Thinking About Collapse

One of the interesting things about what is happening in Syria is that it is not just the fall of the government but a collapse of Syrian society. When Assad fled, everyone in his government went into hiding. The people running various parts of the system abandoned their posts, leaving no government at all. The money is worthless, so the economy has ceased to function.

Then you have the gangs of lunatics running around, supported by your tax dollars, making sure nothing is working. Now we are getting word that remnants of the military are forming up into war bands. Soon the various ethnic and religious groups will do the same and the result will be a war zone where lightly armed war bands fight with one another for control of increasingly worthless land.

In other words, Syria collapsed and went from a poorly functioning country to something like a fallen Bronze Age society. This is not just the fall of a government but the collapse of everything, which is not something we often see. The last example is Libya, which was not much a society before we killed Gaddafi. The most recent example is the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago.

That is the show this week. Societal collapse is a rare thing, but Syria is a good reminder that it can still happen. The conditions are pretty similar in all the big examples of collapse. Of course, once you start thinking about those conditions, the West begins to look a bit fragile. Syria is also a reminder that collapse always catches people by surprise, even those causing it.


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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Intro
  • Syrian Collapse
  • French Collapse
  • Tsarist Collapse
  • Soviet Collapse
  • Collapse & Revolution
  • The American Collapse

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pyrrhus
pyrrhus
14 hours ago

Syria was a reasonably well functioning country 15 years ago, with Assad protecting Christians and minorities…Then the US and its minions decided to create a color revolution, accompanied by strangling sanctions and US military occupation of a major. oil producing area…That failed due to Russian military intervention, as did a later attempt in 2015…This time, the Syrian Arab Army refused to fight, probably due to bribery, and the Russians gave up…Now it’s Lord of the Flies territory…
The lesson is that no smaller country can indefinitely withstand destruction by the concerted action of powerful countries….

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  pyrrhus
13 hours ago

it’s crazy how every action the USA takes in the Middle East leads to slaughter of Christians, dismantling of Christian communities, and mass migration of non-Christians into the USA and Europe where the ties of Christianity are further weakened. But no, that’s surely just a coincidence.

Apex Predator
Apex Predator
Reply to  Mycale
10 hours ago

Hey, hey! Cool it with the anti-Semitic remarks…

ray
ray
Reply to  Mycale
9 hours ago

D.C. would like to crush American Christians too, but there might be resistance, you see. There’s a lot of pesky Christians and some are pretty feisty about their satanic government.

Small countries on the other side of the world . . . no problem!

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  ray
8 hours ago

ray, the number of Christians who share your beliefs is small. Most self-professed Christians are f@gs whom the government likes.

Governments need to crush the people who, Christian or not, believe in traditional sex roles and ethnonationalism.

Don’t discount the non-Christians who share most of your beliefs and we won’t discount your Christianity.

It will be a blessed day if together we ever triumph and have to sort out our religious differences. I’m pulling for you guys.

Last edited 8 hours ago by LineInTheSand
ray
ray
Reply to  LineInTheSand
8 hours ago

‘Most self-professed Christians are f@gs whom the government likes.’ Like the rest of American society, the Christian ‘churches’ are feminized and emasculated. I avoid these doods same as the gelded atheists and agnostics. One day back when I lived in Amerika the neighbor, who was a fresh-outta-bible-college Pastor Boy (maybe 22 or 23) gave me the rote ‘When Will I See You in Church?’ line. I told him if I walked into his church it’d spontaneously combust. I also told him (twice) that serving God was not a career. ‘Don’t discount the non-Christians who share most of your beliefs and… Read more »

Xman
Xman
Reply to  ray
7 hours ago

Yep. I’m all for Christianity but unfortunately there are probably more Christian Zionists in the Israel Lobby than Jewish Zionists, LOL.

It’s incredible how many of these guys do not understand their own religion. Christianity properly understood is a rejection of Jewish tribalism, exclusivity, arrogance, self-righteousness and perceived superiority, not a affirmation of it.

Christianity is overdue for a Second Reformation.

Hokkoda
Member
Reply to  pyrrhus
3 hours ago

Ghosts of Benghazi weapons smuggling.

