Dmitry Orlov's Blog, page 38

US Swaps Russian Spies for... Russian Spies

A couple of weeks ago I was amused to see a large hammer and sickle on the cover of the local subway rag: Spy scandal! Cold war is back on! Happy days are here again!

The truth, of course, is much less amusing. The FBI, after years and years of assiduous investigation, nailed a handful of Russians for failing to register as foreign agents. (Reminds me, got to get my fishing license renewed.) These Russians have been living boring suburban American lives under assumed Anglo names trying to infi...

Checkmate

In all of the descriptions of perilous situations that I have studied, arising during adventures the high seas or in the high mountains, or during armed conflict, a single mistake rarely proves fatal. More often than not, death comes as a result of a sequence of bad choices which reinforce each other. These choices may not appear bad at the time—but they certainly do in retrospect! The end result is a situation in which no further steps can be taken that would not be either harmful or ...

Lost Leaders

It is embarrassing to be lost. It is even more embarrassing for a leader to be lost. And what's really really embarrassing to all concerned is when national and transnational corporate leaders attempt to tackle a major disaster and are found out to have been issuing marching orders based on the wrong map. Everyone then executes a routine of turning toward each other in shock, frowning while shaking their heads slowly from side to side and looking away in disgust. After that, these leader...

An American Chernobyl

[image error] The drawing of parallels between industrial accidents is a dubious armchair sport, but here the parallels are just piling up and are becoming too hard to ignore:
An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 spewed radioactive waste across Europe A recent explosion and sinking of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform is spewing heavy oil into the Gulf of MexicoThese accidents were both quite spectacular. At Chernobyl, the force of the explosion, caused by superheated ...

The Great Unreasoning

Wherever we go, and whatever we do, we find ourselves surrounded by a variety of human and animal noises:

"Woof!"—"Meow!"—"Moo!"—"Baah!"—"Tweet!"—"How about them Red Sox!"

And, naturally, we find ourselves wondering, What are they all saying? What does it all mean? Does it mean anything at all, or is it just a lot of meaningless background noise?

To be sure, sometimes it is just noise. But it seems that while animals use just one or two utterances (bark, growl, whimper) to convey an entir...

Bloody Tulips!

[image error] Excellent photo gallery of the uprising in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Five years ago Kyrgyzstan (former Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic) went through a so-called "tulip revolution." Organized by George Soros and the usual suspects from the Orange Revolution Syndicate, they got rid of one unsavory dictator and installed another one – all in the name of democracy and freedom, of course. And now, just five years later, an uprising has taken place, the president and his entourage have fled, the gover...

Collapse Competitively

We are heading toward economic, political and social collapse, and every day that passes brings it closer. But we just don't know when to stop, do we? Which part of "the harder we try, the harder we fail" can't we understand? Why can't we understand that each additional dollar of debt will drive us into national bankruptcy faster, harder and deeper? Why can't we grasp the concept that each additional dollar of military spending further undermines our security? Is there some sort of cog...

Our Future and the End of the Oil Age: Building Resilience in a Resource-Constrained World

Interview on Diet Soap Podcast

"Episode #50: Is There No Alternative?" ...well, no, not to me, not on this episode, since it's pretty much just an interview with me, in which I am compelled to refer to a wide variety of things as "stupid," plus some nice music and interesting audio excerpts.

Interview on Max Keiser's "On the Edge"

Part I:


Part II: