The Imperial Collapse Playbook

[По-русски] [In italiano]

Some people enjoy having the Big Picture laid out in front of them—the biggest possible—on what is happening in the world at large, and I am happy to oblige. The largest development of 2014 is, very broadly, this: the Anglo-imperialists are finally being forced out of Eurasia. How can we tell? Well, here is the Big Picture—the biggest I could find. I found it thanks to Nikolai Starikov and a recent article of his.

Absolutely Positive now available in paper form

This book of essays was previously only available as an e-book. But since lots of people don't like reading books on gadgets, here it is in paperback form. It contains essays from 2-3 years back, all available for free right on this blog if you dig deep enough. But the book is much more convenient.

ORDER LINK

Table of Contents

Alice Unspelled

Number Two in the series is ready for purchase. As with all Unspelled Editions, it includes a short but profound introduction and two not very full pages of reference material on how to read Unspelled English.

ORDER LINK

For those who forget what's in Carroll's amazing works, here is the TOC:

First Unspelled Edition available for purchase

I am very happy to announce that the first Unspelled Edition of a children's classic is finally out, so please go ahead and order it. This book, being the first, took 2.5 years to produce. The second (containing both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Beyond the Looking-Glass) took 2.5 days. The third (Treasure Island) is taking about a day. The tenth, I suspect, will take less than an hour. That's how it works with software: it takes a long time to get all the bugs out, but once they are gone it becomes more or less a matter of pushing a button.

Are Americans Prepared For A Soviet Style Collapse?

Last week I gave an interview to Barry at DR Escapes which is now up on Youtube. Please follow the link to listen to the interview. Barry's notes on it are pasted in below.

If the social and financial structure around you collapsed tomorrow, as it did for many people during the fall of the Soviet Union, are you prepared to survive and even prosper? In my latest interview with best selling author Dmitry Orlov we discuss lifestyle and how your lifestyle decisions may dramatically impact how your family will fare if times get tough.

Can anybody find me... a central banker to love?

Freddie

[По-русски]

[Final update: the ruble seems to have stabilized, for now, and China has declared its support for the Russian economy, but the problem with devaluing currencies is by no means limited to Russia. In the meantime, Russia has stopped grain exports, so we should expect Arab Spring 2.0, because Russia is where couscous comes from. Also, I hear Krugman has declared that the world is not only flat but only a bubble; I wouldn't know since I don't pay attention to him, so please stop asking me.]

[Early morning update: in case you had any doubts, the intervention didn't work. Ruble and oil are continuing to plunge amid increasing financial market turmoil throughout the world.]

[Last minute update: the repo rate has been just hiked to an eyewatering 17%! At the same time, the percentage of bullshit in the rationale given was lowered significantly: it is to prevent further ruble devaluation. Simply put (perhaps too simply), ruble liquidity for currency speculation has just dried up. At the same time, the central bank is backing long-term investments in industry at a far more reasonable 6.5% rate. Will this be enough to stop the slide?]

On December 11 Russia's central bank hiked its rate by one percent, from 9.5% to 10.5%. The rationale offered by the bank's governor Elvira Nabiullina was that this would stop the slide in the value of the ruble. But nobody laughed.

Defeat is Victory

John Holcroft

[In italiano]

On the wall of George Orwell's Ministry of Truth from his novel 1984 there were three slogans:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

It occurred to me that these apply just a little bit too well to the way the Washington, DC establishment operates.

Minimum Viable Sociopathy

There are absolutely NO Nazis fighting for Ukraine!
If you agree, then just gouge out your eyes!
(Note NATO and Nazi flags side by side.
Isn't that just cute?)

I seem to be doing a lot of hyperproductive things lately: explaining to people how to kill the foul beast of Empire, revolutionizing the way English literacy is taught to both native English speakers and the rest... Somebody just emailed me to tell me that I have become “one of those significant commentators.” Yikes! If I keep going this way, then I will run the risk of making a Significant Contribution to Society (SCS). And that would be a mistake; not just for me, but for anyone.

Plus I'd be spending most of my time deleting blog comments from imbeciles. It's the blogging equivalent of scraping bugs off your windshield. (It's about 1% thoughtful comments from actual readers, and 99% senseless blather from idiotic trolls. I am serious. Very sad. But I liked the one I got the other day from a Ukrainian who said that his people will drown all the Russians in their (Ukrainians') own blood. That was cute, but I deleted it anyway because it's hate speech.

But allow me to explain about SCS and what the title of this blog post means.

Tax Revolt Methods

Niccolò Macchiavelli

[This is a follow-up by Gary Flomenhoft on last week's post.]

“It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.”
Niccolò Macchiavelli

‘Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”
Étienne de la Boétie, 1552

I am pleased that many people have expressed interest in getting more information about different methods of joining a tax revolt.

Unspeller now available in Japanese and Russian

Thanks to the efforts of Masayuki, Oji, Natasha and Mirra, Unspeller is now available in Japanese and in Russian. Click on the links to read the language-specific introductions.

Unspeller—Japanese Edition

Unspeller—Russian Edition

Peak Prosperity Podcast: Russia's Patience is Wearing Thin

My interview with Chris Martenson:



With the western propaganda flying thick and heavy, it's more important than ever to cut through the chaff and learn what we can about the most important geopolitical realignment (and renewed tensions) in recent memory.

You know, for kids...

Something for them to do while waiting for their copies of Unspeller to arrive: learn the names of all the animals featured in it.

CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH

Again, don't use Internet Explorer, or it won't work. This is not something I am ever going to fix, so please download and install Firefox or Chrome.

The Only Way to Stop the Empire

[In italiano]

Dear friends,

The final days of US empire are fast approaching. Perhaps its end will pass slowly and gradually, or perhaps the event will unfold rapidly and catastrophically. Maybe chaos will break loose, or maybe its demise will be organized well and proceed smoothly. This nobody knows, but the end of empire is coming as surely as day follows night and sun follows rain. Overexpansion, overreach and over-indebtedness will take their toll—as all past empires have discovered. Empires are like bacteria in a Petrie dish; unthinking, unseeing, unfeeling, they expand until they run out of food or contaminate their environment with their waste, and then they die. They are automatons, and they just can’t help it: they are programmed to expand or die, expand or die, and, in the end, expand and die.

Unspell gets a glowing review

How To Teach Your Kids To Read Good In Bad Sitchuwayshins by Don Feathers. Long but heartfelt.

Unspell Sound Charts

The Consonants

Here is a nifty interactive tool to help people with learning Unspell. Click on a shape, and hear my careful rendition of the associated sound.

CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH IT

It was put together with all free software: OfficeLibre for design, Audacity for audio, Aquamacs for coding and Mozilla for testing/debugging.

The Vowels

If you are on a slow internet connection, the sounds will take a little while to load the first time you click on them.

It was tested with Firefox, Chrome and Safari. It probably doesn't work with Internet Explorer because it uses Wave files for the sounds, which are originally a Microsoft standard, so it makes perfect sense that it works with every browser except Microsoft's.

Calling all English teachers!

It's been brought to my attention that English teachers are not immediately receptive to Unspell. When presented with a copy of Unspeller, they ask the rather obvious question: Why do my students need to learn this? And so here is the answer. If you are an English teacher, please read this. And if you know any English teachers, please send the link to them, and tell them that this is something they need to read. Thank you.

It's official: US stole Ukraine's gold

This just in: it turns out that the rumors were right after all. At least part of the reason the US State Dept./CIA staged a coup in Ukraine that overthrew its democratically elected government and installed a neo-Nazi puppet regime was to steal Ukraine's gold. Rumor had it that shortly after the coup the gold was quietly loaded onto a plane that took it to the US. And now comes the official revelation: Ukraine has no gold reserves left. The gold was sold to pay for a failed military campaign in Eastern Ukraine, and to prop up the fake paper gold market for a little bit longer. One would expect that once the fix is off, the price of gold will skyrocket, the US dollar will drop like a rock, and Americans will need to add the word “hyperinflation” to their list of national woes.

