FEAR

Fear is a powerful weapon. When the fear of a coronavirus can shut down the world, there is little wonder that our opportunistic diplomats will embellish Chinese threats to strike fear in the hearts and minds of the NATO nations. (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

To continue the confrontation approach of the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations is foolish. To increase U.S. Navy patrols in waters near China, sanctioning Chinese leaders, and issuing public demands will only provoke obstinate and retaliatory behavior from China.

Secretary of State Blinken just recently continued this foolish confrontational approach. At the recent March 2021 NATO Headquarters Summit, he warned of the global threats that we face. He included climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, economic inequality, and an increasingly assertive China. 

GLOBAL THREATS

Blinken categorized the three global threats as; 1) Military, 2) Technology, Economic and Information Threat, and 3) Environmental. Blinken specifically identified China as the culprit in two of the three threats and indirectly indicate them in the third. Leaving little doubt that the Biden Administration considers China to be the #1 Global Threat. 

According to the Secretary, China has threatened freedom of navigation, militarized the South China Sea, and has increased its military capabilities. Blinken claims that the Beijing military ambitions are growing by the year with new military capabilities and strategies. And that its modernized technology challenge that once seemed half a world away is no longer remote.

Blinken targets China and Russia as the primary perpetrators of the Technology, Economic, and Information threat. He claims they conduct disinformation campaigns to fuel distrust in our democracies and cyberattacks on infrastructure, stealing intellectual property, and blatant economic coercion aimed at Australia.

MORE, MORE, MORE

Most concerning are his more, more and more solution. More modernization to improve our military capabilities and readiness against Beijing increased use of resources, markets, and technologies to pressure our allies and drive wedges between us. More help to push back, if necessary, when China uses coercion or aggression to get its way. 

Display more strength in the East and South China Seas to ensure a free, open, inclusive, and healthy Indo-Pacific region, unconstrained by coercion and anchored by democratic values. 

More cooperation with following U.S. sanctions on individuals engaged in the atrocities against Uyghurs in Xinjian China. And more togetherness to stand firm against any retaliatory response by China to send the message against bullying tactics.

More alliances to ensure that our strategic nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure, and effective. Expansion of our ability to address transnational threats, like its 5G surveillance technology. More cooperation is needed to counter the Chinese coercive behavior. And more effort to prevent China from undercutting the rules of the international system. Finally, more values exerting coercive pressure to use its technology and infrastructure.

DIPLOMACY

Diplomacy is not counterproductive muscle flexing with China. Diplomacy is to stop spending money and resources to confront China. If we continue to misuse diplomacy, the U.S. will eventually exhaust itself. Attempting to contain Beijing in its backyard will only increase the risk of direct conflict with a nuclear-armed state.

China is a rival. We must recognize our interests sometimes align, sometimes diverge, and sometimes do not intersect. The U.S. policy should reflect that reality. Washington must be able to compete where necessary while preserving the ability to cooperate in areas of mutual concern.

The U.S. should engage China on the diplomatic and economic fronts to redress intellectual property rights issues, rely on our existing powerful military deterrent, and encourage our regional partners to bolster their defenses. 

THE DRAGON

China has undergone a diplomatic, economic and military modernization that has seen them rise to become the second-largest economy and a potent regional military power. China underwent an economic and diplomatic evolution that has a global reach. But its military development has been local and regional nature. 

China has taken controversial actions; they have militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea, have imposed a restrictive new National Security Law in Hong Kong, and continue threatening force to reunify with Taiwan. The Washington blob argues, these actions have initiated a global military threat that American military power must counter.

The Chinese armed forces focus on; 1) building the capacity to make good on their long-standing threat to reunify Taiwan and 2) deterring the U.S. from intervening militarily in Taiwan.

They are building assault ships, beach landing craft, and missile forces in preparation for an invasion of Taiwan and have engaged in constructing considerable anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) defensive belts to prevent American attacks against the Chinese homeland. 

China shares a land border with 14 countries and sea borders with several more. These include nuclear powers such as Russia, India, North Korea, and Pakistan and potent regional powers like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Beijing is far more concerned with regional security than in launching into territorial conquest elsewhere. The United States borders two vast oceans and two friendly countries. China is in a far more vulnerable position.

