northman
Northman

Watching the Western countries' collapse due to their leaders' egoism and hubris.

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Last Notes

2023-08-04 13:00:15 UTC

There is a lot of anger and conflict being promoted by the highly controlled national media outlets. Whether it is Russia vs. Ukraine, China vs.Taiwan, Israel vs. Lebanon, right vs. left, vaccinated vs. unvaccinated, transgenderism vs. traditional family values, antifa/BLM vs. law and order, nationalism vs. mass migration, ‘green’ energy vs. fossil fuels, climate change vs. climate skeptics, it all seems to be designed to distract the population from what is really happening.
As Sun Tzu wrote in the Art of War, “The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”

2023-07-15 20:33:25 UTC

The West's recent prosperity is the result of multiple past generations who believed in hard work, saving and investing for a better future.
Now, much of this prosperity is being squandered by the present generation who believes in instant gratification and spending beyond one's contribution to society. This process can proceed for some time but, eventually, there will be nothing left to squander.

2023-06-25 17:39:43 UTC

It is clear that, since the start of the Special Military Operation, Putin has made extraordinary efforts to avoid unnecessary casualties, despite the potential impact on the war.
When Russian forces first moved into Ukraine, there were videos of their tanks stopping when approaching civilians blocking the roads.
When the Ukrainians military threatened to launch counterattacks, Russian troops evacuated local Ukrainian residents ahead of the fighting.
The combat has also been conducted in such a way as to minimize Russian casualties, even at the expense of extending the duration of the conflict.
When Prigozhin attempted his coup (likely coordinated by MI6/CIA), Putin again held back and gave Lukashenko time to help negotiate a peaceful resolution.
In the warmongering West, this caution is seen as weakness. After all, recall how quickly and ruthlessly the Americans moved into Iraq (‘shock and awe’), resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.
Others see his approach as a sign of confidence and strength of character.

2023-06-18 20:26:50 UTC

- reply

Muito obrigado.

2023-06-18 20:25:57 UTC

There is a chasm between on-the-ground reporting and what Western media and senior officials are saying about the current military offensive in Ukraine. The official line is that Ukraine is advancing and, thanks to the West, will soon push back Russia to its former borders.
We are being told to disbelieve the massive amounts of Ukrainian death and destruction that we are witnessing daily in front-line videos.
Like everything else nowadays in the West, there appears to be a hope that if we are told something often enough it will come true. But the Western elites are struggling to keep their narrative going.
Eventually, reality will intrude and lay bare the lies. It won't take long.

2023-05-27 13:53:35 UTC

Looking back over the past 20 years, we have watched the transformation of the Western society in ways that we would have found unimaginable in 2003. These include:
- Pointless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Ukraine
- Weaponization of the global reserve currency
- Covid, followed by ineffective vaccines, mandates and lockdowns
- Climate alarmism and the botched transition to "green energy"
- ZIRP, monetary easing and corporate bailouts
- Exploding government fiscal deficits
- Hollowing out of corporations in favour of short term profits and share prices
- Abandonment of traditional subjects and standards in schools
- Promotion of critical race theory and wokism
- Demolition of merit based systems
- Attempted erasure of history and disparagement of past achievements
- Undermining of the police and criminal prosecution
- Open borders and mass migration
- Surrender of national sovereignty to unelected supranational institutions
- Mass surveillance and the weaponization of government agencies
- Subversion of democratic processes to elect weak and ineffective leaders
Taken individually, one might put these developments down to incompetence.
Taken together, one cannot help but attribute them to malevolence. If so, what we have been witnessing is a deliberate and concerted effort to bankrupt the Western World economically, morally and spiritually.

2023-05-09 19:08:25 UTC

It is interesting that Germany's current leaders are showing their supposed contrition for their role in WW2 by banning the flag of the country most responsible for their defeat in 1945, while allowing the flag of a Nazi regime. Truly disgraceful!

2023-05-02 02:16:36 UTC

I have just finished re-reading George Orwell's '1984' and Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World', along with lengthy discussions on which dystopian vision better describes where we are heading.
The answer is obvious: You combine the worst parts of the two visions. And it is not our future. We are already there.

