Not all that likely. If the primaries go the way they're expected to (which they have been), Hillary is going to need something like 4-5 times as many super delegates as Obama. Seeing as so far they've been split pretty even, I just don't see that happening.

ya, and what country is that from? I bet my copy of sins that it's not from a western country.

some bad leardership will slow america down utill it falls and the jelly bean death star kills us all orders by chuck norurs.

some bad leardership will slow america down utill it falls and the jelly bean death star kills us all orders by chuck norurs.

the peopel hosting the chapter no. but here is the information on the authors and a link to the book itself.

Attorney John Loftus is the author of four histories of intelligence operations. As former prosecutor with the U.S. Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit, he had unprecedented access to top-secret CIA and NATO archives. He lives in Florida. Mark Aarons and John Loftus are the co-authors of The Secret War Against the Jews and Unholy Trinity.

Mark Aarons is an international award-winning investigative reporter and the author of several books on intelligence-related issues. He exposed Nazi war criminals in Australia, where he lives, and prompted changes to Australian federal law.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0312156480/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

Only chapert six was ocr'ed. and that only because it was being referenced for some indepth understanding of the ties between certian people that were being chcked.

a person we know was having some difficulty getting their head around the whole "he is jewish, lived in france, was a communist, worked for the Nazis & spied for America" all in the same breath. He just could not get his head past what seemed to him direct contradictions concerning stories about his grandfather. (we are not talking about "uncle Bernie").

Sorry that was my brother how wrote this.

SpacePony, the reason I asked about the people hosting that book chapter, is that they have also archived some other, erm, curious material; pro-fascism material. I'm really not interested in reading anything that comes from a site like that, even if the authors you describe sound more anti-fascist (definitely how I would describe myself). That site is a bit scary...

Check it out here: http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com

There's Ezra Pound's essays in support of Mussolini, a collection of articles on the NSDAP (ie. Nazis), Lawrence Dennis' The Coming American Fascism (hint: he was in favour of it) and others.

Not all of the material is fascist, but enough is that I'm a little creeped out right now, to be honest.

Oh lord, what is this world coming to... you and I agree on something
wanna see a fasist in action? go chck this thred out
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/310739

OK a few things you are not considering here.

Will America decline? The answer is we already did as an economic power. Back in the eighties the balance of total monetary value exchanged shifted to the Tokyo stock exchange without most people in the US noticing or commenting. The rift has only gotten bigger over time. We produce very little in the way of products any longer ourselves and instead rely on production outside US borders. We don't call the center of our nation the "rust belt" for nothing... take a good look at Gary, Ind. and Alan Town, Penn. if you want to see how far we have fallen in this area.

The vast majority of economists and historians world wide including quite a few nobel prize winners put the hight of the American power in the 1950's. We won the cold war but the damage done to long range economic strength for the US is difficult to understate. We wore the USSR out but at a huge cost. All you have to do is look at the rebuilding of Japan and Europe (yes I know we helped a lot) to see how much can be done if you DON'T spend a huge portion of your GNP on a powerful military. One of the first things I learned in economics class was "You can't plow a field with a tank. Any money you spend on your military is a write off... that money is never really reinvested in your economy. All you get back is the money payed to the workers but you lose the raw materials... they do nothing for you economically."

Right now we have former US companies (yes I say former... most of them went multi-national long ago and the US collects essentially no taxes from the companies that used to be US. Most of them don't even have their headquarters in the US any more and keep most of their money in off shore banks...) producing our goods over seas. Good for us because they are cheaper...except we don't get wages or taxes from those companies. That money stays over seas. Even when you buy the product the money collected by those companies is reinvested overseas for the most part. The result is we are being drained of economic power at an impressive rate. Our economic strength is being used to transform the economies of places like China... all that money they suddenly have had to COME from some where, it didn't just appear, and we are that some where.

