Monthly Archives: March 2019

Current Events

Kushner Inc.

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Posted by: Pft

Russiagate may be done but thats because it was defined improperly. Sometimes it helps to look back to get a big picture perspective

Starting in 1999, Putin enlisted two oligarchs Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich, who would go on to become Chabad’s biggest patrons worldwide, to create the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, who would come to be known as “Putin’s rabbi.”

Roman Abramovich is the owner of the Chelsea Football Club of the English Premier League. He was a victor (along with Paul Manafort’s patron Oleg Deripaska) in the aluminum wars of the 1990s and reportedly the person who convinced Boris Yeltsin that Putin would be a proper successor.

Ivanka Trump is very close friends with Abramovich’s wife, Dasha Zhukova. Zhukova reportedly attended the inauguration as Ivanka’s personal guest.

Leviev is the one with the closest links to the Trumps and Israel.

It starts with Bayrock . This is the company that Donald Trump teamed up with to build his Trump Soho project. There were three main actors . One was convicted mob associate and FBI informant Felix Sater. Another was Tevfik Arif, a likely Russian intelligence connection who once was arrested by the Turks. The third was the late Tamir Sapir, another man with ties to Russian intelligence.

The late billionaire Tamir Sapir, was born in the Soviet state of Georgia .
Trump has called Sapir “a great friend.” In December 2007, he hosted the wedding of Sapir’s daughter, Zina, at Mar-a-Lago. The groom, Rotem Rosen, was the CEO of the American branch of Africa Israel, the Putin oligarch Leviev’s holding company, and known as Leviev’s right hand man.

As mentioned Leviev was one of two oligarch’s with who Putin had establish the “Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia” under the leadership of Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, who would come to be known as ‘Putin’s rabbi.’” Sater, Sapier, Jared, Ivanka are all Chabad members and/or donors

Trump had business discussions in Moscow in 2013 about Moscow real estate projects with Agalarovs, Alex Sapir (son of Tamir Sapir, brother of Zina, and brother-in-law of Rotem Rosen.) and Rotem Rosen, a pair of New York-based Russians. This may also have been discussed during the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower that was attended by Kushner, Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer associated with Fusion GPS (Steele dossier) and the Leviev linked Prevezon.

Agalarovis is a Moscow-based property developer who had won major contracts from Putin’s government. He hosted Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe contest at his concert hall in Moscow. He orchestrated the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting and formed a new American shell company a month beforehand with the help of the Russian lawyer who attended the meeting.

In 2015, Kushner and his family business, Kushner Cos., bought a portion of the New York Times building on West 43rd Street from Russian /Israeli real estate billionaire Lev Leviev for $295M, where $285M was borrowed from Deutsche Bank to complete the transaction, despite the 666 albatross hanging over Kushners head.

Deutsche Bank and two companies tied to Leviev, Africa Israel Investments and Prevezon, have all recently been the subject of money laundering investigations. A laundering case against Prevezon was settled two months after Trump fired Bharara, with a $6M slap on the wrist settlement that raised some eyebrows.

As for 666, Kushner gets bailed out by Brookfield who has Qatar as its 2nd largest investor. But consider that at the same time they did this deal they also acquired Westinghouse Electric, a nuclear power company. Now members of the Trump administration propose selling nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia. Interesting.

Can’t seem to find a Putin/Russian oligarch connection although that’s probably due to the fact you can’t use anonymous shell companies to buy property in NYC any longer due to new rules by FinCEN

But so many conflict of interests here, Israel, China, Saudis, Russian oligarchs, etc., and virtually no oversight or transparency. With twitter being used to manipulate markets one has to imagine rampant insider trading as well (hey guys, my tweets going out at 3 pm, get your trades in and remember my 5%).

Anglozionism

In Depth: Who Really Betrayed The USSR? EDITED

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Вячеслав Матузов: Михаил Горбачев — пешка в плане по развалу СССР

Via EurAsia Daily

11 March 2019

Translated from the Russian-language original by Algora Publishing

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Vyacheslav Matuzov

Interview with Soviet diplomat and Analyst, Arab Countries, Vyacheslav Matuzov, by Sarkis Tsaturyan

How did Trotskyism liquidate the state of Lenin and Stalin? What constrained the Comintern, the international department of the Central Committee and the KGB? What of Pitovran, Andropov and Primakov?

What follows is an interview with the well-known Soviet diplomat and political analyst Vyacheslav Matuzov, who lifts the veil from the main secret of the 20th century. We believe readers will take great interest in this, for it explains how parallel structures were created [in the Soviet Union] and shows that these were made possible by shadowy figures, although in fact were well known and operated in public view, penetrating right up to the top of Soviet power. This interview explains the mechanics involved, and the arrival of a mysterious and subversive dual structure that had the powers of the KGB but which was decidedly not the KGB.

At the same time, this interview is necessarily limited. It is conducted in a somewhat Platonic manner, the reader must untangle the relationship between the USSR’s structures as observed from this critical ‘diplomat’ who engaged in cipher work on a daily basis on Lebanon and Palestine, and how these related to a stark shift in Soviet power which appeared to betray the PLO and the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine]. What does that lead to, what does that mean? – J. Flores

– What questions did you deal with in the international department of the CPSU Central Committee?

– My working day began at 9 am. For the first 2–3 hours I read the cipher telegrams in a special room. They covered everything related to my area from the GRU, the General Staff, the Foreign Ministry and the KGB. In each embassy, ​​various departments had their coders. The people working there were highly professional.

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Yasser Arafat

From 1974 to 1988 I was an analist for Lebanon. During this period there was a civil war going on, and those parties with which the CPSU cooperated were at its epicenter. For example, the Lebanese Communist Party, Progressive–Socialist Party, was headed by Kamal Jumblatt, and starting in 1977 it was led by his son Walid Jumblatt. Relations with the Palestinian parties were also in my area of ​​responsibility, including Yasser Arafat and other politicians in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The CPSU has often been accused of supporting terrorists, but this is not true. We strictly observed the line between terrorists and national-patriotic forces that fought against imperialism. If the smallest Palestinian organization was caught participating in armed actions against a civilian population, it was automatically dropped from the framework of assistance, even contacts. There were many such organizations.

