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Sep 30, 2011

The Limits of Blackness

 

The Occidental Observer 


The Limits of Blackness

Posted: 30 Sep 2011 07:27 AM PDT

Debates about where the limits of a race lie are always heated and seldom resolved. Readers of this website may have encountered such debates, only almost certainly they have always involved determining where White ends and coloured begins.

But—what about the other side? Where does Black end and something other begin?

And, more importantly, should that something other, if a multiracial person, enjoy the same breaks given to Blacks on account of so-called 'historical injustices'?

The answer to this question has legal, economic, and moral consequences.

Didier Aplogan, Benin's Minister of Sports

The Problem of Blackness
In a country like the United States, where Blackness was and is still traditionally defined according to a 'one drop rule', Blackness is problematic.

The problem of Blackness is perhaps emblematically highlighted by the case of Barack Obama. Because of his White mother, the latter is technically a mulatto, but is regarded, as he regards himself, a Black man.

Some, including Black columnist Debra Dickerson, do not regard him as Black at all. For the likes of Dickerson, being Black in America—being an African American—means being descended from West African slaves brought to America.

Laurant Gbagbo, former president of Côte d'Ivoire

The problem has also been recognised in education. Lani Guinier and Henry Louis Gates once noted during a panel discussion at Harvard University's reunion for African American alumni that approximately only one third of Black Harvard undergraduates were from families where all four grandparents were African American. The rest were West Indian immigrants, their children, or mixed race. The result is that Affirmative Action has come mostly to benefit individuals for whom it was not originally intended, and who, as per the logic of the policy, do not deserve special provisions.

In the context of Affirmative Action and the reasons for it, the situation becomes particularly problematic when it comes to mixed-race individuals, particularly those who have one Black and one White parent.

The White parent could well have descended from a White slaveholder, while the Black parent could have descended from slaves—even from slaves owned by the White slaveholder. What then? Is this mixed-race individual eligible for Affirmative Action or reparations for slavery?

It is worth asking, because then the White man within, who, by modern definitions, harbours historical guilt, and, according to many Blacks, ought to be atoning and paying reparations for the crimes of his ancestors, is effectively being rewarded by those crimes, denying the Black man his justice. Injustice—if we accept that there has been such—would be perpetuated this way: within a single individual, the White man robs the Black man of half his due.

Needless to say, I do not accept the premise that the Black man is due or owed anything by us. On the contrary, and as I have stated before, the reverse is true: the Black man owes us, and owes us big, because it was wewho freed him, we who banned slavery, and we who gave them rights and access to a standard of living on average far superior to anything he ever had as the slave of his Black masters in West Africa.

This brings us to the other side of question of Affirmative Action with individuals of mixed Black/White ancestry: if the Black man owes us, and we are being forced by politicians to transfer wealth and cede places at universities for the benefit of the Black man, then, within a single individual, the Black man is getting double what he is entitled to, and the White man being doubly penalised for his good deeds.

Either way, affirmative action commits a double injustice where individuals who are of mixed ancestry benefit from it because they are classed as Black.

Then, of course, there is the question of what, or who, is Black? And of exactly how Black is Black?

Harold Ford, former Congressman from Tennessee

Jose Eduardo dos Santos, President of Angola

African Americans in the United States have, on average, 18-20% White ancestry.

Does this mean—if we accept the premises of the Left—that, in the event that reparations for slavery are ever paid, automatically one fifth of it needs to be discounted, so as to avoid injustice?

And what about individuals who are classed as Black, but who have seven White great grandparents? Should such a person be eligible for Affirmative Action or reparations for slavery? Or should he, instead, be apologising, atoning, and paying up?

Even more interestingly: What about individuals who are Black for a living? Should individuals in such a position not be the Blackest of Black? I ask because it seems absurd that a man with a non-negligible amount of White ancestry should be campaigning to advance Black ethnic interests. What about the White man within? Why is he denied?

White Deniers

Returning to the case of Obama, some interesting questions arise when one considers that a) he was supposed to unite a post-racial America; and b) he has since presided over a huge transfer of wealth from White tax-payers to Black welfare claimants and affirmative action beneficiaries.

