THE COMING GREAT DEPRESSION AND WORLD WAR IV

by James Reed
The tale of the headlines tells of hard economic times ahead, “Bargain Basement: You Can Buy Home for $1.50” (The Advertiser 14/3/09, p.13). As happened in the South of the United States in the aftermath of the civil war, bargain hunters are buying up homes at nominal prices (e.g. $1.50, even $1!). Some homes sell for more though - $750, $1500 – and international buyers are gobbling them up. Some have a US tax bill attached, but that doesn’t worry the global grabbers. Soon these homes are rented out for $1000 a week.

Isn’t capitalism a charm? Homes that people worked to pay off for years, now virtually given away to the well-to-do overseas, to pay back banks that created the credit out of thin air in the first place! As Alexander Downer recently put it, “In a climate of economic meltdown which threatens widespread political and social chaos, we have every reason to be afraid…” (The Advertiser, 16/3/09, p.19) – and of course he would know.

An interesting book has appeared in the bookshops – Harry S. Dent, “The Great Depression Ahead” (Schwartz, Melbourne, 2009). The subtitle of the book is ‘How to Prosper in the Crash that Follows the Greatest Boom in History'. In terms of orthodox finance, Dent is a winner having accurately predicted the 1990’s boom. Dent points out that life hundreds of years ago was brutal and short for the most people and wealth concentrated more in the hands of the elites in the days of ancient Rome than it is today. So things were bad once and they can get worse again.

Dent argues that the perfect storm has occurred: the peak of the baby-boom spending cycle and the “oil and commodity bubble.” Oil and commodity prices have been bubbles that peak every 30 years and 2009 is the unlucky year. By late 2009 mid 2010 the “entire boom unravels” (p.18). Then we will see a deflation of stocks, real estate and commodities “and the broader deleveraging of the greatest credit bubble in history” (p.19). Then will follow “the greatest economic and banking crisis since the early 1930’s” (p.19). Home prices will drop 40 –50%. The next Great Depression will be here. However, this is not the end of capitalism as economic growth in Asia will save the day.

*The Privateer (March 2009) is in general agreement with the first part of this prediction. Another major downturn is coming as stock markets around the world record declines: “The MSCI World Index had three consecutive weeks of decline to the end of February,” The Privateer notes. The US Fed Chairman Paul Volcker has said that there has been a slowdown in world factory productions, even faster than in 1930. This occurred dramatically, for example, in the UK prior to World War II and as I indicate below, is a prelude to the next World War. By June, The Privateer predicts there will be shortages in the shops: “The great deflation is hitting the ground.”
Citigroup, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler have posted massive losses, a ‘specific sign of deflation’. Orders for durable US goods continue to fall. Contrary to Dent, The Privateer sees China crashing, along with Japan.
China is already crashing into a recession and cannot save the world: “The Chinese economy has gone into its own crash sequence. The situation is dire for Asia and the world.’”

Even The Australian has recently published an article by David Burchell, “China Could Prove to be the Biggest Bubble,” (16/3/09, p.8) where he tackles the Sinophiles. He says:
“And yet, despite our pious obeisance to the myth of Chinese industrial invulnerability, the terms of the Chinese economic miracle never made much economic, social or even moral sense. A nation that grows at 10% a year for more than a decade, but which has no domestic demand, property rights, or financial infrastructure worthy of the name, is not a normal country.”

Indeed, it is a vulnerable State, ready to split open when the real global financial crisis hits. Although China is the US’s biggest creditor, and perhaps because of this, all the explosive ingredients are coming together for World War IV, yes IV, not III, as III was the ‘Cold War’. Conflict between China, the US and other nations is already happening in the South China Sea.

No doubt the evil global financial elite will go back to the tried and proven formula of a World War, the U.S. versus China. Australia, this time, will be fighting against the U.S. and on China’s team. It’s going to be interesting to see how our rich and diverse multicultural society deals with this one.
* © 2009 - The Privateer, https://www.the-privateer.com capt@the-privateer.com (reproduced with permission)

THE PROBLEM OF INFRASTRUCTURE DISINTEGRATION

by James Reed
A seldom discussed problem, but one as great a threat to western civilisation as economic and environmental issues, is what I call the problem of infrastructure disintegration. The US anti-immigration journal The Social Contract, Winter 2009, discusses the problem in the context of mass immigration, which obviously is a farce resulting in more people wearing away at infrastructure.