2023-04-21 22:46:03 UTC

A wide range of reliable economic indicators are pointing to a severe financial crisis starting later this year in North America, likely on the scale of 2008-09 or even 1929-37. This will lead to massive job losses, increased poverty, acrimonious political finger pointing and widespread social unrest. Now is the time to prepare.
Europe will fare far worse. The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines by the U.S. and the resulting disindustrialisation that is occurring, along with the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia (and possibly soon on China), have put their economies in an extremely fragile situation that will not allow Europe to absorb the incoming financial crisis anywhere near as well as North America. The result could be cataclysmic. It is probably already too late to prepare.
Asia (incl. Russia), South America, Africa and Oceania will also suffer, but likely to a lesser extent than either Europe or North America, depending on how well they are able to isolate themselves.

2023-04-06 10:49:41 UTC

Over the past two years, there has been a dramatic drop in birth rates in countries that imposed mRNA 'vaccines' against the Covid virus, but not elsewhere.
The spike proteins in these 'vaccines' have been shown to penetrate women's ovaries and affect their menstrual cycles. There has also been a dramatic drop in male sperm count, though this has been a trend for a longer time.
Might the whole virus/vaccine program be meant to implement what is narrated in Dan Brown's Inferno (the book, not the movie which had a different ending)?

2023-04-03 01:05:43 UTC

What we are seeing in the West is a small cadre of financial, industrial and political elites who mistake their fortuitous success for innate genius.
Now things are not going their way and they are becoming frustrated and bewildered. So they double down on their policies and become increasingly autocratic. With the inevitable further failures, they lash out and blame others. Their hubris prevents them from seeing their own inadequacy.
Unfortunately, they still control the levers of power and could do a lot of damage before they are removed.

2023-03-27 02:07:59 UTC

We could be on the verge of a nuclear war, the fiat-based global financial system could be about to collapse, public healthcare systems are breaking down everywhere, we are facing a demographic and a pension crises, mass
migration is destroying social cohesion, homelessness is devouring large cities, etc.
But, for many people, the most important issue facing humanity today is whether a man can become a woman and give birth.
If we survive as a species, we will look back at the 2020s as the time when the World went mad.

2023-03-23 12:26:45 UTC

Most countries have been willing to go along with the pretend dominance of Western powers as long as they were left alone. From their perspective, it was not worth the aggravation that would result from challenging that narrative.
But now the West has made the mistake of pushing too hard and is overtly undermining the well-being of other countries. As a result, countries in the Global South are setting aside their disagreements and coalescing into a unified opposition.
Western countries undoubtably will keep doubling down on their failing policies. They would rather go to war and risk devastating the World than admit their impotence.

2023-03-22 15:05:25 UTC

For much of the 20th century, North America and Western Europe were beacons of political and social freedom, justice, opportunity and property rights, all of which were envied by those living elsewhere. This is no longer the case.
Since entering the 21st century, we have seen the persecution of political opponents by law enforcement agencies (e.g., Trump), unjust imprisonments through perversion of justice (e.g., Jacob Chansley), censorship (e.g., Julian Assange), the economic destruction of the middle class (e.g., the housing crisis), the arbitrary confiscation of personal assets (e.g., Canadian protestors, Russian citizens), restrictions of movement (e.g., closed borders, 15-minute cities), forced "medical" treatment (e.g., Covid shots), the intentional destruction of social cohesion (e.g. uncontrolled immigration, ghettos), the encouragement of violence and vandalism (e.g., BLM), and a captured press that no longer questions government actions.
The West is tearing itself apart and abandoning all the foundational tenets that defined its identity. People are feeling helpless, as there is no longer any pretence that public institutions are working for the good of the general citizenship.
And I fear that these developments are about to get much worse.

2023-03-14 13:15:43 UTC

In today's Western hyper-financialized economies, most of the money in circulation is created by commercial banks through loans.
These loans are usually secured by the borrower posting assets to the lender as collateral, but these assets are often re-hypocathated, i.e. re-posted by the previous lender to another lender as collateral for his/her own borrowing. In normal times, this increases liquidity and dissipates risk through the system.
However, in times of stress, an inability to recover the value of the asset can cause a local crisis to spread along the collateral chain to the entire World in unpredictable ways.
This may be the situation in which we now find ourselves.

