During Summer 2015, I attended the IWPA Convention in Las Vegas. The purpose of this organization was to promote "International Wood Products" in and out the US. I can still remember sawmills and associations expecting to find, during the convention, some new markets outside of the US to sell their products outside. The politic of IWPA has changed. Now, on the IWPA website, this is what they say:
" IWPA is the only association in the United States committed to the promotion and enhancement of legal and sustainable trade in the imported hardwood and softwood products industry. IWPA actively represents the interests of the imported wood products industry before international trade organizations, Congress, the federal government, state legislatures and regulators, and municipal governments." In other words, they now openly represent the interest of foreign economy to benefit the approval from local US authorities.
On this page, they emphasis their policy: " Ford himself even attempted to build his own rubber empire in Brazil to harvest and import the valuable good. " In other words, American industry can only benefit from foreign imports. During the convention of 2015, I met a sawmill owner who told me "I make more money with the wood I import rather than trying to sell my own woods" and the hardwood association of Tennessee had given up a while ago when they were told that the miracle would come from China.
What really happens in IWPA is what I call an "economic warfare". Just like civilians would think to win a war given weapons, some industrial companies are taking the weapons that governments are losing, and the wood industry is symptomatic of the politics abroad. Wood imports are synonymous with the grabbing of lands abroad.
All this economy is based on the opacity of the prices, the lack of organization from the various actors, forest owners, sawmills and workers. It benefits also from the appetite of political influences that favor immediate results and results sound with money. On their websites, IWPA will speak of Ford and Eisenhower, but they don't speak of Trump, Obama, Clinton, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, CNN, Fox, etc.... They use the symbols of the past to emphasis a business practice, but while they speak of Ford, they shall speak also of the workers houses, the social progress and the evolution that shall have prevented from the growth of favelas.
The following is a picture of modern colonialism in Brasil. While Ford built houses in the United-States, the mining and rubber companies who provided the iron for the body of the cars and the rubber for the weals did not do anything. Instead, the people had to manage their life by themselves and it became the favelas.
Now in Paris, favelas are growing in the heart of the city. They are symptomatic of a government that does not have state regulations to ordain living standards.
In the skid of Los Angeles, 50,000 homeless people are living just miles away from the most powerful and rich men of the United-States.
In San Francisco, they use robots to deter homelessness. Technology does not have human feelings.
What's going on with IWPA is a war of influence that favors international trades prior to local businesses, growth, education, industries and wellness. The industry at stake is the Silicon Valley, because without China (and Japan), Silicon Valley is dead. Without China, Las Vegas is also dead and if San Francisco and Las Vegas are dead, so is also the business of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Orange County. So is to say, if Los Angeles dies, so does also New-York. There is a chain effect on the new technologies because those technologies are linked to fortunes who do not want to lose their power. Instead, they buy the politics.
Actually, most people in Beverly Hills were once hillbillies. Actors who become rich and influential. Producers, directors, marketing sharks and bankers.
California is the home of most liberal billionaires. It is also the home of the "Big Six" who make the propaganda for the sectors of the industry that favor energy because behind energy, there is a war of power.
Columbia Picture = Sony, Japanese
20th Century Fox = Sir Rupert Murdock, Australian, Commonwealth
Paramount Picture = Viacom, CBS ( Westinghouse Electric Corporation )
Universal pictures = Comcast, General Electric
Metro Goldwyn Meyer = Sony, Comcast, JP Morgan, Crédit Suisse
United-Artist = merged with MGM
WWII has been won because Russia had large stocks of oil that kept the engines running over the Nazis. The Americans arrived with new resources and before they took over Europe, they won in Africa where they found all the energy to run their engines. Both the United-States and Russia (USSR) took the Nazis into a vice and the war was over. Some government such France and Great Britain are still in the same war because their colonial territories are their resource to control the power over the other nations. The United-States is "another nation", precisely, the Republicans of the United-States are "another nation" and they consider the United-States just the same way they consider Africa and South America. The United-States is still, in their mind, a territory to conquer.
Great Britain and France are two major influential countries, along with China, Japan, Russia, the Middle East and the United-States, but after WWII, the united states have constantly curbed the greed. IWPA is a phenomenon that shows in three years (2018-2015) what's happening globally and here are some documentaries to explain:
China has invaded the American and the European markets. The United-States and France were the two major countries in the world that had developed a strong industry to transform iron into a product. Cars, beams, bolts, screws, railways have used iron and to cast iron, the industry has burnt the wood that was not used for making the furniture. All parts of a tree had a purpose and an industrial value.
The industry has changed and precisely, the industry has moved outside of the US, outside of France and mostly outside of the Western countries. China has developed an industry that was cheaper and this industry has received the support of the companies in charge of the logistic of the products, trucks, boats and planes. They are quite the same industries that use the transport the products from the colonies, what means that after WWII, the governments have changed, the countries have changed but the "nomads" have continued to be "nomads". Truck companies have continued to be truck companies. Boat companies have continued to be boat companies and the flight industry has developed on the same pattern as boat companies, to ship people, products and materials in order to keep moving.
When we talk about China, Africa, Brasil, we shall always wonder who is behind, is it Great Britain, France, the United-States, China, the Middle East ????
China has benefited from Great Britain, and then it benefited from USSR when the regime was communist. It now benefits from Europe who smuggles hope all over the world. In fact, Europe smuggles green labels and Climate Change certificates in place of boundaries.
Now that China is settled worldwide, Russia is using the black market to smuggle its illegal wood and behind the politic of IWPA, there is a politic of mob.