The Chinese leadership has its hands full trying to maintain local and regional security. It remains far more interested in developing its economy than in any consideration of threatening to attack other countries around the world, much less the United States.

China has not created the physical ability to project sufficient power abroad for territorial conquest. Chinese warships are not sailing down the East Coast into the Caribbean; Beijing is not filling Latin America with bases and troops; Chinese officials are not attempting to dictate American policy regarding Cuba. China is not demanding aggressive posturing in the Western Hemisphere to contain America. 

FEAR WASHINGTON

Where is the threat? The threat is to the American taxpayer. Those of us that continually finance the latest military expansion. In a security state, the military budgets never get cut. Because when the expenses of one war diminish, another conflict starts. After all, the trick to maintain and expand a government budget is spending all of it.    

The U.S. should not go to war with a nuclear-armed power over worthless rocks, or the sovereignty of Scarborough Shoal, or the Chinese interest in reuniting Taiwan. Washington has to know that NATO will not join an American crusade against China. Blinken is foolish to expect NATO to send a task force to the Indo-Pacific to help drive the Chinese navy back into their territorial waters?

PROMISES

At the 2021 Munich Security Conference, President Biden promised, “the United States is fully committed to our NATO Alliance.” He went on to say, ” we’ll keep faith with Article 5. It’s a guarantee. An attack on one is an attack on all. That is our unshakable vow. “

Then the NATO Summit, Secretary of State Blinken also mentioning the Article 5 clause of NATO, promising to go to war for other countries. Whether these promises are pre-game prep talks or bluster, they are playing with fire. Please don’t poke the Dragon.

“Once a gangster, always a gangster,” Julio says. “The only way out from this life is death, so if I can’t stop, all I can do is ask for forgiveness, cleanse and get on with it.”

Julio is a 33-year-old narco commander in the resurgent drug war on Columbia’s Pacific Coast. He runs a local cell for Empresa, the ruling gang. He is known and feared by the locals because his job is to terrorize them. In a war for turf control, gang rivals regularly try to kill Julio. They know that eliminating Julio would leave a very profitable area up for grabs.

The Atlantic Council is a think tank primarily focused on foreign policy. It is influential within the Washington turf management system. They claim to promote constructive leadership and engagement in international affairs and play a central role in meeting global challenges.

Their motto reads:
“The Council provides an essential forum for navigating the dramatic economic and political changes defining the twenty-first century by informing and galvanizing its uniquely influential network of global leaders. The Council shapes policy choices and strategies to create a more secure and prosperous world.”

Recently the Atlantic Council published their strategy to create a more secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific by drawing a series of “red lines” backed by the threat to use military force. They write: “any nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons action by China against the U.S. or its allies or by North Korea; any Chinese military attack against Taiwan or its offshore islands, including an economic blockade or major cyberattack against Taiwanese public infrastructure and institutions; any Chinese attack against Japanese forces in their defense of Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands, which China claims as to the Diaoyu, and their surrounding exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea; any major Chinese hostile action in the South China Sea to further reclaim and militarize islands, to deploy force against other claimant states, or to prevent full freedom of navigation operations by the U.S. and allied maritime forces; and any Chinese attack against the sovereign territory or military assets of U.S. treaty allies.”

In Julio’s world, so-called invisible borders define gang turf. Residents can be killed simply for crossing into rival territory. In the Atlantic Council world, crossing “red lines” would require the use of military force. The Atlantic Council has a more refined message with better public relations personnel, but they are surprisingly similar to the Julio narco-drug community message.

In Julio’s lawless, violent neighborhood, there is no opposition or challenge from their constituents. Instead, they nod and smile nervously. The bullies can walk the streets, greet those they meet in a politician-like style. Consequently, the people in these communities watch the bully as he manages his turf through extortion, collecting fees, and his army of hitmen enforce gang rule to protect their turf.

The Atlantic Council appears to be prescribing that Washington adopt the same turf management protocol as Julio. Hegemony is the drug. The Indo-Pacific is the turf. It is scary that the Biden Administration appears to be listening.

Attempting to dominate China in its neighborhood is the recipe for a turf war between two nuclear-armed gangs.