Yes it is true that many of these companies were US based once but now most of them owe no loyalty to the good old USA. They are transfering our wealth to places where they think it will do them more good in the long run... and they could care less about what that means for the US. An Example. With China holding sooo much of our loans it would easy for them to just nationialize any remaining US companies holdings there and call it payment on that huge debt which we are increasingly close to defaulting on. They could even in a fit of generosity cancel our debts and take all the factories (we owe much more than they are worth). For the US it would drain even more money but for these companies that hardly even consider them selves part of the US any more what would change? Nothing. The managers and workers in the companies would remain the same. All that would change is who they payed taxes to. They are planning to build the future consumer economies in places like China... they will very soon no longer need to sell products back in the US at all... particularly if our currency continues to devalue this will happen very very fast.

What does the US mean to do about this? Well at the moment we are going to hold it off with our military power. Conventional wars like Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq have one thing in common that no one really considers... it was never a case of total war only limited war. The last total war we fought was WWII. Engaging the US in total war is suicide even for a power like China. In total war if a town resists you you destroy it... level it and leave no survivors. If a country or population resists it is genocide for them. I know a lot of you will be unhappy that I actually said this out loud... we don't like to think of the US like that but there it is. We have destruction down to an art and that is why the rest of the world fears us... we are usually at the top of the rest of the worlds list of "rogue" states and this is why. Add in the fact that our current administration is flaunting these capabilities instead of sort of playing them down as we have done in the past and you can see how the rest of the world might get a little upset.

If destruction of the population was not a factor and the US didn't hold back we would win. No doubt. I am a pacifist and even I know that. No one can field a military that could even slow us down in this situation and I am just talking about Conventional war. Introduce nuclear war and 90% of the world would lose the war in the first hour of the conflict.

Now consider we recently declared publicly that we consider space ours and have forbidden any one to deploy space based weapons... except we fully intend to build all that ourselves. Back in 2005 the Pentagon put out an operational statement clearly outlining our intent that the rest of the world took notice of. The recent destruction of a malfunctioning satellite was a warning... we have the tech to insure space is our play ground alone and we will use it. Currently the warning time for even a ballistic or cruise missile attack from right next door to most nations is 15 min. before impact. From space it is about 5 with almost no possibility of interception. Look for the US to place nuclear weapons in space as soon as it thinks it can. And to continue to work on an effective anti ballistic missile technology like our missile shield to insure we continue to be untouchable.

So we plan to just take the resources we need. And fear is our means to that end.

I could continue but this post will probably give people plenty to chat about for a while... I am gonna go put on a tie and go eat some sushi. Let the flame war commence.

