Globalization....on the skids 1874

I'm not trying to sort out media reports. I've been to a demonstration, and then seen how the TV media misrepresented what went on. Given the political ramifications, I dont see anyway to sort out the numbers used to attract investment, justify taxes and war, or whatever.

But archeology, Machiavelli, Gibbon, et al, provide a longer perspective that sees above the spin from the various demagogues trying to sell one party or program or other. Whether bread & circuses, or beer & football, the sheeple have no f***ing clue as to what is going on, and wont wake up until the show is over and the beer trucks are out of diesel.

The legions formerly imported slaves to keep the empire going, and now they import oil, but in both cases, supplies are getting harder to get at. And if the military forces of the Untied States of Denial will not organize the exploitation of resources to keep the global economy going, then who will? As Machiavelli said, "The only time the Italians had any peace, was when the French king threatened to invade." The Arabs are at each other's throats already trying to control access to oil, and the US has not even left yet.

We've seen this before, how the Silk Road ran a system of city states in a free market economy among the various routes for millennia, and how the whole business was shut down by the hegemony of Islam and the corruption and greed it imposed eliminating profits for the merchants.

This certainly is an object lesson to be careful of what you wish for, in that the hegemony so drove up prices in Europe that ships were sailed *around* the Islamic world to China and the Spice Islands, and thereby led to the domination of the rest of the planet by Native Europeans.

The hegemony of Islam drove the merchant ancestors of the Ashkenazic Jews west into the free market timber frame Viking cities of Russian and eventually Europe. And now, their descendants are back, having founded the state of Israel, and using it as a base to nibble away at remaining pieces of Islamic hegemony. It remains to be seen whether Islam can pull together and throw the Aryans out so it can control the flow of oil; but if so, I'd expect their instinctive greed will again destroy the global economy that wont be able to afford the prices Islam sets.

After all, they are zealots who study the Koran, not double entry bookkeeping. But even without that, if you take accounting, economics, and statistics in college like I did, you can see that the numbers posted by WSJ or Bloomberg just dont add up. Globalization could well be on the skids, but the media would well be in denial, knowing their own jobs (paid for by advertising revenue) are at risk. I know the numbers I have to work with are not sufficient, but I dunno where to get the numbers that really count.