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George Habash

There were also those who promised the USSR to abandon terrorist methods. In particular, we accepted the apologies and assurances of the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in the person of George Habash, that they would never engage in terrorist activities. After that, they were given scholarships to study at Soviet educational institutions. I remember how members of the Politburo’s eyebrows shot up, when Leila Khaled was among the students of the University of Peoples Friendship. Then it was decided to transfer her to the Kiev Medical Institute. Past terrorist attacks carried out by the Popular Front affected the climate of relations between the USSR and this organization. However, their representative Abu Ali Mustafa was a member of the PLO Executive Committee, as was Mahmoud Abbas from Fatah. We treated the Front as an integral part of the PLO, but followed them closely to ensure there was no recurrence of terrorism.

Relations with the communist parties were carried out through the Solidarity Committee, the most influential organization in those days. Unfortunately, these days we do not see any such public organizations that would serve as side structures and complement diplomatic agencies. In modern Russia the role of the public is reduced to incomprehensible meetings in Vladimir and [the youth forum that’s held in] Seliger. This is a problem.

In our international department, work was conducted on a serious level. Suffice it to say that the Tajik writer Mirzo Tursunzade was the head of the Solidarity Committee. But the real work was done by Alexander Dzasokhov. Dzasokhov was responsible for [many] different directions: one – for the Arab [countries] and another – for the African [countries]. He had an executive secretary for general affairs. At different times, different people worked there. Work on the ground was carried out through a structured apparatus in which all departments were represented. This allowed people who were at the top of the party to look around and set the general direction.

After all, if you handed over all these problems to representatives of the KGB and the GRU, or to people with [just a] general education, who know nothing about the matters at hand, the system would not be able to work effectively. There had to be an approved political line. Therefore, we had a division for working with public organizations. One person in it was responsible for the Committee of Solidarity, another – for the Peace Committee, etc. Everything was structured.

– How was the Communist Party funded?

– Each fraternal party had its own budget. By today’s standards, it wasn’t much money – what one oligarch makes in a month. Suppose the Lebanese Communist Party was allocated $200,000/year, at first, then it was raised to $300,000. We had a man in the department who controlled the cash vault. A KGB officer with a briefcase would come to him and get the specified amount, which was then transferred via the station chief, who distributed the money and kept receipts.

When we arrived in a country, the ambassador would greet us with open arms. But on a day-to-day basis, members of the special services would watch over the staff of the international department of the Central Committee.

– It turns out that the participation of the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate) was minimal?

– The participation of the GRU was purely theoretical. Military intelligence handed the analysis, for example, of the Palestinian resistance movement. And contacts with Arafat went through the Committee of Solidarity, where Lev Baucin, a colonel from the KGB (First Main Directorate), sat. He was responsible for ties with the PLO. We had friendly relations with everyone. The military solved their own problems. Those were smart, talented guys, strong analysts. Where did they all go then? Age, I guess. Many of them were older than me …

With the collapse of the USSR, the GRU system was destroyed. The GRU was turned into the Directorate of the General Staff. The status, rates and the role of the agency all went down. At the time of Peter Ivashutin, the GRU was an influential structure that had the right to reach the top person with its information and analyses. After Ivashutin left in 1987, everything went downhill.

– The Central Committee of the CPSU had an effective decision-making system, called “party intelligence” by some experts. When and why did this system start to fail?

– In my view, party intelligence as such did not exist, but there was intelligence from the Comintern. Stalin shut down the structure of the Comintern May 15, 1943; but on its foundation the Communist Information Bureau was formed, in 1947 (which was liquidated after the 20th CPSU Congress in 1956), after the cadres of the Comintern moved to the international department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. For example, Boris Ponomarev, head of the international department of the Comintern was a member of [CPSU Central Committee]. Grigory Shumeiko from the Comintern also worked with us. The methods of the Comintern were preserved and used on a party basis.

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Yuri Andropov

Today they say that Vasily Kuznetsov was allegedly the head of party intelligence. This wasn’t the reality. Can you imagine that Yuri Andropov would allow anyone to control the special services?

– Nevertheless, Kuznetsov was a weighty figure …

– Yes, he was an honorable man, a candidate member of the Politburo. Sometimes he replaced the chairman of the Supreme Council when he was ill or went on a business trip. A chair-warmer. He wasn’t responsible for anything. Kuznetsov never had contact with the fraternal Communist Parties.

That is, there was no party intelligence; at least, not in 1966, when, while I was still a student, I contacted the international department of the Central Committee. However, the Central Committee apparatus worked very closely with the First Main Directorate (PGU) of the KGB – this is an unequivocal fact. Full partnership with the PSU.

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Leonid Brezhnev

Although after Khrushchev times there was an unwritten law that prohibited the KGB from following the workers of the Central Committee and obtaining any information in the Central Committee staff. What’s more, they were instructed to render the Central Committee every assistance. Leonid Brezhnev had a feeling that the KGB at some stage could take advantage of its power to liquidate the party leadership.

The party system itself has never collapsed. Take note of Alexander Dzasokhov, who was Yevgeny Primakov’s closest friend. While still serving as the executive secretary, he first left as ambassador to Damascus, then became secretary of the North Ossetian Regional Committee of the CPSU, and on the eve of the collapse of the USSR – a member of the Politburo. As a result of the change of leadership that Mikhail Gorbachev was conducting, people far from the party work became members of the Politburo. Primakov and Dzasokhov had nothing to do with the party.

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Yevgeny Primakov

I knew Primakov since 1970. At that time I arrived in Lebanon, where he was a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper. It turned out that my boss in the international department, the most talented Arabist, Vadim Rumyantsev, and Primakov had studied together and were friends. So they invited me to joint them and their buddies, and we’d drink tea in the evenings (smiles). I was 33 years old. We knew each other well.

I think that Yevgeny Maksimovich [Primakov] was the central figure that carried out the transition from “perestroika” to the shootout [the White House shelling by Yeltsin] and the current situation. I believe that Boris Yeltsin and Gorbachev were secondary people. [They] were the figure heads for the outside. But the real mechanism that controlled the whole process — before perestroika, during perestroika, and after perestroika, when all sorts of Austrian institutions were formed, was tied to Primakov and other heirs of the Andropov plan.

– Speaking about the Austrian institutions, do you mean the centers where Anatoly Chubais and the whole team of future young reformers went to study?

– Yes. The same forces also created the Leningrad Center, where at one time they transferred Major General Oleg Kalugin, who at the PSU headed the department of the USA and Canada, and also was the head of foreign counterintelligence of the PSU.

