Category: Politics

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Posted on 27th November 202327th October 2023 by jonathanstephanharryriley — Leave a comment

Why the West is in Perpetual Crisis

Western nations are predominantly nations that are part of the European Union, North America, and other nations linked to liberal democracies and Western European cultures, particularly what constitutes Europe politically and culturally is much larger than Europe itself.

West has been moving in perpetual crisis since the 2008 financial crash due to political leadership and even the general public not being willing to use power in the geopolitical sense due to four main reasons:

· The legacy of colonialism

· Unfounded belief that the West is evil in the United States is an evil empire and finally

· Society and political leaders not accepting the true nature of international politics and geopolitics

· Europe has been in a state of war since the fall of the Western Rome Empire in 476AD

According to Konstantin Kisin, a British and Russian author, writer, and podcaster, it is the application and use of power to serve your citizens.

The United States, the world’s greatest superpower, consumes five times as many resources as any other nation and people on this planet.

This success is caused by the protection and economic security created by the United States post-World War II world order, which has led to prosperity throughout the West until today.

French Empire in Africa: Why the West is in Perpetual Crisis

The Legacy of Colonialism

European nations from the late 15th century until the collapse of the old colonial powers, Spain and Portugal, in the early 19th century and the withdrawal of French and British from their old colonial territories in the mid-20th century.

The British Empire officially disbanded with the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, marking the end of Britain as an empire.

With the European nation’s colonial legacy, there is a robust, ingrained reluctance to interfere in African countries outright to interfere in other nations’ politics, the very least directly.

However, it must be stated the political situation is more complicated. For instance, the French have held a quasi-empire in northern Africa due to influencing government with them using the currency African franc, the French language as a common language and the recent coup d’états in Niger in 2023, marking the end of French influence in that region.

The French, British, German and others are reluctant to handle the European migrant crisis, which has been an ongoing crisis since 2013 due to the Arab Spring from 2010 to 2019, and this year, a net inflow of migrants is at least 1,200,000 people.

There is a misplaced view within European leadership, particularly in Germany, which is responsible for two world wars and the deaths of nearly a hundred million people, including 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, that they need to atone for their sins, and this is why Germany opened its borders to migrants.

Under the leadership of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in 2015, the nation had 1 million migrants, and as of 2022, that figure is now 2.7 million, though this data may not be accurate.

America War of Independence: Why the West is in Perpetual Crisis

The Evil Empire

There is a view pushed by the enemies of democracy, freedom, and the American world system created after the Second World War that the United States is a force for evil in this world.

Furthermore, this viewpoint is being driven by the world becoming geopolitically multipolar.

What this means in politics and international relations terms is that the world is now becoming home to more than one superpower. In practical terms, it is more likely to be regional powers, with each region having one or more great powers dominating the politics within their areas.

This is driven by two factors: the industrialisation and prosperity that the United States created, which enabled nations who did not have access to resources to have the security of global oceans, which enabled free trade and for countries to begin industrialisation and specialisation.

Two great examples of specialisation are the Republic of Taiwan, which creates 90% of global semiconductor chips and the British, which is still the global leader in financial services.

What globalisation did was turn the world into one giant marketplace for goods and services, as well as affordable, which is why poor villages in Africa or People living in the Gaza Strip living in poverty have access to smartphones.

Nations don’t just fight wars with guns and rockets; they fight with war using culture, pushing forward their narrative, rightly or wrongly, that they should influence their regions, such as the Russians, Chinese, Iranians and India, to a lesser extent wanting to be out of the influence of the American system.

What these nations want is to be free of American influence, be free of Western influence and pursue geopolitical policies which they believe rightly or wrongly will be better off without being influenced by the United States of America.

Four people reading this who are curious about what an international world would look like if the United States dismantled its navy and permanently withdrew from geopolitics would see a world reminiscent of the 19th century.

For Europe, due to its declining geographical region, the dominant powers would be the French and English.

In the Far East, it would be China, India and Japan, though to a lesser extent for that nation due to its demographic decline and having more adults in diapers than newborn babies.

As for Africa, my money would be on Nigeria and South Africa. As for North America, that would still be the United States, a continental nation like India and China, and they will most likely have a powerful position in the world.

The Middle East would have to be Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel to a lesser extent because Turkey and Israel are most likely to make arrangements to carve up their interests in the region. However, Turkey and Greece may go to war over influence in the Aegean Sea.