The politic of a mob is about power, money, influence and propaganda. In fact, the politic of IWPA is symptomatic of an organization of people who think individually for their own businesses. They don't think as an "industry", a "nation" and a "people".
When the American forest sells pellets in Europe, it sells a product that is below the value of timber wood. When Chinese buy timber wood without any competitors, the value is also below its normal price so smuggling illegal wood from Russia and Africa is a way for China to keep up its balance and sell the products made out of those woods with large margins. The wood products made in China arrive on the American market way above the value of the pellets and it creates a whole in the economy that other industries will fill to weight into the national economy. Globally, some industries are more organized than others and globally, engineers have a better chance to win on farmers, forest owners, sawmills and lower educated people.
The United-States is no different than Africa. At some point, when the goods the US can sell have less value than the goods they buy, there is an increasing deficit that creates fluctuations and crisis.
Governments are not armed to fight because they have not yet understood that the Chinese government is made of engineers who nonetheless understand the technologies, but who also have a very aggressive strategy to control everything, everywhere. Nonetheless they think as engineers, but they also think globally like an army shall think a map or a "Go game". The wood industry has become a weapon of control on a market and on a money.
The balance created by the wood industry has created an impact on the US dollars that Chinese can manipulate to value their own currency. While the dollar becomes unstable, the Yuan becomes more stable and even get the money of exchange on the markets. As a result, the impact of one industry finally impacts the rest of the industries because they all use the same money.
My wonder over the years since I have been in the United-States is to try to understand the role of Europe on the American market. There is a will of domination at every levels of the society and it seems that the declaration of independence still have some resonance with the British Commonwealth. I don't really understand the role played by the UK in the American forestry other than creating a very low price product that cannot compete with the importations from China. I don't really understand either the role of Hong-Kong vs Shanghai and the role of Europe in the monetary competition.
What I know is what I have seen and during the Obama era, he has favored the "silicon technologies" with large grants while he did not help the wood industry. Obama, in the path of Al Gore, has favored "a climate change" debate but has done nothing to protect the forestry. I have witnessed the incoherence of a Democratic era and like anybody, I fear the incoherence of a Republican era. I fear also the instrumentation of colors as if being black, Obama would be right. I think that he has been wrong in many ways. He has been wrong with the technologies and the imbalance he has created on the territory. He has been wrong with giving weapons to civilians abroad. He has been wrong with breaking the "grace period" for American inventors. He has been wrong with making the social security system more complicated than ever.
Let me be clear with that, I would have voted for Obama in 2004. I was teaching English in a French company and I have been fired from this company because I made my students to read the speech of Obama. It was an historical event, the first black president. But what a deception later. The first deception with his Nobel price without any accomplishment. It smelled like corruption and indeed. The father of Obama was from Kenya, a former British colony. The Nobel Price was given by Norway, an Anglican territory what means that the Queen of England is the religious authority. An authority with lust on the United-States, the Commonwealth and the colonies.
If we compare the colonies in Africa and the countries that suffer from hunger, we see some correlation between the maps that question both the religion and the politics.
The video below was made on February 28, 2017, one year ago. The UN announced that hunger is back in Africa, something they had not seen since... 2011. Six years only without hunger. The hunger hits the yellow parts of the map, 20 million people concerned by hunger. The UN estimates that it would need 4.4 billion dollars to solve the crisis. SO far in 2017, the UN had reached 10% of it. South Sudan, Yemen and Somalia are the most endangered countries.
What is hunger? Hunger is the lack of access to basic food for 20% of the population what brings to 2 death a day every 10,000 people. That's 800 death a day on a population of 20% of 20 million. It's 5,615 death a week and 24,333 death each month. Hunger is also a bad nutrition for 30% of the population what means that some of them might not die but might suffer from the lack of basic food.
The causes of hunger are climate, military-politics and human other than wars:
CLIMATE: drought and extension of the desert. The area concerned go from Senegal to the Arabian peninsula.
MILITARY-POLITICS: Boko Haram in Nigeria and Somalia. Civil wars in Yemen and South Sudan.
HUMANITARIAN CAUSES: over exploitation of wells, deforestation, overpopulation, green house effect.
The over exploitation of the wells and the over population are linked but they are the cause of the magnet effect of the cities. The deforestation and the green house effect are the cause of developed countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the United-States. Drought and the extension of the desert are a cause of the green house effect. Military-politic problem are false problem which have been created to keep the control of the territories. When a foreign country wants to dominate a territory, he creates a vacuum filled with fears. The modern governments did not invent this technique, it has been used since the birth of the first human empire.
The question is, do modern people have to live like the old ones? Does humanity have a change to progress? Does the society have a chance to progress? I believe that the answer is inside the religion and this is the duty of everyone to question what is going on.
In the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, the rabbi talks about the "Tower of Power". I really recommend this lecture because it can only inspire a good thinking even though we might not agree with Rabbi Lapin's words, the idea is resonating.
On minute 26:04: "Cain means acquisitiveness and Abel means zero. What a more appropriate name for someone who dies without even having a chance to impact the world. There is nothing left of Abel. Abel is no more, in fact "a zero". Cain acquisitiveness, that would be a right way to describe somebody who is not satisfied with inheriting half the world from father Adam. He wanted to inherit the entire world and so he eliminated the other person. It's too bad Cain did not have a Rabbi, it would have saved him the trouble. A Rabbi could have told him that wealth and health comes from cooperating with other people, not eliminating them."