There has been much talk about our politicians trying to drum up a hot war with Russia and/or China, but I don't think that is their real goal. A hot war is "fine" if you are doing it to a country that does not have the ability to project force on a global level.

Another cold war stands to make them a LOT more money than a hot war would. (Difficult to enjoy those hard stolen dollars when the world economy is in shambles and anything worth buying is already ashes.) Which makes me believe they are pushing more for Cold War 2.0 (Since version 1 was so lucrative for the MIC) but that is not the point of this essay.

Some quick background.

I belong to a group of gamers from all over the world, we frequently have group audio conversations using an App like Discord, Mumble or Teamspeak with upwards of 130 participants in the conversation at a time. I know, it sounds like such a group "call" would quickly degenerate into a free for all with everyone talking at once but we have actually developed a pretty good set of "acceptable behavior" on it and it seldom descends to that level. (It helps that every user has the ability to mute, only to themselves, someone that is being annoying, and a few channel Ops have the ability to globally mute those engaging in bad behavior, essentially giving them a time out.)

I am currently working on setting up a prototype/test C99P server for it to see if it is something that would be utilized enough to make worthwhile, and if it is I plan on funding it myself. (just doing what I can to help our little community have more avenues for conversation and help build and grow our relationships with each other)

This would allow those that wish to have a real time discussion about something join the channel and can converse with whomever else is in it, with different channels created for different topics and a common lobby for free form discussion but that is a project for a little later and I digress, I just wanted to give a little background on how this conversation took place.

Now, for the meat and potato's part of this essay.

I was talking to some of the guys about a week ago and while we generally avoid topics like Politics and religion on our comms (Too damn divisive and interferes with the goal of the server, which is to have fun) and it just so happens that a large number of the people I play with are from Australia and New Zealand (Due to my pain issues I am frequently up during their peak time zone if I am gonna be miserable it always helps to reduce or at least take my mind off the pain when having a fun conversation).

To make a long story short I asked the Kiwi's what they thought about the ultra rich buying up large chunks of NZ in order to have safe refuge after they destroy the world.

They actually find it quite humorous, and here is why.

One of the NZ guys, who is a Maori, stated that there has already been much discussion about it amongst themselves (Think more bar talk than in an academic setting) and according to him and a few of the other guys, they already know exactly where these compounds are being built, who owns them and in many cases even obtained Blueprints via public (and not so public) records of their compounds and fully intend, in the event of a massive global catastrophe, to go in and raid these "Safe Havens".

Their reasoning was two fold, firstly, if their is a breakdown in global infrastructure and society in general there will be lots of useful supplies just sitting there for the taking, and secondly, purely out of rage against the concept that the very people that constructed the global collapse, or at best sat idle and allowed it to happen, would not only go unpunished but sit in the lap of luxury while the rest of the world suffers and burns.

Many people who are not familiar with the Maori are unaware that these people have a long standing culture of the warrior and are very proud of it and can be quite formidable in a fight.

I don't know how many personal security people these richies are planning on bringing with them, but I am pretty sure it isn't going to be enough to stop even one incensed group of Maori let alone the entire Maori nation.

So the moral of this story is simple, if you are one of these oligarch fucks that think you can rape and pillage the planet and then when stuff gets to hot retreat to the safety of NZ they are mistaken.

If they change the entire world into essentially a third world prison they are going to learn a valuable lesson that I learned within my first month as a Corrections officer, in quite a shocking manner, and that is Rapists and Child Molesters both do not fare well in prison.

No matter how many guards with guns we had, there was no way you could keep anyone completely safe unless you moved them into protective custody (basically one step up from a lock-down unit aka The Hole.) and even then a gang would assault one of it's own members just to get him placed into protective custody as well. (You have to request it and have reason in order to go PC) and after laying low for 2 weeks he casually walked by and sliced the throat of the rapist. (Turns out his victim was related to a MS13 member who put a large sum of money on the Shot Callers books to "Serve Justice")

It might only be to a minimal level, but I do obtain a certain sense of satisfaction from knowing that if these assholes do do something of that nature they won't outlive me by long.

There is no protective custody available when the entire planet thinks you are scum and is out to get you.

Feel free to chime in below on either the topic or if you like the idea of us having a free (well, at least for the members, lol!) form of verbal communication. Tools like Discord, Mumble, etc could be really useful I feel for helping with organizing as well as just a place to actually have a conversation with one of your fellow C99Peeps without the slow delay of a text only discussion.