2023-03-12 18:02:36 UTC

If you assume that everything Western governments say is a lie, everything starts to make sense.

2023-03-10 22:29:46 UTC

The collapse that we are seeing of any remaining U.S. reputation and stature around the World is being driven by neo-conservatism and wokism, with the accompanying appointment of senior government officials based on ideology and gender/race/sexual orientation instead of competence.
The U.S. and its allies will pay an incalculable price for these errors. They may never recover.

2023-03-08 15:14:21 UTC

So a few days after Joe Biden and Olaf Scholz had a very private meeting in Washington, newspapers in the U.S. and Germany suddenly report that Nord Stream was blown up by a group of unknown Ukrainian supporters. Knowing the technical difficulties in doing the sabotage, these stories are absurd.
Is this just an attempt to divert blame away from the U.S. (with Olaf's support), or is it a setup to justify throwing Ukraine under the bus?

2023-03-07 13:19:31 UTC

So, after reviewing previously secret security tapes from the Capitol, Tucker Carlson shows that the 6 January 2021 'right-wing extremist insurrection' was completely fabricated by the Democratic and the Republican establishments, obviously to undermine Trump and reduce U.S. citizens' rights.
Also, one cannot help but note that not one of today's U.S. national mainstream newspapers mentions this revelation despite having amplified the original story for the past two years.
The rot is everywhere.

2023-03-05 17:52:27 UTC

Over the past 50 years, Western government policies have converted their countries' once thriving economic, social, industrial and military environments into Potemkin villages.
Some critics suggest that Western leaders continue to act as they do because they hope that no-one will call their bluff and look behind the façades.
A scarier, but just as likely, alternative view is that their leaders are so oblivious that they truly believe that these façades are supported by more than just some creaky scaffolding.
Either way, they will inevitably push things too far and the reality will become obvious to all.
The consequences to their citizens will be severe, something like Germany in the 1920s or Russia in the 1990s. And they will claim that "no-one could have seen it coming".

2023-03-05 16:00:10 UTC

It appears that Artyomovsk-Bakhmut, Donetsk Republic (ex-Ukraine), is now for all intents and purposes under Russian control. While this will be portrayed by the West as a minor event, it is in fact a major defeat for the Western alliance.
We should expect Ukraine and its supporters to launch some diversionary escalation soon to draw our attention elsewhere.

2023-03-04 21:42:51 UTC

So Olaf Scholz was summoned to Washington and given his orders. Don't worry Germany, I am sure that it is for your own good.

2023-03-03 21:38:45 UTC

Why doesn't any government in Western Europe want to publicly investigate the Nord Stream sabotage? What are they afraid of?
It begs the question: what leverage is the U.S. (or whoever else is guilty) using to silence any investigation?

2023-03-03 21:20:46 UTC

(repost)
For years, the U.S. has been using its military supremacy and its ability to issue the World's reserve currency to exploit global physical and human resources. This has allowed it to maintain a much higher standard of living than would have been otherwise possible given its diminishing non-financial productivity. As far as the U.S. is concerned, the alternative is unthinkable.
This explains why the U.S. keeps escalating its rhetoric and its military and financial provocations against the other World powers, namely Russia and China.
Fortunately for us, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have been acting as the adults in the room with a petulant child, and have refused to be provoked. The concern is that the U.S. will miscalculate and overdo it, and trigger a catastrophic response.

2023-03-03 21:18:45 UTC

The U.S. has been using its military supremacy and its ability to issue the For years, the U.S. has been using its military supremacy and its ability to issue the World's reserve currency to exploit global physical and human resources.
This has allowed it to maintain a much higher standard of living than would have been otherwise possible given its diminishing non-financial productivity. As far as the U.S. is concerned, the alternative is unthinkable.
This explains why the U.S. keeps escalating its rhetoric and its military and financial provocations against the other World powers, namely Russia and China.
Fortunately for us, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have been acting as the adults in the room with a petulant child, and have refused to be provoked. The concern is that the U.S. will miscalculate and overdo it, and trigger a catastrophic response.

