SoBL on the next stage for Japan:

The Japanese had their forty-first straight month of trade deficits. This is the problem when a nation imports raw materials and energy and exports finished goods in a world of sluggish demand. The Japanese are one of the export dollar recyclers. They are not reliable anymore, which might be why tiny Belgium holds hundreds of billions of US Treasuries now. The Japanese are now moving to invest more abroad, but curiously, they are not investing in hot spots like China but instead in America. The Japanese are investing in US insurance companies as a proxy for investing directly in the US. They want to use insurance companies as a way to learn about the US market more before digging in deeper. This is beyond direct purchases of manufacturing firms and what not. They did this in the ’80s when Japanese automakers partnered with US firms to learn the psychology of the US worker as they then invested in US sitused plants.

At the core of all of this is finding ways to earn non-yen denominated revenue. Currency diversification to prepare for a domestic shock. They are preparing for the devaluing of the yen, and they expect it to happen to the yen first and the dollar later. Many have bet against the yen and lost, including recently Kyle Bass, but if the Japanese themselves are starting to bail, the end must be approaching. It is an interesting island culture shaping up. Greying and shrinking population, growing robotics industry, worlds’ largest creditor nation with trillions in net assets, “xenophobic” immigration policy, shrinking working population… it is like they are setting up an island of a homogenous, rentier class.

If this analysis is correct, it suggests that Japanese capital is set to become a major resource for world-wide trends with an NRx (anti-demotic propertarian) orientation. Sustaining foreign investment revenue streams will become an existential necessity for a grayed Japan, which is enough to establish a definite agenda regarding governance models in the functional fragments of the world system.

Does a ‘rentier nation’ spontaneously produce a Neocameral geopolitical entity?

This has to be enemy micro-media action (but it’s pretty damn funny nonetheless).

ADDED: Don’t miss the additional Sam Hyde (video) links in the comment thread.

ADDED: Racial healing.

(Weekly open thread.) XS is sticking with the settled schedule, despite the risk of chaos overdose. It’s been that kind of week. Spotty coverage of 4chan craziness and failed secession in the Anglosphere heartland doesn’t begin to exhaust it.

For anybody tugging at the scorched /pol/ thread, this is an interesting — and impressively sophisticated — strand to pull at (+ some Ebola-Chan context). ++ Trolls are Kulaks — Science. Free Northener on #Gamergate (+ NIO anticipates the storm).

The regular Mitrailleuse secession round-up makes serves as a good Scottish re-dependence portal. Some now dated, but stimulating Scotland-related commentary here, here, here, and here. (Also loosely related, and highly-recommended, from Mitrailleuse.) This might also be the place to throw in some Proprietary Cities links (1, 2, 3).

Anything — however embryonic — proposing to synthesize Neoreaction and Accelerationism is bound to get a hearing here. This is the sign. From a left-slanted sensibility, but related.

Dark comedy on the civilization-morbidity front at the MacArthur Genius Grants. (Some residual seriousness still apparent.) Grants and awards are clearly a crucial zone of conflict.

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… proves yet again that it’s a reliable vote winner.

What the f…

This is posted as a special open thread (requested by Nyan) — consider it a Chaos Patch with turbo-charged chaos. (Given my utter outsideness to the mysteries of 4chan, it can scarcely avoid teaching me something.)

There’s apparently been a brouhaha of some kind. Jim comments on the episode here (his post comes up first on a “4chan purge” Google search). I couldn’t find anything else that was helpful quickly.

This strikes me as far more also fascinating. It’s actual 4GW in the guise of a media prank.

Anyway, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law (with the understanding that sovereign Admin spanking rights are always conserved).

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The trailer for the ISIS jihad-porn blockbuster Flames of War is quite something.

The Rubin Report-embedded version. “They’re clearly trying to bring us into a fight …”

ADDED: A little background from the International Business Times:

The new video, titled “Flames of War,” was released late Tuesday by the Al Hayat Media Center, which, according to the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute, was established in May as the media arm of the Islamic State. […] The 52-second-long video, which, at first glance, seems more like a video-game trailer, is replete with slow-motion effects and high-definition images. It shows exploding tanks and Islamic State militants apparently preparing to execute captives before the words “Flames of War” flash on the screen, followed by the words, “Fighting has just begun.” And, before the screen fades to black, the video ends with the words, “Coming Soon.”

Dig beneath the facile moralism, and Tom Engelhardt offers sentences (even the embryo of an analysis) to delect in:

Since World War II, we’ve generally been focused on the Great Concentration, while another story was developing in the shadows. Its focus: the de-concentration of power in what the Bush administration used to call the Greater Middle East, as well as in Africa, and even Europe. Just how exactly this developed will have to await a better historian than I and perhaps the passage of time. But for the sake of discussion, let’s call it the Great Fragmentation.

This is why, now in my eighth decade, I can’t help but wonder just what planet I’m really on and what its story will really turn out to be.

Probably not, but the chance isn’t negligible. There’s a poll tracker for the final phase here. This historical overview of independence plebiscites is encouraging.

My favorite article on the topic so far is too odd too easily classify. Quality hedginess from Sailer, and (ratcheting down a few notches) David Miles at the Huffington Post.

Reason does the right thing. Steve Forbes makes an even stronger case for a break, while trying to do the opposite. Here‘s some deeply retarded propaganda, that happens to be pointing in the right direction. Round-up coverage from The Scotsman.

As should be expected, various flavors of hostility and condescension to secession from the (smug-through-to-foaming) Left. (We splittists will take whatever we can get.) Paul Krugman, who has never been right about anything, is against independence, which should settle the question conclusively.

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Richard Fernandez seizes upon Roger Cohen’s recent NYT lamentation (here) to explore the predicament of America’s narcissistic, ruin-mongering elite, as the world they broke collapses about them:

What’s the alternative to stupidity now? Now that they’ve gone so far it’s almost a shame not to see it through to the end. And therein rests the last remaining chance of the liberal establishment, imploring such divinities as they still believe in — luck maybe — that their hero can create a chaos so complete it will embroil the entire Muslim world, Russia and China in a vast conflagration before it consumes them.

Note: Cohen’s inclusion of a citation from Kipling’s The Gods of the Copybook Headings (in the NYT!) is a sure sign of the End Times. It makes me wonder whether the liberal media elite will be desperately chanting Moldbug poetry when Zack finally closes in.