This was connected not so much with Primakov, as with Andropov. When I joined the staff in 1966, Andropov was also in charge of the Central Committee department for working with socialist countries. In 1967, he became chairman of the KGB, not having the status of a member of the Central Committee and a member of the Politburo. Just like Andrei Gromyko .

Our chief, Ponomarev, was superior in status. He was a candidate member of the Politburo, secretary of the Central Committee, and head of all international relations. Between a candidate member of the Politburo and a member of the Politburo there is a big difference: you have the right to listen, but you have no right to vote.

With the appointment of Andropov, the very status of the KGB chairmanship soon changed, since in the post-Khruschev period Brezhnev was very careful and did not allow the special services to dominate the party apparatus. The head of the KGB has now become a member of the Politburo. The status of Gromyko also increased. And the status of the international department fell. Although then there were some relapses, the agony lasted for a long time … Until the last day, the international department was trying to prove to the USSR Foreign Ministry that it was closer to the body of the leader.

– Was there a strong competition?

– Very strong. Relations between Ponomarev and Gromyko were strained to the limit … Who will be the first to grab the information and the first to write a note to the Politburo? I believe that as a member of the Politburo, Gromyko had information from every department – from the KGB, the GRU, the General Staff.

Everything that was transmitted through closed ciphers was laid out on the table of a member of the Politburo,. By the way, not every member of the Politburo had access to read all the information that was intended for 2–3 members, and sometimes just for one.

– You worked under Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev. With Brezhnev, I understand. And what changed in the relationship of the rest of the Soviet leaders to the leading figures of the party?

– The dynamics went unnoticed. Already today, given the information appearing on the Internet and on television, it is possible to get an overall picture. For example, Aleksandr Tsipko, whom no one at the Central Committee took as a serious worker, now says that he worked under the eye of Andropov personally and that he prepared private documents for him which Andropov did not leave in the KGB archives.

The KGB was a system that did not allow one to deviate from the general line. Andropov, having created this system himself, understood that if information gets into it, then it will automatically become an asset for many employees who may be dissatisfied with one or another political position of the leadership.

Therefore, further changes (“restructuring”) were not carried out on behalf of the KGB, but with the help of the KGB ­– and outside the framework of the KGB. Where did Primakov come from? He is not from the KGB system. He is from the collateral entities that Andropov created, as Andropov was already chairman of the KGB and a member of the Politburo. [Same applies to] Georgi Arbatov (Director of the Institute of USA and Canada), Nikolai Inozemtsev (Director of IMEMO ), and Bobojan Gafurov (Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies).

These were parallel structures that duplicated the KGB. Outwardly, they worked in conjunction with the party apparatus. But in reality, these institutions were so strong, being under the patronage of Andropov, that the leading departments of the Central Committee had zero influence on them.

At the time, I did not know about it. I happened to fall out of favor with Primakov precisely because of my ignorance. When Primakov was head of the Institute of Oriental Studies in 1977, he was immediately given the status of a member of the Central Committee, that is, untouchable. By the way, Inozemtsev was a very talented person. The two of us traveled for 40 days after the day of the killing of Kamal Jumblat. I talked with him for 7 days in Beirut. Made a strong impression.

– Intellectual?

– Very strong. With colossal life experience, a veteran of World War II, was awarded four military orders. Restrained, not a single superfluous word or even movement with his eyebrows. He was a trained public figure, and that enabled him to keep his personality discrete.

Tsipko speaks the truth when he recalls Andropov, who did not allow him to send notes to the KGB archives. The last time I met was Tsipko in Washington, when in 1990 I worked as an adviser to the embassy. By then the Central Committee had collapsed, there was no one there to connect with them. The entire cipher translation was banned from being sent to the Central Committee as early as the end of 1988.

– It turns out that Gorbachev just finished off the system?

– Gorbachev is a rag, a pawn, nothing at all. Responsible for the collapse of the USSR were the heirs of Andropov. That is, conditions were created for the transition from the system in which we lived to the Western model.

– “Why did they need to destroy the country?”

– Let me answer by telling you to a little story from life. In October 1974, when I was in Lebanon, I worked as the first secretary of the embassy, and ​​my mother died. I flew to Novosibirsk for the funeral. On the way back [via Moscow], I called Vadim Rumyantsev, who at that time had been made the deputy head of the International Department of the Central Committee. He invited me to his place. Visiting him were Primakov and his wife … At that time Primakov was a member of the editorial board of the Pravda newspaper.

Let me ask you, how important was “Pravda” in those years? If there was a small negative note published by Pravda about an official, then he was immediately removed from his post. Suddenly I heard Primakov say: “The socialist system has become obsolete. We must move away from it and start living as they do in the West. ”

And here I entered into an argument with Evgeny Makedonovich [Primakov]. In those years, that was his middle name … When I visited Primakov in 1975, he told me: “Slava, call me Evgeny Maksimovich now.”

– He changed his middle name?

– Yes, this is a unique thing in his biography. Primakov’s background has been completely masked to this day. I believe that he was the main actor who completed Andropov’s plan to reorganize the Soviet Union. In simple terms, Primakov had been watching the process — all these years.

Returning to my dispute with Primakov. I gave him examples from the history of the USSR … The civil war ended in 1922. The country was in ruins. After 7 years, industrialization began, and by 1939, on the eve of World War II, the USSR faced it with its industry and agriculture in place, with the political will of the leadership, and most important – it was the [support from the] population. My maternal grandmother recalled how they lived before World War II: the shelves were filled with goods, food was cheap, socially equipped life, the economy was flourishing. These were colorful memories. And today nobody talks about this: officially, all the information is distorted and destroyed, and people who have seen it with their own eyes are gradually passing away. In 1941-1945, half the country was evacuated to Siberia. I remember that, I myself lived in Siberia then. And in 1945-1955, the rocket industry was already being developed … Then, during the discussion, Yevgeny Makedonovich looked at me like a beast.

The deputy head of the international department, Vadim Rumyantsev, kicked me under the table: “Slava, let’s go for a smoke.” I went out with him. “Stop it! Do you know who you’re arguing with? Shut up immediately, ” Rumyantsev tells me. In other words, already in 1974, the head of the International Department of the Central Committee deferred to the point of view of a Pravda correspondent like Primakov. And what can we say about the higher levels? Then I realized that my boss, Ponomarev, and Andropov, were on the same team.

The “perestroika” plan was carried out by Primakov’s supporters outside the KGB, partly drawing from the personnel that Andropov had personally created. After all, Andropov himself didn’t become head of the KGB and a member of the Central Committee out of nowhere. And here it is interesting to consider the roots of Andropov himself.

