EU – Page 4 – The Burning Platform

FOURTH TURNING – POLITICIANS DRIVING THE WORLD TOWARDS WAR

In Part 1 of this article I discussed the catalyst spark which ignited this Fourth Turning and the seemingly delayed regeneracy. In Part 2 I pondered possible Grey Champion prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy. In Part 3 I focused on the economic channel of distress which is likely to be the primary driving force in the next phase of this Crisis. In Part 4 I assessed the social and cultural channels of distress dividing the nation. In Part 5 I’ll examine the technological, ecological, political, and military channels of distress likely to burst forth with the molten ingredients of this Fourth Turning, and finally in Part 6 our rendezvous with destiny, with potential climaxes to this Winter of our discontent.

Technological & Ecological Distress

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” – Aldous Huxley – Ends and Means

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The level of distress being produced by technology was probably underestimated by Strauss & Howe when they wrote their book in 1997. The internet, cell phones and e-commerce were still in their infancy, while cyber security was an unknown concept. Huxley would be shocked by how backwards we have “progressed” through the efficient distribution of iGadgets, creating millions of distracted, non-thinking, passive, easily pliable, willfully ignorant sheep who adore their technological servitude.

A vast swath of the populace never reads a book and can’t go more than a few minutes without checking their iGadget to view the latest funny cat video, the latest update on Kim Kardashian’s ass, Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner’s courage, or Lamar Odom’s latest whorehouse escapade. Our country is drowning in a sea of irrelevance as our infinite craving for diversions and triviality overwhelms any thoughts of confronting our oppressors. The adoration of technology has degraded our ability to think and allowed the Deep State to control the masses by amusing them to death.

The totalitarian Orwellian utilization of technology was exposed by a millennial with courage, intelligence, and love of his country – Edward Snowden. His revelations were very distressful to the felonious government apparatchiks who blatantly flaunt their disregard for the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The criminals at the NSA, fully supported by Obama and Congress, have made Big Brother look like an amateur, as they siphon up every phone call, text, email, and facebook entry made by each person in this country and for good measure the political leaders of our allies and enemies.

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Paris, Sharm el-Sheikh, and the Resurrection of Old Europe

Outside the Box: Paris, Sharm el-Sheikh, and the Resurrection of Old Europe

By John Mauldin

Soon after the Paris attacks, I picked up the phone to talk over the situation with my friend George Friedman. George is one of the truly world-class thought leaders on geopolitics. We had an animated 20-minute conversation. I didn’t particularly like what I heard.

George thinks we face big difficulties in dealing realistically with the ISIS threat. The more I read—and the more I listen to people like George who have worked these issues for decades—the more I think that we, as a culture, need to face reality.

I asked George to distill his thoughts into a short essay I could publish in Outside the Box, and he agreed.

This is a very thought-provoking piece with a different conclusion—which is what you can always expect from George.

Paris, Sharm el-Sheikh, and the Resurrection of Old Europe

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box[email protected]

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By George Friedman

The attacks in Paris last Friday night were part of a long-term pattern of occasional terrorist attacks by jihadists on targets in Europe. In the European context, this stood out for two reasons. First, the scale of the attack was substantially larger than other attacks in recent years, both in the number of participants and the number of casualties. Second, it was different in the level of sophistication and planning. Securing weapons and explosives, gathering at least three teams, identifying the targets and the manner in which these targets were to be attacked involved fairly complex logistics, intelligence and above all coordination. Most impressive was their counter-intelligence and security. There were at least seven attackers and additional support personnel to secure weapons, gather information and help them hide out in preparation for the attack. No one detected them.

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THE FED INDUCED FARCE

The minutes from the last Fed meeting were released on Wednesday afternoon. The minutes, along with a squadron of jabbering Fed heads lying about the economy doing great, pretty much locked in the most talked about .25% interest rate increase in world history. Evidently the Wall Street titans of greed have convinced the muppets higher interest rates are great for stocks, as the market soared by 250 points. As institutional money exits the market on these rigged up days, the dumb money retail investor buys into the market with dreams of riches just like they did with Pets.com in 2000, McMansions in 2005, and Bear Stearns in 2007.

The Fed has lost any credibility they ever thought they deserved by delaying this meaningless insignificant interest rate increase for the last three years, so they will make this token increase in December come hell or high water. They want to give themselves some leeway for easing again when this debt saturated global economy implodes in the near future. The Fed is trapped by their own cowardice and capture by the Wall Street cabal. If they raise rates the USD will strengthen even more than it has already. The USD is already at 11 year highs. It has appreciated by 25% in the last year versus the basket of world currencies. The babbling boobs on the entertainment news channels authoritatively expound with a straight face about the rise in the dollar being due to our strong economic performance. It’s beyond laughable, as the economy has been sucking wind since the day the Fed turned off the QE spigot in October 2014.

Chart of the Day

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VISUALIZATION OF EUROPEAN REFUGEE CRISIS

Hat tip Boston Bob

DEFENSE MINISTERS

Hat tip flash

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Nigel Farage Compares EU to USSR

THE WORSE THINGS GET FOR YOU, THE BETTER THEY GET FOR WALL STREET

On October 2 the BLS reported absolutely atrocious employment data, with virtually no job growth other than the phantom jobs added by the fantastically wrong Birth/Death adjustment for all those new businesses springing up around the country. The MSM couldn’t even spin it in a positive manner, as the previous two months of lies were adjusted significantly downward. What a shocker. At the beginning of that day the Dow stood at 16,250 and had been in a downward trend for a couple months as the global economy has been clearly weakening. The immediate rational reaction to the horrible news was a 250 point plunge down to the 16,000 level. But by the end of the day the market had finished up over 200 points, as this terrible news was immediately interpreted as good news for the market, because the Federal Reserve will never ever increase interest rates again.