2023-03-02 11:25:54 UTC

It should be clear by now that the main purpose of Western governments, whether left- or right-leaning, is to transfer wealth from the broad population to the industrial elites.
From recent evidence of U.S. government-funded Coronavirus gain-of-function research and pre-2019 development of the mRNA Covid 'vaccines', it seems that Covid may have been a planned epidemic for the purpose of transferring billions of dollars to the pharmaceutical and health-care industries.
Following the recent debacles in Libya, Iraq, Afganistan, Syria, Yemen, and now Ukraine, the U.S. government and its allies are currently focussing on instigating a conflict with China. These unnecessary wars' purpose is to enrich the military industrial complex at the expense of millions of innocent lives.
Any objective scientist knows that the Earth's climate has been continuously changing for centuries and that recent man-made CO2 emissions have little or nothing to do with it (if in doubt, see graphs of long-term temperature changes at http://faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/climate.htm). The Green Revolution's sole purpose is to direct vast resources to the financial and industrial industries.
Any attempt to voice these truths is ruthlessly suppressed. And the consequences will be ever-increasing public and private debt and an ever-decreasing quality of life for the average person.

2023-03-02 10:36:18 UTC

The official Western narrative about the war in Ukraine is looking increasingly absurd.
Ukraine is burning through its fighting-age population at a prodigious rate, its supporters are running out of weapons to sent, its infrastructure is being destroyed, its economy is only barely functioning with massive external financial aid, it continues to lose territory under its control, and popular support for the war is waning in Nato countries.
While all this is happening, Russia is about to send hundreds of thousands of freshly trained and armed troops into the conflict and may soon get the active support (likely drones) from China.
And yet we are being told that negotiations can only begin when Russia has been pushed back to its pre-2014 borders?

2023-03-01 15:17:54 UTC

I used to keep myself informed daily by reading a wide range of news articles from around the World: The Economist, Le Monde, The Times, BBC, CBC, CNN, New York Times, Jornal do Brasil, South China Morning Post, Al Jazeera, Russia Today, etc. They offered a diverse range of views, with the truth usually being found somewhere in the middle.
Then, bit by bit, the viewpoints in the various organizations began to converge, while deviating from what I was observing around me. Then, starting with Covid19, nothing that I was reading made sense, particularly in the Western media. It became clear that the press was being used overtly to shape popular opinion into adhering to the governments' agenda. Dissenting views were crushed.
While a large proportion of the older population continues to believe what they are reading, younger generations are seeing through the manipulation and have become completely disengaged from the mainstream press, and readership and viewership are collapsing. Is it any surprise that governments are now having to increasingly subsidize their 'approved' news organizations?

2023-02-28 12:45:07 UTC

We in the West appear to be running into one crisis after another, mostly of our own doing. Germany, for example, has allowed uncontrolled immigration that is threatening social cohesion, has shut down most of its nuclear plants, has foregone its principal source of natural gas and diesel in favour of coal, is shuttering much of its heavy industry, has driven hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes, and is now proposing to ban oil and gas heating, all justified by an absurd combination of social justice and climate change theories. And we have collectively lost our minds by allowing all this to take place without a fight.

2023-02-26 23:42:03 UTC

There is now panic among Western leaders about the possibility of China actively supporting Russia in the Ukraine conflict. They realize that Nato has no hope of matching a Russia-China coalition, either in Ukraine or in Taiwan.
Unfortunately, the neo-conservatives seem unable to accept that they have miscalculated and will likely continue to double down on their failed policies. Their final defeat will one for the history books.

2023-02-25 20:15:42 UTC

It appears that China has thrown down the gauntlet and has publicly declared that it is rejecting the U.S.-based 'rules based order':
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/2649_665393/202302/t20230220_11027664.html
The importance of this document should not be underestimated. In the coming months and years, the Chinese will be offering countries in the Global South with an alternative vision that will be very appealing and will lead them to distance themselves from the U.S. in favour of a multipolar system. This will isolate the U.S. and its allies.

