Higgenbotham wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 8:27 pm
As western political disintegration continues,
immigrants will arrive in increasing numbers, and
will exploit very well the opportunities that are on
offer. The ageing of western populations creates a
continuing need for new arrivals to support the
growing number of pensioners. While indigenous
populations waste their lives on the dole, these
latter-day barbarians (a term that should not be
regarded as pejorative) will be building their power
and influence as they infiltrate every corner of the
west’s civic life. The latest arrivals will be the least
easily assimilated and the most cynical in their
exploitation of what the west has to offer.
Today’s peaceful invasion of economic
migrants will prepare the ground for their kinfolk
back in the homeland. When the west has become
terminally feeble and defenceless, the only citizens
who retain any vigour and sense of purpose will be
those who have no allegiance to anything it stands
for. Yet the western countries will still be laden
with riches. This combination seems bound to be
irresistible. The final days of the present world
order are very likely to be marked by mass
movements of people out of the impoverished
lands. They will come from Africa to Spain, Italy
and Greece, thence northward; from the middle
east, across eastern Europe and perhaps Russia, to
Germany; from Mexico and across the Caribbean
from Brazil into North America. Moreover, these
people will not come peacefully. They will have
consulted no immigration official. They will bring
no passports. They will not be coming to work.
They will be seeking booty, and revenge for half a
millennium of humiliation.
The western nations have spread an enormous
amount of bad blood around the world in the
present era, interfering everywhere and imposing
their values with a degree of insensitivity that
future historians will truly wonder at. The dark age
may see the opportunity for old scores to be settled
and to be paid back not once but three times over,
as centuries of resentment are relieved in a few
intense years. When the plunderers arrive, they will
head first for the big cities, where the pickings are
richest and thickest on the ground. They will be
looking for everything from petrol to slaves and
precious metals.
Unplanned migration is already a problem in
the west. The number of people seeking political
asylum has increased dramatically in the last few
years. Between a third and a half have their
applications refused, but in Britain that still means
thousands being admitted every year.2890 In an
increasingly disordered world, one might expect
that the proportion of admissions should rise, since
claims of fleeing oppression will seem increasingly
just. Besides which, large numbers of asylum
seekers lose patience with the bureaucratic process
and go underground as illegal immigrants. In
Britain, at least 60,000 have thus evaded the
authorities in the past decade. Smuggling third
worlders into the rich countries is now a multi-
billion dollar criminal business.2891 Fishing vessels
carry them across the Mediterranean and truckers
speed them overland.2892 Bangladeshis, Iraqis and
Indians were recently found to be riding in to
Britain on freight trains going through the Channel
tunnel.2893 New laws, tougher rules and more
vigilant border controls may slow this tide, but they
will not halt it. The would-be immigrants are
extraordinarily determined. Five Ukrainian men
were recently intercepted trying to row across the
English Channel in a child’s inflatable dinghy.2894
Today, third worlders come surreptitiously
rather than bearing down on the rich countries in
their hordes because they perceive that the latter,
who not so long ago directly ruled the third world,
are well able to defend themselves. Today, they are
probably correct. However, with every decade, the
reality is changing and so eventually will the
perception. In Sierra Leone’s recent civil war,
teenage soldiers, both girls and boys, were required
to eat the organs and drink the blood of their
victims as a military initiation rite.2895 By contrast,
trainees at Britain’s school of naval gunnery were
being asked to shout ‘bang’ rather than fire real
ammunition, in a bid to contain costs.2896 It is
increasingly doubtful whether these western
youths, whose only taste of violence is in computer
games, will really be any match for the blood-
drinking, machete-wielding Africans in a serious,
face-to-face fight.
The Sierra Leone teenagers conduct military
actions that they call Operation No Living Thing
and Operation Pay Yourself (i.e. looting). How
long can it be before they start bringing these
‘operations’ to feebler and far more lucrative
Europe? Although they are seldom in western
thoughts, today’s underprivileged peoples are well-
informed of the richness of northern lands, of the
vulnerabilities of those lands, and of the existence
of others dissatisfied like themselves. They are
fully engaged in the world and they show an astute
understanding of how to operate within it. Ugandan
conmen posing as underprivileged schoolchildren
were recently found to be raking it in with begging
letters sent to prominent Britons.2897 Other scams
have originated in Nigeria. In 1999, refugees in
Tanzania were rioting because fleeing Kosovans
seemed to be receiving better rations than they
were.2898 Clearly these people know exactly what is
going on elsewhere – and they are not happy about
it.