In 2005 the American Society of Civil Engineers in their 2005 Report Card gave a D grade to the following fifteen categories of US public infrastructure: airports, bridges, dams, drinking water, energy (national power grid), hazardous waste, hospitals, navigable waterways, public parks and recreation, public schools, railroads, border security, solid waste, mass transit, water and sewer systems (p.3).
Edwin S. Rubenstein notes that the US government has spent US$3.1 trillion to build transportation and infrastructure and another US$3.8 trillion to operate and maintain it, but because of immigration fuelled population growth the demand for highway infrastructure, for example, was six times greater than supply (p.4). The bottom line is that US infrastructure “is crumbling because population growth has overwhelmed the ability of government to productively spend the vast sums it already devotes to infrastructure.”

America’s population will increase by 44% or 135 million by 2050, making the total population 433 million; 82% of the increase will be from new immigrants and their children. In California at present, 47% of the school-age population consists of immigrants or the children of immigrants. US schools are already crowded and some schools make do with trailers as classrooms (p.53).

Immigrant numbers are also straining the US hospital system. Even road and highway infrastructure are strained by immigrants: “Even in the short-run, immigrants add to traffic congestion woes. Cities with large immigrant populations experience larger increases in suburban-to-core commuter traffic – with many of the new suburban commuters having lived in urban cores until displaced by immigrants.” (p.63)

Similar evidence can be assembled for all the other infrastructure areas listed. This poses major problems given runaway immigrations levels; the US cannot keep up with present demands. Along with this, right across the Western world, ageing infrastructure, especially water and wastewater infrastructure, is going to need to be replaced. That means millions of metres of pipe-laying underground. The replacement costs will be staggering.

Without an end to immigration, the infrastructure of the modern world (which ironically was one of the factors bringing migrants to the West in the first place) will literally fall apart. It is a high cost to pay for racial diversity.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND DESTRUCTION OF ENGLAND

by James Reed
The country to look at to see the logical conclusion of political correctness and race relations, is Britain. At present, the government is busy at work putting into place legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes. Leading the politically correct charge is Justice Secretary Jack Straw.

About Straw, H. Colebatch recently (The Australian, 21/4/09, p.12) wrote: “It was Straw who previously called for a definition of Englishness and suggested the “global baggage of empire” was linked to soccer violence by “racist and xenophobic white males.” He claimed the English “propensity for violence” was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales and that the English as a race were ‘potentially very aggressive’.

Well, Straw is making an English strawman here. The English are not aggressive. Like Anglo-Australians they are quite content to let their race and civilisation disappear down the drainpipe of history. Unlike white mice, there is not even a squeak heard!

'MY BRILLIANT CAREER COMES FIRST, DEAR '

by James Reed
A survey about British childhood has found that it is the trend of women’s increasing economic independence from their male partners which is leading to family breakup and harm to children. The report is entitled A Good Childhood, and is produced for the Children’s Society.

According to the report “compared with a century ago, two changes stand out. First most women now work outside the home and have careers as well as being mothers. The second change is the rise in family break-up. Women’s new economic independence contributes to this rise: it has made women much less dependent on their male partners as has the advent of the welfare state. As a result of family break-up a third of our 16 year olds now live apart from their biological father.”

All of this is ultimately a product of our demonic economic and financial system which puts profits and having masses of atomised consumers, above community. The ideal of a working family wage was eroded away by the 1970’s, forcing many women into the workforce. Surveys show that they are not happy being there, but whilst they are, the cancerous effects of disruption continue.

Social credit, with its idea of a dividend based upon the creative, productive potential of the economy and the control of credit creation, holds the key to taking the power of finance away from an evil controlling elite and giving it back to the community. Problems such as family breakdown would evaporate like the morning dew in the first rays of autumn sun, under the reign of social credit.

