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Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism
In RAGING TWENTIES, Pepe Escobar smashes a triple-wide jumbo bulldozer of erudition and insight through the painfully narrow and now Big Tech-fortified Overton window of conventional American political discourse. This volume includes 25 essays written for Asia Times, Consortium News, and Strategic Culture in the incomparable year of 2020 and adds a new introduction, afterword, and table of abbreviations. Educated people of all political persusasions will enjoy Escobar's stinging prose and his display of his wide-ranging and truly global knowledge of poetry, history, and political philosophy. American readers already skeptical of the dominant narrative will enjoy this scintillating dissection of the mammoth hypocrisy involved in the standard governmental and corporate narrative. And those with perspectives similar to the American mainstream will benefit from reading a truly Other-centered exemplar of the several billion people who find the political perspectives that are commonplace in Asia, Europe, China, Russia, and Iran more congenial than those of a US establishment that has gifted the world with seventy-five-plus years of continuous war. Escobar's first book in the US, Globalistan (Nimble, 2007), brilliantly anticipated the future of a disintegrating international system in an era of "Liquid" (hybrid) war. These were followed by Red Zone Blues (2007); Obama does Globalistan (2009); Empire of Chaos (2014); and 2030 (2015), all by Nimble Books. From the The Raging Twenties started with a murder. That lethality was amplified when a virus cannibalized virtually the whole planet, devouring time. As time has been standing still—or imploded—ever since, we cannot even begin to imagine the consequences of the anthropological rupture caused by SARS-CoV-2. A new world starts when language—either a living entity, or a virus from outer space (William Burroughs)—starts metastasizing new words. A basket of concepts already stand out. Circuit breaker. Biosecurity. Negative feedback loops. State of exception. Necropolitics. New Brutalism. Hybrid Neofascism. And, as we shall see, New Viral Paradigm. The proliferation of new words—and concepts—paradoxically developed in parallel with the slow fade out of The Word.Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe summed it all “This end of the word, this definitive triumph of the gesture and artificial organs over the word, the fact that the history of the word ends under our eyes, that for me is the historical development par excellence.” We all now live in Google town. Suddenly, we were forced to identify the lineaments of a new regime. A new mode of a turbo-capitalist survival engineered as Rentier Capitalism 2.0, where Silicon Valley behemoths take the place of estates, and also the State. That is the “techno-feudal” option, as defined by economist Cedric Durand. Squeezed and intoxicated by information performing the role of a dominatrix, we were presented with a new map of Dystopia, packaged as a “new normal”, featuring cognitive dissonance, a biosecurity paradigm, the inevitability of virtual work, social distancing as a political program, info-surveillance, and triumphant Trans-humanism.
157 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 20, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 7, 2021
A detailed look at the world we live in.
I have followed Pepe for a few years now and knew that going in I might have already read some of the articles he drew from for this book, but nonetheless it remains a good read. A great read for anyone not familiar with Pepe's work or with world affairs.
I have followed Pepe for a few years now and knew that going in I might have already read some of the articles he drew from for this book, but nonetheless it remains a good read. A great read for anyone not familiar with Pepe's work or with world affairs.
August 15, 2021
"One year ago, the Raging Twenties started with a murder."
"Everyone knows only one “indispensable nation” is self-authorized to operate “in theaters outside its borders” to bomb others into democracy. (...) The “indispensable nation” lost its military cutting edge to Russia and is losing its economic/ trade preeminence to China. (...) It’s idle to discuss with simpletons. In the interest of an informed debate, what matters is to find the deeper roots of Beijing’s strategy: in fact what the Chinese learned from their own rich history, and how they are applying these lessons as a re-emerging major power in the young 21st century."
This is a selection of op-eds and such, written in 2019 and 2020. The whole ultimately makes sense as a book of essays because there is a relevant cohesion in the themes, and the depth of culture and reason at play are impressive. Pepe Escobar is a grand-reporter and a opinionated person with much to say, and everything he has to say should be considered: He is a fundamental writer for one to understand this world we inhabit.
Here are a few morsels.