– By the way, about those roots. What factors contributed to Andropov’s career takeoff?

– Andropov was the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol of the Karelian-Finnish SSR. Otto Kuusinen stood behind him. And who was Kuusinen involved with? With Lt. Gen. Yevgeny Pitovranov. This is the “father” of all of them: Andropov, Primakov and other figures of “perestroika”.

– What was the role of Pitovranov?

– The thread stretches back to the Comintern and Leon Trotsky. The “red thread” in this story is the struggle of Joseph Stalin with Trotskyism in the ranks of law enforcement agencies. In my opinion, all this opposition was created within the special services.

– Would you say that Trotskyism took revenge on Stalinism in 1991?

– Absolute revenge. And with the same goal – against Stalinism.

– So, what was the Comintern?

– This is an interesting topic. The Arab Communist Parties, especially the Lebanese, were especially interested in the mechanisms of the Comintern. The Lebanese at that time were still powerful veterans from the days of the Comintern themselves. Every year at [what had been Stalin’s] Volyn dacha, we held meetings of the Arab Communist Parties and discussed plans. In 1968, the Lebanese requested to check the Comintern archives; legally they had that right.

Then I was sent to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, where the super-secret archive was located. Nobody was allowed in, even if they had an ID proving they were employees of the Central Committee. However, a pass was ordered for me. I sat down and looked through the archive of the Lebanese Communist Party, after which I reported to my boss Rumyantsev: “Vadim Petrovich, honestly, I would not show them a single piece of paper” (laughs) .

– Is it completely over the edge?

“Lord have mercy!” The relationship was very crude. For example, on a request to the Comintern to clarify such and such a question, there is a note from the well-known head of the department: “Stick it up his ass!” And further – in a similar vein. By the way, I don’t know where the archive of the Comintern is now.

– Was the Comintern an intelligence organization?

– Of course. In the years 1925-1930, the Communist Parties of the Arab countries were created. The epicenter of the communist movement in the Middle East was the Communist Party of Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. The Comintern sent its emissaries to this base, who with a lot of money created party structures there and engaged in propaganda. And the most reliable employees of the Comintern were people of Jewish origin, who had no sympathy for the local population and clearly followed the instructions of the Center.

Here, I should say a word about why Britain made a bid to create the Muslim Brotherhood (an organization whose activities are prohibited in the territory of the Russian Federation – ed) . I studied a lot of materials on this topic, I read the memoirs of British intelligence. As a result of the activity of the Comintern, in the 1930s London felt a threat to its influence in all the Arab countries.

Those who came to the Middle East in the name of helping in the struggle against colonialism and the exploitation and oppression of the Arab people received the strongest support on the ground. The French were less astute about what was going on, but the British came to all the necessary conclusions. Therefore, from 1929 to 1932, they created the movement called the “Blockade of Godless Communism”.

That is, British intelligence billed the struggle against communism as a battle with godlessness, thus hoping to win over the believing population. So the Muslim Brotherhood was born. This organization is still rooted in the 1930s. True, the control system has changed today, but not by much: MI-6 simply handed over the controls to the CIA.

– And what is Mikhail Gorbachev?

– Gorbachev is a very narrow-minded person, two-faced. He did not have any convictions, except for the desire to destroy socialism. The significance of Gorbachev’s views is over-estimated in the West, and that’s why he’s so well paid. He survived on the Politburo by making decisions based on who was the first to approach him.

Let me give an example. In November 1988, I was returning from Algeria from the National Council of Palestine, when a fight between Arafat and pro-Syrian groups broke out that could have destroyed the PLO. The deputy head of the international department of the Central Committee, Karen Brutents, gave me an oral instruction: “Don’t interfere, don’t do anything. Let them destroy each other. It will be easier for us to establish diplomatic relations with Israel [which had been severed in June 1967]. ”

It was clear that Brutents was stating a personal point of view, and not an official position. I took the responsibility and ignored this instruction, since in Algeria Arafat had approached me in the congress hall and declared: “Tell your Marxists to stop destroying me. Yesterday, I signed a cooperation agreement with the Palestinians who supportHafez Asad. And tonight, I received calls from the King of Morocco, Hassan II, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who demanded an immediate end to the agreement. Tell them that it was not I who liquidated it, but Arab leaders,and I cannot stand up to them.”

I told Arafat the following: “Abu Ammar, you, the wisest of the wisest, have always been able to maneuver. If you are the source of destruction of the PLO Executive Committee, then I guarantee that Moscow will no longer support you.” To which Arafat retorted: “Well, I will do everything possible, but you talk to your Marxists.” Let me remind you that Arafat was thrown out of Lebanon by the hands of pro-Palestinian Syrians. And Arafat was offended by us, because the USSR did not protect him from the Syrians.

After Arafat, his opponent came to me – the leader of the pro-Syrian wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PLFP], Georges Habash. “Arafat is a traitor. Yesterday we signed an agreement, and today he broke it,” he said. I said to Habash: “I just spoke to Arafat. He said it was not his decision. You are a wise man, do not become the cause of the destruction of the PLO.“

In those days, our conversations were recorded in their entirety. Very soon, our international department learned the content of the conversations. Brutents did not receive me for a week after I arrived back in Moscow – he was allegedly busy. When we finally met, he remarked to me: “I told you not to do anything, and you ignored my instructions.” I replied to my boss: “But the PLO has survived, and it could have split into thousands of terrorist organizations.”

Upon my return to Moscow, in my role as an officer of the Central Committee, I prepared a briefing outlining the situation and some proposals. Next, the note went to the Politburo. It was extremely important. After all, US President George W. Bush was commenting on the situation with the Palestinians several times a day: the Americans were following the events closely. And from us, there was only silence, like now …

But then I learned that Brutents, behind my back, had presented a separate note to the Politburo (without my signature) – we were under very strict discipline that forbid anyone from submitting such a document without the signature of the person in charge of that area, and accordingly the document was dismissed by the general department of the Central Committee (which was once headed by Konstantin Chernenko ) and was not considered at a meeting of the Politburo. Meanwhile, I prepared a paper with my proposals and handed it to Gorbachev, who said that the resolution on this issue had already been adopted, but the proposals set forth in my note would be implemented by direct order…

The system had already been destroyed. In December 1988, all information flows to the Central Committee were liquidated. There was no information via special channels. The GRU and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stopped sending cipher telegrams. The only thing that remained was that the KGB sent us generalizing materials and analyses, not daily briefings from the embassies, as they had before. The structure was virtually gone. Then I went to work at the Foreign Ministry as an expert in the Middle East, and my colleague Vitaly Churkin went to work as an expert in the secretariat of Eduard Shevardnadze .