Justin Trudeau: Why the West is in Perpetual Crisis

Western Liberalism

In 2017, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared Canada the first postnational state; this means he does not see a landmass that any people living there have a claim to that land or that national identity is a genuine belief.

What we consider nationhood was created in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789 because the People in France who identified as French were mainly the intelligentsia and people living in cities, so around just 20% of the population.

Therefore, to create unity in the new French Republic and later under the first French Empire was to create a nation-state with one particular ethnic group or people’s belief in similar ideologies, speaking the same languages and believing their nation and its history special.

Nation-states were created and became the predominant method of ruling a land mass area dominated by one or similar ethnic groups due to this being the most straightforward method to govern nations.

With empires typically made of multiple ethnic groups, one ethnic group ruling a nation-state is far easier to manage.

The reason this attitude of not identifying with a nation’s history is making the West have a perpetual crisis is that if you do not believe in your nation, believe in its own right to exist, or believe in its identity, then no political leader or even its people will fight to protect it.

Using the analogy used by the historians David Starkey and Edward Gibbon, the Roman Empire did not fall to armies or farming, but due to its people no longer caring if it existed or if it was destroyed, it did not fall in a cataclysm instead died in a whimper because the Roman people no longer cared.

Suppose the Western people no longer care about their cultural legacy and are unwilling to share their national story with its history and culture. In that case, that too will fall into perpetual crisis, just like what happened to the Roman Empire.

Rome Empire Map: Why the West is in Perpetual Crisis

The End of the Roman Empire

Watson Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476 A.D. From then until 1945, Europe was in a state of perpetual wars either internally or externally with its neighbours with kingdoms fighting for dominance, which lasted 1469 years or just short of 1 ½ millennium.

These wars and people reading this who are of European descent either by culture or by genetics, our grandfathers or even parents lived through two world wars in the 20th century, and they are the descendants of multiple wars stretching back to the fall of the Roman Empire.

This legacy of violence and destruction has traumatised Western European and Western psyches both emotionally and politically, with nations that are part of the West no longer interested in engaging in international politics and geopolitics the way they used before 1945.

The reason why this is leading the West into perpetual crisis is that, collectively, in our national memories, we have had enough of war and violence and are no longer willing to make decisions for our security that have instead outsourced to the United States of America that doesn’t have over millennia worth of trauma to deal with.

However, it must be highlighted that the United States has had enough of foreign wars and conflicts with American presidents since 1992, with the election of Bill Clinton having become increasingly isolationist and reactive, not proactive to a perpetual crisis.

Posted on 25th November 202315th June 2023 by jonathanstephanharryriley — Leave a comment

Russian Demographics and Ukraine War

Russian Federation and Russia historically have been a kingdom, Empire and nation that is easy to invade but very hard to defend against the Mongols; the first French Empire and Nazi Germany found this out for themselves and a host of other nations that invaded or have had wars against Russia.

Russia has flatlands perfect for Mongol hordes and organised armies and tank divisions.

Russia has shown that it can defend itself if it controls the invasion points into Russia by controlling the Carpathian Mountains last time the Russians had this control and security was during the Cold War from 1945 into the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Russians could only have security by having control of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, including parts of Finland which Russia won during the Finnish-Soviet War of 1939 to 1940, more commonly known as the Winter War.

This war also guaranteed that Finland would not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the alliance network created by the United States of America to fight Russia.

These geographical areas are essential to Russia because other power must do more than send tanks through these buffer zones. The territory is outside of natural defences, flatlands, and enough native infrastructure and space to ensure the war happens outside Russia’s borders.

Russia’s defence planning mainly involves plugging the invasion gaps with soldiers and fighting along defensive lines. Russians fight their wars by rail, not by roads, due to massive infrastructure projects not being practical due to the natural Russian geography.

destroyed residential building in ukraine Ukraine War — Photo by Yevhen Sukhenko on Pexels.com

Geopolitics

It is hard for Westerners and people growing up in a liberal, multicultural and democratic society and worldview to understand the motivations for Russian leaders wishing to conquer and hold vast sway of territory.

It’s not only alien but an antithesis to Western values since 1945.

What needs to be understood is that the Russian leadership and peoples come from entirely different historical and cultural backgrounds. Russians are not just Europeans; they are so Asians.

The Russians are Europeans who meet the Mongol hordes and see what has been created in contemporary Russia due to Western and Eastern cultural influences.

Russia is not a liberal society; it does not favour a liberal worldview that has been hard-won and thought for in the West, where the individual is just as important as the collective.

