Democracy Is Waning With American Power

Power is economic in nature; power by force is merely a short cut that usually doesn't last. China just overtook the United States as the largest economy in the world. Geopolitically this fact will not remain without consequences. In Africa democracy is already retracting. 

Democracy without the root of liberty: some world leaders have managed to stay in office well past their constitutionally mandated expiration dates.

Democrats are lamenting, democracy is waning in Africa. It is because African strongmen "rule with an iron fist" and "manage to stay on passed their constitutional expiration dates". (Source) But that conclusion betrays a very limited understanding of what democracy really is. In this case we can say with confidence that 'the' democracy does not exist. The USA is a democracy, but so are Russia and Iran. It all depends on your definition. To some socialists, democracy is even synonymous with their ideology. But what most people actually mean by democracy, is Liberty.

Fighting an Existential War With Demoralized Leaders

"Islam has nothing to do with terrorism, Jihad or the Islamic State", "no religion condones terrorism"... we know the politically correct libations to the gods of multiculturalism all too well. But what is really behind this obvious nonsense?



Not Ayn Al Arab nor Kobani, it became Ayn Al Islam. ISIS latest video. With English translation. - H/t @HananShamounNL

The Islamic State has produced a 20 minute film, including an English translation. It's a must see for every student as it may lead to specific insights that can easily be missed watching events from the same Western conceptual framework. For those who are prepared to see it, interviews with American military brass touch the essence of the problem. In any war, but especially one which is existential, the equation couldn't be worse. A lack of weapons would have been preferable to demoralized leadership. 

Lexicon: the Second-Hander 1/5

 -  Robert Douglas as Ellsworth Toohey in
"The Fountainhead" (1949) - Wiki  -

Isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand.

STRATEGY (1): SUN TZU, THE ART OF WAR

War is an art. War is deception. War is the will to win. War is convincing the enemy he cannot win. War is more than breaking things and killing people. War is philosophy, psychology and brain power.

Oct. 5, 2021 The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Entire Unabridged Audiobook).

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise that is attributed to Sun Tzu (also referred to as "Sunzi" and "Sun Wu"), a high ranking military general and strategist during the late Spring and Autumn period (some scholars believe that the Art of War was not completed until the subsequent Warring States period. Composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, it is said to be the definitive work on military strategies and tactics of its time, and is still read for its military insights. The Art of War is one of the oldest and most successful books on military strategy in the world.

The Bitter Fruits of Immoral Monetary Policies

On October 9th the Greek Libertarian economist Dr John Charalambakis spoke on the recent crises, the drama of the euro and the tragedy of Greece in a lecture organized by the Austrian Economics Center

In "Fear the Boom and Bust", economists Keynes and Hayek come back to life to attend an economics conference on the economic crisis. H/t EconStories.TV

Charalambakis: We should have left the banks die

by Federico Fernandez and Raoul Kirschbichler

Crossposted from the Austrian Center

The role of the central bank

The mere existence of central banks raises two very important questions:

1) Do we need a central bank? Why should a central authority dictate the price of money? Can’t the market solve this problem as it does with many other prices?

2) What is the relationship between the bubbles from the past twenty or thirty years and central banks?

Are the Fed, the ECB, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan to blame for them? The overextension of money supply and the overextension of credit create bubbles.

STRATEGY (3): SPECIAL WAR

What have minor conflicts in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Novorossiya, Chechnya, the Baltics, Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine and Hungary have in common? All are examples of Russia involved in what is known as 'Special War'. So what is it? 

May 19, 2020 VIDEO of Russian FSB Snipers in Ukraine. 

The conflict in Ukraine is a good example of what is known as Special Warfare -- an amalgam of espionage, subversion, even forms of terrorism to attain political ends without actually going to war in any conventional sense. Also diplomacy, misinformation and disinformation play an important role in Special War. Special war is the default setting for countries that are unable or unwilling to fight major wars, but there are prerequisites, above all a degree of cunning and a willingness to accept operational risk to achieve strategic aims.

How Our Monetary System Works and Why It Must Fail

Something isn't right with the economy. Apart from a few happy positivos, we all know that. It isn't just economic and monetary policy. The problem is structural and systemic

In "The Biggest Scam" you are about to learn one of the biggest secrets in the history of the world... For more, visit Hidden Secrets of Money H/t +Vrijspreker.nl 

In a free banking system, banks will issue their own currencies, as was historically the case. The market will determine which currency will eventually dominate and become the standard. This currency may, or may not be backed up by gold or silver. The central bank would be abolished. 

STRATEGY (2): MACHIAVELLI, THE PRAGMATIST

Most contemporary politicians hold the view that ends can only be achieved by negotiation and by a Pragmatic take on 'what works'. Consensus leads to the best results for the majority. If that doesn't specifically specifies what is the Good, that is not an accident of nature. 

Five Part docu and audio book about Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. (Wiki)

Officially Pragmatism is rooted in 19th Century America. Unofficially its principles are much older. Machiavelli was a typical Pragmatist. The philosophy of Pragmatism is a rejection of the idea that the function of thought is knowledge of objective reality. Instead, pragmatists consider thought to be a product of the interaction between organism and environment. The function of thought is a tool for prediction, action, and problem solving, not for knowledge of reality as such. According to Pragmatism, philosophical topics — such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science — must be seen in terms of their practical uses and successes rather than in terms of accuracy. It leads to a very curious, irrational and amoral world view. This makes it quite dangerous in the hands of the wrong people.