Now that America is decapitated, dictators of China and Russia are battling it out.

We are witnessing the rise of China to 1st place in the world of economic powers. America is decapitated, and the battle between the dictators of China and Russia is in place.

http://moneyinc.com/10-richest-russian-billionaires/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamelaambler/2017/10/30/where-young-chinese-billionaires-are-making-their-wealth-and-spending-it/#6c0985857fb6

Russia, started far behind, but used a trojan horse to seize control of American political power: Putin seized the Congress by superfunding the NRA.  Putin's genius was well-known but the Koch's cooperation was a huge surprise.  The Kochs pointed Putin to the use of a carnival barker as a distractor. The NRA was used to place empty suits into the seats of power.  Using its own resources against itself, Government is helpless, and we are witnessing the disguised sell-off and stripping of the assets of the former American Republic. Fox News, owned by offshore foreigners, has been teaching Americans to hate their own for decades.  And Fox News owns most of the porn which dominates the internet.  Faux News is a major industry, carefully curated, targeted, and projected for maximum toxic effect.

China continued to secure its seizure of America through the cooperation of the Walton-Merce lords of the South and Mid-West, using Walmart and chains of Casinos to destroy the middle class. 

Between the dictators of Russia and China, whoever tears off the biggest pieces of America will be declared the "winner".  And the entire globe will suffer, as science, the arts and the hearts of humankind gradually fade, and drown in tears and bitterness.

In terms of sources of Power, the only remaining hope against these global powers are the remaining unaligned billionaires.  We do not know what Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft might accomplish.  We do know that few other sources of power will survive this onslaught and the dive into resource depletion, numbing depravity, crippling poverty, and unleashed tyranny.   Sadly, the unaligned billionaires are not motivated or organized.  Corporate monopolist boards are structurally incapable of responding to crisis.  

Private stock companies simply cannot move quickly to seize treasure -- like Putin's puppets and Xi Jinping's Chinese syndicate.  Feudal lords of piracy will destroy the peace and prosperity built by the great republics and the middle class.

Bubbles and Pirates

The largest economy in the world is the Global Economy. No single "country" whatever that means, or even Continent, can claim to be Number One in a vacuum.

The United States has the largest economy among political systems, and by 2007, China became the 2d largest with the highest growth rate, at 9%.

Japan, with no natural resources and half the population of the US, is in 3d place, with the world's largest banks. Remarkably, considering its location exactly between the US and China, it is still in torpor from the real estate crash of Tokyo decades ago.

India has a growth rate that matches China in many ways, but is economically and radically different. The growth is accelerated not by low-wage manufacturing, but by service industries producing well over half the GDP. Both India and China each have a Middle Class larger than either the United States or Europe.

Russia still enjoys the rich bottom lands and bread baskets of the Ukraine, but these are still locked in with transportation difficulties exposed the the predations of Pirates and the spoliation of pollution. Russia, is not, as DeTocqueville predicted, the "country of the future", but it is the great warning to the future of the damage that piracy and pollution can wreak.

The economies of the countries in the Middle East are extremely small. The Oil billionaires look down on everyone--the Bedouin shepard, other billionaires, and especially the Middle Classes, which almost do not exist. This is the curse of Oil -- it creates controllers and dependents. Dubai, with its glittering architecture, looked promising, but then it collapsed economically -- and names the world's tallest building after a neighboring billionaire.

Back to China. This year, a variety of GDP growth rates and projections have been announced. Most of the numbers are astounding, not just because the rest of the world is suffering as a result of a pirate attack on Wall Street. The Chinese Government still "controls" the announcement of the numbers. And the Government is lying. The figures coming out of China are "political". The concept of gathering the facts and reporting them is still completely "foreign".

The publication and projection of false figures will have the accelerating and inevitable effect of creating a large Bubble in the Chinese economy. Prices are increasing for everything faster than wages. As the power drive of Hong Kong continues to roll across China -- all of its cities are in capitalism's thrall-- they compete with each other to pollute the air, water, and farms.

The rulers of China are elderly and short-sighted. They are stuffing their pockets as fast as they can, and are oblivious to long-term investments or the impact of toxic waste, industrialization, and thoughtless change. The Government officials engage in a crude form of competition which consists of banqueting -- they eat and drink to excess, as a form of political demonstration and power-mongering. This is the kind of anecdotal behavior which presages disaster and reveals character, or lack of character, at the top of their society, which is the bottom.

The Bubble that was created in the coastal real estate of the United States in 2008, causing a rise in prices of homes to a level roughly two times what the members of the middle class could purchase with their dual but decreasing earner households, is now forming in China. There are other similarities -- both spouses work, few children, large "middle" class, many opportunities to make money. There are also differences -- regulations, no privatized "Treasury Department", no Wall Street gamers.

However, it should be noted that in China, the pirates are already IN power. They conquered China quickly after WWII. More recently, in Wall Street USA, the pirates had to buy the Pentagon, the Treasury, all the large newspapers, the Congress, the Presidency, and even the Courts. This took more time.

The historical fact is that Pirates and Bubbles go after each other. Pirates have a crude fascination -- its part of their man-child fantasy -- with things that burst. The Chinese bubble is growing larger, rapidly. They have, like the Russians, polluted the land and rivers of China, which once fed the most successful breeding population on the planet. The Pirates are already in charge.

Geodeterminism

It is a curse, not to forget history, but to remember it.

Geographically, the north American continent is uniquely "bountiful" in terms of resources that human culture requires. The Mississippi-Missouri delta is a many-fingered palm of waterways going all the directions you want to go in a Temperate Zone bread-basket. The mineral wealth comprehensively covers the chart of elements, wanting for nothing. The plagues of locusts in the Great Plains mysteriously disappeared with the feral Bison. Colonies of idiots and convicted felons could come to the region and thrive. Natural population expansion results in larger numbers of descendants of the emigrants in America than in many of their "home countries". More present-day Americans have German ancestry than in Germany, the largest population of Europe. The largest Norwegian country is Minnesota-Wisconsin. We could go on. The 2d largest Polish city in the world is Chicago, etc.

