I generally like Dmitry Orlov’s outlook. He is more apocalyptic than I am, but his heart is in the right place. He thinks the West’s Establishment is the Wizard of Oz. So do I. But let us not forget that the Wizard ran Oz without opposition for quite some time.
Orlov thinks we are getting close to the end of the movie, when the Wizard gets exposed. Recall that it was Toto who did it. Here is his latest article.
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 crowd invisible. It is an ex-world order.
We’re not there yet. That’s because central banks still create counterfeit money to keep things going. But there are limits to this process. I just can’t time it.
ORLOV ON THE USSR
He says that the USSR collapsed in a heap without warning, 1985-91.
If we rewind back to the early 1980s, we can easily remember how the USSR was still running half of Europe and exerting major influence on a sizable chunk of the world. World socialist revolution was still sputtering along, with pro-Soviet regimes coming in to power here and there in different parts of the globe, the chorus of their leaders’ official pronouncements sounding more or less in unison. The leaders made their pilgrimages to Moscow as if it were Mecca, and they sent their promising young people there to learn how to do things the Soviet way. Soviet technology continued to make impressive advances: in the mid-1980s the Soviets launched into orbit a miracle of technology–the space station Mir, while Vega space probes were being dispatched to study Venus.
Soviet technology, outside of weaponry and rockets, was a joke. It was always mythological. From 1917 until 1970, at least 95% of Soviet technology was imported from the West: either stolen, imported, or built in the USSR by Western corporations. That was proved in the mid-1960’s by Antony Sutton’s path-breaking three-volume study, Soviet Technology and Economic Development. Also, three premiers died in rapid succession, leaving the Empire leaderless.
(For the rest of my article, click the link.)
