadi attack. They would strike Syrian government forces and institutions after a new fake incident would be attributed to the Syrian government.

Turkey was given until the summit to remove al-Qaeda and similar Jihadi groups from Idleb governorate. It so far failed to do so and its chance of achieving that is practically zero. Al-Qaeda in the form of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) and in coalition with other foreign Jihadis from all over the world rules about 70% of Idleb governorate:

“Idlib Province is the largest al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11,” says Brett McGurk, the senior US envoy to the international coalition fighting Isis.

Pushed up against the Turkish border, with the clock ticking, Syria, Russian and Iranian forces are EXPECTING the US’s deep state to attempt to pull off a false flag to justify even more intervention in an area where they are not wanted.

The Inspector General of the U.S. aid agency shut down an aid program through which al-Qaeda in Idleb was fed:

“US charity Catholic Relief Services wouldn’t directly confirm it was the NGO involved but left little doubt, saying it had “closed” its operations in northwest Syria following reports of aid diversion, and had dismissed staff as it works to “further enhance” anti-fraud measures. CRS has received $147 million from USAID for projects in Syria over the last three financial years, according to the USAID website.”
“USAID’s inspector general, reporting to Congress, first in March and with more details released in July, said that staff of an unnamed non-profit added “fighters” of armed group Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham to lists of civilians eligible for food packages and then covered up the records. The US government regards HTS as a successor to the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.”

First reports of this scheme through which the U.S. supplied al-Qaeda were already published in 2012. It was widely known that al-Qaeda systematically “taxed” up to 50% of all food and weapon supplies U.S. supported “moderate rebels” received.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/images6/idlibmap20180815.jpg (click to zoom in)

Ringed with both Russian and Iranian observation posts, this is a very controlled “run-down” of the terrorist scourge in the region as long as the US does not interfere.

To assist in pressing its point, at lest 20 Russian naval units are in the region (thanks to Capt N on Twitter)

A long-range Kalibr cruise missile is launched by a Russian Navy ship in the eastern Mediterranean, August 19, 2016. Russian Defense Ministry Press Service

This is a serious attempt at bringing to a close this chapter (but not yet the final chapters) of Syria’s battle against terrorism and their supporters.

The US Navy however is positioned more for North Korean and Chinese “threats” and will have to bring non-carrier based task forces into the region like the USS Ross, armed with Tomahawk missiles:

Expect the US and other forces to be desperate in bringing about a confrontation. Never-mind that the US just re-activated their 2nd Fleet for North Atlantic and Arctic activities now that the Trump administration has ratcheted up tension with Russia using sanctions as well as ill-advised Tomahawk cruise missile attacks like Trump did the last time he dabbled in Syria’s domestic affairs.

The multi-year joint effort by Syria-Russia-Iran is progressing in an attempt to undo the “democracy” the US brought into the region:

Long term, Moon of Alabama says:

Six month from now, after the Idleb operation is over, the Syrian army is likely to move further north to retake the Syrian areas Turkey is currently holding and attempting to annex. After that the U.S. occupation force in north-east Syria will come into sight.

Additional U.S. operations against Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian forces might soon come on the Syian-Iraq border where U.S. forces are building up for new operations. It is claimed that the U.S. deploys radar systems to north-east Syria which it keeps occupying. These would be useful in establishing a no-fly zone over the territory of its Kurdish proxy forces. The U:S. is likely underestimating the local hostility against this development. The 2-5,000 U.S. troops there may soon find themselves in a hopeless fight with local guerilla forces.

For all the innocent lives impacted, please pray that the US steers clear of its reactive/short-term moves that continues the de-stabilization process it set in motion soon after the Cold War was over in 1989. The US continues to try to justify a global military as well as the Petro Dollar (USD).

Stay ‘tuned’ (US Navy Electronic Technician humor)

-SF1

Iran: Misunderstood If One Only Listens to US Government/US Media

USS Kidd (DDG-993), the never-delivered IIS Kouroush, to be part of the Shah’s upgraded Iranian Navy

Reflecting back on the late 1970s when I was an instructor in the US Navy’s Naval Training Center, it was apparent that I was more than just a little intrigued by some of the nationalities represented. I taught Aussies (quite the drinkers) and Germans (2nd place drinkers) as well as Saudis, Iraqis and Iranians. It was the Iranians I was the most curious about especially when it seemed at one moment Iran was the US’s closest ally and then during the “Hostage Crisis” broke out in November 1979, they were becoming our worst enemy.