[quote]Back on topic, many people have pointed out the vast foreign debt of the USA as a weakness. However there is a school of thought amongst the asian financial community, (particularly China and HKSAR) that borrowing money works out better for the USA and worse for China.
As the theory goes, China, which holds a trillion in bonds from the USA, is at severe risk of devaluation of the currency and thus of the bonds they hold. The currency devalues when the USA prints more money or when people stop buying the bonds (very simplified explanation, some finance major please correct any mistakes). China is the largest buyer of bonds and the logic goes that if China stops buying, the bonds they currently hold will devalue, as everyone else will stop buying (because they will devalue). Thus, China is in a position where it must keep lending money to the USA to stop losing on their current loans (ie, being shafted). The best solution for China to not lose is for the loans they give to the USA to improve their economy so the bonds they hold become valuable again, so it becomes a win-win (really a small gains-big win) situation.
Derivatives of this theory go to say that this is one of the reasons for their massive overseas and military investments and the Chain-of-Pearls strategy, to convert the bonds they hold into something less likely to depreciate. The Chain of Pearls strategy for those who haven't heard is a string of Chinese funded ports and bases all along the route to the middle east to safeguard their oil supplies. The significance of this is that it is an opportunity for them to quietly get rid of the bonds they hold so in case the USA does the stupid thing of spending their loan on more carriers or wars, China can cut their losses and have some power to resist a belligerent American strategy.
All that being said, it is only one of the many economic theories, but one thing most are sure of is that America insists on going down the path of Military Keynesianism (the belief that military spending will provide sufficient economic stimulus), the future does not look good for anyone.[quote]
sorry for quoting myself but I thought I might spread this interesting theory to complement Aasch's observation on todays geopolitical situation.
Your theory seems to describe the USA following the path of military Keynesianism, but I do not agree with your point that the USA will resort to "hot" wars with large powers to prop up its economy. One idea that Americans have was that fighting and winning a war will not harm, but significantly improve ones economy. This idea originates from WWII where the USA emerged as a superpower over the ruined remains of her former enemies and while it does have its points, it has been largely negated by the deployment of nuclear arms and the fact that for the USA, the war was comparatively brief and not as costly in terms of lives and infrastructure as everyone else (yes flame me all you want for desecrating your sacrifice but you now you casualties pales comparison to numbers and proportion). People might say that I am naive for believing nuclear weapons will deter war, but in this Aasch's case (USA vs China nuclear exchange) I am saying that the cost of such an exchange will far outweigh the gains of reducing a perceived rival to ruin. It is true that in such an exchange, the USA will "win" the exchange simply using its strategic and Naval assets to completely destroy Chinas military assets. Many don't know but the USA's nuclear arsenal is primarily counterforce, ie designed to destroy military forces and nukes. Cities are no longer a primary target but a secondary retaliation target should the inital counterforce attack fails or the USA is pre emptively attacked.
China on the other hand possesses a countervalue arsenal designed for a retaliatory strike against cities. This is designed to deter a counterforce first-strike, for example from the united states, as though their military might be severely crippled, the enemy will suffer far greater losses than are gained by defeating China. A hot war by the USA to destroy their rival China will result in a great loss of civilian lives and infrastructure and little gained in terms of area of influence and access to resources. In a war of attrition in today's multipolar world the victor will likely be the countries which did not participate. This is why MAD is still the prevailing factor today. The more likely form of warfare between superpowers discussed by Military tacticians today is limited regional warfare like the Falklands where neither the Argentine mainland nor the British Isles themselves were attacked. No one seriously considers a ground war on mainland China nor an invasion of the continental USA as likely scenarios of the future. Americas conventional forces are not as powerful as many believe to bring the fight onto the Chinese mainland. Nor is China capable of fighting outside its borders for long. In the likely Taiwan scenario, even those in the US military admit that assistance will take too long to arrive to really rout an invasion, and for all the talk of "preserving freedom" of the current administration it is doubtful of whether it is simply talk or whether future administrations will continue that rhetoric. The powers that be consider Taiwan to be simply a strategically valuable territory in the region, but sell it to the people as a 'bastion of freedom'. On the flipside, the bearers of power in China consider Taiwan as an "Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier USS taiwan" which threatens to cut off their sea lanes at a whim, but I digress.
On the topic of the militarisation of space, it is true that the USA has announced a plan to do so and prevent anyone else from doing so. What many might remember was that China demonstrated their ASAT capabilities shortly afterwards under the pretence of destroying an old weather satellite of course, everyone condemned it as an unprovoked act of aggression, conveniently forgetting the USA's threatening declaration earlier. Of course, not to be outdone, the USA demonstrated their ASAT capabilities against an allegedly malfunctioning satellite which was an "environmental threat". Fortunately bullshit is not an environmental threat because of the amount generated by this ASAT nonsense. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that space assets are extremely vulnerable to ASAT weapons and have been criticised for their poor survivability, so weapons in space are an unlikely future.
As for the missile defense program or "Star Wars", it seems those idiots have finally fallen for their own trap. The missile dense program was an elaborate ruse designed to end the Cold War by causing the Soviet Union to spend itself to death. The plan worked but obviously somewhere along the line someone forgot about it and plans to spend their way to demise. Unless of course, they are using the same ruse against China. Things are looking interesting....

OK, it's been a few years since econ class, but I trust someone will point out the errors:

Isn't the decline of the dollar a (relatively) good thing in terms of balance-of-trade? Not in terms of us making money at trade per se, but in that goods will be cheaper for us to make here (as opposed to paying the Chinese to make them for us)?

Isn't that why the World Bank people got on China for artificially devaluing their currency?

