What Will 2024 Bring? — Part 1/3 (Predictions from a year ago)
Things already happen and will continue, but to what extent? What else can be expected? And is it really me saying this?
Written in the last days of 2023 and published on Medium on New Year’s Eve 2023, the below text was completely ignored. After 24 hours, there had not been even a single view of it.
New Year’s predictions are not unusual in media, and Medium also had its share, but for whatever reason, this particular one was blocked by the system and not shown to anyone.
I got disappointed and removed the article from the platform, only now bringing it forward through Turning Life, here on Substack, the way it was, only some typos fixed and the formatting slightly adjusted.
It was all meant to be a bit provocative, to spark thoughts and discussion, as this is something I always want to see when we talk about our common future. Perhaps, with a little luck, some of the worst predictions can actually be prevented from coming true if only we have a good talk about things up front?
I hope you will enjoy the old predictions and take your time to make your own evaluations along the way — were they reasonable predictions, and did things go in the direction described, perhaps partly?
Btw., my background for predicting things like these are former Eastern Europe and Russian studies, including history and politics, and also Latin American history studies. Next to that, I am just a normal person who is interested in the world.
Please note: The Substack editor had problems handling it as one long post, such as it was laid out originally, so I split it into three, letting a separate fourth one hold a follow-up and evaluation. The three parts will be published over a few days, the follow-up afterwards.
2024 predictions
While it is definitely true that a lot of things are happening around the world, it is less certain that what I believe is happening — really is.
News media cannot be trusted: everything is told as either a sensation, not focusing on what is actually true but more on what makes a horrific story; or as propaganda, told with a purpose of manipulating the audience’s feelings and beliefs about a topic.
When I had written the text below and just wanted to step through it one more time to fix potential typos, etc., I happened to read in an online newspaper a story about Ukraine and the USA and the likely outcome of several things during the next few months, and I realized that the writer of that article was telling to maybe 75% the exact same story as I had just written, with some elements that I had been thinking but decided not to write here and now, bringing in the same conclusions, same words and phrases, etc. — effectively proving that we had both been shaped and manipulated the same way by our sources. That other writer probably doesn’t know any better than me.
So, please read whatever I claim to think with this in mind. See it as various bits of propaganda tied together in a well-meant attempt to see and describe what is going on, but through coloured glasses that hide the real world and makes me tell a made-up story.
Sorry about that, I don’t know how to get a better and more trustworthy picture of the world. I do hope, however, that the real picture is brighter.
Propaganda starts here … :
The headlines for 2024, in short
War is on top of the list of easy predictions for 2024, as there are several wars already going on or lining up, not likely to end within the next couple of days.
The West will get increasingly out of balance as weapon stores are emptied and production rates for new weapons are too low.
The USA will send lots of military to Scandinavia and show disrespect for local laws, creating tensions with the few locals who are not too afraid of the NSA, CIA, etc. to dare to complain.
Trade, culture, and just about everything else will increasingly close around national or very local activities. China’s importance will begin to fade.
An affection for the ultra-right wing movements in many areas of the world have brought power to maniacs, and more will follow.
Freedom of speech, and even freedom to think, is already under attack, and more of this will come. Information is also no longer free — whatever may be left of free information will be captured by businesses and sold as subscriptions.
Technological advancements are, as always, promised to be to the benefit of humanity but will in the short run lead to lay-offs, later to the abstraction of what used to be known and understandable. People will get increasingly alienated from their own lives.
Research may bring news about the very distant outer space, but medical and chemical advances have already been completely encapsulated in business life and will appear only if and when a company can earn money on it.
Climate will continue to show its teeth, with more floodings, fires, and tough weather all around.
An oil crisis will appear, affecting everything in society, but mostly creating tensions between rich and poor.
Let’s check some of the details:
War
Africa
Various wars and war-like situations happen all the time in different parts of Africa, and it will continue. The risk for any larger scale wars may have been reduced somewhat with the assassination of the Wagner Group’s leader, but this group of criminals for hire is still active and will still be involved with many security aspects in Africa, also in 2024.
Ukraine
Russia will be continuously equipped with enough weapon to bomb, kill and destroy in Ukraine for many years, but there is an increasing risk of nuclear weapon being put into active use, especially the “tactical” ones. Russia has mentioned these on many occasions and have now placed a number of them in Belarus, and from there it is, as I see it, quite likely that one or more will be used in 2024 for some special situations that Russia just wants to win at any price. Speaking for that: Russia is already using chemical weapons and have used the terrible “vacuum bombs” from day one, apart from covering every square inch of Ukraine (where they have been) with land mines.
There are so many people earning money on this war that it probably will not end anytime soon, and it is indicative for the current situation that a lot of rebuilding activities are actively taking place in parts of the country, while bombs are still falling — foreign companies earn a lot on this, and so do all those who deliver weapons to both sides.
The USA seems to be split between people who want to kill Russians and people who want to make life miserable for Mexicans instead, so the level of participation from the USA is difficult to predict — but as the companies producing weapons must be earning a lot, I doubt that the USA support will disappear completely, and even if it, along the way, would be on the way to do so, Russia will make sure to reinstate it again; if the USA is no longer the enemy, Russia will have a problem explaining why they keep the war going on.
Iran may get distracted by other war activities, so a source of weapon may dry out for Russia during the year, but South Africa, North Korea, and what about Brazil and others — members of the new, extended BRICS organization — are probably all heavily involved in the support of the assault on Ukraine.
Georgia
It looks like Russia currently has no capacity for continuing their attempts of getting Georgia under control, and currently they meet some level of cooperation from the country, so I don’t believe that 2024 will see an attack by Russia on Georgia. But later, this is absolutely possible.
Moldova
There are already Russian soldiers in parts of Moldova, and as soon as it can be arranged, some kind of coup or attack is likely. Russia doesn’t care much about the people there, but they do want to get their old empire back and be present deep inside of Europe, and Moldova is probably seen as an easy way in. A military action in/against Moldova could happen in 2024.
The Middle East
Israel was attacked and initiated a big scale war as kind of revenge. I know that there are more details in it, such as hostages still being held by Hamas as this is written and a potential for more attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah and other groupings. But for now, Israel is very much in charge of whether there is a war or not.
Groups of partisans in Yemen have started shooting at ships passing by, and all kinds of other war activities are going on here and there in the area — and Iran has been mentioned a few times as being behind some of it. It is not unlikely that the situation overall will escalate and Iran will get more openly and actively involved in various acts of war — and the USA will possibly get into a war with Iran, demanding their usual “partners” to participate, meaning a new desert war coming up. Somehow, the whole scenery around the current Israel/Hamas war could look like a way of building up the stage for something like that (even though I don’t know who is building and who may try to prevent it, if any).
To be continued…