In hindsight, with a little research and education it is apparent that the Shah’s policies did little to advance the Iranian people as the Iranian military was not ready to use these advanced US built navy warships without outside technical help. The situation was not helped by the woeful state of Iranian society which in the 1970s it was still 40%+ illiterate and it had an acute shortage of engineers and electronics technicians, let alone ones who wanted to join the navy. I had seen this first hand in teaching Iranians about radar systems.

Most people who remember 1979 saw what those in power wanted us to see. Few people at that time understood the path the Iranian people had up to that point. As David Swanson points out in this Lew Rockwell article back in 2013 about what the US public was fed:

[Myth follows]

U.S.-Iranian relations began around November 1979 when a crowd of irrational religious nutcases violently seized the U.S. embassy in Iran, took the employees hostage, tortured them, and held them until scared into freeing them by the arrival of a new sheriff in Washington, a man named Ronald Reagan.

From that day to this, according to this popular theory, Iran has been run by a bunch of subhuman lunatics with whom rational people couldn’t really talk if they wanted to. These monsters only understand force. And they have been moments away from developing and using nuclear weapons against us for decades now.

However, if the truth be told (just know that it was in 2013 when the CIA finally admitted to this):

[Truth follows]

… the CIA, operating out of that U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1953, maliciously and illegally overthrew a relatively democratic and liberal parliamentary government, and with it the 1951 Time magazine man of the year Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, because Mossadegh insisted that Iran’s oil wealth enrich Iranians rather than foreign corporations.

The CIA installed a dictatorship run by the Shah of Iran who quickly became a major source of profits for U.S. weapons makers, and his nation a testing ground for surveillance techniques and human rights abuses. The U.S. government encouraged the Shah’s development of a nuclear energy program. But the Shah impoverished and alienated the people of Iran, including hundreds of thousands educated abroad.

We are talking about a beta test of the NSA called SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, back in the 1970s. So embedded was this surveillance network, that the CIA was able to transition Iran from the Shah’s regime to an equally abusive on based on a theocracy without hardly anyone in media seeing anything strange at all.

A secular pro-democracy revolution nonviolently overthrew the Shah in January 1979, but it was a revolution without a leader or a plan for governing. It was co-opted by rightwing religious forces led by a man who pretended briefly to favor democratic reform. The U.S. government, operating out of the same embassy despised by many in Iran since 1953, explored possible means of keeping the Shah in power, but some in the CIA worked to facilitate what they saw as the second best option: a theocracy that would substitute religious fanaticism and oppression for populist and nationalist demands.

When the U.S. embassy was taken over by an unarmed crowd the next November, immediately following the public announcement of the Shah’s arrival in the United States, and with fears of another U.S.-led coup widespread in Tehran, a sit-in planned for two or three days was co-opted, as the whole revolution had been, by mullahs with connections to the CIA and an extremely anti-democratic agenda.

They later made a deal with U.S. Republicans, as Robert Parry and others have well documented, to keep the hostage crisis going until Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s government secretly renewed weapons sales to the new Iranian dictatorship despite its public anti-American stance and with no more concern for its religious fervor than for that of future al Qaeda leaders who would spend the 1980s fighting the Soviets with U.S. weapons in Afghanistan. At the same time, the Reagan administration made similarly profitable deals with Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq, which had launched a war on Iran and continued it with U.S. support through the length of the Reagan presidency…

So you see, Iran was once again used and abused by a super power like it had been before by the British and BP which profited from the immense oil discoveries from 1908 through 1953 when it enlisted the CIA to get the Shah of Iran back in power. Back in the 1800s it was Iran’s weak and greedy monarchs who where all too ready to hand over their country’s riches to the country, usually Britain or Russia, that had the deepest pockets with little regard for the well being of their subjects. These corrupt rulers, more than any other internal factor, set the stage for the violent struggle the Iranians waged for freedom, democracy, and national sovereignty throughout the first half of the 20th century.