Nothing political in the world is going to change this unique geophysical configuration of rivers and mountains and plains in a Temperate Zone. All the rivers of Russia flow North, where you do not want to go, except for the Volga which flows into a landlocked body of water, the Caspian Sea. Africa has a mighty and a storied river, the Nile, and many fertile places which enable mankind to thrive. But it shares, with South America, a Tropical curse. It is a petri dish for disease, torpor, and excess humidity. It shares with Australia, a plague of insects that distract human culture and compete for food.

It is true that the Middle East began the most successful human cultures in its fertile crescents. However, the soils of the region are exhausted, and the subsoil is cursed with an abundance of Oil controlled by inbred clans. The Egyptians destroyed the Nile with a dam, Saddam Hussein channelized and desertified the Tigris-Euphrates delta, and beyond Israel, the soils of the Levant and much of Persia are exhausted. Israel alone has flushed the salinity and replenishes its soil. Arabia sits on the largest fresh-water aquifer in the world, but ignores it for the oil.

It is true that the sub-continent of China has long supported human needs. The Yangtze flows east-west in a Temperate Zone. The People, the most successful on the planet in terms of numbers, also have the prescience to celebrate that achievement with steps to rein in any further increase. Many observers also take notice of the decision of the Government of China to permit economic freedom, and the participation of China in globalization. However, China destroyed the fisheries of its rivers with power dams and mining, and now has 18 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world.

It is true that geophysical features alone do not exlain all risings and fallings. Japan has few resources and constant earthquaking, and yet they have projected power, doing some of the worst and some of the best things. The centrality of Italy in the Mediterranean does not explain why a minor village formed at a fjord in the Tiber River valley, a cross-roads, would become the Rome that all roads led to. Or why a sinking city in a marsh of 117 islands would survive frequent irruptions to become Venice, a major maritime power during the Middle Ages through its Settecento (17-18th century).

Steven Solomon has recently lent his beltway journalist scholarship to the pride of place historicity of Water issues, in his comprehensive work, WATER the Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization (2010). Noting that civilization itself (a mixed blessing) has been mid-wifed by agricultural irrigation, hag-ridden by scarcity, and left to collapse upon indiscretions over water, Solomon updates us all. The recurring patterns of geophysical preeminence are made visible. There is an enduring tension between two forms of political/economic organization which are themselves formed by water usage. The "hydraulic states" (Egypt, Sparta, Soviet) which focused on irrigation and canals run by centralized (authoritarian) governance, and the "sea-faring cultures" (Athens, United Kingdom) which were decidedly more difused and democratic. (We perpetually fight the Peloponnesian War.)

The key fact here is not which form of government is "better", by any measure. But WHAT sources for potable water are available?

We are, as always, facing the hydrological time bomb -- we, the beneficiaries of the immediately previous demographic bomb, enabled by the availability of exploitable Water.

Why People Hate Americans

The American People are entitled to feel aggrieved by the fact that millions of people in South America, India, Europe, Australia, Asia, and the Middle East (have I missed a continent?) now despise us. After all, most of us are simply the direct descendants of People From There.

There must be some basis for what is now almost universal hatred for Americans so extreme as to draw sympathy even for wealthy Arab syndicates and obviously pathetic "suicide bombers".

Is the hatred because "foreigners" hold The American People responsible for what the American Government does?

Foreigners of course have NO VOTE in American Elections. Apparently they have heard that The American People have this power, this "election" to choose the leaders in a Government limited by a Constitution which enfranchises the governed.

Perhaps The American People are directly responsible for the things done by those acting in their name.

In India, it was the US Government which forced Indians to buy electric power produced by a private company which dramatically raised the cost of their electricity. In Bolivia, it was the US Government which forced the residents of Cochabamba to buy water from a private company which dramatically raised the cost of their water. In Iraq, it was the US Government which took over security functions and "public utilities" and turned them over wholesale to private "American" [actually "off-shore"] companies.

The American People are paying the costs, but receive none of the credit, none of the profit, and none of the benefits. Our leaders have "privatized" the benefits at the expense of the Government.

The American People can see it domestically: In California, huge profits from selling electrical power produced at Government expense were "gamed" by private interests. Californians have been as helpless as Bolivians to do anything about it, but Californians do know it happened -- they see it every time they pay quadrupled electrical bills. Even "voting" -- throwing out Governor Davis and replacing him with Governor Schwartzenegger -- although it provided a refreshing and entertaining hope, did not change the "net" result. Off-shore private corporations -- run by executives who pocketed billions at taxpayer expense -- had already executed their planned "privatized" piracy.

However, it is hard for The American People to appreciate it when the same piracy happens in other parts of the world. And their own culpability is completely invisible to them -- the pressure which the US Government puts on other governments through its ministers and ambassadors on behalf of Enron, Haliburton, and "private" companies, is virtually invisible. The American People do not realize that foreigners hold the Voting Citizen responsible for the Government which plays such a major "influence" in the rest of the world.

The hatred will only increase. It will be the hatred of the increasingly disenfranchised. The hatred of people who are being taken advantage of. If a pirate jumps your ship and plunders your best stuff, and then uses it to buy things, you do not "envy" his possessions -- you believe deep down inside that what he stole remains your own.

Piracy is not a form of trade or an activity which should be encouraged. Taking over Government functions may enable a pirate to shift expenses and extract risk-free benefits, but this extraction is not the "profit" of a business. It is theft.

People hate Americans today, like never before. Why?