– How do you remember Churkin?

Amazing specialist. Brilliant man, open. He knew the language brilliantly. Dobrynin brought him to the international department. Churkin headed the press service in the Washington embassy for 10 years.

Cultural/Ideological Divide

Christchurch, Birmingham, and the Power of Islamic Victimhood

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JAMES GEORGE JATRAS in Strategic-Culture

It’s the massacre heard ‘round the world! Leaders react across the globe! Religious bigotry and hate must be rooted out!

Oh wait, not this one. This is just another Muslim massacre of Christian villagers in Nigeria. Ho-hum, nothing to see here folks. Just move along now…

Ah, here’s the right one! In the initial hours following the fatal shooting of several dozen Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the verdict was already in: this was a manifestation of white nationalism, which is a kind of “white ISIS.”

The only secondary question left to settle remains: Who bears the most blame, Donald Trump individually, Serbs collectively, or Robert E. Lee posthumously?

One thing we will not see is any effort to avoid a “backlash” from Christchurch. Remember in 2015, “After Charlie Hebdo attack in France, backlash against Muslims feared”? Well, as one Twitter user notes, you won’t see any headlines like “After Christchurch attack in New Zealand, backlash against white males feared.”

Quite to the contrary, backlash against the perceived ideology behind the mosque attack and its presumed toxic racist purveyors will be front and center worldwide. (How soon before it’s Putin’s fault?) Nor will we see the killings breezily dismissed as just “part and parcel of living in a big city,” as London’s mayor Sadiq Khan waved away the threat of terror after a bombing in New York.

As pointed out by Srdja Trifkovic (himself a deplorable Serb by birth) in Chronicles magazine (“New Zealand Attacks: Repercussions and Perspective,” March 15):

‘The developing frenzy of compassion with the victims of Christchurch will result in a number of mathematically predictable consequences:

· ‘The ruling elites and their media cohorts all over the Western world will have a field day equating “violent extremism” (which has nothing to do with “true Islam,” of course) with the neo-nazi, right-wing, white, Christian-inspired racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and all other traits of the deplorables; and yes, it will be Trump’s fault to boot.

· ‘Various Islamic activist in the West, such as the sharia-promoting CAIR in the US and its fellow-conspirators elsewhere, will clamor for ever more stringent laws criminalizing “Islamophobia,” effectively defined as any form of meaningful debate of Islam, its scriptural message, historical practice, and current ambitions.

· ‘Such demands will be promptly translated into legislative proposals by the jihadophile liberal class which will proclaim zero tolerance of “Islamophobia” as defined by CAIR et al. And, of course, they will demand additional Soviet/Nazi style gun laws.’ [ … ]

‘There will be no attempt to place today’s killings “in perspective,” as is invariably the case after Muslim terrorists strike Western targets—in Nice, Paris, Berlin etc.—killing hundreds of people. That “perspective” should include the fact that some 30 million Muslims reside in the Western world today (many more on their own reckoning), which makes the probability of any one of them falling victim to a deplorable attack in any given year roughly one in ten million… The odds of a Christian in a majority-Muslim country being murdered by a Muslim—simply for being what he is—approximately one in 70,000. This means a Christian living in a majority Muslim country is 143 times more likely to be killed by a Muslim for being a Christian than a Muslim is likely to be killed by a non-Muslim in a Western country for being what he is.’

Despite what by any metric is a gross imbalance between Islamic violence committed against the innocent and violence committed against innocents by Muslims, the Christchurch attack will be a new milestone in Islam’s empowerment as an aggrieved category, along with “other marginalized groups [that] have become victims of white supremacist ideologies in recent years.” Victimhood is the ultimate form of empowerment, with CAIR already calling for social media to further muzzle criticism of Islamic intolerance and opposition to jihad terror.

Another testament to the power of victimhood was provided recently in Birmingham, England, where angry parental opposition successfully, for now, beat back efforts to institute a program aimed at primary school pupils “to promote LGBT equality and challenge homophobia.” The parents, citing offense to their religious sensibilities, organized, protested strenuously, and threatened to yank their kids from the school in question. The school shelved the program.

Yay! Bravo for the parents! A win for the good guys!

Of course it’s relevant that 98 percent of the families in the school are Muslim. As Rod Dreher comments in The American Conservative:

‘Good for those Muslim parents! They have guts. They have a hell of a lot more courage than many US Christians do. What they are standing up to is not homosexuality, but the state’s sexual indoctrination of little children. Andrew Moffat, the gay teacher who came up with the program, and who has been teaching it to Muslim students in that school, knows perfectly well what he’s doing. The strategy liberals use in cases like this is that they have to make schools “safe” for kids, and to fight bullying. It’s nonsense. What they are doing is trying to sexualize little children, and to destroy the substance of what their religiously and socially conservative parents teach them, and in so doing undermine the authority of the parents.’

How would such a protest have worked out for any Christian parents with “guts”? It’s no mystery. First, we can be sure they’d have lost. Second, they’d be vilified and likely subjected to reprisals.

Birmingham illustrates the rock-paper-scissors nature of intersectionality. On this occasion anti-Islamophobia and the educational establishment’s dread of being called racist outweighed what in other contexts would be the invincible LGBT++ doubleplusgoodideology. The remnants of a disenfranchised Christian England are literally irrelevant spectators watching a fight between two empowered certified victim groups sparring with each other.

As pointed out by “Seoulite” in TAC, in the victim grievance department –

‘Muslims will continue to come out on top, for several reasons.
‘1. They have the numbers and will steadily keep increasing in relation to the LGBT brigade, especially in particular locales.
‘2. They can always play the race card, which will always beat the LGBT card.
‘3. They can always make subtle references to “marginalization” and “radicalization”. These are basically threats of blackmail: let us do what we want or we might start blowing ourselves up at pop concerts.
‘Unless the LGBT brigade start actually murdering Muslim children, bombs will always trump twitter criticism.’