RE: warfare against China. If we could keep it conventional (missile shield, preemptive strike, whatever), a US victory would be limited by our own ethical standards. Unlike the PLA/PLAN, the US Navy/Air Force are designed to project power. After knocking down their air defenses (no joke, but doable - most of our offensive power was designed with this in mind), we could basically have our way with their civilian infrastructure.

I don't care what kind of economy they have, removing power plants, oil refineries/pipelines, railroads and highway bridges will bring it to a grinding halt. The ethical limitations would be that this would cause mass deaths in the cities now cut off from food, power, and fuel sources. A nuke would be more merciful - at least it would be fast.

so, you think the US should destroy china to keep it's rank as a superpower?

or do you think that we could destroy china and stay a superpower?

The development of the world economy will in the distant future make the current State System lose a large amount of power as technological innovation and economic development instead shift into the hands of massive corporations that are able to compete with national governments and for a time will (and are) necessary for these national governments to function efficiently. In time, these corporations will dominate as independent units, and the proliferation of information technology and international transportation will make questions of borders less and less pertinent.

If that doesn't happen, and the State System continues as it is with no changes (Very unlikely from a historical viewpoint) even then no one empire can be a super power for ever. Resources run out, hard times are fallen upon, unique situations come about, wars drain resources, governments are deposed, and territories change. Whether or not it's even called America is in question; it may be a nation of predominantly Hispanic and Asian technological and industrial workers that occupies the upper half of south and a quarter of North America given enough time...

So either way the question degrades in importance the further into the future you travel.

Should?
Genocide again a billion people to prevent ourselves from losing a little power doesn't sound like a particularly good thing. Would seems to be the question, and I honestly don't know.

Could?
Destroy China... almost certainly. Would it prevent the U.S. from declining... highly unlikely. But that isn't really the point. The point is China's current position: If they challenge the U.S. directly, they are destroyed, and what happens to the U.S. afterward doesn't effect them much.

Which is why a military engagement is fundamentally impossible: the aggressor cannot benefit. So, we resign ourselves to economic struggles.

I think many people here assume that the nation state concept has permanence.

Nation states, as we have them today, are a relatively new invention.  Europe, the first continent to have nation states, didn't even complete the process until the 19th century.

A 100 years from now? Who knows. Multinational corporations and international trade treaties and the like might make nation states largely obsolete.

Even in my lifetime I've seen an immense change. I work with people all over the world.  Sins of a Solar Empire, for instance, was a collaboration between Americans and Canadians that was pretty seamless.  Stardock's other products include people who work together from countries as varied as Russia, Poland, UK, Brazil, South Africa, Italy, etc. all working together as a single team.

Nationalism is something of a generational issue. I feel a strong sense of "patriotism" for my country but is weakens over time as I come to realize that the ideas and people that matter to me occur across multiple borders. This already has happened in the United States. At one time, loyalty to individual states trumped loyalty to the union of states.  In a century who knows how things may evolve.

That said, it is unlikely that any *government* will be as powerful as the federal government of the United States any time soon.  People talk about China but China's a blip. It'll be a very long time before the government of China is a major power in the world.  China is barely at the nation state level from a government point of view.  A lot of money is being made there but the government has little ability to tax it at this point.  If any country is likely to be run by corporations in 50 years, it's China, not the United States.

Of course it will, its a matter of time. Its in so much debt its already in decline. People often assume superpower is the one with the most military/nukes.(Those people are usually from Texas or more south from what i understand)
But it seems strange in this age to be thinking in terms military power, as if china and usa would fight a war for the one that gets #1, you wont get a match and then a scoreboard will list the winning country, it will just slowly become the main country for getting entertainment/pop culture and things like that.
I'd say my top pet peeve with ignorance in america is how they say things like "the most free country" or things like that. Some things i hear on the news like email/phone surveillance and torture prisons give the idea of the most oppresive environment ever.

