Russian Analyst: US will have civil war in 2009

The picture on left published in the Wall Street Journal on December 29, 2008 depicts how the U.S. may split apart following a civil war as according to the predictions of a Russian professor Igor Panarin.

Reaction of course in the commentariat is that Panarin is just ignorant of the United States. Although I was aware of the sensation he created earlier in the Russian media, the article in the Wall Street Journal was one the first times he was mentioned in the mainstream U.S. media. Now as expected, his views have created a stir and which prompted myself to do a little research on who Panarin is and how he came about with this scenario. In another article, Panarin claims, "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse."

Lets look at some facts:

• Igor Panarin is a professor of political sciences and expert on the U.S. as well as Dean of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Diplomatic Academy in Moscow.
• Panarin cites French political scientist Emmanuel Todd who in 1976 predicted, the fall of the Soviet Union, based on indicators such as increasing infant mortality rates. Likewise, Todd predicted a similar fate for the United states in 2001.
• Similar to Todd's use of demographic date to calculate his predictions, Panarin based his forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts (Russia's equivilent of the National Security Agency) which is used to predict economic, financial and demographic trends.

One must also keep in mind that Panarin himself gives his predictions a 55-45% chance of happening. If you read in one of my previous posts you will also find that his predictions are not far off from some analysts in the United States as well. Other analysts offer other scenarios: The U.S. could prevent its economic collapse by becoming a dictatorship. Standards of living would decrease but the government could use military force to keep the country together and perhaps even succeed with implementing a union with Canada and Mexico and just replace the failed currency with a new one. But this is a topic for another day and another post!

Russia in the Americas

This picture on the left says a thousand words. The President of Russia is shown lighting a candle in the newly consecrated Russian Orthodox cathedral in Havana, Cuba, while Raul Castro looks on. Dmitry Medvedev's visit to South America was certainly significant for Russia's presence in the Americas. Despite the commentariat's agenda to make it appear that a new USSR is trying to militarize the region, there are several points I think were very significant about Medvedev's visit:

1. Brazil - is one of the so-called "emerging markets" - countries that make up the "B.R.I.C." economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. This is important to note because Brazil and Russia are discussing the process of restructuring the global economy which is just another blow to the global elite and a victory to sovereign nations.

2. Venezuela - While Medvedev was visiting Caracas and Russian naval ships were training with the Venezuelan military, Hugo Chavez held a meeting of the "Bolivarian Movement." This is the left-wing movement that Chavez, Morales and other Latin Americans follow. Although they started as nationalist movements, they merged with leftists during the Cold War. However, Medvedev refused all invitations to participate on this level but instead brought members of the Russian private business community to make business connections in Caracas instead. This means that while Moscow values its relationship with Caracas, it is clear that the Russians came to open up business opportunities and to gain a foothold in the Americas militarily.

3. Cuba - Medvedev took part in the consecration of the Our Lady of Kazan Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Havana. Here again Medvedev is making it clear they are not there for leftist reasons that previously united Castro with the USSR ideologically.

Glenn Beck: U.S. headed for unrest?

Conservative Talk Show Host Glenn Beck videos speaking on the U.S. economic situation.

Why the global elite do not like an economically strong Russia

I just had to comment on the Economist's Special Report on Russia by Arkady Ostrovsky. The report appears factual but it wreaks with propagandistic rhetoric evident from the so-called Western "commentariat" - a term I prefer to call the liberal globalist media as coined by Russia Today's Peter Lavelle.

Ostrovsky appears in various British print as an "expert" on Russian affairs but the rhetoric is typical of the Economist. I am sure the editor made sure of that since the Economist has always predicted for decades that "pro-Western" countries like Ukraine, Georgia, etc., would become economic successes whilst Russia remain a basket case. Just pick up any old Economist from the 1990's or early 2000's and you will see that the reality of today does not resemble their predictions then. This is what happens when people under the ideology of liberal globalism wrongly define what is right and what is wrong. Now they are faced to explain why Russia has been rising economically and politically. Anything you can find wrong with Russia on the other hand is Putin's fault. However, if there are positive economic reports, it means Putin is using nationalism and oil to allow Russians to get rich unfairly. It is all nonsense.

Ostrovsky at least is more realistic than most of the commentariat that the current Russia is not the Second Soviet Union. The commentariat has led the average American to believe that Putin is trying to re-create another Soviet Union through the KGB. Firstly, Putin is not the Commander in Chief any longer, and secondly as even Ostrovsky rightfully reports, Russia does have a market economy moving away from socialism.

Ostrovsky is wrong on other points as well. Mainly he is wrong by saying that Russia is merely copying the West by "unilaterally" invading Georgia, and suggesting that Russian style capitalism is leaving out the "masses" in the cold who are falling into poverty. Firstly, I don't think Russia had any other choice than to attack Georgia in order to protect its own security. Instead it was the unilateral intention of the U.S. to interfere with Georgian-Russian relations. Secondly, there does not seem to be any dispute in regards to fact the quantity of millionaires and billionaires in Russia is growing. Where do these millionaires come from? Of course we all know a good number of billionaires or oligarchs as the Russians call them got rich in the 1990's by pillaging Russia. Men like Berezovsky or the jailed Khodorkovsky got rich without really creating anything. However, there are plenty of newly created legitimate millionaires who during the same 1990's were making $40 per month, then $100 per month, etc., but used their great talents to harness opportunities that built the consumer economy now present in Russia. Prosperity has only until recently begun to spread to the provincial areas of Russia which in time will also see their standards of living improve. There is much evidence of this happening already. However, there will always be certain Russians, especially older retirees of the USSR era who will be just happy living in their villages and dachas as long as nobody bothers them. Whereas oil and gas has helped make some very rich billionaires in the energy sector and caused state coffers to fill with mountains of cash which the Kremlin has put in its reserves, the implementation of a flat tax, reduction of government and establishment of private property are the real reasons for the rise of the middle class and why there is a growing legitimate millionaire class.

What is lacking in the Economist and most other reports on Russia coming from the commentariat is that they never use real logic or investigate why things are really the way they are. They cannot report the real story because they know that the opposite is happening in the West where there is an unprecedented economic crisis. If you report the facts in Russia, you would discredit the entire elite establishment and their policies of the last 20 or so years.

And lastly the author is dead wrong on the facts about the population decreasing in Russia. According to what I have read, Russia has begun to report positive demographic growth. In fact, Russia (and Ukraine, Belarus, etc.) is among the few European countries with positive birth-rate growth. It is true that Russia has a high mortality rate, but the generation dying currently were born during the 1930's and 40's. Much of this population did not have basics like baby's milk or proper food and were living under severe trauma from the Nazis and the policies of Stalin. Babies exposed to malnutrition may have shorter life spans which now is affecting Russian demographic statistics. But this does not take into consideration the health of young people today who will most certainly enjoy longer life spans.

The Economist and rest of the commentariat love to preach about how Russia is just dying off when it is the West that is really dying off - literally with negative demographic growth in the United Kingdom and all the rest of the major Western nations. It is true, that Russia will need to increase its population in order to survive the realignment of the world order, and that is still to early to tell if Russia will succeed in this arena. While Russia is at least trying to address this problem, the West has not even acknowledged that this as a problem.