I agree with you wholeheartedly, Dave, and appreciate it every time you bring up this action plan. I find it takes a good bit of effort to keep that thought engaged and front-and-center whilst simmering in all the nasty challenges.
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Yeah me too. I keep saying it because I need to keep reminding myself! Probably because continuing to focus on the crap weâre swimming in is how weâve all been trained here on planet earth.
Just a coincidence?
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Why would the old people rally against a system that has, in the main, worked well for them? They got in there and bought cheap assets then rode the boom times. And now sit back with their horde giving lectures and calling people âwhinersâ and the like.
Change will come once the current generations of old people are dead. It will come from people who are not even born yet. Just the way things turn round and round, I think. What will that next turning look like in a nation with a reduced population stuffed with diversity? Might take 100s of years for people to unite and for the turn to happen. I donât know. Live well now as I think chaos will increase.
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There are plenty of cheap assets still available. They just donât come with the right amenities to be attractive to younger folks.
Lots of cheap land, large older homes that need some restoration, business locations that need returned and brought back to life. It all requires planning, investment of cash and labor, and living places that some might consider boring and uncultured. Crappy to Meh internet, spotty cell service and a lack of Starbucks are likely the biggest deterants.
I left a booming real estate market that was outpacing me and started over in a depressed market. Now itâs coming around and I am seeing the fruit of my labor. In the mean time the local you g people left for the big cities when they could have bought 3bedroom brick homes for 34-60k and fixed them up. A mortgage on such a place could be paid on a McD salary paired with a partner working at Walmart.
Now with the ability to work from home for so many, we have people coming in from out of the state and out of the country and renovating places. As with so many things, immigrants often see opportunities and value when the locals donât.
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In my opinion, âhow things really workâ doesnât look very good at all in todayâs world. It seems to me that we are all more vulnerable to the predations of the elites than we were even just a decade ago. I donât see things improving any time soon. My kids, in their 30s, are in more jeopardy than my wife and I because we have quite a nice nest egg to fall back on. I plan to bequeath that safety net to them, such as it is, to lessen their chances of going homeless or otherwise really suffering. We donât know whatâs ahead for people who havenât yet had enough time to build up their fall-back investments.
Hard as it is to say it, here is my view on that: At the national and international levels ⌠They (the elites who reside there) are wealthy, we are not. They are organized, we are not. They have bought the government, we have not. They have overwhelming force at their disposal, we do not. They control the media, we do not. They will fight to the bitter end, most of us will not. The only option for a quality life going forward is to organize at the community level and build a small, localized, equitable society/system from the bottom up. Not many will be able to achieve this. In any case, we need to prepare ourselves in body, mind, and spirit for a more challenging life.
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I will make sure they have enough to secure housing if need be, and will leave some land to them. I will likely quit being so damned frugal however.
I will take some nice trips and might buy a camper van of some sort and hit the road.
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Not that I would disagree, but do you think such a system could remain unscathed from the surrounding mayhem? Many think our current situation is truly a fight between good and evil. A battle- physical, emotional, spiritual- seems inevitable. And, we are many rats in this cage. Hopefully we can keep our wits about usâŚ
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Very few. Maybe if theyâre well separated from population centers, truly pull together, and all are willing to live a much more rudimentary lifestyle to retain some measure of freedom, at least at first. I could see a Mormon community having a chance to pull it off. Certainly the Amish. I donât think any of us are going to get back to the relatively comfy lifestyle we lived in the 70s and 80s any time soon.
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Iâm picturing a skoolie in my future! 
God willing, the kids get out of college debt free. And hopefully, a trust that will give them a good start. Surely not enough to live on, but enough to have a fighting chance.
If or when Russia âwinsâ - congratulations, you now have a complete ruin to misgovern. NATO aligned forces will forever pester your occupying force, strikes at critical infrastructure will continue ceaselessly, and the information space belongs to Western financial interests. Russia can defend itself, for now, but there is no way this dies down.