Over the next three weeks, the economic data has continued to deteriorate, corporate earnings have been crashing, and both Europe and China are experiencing continuing and deepening economic declines. The big swinging dicks on Wall Street have programmed their HFT computers to buy, buy, buy. The worse the data, the bigger the gains. The market has soared by 1,600 points since the low on October 2. A 10% surge based upon lousy economic info, as the economy is either in recession or headed into recession, is irrational, ridiculous, and warped, just like our financial system. This is what happens when crony capitalism takes root like a foul weed and is bankrolled by a central bank that cares only for Wall Street, while throwing Main Street under the bus.

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The Fall of the Mighty Euro

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Immigration During an Economic Decline Is Insane!

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

According to the BBC, the German government has admitted that there have been almost 500 attacks on homes intended for asylum seekers this year. Politicians are clueless when it comes to managing an economy. In the USA during the 1840s, in the middle of the State Sovereign Debt Crisis, gun battles took place in many areas against the Irish who were blamed for the rising unemployment and taking jobs from citizens since that was the major wave of Irish immigration during the mid-19th century.

While politicians are lining their pockets and playing for Nobel Prizes, the reality of their actions are very different. This is what happens when lawyers rule government. They know how to write laws and then expect people to obey even when their laws go against common sense and economics.

You cannot legislate morality. Violence will rise in Europe as the economy turns down. This is going to be a very rough two years ahead.

The Real Reason for the Refugee Crisis You Won’t Hear About in the Media

By Nick Giambruno

There’s a meme going around that the refugee crisis in Europe (the largest since World War II) is part of a secret plot to subvert the West.

I completely understand why the locals in any country wouldn’t be happy about waves of foreigners pouring in. Especially if they’re poor, unskilled, and not likely to assimilate.

It leads to huge problems. Infrastructure gets strained. More people are sucking at the teat of the welfare system. The unwelcome newcomers compete for bottom-of-the-ladder jobs. Things easily turn nasty and then turn violent.

But the idea that the refugee crisis in Europe is part of a hidden agenda – rather than a predictable outcome – strikes me as strange. And it’s a notion that conveniently deflects blame away from the people and factors that deserve it.

Interventions Destabilize the Middle East

The civil war in Syria has turned the country into a refugee-maker.

Syria’s neighbors have reached their physical limit on their ability to absorb refugees.

That’s one of the reasons so many are heading to the West.

Lebanon has received over 1 million Syrian refugees. That’s an enormous number for a country with a population of only 4 million – a 25% increase. Jordan and Turkey also have millions of Syrian refugees. They’re saturated.

The number of refugees heading to the West, by contrast, is in the hundreds of thousands. So far.

But it’s not just Syria that’s sending refugees. Many more come from Iraq and Afghanistan, two other countries shattered by bungled Western military interventions.

Then there are the refugees from Libya. A country the media and political establishment would rather forget because it represents another disastrous military decision.

Actually, it’s not just Libyan refugees. It’s refugees from all of Africa who are using Libya as a transit point to reach Europe.

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Europe’s Refugee Crisis

Guest Post by Pater Tenebrarum

Stumped Politicians

Europe’s welfare states are currently flooded with refugees. Many of these refugees are fleeing the chaos of assorted civil wars in the Middle East, primarily in Syria, Libya and Northern Iraq. Naturally, it would be utterly inhumane to simply send such refugees back to where they have come from. How could one possibly look oneself in the mirror after sending people back to territories controlled by ISIS, or bombarded with barrel bombs by Assad’s air force?

Refugees after crossing the Austro – Hungarian border at Nickelsdorf today.

Photo credit: Leonhard Foeger / Reuters

This has Europe’s political class in a bind. The migration of people would pose no problem in a free society of property owners. Every property owner could decide for himself whether to accept refugees. In a free society communitarian enclaves would surely exist as well, and it is absolutely certain that private charity efforts would be orders of magnitude greater than in a society in which the State has arrogated all social responsibility to itself. It is hardly conceivable that migration would ever become a major bone of contention in such a society. It is quite different in welfare States with a severely hampered market economy.

In such states, migration will always be cause for highly emotional disagreements, because citizens know they will have to pay for it all involuntarily – and the costs are exceedingly large. The political and bureaucratic classes, who themselves are parasitizing society’s wealth creators, are of course not directly affected by the decisions they are taking in this context. The eurocrats employed in Brussels will continue to receive their generous salaries and perks, no matter what. However, a number of politicians are likely to face problems in domestic elections, and as we will discuss further below, the outcomes won’t necessarily be desirable. While the political and bureaucratic classes are unlikely to lose out, for a number of reasons it is absolutely certain that the citizenry at large will.

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EUROPE REAPING WHAT IT SOWED

Clashes break out in Budapest as a crowd of football fans marches by a camp of refugees in the heart of the Hungarian capital. Meanwhile, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia have unanimously rejected a quota system for sharing migrants.

Hungarian police sprayed tear gas on migrants and refugees in the Roszke camp in Asotthalom on the Serbian border, after some of them tried to break out of the facilities on Friday.