Dmitry Orlov's Blog, page 5

Interview on the Lifeboat Hour

In the latest episode, I am interviewed by Carolyn Baker, who took over after the tragic loss of Mike Ruppert.

On the Charlie Hebdo Carnage

The killing of the staff at the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo by Moslem assailants who said that they wanted to die as martyrs, and the subsequent killing of the assailants, together with their hostages, by the French police, could not have failed to produce strong emotions. For instance, my friend Bruno had this to say . I don't entirely disagree, especially about the undue haste of the French police, but I do want to make a few points about methods.

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2015: Grounds for Optimism

This may seem like an odd line of reasoning to pursue given what everyone else seems to be saying. Some are thinking that 2015 will be a repeat of 2014 with a few incremental changes (always a safe bet, but makes for boring reading) while others are warning of the potential for a nuclear confrontation between the US and Russia (always a possibility, on par with an asteroid strike or a supernova in our galactic vicinity). But this is all more of the same. The interesting question to ask is, How has the ground shifted in 2014, if indeed it has?

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Organizational announcement

I have decided to streamline the operation a bit. Now, instead of piling collapse, English spelling, boat design and various miscellaneous projects all into one blog, I will have one for each:

ClubOrlovFor collapse-related items of interest, geopolitics and various bits of practical philosophy, please keep coming back here.

Project UnspellFor Project Unspell (which is up and running; I am putting the finishing touches on unspelled Tom Sawyer) go to unspell.it .

S/V QuidnonFor reading about and helping me think through a boat design project for a “houseboat that sails,” please go to quidnon.blogspot.com . I will be updating it on a daily basis between now and whenever all the design issues are resolved.

Also, if you are looking for a place to go hiking, mountain-biking, skinny-dipping or bird-watching in Massachusetts, go to masstrails.com and use a special-purpose search engine I built.

That will be all.

The Imperial Collapse Playbook

Leon KuhnSome 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.
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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
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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:

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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.

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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.

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

Freddie[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.

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