Ted X
Ted X
14 hours ago

‘Fate of Empires’ by Sir John Glubb p.12-13 In the fourteenth century, the weakening empire of Byzantium was threatened, and indeed dominated, by the Ottoman Turks. The situation was so serious that one would have expected every subject of Byzantium to abandon his personal interests and to stand with his compatriots in a last desperate attempt to save the country. The reverse occurred. The Byzantines spent the last fifty years of their history in fighting one another in repeated civil wars, until the Ottomans moved in and administered the coup de grâce. p. 15 In the first half of the… Read more »

Jannie
Jannie
Reply to  Ted X
13 hours ago

That’s a great book.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Ted X
12 hours ago

Psychologist Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel argued that the destruction of traditional morality with the attendant blooming of depravity and degeneracy always herald chaos and disaster. She arrived at her conclusions through social psychology, but they seem to tally quite well with the historical record.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
12 hours ago
3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
11 hours ago

My husband mentioned that to me a few weeks ago and I just read it now. Fascinating and utterly predictable. Although the linked article mentions the vital importance of premarital chastity, it does not specify ‘female’ premarital chastity. But that was the historical pattern, and as we’ve seen, without external male and societal control, women’s sexuality seems to run amok. Although pederasts have long been known to feature hundreds of sexual partners, that has not been the general pattern for normal men. But now women openly brag of dozens of partners and one father’s daughter just rutted with 100 men… Read more »

Piffle
Piffle
Reply to  3g4me
10 hours ago

“it does not specify ‘female’ premarital chastity. But that was the historical pattern, and as we’ve seen, without external male and societal control, ” Men cannot enforce chastity on women without some self control themselves. The alphabet people running amok is about a social majority of men sowing their wild oats and then being impotent to do anything when they got older. The minority of men who have some integrity are then also are helpless in the face of the social majority. Yes, for many reasons chastity in women matters more. However, that cannot exist in world where the men are… Read more »

Last edited 10 hours ago by Piffle
3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Piffle
10 hours ago

Fair point. Men were celebrating ‘sexual liberation’ in the late ’60s and 1970s, because it meant one could easily bed without being wed. Most were not thinking past their crotches to what this would mean for long-term marriage/fidelity and parenthood. Unwin describes the lowest level of human society as ‘zoistic,’ focused entirely on day-to-day wants and needs. A pattern we are all familiar with by virtue of AINO’s non-White population – lack of future time orientation.

Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  3g4me
9 hours ago

Harams are all the rage, hypergamy means the women end up all trying to get the same man. The only losers are men not in the upper 10 percent of the population. You see the same in the economy. And when Chad knocks a five or a six up, he leaves, the state picks up the pieces, taking some money from all the men who aren’t getting any. What a tangled web we weave. A thought experiment for the readers: Who has easier access to sex? The average guy? Or the average women?

Last edited 9 hours ago by Mr. House
3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Mr. House
8 hours ago

We’ve all seen the videos and articles about women who are 40+, single/divorced, celebrating living their ‘best life’ focusing on mememememe . . . and the equal number of posts/clips lamenting “Why am I so alone?” as their wiser friends settle down and raise families. I am as misanthropic as they come, but I’d slowly go nuts if I was utterly alone all the time. My husband and I give each other space (as much as we can in our tiny cabin) but we also provide one another with friendship, intellectual stimulation, physical assistance and attraction, and all the rest… Read more »

Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  3g4me
8 hours ago

That is commendable, but i’m not certain what your point is? Please elaborate. To clarify myself, i’m not saying “all” women are like this, i know you guys hate that, i’m saying the majority are. When was the last time you tried to date women in their 20’s and 30’s? 😉

Did you consider my thought experiment?

Humanity is a herd species, can we agree on that? And from my personal exp. seeking the safety of the herd is more of a female trait (not saying some men don’t do the same).

Last edited 8 hours ago by Mr. House
ray
ray
Reply to  Mr. House
8 hours ago

The plural of her is herd.

And of course the herd will deny and rage against what they patently are.

Last edited 8 hours ago by ray
3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Mr. House
7 hours ago

No disagreement with you at all. And I don’t hate hearing “all women are ‘x'”, because most are! I refer to them as emotionally incontinent airheads, and that’s when I’m being civil.

Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  3g4me
7 hours ago

And why do you think “We’ve all seen the videos and articles about women who are 40+, single/divorced, celebrating living their ‘best life’ focusing on mememememe . . . and the equal number of posts/clips lamenting “Why am I so alone?”? Why is that put on blast? But if you’re a dude and you look for confirmation for your exp. you have to actually search for it? And lets be honest, even when i was in high school, before i even knew what feminism or female nature was, all the hot girls in my grade were dating seniors or football… Read more »

Last edited 7 hours ago by Mr. House
ray
ray
Reply to  Mr. House
8 hours ago

Mr. House —

Exactly.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  3g4me
9 hours ago

Samuel Johnson wrote in the 1700s, “Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.”

Men must constrain women’s sexual power because if it is unleashed, men go crazy and things fall apart.

I can sympathize with women who feel unfairly put upon. They can get pregnant, and at least as significant, if they are allowed to flaunt their bodies for personal gain, then men lose their minds, and everything collapses.