You see, there are bits of truth out there but you will not see it in the best sellers sections of bookstores or in your history books. One recommended read is the yet to be published “Waking Up in Tehran: Love and Intrigue in Revolutionary Iran“, which is the memoir of Margot White, an American human rights activist who became an ally of pro-democracy Iranian student groups in 1977, traveled to Iran, supported the revolution, met with the hostage-takers in the embassy .. which in fact was an early version of WikiLeaks. They “continued to publish reconstructed US Embassy documents, eventually producing 54 volumes of evidence of CIA operatives … manipulating, threatening and bribing world leaders, rigging foreign elections, hijacking local political systems, shuffling foreign governments like decks of cards, sabotaging economic competitors, assassinating regional, national and tribal leaders at will, choreographing state-to-state diplomacy like cheap theater.” [ Facebook page link to this book here ]

This book, promised for the past five years, could unlock even more information about the Deep State. Maybe this is why this book has yet to be published?

In the meantime I encourage you to check out The Corbett Report article back in June 2016 which states:

It’s been an open secret that the US organized and enabled two of the three major events in modern Iranian history: the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and the Shah’s subsequent reign of terror (and eventual exile)…. newly-released documents confirm that the US had a larger role than previously admitted in the third: the Islamic Revolution of 1979

-SF1

 

Lookin’ for War in All the Wrong Places ..

OK, I guess that was off by one word .. right? I would much rather have love and peace, however, this is a very broken world where Jesus promised (Matthew 24 in The Message – a paraphrase):

When reports come in of wars and rumored wars, keep your head and don’t panic. This is routine history; this is no sign of the end. Nation will fight nation and ruler fight ruler, over and over. Famines and earthquakes will occur in various places. This is nothing compared to what is coming.

“They are going to throw you to the wolves and kill you, everyone hating you because you carry my name. And then, going from bad to worse, it will be dog-eat-dog, everyone at each other’s throat, everyone hating each other.

“In the confusion, lying preachers will come forward and deceive a lot of people. For many others, the overwhelming spread of evil will do them in—nothing left of their love but a mound of ashes.

“Staying with it—that’s what God requires. Stay with it to the end. You won’t be sorry, and you’ll be saved. All during this time, the good news—the Message of the kingdom—will be preached all over the world, a witness staked out in every country. And then the end will come.

So while my mission is to let you in on what might really be happening in this world using the ability to enter “a place to entertain a thought without accepting it”. There is no need to panic, but instead consider these events in context and in your own time consider what type of planning is appropriate for yourself, your family and your friends.

Today, I am looking at a very macro picture of where the United States is at this point of an “empire’s life”. With recent ramp-up in the accusations against Iran and North Korea initially as early as Bush II declaring them part of the “Axis of Evil” it is Trump now that is expanding this to include Russia and China.

So what happened? Why is having enemies (totally fabricated, as neither Iran nor North Korea EVER attacked the United States) like tier 2 like Iran and NK not enough? Maybe because they have the military strength below that of Iraq, Libya and Syria and Trump wants to take it up a notch. Actually, maybe yet again (just like FDR in the late 1930s), frustration with domestic programs leads to a desire for war which causes everyone to think like Bush II “you are either for us or against us”. Then we can wave the flag and be happy when we entice either China or Russia to “surprise” attack the US. This is as old as Fort Sumter and Abe Lincoln, ala, let THEM fire the first shot!

So the nitty-gritty comes this time from Moon of Alabama in this article where Trump has now linked a Chinese trade agreement with some treaty with North Korea.  I call b*lls**t on this, since when does a leader have to re-define some potential treaty, except from a point of weakness. I believe that the Chinese were willing to trade more with BRICS:

… than with the US/NATO nations. We have effectively gone back to the 1960s in world affairs probably because the MIC wants a guarantee of much more military spending globally to solidify their stocks in the impending economic storm.

Here is some of what Moon of Alabama is seeing:

Pompeo was in Trump’s office when Trump tweeted the above. Staff in the State Department was briefing foreign ambassadors on Pompeo’s upcoming talks, planned for next week, when Trump stepped in. The decision was clearly a surprise.

Trump is suddenly binding the continuation of Korea talks to a trade deal with China. Such a deal is unlikely to happen anytime soon as China is convinced that it can win a tariff war, while the Trump administration overestimates the economic pressure it can create. That Trump now connects these two issues might mean that he has given up the “denuclearization” game.

