Don't be roadkill

 

It's long been a staple illustration of nuclear fission to show what happens when a lot of mousetraps are set up with ping-pong balls on top of them, and then another ball is dropped into the midst of them.  That sets off one or two mousetraps, and the balls they fling set off several more, and before you know it there are snapping mousetraps and ping-pong balls flying all over the place.  Here's one of the original demonstration videos, this one from Harvard University.

And, if bigger is better (a questionable assumption), here's one much larger.

Fun to watch, weren't they?

Now . . . let's assume that instead of individual atoms, or components of atoms, those ping-pong balls and mousetraps represent individual nations, and the chain reaction unleashed represents what happens to order and stability in the world we live in when the bonds of law and order and civilized society are broken.

That's rather more frightening, isn't it?  And yet, it's not at all a bad analogy to what we're seeing right now, all over the world.  Yesterday I asked why the mainstream media were observing a "deafening silence" about the growing global unrest.  Their careful and obviously coordinated failure to mention what's going on is leaving most people in ignorance of the very real danger of a collapse of global order in the not too distant future.  The Federalist offers an explanation.

Aside from a scant headline here and there, America’s most popular news providers, The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, and NBC, did not cover these protests ... The corporate press oftentimes only highlights these economic protests when they get so loud they can no longer be ignored, as we saw with Kazakhstan’s kill order to quell protests and the Sri Lankans’ attack on their president’s home ... Corporate media won’t talk about the rest of these protests because the countries are struggling from economically disastrous policies akin to President Joe Biden’s. Any show of economic turmoil in EU member states could be traced back to EU sanctions on Russia or green energy failures, which would fly in the face of the corporate media’s agenda. Many of these countries have inflationary monetary policies.

. . .

The media only highlight these world protests when they grow too big to ignore or when the facts can be skewed toward their preferring narratives. Cherry-picking which protests to highlight gives media cover to paint them as isolated incidents in non-Western countries instead of a worldwide trend showing the consequences of embracing left-wing policies. After all, Biden is making the same blunders in the United States, and corporate media can’t have Americans connecting those dots.

. . .

Discontent with these policy failures is triggering massive protests all over the world. Just don’t expect to read all about it in the New York Times.

There's more at the link.

This dangerous lack of coverage means that many Americans have no idea how bad things are getting, or how dangerous the geopolitical situation is becoming.  Even one country can provoke unrest and disorder in half a dozen others, given the right (or wrong) circumstances.  Don't believe me?  Consider Pakistan.

Sri Lanka’s collapse worries the region, but Pakistan’s collapse should worry the world. For decades, state failure in Pakistan has been a nightmare scenario. Both Pakistan and the broader world have had a taste of that scenario as violence, extremism, and poverty engulf the former capital and commercial hub of Karachi and as Pakistani authorities lose control over many regions alongside the Afghanistan border. The United States, India, and Iran are right to worry about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, as military officers also begin to struggle to get by. Pakistani elite live in a state of denial believing that the status quo in which they live an affluent life insulated from broader society is permanent. It is not. The bubble is collapsing, and the result will not be pretty.

Again, more at the link.

Oh - and about Pakistan's nuclear weapons?  Ask yourself:  "What Happens When The Taliban Gets Ahold Of Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal?"  It's a nightmare scenario, but it's far from a remote possibility.  It may happen a lot sooner than any of us want to consider.  What would it do to global stability to have a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organization in control of dozens, or scores, or even hundreds of nuclear weapons, including the aircraft, missiles and other systems needed to deliver them to their targets?

Remember - that's just one country.  How many other countries are also in turmoil, to a greater or lesser extent?  Let's ask the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  It provides what it calls the "Global Protest Tracker".  Here's a snapshot of that Tracker as of July 5th this year.  Click either image for a larger view.

Does that seem like a nice, peaceful, well-balanced world to you?  It sure doesn't to me.

Now, examine the situation with the governments of so many of those countries.  South America is a good example.  I'm obliged to a friend, Connie, for reminding me about the São Paulo Forum, "a conference of leftist political parties and other organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean".  Wikipedia reports:

According to FSP, more than 100 parties and political organizations participate in its conferences today. Their political positions vary across a wide spectrum, which includes: social-democratic parties, left-wing grass-roots labor and social movements inspired by the Catholic Church, ethnic and environmentalist groups, anti-imperialist and nationalist organizations, communist parties, and armed guerrilla forces.

. . .