In the intersectional pecking order the trump card is anti-racism (of which “Islamophobia” is a subset, even though Islam isn’t a race). Similarly, anti-racism and migrants’ rights outweighed feminism and #MeToo, resulting in the dropping of charges against two illegal aliens who repeatedly raped and sodomized a 14-year-old middle school girl in Maryland. Ditto European authorities’ inaction against migrant abuse of local women in Germany and Sweden and cover-up of Muslim “grooming gangs” raping girls throughout the United Kingdom. No price in native European women’s flesh is too high to pay to signal virtuous rejection of racism and Islamophobia.

Thus, while LGBT++ and feminism might yet win an occasional skirmish, in the long run these are nothing more than noxious precipitates of the demoralized, decaying homegrown culture. Once that culture is gone, sexual pathologies will have no ability to sustain themselves against the militant, unapologetic newcomer that, ironically, embodies the very anti-homosexual and misogynistic attitudes they deplore.

That’s no reason to celebrate, though. Pick your metaphor: rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, choosing which sauce you wish to be eaten with, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s all just sound and fury unless and until we see the (very unlikely) resolve of English (and French, German, Dutch, Swedish, – and American, Australian, and New Zealander) parents and the rest of the native population join Poles, Hungarians, Russians, Italians, and other nations still determined to exist on their own historical cultural and moral terms, not the ones allowed them by this or that faction among their gravediggers. As noted by Christine Douglass-Williams of Jihad Watch:

‘At Parkfield Community School in Birmingham, we see a possible collision between two unlikely allies in the West: the socialist Left and Islamic supremacists. Such a collision is inevitable, as neither believes in freedom of belief and thought, or in the freedom of speech. For example, Christians who fully believe in the equality of rights of all people before the law but do not believe in promoting LGBT causes have been mercilessly attacked by LGBT socialist-Left activists for having a difference of faith and opinion, despite supporting the human rights of gays. Yet peculiarly, social justice warriors have given Islamic supremacists a free pass, despite their opposition to gay rights and the equality of rights of all people before the law, and also despite the gay hate-preaching from many mosques and the call for the murder of gays in many Islamic states.’

Whether in Christchurch or Birmingham, or anywhere else in what until recently were indisputably societies that were ethnically European and spiritually, or at least culturally, Christian, the forces of the rising dictatorship of victims, despite their internecine squabbles, understand all too well who their common enemy is. Whichever faction might have the upper hand at any moment just boils down to scavengers scrapping over the rotting, barely living carcass of a legacy society begging to be put out of its misery.

“There’ll always be an England”? Don’t count on it. Or a New Zealand or an America, for that matter.

Capitalism in Decay

Can Trump Stop The Invasion?

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Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

In its lede editorial Wednesday, The New York Times called upon Congress to amend the National Emergency Act to “erect a wall against any President, not just Mr. Trump, who insists on creating emergencies where none exist.”

Trump “took advantage” of a “loophole” in the NEA, said The Times, to declare “a crisis at the border, contrary to all evidence.”

The Times news desk, however, apparently failed to alert the editorial page on what the top story would be that day.

“Record Numbers Crossing to U.S., Deluging Agents” was the page-one headline. The Times quoted Kevin K. McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection:

“The system is well beyond capacity, and remains at the breaking point. … This is … a border security and a humanitarian crisis.”

Reporter Caitlin Dickerson explained what is behind CPB’s alarm:

“The number of migrant families crossing the Southwest border has once again broken records, with unauthorized entries nearly double what they were a year ago.”

She continued,

“More than 76,000 migrants crossed the border without authorization in February, an 11-year high … newcomers continue to arrive, sometimes by the busload, at the rate of 2,200 a day.”

Only if one believes in open borders is this not an emergency, not a crisis. Consider the budgetary impact alone of this invasion.

The majority of migrants breaching the border are from Mexico and Central and South America. Most do not read, write or speak our English language, are not college graduates and arrive with few skills.

Almost all will enter the half of the U.S. population that consumes more in social benefits during their lifetime than they will ever pay in taxes.

With the U.S. debt over 100 percent of gross domestic product and the deficit running at nearly 5 percent of GDP, at full employment, the burden the migrant millions are imposing upon our social welfare state will one day collapse the system. For these folks are coming to a country where education K-12 is free and where, if the Democrats take over, pre-K though college will be free.

These folks will be eligible for city, county, state and federal programs that provide free or subsidized food, rent, housing and health care.

All were enacted for the benefit of U.S. citizens. Uninvited, the Third World is coming to partake of and enjoy them.

With 328 million people here now, approaching twice the number as in 1960, how many more can we take in before government sinks under the weight of its beneficiaries?

And there is a larger issue.

If, as appears probable, President Trump is not going to be able to build his wall and all the security measures taken in this century have proved inadequate to stanch the invasion of America, how does the invasion end?

Or is this the endless invasion, where the future is decided on our 1,900-mile border with Mexico and we, as the last superpower, are a pitiful, helpless giant too morally paralyzed to stop it?

The resolution and determination of Third World peoples to come to America, even if they have to break our laws to get in and stay, is proven.

And if there is no matching national will to halt the invasion, and no truly effective means that would be acceptable to our elites, the migrants are never going to stop coming. And why should they?

Politically, this invasion means the inevitable death of the national Republican Party, as peoples of color, who vote 70-90 percent Democratic in presidential elections, become the new majority of 21st-century America.

The bell will toll for the Grand Old Party when Texas votes like California in some presidential election. That is game, set, match.

What is remarkable is how our cultural elites are giddily embracing what most of the advanced world is recoiling from.

The Times that berates Trump for trying to secure the border with his wall constantly bewails the rise of ethnic nationalism, populism, tribalism and “illiberal democracies” in Europe. But the rising “isms” of the new Europe are driven by popular fear and loathing of the very future The Times cannot wait to embrace.

Japan’s population of 127 million, the second oldest on Earth, has begun to shrink. But there seems to be no desire in Japan to import millions of East or South Asians or Africans to replace the vanishing Japanese.

Does China look upon its diversity as its greatest strength?

Hardly. Beijing is repopulating Tibet with Han Chinese, and has set up “re-education camps” to de-program Uighur Muslims and Kazakhs in the west so they sever their birth attachments to their ethnicity and faith and convert into good communists.

In the U.S., the ball is now in Trump’s court.

If he cannot get a Democratic House to fund his wall and the forces now on the border are being overwhelmed by the migrants, as CPB reports, how does he propose to halt the invasion?

And if he does not stop it, who will? And what does failure mean for America’s future as one nation and one people?