It may make practical sense for Obama to self-identify as Black in a country with a one-drop rule, but this does not mean that the White man inside him is not there, living alongside the Kenyan, a non-African American Black. Thus his affirmation of Blackness is simultaneously a denial of Whiteness. The act has to be racial, because, as is amply documented in Jared Taylor'sWhite Indentity, Blacks think and act racially as a matter of course.

And, therefore, in as much as Obama denies his White half, and in as much as he does not proportionally serve White ethnic interests, Obama is a race traitor.

Furthermore, since racial ethnic interests often conflict, everything Obama does in terms of race as a political leader is a double act of racial treason, either to his Black half or his White half, and again and in all cases to both simultaneously.

White denial in Blacks is the unintended consequence of a rule whose aim was to preserve Whiteness. The rule no longer seems to serve White interests now that Blacks have the upper hand in their role of righteous victims. Or does it?

Al Sharpton

Let us imagine for a second that the one-drop rule were reversed, and that, in a country run by Blacks, any person with even one drop of White ancestry was classed as White. This would have made Obama White, and it is conceivable that under such circumstances Obama would have preferred a White identity, denying his Blackness. It is likewise conceivable that he would pander to White interests, instead of Black interests. Or would he?

White people tend to be less ethnocentric than other peoples of the world, and in modern times they have altogether renounced their racial identity, retaining only a vestige for the purposes of apologising for themselves.

In The French Revolution in San Domingo, Lothrop Stoddard highlighted that in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), the mulattoes aggregated into a separate caste. They hated the Blacks, disdaining them as inferior; and they hated the Whites, who in turn disdained them as their inferiors.

Conversely, the Blacks hated the mulattoes, who were higher up socioeconomically, and even a century after the revolution, Hesketh Prichard, a British journalist, observed that the 'ultra-negro' Blacks systematically excluded and marginalised the coloured caste.

Among the so-called Hispanics, the same applies. They are by no means a race, even if they adopt silly slogans like 'Brown power'. Some have White ancestry, which can be considerable and even total.

Perhaps the Blacks and 'Browns' deny their Whiteness because the Whites themselves deny their Whiteness. And this denial, this negative identity where Whiteness only exists as a vehicle for apology to Blacks, only fuels the disdain of Blacks and mulattoes, who in turn see Whites and Whiteness as shameful, and thus White pride as the lowest of the low.

The situation is quite different in many countries in Latin America, where populations have experienced a great deal of admixture and where individuals are classed according to ancestry and skin gradations. In Brazil and Venezuela up to ten gradations are recognised by 99% of the population, but a study in Brazil identified up to 143 names for racial types.

Such societies are by no means post-racial. They are, in fact, highly stratified socioeconomically according to race, with pure Whites at the top, and pure Blacks at the bottom.

Phenotypic Whites tend to marry other phenotypic Whites. And even if the boundaries are fuzzy and phenotypes an unreliable marker for racial purity, the fact remains that Whiteness is an asset, and Whites, especially Nordic Whites, are generally considered more attractive than coloured individuals, let alone Blacks. The comments of Gabriela Oviedo, representing Bolivia in the 2004 edition of Miss Universe, are indicative of racial attitudes in her part of the world:

"Unfortunately, people who don't know Bolivia very much think that we are all just Indian people," she said, adding that the image typified La Paz, which has "poor people and very short people and Indian people. . . .  I'm from the other side of the country. We are tall and we are white people and we know English." (Tyler Bridges, Knight Ridder,TheState.com (SC), Aug. 13)

All the same, Whites in Latin America do not operate as a self-conscious racial group. When they band together it is by proxy, by implicit means. In political terms they too deny their Whiteness.

Some commentators on the Left have stated that it is the United States' destiny to become like Brazil. If so, this would mean a dropping of the one-drop rule, much more permeable racial boundaries, and stratification, implicit and/or explicit, according to language, culture, and racial castes.

However, because of the regnant anti-racist ideology dominating the West—originally developed and adopted by Whites during the French Revolution and now at its logical extreme, we can expect the self-denying Whites in the United States not to remain an implicitly White oligarchy, as in Latin America, but to be expelled or exterminated, as in Haiti.

(Jews, who are often perceived as White, even if many have theorised against Whiteness, would also be 'encouraged' to emigrate by the very same people they helped enter the United States.)