This is why the Russians can afford to take losses of 5 to 1 or 10 to 1, and Western liberal nations can not afford those kinds of losses because the West favours individuality over collectivism is one of the significant differences between Western civilisations and other civilisations.

There is also the Russian view of international politics when it is the survival of the fittest, where nations rise and fall in their abilities to protect their soil and compete to be the global or regional hegemony.

History before 1945 was when nations thought nations were in an independent self-help system described by international relations scholars like John Mearsheimer, author of, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, and the system where nations fight for survival.

Mearsheimer uses the example of Otto von Bismarck and their policy of destroying the Poles to prevent the recreation of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, which would threaten Germany and the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, respectively.

The reason why this was such a threat to Germany was that in the 19^th century, Germany was surrounded by enemies to the West in the forms of the Second French Empire, the East by the Russian Empire, to the south by the Austrian Hungarian Empire and to the north the decaying Scandinavian powers of Denmark and Sweden.

As for the North Sea, this was the territory of the British Empire, the largest empire the world had ever seen, dominating international trade in the 19^th century.

So like Russia and its actions in the Ukraine war and Germany in the 19^th and early 20^th century, these nations perceive themselves as being surrounded by enemies and aggressors who would see their destruction if given a chance but keep in mind their point of view.

They are not protected by natural defences like Great Britain and the United States of America; they are islands onto themselves. Geography plays a massive part in political decisions, what Tim Marshall, a journalist and author, ‘prisoners of geography’.

devastated bus stop in town after bomb explosion Ukraine War — Photo by Алесь Усцінаў on Pexels.com

Russia Re-establishing Control of Invasion Gaps

Russia, since the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, has been trying to regain invasion gaps into Russia since 1992 with the occupation Transnistria region of Moldova.

In 1991 Moldova declared independence from the Soviet Union; shortly after this event, the ethnically identifying region Transnistria situated on the east bank of the Dniester River, unilaterally declared independence with the backing of Russia.

The declaration triggered armed conflicts in the region, ending in a ceasefire on July 22 1992. Transnistria is a largely Russian-speaking population and has remained unofficially part of the Russian Federation since 1992, with Russian soldiers stationed in Transnistria.

Transnistria is home to Russia’s largest arms arsenal from the Second World War.

For people reading this who are fans of history, the collapse of the Soviet Union is very much reminiscent of the partition of the German Empire at the end of World War I in 1918, the Empire was broken up, and independent states like Poland were created.

Unfortunately, the divisions and new states created after World War I caused greater divisions and hatred that contributed to Second World War because ethnic Germans not living within the much reduced German Republic/Weimar Republic in 1918 and 1933 gave Nazi Germany a cause bill to expand its territories.

The World after the Cold War did not effectively deal with the remnants of the Soviet Union and Russia after a Cold War spanning from 1945 until 1989; like the Second World War, the origins of the Ukraine War can be found in the aftermath of the Cold War.

The Allied nations defeated the Russians, like Imperial Germany, after 1918.

However, due to the Russian use and availability of nuclear weaponry, that state could ne be defeated, which, like the First World War, led to the Second World War from 1939 to 1945, the Russians were able to rearm and rebuild their economy to be a recurring threat to the West.

‘Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much’-Oscar Wilde, an Irish poet and playwright.

Russians have repeated this process of occupying territory to fill invasion gaps in Russia, the examples above Transnistria region and during the Georgian Civil War 1992 to 1993. On October 20, around 2,000 Russian troops moved to protect Georgian railroads.

On October 22, 1993, the government forces launched an offensive against pro-Gamsakhurdia rebels led by Colonel Loti Kobalia and, with the help of the Russian military, occupied most of Samegrelo province.

Again in 2008, Russians on the pretext of protecting Russians after Georgia deported four suspected Russian spies in 2006.

Russia began a full-scale diplomatic and economic war against Georgia, followed by the persecution of ethnic Georgians living in Russia.

By 2008, most residents of South Ossetia had obtained Russian passports.

Like the Ukraine War, the Russian Federation created puppet republics since the 2008 war and subsequent Russian military occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Russian government, along with four other UN member states, considers the territories sovereign independent states: the Republic of Abkhazia and the Republic of South Ossetia.

entrance to residential building devastated by explosion Ukraine War — Photo by Алесь Усцінаў on Pexels.com

Russian Demographics

The Russian Federation, People’s Republic of China, South Korea and Japan have some of the world’s worst demographics with Ukraine due to the Ukraine war since 2014 has entered the club of nations with decaying demographics.