FEMINISM AND THE END OF CIVILISATION

by James Reed
As a matter of fact, feminism ended civilisation long ago. Now I don’t mean to refer to working women, women in positions of power over men not by merit but by affirmative action (see ‘Women the life of the Party’, The Weekend Australian 28-29/3/09, p.17, showing how Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s ‘political career has benefited from [Labor’s] affirmative action policy’).
No, I have in mind the sort of cultural feminism depicted by Helen Razer “No End to Orifice Politics”, The Australian Literary Review 1/4/09, p.16.

This article reviews four books about women’s problems. One book deals with how the news media scares women. Another is a novel called Wetlands and the other books deal with anorexia and the last with obesity. These are all important topics that deserve a sensible treatment. However all of the authors take the standard feminist conspiracy theory line that men are oppressing women and resent man-hating feminists.

Sorry, but it is an act of sanity to oppose those who would seek to destroy one. Feminists have no concern about the plight of boys, the disproportionately high rate of male youth suicide and most of the issues that concern mothers and working wives. Feminism is a leftist power movement which uses sex and gender divisions to wreak its mischief and promote its own gender agenda for power.

Razer reviews a novel by Charlotte Roche called Wetlands, which is far from ecological. The novel is translated from the German where it sold two million copies. It features so much ‘rough sex’ that Razer says that even ‘a young [Germaine] Greer might be shocked at the muck’.
No, civilisation ended long ago. Our task is to claw decency back from the elites.

BAD WEATHER FOR CLIMATE CHANGERS

by James Reed
A few months back SPCC heavies told us that the Antarctic was, overall, melting. Now the British Antarctic Survey tells us that this is not so. Then there was the case of a Professor Ian Plimer and his anti-climate change book Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, The Missing Science. More recently Professor Ian Veizer (“Science of Climate Change isn’t Settled” The Australian, 24/04/09, p.12) has explained to us, in words most of us non-scientists can understand, why present climate models are flawed.

The SPCC says that the smoking gun is carbon dioxide. It is the gas of industry (and also natural processes such as volcanoes). But the most important greenhouse gas is water vapour, not carbon dioxide. SPCC climate models assume that carbon dioxide is the cause of the climate cycle, whilst water vapour is passive. Professor Veizer argues that just the opposite is true, that atmospheric carbon dioxide is an effect not a cause of the climate. In the past this is shown by temperature changes preceding atmospheric carbon dioxide increases.

Little by little the UN position on climate change, devised to panic us into a one-world government and dismantle Western society, is being shown to be hot air. Editor: Have you written to your politician and told him so?

BAD WEATHER FOR CLIMATE CHANGERS

by James Reed
A few months back SPCC heavies told us that the Antarctic was, overall, melting. Now the British Antarctic Survey tells us that this is not so. Then there was the case of a Professor Ian Plimer and his anti-climate change book Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, The Missing Science. More recently Professor Ian Veizer (“Science of Climate Change isn’t Settled” The Australian, 24/04/09, p.12) has explained to us, in words most of us non-scientists can understand, why present climate models are flawed.

The SPCC says that the smoking gun is carbon dioxide. It is the gas of industry (and also natural processes such as volcanoes). But the most important greenhouse gas is water vapour, not carbon dioxide. SPCC climate models assume that carbon dioxide is the cause of the climate cycle, whilst water vapour is passive.

Professor Veizer argues that just the opposite is true, that atmospheric carbon dioxide is an effect not a cause of the climate. In the past this is shown by temperature changes preceding atmospheric carbon dioxide increases. Little by little the UN position on climate change, devised to panic us into a one-world government and dismantle Western society, is being shown to be hot air.

... Editor: Have you written to your politician and told him so?

THE RISING CLOUD OF GLOBAL B 'DUST ?

by Brian Simpson
Christopher Booker in The Sunday Telegraph reports on a bit of news which the climate change establishment crowd is not telling you. Professor Nils-Axel Morner, former chairman of the International Commission on Sea Level Change, rejects the latest bit of scare-mongering from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (SPCC). The SPCC largely looks at studies based on computer modelling.