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Well, point taken. However, since WW2, the US has never faced an existential threat; a military threat to its existence with the ability to trade freely with other nations per George Washingtonâs final address.
Russia faces them all the time and has for over a thousand years. Mearsheimer & Sachs do the history explanation infinitely better than me and Iâd refer you to those two for background.
Putin and Lavrov have stated since 2003 (well, since the nineties really) NATO on its borders with Ukraine is an existential threat the same way China with all their military personnel and equipment on Mexicoâs or Canadaâs borders. When Russia asked the US to JOIN NATO, they were mocked and refused.
Back at the ranch: the last thing Putin wants to do is âwinâ Ukraine. Since 2014, his concerns have been exactly the same: no NATO in Ukraine; no nazification because that genicides Russians within Ukraineâs territory. There are more demands now based on Ukraineâs (really EU & US) actions against Russia and their refusal to reach a negotiation. They had one, a really good one for both parties in April â22 but we all know what happened there.
But youâre right; Russia âwinningâ Ukraine is NOT what Putin or Lavrov want at all but they feel theyâve been forced by US and EU to make their border with Ukraine safer with a buffer (my guess is to the Dneiper from south to north) and some kind if system to mitigate the US & EUR constant harassment via backing Ukraine terrorists.
Itâs obvious now NATO aligned forces are going to forever harass Russia. Russiaâs just making the buffer as wide as possible. However, now the US & EU are openly fighting Russia via deep strikes that can ONLY be performed by England Germany, and the US. Thatâs not harassment. Thatâs uber-existential to Russia. Hence their stepping up (a few years of daily Military Summary viewing makes it clear) their special military operation the past week is not a good thing for them and especially not the US or EU.
The biggest thing the west has yet to learn at all, I mean AT ALL, is the new and future drone battlefield. Itâs nothing any western nation except Ukraine & Russia has experience doing. ZERO. All of our retired snarky 4 stars just prove their utter incompetence when they ignore it. (And they ignore it because they didnât invent it). The amazing squad/platoon level three to four man battlefield strike forces by Ukraine & Russia and their also amazing super fast threat adaption AND real time coordination both at unit AND higher echelon with four man command/decision autonomy? NATO & the US are at least ten years away. Plus, weâve NEVER fought attrition warfare since WW1.
Long blathering on my part I know, but we have no idea the bear weâre poking doesnât want to go nuclear but a perceived existential threat on their part will force them to do so.
Russiaâs hornetâs nest might not be as bad as the one NATO could walk into. The juryâs still out but weâre itching for a nuke conflict when a diplomatic solution exists. The best one in Apr, â22. Todayâs will suck a lot worse for Ukraine but it beats a mushroom cloud.
Sorry for the long wind.
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You blather well.
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Interesting take from Catherine Austin Fitts: weâre not in an AI bubble if you think the control grid is going to succeed. Then those companies are worth that much.
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How do you see achieved 3000 or 5000km long strikes to Omsk, Urals region⌠that is very far distance⌠IRBM/ICBM almost and ofc needs intel of detailed terrain mapping but thatâs simply data one can upload from NATO satellites.
I can believe âlawnmower dronesâ with horrible engines can travel 200-500km and then fall off the sky. But 10x that is way bigger thing.
(it is amazing how bigger plane pilots measure fuel: in tens of tons. Car tank is few gallons, truck 18wheeler maybe 50-100 gallons⌠thatâs pretty small volume in house heater)
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The 3000-5000km missiles are US or EU provided, controlled, targeted, and fired, period. Ukraine does not have that capability. If drones are hitting targets that far into Russia, they have to be fired from within Russia. I donât know for sure but I doubt Ukes can infiltrate Russia, stay completely hidden, supplied/supported, target & launch drones without getting caught without US or EU support. If they can, Russiaâs either stupidly rural or stupidly incompetent. I doubt if theyâre stupidly incompetent.
