Fasten Your Seat Belt
Jeff Thomas

Imagine you’re in mid-flight on a passenger jet, and the captain flies directly into a Category Five hurricane.

The flight attendant calmly says, “The captain has turned on the ‘Fasten Seat Belt’ sign, as we may be expecting some turbulence.”

Of course, the above situation is absurd, as no passenger jet pilot would ever put his passengers in such danger.

But, tragically, governments sometimes do exactly that.

Sometimes, they do it on a small scale, such as when a small country adopts collectivism, only to discover, decades later, that collectivism doesn’t actually work and, eventually, as Maggie Thatcher said, “You run out of other people’s money.”

Then, there’s a period of depression, followed by a rebuilding period, during which the electorate decides whether to be sensible and dump collectivism or whether they choose to be foolish and begin the collectivist conundrum anew.

(As absurd as this latter choice might seem, it is all too common. Argentina, in particular, has been doing it for nearly eighty years.)

But the larger the country, the greater the catastrophe when it all falls apart. And it, therefore, stands to reason that when it’s the world’s foremost empire that’s passed its sell-by date, the damage will be catastrophic. The damage from the hurricane will be centred on the empire itself and those within the empire will be most directly impacted, but the effects will be felt well outside its borders.

The more closely a country is connected to the empire economically, the greater, the lesser country will feel the damage. For example, at the present time, if the US is a country’s major trading partner, that country will experience damage significant enough that its economy might well collapse along with that of the US.

But why should we be talking about this now? Yes, the US is indeed troubled, both internally and externally. Still, the news media have regularly presented national leaders and other pundits who assure us that the storm that’s being flown into will only result in temporary turbulence and that “Category Five” is a gross exaggeration.

Well, let’s have a look at that for a moment.

In the last half-century, the US has gone from being the foremost creditor nation to the foremost debtor nation. At that same time, its wage level has risen so high that the US can no longer sell American-made goods, even to Americans, and its factories, predominantly in China and Mexico, are producing the vast majority of goods. Unfortunately, relations are on a steady decline between the US and these countries. The US has even been engaged in sabre-rattling with regard to China.

But the US empire has always had an ace in the hole with Europe. Although it’s self-destructively on a campaign to end fossil fuel production domestically, it has for decades provided liquified gas to Europe, shipping primarily into Hamburg harbour and distributing from there.

In the meantime, Germany formed an alliance with Russia, from whom it also receives gas to power the German industry. In recent years, Russia has been building a direct pipeline from Russia to Germany to provide gas more cheaply than any other country can provide (at roughly 11% of what US gas can be provided for).

With the understanding that this gas line would come on stream in 2022, Germany foolishly shut down all of its nuclear power plants, thus painting itself into a corner.

Clearly, the opening of the Nord Steam II valve would have been a major, major event, as it would not just mean cheaper gas for Europe, but an end of US hegemony over Europe and a shift in the balance of trade to Russia.

But the pipeline was sabotaged before this could happen.

It would seem that US hegemony would be saved, as Europe would fall back on US gas, even though it was cripplingly expensive.

But an unexpected wrinkle occurred. Germany went shopping and found that they could buy gas from China, India, and Saudi Arabia. It was more expensive than the Nord Steam gas, but still cheaper than the American gas.

Odd, though, as neither China, nor India are gas producers. So, where was this gas coming from? Well, as China, India, and Russia are BRICS countries, the gas was the very gas that Germany was to have received through Nord Stream, but now quite a bit pricier, as it had to be piped quite a lot further and there were also now middlemen to be paid.

So, how did the situation play out? Well, the US gas is still the most expensive and, therefore, least desirable, and Russia, instead of being economically crippled, was now selling more gas than before and experiencing a boom at a time when much of the world was sliding into economic turmoil. And, in the ensuing eighteen months, Germany would find that it could no longer sell its products internationally, as the cost to produce them was now even higher than before. Recently, there have been rumblings in the Bundestag that one out of three German industrial companies is hoping to leave the country, with the majority choosing China as their destination.

Unless the US could salvage the situation, its hegemony over Europe (and its claim to empire) was soon to end.

It was, however, true that there were significant oil and gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean. If they could be taken hold of, the US might stand a chance. But the rights to those fields were held by Palestine, and the US was known to staunchly support Palestine’s arch-enemy, Israel.

What to do?

Well, although the Gaza/Israel border is the one of the most protected in the world, Hamas somehow breached it in multiple locations and went on a killing spree in which, it is claimed, horrendous inhumane acts were committed. Proof of such acts have not been provided, but they’ve been well-publicised and have led to a “self-defense” retaliation by Israel in which Gaza is being systematically destroyed and its people being decimated. In spite of worldwide objection to this retaliation, and repeated warnings from the UN and others that Israel must not take over Gaza, Israel’s President insists that if Israel does not complete the destruction of Gaza and take over the control of its rubble, Israel will never be safe from Hamas.

In the bargain, the oil and gas fields will have a new owner.

At this point, it would be advisable for the world, particularly Americans, to sit back and observe such events from a distance. Although Israel is charging ahead, the majority of the world is dividing into BRICS vs. First World Globalists camps. The former is already in the majority and growing rapidly.

In describing his Israel/Palestine position, the US president appears to be changing from a black hat to a white one and back again, repeatedly. While this makes the White House appear to be both hypocritical and untrustworthy in the extreme, there’s little else the President can do. He’s squeezed between a rock and a time bomb.

I rarely write on current events, preferring to focus on the overview – the Big Picture – but this may be a moment when it’s important for the reader to sit far back from the present noise from the media and assess the degree to which his own future is dependent upon the outcome of these events.

The jet pilot has turned into a Category Five hurricane, and, for those who are on the flight, this would indeed be the time to fasten seat belts.

Jeff Thomas is British. He has lived multi-nationally since childhood, but resides primarily in the Caribbean. The son of an economist and historian, he learned early to question governments as a general principle. He has bought precious metals throughout his adult life. A confirmed contrarian and independent thinker, he describes his “qualifications” as not having pursued a degree in conventional economics at university, having been surrounded with those from the financial industry, while not relying on that industry for income and having chosen early in life to avoid residing in countries where he could not control his own future. Although he spent his career creating and developing businesses, he has also written regularly for over thirty years on Austrian economics, personal liberty and limiting government. He is a feature writer for International Man, in addition to being published frequently in other publications.

 

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