Happy talk about the climate

Mathiole

[Update for the rest of you: I've had smarter insects go splat on my windshield than these climate denialists whose comments I don't even bother reading. Do your best to learn to ignore them.]

[Update for climate change denialists: please save me the trouble of marking your comments as spam. This blog is not for the willfully ignorant or the scientifically illiterate, so a hearty good-bye to you all.]

The non-binding climate deal which the US and China just signed will allow the Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to go to 500ppm and beyond by the end of the century, far past the current concentration of 400ppm. Historically, this concentration was sufficient to produce an ice-free Arctic, significantly higher ocean levels, and an environment unlikely to be able to sustain large human populations.

Twilight of the Oligarchs

Michael Murph

Last week I published a brave prediction:

I see the political elites and their oligarch puppet-masters becoming endangered species in the United States before too long as the populace, including their own bodyguards, turns against them.

As usual, I made no attempt to specify what I mean by “before too long” because making predictions as to timing is a fool's game. And, as usual, I got a flurry of emails expressing a wide range of rationalizations but all adding up to the same sentiment: “not any time soon.”

Well that didn't take long...

Back in early August I made a very specific prediction as to the effect of US/EU sanctions against Russia:

I see tractors clogging the streets of Europe's capitals and dumptruck-loads of manure decorating the steps of government buildings before too long.

 Here's the photographic evidence from Toulouse, France: irate farmers fling poo.

 

In this case, ”before too long” = 3 months. But in other cases it may be a bit longer. This is, after all, only the beginning. Take this prediction, for example:

I see the political elites and their oligarch puppet-masters becoming endangered species in the United States before too long as the populace, including their own bodyguards, turns against them.

Odds and ends

The last post produced a few comments and quite a few emails that I would like to respond to.

Is unlearning harder than unschooling?

Patrick Desmet

This blog has developed something of a split personality. The bulk of the readership (well over 10,000 visitors on a typical day) is here to read about the unfolding geopolitical tragicomedy, and the various and assorted stages of collapse which are to follow. A much smaller group (under 10% so far) is also interested in my effort to single-handedly solve a certain well-defined problem with the English language. And an even smaller group, numbering in the hundreds, is actually participating and contributing to this effort. Now, the geopolitical tragicomedy is certainly fun to watch, sort of like watching icebergs capsize, but since there is not a lot any of us can do about it, it's something of a time-waster; whereas fixing an actual problem, and making many people's lives better as a result, seems like a worthwhile pursuit—at least it does to me.

Putin to Western elites: Play-time is over

Most people in the English-speaking parts of the world missed Putin's speech at the Valdai conference in Sochi a few days ago, and, chances are, those of you who have heard of the speech didn't get a chance to read it, and missed its importance. (For your convenience, I am pasting in the full transcript of his speech below.) Western media did their best to ignore it or to twist its meaning. Regardless of what you think or don't think of Putin (like the sun and the moon, he does not exist for you to cultivate an opinion) this is probably the most important political speech since Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech of March 5, 1946.
In this speech, Putin abruptly changed the rules of the game. Previously, the game of international politics was played as follows: politicians made public pronouncements, for the sake of maintaining a pleasant fiction of national sovereignty, but they were strictly for show and had nothing to do with the substance of international politics; in the meantime, they engaged in secret back-room negotiations, in which the actual deals were hammered out. Previously, Putin tried to play this game, expecting only that Russia be treated as an equal. But these hopes have been dashed, and at this conference he declared the game to be over, explicitly violating Western taboo by speaking directly to the people over the heads of elite clans and political leaders.

The Russian blogger chipstone summarized the most salient points from Putin speech as follows:

Peak Empire, Take Two

[Many thanks to Gary for putting this update together.]