In this global chess match, the people “on the ground” suffer. Peace in the Korean Peninsula might cause unification which does not play into the American Empire’s narrative. Washington DC thrives on wars and rumors of wars and has its CIA embedded around the world just to make sure the pot continues to be stirred.

Peter Lee, aka Chinahand, sees a larger plan behind the latest Trumping: to demonstrate to Kim Jong-un that China is hindering Kim’s plans for a peace agreement and for economic development; then, when China will finally be pushed into open adversary status to the U.S., Kim Jong-un will have to chose and will end up in the U.S. camp. If that is really Trump’s plan, which I doubt, then it is clearly bound to fail. North Korea would never end the relations with its long-term strategic partner for the dangerous vagueness of a nuclear treaty relations with the U.S. (see Iran, Libya).

It is true that the US character is known around the world as BOT, the Breaker of Treaties .. something the Native Americans know all too well.

Despite the evident agreement in the Statement to follow a sequence of several steps, the Trump administration has been deceptive about it. After the Singapore Statement it again demanded from North Korea to take step 3 before the U.S. takes step 1 and 2. The administration also continues to falsely claim that North Korea agreed to “denuclearization”. On August 28, when Secretary of State introduced a new special representative for North Korea, he said:

“Steve [Biegun] will direct U.S. policy towards North Korea and lead our efforts to achieve President Trump’s goal of the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea, as agreed to by Chairman Kim Jong-un.”

Chairman Kim Jong-un never agreed to such a thing.

The U.S. media, even those outlets which oppose the Trump regime, support the falsehoods the administration is spreading. They fail to point out the obvious sequencing agreed to in the Singapore Statement and they fail to point out the aspirational character of the disarmament point. Instead of holding Trump’s feet to the fire for breaking an agreement he himself signed just a few month ago, the New York Times, Washington Post and others seem to support his stand.

The Trump negotiations with North Korea were in the end probably just an attempt to get some fast success before the big clash with China over global supremacy finally enters a more serious stage.

Moon of Alabama hits the nail on the head with this. In fact, in spite of sanctions and tariffs, both China and Russia are stronger every day economically, and both governments spend MUCH less in military spending and yet have a lot more to show for it. The American Empire is hoping that either China or Russia will react to this bully-prodding for a fight but I do believe they have learned from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria what Washington DC is up to as it is mired in epic debt up to its eyeballs.

In summary, MoA writes:

Who in the White House is making these policies? Trump’s tweets yesterday seem spontaneous, but are carefully formulated and obviously part of some larger plans. Are these Trump’s plans? Or have the hawks -Bolton, Mattis, Pompeo- written these up to push Trump along their lines?

We may never know, but now YOU know, probably more than you wanted to know.

Research it yourself, or as Royal Caribbean might say, “get out there!”

SF1

Prophets: Ignored and Marginalized .. Every Time

Anyone who has studied the Bible knows that the prophets (not “forth-telling” as in future telling, but “truth-telling”) were routinely seen as strange old men who reside on the edge of crazy and are in fact marginalized or worse, killed. From Noah, Moses and Samuel in the Old Testament to John the Baptist, Jesus, John and Paul in the New Testament, there was usually some tragic period in their life and also some truth-telling that usually had the masses turn away from following them.

Here is a modern day prophet whose message of peace was not well received but he did live until age 94. His name at birth in Germany was Helmut Osterman, born into a prosperous Jewish family in 1922 hear Hanover. His family saw the rise to power of the Nazis and in 1933 moved to Palestine. This 11-year old changed his name to the Hebrew, Uri Avnery.

Eric Margolis, in his Lew Rockwell article today, outlines Uri’s trajectory and allegience as well as his shift in his vision for the future of Israel:

In 1948, the young Avnery joined the underground Jewish guerilla force Irgun, fighting British and Palestinians and, later, Arab regular soldiers. Irgun committed numerous notorious terrorist acts and massacres that played a key role in driving the Palestinian population from their ancestral homes. He was seriously wounded and nearly died. Two years later, he and three friends started a political magazine, “One World.” Avnery was increasingly political and sided with Israeli expansionists.