And no doubt the Whites would see it as either just deserts for their wicked past, or a failure by them successfully to end racism. Those with an explicit racial consciousness would be the same ones who have one now, plus those who have it but have yet to admit to it or go public.

Modern White denial in Blacks and mulattoes is the latter two appropriating a policy designed to benefit Whites and putting it to work to benefit them, with the result that it is now Whites who deny their own Whiteness. The one-drop rule has come back to bite them in the rear.

Thus, one wonders whether Whites' suddenly adopting a policy of White affirmation would mean Blacks suddenly competing to see who is more blessed with the coveted genes.

Legitimate Claimaint

If we are going to affirm our Whiteness, it seems appropriate, and a logical consequence, to remind Blacks in the United States of their White ancestry. Thus far, it seems, they have refused to deal with this important issue. And it is especially pressing in their case, since they are so explicitly racial in their thinking and their actions.

Jesse Jackson

Perhaps Blacks, and especially those who are Black for a living, should require racial purity of each other. And, given that the context in the United States is always slavery and its consequences, they should also perhaps require a specifically West African ancestry, and being able to trace their lineage to a slave.

In other words, immigrants from Africa who settled in the United States after the abolition of slavery cannot legitimately partake in any kind of reparations discourse, benefit from affirmative action, or engage in Afro-American political agitation. They cannot even besmirch the United States as a 'racist' country, or make demands from the White population and leadership, because it was their choice to immigrate to the United States in the first place.

The term African American should be defined strictly, and, before we hear anything further about Affirmative Action, both we and African Americans should insist on the adoption of this strict definition. What is more, in this context Whites should deal only with correctly defined African Americans.

Anything other is a cynical attempt by professional and amateur 'Blacks' to add demographic weight to their outrageous claims—because deep down, those who are only partially African American, or who are African immigrants who immigrated after the abolition of slavery, know those claims are outrageous, being just an effort to get a slice of the White pie, to get freebies out of Whites befuddled by their own moral and philosophical abstractions.

This particularly applies to mulattoes and people of colour. Those who adopt Black identities in the United States, whose partial Black ancestry qualifies as African American, and who parrot the discourse of Affirmative Action and reparations for slavery cannot, and should not be allowed to get away with, the onotological contradiction that automatically renders them bogus claimants. They cannot legitimately claim to be victims when they are also simultaneously guilty, as per their own ideology. And from both their and our perspective, any benefits they receive as a result of Affirmative Action should be handed straight back by them, since they are also the ones owing. In other words, they should neither compensate nor be compensated, and we should expect that they end up no better and no worse than before.

Blackness ought to have a limit.


+++

Fun stuff to read, tell and watch:

Now FREE to watch all 91 minutes: "Defamation," from Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. LINK: http://tinyurl.com/3rvhdvc

Some of His Best Friends Are Jewish: The Saga of a Holocaust Revisionist By Nathaniel Popper. Link: http://tinyurl.com/3v6m88c

...an Israeli lawyer has filed a class-action lawsuit against former President Jimmy Carter, seeking $5 million in damages because his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" allegedly defamed Israel. Link: http://tinyurl.com/3pltqg2

"...when you have laws against questioning the Holocaust narrative, you are screaming at the other person to stop thinking!!!" ---Mike Santomauro. *Anthony Lawson's Holocaust Video "were the Germans so stupid"... Link: http://tinyurl.com/643q54n

An anti-Semite condemns people for being Jews, I am not an anti-Semite.--Mike Santomauro. Link: http://tinyurl.com/42z9p8o

Start reading DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST in under a minute: http://tinyurl.com/3f8h874

Peace.

Mike Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367

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Israeli Jets Reportedly Harrass Turkish Ship in Mediterranean « Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

 

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/09/30/israeli-jets-reportedly-harrass-turkish-ship-in-mediterranean/

+++

Fun stuff to read, tell and watch:

Now FREE to watch all 91 minutes: "Defamation," from Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. LINK: http://tinyurl.com/3rvhdvc

Some of His Best Friends Are Jewish: The Saga of a Holocaust Revisionist By Nathaniel Popper. Link: http://tinyurl.com/3v6m88c

...an Israeli lawyer has filed a class-action lawsuit against former President Jimmy Carter, seeking $5 million in damages because his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" allegedly defamed Israel. Link: http://tinyurl.com/3pltqg2

"...when you have laws against questioning the Holocaust narrative, you are screaming at the other person to stop thinking!!!" ---Mike Santomauro. *Anthony Lawson's Holocaust Video "were the Germans so stupid"... Link: http://tinyurl.com/643q54n

An anti-Semite condemns people for being Jews, I am not an anti-Semite.--Mike Santomauro. Link: http://tinyurl.com/42z9p8o

Start reading DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST in under a minute: http://tinyurl.com/3f8h874

Peace.

