Forum/Discussions

                            From The Ramparts

                      Junious Ricardo Stanton

                         2015 Predictions

“There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution. One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people find themselves standing amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to achieve the new attitudes, the new thought patterns, the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands. So many people fail to remain awake through great revolutions.”  Martin Luther King Jr.

            Human beings are creatures of habit for most of us change is extremely unnerving and difficult. People usually change for only two reasons: external coercion, manipulation or intimidation or they change due to enlightened self- interest, they have a great aha moment a flash of insight or they learn conscious lessons from their past and current experiences. Change is intricate we tend to resist it and thus fail to learn a major life lesson which is; change is inevitable, it is the one constant in the universe. Rapid change is even more difficult to deal with for most of us.

            Human beings tend to constantly replicate their personal and collective ideas, attitudes and behaviors; they are called habits, customs, tradition and in the larger arena culture. If you can observe and discern the customs, traditions, habits and culture of an individual, groups or nation you can accurately predict their future behavior. How? As I’ve said, people are creatures of habit and change is all too often resisted and fought against. We tend to do the same things over and over again especially when we are under stress. Once you discern their patterns and habits you can anticipate their current and future behavior.

            It is with this insight we can safely predict the behavior of people, groups, even governments and nations. It is with this understanding I can make the following predictions about 2015: given the history of race in this country and the rising militarized police state and surveillance security state I can confidently predict there will be more African-Americans killed by police officers with impunity, the racism and endemic injustice of US jurisprudence will continually be exposed and laid bare before the whole world to see. No longer will the US be able to sham and spin reality.

        The FBI does not keep accurate records on police killings because local police departments do not provide the data to make the records accurate even if he US Justice Department wanted to keep such data.  There is ample evidence that police killings are much prevalent than the media reports. Go to http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/another-much-higher-count-of-police-homicides/ and https://www.facebook.com/KilledByPolice to see for yourself.

            Based upon past practices and statistics we can safely predict killings by US police will continue. But given recent occurrences like Ferguson Missouri, New York City and Cleveland Ohio, it is clear there will be reactions to the killings: some large, some small, some effective but most will be frustrated due to inaction by local governments to deal with this nation’s long history of racial oppression, police abuse and brutality.

          But despite the recalcitrance of governments, despite the fixed attitudes of Black and white people and the custom of racism, change is in the air. The nation is on the verge of having a Popeye moment, “that’s all I can stand and I can’t stand no more!” Whites and Blacks will lead a national charge to address the militarization, brutality and overreaction of the police. We can see this happening in Ferguson Missouri, New York City and other places. I predict it will spread.  I also predict the Fraternal Order of Police and the Policemen’s Benevolent Association will offer knee jerk reactions and lobby hard to maintain the status quo. I predict police-community tensions will spiral in 2015.

          The United States is a plutocratic oligarchy; it always has been and is even more so today. Economic apartheid in the US is more blatant today than any time other than during slavery. The wealth gap between the haves and the have nots transcends color, class and race but it impacts Africans in America more disproportionately.

 “Household wealth is the accumulated sum of assets–houses, cars, bank, investment, and retirement accounts– minus the aggregate value of debt, including mortgages, auto loans, and credit card balances. It’s more comprehensive than income, which measures the year-to-year earnings from wages, dividends, and profits. Since the US Census began publishing the figures nearly a quarter century ago, the chasm in wealth between whites and blacks has always yawned far wider than disparities in income, but narrowed to a ratio of 7 to 1 in 1995 before ballooning to 22 to 1 following a housing market collapse five years ago.  African-descended people account for about 14 percent of the population in the US but only 1.4 percent of the wealthiest 1 percent.

Inflated largely by speculators’ frenzied investments in usurious mortgage loans, the real-estate bubble’s inevitable implosion triggered the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and, the most profound dispossession of African Americans’ material wealth since the slave trade.”

           I predict given the long history of economic inequality in the US, and the increasing greed of the ruling elites, the wealth gap will widen farther and economic apartheid will worsen to the point Black folks will no longer be able to pretend things are cool because a bi-racial man who panders to the corporations and special interests is in the White House! People are waking up and this will lead to serious confrontations.

            On the international front, the American Empire will continue its attempt to bludgeon the world into submission in order to keep the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency; while pillaging and plundering the world for its raw resources and the control of global markets. Despite the propaganda and brainwashing about the US being a city on the hill, a bright and shining beacon of hope, the world now sees the United States as the prime threat and impediment to world peace, stability and security.

         Thanks to the alternative media and the Internet we have greater access to the truth, the real facts about US foreign policy and the wickedness and evil the US does around the world in the name of freedom and democracy. In January of 2014 a poll ranked the United States as the greatest threat to world peace. http://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-poll-biggest-threat-world-peace-america-1525008  Based upon the past and current actions of the US ruling elites and their puppets and flunkies in government, that assessment is alarmingly correct and will extend into 2015.

            Based upon the empire’s recent actions, I predict the demonization of Vladimir Putin will continue, the economic warfare directed towards Moscow will be intensified because Russia, China and the BRICS nations now offer a viable alternative to the IMF, World Bank, US-AID and other Western predatory loan sharking agencies that oppress and degrade the world.

            I predict the US will antagonize Russia even further because the US economic system is on the verge collapse/implosion and Western oligarchs fear the ascendency of China as the world’s economic leader. The Russian-Chinese partnership and their leadership in the BRICS coalition mean the end of the Project for A New American Century’s goal of global hegemony and full spectrum global dominance. http://www.oilempire.us/pnac.html  This is not going down easy with the NeoCons and they are determined not to go out as a second class chumps.

            If the only tool you have at your disposal is a hammer you will treat everything as if it were a nail. But at some point Russia, China and their allies will push back against US/EU/NATO blustering, provocations and warmongering. I cannot and do not want to predict what will happen when (not if) we reach that point. I will say it will not be pretty because China and Russia are not Libya, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan with feeble militaries and no air force, navy or nuclear weapons. So for now the US ruling class and its minions will continue their proxy economic wars, cyber and political intrigue in hopes they can foment instability and regime change in Russia, Syria, China, all of Africa and Latin America. This is the only way the empire can survive. How long Russia and China will put up with US petulance and mischief is uncertain. But I predict a time will come in the not too distant future when they will lose patience and step to the US/EU/NATO axis of evil economically or militarily or both.

                                                            -30-