Biden’s Defense Enhances Saudi’s Offense

NFL fans understand defense can score points directly or may even provide the offense with a great scoring opportunity. Recovering a fumble could give the offense a territorial advantage. They may even intercept a pass to stop forward progress. Hell, they may even get a pick-6 and score directly.

Last month President/Coach Joe Biden announced that he would end US support for offensive operations to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. It is a start but comparable to assigning a 5’ slow defensive back to defend a 6’ 6” incredibly fast wide receiver.

Coach Biden, maybe you should reconsider a politically strategic offense. An offense to attack the Saudis for the blockade denying food and fuel to Yemen’s starving population, to attack the Saudis for bombing civilian targets.

Besides, defending Saudi Arabia as they continue to heave bombs at food warehouses and civilian infrastructure is a losing game plan. To defend Saudi Arabia as they prevent humanitarian supplies and fuel from being received or unloaded in Yemen seaports and airports are grounds for firing.

Statistics

Nearly 80 percent of Yemen’s 30 million people depend on foreign aid as large parts of the country have been devastated by the six years of violence that have resulted in what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

Newly released data, published by the Yemen Data Project in March 202, has found that the Saudi-led coalition has conducted at least 22,766 air raids in Yemen and up to 65,982 airstrikes since it began its bombing campaign in 2015. Roughly a third of the airstrikes hit non-military sites, including schools, residential areas, and hospitals.

The aerial campaign led to the death of 8,759 civilians and injured another 9,815. While the project found that 29 percent of all air raids hit civilian targets, 47 percent identified hit civilian sites.

Save the Children, reported over a quarter of the casualties have been children. The UN is warning that 400,000 Yemeni children will starve to death this year if conditions don’t change.

The Play-action; Fake the Run – Pass the Ball

News reports that the US-backed Saudi-led coalition has cleared four fuel ships to dock in Yemen’s port of Hodeidah. They report all the supplies on board. They create an illusion that 45,000 tons of gas oil, 5,000 tons of liquefied petroleum gas, and 22,700 tons of fuel oil will be soon be delivered to restart the electric grid, sewerage treatment plants, and other vital infrastructure.

The News fails to emphasize that the ships get cleared, but they do not get to the port for unloading. CNN investigations have revealed the Saudis prevent ships from docking in Hodeidah, depriving Yemen’s starving civilian population of the fuel necessary to deliver food.

As of March 23rd, the Saudis were holding 14 tankers from docking in Hodeidah even though the ships had clearance from the UN. a CNN investigation showed food trucks stranded in Hodeidah, unable to make deliveries due to a lack of fuel.

Quarterback Draw; Fake to Pass – Run Instead

Saudi Arabia recently presented a new ceasefire proposal. This plan/play calls for an UN-supervised nation-wide ceasefire without lifting the brutal blockade. The new proposal allows for only certain flights to land at the Sanaa airport.

“We expected that Saudi Arabia would announce an end to the blockade of ports and airports and an initiative to allow in 14 ships that are held by the coalition,” Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam said. He added, “opening the airports and seaports is a humanitarian right and should not be used as a pressure tool.”

The Hail Mary

Despite President Biden’s vows to end all US support for Saudi Arabia’s “offensive” operations in Yemen, the world’s worst humanitarian disaster has not stopped. Non-support of offensive operations is not good enough. Last week, a Saudi airstrike in Salif targeted a grain port, warehouse, and the living quarters of a food production company.

Coach, we are in Sudden Death. Time is running out. Throw up the Hail Mary, demand that Riyadh lifts the blockade, and stop their airstrikes on civilian targets.

Cold War I

Since the days of Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, George Marshall, and their Post World II crusade against global communisms, the Washington narrative has not changed. It states; the United States is the last superpower, the leader of the free world, the indispensable nation, the architect of the rules-based international order with a mission to save mankind. 

Seventy-five years ago, the United States declared the Soviet Union our enemy in the Cold War. Between 1989 and 1991, the Soviet Union imploded from a bloated economy overextended across the world. During these years, the Berlin Wall came down, the Red Army left eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union split apart into 15 separate nations.

Why Can’t We Be Friends?