Mike Santomauro
Editorial Director
ReporterNotebook@gmail.com
Call anytime: 917-974-6367

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"Anwar al-Awlaki videos will be out there on the internet forever, inspiring others. That's all it takes to radicalize." - Evan Kohlmann, kosher MSNBC "security analyst"

 

This dude was born in America, went to San Diego college, was arrested for solicitation of prostitution twice in California
 
 
"Anwar al-Awlaki videos will be out there on the internet forever, inspiring others. That's all it takes to radicalize." - Evan Kohlmann, kosher MSNBC "security analyst"
Evan "Hymie" Kohlmann
 
 
In other words, all it takes for a person to "radicalize" is to watch YouTube videos.
 
If that's the case, then the 1,544,328 people who watched a single video showing Israeli soldiers abusing Palestinians are ripe for radicalization because they might get upset over Palestinians being abused.
 
We all live in a Cause and Effect Universe. In this instance, Jewish desire to create a racially-pure Jewish state on Palestinian land was the Cause, and the subsequent expectant upheaval and reprisals on the Invaders Israel are the Effect.
 
So why in the world would the Israelis expect Peace standing on "stolen blood land?"
 
So why in the world would the Israelis expect America to pay for Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and all the costly military equipment Israel can buy from select American defense contractors?Holocaust sympathy? Contractor kickbacks? ZOG mandate?
 
Why would anyone expect anything other than all the war the defenseless Palestinians can muster?
 
Even under int'l law, the Occupied have a right to use ".....any means necessary" to evict the illegal Occupying Force.
 
Just think, instead of the poor defenseless Palestinians having only bottles, rocks and glorified fireworks to "attack Israel" with, what if they had ICBMs, and an Air Force armed with nuclear weapons? Would Israel behave then? Would Israel become an instant convert to the policy of "Mutally Assured Destruction" with the Palestinians?
 
Why would anyone expect Palestinians and any other peace-loving person to keep their mouths shut about the abuse, murder and occupation of the Palestinian people at the hands of the U.S. and Israeli governments?
 
And is it any wonder? Wouldn't you consider it "normal" or even "predictable" that if a foreign army attacks and displaces a million people from their land and homes, wouldn't you imagine those people will remain eternally pissed at the Evil Evictors? If those people did nothing, THAT would be unnatural.
 
bin Laden said, "It is normal for us to react to the forces that occupy our land, kill our people and steal our natural resources."
 
Let me tell you what ISN'T "normal." It is certainly "abnormal" for ZOG to expect and demand that Palestinians "keep their mouths shut" in complaint of their personal Occupying Evildoers. How dare their victims utter a sound in protest, much less demand justice!
 
Unfortunately, our government officials want to kill folks opposed to U.S.-Israeli foreign policy; folks who are willing to do something about the illegal military occupations.
 
How many of those U.S. government officials are Israeli-Firsters, pro-Israeli and/or under the political influence of AIPAC?
 
Probably most of them. Certainly our American Congress is Zionist Occupied Government.
 
 
 

Anwar al-Awlaki (also spelled Aulaqi; Arabic: أنور العولقيAnwar al-'Awlaqī; April 22, 1971 – September 30, 2011)[4][11] was a Yemeni-American[12] imam who was an engineer and educator by training.[13][14] According to U.S. officials, he was a senior talent recruiter and motivator who was involved with planning operations for the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda.[3][9][15][16][17][18] He was implicated in helping to motivate at least three attacks on U.S. soil,[19] and was the first U.S. citizen to be approved for targeted killing, in direct violation of the United States Constitution.[20][21][22][23] With a blog, a Facebook page, and many YouTube videos, he had been described as the "bin Laden of the Internet".[24][25] Obama described Awlaki as "the leader of external operations for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula".[4]

Al-Awlaki reportedly spoke with, trained, and preached to a number of al-Qaeda members and affiliates, including three of the 9/11 hijackers,[26] alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan,[27][28] and alleged "Christmas Day bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab;[29][30][31] he was also reportedly involved in planning the latter's attack.