What I find brilliant and simple is the Russians destroying gas stations everywhere on the Russian side of the Dneiper. They must be PP subscribers, watch Chrisâ energy videos & Daveâs Sunday submission. They are making it impossible for Ukraine to refuel vehicles. Theyâve only been doing it for about a month or so and the effects are crippling Ukraine along the 1200+ mile front more than ever. Master resource denial.
The past few weeks, Russia has turned up their efforts. When they take the next town along the central front, thereâs no defensive positions between that and the Dneiper. But always keep in mind drone warfare slows things down way beyond the âoldâ conventional ground warfare so it wonât ever be zippita-zappita fast on the ground, something our brass just will not believe or accept as reality. That kind of arrogance doesnât end well.
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This is nice mirroring⌠ie either russia figured it first or ukraine did but it is very much tit for tat.
But this is âgreen movementâ sic. Only good are drones.
Another anecdote, albeit I dont have such trust in popular public views of historians (they mind political correctness especially in UK nowadays) that tidbit why nazi warmachine was succesful in west and france, was because they could fill tank vehicle tanks from regular gas stations very close by⌠civvie gas stations. In russia, no such things and distances very long. Thus one factor why they had hubris and failed spectacularly in east.
(Ive seen plenty of vids ukraine targeting with drones supply trucks in south east of ukraine, occupied by russia).
I cant say this or that which way that conflict goes, both sides have advantages and weaknesses.
But. This gives parallel to west in WW2 eastern front vs west to us. We are totally unprepared for any crisis now. Hubris lives strong. (is it âpresentismâ where people think things will stay same as now forever, eg oil production trend, and can never change regardless of what me or us do).
If ukraine fails, we are pants down. Even best of us. So I dont hope that. It could be east berlin again. Or worse. However US now leading the way destroying economically and also molecules (Paul Kiker wording) our future is irresponsible. I hope Simon Dixon play as that looks more and more âbest futureâ prospect at this point. But we gotta brace for more 1700s world anecdotally some folks have predicted solely from this idiocracy hubris development without any tech or fancyness. Both in brute darwinism way and economically and whatnot (no so far I dont lean on Michael Yon⌠pesky humans are so resilient or africa would have starved since 80s, instead they want maximum offspring).
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I reached this point as well about two months ago.
I resolved to âfigure things outâ and have done so, somewhat.
As for what motivates the U.S. and Western financial system: keeping the US dollar as the reserve currency; keeping collateral expansion for Western banks; strategic control of energy flows.
As for collapse, ethics, whatever - the timelines are simply too long. Sure, peak oil is happening - but it is decades away.
What is happening for sure is a central bank led anti-nationalist harmonization effort in the West. It has support from the non-Western aligned financial system via that rival systems proxies.
There is a lot of that, actually, where rival systems actually agree on something and, voila, Europe and Japan are cut off from nuclear power. African colonies are granted independence and their reserves are sold off.
Those goals listed above (reserve currency status, bank collateral, energy flow control) apply to most political and economic systems affecting our day to day lives now.
Something happened last week when all this came together and my blood pressure dropped, I can sleep and dream again.
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The military asymmetry is going to become an even bigger deal for the West.
The bankers in the West do know how to unleash what is required to reorient an economy, people, and thereby the military - but it would take years to build the workforce and facilities, if they wanted to do it. It will be military losses and piracy, asymmetric attacks, soft power coup attempts for at least the next decade from the West.
There is a kind of civil war in the West - the drive to denationalize, deracinate, and harmonize all Western financial system territories versus the U.S. dollar dominant, âWestphalianâ ideology.
That elite civil war is moving towards the U.S. dollar/Westphalian side of things at the moment. The Harmonizers are losing their grip, but have strategic goals that align with Russian and Chinese system interests - hence the attacks on Western metroplises political systems and other efforts fighting off the U.S. dollar/Westphalian reforms
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There is evidence that the FARP & EARP (Forward/Expeditionary Arming Refueling Point) techniques will be retooled with drones. Containerized drone deployments. A great way to make combat a profit center and minimize losses of politically significant personnel (U.S. military).
Also - Putin the P.P. member should be an AI image generated gold mine.
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