In the aftermath, Russia became a nation reaching out in friendship to the United States. In June 1991, Boris Yeltsin became the first elected Russian president. Once in power, Yeltsin introduced economic reforms. By January 1992, prices stabilized, queues in stores disappeared, and goods reappeared on Russian shelves. 

Yeltsin began a mass privatization program, transferred shares from the government to private investors. By mid-1994, almost 70 percent of the Russian economy was in private hands. In 1995, with the help of the International Monetary Fund, Russia stabilized the ruble. 

However, the Russian parliament remained mostly unreformed, a well-organized Communist Party entrenched in its industrial interests. They resisted most of the Yeltsin reforms. In 1995, the Communist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, challenged Yeltsin. 

Friend Of The Devil(s)

With the 1996 presidential election pending, a desperate Yeltsin agreed to a loans-for-shares program, providing loans for valuable Russian resources. This program consolidated a few well-connected men, the oligarchs. The oligarchs had a political and economic influence across Russia. 

It was the oligarchs and the inner machinations of the Clinton Administration that helped Yeltsin get re-elected. With Hollywood scripted coverage on the television networks and New York Times style journalism in the newspapers, owned by the oligarchs, Yeltsin won the 1996 election. However, the Yeltsin victory did not come cheap. Yeltsin became beholden to a few new masters. 

During this period, he reduced defense procurement by an estimated 90 percent, pursued drastic nuclear arms reduction in co-operation with the United States, accepted the expansion of NATO. Most of the Russian resources became under the control of a few.

By the late 1990s, Yeltsin lacked political and popular support. Political gridlock made it hard for the government to function. As oil prices collapsed in 1997–1998, so did the federal budget, and the financial turmoil spread throughout Russia. The crisis led to a Russian debt default and a sharp depreciation of the ruble. 

Putin – The Russian Friend

Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin. He was appointed Prime Minister by Yeltsin in 1999. On January 1, 2000, Yeltsin resigned, making Putin the acting president, subsequently winning the presidential election in March of that year. 

Over the following four years, the Russian economy rapidly grew. In 2003 the Russian government was able to borrow money, in world markets, at a long-term interest rate of around 7 percent. Investors had confidence in the Putin leadership, and the Russian economic growth forecast had turned highly optimistic. 

Putin saved Russia from becoming another US vassal. He targeted the corrupt oligarchs. Putin immediately becomes an enemy of Washington. However, under Putin, Russia would remain a sovereign state.

Cold War II

Having won the Cold War and unable to find a new mission, Washington started Cold War II. This war moved our front lines from the River Elbe to the borders of Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia. We doubled the number of nations in NATO, obligated to defend 30 countries, moved the alliance deep into Eastern Europe, and adopted a policy of containment of a shrunken Russia. 

Today, Washington continues to target Russia with a sanction initiative best described by The Washington Institute: 

“Sanctions may be imposed on a state to express disapproval (retribution) and/or to change the behavior of the target state (rehabilitation). Retributive sanctions serve the interests of a domestic constituency. The government imposes them as a form of punishment, irrespective of whether they can change the policies of the target states. When imposing retributive sanctions, the “feel good” benefit should be weighed against the possible political and strategic consequences of the measure.”

With friends like Washington, who needs enemies?

Plan Columbia

President Joe Biden has proclaimed himself the architect of Plan Colombia. A plan that transformed Colombia into a hyper-militarized bastion of right-wing rule, enhancing the power and presence of the notoriously brutal armed forces while failing miserably in its anti-narcotic and reformist objectives.

According to Robert White, the former number two at the US embassy in Bogota. The original Plan Colombia, was written in Spanish and had no mention of military action against the FARC rebels. However, in the translated Biden/Washington English version, almost 80 percent of the $7.5 billion plan went to the Colombian military. Five hundred US military personnel were promptly dispatched to Bogota to train Columbian military personnel.

On July 5, 2019, CNN interview Biden explained his Plan Columbia. “We went down and said, okay, and I was one of the architects of Plan Colombia,” Biden continued. “I said, here’s the deal. If you have all these crooked cops, all these federal police, we’re sending our FBI down, you let us put them through a lie detector test, let us tell you who you should fire, and tell you the kind of people you should hire. They did and began to change. We can do so much if we’re committed.”