2023-02-25 14:33:35 UTC

Recent policies of many Western countries have gone against the best interest of their own citizens. Canada's efforts to suppress its oil and natural gas industries, the Netherlands' suppression of its agricultural industry, Germany's voluntary destruction of its industrial base, the UK's gradual backtracking on Brexit and Switzerland's departure from its longstanding political neutrality are a few examples.
The simplest explanation for these trends is that the political elites are acting on behalf of people who believe in the dissolution of national boundaries in favour of global governments, with themselves as the leaders of course.

2023-02-24 15:02:54 UTC

Western democracies were created to ensure that governments worked in the interests of their citizens.
Instead, they have evolved into an elite class, supported by captured politicians, media and other hangers-on, who use the political system to subject and control the population through manufactured crises and associated policies.
How else can one explain government policies on health, digital IDs, travel restrictions, central bank digital currencies, ever-increasing fiscal deficits and wars in distant locations, none of which can be justified when examined critically.

2023-02-22 22:13:20 UTC

Many year ago, the romans spoke about someone's 'gravitas', which referred to their weight, seriousness and dignity, also importance, and it connoted a certain substance or depth of personality. Someone with gravitas could not be dismissed or ignored.
I cannot help but contrast the gravitas of Vladimir Putin, Sergey Lavrov, Xi Jinping, Wang Yi and Narendra Modi with the likes of Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, Rishi Sunak, James Cleverly, Olaf Scholz, Annalena Baerbock and Justin Trudeau.
Can't the West find any real leaders anymore?

2023-02-22 18:16:10 UTC

The United States likes to claim that it saved Europe by winning both World Wars.
In fact, the U.S. only entered WW1 in 1917, after the principal combatants had suffered millions of dead and exhausted themselves through the previous 3 years, and it only entered WW2 in 1941, after 2+ years of intense conflict.
Still, with only about 8% Government Debt/GDP in 1917 and under 39% in 1941, and a dominant industrial base safely distant from the conflict, its entry into both conflicts tipped the balance of power.
But the U.S. has never entered into direct military conflict with a World power that had not already been degraded by years of war. By continuously escalating the conflict in Ukraine and Taiwan, it risks doing exactly that, and potentially with two World powers at the same time. Further, with the current 134% Debt/GDP (excluding all the unfunded liabilities) and a hollowed-out heavy industrial base, it cannot count on the advantages that it possessed in the previous major conflicts.
Furthermore, after 3 decades of peace in Europe, its fellow NATO members have allowed their militaries to atrophy to the point that they can no longer be considered World powers. They also have to support huge debt loads while their industrial base is being crushed by high energy costs.
It appears that the U.S.’s dream of using the proxy war in Ukraine to gain unfettered access to Russia’s immense resources, much like European countries did in the 15th to 17th centuries with the riches from the Americas, may not come to pass. Instead, of the U.S. re-establishing itself as the sole dominent World power, this war may trigger its final decline.

2023-02-21 22:27:40 UTC

Leaders are often in emotional turmoil when they embark on a new risky venture. Knowing Vladimir Putin, he would have agonized over whether his decision to launch the Special Military Operation in Ukraine was right one. This turmoil would have been particularly acute given the doubts on whether Russia would be able to prevail militarily, economically and politically following the Nato's response.
Subsequent comments by Volodymyr Zelensky, Angela Merkel and François Hollande with respect to the Minsk Agreements, by Naftali Bennett about the March 2022 peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and by Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan and Joe Biden about the preparations the U.S. and Nato were making well in advance of the war (including those pertaining to Nord Stream), must have confirmed to Putin that the decision was not only the correct one, but an essential one. Putin's confident demeanour during today's annual address to parliament suggests that those doubts are now over.
In stark contrast, the leaders in Nato and its constituent members were supremely confident at the start of the war. Today they are panicking and sounding increasingly hysterical. And the mainstream press in Nato countries has totally lost its mind!