This means that nations that do not have replacement generations face the extinction of their cultures and economies because devout people who invest and work in the economy cultures and then nations would fade from human history.

Massive gouges are out of the Russian demographics due to the trauma of the previous century, with World War II killing 22 and 27 million Russians.

The great famine of 1930 to 1933 killed 7 to 8 million Russians and 4 to 5 million Ukrainians.

One of the most significant demographic crunchers in Russian people was the missed decade of the 1990s, were death rates doubled and birth rates halved.

What has been happening recently due to the war in Ukraine is that 1.3 million Russians a 35 and below fled the Russian Federation.

This happened due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and to fear of being drafted into fighting as part of the Russian war machine in the classic throw bodies at the problem until it goes away strategy of Russian warfare.

silhouette photo of a mother carrying her baby at beach during golden hour Ukraine War — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Sources and Bibliography

Atlantic Council The 2008 Russo-Georgian War: Putin’s green light link

Wikipedia Russo-Georgian War link

United States Holocaust Memorial THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC link

TRT World What is the Russian army doing in Transnistria? link

Prisoners of Geography: Read this now to understand the geopolitical context behind Putin’s Russia and the Ukraine crisis: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall link

Zeihan on Geopolitics Ask Peter Zeihan: Will Putin “Disappear” and Updates on Russian Demographics? link

Social Media and Other Links

LinkedIn Link https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-riley-b463881b4/

YouTube Link https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCChWzkJjCwD37gmvugB9a_g/featured

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1DXGH7dTHgYE49sdmfv1C8

My Amazon author page https://www.amazon.com/author/jonathan1997

My Medium link jonathanrileywriter.medium.com

Donate To Ukraine Links

United24 link

Come Back Alive link

Nova Ukraine link

Razom link

The $1K Project for Ukraine link

Hospitallers link

Posted on 24th November 202326th October 2023 by jonathanstephanharryriley — Leave a comment

Economic Trends: China’s Crumbling Economy

China’s crumbling economy originated in the 1980s when China was opening up its economy to the rest of the world by creating special economic zones and implementing the one-child policy, which crippled China’s birthrate with social engineering.

The Chinese did this due to the communist philosophy, which enabled the state to interfere in individual’s lives due to the belief that the collective comes before the individual.

One of the critical battles during the Cold War from 1945 to 1989 was the battle between collectivism and liberal and economic capitalism, which saw the individual succeed but with the collective state-managed controlled economy stagnate and ultimately fail.

The Chinese political leadership chose to charter a third way, not communism with Chinese characteristics but capitalism with Chinese features, due to the underpinning ideology behind the Chinese Communist Party, which has been proven to be the wrong way to manage a nation.

That is why the Chinese Communist Party only maintained its legitimacy for its economic success, not through ideological frameworks of capitalism versus communism, due to China being a market-driven, not a state-driven economy, since the 1980s.

Xi Jinping: Economic Trends and China’s Crumbling Economy

CCP’s Decision-making

At the end of the Second World War, the global population was 2.3 billion; by 1980, it was over 4.4 billion people. This marked a doubling of the worldwide population, with the baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964.

This led to growing fears in the economic and academic community that humanity would experience global famines and mass starvation, which was prevented due to the creation of genetically engineered crops and improved technologies.

The Chinese Communist Party had the information in the 1960s and 1970s that they were heading towards mass famine and that the globe was not built to support a global population of over 7 billion, with the world’s current population at over 8 billion.

They were also heavily influenced by a view of eugenics and communist ideology but from the viewpoint of state intervention in people’s lives to stop China from starving to death.

These fears were ultimately unfounded and were essential to understand throughout the 1950s and 1970s; there were mass fears of global famine and global cooling, which were the global warming climate change fears of the 1970s.

Deng Xiaoping

In the early 1980s, China began the process under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping to open up the Chinese economy to foreign investment and begin developing a sophisticated market-based economic system for China, which was still being loosely controlled and monitored by the Chinese state.

China implemented this strategy because economics in the Far East was heavily influenced by the attitude exported from Japan, particularly in their reindustrialisation after its destruction and defeat in World War II.

Japan also industrialised in the late 19th century and conquered Korea and large chunks of China, which was only possible through state intervention and using debt to finance and grow Japan’s economy.

Furthermore, Japan has few natural resources, which drove the need for state intervention and the use of debt and imperialism to expand its economy.