No, of course not. I believe America as it is now will be around for the next 50+ years. Yes we probably won't be number 1 forever, but for the foreseeable-future we will remain a superpower. When we do collapse I'm putting my money on a military coup, not a USSR-style break up of the states. I'll be happy when China and India surpass us. The world will blame them when things start going wrong, and when they invade defenseless countries.

The US's debt as a % of its GDP is less than most European nations or Japan.  It's all relative. 

Technically speaking, the US is still currently on a relative ascension relative to the G7 average when one looks at economic and military might.

China, Japan, etc. are very very far behind economically and of course militarily they're not even on the charts.

All this hubris one way or the other about nation states is pretty baffling to me to be honest. Where one was born was a matter of random chance.

 

Good points. From what I understand, the real worry is not What Is, but rather What Could Become. The US economy revolve around the citizens spending all the moeny that they earn. If suddendly people stop spending and start saving, the big inverstors would stop investing their money because the value of their investment would not increase so much., then the small investors would get scared looking at the big invertors and would also stop investing. Suddenly you have a scenario where nobody spends money because they are too scared to lose their money.

Its funny, but thats how things work in the US. Hell, its almost stupid, think about it. If normal people (normal civilians) in the US start saving their money today instead of spending it, the US economy would collapse.




Is it bad to be a facist? Or a Nazi? Anybody can believe in what they want.

I just read an excellent article about the economics side of the great demise of the USA.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23681221-20261,00.html

I suggest some of you read it.

Well, they are communist, and people often forget some of the meanings that underlie that word. One of the core concepts of communism is that the government controls the means of production. With this philosophy, it's very heavily weighted towards government control, and the corporations have very little power.

I would agree, however, that China does not hold much power. If they were to go to war with the USA or do anything major that we don't like, we'd stop trading with them, and their economy (and likely ours as well) would tank. In which case, I'd predict they'd be hurt a lot worse by the economic instability than we would be. Our capitalistic economic system has proved to be quite resilient, surviving a Great Depression and the Cold War. Even when we get into major downturns, we have always been able to rebound eventually.



Agreed, and I think some people forget this: China has not been in a major war for a long time. Their military is very likely to be behind ours in technology and strength. The only real advantage they'd have is sheer numbers, and the USA's technology is likely to offset that. All we'd really have to do is to cut off all trade and hold our borders long enough for their economy to collapse.



I'm a bit worried about this "evolution." I think one of our greatest strengths is our ability to have pride in our states, our towns, and even ourselves as individuals. People may joke about how we are a bunch of "cowboys," but the truth is we have our roots in that rugged individualism and grew to be the great country we are today. Perhaps it's selfish, perhaps it causes conflict, perhaps it's not ideal. But then again, perhaps a person who is strong as an individual makes the group even stronger. Perhaps a person who improves himself will improve the entire nation. Perhaps a person who cares about himself will also care about his country. Perhaps an individual who has pride in himself will extend that pride to his town, his state, his country.

I've seen many complaints that we ignore the international community - but the truth is, we simply do not want our sovereignty and our independence to disappear. After all, we were founded on the idea that we should rule ourselves, rather than by various parts of Europe.

Along this line of thinking, It's my opinion that we should strive to keep our government small. It should certainly exist, and it should certainly have enough power to enforce basic human rights and our laws, but it should not try to exercise undue control over the people.

So, in that like of thinking, I am very leery of what is going on in Europe, where international organizations such as the EU have enormous control over the laws of other nations. I think that these new international organizations may be taking away more rights than they give.



I worry greatly about this attitude of spending, and I worry that it may be a major reason for our declining economy. I personally think that saving some money is a great idea.

In fact, saving money creates personal wealth with compound interest rates, while going into debt destroys personal wealth. Credit cards have interest rates too - but they hurt, not help!

Seriously, I'd think it would be obvious that you'd want an interest rate that adds to your wealth rather than destroys it.



Quite the opposite!

The basic accounting equation:

Assets = Liabilities + Equity

Equity is the value of your company.

So, with a small bit of algebra, we separate out equity:

Equity = Assets - Liabilities

The total value of a company decreases when liabilities increase, and increases when you save cash (cash is an asset, just like land).