“And that brings us to the direct link between the Anthropocene and what has been conceptualized by French economist Benjamin Coriat as the Capitalocene. Capitalocene means that our current state of appalling planetary degradation should not be linked to an undefined “humanity” but “to a very defined humanity organized by a predatory economic system.”
"Silicon Valley stalwart Peter Thiel has always stressed the target of the digital entrepreneur is exactly to bypass competition. As quoted in 'Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World', Thiel declared, “Capitalism and competition are antagonistic. Competition is for losers.” So now we are facing not a mere clash between Silicon Valley capitalism and finance capital, but actually a new mode of production: a turbo-capitalist survival as rentier capitalism, where Silicon giants take the place of estates, and also the State. That is the “techno-feudal” option (...)"
“Racism is an Anglo-Saxon liberal construction based on a hierarchy between peoples. I think this is criminal.” Then he defines “a new Manichean division, a new racism. Those who are in favor of Western values, they are good. Everybody who challenges that, in the Islamic tradition, in the Russian tradition, in the Chinese tradition, in the Indian tradition, everywhere, they are populists, and they are classified as fascism. I think that is a new kind of racism.”
"And so we come to the COVID- 19 pandemic. Here it would be helpful to refer to the writings of Giorgio Agamben, who did in fact square the circle: it’s not that citizens across the West have the right to health safety, he has written, it’s the fact that now they have been juridically forced to be healthy. And that, in a nutshell, is what biosecurity—a data process—is all about. (...) With pervasive social distancing in place, the new border is each and everyone’s skin. Migrants and refugees were previously considered viruses, and only merited confinement and immobilization. But now these policies apply to whole populations. Detention centers—perpetual waiting rooms that abolish human rights and citizenship—are now detention centers inside one’s own home. (...) What we are already experiencing is social distancing as a political model—with a digital matrix replacing human interaction, which by definition from now on will be regarded as fundamentally suspicious and politically “contagious”. (...) With necropower and data‑as‑sovereign tightening its grip, what passes now for “democracy” in the West is being reduced to a hollowed out shell, unpredictable, paranoid, corroded by the marriage of manufactured consent and political correctness, devoid of substantive meaning and increasingly lacking in justification: a mere (and increasingly outdated) ornament."
"Man himself has been reduced to a mere and calculable accumulation of data. The consequence is inevitable: total communication coincides with total vigilance."
"Comparing China's economic velocity now with the US is like comparing a Maserati Gran Turismo Sport (with a V8 Ferrari engine) with a Toyota Camry. China, proportionately, holds a larger reservoir of very well educated young generations; an accelerated rural-urban migration; increased poverty eradication; more savings; a cultural sense of deferred gratification; more—Confucianist—social discipline; and infinitely more respect for the rationally educated mind. The process of China increasingly trading with itself will be more than enough to keep the necessary sustainable development momentum going."
“Human beings don’t have the appropriate engineering for the society they developed. Over a million years of evolution, the instinct of getting together in small communities, belligerent and compact, turned out to be correct. But then, in the 20th century, man ceased to adapt. Technology overtook evolution. The brain of an ancestral creature, like a rat, which sees provocation in the face of every stranger, is the brain that now controls the earth’s destiny.”
“The (unexploded) 107mm caliber rockets—by the way marked in English, not Farsi—can be easily bought in some underground Baghdad souk by virtually anybody, as I have seen for myself in Iraq since the mid-2000s. That certainly does not qualify as a casus belli—or “self-defense” merging with “deterrence”. The CENTCOM justification actually sounds like a Monty Python sketch: an attack “…almost certainly conducted by an Iranian-backed rogue militia group.” Note that “almost certainly” is code for “we have no idea who did it”.
"There are essentially four truly sovereign states in the world today, at least amongst the major powers: the United States, the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. These four sovereigns— I call them the Hegemon and the Three Sovereigns— stand at the vanguard of the ultra‑postmodern world, characterized by the supremacy of data algorithms and techno‑financialization ruling over politics."