The Japanese use the economy as a political end, not how the West uses it. It is a purely economic tool based upon principles of the free market for the Chinese; they adopted this viewpoint that the economy serves political ends and not vice versa.

Deng Xiaoping began opening up the Chinese economy to foreign investment offshore from the border with Hong Kong, which was still controlled by the British and its crumbling empire. It was handed over to China in 1997, marking the historical end of Britain’s empire.

The city chosen to open up the global economy only had a population of 330,000 people, which was tiny by Chinese standards; in 1980, China became the first nation to be home to over 1 billion people.

In the 40 years since Shezhen opened to the rest of the global economy, its economists exceeded that of its nearest neighbour, Hong Kong, in 2018, and the city is now the eighth largest city in the world at over 13 million people.

Shenzhen: Economic Trends and China’s Crumbling Economy

Impact on China

There are significant economic and social consequences of China’s opening economy and the development of the cities, with 65% of its population living in cities and 50% of its population moving to cities throughout the 1990s.

This was the largest migration of people in human history and marked the turning point in China from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing and industrial economy in the past 40 years.

There are two critical long-term economic impacts of this choice.

China experiences seven generations of economic development within one generation and experiences the same demographic decline experienced by other industrial nations rather than being spaced out over seven generations. Still, it is happening now in one generation.

When nations move from agricultural to industrial economies, people move to cities, and that’s when children become a liability and expensive; in the short term, previously, children were a free form of labour, but in small city apartments, they become a financial liability.

This is why nations, once they begin industrialisation, have a collapse or decline in their birthrate; for example, the United Kingdom’s birth rate declined over seven generations, which kept the overall population stable, and the UK started down that road in 1769.

India is another recent industrialising nation still behind China in industrial capacity and still has a good birthrate, which is just at replacement levels at 2.5, though some data says it is lower; this is an indicator of a historical trend of industrialisation, which leads to the collapse in the birthrate.

Old Chinese Man: Economic Trends and China’s Crumbling Economy

China’s Housing Crisis

China’s economy is functioning in one continuous economic input, and that is the continued phenomenal growth of the Chinese economy that is being powered by its industrial capacity and potential as well as internal factors that artificially raise its growth.

The construction is being promoted in China due to the artificial inflating of its GDP numbers, which has led to China building 65 million houses with a population the size of France with no people living there.

This inflation in the Chinese housing market could lead to an economic crash. The 2008 banking crisis and the 2007 and 2006 US mortgage crisis will look like not much of a big deal.

From the beginning of the recession in December 2007 to its official end in June 2009, real gross domestic product (GDP) — i.e., GDP as adjusted for inflation or deflation — declined by 4.3 per cent, and unemployment increased from 5 per cent to 9.5 per cent, peaking at 10 per cent in October 2009.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) fell 4.3 per cent from its peak in 2007Q4 to its trough in 2009Q2, the largest decline in the postwar era (based on data as of October 2013).

The unemployment rate, which was 5 per cent in December 2007, rose to 9.5 per cent in June 2009 and peaked at 10 per cent in October 2009.

This is just information about the United States, how it affected the rest of the world, how future crashes will be affected by China, how it will be unprecedented in financial history, and how it will affect the global economy.

Chinese citizens cannot invest their savings in assets outside of China due to restrictions made by the Chinese Communist Party that limit the flow of capital outside of China.

Therefore, to invest for retirement, Chinese citizens put their money in the Chinese stock market when there is an oversupply of housing and insufficient demand, which makes it incredibly unlikely that they could use the savings invested in property to live a comfortable retirement.

This leads to a considerable possibility of a Chinese financial crash triggered by the Chinese housing market’s overproduction of housing due to incentives not made by consumers but by the Chinese Communist Party due to state intervention in the economy.

Remember that for the Chinese, economics does not serve the purpose of the economy; it serves the purpose of political aims, which is, again, a different viewpoint than what is predominant in Western nations.

Posted on 21st November 202323rd October 2023 by jonathanstephanharryriley — Leave a comment

Murder of Tiberius Gracchus

The murder of Tiberius Gracchus is one of history’s most significant murders and events that contributed to and marked the beginning of the fall of the Roman Empire when Tiberius was murdered in 133 BC and his brother, Gaius Gracchus, was murdered in 121 BC.

The Roman Senate murdered both Gracchus’s brothers, with Tiberius himself beaten to death by Roman senators, similar to Gaius Julius Caesar, who was famously assassinated in 44 BC.