Sorry ladies. Civilization depends on men restraining your sexual power. Get mad at God or nature.

ray
ray
Reply to  LineInTheSand
8 hours ago

Countries that restrict female power, especially female sexual power, typically thrive and last. Countries that don’t restrict female power fail from within, and fall. Countries that gleefully ‘liberate’ female sexuality and empower females across-the-board in all aspects of society — turning females into the supervisors and cultural rulers of men — are condemned by God for their joyful rebellion against Him and nature. Those countries get the Special Treatment. Women rage against this truth about restricting their chaotic, emotive, vengeful natures. Their daddies rage against it, and the simps that women ‘educate’ and neuter rage against it. All in vain.… Read more »

Davidcito
Davidcito
Reply to  3g4me
3 minutes ago

Great comment. I imagine in my mind a sloping graph that represents societal wellbeing. The most “fun” time to be alive was probably just as the graph line started to dip down, past the point of no return but before collapse was obvious. This would be roughly the late sixties and seventies. Boomers banging each other for fun without fear of stds, smoking grass, and not knowing how this would invoke the divorce, suicide, crime, and drug overdose epidemic for their children and grandchildren.

ray
ray
Reply to  Piffle
9 hours ago

So females whoring around is the fault of men. Right.

Why is it in modern Western societies that any fault that females have must be laid at the feet of men? That’s running society according to Feminist Logic, and the results are all around us.

Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  ray
8 hours ago

You may enjoy this, guy makes excellent points

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wZDMsbxEmk

ray
ray
Reply to  3g4me
9 hours ago

How to keep the daughters from whoring around typically is the central problem for any society, because then the birth rates plummet. Nations used to be realistic about this fact. U.S society can’t even admit that this IS a problem, because that might suggest that females are less than holy, pure, kind goddesses. It might also suggest that females have ravenous sexual appetites, which often they do. Instead, America infantilizes and empowers its daughters, to the ruin of all. Liberating females from all consequences, sexual and otherwise, is America’s method. Dads of daughters love that their princesses go to the… Read more »

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  ray
8 hours ago

Ah, but help is on the way! Philadelphia, concerned about falling birth rates, is offering women a monthly stipend to get pregnant. What could possibly go wrong?

ray
ray
Reply to  3g4me
8 hours ago

Sounds like a typically American solution to its ruinous Woman Problem: give them more money and power. More independence from God and man.

Philadelphia keeps going like this and I’m gonna have to change the name of my church.

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  3g4me
8 hours ago

Rodney Dangerfield had a funny line about sex and meeting women. He said, “the eight hours of having to bullshit ain’t worth the eight seconds.”

I always thought that was insightful. Of course, we are all human beings and we are made to procreate, but it does seem rather silly than everybody is so fixated on eight seconds of pleasure. TV, movies, music, video, politics, the legal system … It’s like that’s all they talk about.

Last edited 8 hours ago by TempoNick
Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  TempoNick
7 hours ago

The 8 hours of bullshit seemed a lot more worth it at 18 than it does at 54. I expect that still holds true for today’s 18 year olds

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  TempoNick
7 hours ago

Too much is made of both the simulation of ‘romance,’ that today’s women make such a big deal out of (the fancy restaurants, flowers, etc.) and animalistic, exhibitionist sex. But . . . without sex and physical intimacy marriage is just friends and roommates. Both the relaxed, natural companionship and the ‘8 seconds’ matter.

ray
ray
Reply to  3g4me
5 hours ago

Our feminist nations are the result of 800 years of Western Romanticism. America, in particular, is what happens when men romanticize women.

Romanticism is neo-gnostic and demonic. It has nothing to do with Godly/Biblical relationship and marriage.

Effing Cathars. They’re everywhere now.

ProZNoV
ProZNoV
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
2 hours ago

Amazing link.

Depressing though.

Dutchboy
Dutchboy
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
12 hours ago

Depravity and degeneracy are the mortal enemies of the family and the family is the actual building block of society (not the individual, as in the liberal ideology).

miforest
miforest
Reply to  Dutchboy
11 hours ago

And of Fulfillment

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
8 hours ago

I’ve been watching The Godfather trilogy which has been playing on Pluto for the past couple of months. I’ve seen it so many times, it’s comfortable background noise when I’m doing something else. But the thing that strikes me is that the most powerful and successful of the bunch, Vito Corleone, Michael Corleone, Tom Hagen and Peter Clemenza all kept it zipped. Vito was raised under traditional Italian Catholic morality and didn’t understand why you would want or need anything on the side. But the womanizers of the bunch (Sonny, Carlos and Fredo) weren’t quite as successful or lucky. For… Read more »

out on a limb sawin' away
out on a limb sawin' away
Reply to  Ted X
12 hours ago

It’s still amazing to me how little it takes to upset the apple cart. History turns on a dime. For want of a nail etc.