"The Axis of Resistance—Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Hezbollah—instead of collapsing, will keep getting reinforced. Internally, and still under “maximum pressure” sanctions, Iran and Russia will be cooperating to produce COVID-19 vaccines, and the Pasteur Institute of Iran will co-produce a vaccine with a Cuban company. Iran is increasingly solidified as the key node of the New Silk Roads in Southwest Asia: the Iran-China strategic partnership is constantly revitalized by FMs Zarif and Wang Yi, and that includes Beijing turbo-charging its geoeconomic investment in South Pars—the largest gas field on the planet. Iran, Russia and China will be involved in the reconstruction of Syria—which will also include, eventually, a New Silk Road branch: the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Eastern Mediterranean railway. All that is an interlinked, ongoing process no Hellfires are able to burn."
(N.B.: in his increasingly despise for the United States, a country he's been referring lately as "Stupidistan", the author depends financially from publishers in the East, specifically in China, so when the subject in China, all is good and great under the sun, and we get copy like this thing here, about the credit system: "For the State Council, the supreme government authority in China, what really mattered was to encourage behavior deemed responsible in the financial, economic and sociopolitical spheres, and sanction what is not. It’s all about trust. Beijing defines it as “a method of perfecting the socialist market economy system that improves social governance”. The Chinese term—shehui xinyong—is totally lost in translation in the West. Way more complex than “social credit”, it’s more about “trustworthiness”, in the sense of integrity. Instead of the pedestrian Western accusations of being an Orwellian system, priorities include the fight against fraud and corruption at the national, regional and local levels, violations of environmental rules, disrespect of food security norms." Yeah, sure. For what it's worth, I have no doubts that in the West we'll end up having a much more pervasive and darker—and hypocritical—system. To wit, "The end of cash necessarily implies a One-World government capable of dispensing—and controlling—UBI; a de facto full accomplishment of Foucault’s studies on biopolitics. Anyone is liable to be erased from the system if an algorithm equals this individual with dissent. It gets even sexier when absolute social control is promoted as an innocent vaccine.")
"Everyone knows only one “indispensable nation” is self-authorized to operate “in theaters outside its borders” to bomb others into democracy. (...) The “indispensable nation” lost its military cutting edge to Russia and is losing its economic/ trade preeminence to China. (...) It’s idle to discuss with simpletons. In the interest of an informed debate, what matters is to find the deeper roots of Beijing’s strategy: in fact what the Chinese learned from their own rich history, and how they are applying these lessons as a re-emerging major power in the young 21st century."
This is a selection of op-eds and such, written in 2019 and 2020. The whole ultimately makes sense as a book of essays because there is a relevant cohesion in the themes, and the depth of culture and reason at play are impressive. Pepe Escobar is a grand-reporter and a opinionated person with much to say, and everything he has to say should be considered: He is a fundamental writer for one to understand this world we inhabit.
Here are a few morsels.
“And that brings us to the direct link between the Anthropocene and what has been conceptualized by French economist Benjamin Coriat as the Capitalocene. Capitalocene means that our current state of appalling planetary degradation should not be linked to an undefined “humanity” but “to a very defined humanity organized by a predatory economic system.”
"Silicon Valley stalwart Peter Thiel has always stressed the target of the digital entrepreneur is exactly to bypass competition. As quoted in 'Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World', Thiel declared, “Capitalism and competition are antagonistic. Competition is for losers.” So now we are facing not a mere clash between Silicon Valley capitalism and finance capital, but actually a new mode of production: a turbo-capitalist survival as rentier capitalism, where Silicon giants take the place of estates, and also the State. That is the “techno-feudal” option (...)"
“Racism is an Anglo-Saxon liberal construction based on a hierarchy between peoples. I think this is criminal.” Then he defines “a new Manichean division, a new racism. Those who are in favor of Western values, they are good. Everybody who challenges that, in the Islamic tradition, in the Russian tradition, in the Chinese tradition, in the Indian tradition, everywhere, they are populists, and they are classified as fascism. I think that is a new kind of racism.”