According to U.S. officials, al-Awlaki was promoted to the rank of "regional commander" within al-Qaeda in 2009.[6][32] He repeatedly called for jihad against the United States.[33][34] In April 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama approved Al-Awlaki's targeted killing,[20][21][22] an action unsuccessfully challenged by al-Awlaki's father and civil rights groups.[35]

Al-Awlaki was believed to be in hiding in Southeast Yemen in the last years of his life.[36] The Yemenese government began trying him in absentia in November 2010, for plotting to kill foreigners and being a member of al-Qaeda, and a Yemeni judge ordered that he be captured "dead or alive".[36][37] U.S. unmanned drones were deployed in Yemen to search for and kill him,[38] firing at and failing to kill him at least once,[39] before killing him in a drone attack in Yemen on September 30, 2011.[11]

 

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American Jihadi Samir Khan Killed with Awlaki - (Two Americans Murdered by American President Obama)

 

American Jihadi Samir Khan Killed with Awlaki

Written by  Jeanette Torres

A young American who edited al Qaeda's English-language magazine, and had urged Muslims to mount deadly attacks on U.S. targets, was killed in the same CIA drone strike that eliminated Anwar Awlaki in Yemen Friday, U.S. officials said.


Khan, 25, was the Saudi-born, New York-raised editor behind Inspire magazine, the English language online publication of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.  Khan had become a rising figure in jihadist propaganda and an "aspiring" Awlaki, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
But while Awlaki relied on sermons to recruit jihadis, Khan used sarcasm and idiomatic English in an attempt to appeal to Western youth.  As Khan himself has said, "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that I [am] Al Qaeda to the core."  He titled a rebuke of toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak "A Cold Diss."  Khan's ability to use American vernacular, like a graphic depicting graffiti that reads, "Jihad 4 Eva," had prompted concerns that young Muslims with an interest in jihad and al Qaeda would be drawn to a voice similar to their own.


"He does appear to be increasingly involved with operational activities [of Al Qaeda]", a U.S. official told ABC News in 2010.
British officials found copies of Inspire in the apartments of several suspects arrested and charged in connection to a bomb plot in the U.K.  Officials said the suspects were avid followers of both the magazine and Awlaki.


Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a Somali-American college student charged with plotting an attack on a Christmas lighting event in Portland, Oregon, last year, was in contact with Khan, and wrote articles for him, authorities say.


Mohamud, who was arrested in an FBI sting, is accused of attempting to detonate what he believed to be a car bomb in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square via cellphone during the annual lighting of the Christmas tree, which had drawn a crowd of thousands. The FBI affidavit alleges that Mohamud told FBI agents that he had written four articles since 2009 for two different on-line jihadist magazines edited and distributed by Samir Khan.


Khan had edited seven separate issues of Inspire since launching the publication in 2010, penning such articles as "How To Build A Bomb In the Kitchen of Your Mom." Inspire carried sermons by Awlaki and other jihadi figures, boasted about the failed "printer bomb" cargo plane plot, and paid tribute to Osama bin Laden before and after his death. It outlined various techniques for jihadis to attack Americans within U.S. borders, including using pick-up trucks to mow down pedestrians, how to blow up buildings with natural gas, and how to use an AK-47 automatic rifle. The magazines grew in graphic sophistication with each issue, and Khan seemed to write, edit or design the majority of the content.


In the latest issue, which expressed frustration with Iran for spreading conspiracy theories about 9/11 instead of giving credit to al Qaeda, the editor-in-chief called himself "Yahya Ibrahim," but U.S. officials suspect that's just a pseudonym for Khan.


Khan was born in Saudi Arabia and raised from the age of seven in Queens, New York. He was a normal city teenager who listened to hip hop and wore baggy clothing.
Even before his family relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2004, however, Khan had begun to take an interest in Islam. He ditched his baggy pants for jalabiyas, the long white robes traditionally favored by Saudis. He joined two Islamic groups, but neither espoused violence.


But with the move south, Khan took a turn towards radicalism. In 2004, after watching online videos of suicide bombers blowing themselves up at American military checkpoints in Iraq, Khan began to openly support Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and to express that support on-line.


In 2007, shortly after Osama bin Laden released a communiqué, The New York Times reported that Khan, who had launched a blog called "A Martyr, God Willing" in Arabic, praised the al Qaeda leader, and beseeching Americans to "take his message with great seriousness."


In one of his only interviews, Khan told The New York Times that his favorite online video showed a suicide bomber striking a US base in Iraq.
"It was something that brought great happiness to me," Khan said.


Khan spent years in his parents' Charlotte basement blogging, posting al Qaeda messages, and becoming increasingly radicalized by the war in Iraq. His blog's popularity rose as his rhetoric became more extreme.


In 2009, he started a precursor to Inspire called Jihad Recollections, saying, "We have decided to take it upon ourselves to produce the first jihadi magazine in English." In the third issue, amidst calls for jihad and attacks against non-Muslims, Khan devoted space to a gushing review of a product dear to the hearts of American jihadis and infidels alike, Apple's iPhone 3. According to Khan, iPhone was "quickly becoming a standard as opposed to just another phone. With over 35,000 applications available, it becomes a joke when we hear about the so-called 'iPhone killers'."


According to Oren Segal, a researcher at the Anti-Defamation League who has followed Khan's online rhetoric since 2004, Khan left the U.S. for Yemen in October 2009, which is around the time the fourth and final issue of Jihad Recollections appeared. In Yemen, he launched Inspire, and after his arrival in Yemen, say U.S. authorities, his online efforts had been in conjunction with AQAP.


Inspire's second edition, which was published before the October 2010 printer bomb attempt and included Khan's claim to be "Al Qaeda to the core," featured a photo of the Chicago skyline, which U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials think was a tip-off of the terror group's intention to address the bombs to Jewish targets in Chicago.
"He's a model of what Americans can do in the propaganda sphere," said Segal.  "He's what's next.  His message resonates and appeals to Western audiences."

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Read more http://abcnewsradioonline.com/national-news/american-jihadi-samir-khan-killed-with-awlaki.html

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IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end

 

April 25, 2011, 7:20 p.m. EDT

IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end

Commentary: China's economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.

For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the "Age of America" will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.

IMF sees China topping U.S. in 2016

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China's economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now. Brett Arends looks at the implications for the U.S. dollar and the Treasury market.

And it's a lot closer than you may think.

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China's economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.

Put that in your calendar.

It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world's hegemonic power.

More China news: U.S., China to hold economic talks in early May, Shanghai hit by tightening, China 2011 trade surplus may shrink to 2% of GDP

According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund's website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world's largest economy.

Most people aren't prepared for this. They aren't even aware it's that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.

China's economy will be the world's largest within five years or so.

But they're miscounting. They're only comparing the gross domestic products of the two countries using current exchange rates.

That's a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change quickly. And China's exchange rates are phony. China artificially undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the markets.

The comparison that really matters

In addition to comparing the two countries based on exchange rates, the IMF analysis also looked to the true, real-terms picture of the economies using "purchasing power parities." That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.

Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America's share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China's would reach 18%, and rising.

Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China's.

Naturally, all forecasts are fallible. Time and chance happen to them all. The actual date when China surpasses the U.S. might come even earlier than the IMF predicts, or somewhat later. If the great Chinese juggernaut blows a tire, as a growing number fear it might, it could even delay things by several years. But the outcome is scarcely in doubt.

This is more than a statistical story. It is the end of the Age of America. As a bond strategist in Europe told me two weeks ago, "We are witnessing the end of America's economic hegemony."

We have lived in a world dominated by the U.S. for so long that there is no longer anyone alive who remembers anything else. America overtook Great Britain as the world's leading economic power in the 1890s and never looked back.

And both those countries live under very similar rules of constitutional government, respect for civil liberties and the rights of property. China has none of those. The Age of China will feel very different.

