Monthly Archives: February 2010

Sublime News #2

By AK | Published: February 27, 2010
1. In response to Gregor’s surprise over my lack of mention of the Dubai assassination – don’t think it’s important or that anything substantial will come out of it. Britain may make a media ruckus over the faking of their citizens’ passports, but in the end analysis, the UK is closely aligned with the US, [...]
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Russia’s Demographic Resilience III

By AK | Published: February 24, 2010
It’s official. Russia’s population grew by 23,300 souls in 2009, for the first time since 1995. The rate of natural increase remained slightly negative for Russia as a whole, though the Siberian and Urals Federal Regions actually saw positive natural population growth for the first time in 19 years. However, this was more than compensated for by [...]
Posted in Da Russophile | Tagged , , , | 28 Comments

Sublime News #1

By AK | Published: February 22, 2010
I am beginning a new post category, Sublime News, in which I collate and comment on news bits and pieces that I find interesting over the past week. Whatever I write over the week will be automatically published every Saturday, 12pm (California time). This first post will be exceptional in that it will cover a [...]
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SSR #8: On Future War

By AK | Published: February 18, 2010
This is the fourth post in my series of Sublime Strategic Reports (SSRs) covering global trends, regions, and geopolitics. In this issue I am going to look at the future of military technology and war strategy in a world of informatization, resource scarcity, and renewed ideological turbulence. Be forewarned: while some of what I write here [...]
Posted in Sublime Oblivion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Review of “Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al.)

By AK | Published: February 16, 2010
If I could recommend just one book to someone with a business-as-usual outlook, someone who believes human ingenuity and free markets will always bail us out of any resource scarcity or environmental problem, it would be Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (henceforth LTG). After reading it, you may never look at the world in quite [...]
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The Endgame Begins

By AK | Published: February 13, 2010
A year ago I predicted that there will be a “decoupling from the unwinding“, as “emerging markets” by and large ride out the temporary shocks of declining Western demand for their exports (China) and the interruption of Western credit intermediation (Russia) before resuming growth. This is one aspect of the trends leading to the imminent demise [...]
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SSR #13: China, The Last Superpower

By AK | Published: February 7, 2010
This is the third of my Sublime Strategic Reports (SSRs) covering global trends, regions, and geopolitics. After two hundred years of global ascendancy, the West is in rapid relative decline to (re)emerging Asia, which is mounting a steady “Great Reconvergence”. Likewise, the legitimacy of today’s “neoliberal internationalist” order promoted by the West is being questioned by the more [...]
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Collapse Ethics: Anarchy or Coercion?

By AK | Published: February 4, 2010
The reaction to my article on the “ecotechnic dictatorship” garnered a vigorous response on this blog, and more of a vitriolic one elsewhere (see below for a summary). So let’s ask the question outright. Suppose that all your observations and models indicated that business-as-usual would doom the global industrial system to collapse, causing the premature [...]
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