Based on the lessons of history, all empires collapse eventually; thus, the probability that the US empire will collapse can be set at 100% with a great deal of confidence. The question is, When? (Everyone keeps asking that annoying question.)

How to start a war and lose an empire

[Auf Deutsch] [En français] [日本語訳] [In italiano] [По-русски]

A year and a half I wrote an essay on how the US chooses to view Russia, titled The Image of the Enemy. I was living in Russia at the time, and, after observing the American anti-Russian rhetoric and the Russian reaction to it, I made some observations that seemed important at the time. It turns out that I managed to spot an important trend, but given the quick pace of developments since then, these observations are now woefully out of date, and so here is an update.

Unspeller World Edition

Hello, world! The World Edition is complete and CreateSpace is ready to take your orders. It is not very different from the North American edition, because, you see, it doesn't have to be. Why that is requires quite a bit of explanation; after all, English can sound so different.

Unspeller exercises

The 12 exercises, one for each of the 12 lessons in the Unspeller book, are now available as a free download, and also as a print-on-demand book. Thanks to Pleas Lucian Kavanaugh of Atenas, Costa Rica, for suggesting it. This document is designed for easy inkjet or laser printing, in color or black and white.

Also, since many of the people who have ordered Unspeller should have by now received it, and perhaps even given it a try, I want to take this opportunity to start an open thread devoted to your experiences with it, good, bad or confusing. Your experiences in learning and in teaching Unspell are particularly interesting. And, of course, any suggestions for how the book can be improved are always welcome.

Ebola and the Five Stages of Collapse

At the moment, the Ebola virus is ravaging three countries—Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone—where it is doubling every few weeks, but singular cases and clusters of them are cropping up in dense population centers across the world. An entirely separate Ebola outbreak in the Congo appears to be contained, but illustrates an important point: even if the current outbreak (to which some are already referring as a pandemic) is brought under control, continuing deforestation and natural habitat destruction in the areas where the fruit bats that carry the virus live make future outbreaks quite likely.

An important announcement

[Update: the new book is now in its second printing, with a few typos fixed.]

As some of you may have noticed, I didn't crank out my usual weekly essay this week. I didn't even edit and run a guest post. This is not, I assure you, due to a shortage of interesting topics. I could have written on any of the following ones:

America—the Grim Truth

[This is an old reader favorite. Guest post by Anonymous. It's a bit embarrassing really; this is the all-time most popular post on this blog, and I didn't even write it! It's something for you to ponder while this blog is on hiatus because I am out at sea... sailing away...]

Americans, I have some bad news for you:

You have the worst quality of life in the developed world—by a wide margin.

If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.

I know this because I am an American, and I escaped from the prison you call home.

Understanding Organizational Stupidity

Shintaro Kago

[Another re-run. Regularly scheduled blogging will resume once I've sailed far enough down the coast. Homework assignment: read this article and apply the concepts within it to the Obama administration's policies on Ukraine and Syria.]

Is it morning in America again, or is the bubble that is the American economy about to pop (again), this time perhaps tipping it into full-blown collapse in five stages with symphonic accompaniment and fireworks? A country blowing itself up is quite a sight to behold, and it makes us wonder about lots of things. For instance, it makes us wonder whether the people who are doing the blowing up happen to be criminals. (Sure, they may be in a manner of speaking—as a moral judgment passed on the powerful by the powerless—but since none of them are likely to see the inside of a jail cell or even a courtroom any time soon, the point is moot. Let's be sure to hunt them down once they try to run and hide, though.) But at a much more basic and fundamental level, a better question to ask is this one:

9/11 After 13 years

[An excellent article by Paul Craig Roberts. In case you didn't know, Amerigo Vespucci was a big fat liar. And so are the leaders of the country that stole his name.]

The tragedy of September 11, 2001, goes far beyond the deaths of those who died in the towers and the deaths of firefighters and first responders who succumbed to illnesses caused by inhalation of toxic dust. For thirteen years a new generation of Americans has been born into the 9/11 myth that has been used to create the American warfare/police state.