"And so we come to the COVID- 19 pandemic. Here it would be helpful to refer to the writings of Giorgio Agamben, who did in fact square the circle: it’s not that citizens across the West have the right to health safety, he has written, it’s the fact that now they have been juridically forced to be healthy. And that, in a nutshell, is what biosecurity—a data process—is all about. (...) With pervasive social distancing in place, the new border is each and everyone’s skin. Migrants and refugees were previously considered viruses, and only merited confinement and immobilization. But now these policies apply to whole populations. Detention centers—perpetual waiting rooms that abolish human rights and citizenship—are now detention centers inside one’s own home. (...) What we are already experiencing is social distancing as a political model—with a digital matrix replacing human interaction, which by definition from now on will be regarded as fundamentally suspicious and politically “contagious”. (...) With necropower and data‑as‑sovereign tightening its grip, what passes now for “democracy” in the West is being reduced to a hollowed out shell, unpredictable, paranoid, corroded by the marriage of manufactured consent and political correctness, devoid of substantive meaning and increasingly lacking in justification: a mere (and increasingly outdated) ornament."
"Man himself has been reduced to a mere and calculable accumulation of data. The consequence is inevitable: total communication coincides with total vigilance."
"Comparing China's economic velocity now with the US is like comparing a Maserati Gran Turismo Sport (with a V8 Ferrari engine) with a Toyota Camry. China, proportionately, holds a larger reservoir of very well educated young generations; an accelerated rural-urban migration; increased poverty eradication; more savings; a cultural sense of deferred gratification; more—Confucianist—social discipline; and infinitely more respect for the rationally educated mind. The process of China increasingly trading with itself will be more than enough to keep the necessary sustainable development momentum going."
“Human beings don’t have the appropriate engineering for the society they developed. Over a million years of evolution, the instinct of getting together in small communities, belligerent and compact, turned out to be correct. But then, in the 20th century, man ceased to adapt. Technology overtook evolution. The brain of an ancestral creature, like a rat, which sees provocation in the face of every stranger, is the brain that now controls the earth’s destiny.”
“The (unexploded) 107mm caliber rockets—by the way marked in English, not Farsi—can be easily bought in some underground Baghdad souk by virtually anybody, as I have seen for myself in Iraq since the mid-2000s. That certainly does not qualify as a casus belli—or “self-defense” merging with “deterrence”. The CENTCOM justification actually sounds like a Monty Python sketch: an attack “…almost certainly conducted by an Iranian-backed rogue militia group.” Note that “almost certainly” is code for “we have no idea who did it”.
"There are essentially four truly sovereign states in the world today, at least amongst the major powers: the United States, the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. These four sovereigns— I call them the Hegemon and the Three Sovereigns— stand at the vanguard of the ultra‑postmodern world, characterized by the supremacy of data algorithms and techno‑financialization ruling over politics."
"The Axis of Resistance—Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Hezbollah—instead of collapsing, will keep getting reinforced. Internally, and still under “maximum pressure” sanctions, Iran and Russia will be cooperating to produce COVID-19 vaccines, and the Pasteur Institute of Iran will co-produce a vaccine with a Cuban company. Iran is increasingly solidified as the key node of the New Silk Roads in Southwest Asia: the Iran-China strategic partnership is constantly revitalized by FMs Zarif and Wang Yi, and that includes Beijing turbo-charging its geoeconomic investment in South Pars—the largest gas field on the planet. Iran, Russia and China will be involved in the reconstruction of Syria—which will also include, eventually, a New Silk Road branch: the Iran-Iraq-Syria-Eastern Mediterranean railway. All that is an interlinked, ongoing process no Hellfires are able to burn."
(N.B.: in his increasingly despise for the United States, a country he's been referring lately as "Stupidistan", the author depends financially from publishers in the East, specifically in China, so when the subject in China, all is good and great under the sun, and we get copy like this thing here, about the credit system: "For the State Council, the supreme government authority in China, what really mattered was to encourage behavior deemed responsible in the financial, economic and sociopolitical spheres, and sanction what is not. It’s all about trust. Beijing defines it as “a method of perfecting the socialist market economy system that improves social governance”. The Chinese term—shehui xinyong—is totally lost in translation in the West. Way more complex than “social credit”, it’s more about “trustworthiness”, in the sense of integrity. Instead of the pedestrian Western accusations of being an Orwellian system, priorities include the fight against fraud and corruption at the national, regional and local levels, violations of environmental rules, disrespect of food security norms." Yeah, sure. For what it's worth, I have no doubts that in the West we'll end up having a much more pervasive and darker—and hypocritical—system. To wit, "The end of cash necessarily implies a One-World government capable of dispensing—and controlling—UBI; a de facto full accomplishment of Foucault’s studies on biopolitics. Anyone is liable to be erased from the system if an algorithm equals this individual with dissent. It gets even sexier when absolute social control is promoted as an innocent vaccine.")