These groups differ on a range of topics which go from the use of armed force in revolutions to the support of representative democracy. The Communist Party of Cuba, for example, has adopted a single-party system for decades, while Brazil's Workers' Party (PT) supports and participates in a multiparty system. These differences grant special relevance to FSP's final declarations, released at the end of each conference, which state the collective position of its members.

Ever since FSP's first meeting (1990), the Declaration which was approved expressed the participants' "willingness to renew leftist and socialist thought, to reaffirm its emancipating character, to correct mistaken conceptions, and to overcome all expressions of bureaucratism and all absence of true social and massive democracy."

. . .

In September 2021, the Democratic Socialists of America applied for membership.

More at the link. 

From the same article, consider this map of South American nations that are currently ruled by political parties and organizations that are members of the São Paulo Forum.  Red indicates a SPF-governed state;  blue does not.  Clickit to biggit.

Correlate that map with the protest map (above) from the Carnegie Endowment.  The maps speak volumes, don't they?  If you correlate countries in the rest of the world that are experiencing the worst unrest right now, with the politicians and parties in power in those countries, you'll find a similar situation.  You'll also find that those governments are among the biggest supporters of the World Economic Forum's "Build Back Better" initiative, and most in lockstep with its economic plans and objectives.  I doubt very much whether that's a coincidence.

You can apply a similar analogy to the situation in the United States.  Where do we find the greatest concentration of poverty, homelessness, crime, violence, political unrest, and instability?  The answer is easy to see - in the so-called "blue states" and "blue cities", all of which are governed by leftists of one stripe or another.  We see the same thing in our national government, where the Biden administration, dominated by leftists and socialists and progressives, is rapidly bankrupting our economy and driving our nation to the brink of collapse.  If you look at the so-called "red states", you see many of the same problems (often imposed from national level or affected by them), but they're seldom as bad as you'll find elsewhere.  There's a lot more common sense at work.

There's also the reality that factors in one country can trigger national collapse in another as easily as inept governments and politicians.  For example:

• What happens if Germany can't secure an adequate supply of natural gas to replace its Russian suppliers, and get through the coming winter?  The answer is simple.  Germany's economy will founder, and probably take with it the national government.  I'll let Peter Zeihan outline some of the issues there.

• What happens if the European Union buys up all available natural gas, thereby starving other countries of the supplies they need?  Gas prices there have already risen by something like 700% (so that, here in the USA, our gas suppliers are exporting everything they can to Europe to take advantage of the higher prices there, even if it means short-changing US customers).
• What happens if the Chinese economy is destabilized by the current mortgage boycott, driving the housing sector into the doldrums?  It's a huge part of that country's economic activity, much more so than in most First World nations.  Its collapse might drain the market of all available credit - thus leaving little or nothing for other industries and exporters, and hurting countries (including the USA) that are dependent on their products.
• And, to cap all of these risks . . . what happens when (not if) the global famine gets worse?  It will, you know.  Every single world leader commenting on the situation acknowledges that.  If people can't eat, they'll have a lot more anger and frustration to take out on their governments, and their nations' economies may not survive the resulting breakdown in law and order.  (See Sri Lanka over the past few weeks.  See Panama right now.)

What this all boils down to is that, all over the world, we have very dangerous instability at present.  Think of all the nations of the world as mousetraps topped with ping-pong balls, waiting to be set off.  Right now, according to the Carnegie Foundation, "11 countries are currently seeing protests of more than 1,000 people in response to the rising cost of living and other economic woes in 2022".  I suggest that's a very conservative estimate indeed.  Consider that right now, in Western Europe, we're seeing demonstrations that are severe enough to be classified as active uprisings against agricultural policies in Holland, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland.  That's five nations on one continent.  I'm willing to bet there are a lot more than six others around the world, making Carnegie's total of 11 look rather out-of-date.  (Just look at what's happening in Panama right now, not far from our southern border - and note that Panama is ruled by a SPF-aligned government.)

If things get out of hand in one or more of those states . . . where will its/their ping-pong ball(s) land?  And how many other states will be affected when it/they does/do?

Friends, we're living in a terribly dangerous, very unsettled world right now.  There's no way any of us can predict the future, except to be sure that it won't be anything like as stable or secure as in the past.  The only defense we have is to keep our eyes and ears open, see what's happening locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, and try to understand how developments there might affect us in our homes, jobs and families.  It's part of general preparedness.  If you see the car driving straight at you, you may have time to avoid it by getting out of its way.  If you don't see it . . . if you don't realize it's a threat until it's too late . . . you're roadkill.

Don't be roadkill.

Peter