As with a lot of prophets, there is a period where one’s belief structure is based in the traditional view and they are usually very passionate about it. (i.e. Saul, the best of the Jewish Pharisees, with a resume that is top-notch)

But then one day, or in a series of days, there is a stirring in the heart that something is not right, and that there is a better, although even non-traditional preferred way toward a future that aligns better with nature and its God:

… he gradually came to see that peace and cooperation was the only solution for Israel. After Israel’s smashing victories over the Arabs in the 1956 and 1967 wars, he formed a leftist pro-peace party and won a seat in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. He helped found the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Council and the renowned Gush Shalom peace movement.

Avnery was one of the first Israelis to call for fair treatment of the Palestinians, over a million who had become refugees in 1948 and 1967. He urged Israel to sign a lasting peace accord with the Palestinians and return to them control of the West Bank, the old city of Jerusalem, Golan and Gaza – all occupied by the Israeli Army and growing waves of Jewish settlers.

It is a tough road to hoe when one is a pioneer in new thoughts that would help propagate the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you).

Uri became the target of decades of hatred by right-wing Israelis. He was stabbed. He said things that were not said in public. He kept reminding Israelis that their Jewish ethics demanded fair and decent treatment of Palestinians, whom Israeli leaders preferred to call ‘cockroaches’ and ‘wild animals.’

Yes, but in spite of the attacks (and the truth that when one is on target, one will take on a lot of flak!), Uri continued to share what would be best for all people groups in the region for a peaceful future (something that had been maintained in various areas of the Middle East over the past few centuries, like Syria, Lebanon and even in Iran)

There would never be peace in the region, warned prophet Avnery, until Israel returned at least some land taken from Palestinians, and created a viable Palestinian state with full democratic rights and freedoms … Never one to mince words, Uri called Israel’s right, which just enacted a law making Israel an exclusively Jewish state (thus excluding its 21% Muslim and Christian population) ‘semi-fascist Jews.’

Uri’s dreams seem like they will never come true. He was passionate about a path forward but has found resistance in BOTH Israel and in Washington DC / American Empire:

Avnery became fast friends with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The two leaders could have created a viable Jewish-Arab state or federation. Sadly, Arafat was probably murdered and Avnery politically sidelined. In fact, Israel’s entire pro-peace left has dwindled to a fringe movement, isolated by its right-wing governments and Washington. Days after Uri died, Israel’s Likud coalition announced the expropriation of more Arab land on the West Bank to build 1,000 new homes for Jewish settlers.

As it is with prophets, years later people will find wisdom in the story of their life that may inspire them in another time and place in this world. Until then, it is important to share stories of people like this to give the next generations hope as well as to help them identify prophets in their midst, and take note.

SF1

War’s Value to the Politician, Lifelong Warmonger vs. a Father

Politicians think in terms of election cycles, getting elected the next time is their highest priority. Beyond this, it is either the money the can make along the way from lobbyists, or the power they hold while in office, or the lucrative post-political job they can get to pave their way to retirement.

Warmongers are a different breed. War offers an expediency towards things they value most, an elite status that protects them from the everyday, they dream of empire and destruction of everything in the way of that empire.

“This is the way the kind of king you’re talking about operates. He’ll take your sons and make soldiers of them—chariotry, cavalry, infantry, regimented in battalions and squadrons. He’ll put some to forced labor on his farms, plowing and harvesting, and others to making either weapons of war or chariots in which he can ride in luxury. He’ll put your daughters to work as beauticians and waitresses and cooks. He’ll conscript your best fields, vineyards, and orchards and hand them over to his special friends. He’ll tax your harvests and vintage to support his extensive bureaucracy. Your prize workers and best animals he’ll take for his own use. He’ll lay a tax on your flocks and you’ll end up no better than slaves. The day will come when you will cry in desperation because of this king you so much want for yourselves…” 1 Samuel 8 – God’s Warning via Samuel

Fathers think and act very differently as their heart is with the next generations. Fathers think on legacy, think of love and selflessness, and would rather deal with war themselves than let their kids deal with it. Fathers would be willing to look like a fool to take the focus off the object of their affection, their son or daughter. Fathers would wage war, as a very last resort, to give their ancestors and their community more freedom and liberty. With freedom their offspring are most likely to thrive in bringing innovative value to others in their community. Sharing the fruits of what they love to do to others who can trade or barter back the fruits of their own talents and gifts. This exchange is called an economy, an environment of cooperation and friendship!