A group of as many as 60 conspirators decided to assassinate Caesar at the meeting of the Senate on March 15, the ides of March. Collectively, the group stabbed Caesar a reported 23 times, killing the Roman leader.

What makes the murder of Tiberius Gracchus so historically significant is that it marked a turning point in Roman political history where political debate and the ability to resolve substantial issues through a peaceful democratic process stopped working.

From 133 BC onwards, Roman political leadership no longer resolved the problems if they could not be resolved peacefully by debate and oratory but instead on the battlefield or through murder, which played the Roman Empire into its final destruction in 1453 A.D. by the Ottoman Turks.

Of the Roman emperors of first citizen, which will be the correct terminology of the Imperial Roman period for the ruler of that state of those leaders, 33 emperors were murdered or executed.

Thirty were despatched by sword or dagger. Of these, 26 were killed by Roman soldiers (five decapitated) and one (Valentinian III) by German mercenaries.

As for the Eastern Roman Empire, which existed from 330 A.D. to 1453 AD, eighty-eight emperors and empresses, forty-seven died natural deaths, and six were killed during military revolts, seven were deposed and mutilated, eleven were deposed and exiled or entered a monastery, two were deposed and pursued a further political career, three were deposed, imprisoned, and later executed, six were murdered in their palace, one in church on Christmas day, and one by his uncle, a mob killed one, two were killed by foreigners in battle, and one retired. Thirteen emperors founded dynasties in which multiple members of their family succeeded them.

The Importance of Democracy

As was demonstrated by my words above, the murder of Tiberius Gracchus contributed, along with several other factors, to the decline in the form of the Roman Empire because his death marked a fundamental change in Roman political culture.

For people reading this who enjoy learning about the history of the rise and fall of empires, the murder of Tiberius marked the event that clearly shows a failure of politics that compounded over centuries throughout the Roman Empire.

For nations and empires to survive and be successful, there need to be political mechanisms that enable the winners to win and the losers to lose and not go and kill their opposition.

This is very relevant to modern-day politics within the United States.

Nations, particularly democracies, are becoming more tribalist in both political parties; either Democrats or Republicans are growing increasingly unable to find common ground, leading to increased instability within the United States.

This same attitude has become the new norm around Western democratic and liberal nations all around the globe, particularly in Europe and the English-speaking peoples.

Once we stop listening to one another, it leads to the failure of democracy and for sophisticated states to operate and function without becoming basket cases of instability and chaos that the late Roman Empire and have civil war after civil war and murder after murder of its leadership.

Tiberius Gracchus was murdered for attempting to reform the Roman Republic and remove it from dependency on the senatorial classes and their control over the wealth.

Tiberius wanted to give more power and influence to the Roman people and its middle classes.

Unfortunately, the wealthy Roman senatorial class saw him as a threat to their wealth and power and murdered him.

It was not until the dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar that the Roman Republic would be reformed and be able to function again as a governing body of the Roman Empire, which expanded throughout the Mediterranean even during the time of Tiberius Gracchus.

Rome also needed to be reformed because it was a Republican city-state that ruled an empire.

It needed to transform itself from a city-state into a governing body that could rule an empire due to Roman politics being developed to govern only Rome and the surrounding lands.

The Roman Republic was never designed to work as an empire.

This is why Tiberius tried to make reforms and why only Gareth Julius Caesar made the changes necessary to keep the Roman Empire alive by becoming dictator for life.

Why the successor to Caesar, Augustus, create the position of first citizen/emperor/precept they did in such a way that created a monarchy with Republican characteristics, which made the Roman Empire in regards to leadership incredibly dysfunctional and contributed to its collapse as well?

Posted on 18th November 202314th June 2023 by jonathanstephanharryriley — Leave a comment

Why Has the USA Got Poorly Designed Infrastructure

All nations, if they are to be modern economies, require robust infrastructure that meets the needs of their age and time; during the industrial age, factories needed to be built, and roads to be maintained in cities to be constructed with the necessary infrastructure for manufacturing cities.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, England built sophisticated Riverway networks and locks throughout the country to transport coal, steel and other goods for manufacturing; this process repeated itself around the globe.

The United States has such poor infrastructure due to the period it began industrialisation in the late 19th and early 20th century. New technology was developed, including the internal combustion engine; for example, England and Europe invested their resources in the train, rivers and locks.

America chose to invest in the automobile and not trains, rivers that were predominant in the old world.

To get to the heart of America’s poor infrastructure, we must be aware of the Federal Highway Act of 1956, which aimed to build a country system of Interstate highways throughout the USA.