In August 1998, Moroccan and Tunisian
asylum seekers who were being held on the Italian
island of Lampedusa destroyed their detention
centre in a night-long orgy of violence. For fifteen
days they had watched through barbed wire fencing
as western tourists sunned themselves on a nearby
beach, laughing and joking, enjoying good food
and copious quantities of wine and beer. Eventually
they could take no more and, with temperatures
touching 40 degrees, erupted in a spasm of riot and
arson.2899 This is a microcosm and a warning of
what the future holds in a world where large
numbers of hungry, brutalised, third world youths
are daily being televised the image of fat, spoilt
white people living it up at a party from which they
have been thoroughly excluded. The west’s present
insouciance may be thought breathtaking.
The neo-barbarian invaders of 2050 will leave
little clear record of their activity, for they will
destroy as they go. Future archaeologists will have
to guess at the horrors that might have occurred.
They will have to judge from the rubble, the signs
of burning, the apparent changes in racial mix of
local populations, and the abrupt silencing of a
once articulate and exuberant civilisation.
The Phoenix Principle and the Coming Dark Age by Marc Widdowson, 2001
Having opened the door to this one, I'll start here.
"The western nations have spread an enormous
amount of bad blood around the world in the
present era, interfering everywhere and imposing
their values with a degree of insensitivity that
future historians will truly wonder at. The dark age
may see the opportunity for old scores to be settled
and to be paid back not once but three times over,
as centuries of resentment are relieved in a few
intense years."
This might be true, but it won't be the main event. More bad blood has been spread internally and with a degree of insensitivity that people wonder at right now, forget the historians. There will be plenty of opportunities and desire for revenge as a result of wrongs committed internally. While the periphery has broken down slowly, the capital cities will erupt in violence when the transfer payments or the payments systems, or both, come to a halt, maybe even before. It will be Rodney King and George Floyd but a thousand times more intense and it will go on as long as it needs to in order to satisfy. When the riots in Watts occurred in the 1960s a reporter asked a rioter when it would be over. The rioter replied, "It will be over when I say it's over!" Since the 1960s the disaffected groups go far beyond those who were disaffected at that time.
Why anybody from hundreds or thousands of miles away would want to join the fray or walk through the smoldering ruins is beyond me. To loot an empty Target or Wal-Mart?
Higgenbotham wrote: ↑Sat Mar 25, 2023 2:56 pm
Once the financial collapse occurs, getting to the United States will become difficult due to lack of fuel and transportation infrastructure. Also, the second and third world megacities like Mexico City and Lagos, Nigeria (I'm bringing that one up because it's been discussed previously) will likely fare worse than the major US cities in terms of population loss. I would expect war bands from Mexico, perhaps numbering in the tens of thousands under the leadership of war lords, to cross the US border on foot looking for revenge and loot, and to reclaim territory. They may get as far as Kansas before being devastated by the Winter weather.
This will be a side show, not the main event.
Higgenbotham wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 9:00 pm
The 6 excerpts from Marc Widdowson's book The Phoenix Principle and the Coming Dark Age, in the order posted, discuss these topics:
Characteristics of Economic Descent
World Economic Order and Whether the Dark Age will be Global
Neo-Barbarian Invaders will Destroy the West
Fragmented Spirituality of the Descent will Leave People Wanting
Giant Firms will Fail and there will be an Informal Economy
When the Descent Culminates in Collapse, Every Remaining Nuclear Warhead may be Exploded
Before discussing these excerpts individually, the crux of the matter in my opinion is how severe the financial crisis will be and whether the financial crisis by itself will either cause governments to fail or a large number of deaths. Historically speaking, that's not the case. Let's summarize what is different this time, looking at what may be most important immediately after the worldwide financial system seizes up:
1. Critical components are only manufactured in a small number of often vulnerable locations in the world.
2. Manufacturing of components requires as many as thousands of inputs sourced from all over the world.
3. Farms are typically thousands of acres and use hard to repair equipment that requires high tech electronic components.
4. Populations are dependent on high tech water and wastewater treatment.
5. Big box and large virtual stores dominate retail.
6. Populations are higher and more concentrated in urban areas.
7. Populations are dependent on transfer payments.
We've had 2 minor test runs - the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 covid panic. Both were partial financial seizures.
Details of number 7 discussed on previous pages.
Also, there are the posts discussing the fact that social capital is spent, except in the Midwest.
While the periphery breaks down rather slowly at first, the capital cities of the hegemon should collapse suddenly and violently.