The corrupt Bush and Obama regimes used 9/11 to kill, maim, dispossess and displace millions of Muslims in seven countries, none of whom had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11.

The Madness of President Putin

Juliette Bates

[This is a re-run. I originally published this article on February 18th of this year, and everything I said in it still stands.]

[In italiano. Grazie, Massimiliano!]
[日本語訳。大谷正幸、ありがとうございます。]

[Many thanks to Max who helped put this together.]

Of all the various interpretations Western leaders and commentators have offered for why the president of the Russian Federation has responded the way he has to the events in Ukraine over the course of February and March of 2014—in refusing to acquiesce to the installation of a neo-fascist regime in Kiev, and in upholding the right of Crimea to self-determination—the most striking and illuminating interpretation is that he has gone mad. Striking and illuminating, that is, something in the West itself.

How can you tell whether Russia has invaded Ukraine?

[Auf Deutsch] [По-русски] [En français]

Last Thursday the Ukrainian government, echoed by NATO spokesmen, declared that the the Russian military is now operating within Ukraine's borders. Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't; what do you know? They said the same thing before, most recently on August 13, and then on August 17, each time with either no evidence or fake evidence. But let's give them the benefit of the doubt.

You be the judge. I put together this helpful list of top ten telltale signs that will allow you to determine whether indeed Russia invaded Ukraine last Thursday, or whether Thursday's announcement is yet another confabulation. (Credit to Roman Kretsul).

Because if Russia invaded on Thursday morning, this is what the situation on the ground would look like by Saturday afternoon.

Propaganda and the lack thereof

With regard to the goings-on in Ukraine, I have heard quite a few European and American voices piping in, saying that, yes, Washington and Kiev are fabricating an entirely fictional version of events for propaganda purposes, but then so are the Russians. They appear to assume that if their corporate media is infested with mendacious, incompetent buffoons who are only too happy to repeat the party line, then the Russians must be same or worse.

Collapse Cafe Part II

Topics include supply chain cross-contagion, population decline, near-term human extinction, and community organizing. Click here for audio.

It's the Saudis, Stupid!

[Just nine days after I pointed out that Obama's latest “humanitarian” bombing puts American lives in danger, we have the video of the journalist James Foley's beheading at the hands of Daash, a.k.a. Islamic Caliphate, a.k.a. ISIS/ISIL. Well, that didn't take long! But there is more to the story: what stands behind this event, and others, such as 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, the Benghazi massacre and numerous other acts of terror is none other than America's best friend, the House of Saud. Here is a post by my friend Idris to explain this vital connection.]

The recent rise of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, along with its bedfellow Jahbat Al-Nusra (JN) is being viewed with alarm worldwide. It is the latest in a series of problems related to Islamic extremism for which Al Qaeda is the poster child. From Somalia to Yemen to Nigeria to the Levant to Afghanistan and Pakistan, to Chechnya to Xinjiang, China and even raising its head among the populations of western countries, both Muslim and non-Muslim are facing the ravages of the Salafi/Takfiri Nexus of Jihad.

Collapse Cafe Part I

Topics include the situation around Ukraine, the geopolitical blundering of the United States, and how you too can destroy your economy by imposing unilateral sanctions. Click here for audio.

Interview

The thick façade of civilization

Michael Jaecks

[This is a guest post by Capt. Ray Jason. To read more of his essays, please visit his blog. (And to read more of mine, please buy the book I just published.)]

Most of the sky was clear and starry, but ten miles out to sea there was a cluster of clouds filled with lightning. I was anchored peacefully behind a low island that afforded me a perfect view of this dramatic spectacle. Sitting on the foredeck with my back against the mast, I sipped some hot sake and marveled at this exquisite display. Each burst of sky fire was contained within an individual cloud. Some would erupt in amber-colored brightness and others would shimmer in soft silver or lavender. The almost Japanese lantern quality of the clouds sparked a memory within me that I struggled to recall. A second cup of sake unlocked the remembrance vault, and the incident drifted back. It was a good one.