This highway project is one of the main reasons American infrastructure is poorly designed. The Federal Highway Act cost the United States $571 billion, and this funding primarily went to construct highways and parking spaces.

This means that American cities and suburbs are not designed with alternative public transport in mind; the United States is very much the nation of the automobile; to get to work, get groceries and move around, you must have a vehicle.

With the rise of fear of global warming and governments wanting to cut down emissions, the way American infrastructure is designed is so that it will be costly to redesign the way cities have been built for nearly a hundred years.

The United States, from the creation of the Federal Highway Act of 1956, have added nearly 50,000 miles of road or 80,000 km of road, which had over a million Americans displaced due to road construction; this burden mainly fell upon minorities within the USA.

road between green leafed trees Infrastructure — Photo by Josh Sorenson on Pexels.com

Discrimination and Infrastructure

The United States Housing Association Agency historically has subsidised housing construction, and during the time of discrimination and the United States, new houses being built were only four white families.

During this period, the US government marked African-American areas in red, showing that they were too risky to be insurable for mortgages.

After World War II, the Veteran Association funded housing for ex-white soldiers but not for other ethnic minorities.

In the 21st century, discrimination of the past no longer happens due to the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s and the wins to end discrimination against African Americans.

The old development model left a massive infrastructure problem within the United States. Of the 138 million homes within the US, 68% of these are single-family houses, and due to single-family zoning, many neighbourhoods are primarily made up of urban areas.

Due to this design layout, most US citizens not living in major cities to get groceries and other essentials require an internal combustion engine or an electric vehicle.

America, the national transport is the car United States has 5% of its land mass dedicated to car parking spaces, leaving eight parking spaces for each vehicle within the United States.

The National Car Ownership Statistics states that 278,063,737 personal and commercial vehicles were registered to drivers in the U.S. in 2021. The number of registered vehicles in the United States increased by 3.66% between 2017 and 2021, indicating an upward trend in car ownership.

This means there are 2,224,509.896 car spaces within the United States of America; one positive of this is that 99% of car parking spaces within America are free.

silhouette of golden gate bridge during golden hour Infrastructure — Photo by Mohamed Almari on Pexels.com

Sources

Forbes Car Ownership Statistics 2023 link

The Guardian The hidden climate costs of America’s free parking spaces link

Vox Why free parking is bad for everyone link

OBF The Hidden Truths of America’s Bad Design link

Social Media and Other Links

LinkedIn Link https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-riley-b463881b4/

YouTube Link https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCChWzkJjCwD37gmvugB9a_g/featured

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1DXGH7dTHgYE49sdmfv1C8

My Amazon author page https://www.amazon.com/author/jonathan1997

My Medium link jonathanrileywriter.medium.com

Posted on 15th November 202317th October 2023 by jonathanstephanharryriley — Leave a comment

Israel-Hamas War of 2023

On October 7, 2023, at 6:30 AM local time, a Palestinian and Islamic fundamentalist group known as Hamas announced the launch of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, stating that it had fired over 5,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel within 20 minutes.

Hams launched over 5,000 rockets due to the limitations of Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, an ante missile defence system that can stop some missiles but not all due to the number of missiles launched by Hamas into the world’s only Jewish state.

During the attack and its aftermath, a second operation was launched by Hamas with ground, sea and air assaults into Israeli civilian areas to capture civilians for prisoner exchange.

The Palestinian militants also committed atrocities on Jewish civilians. The crimes include rape, murder, executions and taking children, babies and others as prisoners.

A key motivator for Hamas taking civilian prisoners was that in 2011, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exchanged 1000 Hamas prisoners for one Israeli soldier.

This decision has made Israel vulnerable to other bad actors within the Middle East, believing that this kind of exchange is possible again to get financial or prisoner exchanges from the Israeli government.

Once you show your neck to a tiger or present any vulnerability to a mediaeval-based culture, they will keep coming repeatedly because they only understand strength and only show weakness at your peril.

As of writing this on 16 October 2023, Israel has over 5200 prisoners from Palestine and Hamas. The previous and current leadership, Benjamin Netanyahu Hamas, may believe they can secure prisoner release.

Why Hamas Attacked Israel

Hamas is mostly motivated by three factors that contributed to their choice to launch an attack on Israel. The first is the potential threat of normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

With the war between Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas and the majority Muslim state trying to reclaim Muslim holy territory, which is controlled by a non-Jewish state in a region surrounded by Muslims, the governments within Saudi Arabia will feel pressured by their population and the more religious fundamentalism attitudes of the Middle East.

