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The funny thing is that since my early puberty I told my friends that US would spy on them in certain circunstances, and people kept telling me I was a nutjob that should be using tin foil hat.

When I asked them why, they happily told me that US was a bastion of democracy and would never do anything like that...

After several of my predictions (like Iraq War, Iraq Civil War, Libya, and some of other stuff) came true, plus this, I am having a deluge of messages (ironically, on Facebook) of people wanting to learn geopolitics with me...

And I remember bitterly when in 2011 I explained people (parents included) stuff about Greece protests, and I was chased away with "why care about this geopolitics shit? It would never happen in Brazil!" yeah sure... Now why you are asking ME about brazil protests?

I think, people believe governments never change, that good can be absolute, that evil in other places never come to their doorstep, and that slippery slopes arguments are always a fallacy.



So, uh, what are your next predictions for important world events?


Right now I am more concerned with Brazil stuff...

But it would not surprise me in shorter term (less than 10 years): Syria civil war dragging other countries on it or spreading to other countries. Israel engaging some Shia country in actual war. Eurozone disbanding or changing radically. Bitcoin getting much stronger OR attracting governments worldwide to squash it with heavyhanded tactics.

Also medium term (about 5 to 20 years from now) is clear we will remain having issues related to debt, this will be particularly bad in the US, that will desperately try to maintain USD as world currency (because otherwise it cannot pay the huge army). Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Muslim Brotherhood want to pull-off something, but I don't figured yet what it is, also it depends on they winning Syria Civil war. There is a chance (I am not much sure) that wars (civil and foreign) might happen in countries with a recent rise in far right nationalism (Greece, Japan, Brazil at least).

Long term: UN breakup or centralisation of power... It right now is already quite unstable. Reversal in pro-liberal viewpoints, might lead to extreme violence (ie: lots people actively killing gays, other races, immigrants, instead of isolated cases). - Regarding this, Brazil had some news today, government found out that since passing pro-LGBT laws, violence against LGBT is up 300%, with half of it coming from family members. Instabilities as result of low birth rate and increasing life expectancy.

If you want the "why" of each stuff, feel free to ask. Also I might add that currently (instead of 10 years ago) predicting stuff is harder, because there are more forces at play, specially Anonymous and Cipherpunks, they have been consistently making me recalculate stuff, and I never expected their rise in first place (interestingly, Ghost in the Shell series did... kudos to them), and because of general instability on the world (more riots and protests are happening, and communication tech spreads news about them much faster, sometimes spurring more of them).

EDIT: if anyone know how to make line breaks in HN please tell me... it just took all my stuff and snagged into a single line :(


There's no need for prophecy. Predicting events which are already scripted agendas playing out isn't very difficult, because you can usually assume the script will play out, unless some significant (unlikely) event stops them from doing so.

I'd complain about your use of the term "Syria civil war." We should really be straight on the issue, that is has never been a civil war since day one - outside powers have, and continue to influence the state of the country, where a bunch of "terrorists" would've otherwise been taken care of long ago by the Syrian army.

The "Syria war" (correct term), is not going to be won by some low level rebels, but by the US and it's allies by imposing a no-fly-zone, conducting air strikes, and continuing to arm Syrian (and non-Syrian) Rebels to topple Assad. This is how wars are conducted now - the main instigators can absolve themselves of accountability and responsibility by using a group of rebels as their proxy.

And you don't exactly need to be a professor of history to know what happens to countries after the US conducts it's invasions. As Einstein pointed out: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity. If we ask what the US and allies are doing differently this time, we see that it's business as usual, so they must be insane, right?

Or, we can assume that they know damn well what will happen after Assad is toppled, but they'll go ahead with the plan anyway. The result will depend on Russia's involvement though: will they just let the US invade Syria, or will the US still go ahead with invasion despite Russia's opposition - in this case, we're likely heading into WW3. And we should rightly ask: Is that the plan all along? (As you say, a UN breakup or centralization of power will be the inevitable result: I'm betting on the latter, since that's the agenda of those paying for the wars.)

Being called a tin-hat wearer becomes a compliment after a while - you're no longer gullible to the fairy tail painted by the media. Those calling it are usually ignorant of history, uninformed, or have selfish agendas.


WW3 over Syria will never happen.


You missed the point. If WW3 in planned by those who profit from war, Syria is just the proxy state through which it may begin. It's nothing to do with the domestic affairs of Syria.


There are more interests involved in world politics than just military industrial complexes. WW3 didn't happen at the height of Cold War, when every social, political and economic problem you can reasonably conceive existed and typically at a higher magnitude. And with the baseline adversity back in the day there wasn't any need for a contrived pretext even.


Bravo sir, you know your stuff! You understood me perfectly.


EDIT: if anyone know how to make line breaks in HN please tell me... it just took all my stuff and snagged into a single line :(

Put a blank line between points that you want to separate, like this:

- Point 1

- Point 2

- Point 3


Then how I put TWO blank lines? To separate a set of lists?


You could just put in a few hyphens surrounded by blank lines:

----

Like so.


Do you happen to have any failed predictions, by any chance?


Depends.

Things I said 100% it would happen, happened, but my predictions in that case are things that I think are obvious (although when I struggled to convince other people it would happen, I concluded it is not THAT obvious).

For example, 100% sure it would happen: US invasion on Iraq would trigger a civil war and sectarian violence. US meddling in Libya would result in unstable country. Egypt election of islamist leader would result into more persecution for minorities.

Something I am right now 100% sure: rebels winning Syrian civil war will result into lots of sectarian violence in Syria and countries around it, and will result into millions of displaced Christians (no wonder most Christians still in Syria are fighting for Assad...)

Things where I "failed" was mostly underestimating time to something happen (I 5 years ago, I believed Brazil would take 10 years to have birth rates below replacement... That happened recently, thus 100% faster than I belived).

And I never predicted the rise of Anonymous, or the NSA whistleblowers in the US, I expected it would take some more 20 years to people figure stuff like Prism was not crazy people delusions.

Also I underestimated the scope and length of Brazillian protests, I expected them, because other bus fare increases sparked protests, and when the crackdown happened, and protests got bigger, this was not news either, what was news is that the protests remained for more than 10 days, people in other countries protested, and people in Brazil north protested strongly too (usually those are very detached of anything that happen in Brazil south).

Of course, this leads to a fourth type of possible failure: stuff that happens and force me to throw away previous predictions, and this is strongly the case with Brazil, the protests are quickly changing the political landscape, opening several options while closing others... For example before the protests the chance for a military coup was almost 0%, now it is not so, because there is popular support, and members of the military (including a general) voiced they DO wish to get rid of the current government (or "un-government" as the general wrote on his public letter) Also before the protests I was almost 100% sure Dilma Rouseff would be reelected, now people are even talking about banning reelections completely.




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