Jeff Deist from the Mises Institute has a short article out today about war, where he states:

Why do seemingly endless military conflicts persist, despite lacking any constituency for their prosecution beyond the DC beltway? And why does US military strategy appear incoherent and counterproductive, when viewed through the lens of peace? Why can’t we do anything about this, no matter whom we elect and no matter how much war fatigue resides in the American public?

The answer is not found in a facile denunciation of the military industrial complex or war profiteers, though both are very serious problems. The answer lies in understanding how the DC War Party operates. Its goals are not ours. It is not democratic; the government is not “us.” It is not political; its architects are permanent fixtures who do not come and go with presidential administrations. It is not accountable; budgeting is nonexistent and gross failures only beget greater funding. It is above all not “economic” — it operates in an artificial “market,” one created and perpetuated by wars and interventions ordinary people don’t want. War socialism, or what former Congressman Barney Frank brilliantly termed “military Keynesianism,” has taken on a life of its own.

War taken to the edges of our world are accomplished by an elite who operate in a cocoon of their own making, insulated from their decisions, while in true sociopathic style, have zero empathy for those caught up in their unleashed hell on earth.

Ludwig von Mises experienced this first hand:

Ludwig von Mises saw peace as the key to any liberal economic program, and argued strenuously against the fallacy of war prosperity. Even early in his career, before his horrific experiences as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I, he recognized the critical distinction between economy and war: the former characterized by exchange and cooperation, the latter marked by the worst form of state intervention:

“Only one thing can conquer war — that liberal attitude which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation, and which can never wish to bring about a war, because it regards war as injurious even to the victors.”

The victors DO pay a cost even when they do in fact win the war. In the movie ‘The Patriot’ (2000) the fictional main actor Benjamin Martin says at the close of the movie about reflecting on what we have won and what we have lost. There is a cost to war:

.. the loss is not only economic, it is also cultural and moral. War, the ultimate rejection of reason as a means of navigating human society, reduces our capacity for compassion and makes us complacent about atrocities. Worst of all, it emboldens and strengthens the domestic state — encouraging us to accept absurdities like TSA theater and SWAT teams with leftover military vehicles operating in peaceful small towns.

The small town life of the 1950s, the 1910s or the regional societies of the 1840s and 1780s are no more. Culturally and morally the society we have today in the United States is bankrupt. With the government’s effective pacification of the church via 501C3 exemptions, even the Christian religion has next to zero influence in changing or reforming society. Only an underground non-official movement of Jesus followers could positively impact this empire like it did to the Roman Empire in the First Century.

Until then, the atrocities abroad come home to roost.

 While US troops remain mired throughout the Middle East, a subsurface political war heats up in the US. This cold civil war creates the kind of hyper-politicized society progressives once only dreamed of. Social media outlets encourage even the most ill-informed and ill-intentioned voices to spread hatred against those with differing views. Goodwill doesn’t translate, so fake bravado hidden behind anonymity or distance are the order of the day. Epithets like “racist,” fascist,” “Nazi” and worse become cheap currency in the new vocabulary of meaningless words. Dissenting voices lose jobs, reputations, and access to popular platforms. Mobs form to attack political opponents in restaurants and shops, shout down campus events, and threaten online disclosure of their perceived enemies’ personal information.

The estimate length of time the US Military expects to be in Afghanistan is the same as it has been for Germany and Japan .. OVER 50 YEARS!

Jeff Deist ends his article with a dire prediction:

The hawkishness of neoconservatives and the “democratic socialism” of progressives both lead in the same direction, toward economic destruction and war. If you think American society is polarized and prone to lashing out abroad now, what happens with a shrinking economy and 40% unemployment?

The end of the rope experience like present day Venezuela may very well come to the American Empire. Prepare yourself and your family appropriately with self defense training and skills, adjust economically, be strategic psychologically,  and most importantly, get right spiritually toward being a loving father or mother of your kids, your extended family and friends as well as others in society in the future. Be ready to be a light in the darkness.

SF1