Victor Cha, senior adviser on Asian affairs at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me China's neighbors in Asia are already waking up to the dangers. "The region is overwhelmingly looking to the U.S. in a way that it hasn't done in the past," he said. "They see the U.S. as a counterweight to China. They also see American hegemony over the last half-century as fairly benign. In China they see the rise of an economic power that is not benevolent, that can be predatory. They don't see it as a benign hegemony."

The rise of China, and the relative decline of America, is the biggest story of our time. You can see its implications everywhere, from shuttered factories in the Midwest to soaring costs of oil and other commodities. Last fall, when I attended a conference in London about agricultural investment, I was struck by the number of people there who told stories about Chinese interests snapping up farmland and foodstuff supplies — from South America to China and elsewhere.

This is the result of decades during which China has successfully pursued economic policies aimed at national expansion and power, while the U.S. has embraced either free trade or, for want of a better term, economic appeasement.

"There are two systems in collision," said Ralph Gomory, research professor at NYU's Stern business school. "They have a state-guided form of capitalism, and we have a much freer former of capitalism." What we have seen, he said, is "a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That's very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages."

The next chapter of the story is just beginning.

U.S. spending spree won't work

What the rise of China means for defense, and international affairs, has barely been touched on. The U.S. is now spending gigantic sums — from a beleaguered economy — to try to maintain its place in the sun. See: Pentagon spending is budget blind spot .

It's a lesson we could learn more cheaply from the sad story of the British, Spanish and other empires. It doesn't work. You can't stay on top if your economy doesn't.

Equally to the point, here is what this means economically, and for investors.

Some years ago I was having lunch with the smartest investor I know, London-based hedge-fund manager Crispin Odey. He made the argument that markets are reasonably efficient, most of the time, at setting prices. Where they are most likely to fail, though, is in correctly anticipating and pricing big, revolutionary, "paradigm" shifts — whether a rise of disruptive technologies or revolutionary changes in geopolitics. We are living through one now.

The U.S. Treasury market continues to operate on the assumption that it will always remain the global benchmark of money. Business schools still teach students, for example, that the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury bond is the "risk-free rate" on money. And so it has been for more than a century. But that's all based on the Age of America.

No wonder so many have been buying gold. If the U.S. dollar ceases to be the world's sole reserve currency, what will be? The euro would be fine if it acts like the old deutschemark. If it's just the Greek drachma in drag ... not so much.

The last time the world's dominant hegemon lost its ability to run things singlehandedly was early in the past century. That's when the U.S. and Germany surpassed Great Britain. It didn't turn out well.

Updated with IMF reaction

The International Monetary Fund has responded to my article.

In a statement sent to MarketWatch, the IMF confirmed the report, but challenged my interpretation of the data. Comparing the U.S. and Chinese economies using "purchase-power-parity," it argued, "is not the most appropriate measure… because PPP price levels are influenced by nontraded services, which are more relevant domestically than globally."

The IMF added that it prefers to compare economies using market exchange rates, and that under this comparison the U.S. "is currently 130% bigger than China, and will still be 70% larger by 2016."

My take?

The IMF is entitled to make its case. But its argument raises more questions than it answers.

First, no one measure is perfect. Everybody knows that.

But that's also true of the GDP figures themselves. Hurricane Katrina, for example, added to the U.S. GDP, because it stimulated a lot of economic activity — like providing emergency relief, and rebuilding homes. Is there anyone who seriously thinks Katrina was a net positive for the United States? All statistics need caveats.

Second, comparing economies using simple exchange rates, as the IMF suggests, raises huge problems.

Currency markets fluctuate. They represent international money flows, not real output.

The U.S. dollar has fallen nearly 10% against the euro so far this year. Does anyone suggest that the real size of the U.S. economy has shrunk by 10% in comparison with Europe over that period? The idea is absurd.

China actively suppresses the renminbi on the currency markets through massive dollar purchases. As a result the renminbi is deeply undervalued on the foreign-exchange markets. Just comparing the economies on their exchange rates misses that altogether.

Purchasing power parity is not a perfect measure. None exists. But it measures the output of economies in terms of real goods and services, not just paper money. That's why it's widely used to compare economies. The IMF publishes PPP data. So does the OECD. Many economists rely on them.

Brett Arends is a senior columnist for MarketWatch and a personal-finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

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