Six years into the Bill Clinton/Biden Plan Colombia, US drug czar John Walters admitted that the price of cocaine in the US had declined, the flow of the drug into the US had risen, and its purity had increased. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime has reported that in 2018 coca cultivation reached record levels in Colombia.

In the first four months of 2019, more than 50 human rights defenders were killed. While the US remains in control, Colombian coca production has reached record levels. It has been a failed anti-drug policy with billions of wasted dollars and has produced a society in turmoil. Why does Biden remain boastful of his Plan Columbia?

Plan Northern Triangle 

After 15 years of human misery and billions of dollars squandered in Colombia, Biden set out on a personal mission to export his pet program to Central America crime and corruption-ravaged Northern Triangle.

Biden has bragged of imposing Washington policies on the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. His brainchild channeled $750 million through a right-wing government installed by a US-orchestrated military coup to spur mega-development projects and privatize social services.

At that time, the government of Honduras had no capacity or will to resist the Biden plan. Honduras had democratically elected president Juan Manuel Zelaya. In 2009, a coup orchestrated by the United States removed him from office.

Zelaya told Anya Parampil, “the Obama administration was infuriated by his participation in ALBA, a regional economic development program put forward by Venezuela’s then-President Hugo Chavez that provided an alternative to neoliberal formulas like the so-called “Biden Plan.”

Following the military coup, the FBI sent personnel to Honduras to oversee the training of FUSINA, the main operational arm of the Honduran army and the base of the Military Police for Public Order (PMOP) that patrols cities like an occupation force. Then the US embassy created a special forces unit known as the Tigres. Besides arresting activists, they reportedly helped a drug kingpin escape a US investigation.

After the coup, poverty, violent crime, and unemployment surged. The unstable post-coup Honduras was particularly harsh on LGTBI (Lesbian, Gay, Trans, Bisexual, and Intersex) Hondurans. Since 2009, more than three hundred in their community were killed.

By 2014, the blowback of the Obama administration initiated coup had caused a national emergency. Thousands of Hondurans were being confined in detention camps run by the US Department of Homeland Security. Many of the detainees were not even 16 years old. 

That summer, Obama went to Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funds to increase border militarization. Deportation of unaccompanied Central American minors was made possible. 

Plan Biden

Biden used that opportunity to rustle up an additional billion dollars, exploiting the crisis to fund a massive neoliberal project that saw Honduras as a base for international financial opportunity. Congress quickly ratified, and the first phase of the Alliance for Prosperity began. The role that Vice President Biden was so central it was known as “Plan Biden.”

Dana Frank, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of the book, The Long Honduran Night stated; “In reality, the Plan would further enrich and strengthen the political power of the very same elites whose green, deliberate subversion of the rule of law, and destruction of natural resources and of Indigenous and Campesino land rights, were responsible for the dire conditions the proposal ostensibly addressed.”

The Alliance for Progress provided the backdrop for the assassination of the renowned Honduran environmentalist and feminist organizer Berta Cáceres. Cáceres was leading the fight against a local dam project overseen by DESA, a powerful Honduran energy company backed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and run by former military officers. 

A representative from DESA, Sergio Rodríguez, was accused of the masterminding of Cáceres’ murder. In March 2018, the Honduran police arrested DESA’s executive president, Roberto David Castillo Mejía, for “providing logistics and other resources to one of the material authors” of the assassination. 

Plan Democracy?

By 2017, a movement in Honduras against the US and its orchestrated 2009 coup saw an opportunity for political transformation at the ballot box. President Hernández was running for re-election, violating a constitutional provision on term limits. His opponent, Salvador Nasrallah, a popular broadcast personality, provided a consensus choice for those opposed to the coup regime.

When voting ended on November 26, Nasrallah appeared the victor. The exit polls were showing him comfortably ahead by several points. But suddenly, the government announced that a power outage required the suspension of vote counting. Days later, Hernández was declared the victor by about 1 percent.

The fraud was so transparent that the Organization of American States (OAS), an arm of US interests in Latin America, declared “errors, irregularities, and systemic problems,” as well as “extreme statistical improbability,” rendered the election invalid. But the United States recognized the results, leaving Hondurans with protest as their only recourse.

Plan Failure!

