As Germany and France Come Apart, So Too Will the EU

Charles Hugh-Smith
Washington's Blog

When is a nation-state no longer a functional state? It’s an interesting question to ask of the European nation-states trapped in the devolving European Union. Longtime correspondent Mark G. recently posed seven indicators of dissolving national sovereignty; here’s his commentary:

“RE: The Ghosts of 1968 (February 14, 2018):

In France the “Ghosts of 1968” have become the Poltergeists of 2018. This looks like another real watershed in European and world history. Once again Parisian mobs have appeared and have collectively realized they now hold the real power. And their issues are all anti-EU (European Union) and anti-NWO. (New World Order)

I’m honing my German Collapse Scenario as more data flows in, as it is in ever-faster and larger quantities. ‘Germany’ will implode in parallel with the EU.

So-called ‘states’ with:

1. no effective military forces
2. no control of their own borders
3. no control of their currency and banks
4. a government with a ‘diverse’ population in which the majority either has no loyalty to Berlin (recent ‘refugee’ immigrants) or has dropped its loyalty (large parts of Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg), and which is also losing the allegiance of the many eastern European immigrants in Germany. These people are among the most energized opponents of the ‘refugee’ influx.
5. Fast rising anarchy and lawlessness by the recent ‘refugee’ immigrants, and which is well known to the population, as are the official orders to the police to minimize crime statistics reporting by not opening official cases.

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Europe Proposes "Restrictions On Payments In Cash"

Zero Hedge

Having discontinued its production of EUR500 banknotes, it appears Europe is charging towards the utopian dream of a cashless society. Just days after Davos' elites discussed why the world needs to "get rid of currency," the European Commission has introduced a proposal enforcing "restrictions on payments in cash."

With Rogoff, Stiglitz, Summers et al. all calling for the end of cash - because only terrorists and drug-dealers need cash (nothing at all to do with totalitarian control over a nation's wealth) - we are not surprised that this proposal from the European Commission (sanctuary of statism) would appear...

The Commission published on 2 February 2016 a Communication to the Council and the Parliament on an Action Plan to further step up the fight against the financing of terrorism (COM (2016) 50). The Action Plan builds on existing EU rules to adapt to new threats and aims at updating EU policies in line with international standards. In the context of the Commission's action to extent the scope of the Regulation on the controls of cash entering or leaving the Community, reference is made to the appropriateness to explore the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments.

The Action Plan states that "Payments in cash are widely used in the financing of terrorist activities… In this context, the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments could also be explored. Several Member States have in place prohibitions for cash payments above a specific threshold."

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Freedom And Central Planning Can Never Coexist

Alt-Market.com
Brandon Smith 

The average person is a statist, whether he realizes it or not. It is important that liberty activists recognize and accept this fact because the truth of our limitations as a movement determines the kinds of solutions into which we should ultimately put our time and energy. The fantasy of a final grand march of an awake and aware majority on the doorsteps of power is just that: a fantasy. Some people might argue that given more time, such an event could be organized or could happen spontaneously. But these people seem to forget that the immediacy of any crisis inspires awareness and cuts the bindings of complacency for only a certain percentage of any given population. With “more time” often comes more complacency, not less.

So, history becomes a kind of balancing act, with crisis generating the necessity of intelligent and moral action in some people but rarely, if ever, in most people (even during the American Revolution, in which patriots represented a stark minority). The reason that the culture of freedom consistently plateaus and remains stuck at underdog status is because human beings are, first, often acclimated to the idea that crises are things that only happen to other people, and, second, they are obsessed with the idea that governments should retain prohibitory and administrative power over the public as a means to "prevent" crisis from occurring (the sheepdog and sheep mentality).

Not all people necessarily “love” their current government, but many citizens tend to see the idea of government as an inevitability of a stable society. They assume pre-eminence of the state because they have never known anything else. Not only that, but as people separate into political and ideological factions, often based on false paradigms (such as the false left/right paradigm), they covet government as a kind of tool or weapon that can be used for “the greater good” if only their side had total control of it. Very few people in this world want to shrink government down to a manageable size comparable to that which existed just after the American Revolution, and even fewer would entertain the idea of erasing central governments entirely. The allure of the federalized state as a means to impose ideological control over others is intoxicating.

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The Decline and Fall of the American State; Enjoy It

Karen Kwiatkowski
ICH

The headlines at Drudge are an excellent barometer of what's up with government and culture. Glancing over cops being killed by the other side of law enforcement (the people), Hillary's new Whitewater files (this time electronic), Army and Secret Service partying, drug use, and sex rings, the predictable result of partial "legalization" of pot (neighborhood informers), we find a report that, "Confidence in government is lower than ever!"

Whaaa? The poll, taken in 2014, looked at consumer and investor faith in the "product", i.e. the president, judiciary, legislative as well as mainstream media, banks, big business, organized labor, organized religion, education, medicine and the scientific community.

We are government consumers and investors in these products, although we have little choice. The massive unitary state, this lock-stepping, integrated, wealth-consuming, constantly expanding Rube Goldberg machine is what we the people have bought, and we feed it daily. We are afraid not to, lest it fall down in a million pieces and smash us.

The poll designers were either extremely naive or extremely perspicacious. They have cogently asked how we like our fascism, sunny side up or easy over? Not surprising, the people indicated they'd prefer to skip breakfast, due to a growing queasiness in the pit of their stomachs, and a sense that something is going to fall on our heads.

The poll indicates that we are disgusted by government media, government legislation and 15 straight years of diktatcracy. We have no faith in the justice system and organized religion, and our discontent with the corporate state of big business, big medicine, big education, and big science is seething. All good signs of course, that change is coming. Our identity as "US Citizen" is becoming something we'd rather not talk about. This is how all empires collapse, and the one led by Washington, D.C. is not special. Unlike all the children in Lake Wobegone, we are beginning to recognize our child in D.C. is not above average or exceptional; rather he is a pretty nasty devil who is never going to make something of himself.

Maybe it's the weather, or Snowden, or independent media, or our empty bank accounts. At some point, hard facts around us inspire calls from the crowd of "Why, the emperor isn't wearing anything? He's buck naked! And butt-ugly, too! Hahahahahahahahaha!"

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The Story of Your Enslavement

Comment: A welcome reminder...

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