2023-02-20 18:20:06 UTC

Over the past 20 years, Western finance has moved away from its primary purpose of supplying investment capital to productive activities. With a few exceptions, it now involves trading instruments at ever higher prices back and forth between parties, while corporate executives and vulture funds drain the value of the underlying assets, all the while encumbering them with ever increasing amounts of debt. As a result, most large Western corporations have become shiny shells encasing a rotten core.
To counter the situation, small private or family-owned companies should be encouraged to flourish, but are instead being suffocated from a lack of funding and excessive regulation. Some might argue that this is being done on purpose in order to preserve the current order.

2023-02-20 18:16:07 UTC

Interested in living in a country that:
- has vast natural resources and a strong industrial base?
- supports free markets?
- believes in strong national independence?
- respects its various ethnic and religious minorities?
- exhibits strong family values?
- has firm religious convictions?
- has a vibrant arts scene?
- is not caught up in woke ideological wars?
If so, present-day Russia might be for you!

2023-02-20 17:30:03 UTC

It is fascinating to see the change in the behaviour of participants at the Munich Security Conference.
In 2022, the participants were positively salivating and giddy at the prospects of a war in Ukraine and the subsequent inevitable defeat and humiliation of Russia. They had built up the Ukrainian military over the previous 8 years, to the point that it was arguably the most powerful military in NATO after the U.S., and there were strong layered defences facing the East. Russia's Soviet era military didn't stand a chance.
This year, there was fear in their eyes.

2023-02-20 17:08:12 UTC

The war in Ukraine would have been avoided if its government had honoured the commitments it made in the 2014-2015 Minsk Agreements to allow the Russian minority in Donetsk and Luhansk to live in peace. Instead, the Kyiv government proceeded with a form of ethnic cleansing, spearheaded by ultra-nationalists and encouraged by Western governments.
Soon after the war began, there were negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow that lead to a peace agreement between them, but this agreement was rejected by NATO. Clearly this was a war that Western governments wanted. The reasons have subsequently become clear, as Western governments speak about their plans, upon winning the war, to break up and balkanize Russia, take possession of its wealth, and to ensure that it never challenges the West again.
It would seem that Western governments are fearful of any country opting out of their collective decline. Russia chose to follow a different path, and that was completely unacceptable.

2023-02-20 15:46:32 UTC

As Western economies crumble, their governments are intent on ensuring that other countries do not escape the collapse and become dominant players on the world scene. This is the underlying reason why they are introducing sanctions and fomenting wars around the world. There would be no need for such actions if Western governments were strong and confident about their future.

2023-02-20 13:12:15 UTC

In Strauss and Howe's The Fourth Turning, the last stage of the cycle involves a series of crises, where the established order is torn down, often through war or revolution, in which institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation's survival. This is where we find ourselves.
Our overlords, who don't want to forego their priviledged status, are responding by undermining any organized challenge. Mass migration, destruction of cultural symbols and values, denigration of religious and artistic works, re-writing of history, fermentation of racial and political divisions, redefinition of biological attributes, incitement of wars, etc. are all designed to confuse, demoralise and fracture social cohesion.
Regretably, by doing so, they are also destroying the very world that they trying to control, and we will all be the poorer for it.

2023-02-19 15:02:36 UTC

There have been many eye-witness reports and videos showing the Ukrainian forces:
- shelling residential areas in cities, including hospitals, schools and daycares
- firing banned anti-personel "petal mines" into residential areas
- killing un-armed Russian prisoners
- using schools, hospitals, ambulances and apartment buildings as cover for their troops
- dropping cannisters containing banned nerve agents on Russian positions
- forcing local civilians to remain in towns to be used as human shields
- taping Roma and other "sub-humans" to posts and beating them
- murdering civilian "Russian collaborators"
- wearing Nazi insignia and giving Nazi salutes to each other
- impressing 16-17 year-olds into the armed forces
And yet the West continues to support the Ukrainians and to insist that the Russians are the evil ones.

2023-02-18 18:46:30 UTC

It is very odd that Germany is meekly allowing itself to be pushed around and Switzerland is giving up its neutrality in favour of U.S. neo-conservative foreign policy. Might the U.S. be leveraging Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse weakness and threatening to sink German and Swiss economies if they do not submit?