August 22, 2021
Pepe Escobar is a great geopolitical analyst, among the very best.
Yet, when he tries to make sense of utterly moronic mental diarrhea from postmoderns like Zizek, Deleuze or Baudrillard, the result can only be mediocrity like this unnecessary failed attempt to sound a (more) cultivated author.
Yet, when he tries to make sense of utterly moronic mental diarrhea from postmoderns like Zizek, Deleuze or Baudrillard, the result can only be mediocrity like this unnecessary failed attempt to sound a (more) cultivated author.
August 26, 2023
This decade certainly is the Raging Twenties. US empire and the collective West are in steep decline. China has surpassed the US economically and Russia has surpassed the US militarily. Empire is lashing out everywhere, starting the decade with the assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimaini, who is remembered fondly in west-Asia for his fight against ISIS/Daesh. Although the US war against Iran that many have been expecting for 20 years did not happen.
In August of 2021 the Empire suffered a humiliation in Afghanistan. US withdrew from Afghanistan and immediately their puppet government fell. Taliban took control of the country essentially without violence. Twenty years of war was all for nothing, except for the super profits gained by the military-industrial complex. Leaving Afghanistan US stole the foreign reserves of Afghanistan and put sanctions on the Afghan population, which are causing the horrific mass starvation there at the moment. Currently US is sanctioning almost half of the world. After getting their asses handed to them in Afghanistan they decided to pick a fight with Russia in 2022. Preparations for this started immediately in the beginning of 2021 when Biden (or as Pepe calls him - "the crash test dummy") came to office.
In US establishment's own words "over-extending and unbalancing" Russia and "weakening" it (RAND corp & US defense secretary Lloyd Austin) in Ukraine, as well as putting massive sanctions on Russia, freezing its foreign reserves (something which they have done test runs on Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan etc.) and kicking it from SWIFT would destroy the Russian economy and lead to the overthrow of Putin. In the end they could destroy Russia's industries again (replay of the 1990's), balkanize Russia into several countries (Brzezinski dream) and finally get control of its vast natural resources (this would strengthen dollar hegemony and get rid of Russia as a competitor once and for all).
2014 Maidan US backed violent coup against democratically elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, NATO expansion, US unilaterally pulling out of arms treaties, US/NATO training AFU as well as the Right Sector, Azov, Aidar, C14 etc. nazis in a brutal war against the Donbass Russophone (Maloross) populations, Kiev violating instead of implementing the Minsk agreements for the past eight years, 46 Pentagon biological weapons labs, US stating that they are putting strategic offensive missiles in Kharkov (which would neutralize Russian second strike capability) and rejecting very modest Russian requests about indivisibility of security in December of 2021, Zelensky the comedian telling that Ukraine is going to acquire nuclear weapons and the massive Ukrainian shelling starting in February 17th of 2022 against the Donbass civil populations (as well as amassing over 100 000 troops to attack Donetsk and Lugansk republics) finally led to the Russian intervention in 24th of February 2022.
The chess-pieces were there for the US, NATO and UK, however this US-led western proxy-war using Ukraine against Russia has failed spectacularly. Only thing the neocons and other psychos got from their short sighted strategy was the divorce of Germany from Russia (end of Nordstream 2). Now EU can buy expensive American LNG and see its industries decimated. American oil and gas corporation executives and stockholders are smiling. At the same time fuel prices are through the roof: western populations suffer, but Russia is having record oil and gas revenues. Indeed Russia is working closely with its partners in Eurasia and elsewhere. This is how it will be from now on. Russia doesn't care about the West anymore. Ukraine, which is not officially a NATO country, but has an army that for the past eight years has been the most NATO trained & equipped is getting annihilated right now. The sanctions against Russia have failed and are hurting the western economies more than Russia. Quite hilariously Russian rouble is the best performing currency of the year. At the same time most of the world (Africa, Asia & Latin America) see that the dollar, euro and sterling are completely unreliable and that the Anglo-American financial system cannot be trusted. Dollar hegemony is dying.