Permission to Steal Everything

There is a convoy of 280 gleaming white trucks moving through Russia toward Ukraine loaded with humanitarian aid for the populations of Donetsk and Lugansk. This isn't much, considering that well over a million people have been cut off from food, water, electricity and (soon) heat because of indiscriminate artillery bombardment by the Ukrainian military. But it's a start. But it seems like a rocky start; first, NATO's mouthpiece Rasmussen tries to characterize this humanitarian mission as a clandestine invasion. Then the Ukrainians start imposing various conditions. Let's consider these separately.

Obama risks American lives to save the devil worshipers

If you've been paying attention to the news, the US is bombing Iraq again, this time to avert a humanitarian crisis: a group of Yezedis is stranded on top of a mountain, driven there by those Daashing lads from the Islamic State (the Arabic name for them is “Daash”).

Now, if your reaction on hearing these news was “Who the heck are the Yezedis?” then you are in good company. This is a very obscure, fairly small, incredibly ancient cult, and few people have heard of them. I have, and so my reaction was “Oh no, they are killing the devil worshipers!”

Just Published: Societies that Collapse

CLICK TO ORDER

Dear Readers,

I am happy to announce that the essays I have written over the past three years are now available for purchase worldwide in book form. Of course, you can read these essays right on this blog, but I hope that having them all together in a single plump little book will make the experience more enjoyable. Presenting these essays as a single collection and juxtaposing the deadly serious with the downright whimsical makes difficult subjects a little bit lighter.

At the risk of overstating the obvious, I'd like to point out that it is your purchases of my books—nothing else—that make it economically possible for me to continue writing and for you to continue reading what I write.

German Stunner: “West is on the Wrong Path”

Gabor Steingart, the the publisher of Germany’s leading financial newspaper Handelsblatt, just let loose with an editorial directly challenging Washington's idiotic anti-Russian policies.

The appearance of this document is very timely: just yesterday Russia unleashed the first round of counter-sanctions, banning the import of foodstuffs from the US and the EU. These counter-sanctions are cleverly designed to cause pain in proportion to the level of anti-Russian activity of the country in question; thus, the three Baltic countries, which are virulently anti-Russian in spite of having large Russian populations and surviving largely through trade with Russia, face staggering losses, followed by equally anti-Russian Poland, followed by the rest of the EU, including poor Greece, which is friendly to Russia and should be considered collateral damage. The greatest beneficiaries of these sanctions are all those countries that opposed (11) or abstained (58) when the UN voted to condemn Russia's annexation of Crimea: they get to leapfrog over EU and US economically by exporting foodstuffs to Russia. Russia's consumers and Russia's agricultural sector are also among the winners: Russians will eat healthier food, with no GMO contamination, while profits that used to flow to the US and the EU will now be invested in domestic agriculture, making Russia more self-sufficient in food and aiding in the development of rural districts. Another clever element to these sanctions is that farmers tend to be politically vocal and influential. I see tractors clogging the streets of Europe's capitals and dumptruck-loads of manure decorating the steps of government buildings before too long.

As to his diagnosis of Obama's true motivation, I think he has it wrong. It's not all about pleasing the Tea Party. They, and American voters in general, are irrelevant, it makes no difference who gets elected, and Obama's policies are not Obama's. There is a deeper reason why the oligarchs who own and operate the country formerly known as America are currently attempting to enlarge every problem they see, be it stoking civil war in Ukraine or provoking ISIS into attacking Americans: they are desperate to avoid a scenario where the US collapses on its own, with no external enemy to blame. Not only would it be just too humiliating, but also the population, suddenly brought out of its stupor, might turn on those actually responsible rather than helplessly blame some foreign scapegoat. Putin has to fit the bill, reality be damned.

Some facts on flight MH17

Finally, here are some facts. In spite of most of the “evidence” offered by the Ukrainians or the US being either a forgery or missing altogether, it's looking like the Ukrainian military shot down the plane in a coordinated attack. The black box recordings, the air traffic control records, the satellite surveillance photos—where are they? They have been hidden away. Why? Because they don't support the narrative that “it's all Putin's fault”?

Treeware

As some of you pointed out, there is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance caused by the mismatch between the e-book format and the post-industrial subject matter, and so, by popular demand, Communities that Abide is now available in paper form. It should pop up on amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, etc., in a few days and you can order it directly from the printer in the meantime. Enjoy!

Laughter can heal

Duarte Vitória

[Update: Makeda's playful take on a very serious ethical failing has elicited a surprising number of not-so-clueful comments. Many readers completely missed the point. Here is the point: “America has covertly adopted the crudest, cruelest, stupidest and most profligate form of eugenics conceivable: sterilizing and killing the poor while lavishing resources on unnaturally breeding the rich. When the rich cannot be bred by scientific means such as IVF, we are expected to suspend our disbelief and pretend that they can, celebrating every obviously stolen surrogate-born or donor-egg baby as if it were a scientific miracle.” Touché, anyone?]

[Another guest post by Makeda. Before you submit comments criticizing me for writing this, please know that I just love being mistaken for a young black woman-doctor, even if that makes you look silly.]

I recently caught myself snapping at a white-haired man who simply said hello to me. The context was a leftist gathering of sorts. I find such men, greying male leftists, unusually creepy. Perhaps I've been traumatized by men my father’s age making passes at me in the synagogue, or the surprising prevalence of borderline pedophilic academics who get caught sleeping with their students, but I’ve come to suspect that all old leftist men are acting politically involved only to try to pick up younger women.

Saving Face

The Americans are finding out the hard way that a fact-free zone is not a comfortable place to inhabit. The initial knee-jerk allegations, voiced by Obama, by the screechy UN representative Samantha Power, by John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and any number of talking heads, were that the downing of flight MH17 was all Putin's fault. These were swiftly followed by a complete and utter lack of official evidence of any Russian involvement but lots of strange, unexplained coincidences pointing to Ukrainian and American involvement. These were, in turn, followed by an uncharacteristically frank admission from US intelligence that there is no proof of Russian involvement. The newly installed Ukrainian oligarch-turned-president Poroshenko (code-name “Piglet”) switched from claiming that he had proof of Russian complicity to being very very quiet. Incompetently concocted fake “evidence” of this and that continues to appear on social media sites, only to be swiftly disproved. Once disproved, the fake evidence vanishes, only to be replaced by more of the same. The latest fake is of Russian artillery bombardment from across the border. All of this has added up to quite an awkward situation for the Americans. Barefaced lying may be fun and profitable, but it does not provide a solid foundation for foreign policy. Nobody wants to go down in history for blowing up the world over some fake Youtube videos.

Fact-Free Zone

The fog of war that has been hovering over eastern Ukraine has now spread to the shores of the Potomac, and from there has inundated every pore of western body politic. The party line is that pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine have shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17, using a surface-to-air missile provided by Russia, with Russia's support and complicity. The response is to push for tougher sanctions against Russian companies and Mr. Putin's entourage. None of this is based on fact. To start with, it isn't known that MH-17 was brought down by a surface-to-air missile; it could have been an air-to-air missile, a bomb on board, a mechanical failure, or the same (or different) mysterious force that brought down MH-370 earlier this year. Mysteries abound, and yet western media knows it's Mr. Putin's fault.

The Education Delusion

Hermann Nitsch

[Guest post by Makeda.]

Recently I have run across a number of articles in American newspapers which emphasize the importance of higher education and reassure us that there is no crisis with the way it is being financed. The fact that such articles are written by PhDs speaks to some of the unfortunate aspects of the problem. I am probably being too kind in assuming that the authors of these articles are deluded; I could just as easily accuse them of being high-ups in a massive Ponzi scheme.