Cultural/Ideological Divide

The Fourth Turning & The Case Against Cities

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Via HardScrabbleFarmer.com,

Historians spend a great deal of time on the subject of cities. Rome, Athens, Constantinople, London, Tokyo, Cairo, New York and Moscow. It is as if the stuff that is most worthwhile is the density of the population, those locations where people lived closely packed together rather than the substance of the people who lived everywhere in between. It would appear that all the significant events and accomplishments of a people throughout history are focused on urban centers and as a result we have convinced ourselves that it is and has always been the cities that define a society.

Our perception of urban living versus rural is often defined by the culture shapers — politicians, academics, corporations and media. Rarely are the populations who inhabit the different regions asked about the impact of those decisions on their quality of life. They accept the paradigm into which they were born or they convince themselves that the alternatives are much worse than what they face living in densely populated urban centers.

We seem to readily accept that economic advantages of living in a city far outstrip the opportunities of living in the country, that the benefits of culture — museums and symphonies, for example — are unavailable to anyone who does not live where these attractions are located. There is an almost equal enthusiasm for certain benefits of urbanity, like diversity, that manifest as many, if not more drawbacks to a good life depending on how the effects of that mix manifests itself in good times and in bad. What one gains in access to a varied selection of cuisines is offset by what one must deal with when communication between diverse groups is not possible due to language or cultural differences. While the former are often cited as beneficial, the latter is never mentioned except where it can be used to shame or ridicule anyone who objects. Under social and economic stresses those features such as clannish or tribal behaviors emerge and create fractures along a number of fault lines.

In reviewing the challenges of a stressed and divided society like America in the 21st century, we must consider which behaviors and choices bear the greatest responsibility for those problems. While experts most often point the finger at those who are resistant to change, as if change itself is always beneficial and stasis is always a negative, it doesn’t mean that they are correct in their estimation. While it is difficult to prove that there is a net benefit to de-urbanization, it is very easy to prove that there are far more negatives associated with increased urbanization.

Let’s start with a few basic facts concerning the variables between the two.

According to the US Census nearly two-thirds of Americans live in an urban environment. That area represents less than one fiftieth of the inhabitable land available for habitation and when we look at the numbers, it becomes far more stark. The population of large cities with over one million inhabitants is over 7,000 per square mile, while in rural areas that figure drops to 35.

200:1 is a variable that presents quite a few challenges, most of which are environmental.

Everyone who has ever visited or seen a CAFO where livestock are kept prior to slaughter for fattening can tell you that the single most recognizable factor is the waste. In rural areas where a single family inhabits the same amount of space that would fit 150 inhabitants in a city, there is adequate drainage and soil to accommodate their waste with little or no effect on the environment. In a city there exists no spare land to accommodate any waste disposal and so virtually all excess waste must be treated at an extremely high cost with an even greater amount of material that must be relocated away from the urban source. This goes for solid wastes as well as human waste. Urbanized setting cannot dispose of their detritus without reliance on rural areas to distribute those accumulated wastes. Because of the volume produced, there is virtually little chance of any of that being dealt with organically, i.e. allowing for nature to metabolize the wastes, rather they must be buried in landfills creating huge toxic storage issues that will take centuries rather than days to dissipate.

Cities likewise are incapable of producing even a fraction of what they consume. Urban farming accounts for at best 5% of their total needs making them dependent upon their rural counterparts for 95% of their nutritional requirements. Cities, quite simply, cannot feed themselves nor dispose of their own waste while rural areas have close to zero dependence on urban enclaves for either of the two.

Rural areas of the United States of America enjoy a much higher quality of life than urbanized area by a large margin.Crime rates are three times higher in cities, while tax rates are doubled. The income necessary to maintain a standard of living in a city is 35% higher than someone living in a rural area. In terms of pure economics whatever advantage higher salaries provide to urban dwellers, it is offset by a factor of almost 3 to 1 and this is based only on six raw data points; energy, housing, food, medical care, taxes, and public services. It fails to take into account the radical differences in what urban people must spend on additional factors associated with urban dwelling, like additional security, fees, and medications (urbanites have a 40% higher incidence of anxiety and psychological issues than their rural counterparts as well as an STD rate over five times higher.

Overall the quality of life for rural inhabitants scores fifty percent higher than those who live in the city. While none of these are definitive proof that rural life is objectively better — there are people who thrive in high anxiety, isolation and close proximity to strangers at a higher cost, most human beings seem inclined to live in a peaceful setting with higher ratio of income to expenditures. Proponents of urban living will often point to areas that rural environments do not possess, such as public transportation, diversity (higher percentage of non-natives), and cultural institutions, they do not factor in the costs as opposed to their uses. For example people will tout the fact that the NYC Metropolitan Opera features a valuable resource for those who live in NYC. The truth is that with their 3,800 seat capacity and 200 performance season, less than 1 in 15 New Yorkers would ever have the chance to attend a single performance even if they wanted to, far less when you subtract season ticket holders and out of town ticket buyers. Just because a resource exists in an area does not mean that it will ever be utilized except by a small fraction of the urban population. And in no way are those from the rural regions unable to travel into the city for expressly those purposes, so such claims of urban advantage are specious at best.

It should also be noted that there are significant demographic aberrations in urban versus rural areas, especially in regards to age. Urban populations are much younger than rural ones and skewed to the advantage of younger females. Anyone who has ever made it to adulthood understands what draws young men to a specific place and that is available young females. As old courtship rights were eroded over the last century, especially in regards to the rise of feminism, and loosened standards in terms of sexual availability cities have acted as a magnet for unattached men and women. Similarly the numbers of in tact families is equally skewed with far more living in rural areas than their equal aged cohort in the city. Urban divorce rates are twice that of the country and people who live in the country are ten times as likely to live with a multi-generational extended family than in a city. In addition the number of newly arrived immigrants found in cities dwarves the number located in the countryside as well as second and third generation immigrants. To find someone who speaks the same language, shares the same values, and believes in the same principles you are far more likely to encounter them the further you move from the cities. There are few other considerations that show any of the correlating demographic idiosyncrasies than those demonstrated by the urban/rural divide.