Karen Spring, of the Honduras Solidarity Network, explained, “Hondurans wanted to use their votes to change the country and now they’re voting with their feet,” she continued. “So if Biden’s plan really addressed the root causes of the migrant crisis, why aren’t people asking why migration is getting worse? Hondurans are voting on the Biden plan by fleeing and saying your plan didn’t work and it made our situation worse by fleeing to the border.”

Adrienne Pine, professor of anthropology at American University and leading researcher of the social crisis in Honduras, has explained. “Biden’s policies are driving more people out of Central America and making human rights defenders lives more precarious by defending entities that have no interest in human rights.” Pine added, “Biden is taking credit for doing something constructive to stop the migration crisis and blaming the concentration camps [on the US-Mexico border] on Trump. But it’s Biden.” 

As the social chaos continues to crippled the Northern Triangle, migration to the US-Mexico border has surged to catastrophic levels. Unable to make ends meet, Hondurans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans send their children alone to the US border, hoping for protection or refugee status.

Mr President these people are dying to hear the details of the next Plan.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/central-americas-turbulent-northern-triangle

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/28/biden-privatization-plan-colombia-honduras-migration/

The (not so) Great Reset 

The Great Reset is the brainchildren of the political and corporate Oligarchic elites. The World Economic Forum (WEF) has a global vision that includes socioeconomic planners and corporate stakeholders at the helm. These planners would be responsible for a substantial group of people living under an economic stasis of reduced expectations, with individuality curtailed.

The spiel that now is time to discard selfish individualism and get on board with sustainable development is how they sell it. In The Club of Rome, pioneers in globalization, 1991 book, The First Global Revolution, argued that policies could gain popular support if the masses linked them with an existential fight against a common enemy. The First Global Revolution contains a passage entitled The Common Enemy of Humanity is Man, states the following:

“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine, and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions, these phenomena do constitute a common threat that must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.”

The Club of Rome and the World Economic Forum have frequently argued that population control methods are essential to protecting the environment. The Great Reset would similarly use the climate and environment to market otherwise unpopular policies.

The Great Reset presupposes that all stakeholders, as in the whole planet, must toe the line. Otherwise, we will have more polarization, nationalism, racism, increased social unrest, and conflicts. Could this be the return of the “with us or against us” ultimatum? What an eerily reminiscent of the post 9/11 world. 

Enter Klaus Schwab

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), defines Neo-liberalism as “a corpus of ideas and policies loosely defined as favoring competition over solidarity, creative destruction over government intervention and economic growth over social welfare.” Schwab uses Neo-liberalism as a straw man to blame for world economic woes.

Schwab claims that the Great Reset will peacefully establish nations that dutifully obey the new guidelines designed by their appointed Republic sages. Schwab calls for every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed.

The oligarchic elite experts and their partners will own all means of production. This command economic system has oligarchic party elites dictate who, when, where, and what cost production occurs. They decide who gets what and when from the production output. 

To enforce the constraints of the Great Reset, an expansion of government corporatism would have to follow. The government would favor selected industries and players. These corporate stakeholders would vest as much control over production and distribution, eliminate producers that do not follow the globalist vision of a fairer and greener future. 

The Free Market?

The Great Reset plan is to replace what little is left of the free market system and install a command economic system. The WEF goal is to limit the possibilities for individual activity and choice. In this New World, private property may be allowed. However, the central authority, the power elite, will ultimately determine property usage. 

They promise to provide a user-friendly transition into global socialism. The problem is that socialism has many skeletons in its closet. Historically, it has proven that socialism is a recipe for disaster. It leads to chaos, impoverishment, and loss of individual freedom.

Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

Klaus Schwab writes that the covid crisis is an “opportunity [that can be] seized to make the kind of institutional changes and policy choices that will put economies on the path toward a fairer, greener future.” It is funny that crisis always seems to be lurking in the shadows when an opportunity to expand authority appears. Whether the Covid, window of opportunity, presented itself as a mere coincidence or by design has become a conspiracy theory for us tin-foil-hatters to banter.