Three Sovereigns (China-Russia-Iran) are working closely to integrate their financial systems. During this decade China and Russia will create a new financial and monetary system. This will not be imposed on anyone. It will be voluntary. Most countries in the world will join this new system that will provide real industrial development and modernization for Eurasian and Global South countries. The beginning of multipolarity is here. BRICS is being revived again as well. Argentina and Iran will soon join.
Next stop of the Empire of Chaos & Lies will most likely be Taiwan.
They will take another L.
Pepe's articles in this book are of course from the year 2020 before Afghanistan withdrawal and Ukraine, but he does see the writing on the wall for what would happen in great power politics; in these articles you find the lead-up events to the events that are unfolding right now. In the articles he doesn't only go through Empire's decline, but also in detail the rise of China-Russia strategic partnership and this Eurasian century that is being formed from the New Silk Roads to Eurasian Economic Union. People should read his 2021 and 2022 articles on Afghanistan and Russia-Ukraine and its massive global political ramifications.
The beginning of the Raging Twenties was of course as well the start of the global Covid-19 pandemic. This was a "great opportunity" for the beginning of the Great Reset as the WEF founder and chairman Klaus Schwab has stated. Control of populations with digital IDs to lockdowns to other draconian measures. We had the president of France, Emmanuel Macron call unvaccinated citizens 'non-citizens.' We saw the rise of complete Big Tech surveillance with Covid: the complete control of the narrative and of course we now see the same with Ukraine. Censorship is rampant. (I have some personal experience with this; getting videos I've uploaded deleted from YouTube for being 'misinformation' when I'm for example just reposting a video taken by an Azov commander. In the end my channel was deleted entirely.) Indeed during these times the 'liberal West' has become top down authoritarianism run by complete fools. This process has been happening for quite a while from the Edward Snowden NSA revelations to the imprisonment and torture of the most important journalist of our times Julian Assange. Combine this liberalism as totalitarianism with an economic system that today is just based on endless quantitative easing from the central banks (starting in 2008, this means that basically central banks are creating the profits of the stock market from thin air), Silicon Valley data collection & control, the precarious gig economy, the attention economy, very little real industrial production in the western economies, rise of 'digital fiefdoms' and we have the techno-feudalism in which we live now. This techno-feudal Great Reset agenda of course includes transhumanism, that 'everyone is hackable' and need to be upgraded which is supposed to happen through the fourth industrial revolution, and all of this has a dark neo-Malthusian twist where the messengers of World Economic Forum like Yuval Harari say that there will be billions of useless people who will be entertained with video games and drugs, making a docile slave population unable to think and create. Depopulation is of course included as well. The system would be run by the same 0.01 oligarchs who run our lives now, the 'masters of the universe' as Pepe calls them. However Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Algeria, even Saudi-Arabia and indeed most of the world is resisting this so if there is going to be a Great Reset it will be limited to the West and its satellites. What is certain is that the speculative debt bubble is going to burst soon; this will work as some kind of a reset. As for Covid, Pepe very correctly sees that where as the black plague of the 1300's delayed the Renaissance, Covid which is not much compared to the plague, has sped up the process of the rise of Eurasia.
Here is Yanis Varoufakis explaining (part of the) techno-feudalism to Slavoj Zizek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghx0s...