For people living in the Western world, particularly in English-speaking nations or the Anglosphere, our Christianity has been very much neutered, and religion is seen as a force that should not interfere in secular politics.

Unfortunately, religion still plays a critical factor in political and social life in the Middle East, and it is very hard for nonreligious people to understand how that impacts their day-to-day lives.

The second reason Hamas attacked Israel on 6 October 2023 was that it was the same start date of the Yom Kippur War or the fourth Arab-Israeli war (1973), with the primary antagonists against Israel being Egypt and Syria.

This also led to Israel taking the Golan Heights from Syria and securing its northern border, having superior high ground.

Israel’s victory led to the normalisation of relations with Egypt in 1980.

Due to Israel’s diplomatic and military successes, Hamas has become desperate and launched their attack to galvanise support within the Middle East and prevent the normalisation of relations with Saudi Arabia if possible.

The final reason Hamas attacked Israel was that Iran allegedly supported Hamas and potentially pushed them to launch their attack on Israel to destabilise the region and prevent Saudi Arabia and Israel from entering an alliance that could threaten Iran’s geopolitical interests.

Furthermore, this could be the last chance in the Palestinian mind to attempt to reclaim the West Bank, which Israeli citizens have increasingly settled and the fear on the part of the Palestinian fundamentalists, and this is the last opportunity they can get to reclaim what they perceive as their homeland.

Posted on 11th November 202313th June 2023 by jonathanstephanharryriley — Leave a comment

Brazil’s New Tropical Strain of Wheat

Brazil may have found a new strain of wheat that could revolutionise the global power imbalance between the global North and the global South.

The global North by nations that industrialise, and let’s primarily in the 19^th century, with the British Empire being the first nation to go down the road of industrialisation beginning in the 1760s though historians debate the start date.

The nations that make up the global North are primarily nations that were part of the United States alliance to defeat the Soviet Union from 1945 until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the fall of the Soviet state in 1990.

As for the Global South, these nations tend to be African nations, China, India, Eastern European nations, South American nations and the Russian Federation. However, these definitions will be debated whether China is a developed nation or a developing country.

Nations not part of tropical zones and traditional farming economies have been typically more successful than nations that rely on other food produce and animal husbandry to survive.

The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at 23°26′10.5″ N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at 23°26′10.5″ S.

The tropics are also referred to as the tropical zone and the torrid zone. Which, in layperson’s terms, is pretty much the nations within the centre of the earth if you are viewing the tropical area from a map.

With the breakthrough in wheat development, Brazil introduced a new wheat strain that can thrive in tropical climates, paving the way for self-sufficiency in just five years! Discover the incredible breakthrough that could change the game for agriculture.

However, the Geopolitical Analyst Peter Zeihan stated, ‘It will be two years to see if the new wheat works’.

sunset cereals grain lighting Wheat — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The Balance of Power

Nations like Brazil may no longer depend on food imports but become self-reliant with food production within their countries.

A lack of dependency on grain imports from places like Ukraine, the United States and its corn belt and Russia are high grain producers.

With nations like Brazil with tropical climates having the possibility of self-sufficiency, this provides the opportunity for these nations to wean themselves off dependency on other states.

Nations don’t have friends; they have interests; each country competes in either hostile or friendly competitive nature to become a dominant power in their region or aspirations like China and India to become regional or global hegemonies.

It will be quite some time to see whether or not the new Brazilian strain of wheat will be successful, but with globalisation breaking down, this will be a godsend to states that are more dependent on global trade for national survival.

If the nation is not food sufficient, then that nation in a deglobalised world will face starvation and governmental collapse nations like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other desert kingdoms depend on international trade and the continued survival and maintenance of their populations.

Sources

Britannica Corn Belt region, United States link

National Geographic Tropics link

Zapp Brazil Develops Tropical Wheat and Predicts Self-sufficiency in 5 Years link

Tweet CZapp link

Spiegel Brazil Has High Hopes for a New Strain of Wheat link

Zeihan on Geopolitics Brazil’s Game-Changing Wheat: A Revolutionary Shift in Global Power || Peter Zeihan link

Social Media and Other Links

LinkedIn Link https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-riley-b463881b4/

YouTube Link https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCChWzkJjCwD37gmvugB9a_g/featured

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1DXGH7dTHgYE49sdmfv1C8

My Amazon author page https://www.amazon.com/author/jonathan1997