I would gladly increase my investments tenfold if people and companies started saving more money.



Look where our "you gotta spend" attitude has gotten us - deep into debt and afraid to spend money. Debt is a major source of headaches, and the interest rates on credit cards makes it worse. Many people end up losing everything they have when they rack up a great deal of debt.

Indeed, if you save money, I think you'll find you're more confident to spend it. After all, you've saved it, you have plenty of it, and just having it saved increases your wealth due to compound interest. You can easily get the money you've spent back.

I'm not advocating hoarding money and never spending it at all - I'm merely advocating spend it after you've saved it through a bank, rather than buying an item immediately on a credit card.

Think about it: You can in fact spend more if you have money coming in through the interest in a bank account than if you money taken away through credit card interest.

My credit card company recently charged me for having a balance: That's money out of my pocket never to be seen by me again. That's less money I can spend. I have a lower overall cash flow because money is being taken away from me.

Money I can spend (Cash flow) = money gained each month (paycheck) - credit card interest

My bank, on the other hand, recently put some money into my savings account as interest. That's more money I can spend. I can have a slightly higher cash flow because I'm actually making a small amount of money by simply saving some money in the account.

Cash flow = money gained each month + bank account interest

So, as contradictory as it may sound, saving money actually allows greater spending.



I would disagree. I think it would only get stronger. In fact, people can spend more money and achieve a higher cash flow if they save a small portion of the money and maintain positive balances than if they maintain negative balances.

FYI, Microsoft is a "saver." They maintain a positive cash balance and try to avoid debt. I think their financial strength is obvious.

"Never spend your money before you have it." --Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

While debt does kill personal wealth, it is what the modern economy thrives on. You seem to be confusing "good personal economic sense" with "good macroeconomic sense": it's great to save but if people saved like you are advocating modern financial systems would collapse. People aren't going to outright buy a house or a car (well, the latter perhaps if it's junk). Heck, people even put payments on appliances. The way people buy big-ticket items is based on short-term personal loans, and that's a given considering the way people earn money (ie through monthly or biweekly paychecks).

To be honest in the next 50-100 years the countries that can manage their eco sand enviri sucessfully will become the new superpowers. Atm China is dependant on australian raw materials so we could technially cripple china when our current mining boom is over. As for america leader technologically, its all realtive, the advanced military technologies are irrelevant in the inforamtion age, consider this, You think the ability to have a combat suit that can turn someone invisible is a greater techological achievment than the technological probelms that China had to overcome to consturct its three gorages damn, also the worlds largest particle accelerator is being built in europe, kind of strange considering that people have been saying over and over again that america has the worlds largest gdp.

My opinion as an australian looking at america is that the arrogence of your leaders and your system of government will be your undoing. While you may not think that i understand what its like just remeber that our ex-primeminister john howard had his head stuck up bushes rear end and to be honest a lot of ideas were passed along. Its very sad to say that he was the longest serving pm (he was only better than the other guy) but towards the end of his reign he got real arogrant (like bush) and passed quite a few laws that favoured the rich (wow, corporate politics an american thing) (the main one was "workchoices" which took most rights away from employees) and we have had massive infaltion becuase of his eco managment (bush again).

US wont die ever.

Why?


Not because you are powerful or economically vital (you are at the moment btw) but because the way society has evolved these last fifty years war among developed countries, much less worldpowers are no longer feasibly. The world economies are so integrated that war will be too expensive even if one or both parties finds away to avoid the "mutual destruction assured" from nuclear weapons.

It is however quite likely that China (and to lesser) extent India is going to dominate the world economically.

The question is whether we have an enviromental breakdown before or after that.

China has always been one of the most xenophobic isolationist countries on this planet. Not to mention that they have an extreme overpopulation problem. There is no doubt the U.S. will not be head honcho in another 100-200 years but in the near term there is no way for China to overtake our GDP or our diplomatic controls, they don't even want to all China has ever wanted is to be left alone and have mild hegemony over its neghbors and for some stupid reason military control over Tibet.