Pepe Escobar is one of my favorite journalists and geopolitical analysts. Reading and listening to him for many years has been a doorway to understanding geopolitics. Pepe often gives accurate predictions about future geopolitical events and his writing style is captivating; he has all these great terms like 'NATOstan', Global Robocop, Pipelineistan etc. In his writings you find Confucius, the Stoics, Foucault, Marx, Agamben, Mbembe and other classics. These days you can read Pepe and other brilliant authors (veteran journalists, analysts, diplomats etc.) on the Cradle.
https://thecradle.co/
In August of 2021 the Empire suffered a humiliation in Afghanistan. US withdrew from Afghanistan and immediately their puppet government fell. Taliban took control of the country essentially without violence. Twenty years of war was all for nothing, except for the super profits gained by the military-industrial complex. Leaving Afghanistan US stole the foreign reserves of Afghanistan and put sanctions on the Afghan population, which are causing the horrific mass starvation there at the moment. Currently US is sanctioning almost half of the world. After getting their asses handed to them in Afghanistan they decided to pick a fight with Russia in 2022. Preparations for this started immediately in the beginning of 2021 when Biden (or as Pepe calls him - "the crash test dummy") came to office.
In US establishment's own words "over-extending and unbalancing" Russia and "weakening" it (RAND corp & US defense secretary Lloyd Austin) in Ukraine, as well as putting massive sanctions on Russia, freezing its foreign reserves (something which they have done test runs on Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan etc.) and kicking it from SWIFT would destroy the Russian economy and lead to the overthrow of Putin. In the end they could destroy Russia's industries again (replay of the 1990's), balkanize Russia into several countries (Brzezinski dream) and finally get control of its vast natural resources (this would strengthen dollar hegemony and get rid of Russia as a competitor once and for all).
2014 Maidan US backed violent coup against democratically elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, NATO expansion, US unilaterally pulling out of arms treaties, US/NATO training AFU as well as the Right Sector, Azov, Aidar, C14 etc. nazis in a brutal war against the Donbass Russophone (Maloross) populations, Kiev violating instead of implementing the Minsk agreements for the past eight years, 46 Pentagon biological weapons labs, US stating that they are putting strategic offensive missiles in Kharkov (which would neutralize Russian second strike capability) and rejecting very modest Russian requests about indivisibility of security in December of 2021, Zelensky the comedian telling that Ukraine is going to acquire nuclear weapons and the massive Ukrainian shelling starting in February 17th of 2022 against the Donbass civil populations (as well as amassing over 100 000 troops to attack Donetsk and Lugansk republics) finally led to the Russian intervention in 24th of February 2022.
The chess-pieces were there for the US, NATO and UK, however this US-led western proxy-war using Ukraine against Russia has failed spectacularly. Only thing the neocons and other psychos got from their short sighted strategy was the divorce of Germany from Russia (end of Nordstream 2). Now EU can buy expensive American LNG and see its industries decimated. American oil and gas corporation executives and stockholders are smiling. At the same time fuel prices are through the roof: western populations suffer, but Russia is having record oil and gas revenues. Indeed Russia is working closely with its partners in Eurasia and elsewhere. This is how it will be from now on. Russia doesn't care about the West anymore. Ukraine, which is not officially a NATO country, but has an army that for the past eight years has been the most NATO trained & equipped is getting annihilated right now. The sanctions against Russia have failed and are hurting the western economies more than Russia. Quite hilariously Russian rouble is the best performing currency of the year. At the same time most of the world (Africa, Asia & Latin America) see that the dollar, euro and sterling are completely unreliable and that the Anglo-American financial system cannot be trusted. Dollar hegemony is dying.
Three Sovereigns (China-Russia-Iran) are working closely to integrate their financial systems. During this decade China and Russia will create a new financial and monetary system. This will not be imposed on anyone. It will be voluntary. Most countries in the world will join this new system that will provide real industrial development and modernization for Eurasian and Global South countries. The beginning of multipolarity is here. BRICS is being revived again as well. Argentina and Iran will soon join.
Next stop of the Empire of Chaos & Lies will most likely be Taiwan.
They will take another L.
Pepe's articles in this book are of course from the year 2020 before Afghanistan withdrawal and Ukraine, but he does see the writing on the wall for what would happen in great power politics; in these articles you find the lead-up events to the events that are unfolding right now. In the articles he doesn't only go through Empire's decline, but also in detail the rise of China-Russia strategic partnership and this Eurasian century that is being formed from the New Silk Roads to Eurasian Economic Union. People should read his 2021 and 2022 articles on Afghanistan and Russia-Ukraine and its massive global political ramifications.