The number of small businesses has been nearly cut in half by the covid lockdowns and Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots as corporate giants consolidated their grip on their industry and economy. These same giants have consolidated their power over individual expression on the internet and beyond. Thus, it would appear that the covid lockdowns, shutdowns, partial closings, as well as riots are just what the Great Reset may need for a catalyst. 

The covid lockdowns, and riots, have moved us closer to corporate socialism. With the lockdowns issued by governors/mayors and the destruction caused by the summer rioters, the corporate socialist work is has commenced. In addition to destabilizing the nation-state, these policies and politics have destroyed many small businesses, thus eliminating competitors.

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) points out, the lockdowns and riots have knocked out millions of small businesses. FEE reports that 7.5 million small businesses in America are at risk of closing their doors for good. Federal loans have not helped. Many small business owners will have to shut down for good. The toll has already been severe. In New York alone, stay-at-home orders have forced the permanent closure of more than 100,000 small businesses.

Amazon has thrived like never before as small businesses get crushed by these corporate giants. The tech giants like; Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, have prospered. While the riots of this past summer have cost $1-$2 billion in property damage, Amazon reported quarterly profits of $5.2 billion and a sales increase of 40 percent in the three months ending in June of 2020.

As reported by TechCrunch, Facebook, its WhatsApp, and Instagram platforms saw a 15 percent rise in users, which brought revenues to a total of $17.74 billion in the first quarter. Users of Facebook climbed to 3 billion in March, two-thirds of the internet users. Apple revenues soared during the same period, with quarterly earnings rising 11 percent year-on-year to $59.7 billion. The Washington Post reported that in the first quarter of 2020, Walmart’s profits rose 4 percent, to $3.99 billion. 

Visualizing The Great Reset

Michael Rectenwald, a critic of the Great Reset, has studied the Great Reset in depth. He scoffs at the Schwab rhetoric of economic equality, fairness, inclusion, and a shared destiny. He says these phrases represent collectivist, socialist, political, and ideological components of corporate socialism. 

Rectenwald claims the Great Reset will be a monopolistic control of production via the elimination of non-compliant producers. He claims that the results would be a centralized socialist planning regime where the elites would determine consumer needs by limiting production to acceptable goods and services by the chosen few. 

In a recent publication, Michael Rectenwald described the Great Reset as the convergence of economic, monetary, technological, medical, genomic, environmental, military, and governance systems. 

In terms of economics and monetary policy, the Great Reset would involve the issuance of universal basic income (UBI) with digital currency deposited into a centralized bank. Surveillance of bank accounts, overspending, and debt would be continuous. 

In technology, the Great Reset entails the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a trans-humanism, genomics, nanotechnology, and robotics and their penetration into human bodies and brains. The fourth Industrial Revolution involves the redundancy of human labor in increasing sectors, replaced by automation, robot structures that use nanotechnology and brain scans to predict and preempt human behavior.

In medical, medical passports, digitized, and transparency of medical records inclusive of medical history, genetic makeup, and disease states. The possibilities of implanting microchips that would read and report on genetic makeup; brain scans to assess security risks; medical passports and vaccine data to cross national borders.

In government, the Great Reset would mean an increasingly centralized, coordinated, expanded governmental bureaucracy. There would be a convergence of corporations and state, and the digitalization of governmental functions. They would use 5G and predictive algorithms, real-time tracking and surveillance of bodies in space, or the anticipatory governance of human and systems behavior.

Push Back – The Great Resist

Today, the progressives have endorsed the state to promote egalitarianism and purge society of poverty, racism, oppression, and patriarchal institutions. The Great Society failed miserably. But now they are promising to make good with the Great Reset. 

“Wokeism” has desecrated classical liberalism to the point of extinction. They dismiss those who value conventional gender relations, documented history, and free speech when their beliefs are “counter-woke.” Discourse to explain liberty is silenced by the cancel culture and anti-free speech forces. 

The covid crisis has eliminated many small and medium-sized businesses making the hold-outs more compliant to authority. A spirit of entrepreneurialism must be re-established to help the hold-outs keep their doors open. The public must support and promote the smaller-scale producers, distributors, and, mom and pop businesses. 

Those businesses that survive need to band together and defy the state and demand a full reopening of the economy. Local business associations and merchants must collaborate and become more proactive. Friendly legislation, regulations, and limited production will only drive midsized and small producers out of business. 

The Great Reset is Globalism. It would only benefit a select group of stakeholders who will preserve their common interest, purpose, and action. Globalism is not the answer. The answer is our local community, our neighbors, and our family.

Think Local – Buy Local – Live Local!

President Joe Biden ends many of his speeches with his heartfelt line: “May God protect our troops.” The newest con-man has arrived in Washington, not unlike those of the past. They set the bait, throw the hook, and catch the fish, a simple and effective plan.

A tool used to sniff out a veteran scammer is critical analysis. However, the ability to think critically has been so depleted we cannot distinguish between severe seasonal flu and the bubonic plague. The Department of Education does not have any critical thought courses included in the indoctrination curriculum. Cancel culture has destroyed discourse, and woke-ism now defined allowable commentary.

Do you remember the mainstream media? The purveyor of information; the source for commentary on proceedings and operations within Washington; the means to expose views from alternate policies; the access for the opposition to demand that decision-makers defend their stance; forget it, they are AWOL. They either omitted or de-platform most of the disserting criticism.

The Executive sets the bait with some cute little one-liner, “May God protect our troops.” The media casts the hook across their captive audience, and the game is on. The viewers get the full Hollywood version of reality; great visuals, intense sound with just the right touch of American Exceptionalism. The media completes this imperial scam with their carefully crafted culture of pageantry patriotism.

Like shooting fish in a barrel, the analytics on Washington policy may have gone belly up, but it is entertaining. My fellow Americans are the victims of this old and terrible ruse. Tragically, this scam has worked like a charm ever since Washington entered into the Imperialism game, “Remember the Maine?”

The critical question generated by Biden’s obligatory verbiage is: protect them from what?
Answer: from being put in harm’s way.

What harm? The harm created by having military personnel in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq; eight hundred-plus overseas bases; special operations forces in dozens of countries to combat threats of international terrorism; armed drones flying over at least nine countries; covert operations ongoing on at least three continents; cruel sanctions on people and states all over the World.

Most of the World believes that America is the greatest threat to their futures. Yes, these are the actions that our President is asking God to sanction.

The next logical question is who is responsible for putting the troops in harm’s way?
Answer: the President of the United States. Yes, President Joe Biden, you have the power to stop these endless stupid wars and the other associated violence.

Joe, maybe you should append your tag to “May God protect our troops on their journey back home to the States.”

Rest assured, the Establishment Mob survived. There was a 4-year hiccup, but those days are over. The Washington elites are back on track and hungry to continue their mission. Over the past several months, the Biden Administration has proven to be a very serious protector of the empire. It leaves little doubt that Washington will continue down its power politics road toward domestic and international supremacy.

Recently, Biden threatened Putin with a “pay a price” card. Not your run-of-the-mill Teddy Roosevelt advice to speak softly and carry a big stick. Biden’s nasty warning based upon an intelligence report claiming that it has evidence that indicated the Russian government “likely” ordered attempts to influence the 2020 elections. Naturally, the public cannot see this “rock solid” proof of Russiagate #2 evidence. Who knows they may even dust off the old gang of; Mueller, Comey, Brennan, and Clapper to substantiate the evidence.

Candidate Biden promised his administration would dedicate their efforts to restoring dignity and decorum in U.S. foreign relations. However, Biden has shown little regard for his promise. When he described President Putin as a “killer” and having “no soul,” he quite frankly tarnished any integrity he has left.

These statements are willful actions that will worsen relations with Russia. Our leaders: the President, Secretary of State, and National Security Council have reignited conflict with Russia, ramped up aggression with China, ignored a peace treaty in Afghanistan, refused to re-enter into the JCPOA treaty, and have continued to pursue regime change policies in Syria, Iran, and Venezuela.

The Washington game plan marches on; the Bush’s, the Clinton’s, Obama, Trump or Biden it is contiguous. Even with our 4-years, democratic, built-in regime change pageant, the beast does not stop. Biden’s threatening language, continued sanctions, and displays of military readiness hasten the pace toward confrontational actions. The current administration seems to be very comfortable being the new bully in town.

I prefer the average Joe, cowering in his basement, masked candidate Biden, to my drunk Uncle Joe ranting at the holiday table.