Professor Morner is a good old-fashioned empirical scientist who makes observations in the field. He has looked at both the Maldives and Tuvalu and found no sea level rise. In fact, in Tuvalu the sea level over the last few decades has dropped. Professor Morner believes that the sea has not risen in 50 years and is not going to rise.

Ask yourself then: who benefits from the global warming scare? Why should our industrialised society that gives us so much comfort, goodies and sweeties, be dismantled while so-called ‘developing’ societies like China and India are free to pollute at will? Surely because the global elites want China and India to rule.

THE POVERTY OF NEUROTIC PHILOSOPHY

by Chris Knight
To study philosophy at an Australian, British or US university is a shocking experience for idealistic youth searching for meaning. There is only one brand of philosophy taught, with only minor dissent allowed and that is scientific materialism. Philosophy is modelled on the image of science and supposedly rigorous logical arguments are constructed using symbols.
Topics discussed include the nature of quantum physics and why the mind is a computer. Ethics is discussed too, but only a narrow set of possibilities are considered within a liberal capitalist framework. There are philosophical heroes and gurus. The only real villains are those who step outside this square.

Jewish philosopher Alain de Botton has stepped outside of this square. He has published very interesting books on topics such as the pain of falling in love (“Essays in Love”), how philosophy can help with the problems of living (“The Consolations of Philosophy”) and now “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”. This book looks at the social meaning of work and why we allow work to define our social identity.

An insightful article on de Botton (The Weekend Australian, 21-22/03/09) rightly observes that he “has created a best-selling brand of philosophy by exploring his own neuroses.” This is particularly seen in “The Consolations of Philosophy” which deals with topics such as coping with unpopularity, being poor, or sexual inadequacy.
Mainstream philosophers are often dismissive of de Botton because (1) his work is commercial and popular, (2) he has had TV specials while they have not, and (3) as far as I have been able to ascertain, he doesn’t publish on their pet topics in their pet journals in symbolic gooble de gook. Writing on poverty or sexual inadequacy rather than some obscure ‘paradox’ is something which our arrogant analytical philosophers view with distaste.

There is nothing wrong with dealing with such themes and in doing so de Botton is light years ahead of much academic philosophy. But it is still a superficial pop-culture approach to things.
At a time when civilisation itself faces a crisis of survival, wouldn’t have Socrates himself devoted his talents to the bigger questions? De Botton represents a reaction against an academic discipline, which is much needed, but now is sadly dying. His own direction, a type of popular entertainment philosophy, will not save philosophy but only, ultimately, speed up its death. Man cannot live on neurosis alone.

STARVE THEM TO DEATH, I SAY A FATE THEY DESERVE!

by Brian Simpson
Almost every Wednesday there is an article in some shape or form in the ‘Higher Education’ section of The Australian lamenting the lack of money that the universities in Australia have. “Universities Hit by Lack of Income,” The Australian 8/4/09, p.29 is the latest.

Universities are whingeing about the impact of the financial crisis. Over the page we have “International Students Help the Economy,” p.33 – telling us that foreign student fees are necessary to keep the system going. Yes, believe it or not, universities full of foreign students are necessary to make a few spots for locals.

Universities are perhaps the most evil institutions in our decadent society. Anything good about them – the physical sciences, etc. – could be done without them. The arts and social sciences and the foreign students (who just become migrants anyway) can be let go. Financial starvation is the fate that the Australian Universities – and universities in the West – richly deserve.

THE ECONOMIC CRISIS: A WEE BIT OF ANTI-NORDIC RACISM

by James Reed
According to President Lula da Silva of Brazil, the financial crisis ‘”as fostered and boosted by the irrational behaviour of people who were white and blue-eyed.” (The Weekend Australian, 28-29/3/09, p.13)
Lula obviously doesn’t know who rules the world. The Australian has a picture of Lula shaking British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s hand (Brown is white but I think he has brown eyes).

There is a wall mirror to the pair’s right and Lula weirdly holds his left hand across his body as he points like a robot into the mirror, looking at the reflection of himself and Gordon Brown. Lula is badly in need of some body language confidence lessons, which our own Big Kev ’09 Rudd could deliver to him.