The beginning of the Raging Twenties was of course as well the start of the global Covid-19 pandemic. This was a "great opportunity" for the beginning of the Great Reset as the WEF founder and chairman Klaus Schwab has stated. Control of populations with digital IDs to lockdowns to other draconian measures. We had the president of France, Emmanuel Macron call unvaccinated citizens 'non-citizens.' We saw the rise of complete Big Tech surveillance with Covid: the complete control of the narrative and of course we now see the same with Ukraine. Censorship is rampant. (I have some personal experience with this; getting videos I've uploaded deleted from YouTube for being 'misinformation' when I'm for example just reposting a video taken by an Azov commander. In the end my channel was deleted entirely.) Indeed during these times the 'liberal West' has become top down authoritarianism run by complete fools. This process has been happening for quite a while from the Edward Snowden NSA revelations to the imprisonment and torture of the most important journalist of our times Julian Assange. Combine this liberalism as totalitarianism with an economic system that today is just based on endless quantitative easing from the central banks (starting in 2008, this means that basically central banks are creating the profits of the stock market from thin air), Silicon Valley data collection & control, the precarious gig economy, the attention economy, very little real industrial production in the western economies, rise of 'digital fiefdoms' and we have the techno-feudalism in which we live now. This techno-feudal Great Reset agenda of course includes transhumanism, that 'everyone is hackable' and need to be upgraded which is supposed to happen through the fourth industrial revolution, and all of this has a dark neo-Malthusian twist where the messengers of World Economic Forum like Yuval Harari say that there will be billions of useless people who will be entertained with video games and drugs, making a docile slave population unable to think and create. Depopulation is of course included as well. The system would be run by the same 0.01 oligarchs who run our lives now, the 'masters of the universe' as Pepe calls them. However Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Algeria, even Saudi-Arabia and indeed most of the world is resisting this so if there is going to be a Great Reset it will be limited to the West and its satellites. What is certain is that the speculative debt bubble is going to burst soon; this will work as some kind of a reset. As for Covid, Pepe very correctly sees that where as the black plague of the 1300's delayed the Renaissance, Covid which is not much compared to the plague, has sped up the process of the rise of Eurasia.
Here is Yanis Varoufakis explaining (part of the) techno-feudalism to Slavoj Zizek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghx0s...
Pepe Escobar is one of my favorite journalists and geopolitical analysts. Reading and listening to him for many years has been a doorway to understanding geopolitics. Pepe often gives accurate predictions about future geopolitical events and his writing style is captivating; he has all these great terms like 'NATOstan', Global Robocop, Pipelineistan etc. In his writings you find Confucius, the Stoics, Foucault, Marx, Agamben, Mbembe and other classics. These days you can read Pepe and other brilliant authors (veteran journalists, analysts, diplomats etc.) on the Cradle.
https://thecradle.co/
November 4, 2021
I finished today and recommend it! The book is heavy, even so it's a read, let's say in a playful, young and rebellious rhythm.
In Raging Twenties, Pepe Escobar writes like a geopolitics trail machine. This book includes 25 essays written for various publications during 2020, the year of the pandemic, don't forget. These were terrible times but also fruitful for great meditations and changes. In our daily life in which we live apart, we are connected by the fabric of (perverse) digital networks, where technology meets feudalism, according to the author, it is good to note that he is only the Oracle of Delphi and that action depends on us.
In Raging Twenties, Pepe Escobar writes like a geopolitics trail machine. This book includes 25 essays written for various publications during 2020, the year of the pandemic, don't forget. These were terrible times but also fruitful for great meditations and changes. In our daily life in which we live apart, we are connected by the fabric of (perverse) digital networks, where technology meets feudalism, according to the author, it is good to note that he is only the Oracle of Delphi and that action depends on us.
January 25, 2022
Sleeping on the BRI 20 years ago is understandable - at this juncture it would be fatal. Pepe has been bringing you the best behind the new digital curtains for decades and he's just getting better and better. Just a good dude you want to grab a beer with.
May 13, 2021
When I grow up I want to be a Geopolitical Junkie Rock'n'Roller just like Pepe.
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