Corn Madness Revisited

[En français]

Five years ago I received an unusual email from an unusual character: Yevgeny. I translated and published his letter under the title Corn Madness, and it got some 17,000 reads—a big number for me at the time—and plenty of comments. Yevgeny wrote of his experience with living in the US, and his impressions of it.

Subsequently, we met, and I got to know him. He is educated as a philosopher, a non-drinker, non-smoker, athletic, a self-taught polyglot, an accomplished musician and sound technician, but he was also, by virtue of his economic situation, working as a day-laborer at the time.

Since that time, Yevgeny has returned to Russia. I recently wrote to him and asked him to write an update, which he was kind enough to provide. Below is the original article, followed by his update.

Peculiarities of Russian National Character

Zimnik

[Peculiaridades do caráter nacional russo]
[Zvláštnosti ruského národného charakteru]
[Особенности Русского Национального Характера]
[Aspects particuliers du caractère Russe]
[Svéráz ruské národní povahy]
[Particolarità dell’animo nazionale russo]
[Peculiaridades del Carácter Nacional Ruso]

← Ancient Slavic god Zimnik: a squat old man, long hair the color of snow, wears a white coat, always barefoot. Carries an iron staff, one swing with which instantly freezes everything solid. Can summon snowstorms, ice storms and blizzards. Goes around taking whatever he likes, especially children who misbehave.

Recent events, such as the overthrow of the government in Ukraine, the secession of Crimea and its decision to join the Russian Federation, the subsequent military campaign against civilians in Eastern Ukraine, western sanctions against Russia, and, most recently, the attack on the ruble, have caused a certain phase transition to occur within Russian society, which, I believe, is very poorly, if at all, understood in the west. This lack of understanding puts Europe at a significant disadvantage in being able to negotiate an end to this crisis.

Leveling the Playing Field of Death

[En français]

In April 2015, the Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility released a landmark study concluding that the death toll from 10 years of the “War on Terror” since the 9/11 attacks is at least 1.3 million, and could be as high as two million. However, Nafeez Ahmed begs to differ, writing that western wars have killed four million or more Muslims since 1990.

It seems that the Empire is exterminating Muslims at a higher rate than those of other confessions. Why might that be? There seem to be two competing philosophies at work within the throbbing brain of the Empire: the environmentally hostile, infinite growth-oriented, natalistic view of economists, and the eco-friendly, Malthusian, population-control view of ecologists.

Emergency Eyewash

About a year and a half ago this blog underwent a shift of focus: instead of discussing all things collapse-related, as I have been doing since 2008, I started devoting my attention to the types of collapse we are currently observing:

• Collapse of American hegemony and the old world order
• Collapse of Western “values” and of the Western “civilizational” narrative
• Collapse of the fictional, extend-and-pretend, financial stability of the Eurozone and the US dollar zone
• Collapse in Western media's ability to report on world events

Many people have clearly found this new, sharper focus much more interesting than the discussion of collapses in general: blog traffic has tripled, and now fluctuates between 250,000 and 300,000 reads a month.

This change of focus has helped me define a new mission for myself and for this blog: it is to do what I can to breach the information blockade imposed on the English-speaking world by the corporate-controlled Western media.

Along the way, I have produced a body of work some 70,000 words long, which I have just published as a paperback, titled Emergency Eyewash—the second title from Club Orlov Press, with three more in the works.

ORDER LINK

Re-posting policy

There has been some confusion on this, so let me clarify. It is henceforth not allowed to take entire articles from this blog and publish them on some other web site. It is still allowed to publish short excerpts provided this is done with proper attribution and a link back to the original. Of course, there are no issues at all with sharing articles from this blog via email, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. There are no issues with publishing translations of them, but please let me know if you do so that I can link to them. Thank you.

It's really very simple

[En français] [V češtině] [En español]

[Credit to Dmitry Leikin, whose brief post at d3.ru served as the source and the inspiration for this piece.]

There are times when a loud cry of “The emperor has no clothes!” can be most copacetic. And so, let me point out something quite simple, yet very important.

The old world order, to which we became accustomed over the course of the 1990s and the 2000s, its crises and its problems detailed in numerous authoritative publications on both sides of the Atlantic—it is no more. It is not out sick and it is not on vacation. It is deceased. It has passed on, gone to meet its maker, bought the farm, kicked the bucket and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-world order.

So you say you don't want a revolution?

[En français]

Over the past few months we have been forced to bear witness to a humiliating farce unfolding in Europe. Greece, which was first accepted into the European Monetary Union under false pretenses, then saddled with excessive levels of debt, then crippled through the imposition of austerity, finally did something: the Greeks elected a government that promised to shake things up. The Syriza party platform had the following planks, which were quite revolutionary in spirit.

• Put an end to austerity and put the Greek economy on a path toward recovery
• Raise the income tax to 75% for all incomes over 500,000 euros, adopt a tax on financial transactions and a special tax on luxury goods.
• Drastically cut military expenditures, close all foreign military bases on Greek soil and withdraw from NATO. End military cooperation with Israel and support the creation of a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders.
• Nationalize the banks.
• Enact constitutional reforms to guarantee the right to education, health care and the environment.
• Hold referendums on treaties and other accords with the European Union.

书名：假如美国不在了：无美国世界的生存新秩序

假如美国的崩溃并不是一个耗时数百年的过程，而是突然间发生的，又会怎么样呢？
美国式崩溃5部曲：

第一阶段：金融大崩溃。人们不再信任“现有交易模式”。
第二阶段：商业大崩溃。人们不再相信“市场能够提供一切”。
第三阶段：政治大崩溃。人们不再相信“政府会照顾你”。
第四阶段：社会大崩溃。人们不再相信“你的同胞们会照顾你”。
第五阶段：文化大崩溃。新的信条变成了“愿你今天就死去，这样我才有可能活到明天”。

如果有朝一日我们真的建成了一个统一的世界政府，其实就是同时实现了自我灭亡。
在时间紧迫、资源紧缺的情况下，对付那些更喜欢竞争而不是合作的人，最好的办法就是以其人之道还治其人之身——坚决不同他们合作。

请买我的书

What's Wrong with Our Monetary System and How to Fix It

[In italiano]

[Guest post by Adrian Kuzminski]

[Promoted by the comments, Adrian has provided an update.]

Something's profoundly wrong with our global financial system. Pope Francis is only the latest to raise the alarm:

“Human beings and nature must not be at the service of money. Let us say no to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather than service. That economy kills. That economy excludes. That economy destroys Mother Earth.”

What the Pope calls “an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules” is widely evident. What is not so clear is how we got into this situation, and what to do about it.

Financial Nonsense Overload

Kelly Hensing

[En français] [In italiano]

“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad” goes a quote wrongly attributed to Euripides. It seems to describe the current state of affairs with regard to the unfolding Greek imbroglio. It is a Greek tragedy all right: we have the various Eurocrats—elected, unelected, and soon-to-be-unelected—stumbling about the stage spewing forth fanciful nonsense, and we have the choir of the Greek electorate loudly announcing to the world what fanciful nonsense this is by means of a referendum.