Of course we can try to do what most economists would do in looking at this issue and most of them would point to the productivity and dollar value of each particular region. Cities, they will say, create more dollars per square foot than the rest of the country combined, but they never mention the difference between the source of those dollars. The country produces the ores that become raw materials to fulfill the demands of industry, they produce the overwhelming majority of sustenance, they produce the majority the energy that propels the engine of the economy and the vast majority of the tradesmen that build and maintain the infrastructure. Cities produce an overwhelming majority of those on various kinds of relief, government employees, attorneys and those who work in the financial service sector, none of which create anything of tangible value.One cannot survive long without nourishment but no lives are dependent on notional trading of derivatives or arcane regulations regarding tort law. Cities are the centers of specialization while the countryside is the seedbed of the generalist. Those who live in the city are five times more likely to call a plumber, electrician or tradesmen to perform basic tasks than a rural resident. The majority of all US Patents are held by someone who was born and raised in a rural environment and most of the greatest developments of the past two hundred years were the result of people reared on farms; Whitney, Deere, Bell, Edison, Ford, Browning, Eastman, Farnsworth and Howe are but a fraction of the names of those whose roots and generalist approach to life allowed them to create innovative and groundbreaking technologies, while most of what takes place in the cities is a form of refinement of those creations. Specialists have their place, especially in areas like surgery and engineering, but the origin of their fields always have their roots in the soil.

Human beings possess an innate and powerful drive towards concern for their fellow man. In the country if some sees an accident or a fire the first impulse is always to stop and render aid. It is a rare time when someone in need is ignored in a rural community. In the streets of most major cities the population has inured itself to the sight of human suffering and want. They step over the homeless, pretend they don’t notice the piles of human waste or puddles of urine, blithely stare off into space when someone exhibits signs of mental illness or emotional instability and walk away from random acts of violence. The internet is full of videos of beatdowns, assaults, meltdowns in public places, destruction of businesses, flash mobs and every other form of delinquency but only rarely do these occur in rural settings. It is the desensitized population that makes most of these acts possible despite the fact that the perpetrators are almost always far outnumbered by passerby. Their ability to compartmentalize the vast numbers of human interactions they have every day leaves them numb to their genetic predisposition towards altruism and empathy. People who lack empathy and concern for their fellow human beings cannot be expected to make decisions that would benefit anyone other than themselves. Part of the demographic slant in elections — the majority of Democratic voters live in urban areas while the majority of Republican voters live in rural areas with income, sex and age playing a distant second, third and fourth in terms of political affiliation. Interestingly enough the more dependent upon others someone is, the more likely they are to live in a city, thus the need to vote for increasing government involvement in their lives.

There are certainly more areas where the distinctions between the urban and the rural can be observed, but perhaps none more important than the disconnect between human beings and their natural environment. Human beings were adapted to live in accordance with the seasons and the environment in which they lived. The very advance of human civilization rested almost entirely upon his ability to create surplus food stores in order to survive in year round settlements. These centers became the hub of both agriculture and the domestication of animal species and from that came every conceivable advance and achievement we have ever made since then. The development of mathematics, written language, metallurgy, construction, engineering, medicine, all of them were a direct result of living in tune with the observable world of nature. Urban living divorces human populations of everything from the source of their daily nourishment to the elimination of their wastes. They turn on their lights without knowing where the source of that energy comes from, running in the rivers or buried in the coal seams of some distant wooded hillbillyville, they turn on their tap for their water unaware of its origins in the distant mountains of flyover country.

They are as dependent as babies on the material resources of the places they make fun of, incapable of feeding themselves or of cleaning up their own mess. They make more waste, use more resources, produce fewer necessities, consume more luxuries, have greater disparities between the economic classes, fewer intact families, experience far more crime and pay a higher price to adjudicate it, then ship off their offenders to prisons in the hinterlands where the rubes are hired as custodians to the human effluent of the cities. You can hear sirens 24/7 but you cannot see the stars at night. There is no such thing as silence, privacy is almost nil, personal space is reduced, self-reliance almost unknown. In most cities you do not have the right to arm yourself for defense against the criminal population that far exceeds that of the rural regions. Virtually every transaction in the city is economic with very few people doing business outside of their own very small circles. For all of their cosmopolitan posturing their social circles are 30% smaller than the average inhabitant of a town with 2,000 or fewer inhabitants. They are, in fact, the most provincial of peoples despite living in the most crowded environments.

I have lived in a multitude of places over the course of my life and have seen far more of the United States than the most seasoned travelers. I’ve lived in the center of the largest metropolis on the east coast and now choose to live in a New England village with a seasonal population that never exceeds 2,500 residents in an area twice the size of Manhattan. Our choice to live this way was predicated not upon an economic necessity, nor on an historic attachment to place, but rather as a deliberate choice based on what we wanted to best experience a better way of life. Our economic standard dropped significantly but so did our expenditures. Our physical health improved markedly, our relationships with each other and our children has been greatly enhanced, and our connection to those who live around us, friends, neighbors and the community at large has been nothing short of miraculous. Peace is plentiful, crime is not a concern, freedom to do what we want when we want to has increased and we feel like we have lost nothing in the exchange. Try as I might there are only a few things I can think of as being a loss to us; a good pizza, variety of restaurants, and the friends and family we left behind. Beyond that there is nothing I can think of worth noting and under no circumstance would we ever consider moving back.

The historians rarely concern themselves with life in the provinces, where the toil and sweat of the creator classes accumulated the surpluses that allowed cities to exist in the first place, to flourish and become the centers of civilization we think of today. Paris, Berlin, Los Angeles, Bangkok, Shanghai and Baghdad. They focus on the remnants of collapsed citadels, shrines and fortresses. Those places that served both to celebrate the accomplishments of the nations and principalities that gave birth to them, and their glory are all ruins today. As much as they were lighthouses to the young and the ambitious of each generation, so too were they the fire that drew attention from afar. Eventually the complex business of moving paper and money, of accumulating wealth and building shrines to their hubris always runs its eventual course. And as the lines of supply are cut off, either through inattention or rebellion, the dependent urban centers begin to feed on themselves, leaving them vulnerable to the predations of those who hunger for a taste of their flesh. And all that endures and comes to life amongst the derelict bones of an extinct metropolis are the sons and daughters of those who preserved their independence and traditions in the far flung country of the rural world.

Nothing lasts forever and the accelerating pace of domestic instability demonstrates just how fragile our social fabric is. As we enter the maelstrom of the Fourth Turning anything can happen. The Empire and its narrative struggle to maintain legitimacy in a time of universal corruption. All declines follow a similar path and once the collapse occurs events pick up speed leaving everyone who has failed to prepare caught unaware. The cities are the least secure location during such periods and only those who manage to find a place out of the reach of those who tear down the walls of our civilization will be safe.

Take everything into consideration, but prepare for anything. Your life may depend upon it.