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Ted X
9 hours ago

A lot of what was written there could also apply to modern day America.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Ted X
7 hours ago

The Turkics (who originated in Mongolia) were brought in as servants and slaves to the Arabs and Persians. The Abbasid-era Muslims trained them as soldiers, and they rose up and took over.

It sounds like the Muslims brought them in to pick their lettuce and do their lawns…

Last edited 7 hours ago by Alzaebo
Maxda
Maxda
14 hours ago

Somebody had to expect the collapse. I firmly believe that the Syrian Army officers were paid off and / or blackmailed into abandoning their units. Once they were gone, most of the rest of the army just walked away.

pyrrhus
pyrrhus
Reply to  Maxda
14 hours ago

Clearly…it’s not like the head choppers are much of a military force…As one expert observed, a battalion or two of Russian troops would have halted this invasion quite rapidly….

miforest
miforest
Reply to  thezman
11 hours ago

They should have fought as best they could , they are now being huntd down and killed . lots of hanging and shooting videos of short haired guys on the web.
runnng jus means they are defensless now.

LGC
LGC
Reply to  miforest
10 hours ago

never apologize, never surrender.

Once you’ve picked a side, you better fight to the death for that side.

Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  Maxda
12 hours ago

I heard that Iran stopped shipping cheap oil to Syria in 2023, and with the US occupying their best oil fields, its hard to run a military without oil.

out on a limb sawin' away
out on a limb sawin' away
Reply to  Maxda
12 hours ago

from your mouth to God’s ears, re our military..

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  out on a limb sawin' away
11 hours ago

Is that why Biden is attempting to federalize the National Guard, with authorization to shoot citizens, as quick way to get around Posse Comitatus?

One would hope it would be to defend us from the invading horde once the balloon goes up (which is the NG and state militias’ job anyways), but I’m betting they’ll be expected to throw in with invaders given permission like the Muslims are in Europe.

Tars Tarkas
Member
11 hours ago

Stalin was infinitely worse than Hitler. The holocaust happened in wartime in the occupied territory. The holocaust happened to non-Germans. If you were a good German in Nazi Germany, you were pretty much free to live a normal life, at least before the war. Stalin ran a terror state. You could be arrested and tortured into confessing anything without cause. The police literally had arrest quotas. Stalin’s forced labor camps were probably more lethal than any of the Nazi so-called death camps. Blaming Hitler for the war is a bit disingenuous. While Hitler certainly failed to avoid the war, both… Read more »

MysteriousOrca
MysteriousOrca
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
8 hours ago

One thing that gets me is that policy of Israel in the last year is basically a claim that the Holocaust was morally justified. The Israelis are trying to completely exterminate/expel a large civilian population as punishment for and war again a “terrorist group” (Hamas) that emerged from and is embedded in it. Well, the civilian Ashkenazi Jews in 1930s Europe also had armies of terrorists emerge from and be embedded in them, in the form of violent Spartakist/Bolshevik/Communist revolutionaries whose goal was to do the horrible things to the Germans and other Europeans that their compatriots had already done… Read more »

Pozymandias
Reply to  MysteriousOrca
8 hours ago

The Old Testament is full of genocides carried out “righteously” by the Jews against pretty much all their neighbors. This kind of thinking isn’t novel with Netanyahu. It may be that Netanyahu and his Zionist friends are just more honest about what they’re up to than previous Israeli leaders have been though.

Mycale
Mycale
14 hours ago

I wonder how long it is going to be before we start seeing slave markets in Homs.

The fact that the US supported this rebellion then immediately started bombing the rebels after they succeeded says it all. A book came out in 2005 named “Incoherent Empire”. I never read it but the name always stuck with me. Of course this incoherence comes because the US government feels obligated to support a rogue state in the region that works directly against American interests, but we can’t talk about that.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  Mycale
12 hours ago

We should place bets on what appears first-

  • Slave markets
  • the HTS alt coin
Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
11 hours ago

Well, one week after Libya fell, a country without a government and chaos in the streets had an oil bank.

Pozymandias
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
8 hours ago

Jihadcoin! I love it. Wonder how many heads I have to chop off to earn one.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Pozymandias
7 hours ago

“Jihadicoin” kind of rolls off the tongue, don’t it?
Putting the Fed in fedayeen!

Last edited 7 hours ago by Alzaebo
Tars Tarkas
Member
10 hours ago

The US economy is based on lies, deception and fraud. A perfect example of this just happened. The New Jersey supreme court just made a ruling that is so typical. A couple was driving down the road and were t-boned by some alien driving for Uber Eats. Apparently, their minor daughter had, at one time, ordered an Uber Eats. By agreeing to the EULA, not only her, but all of her immediate relatives are forced into arbitration. This just happened with Disney too. Someone signed up for a free trial of Disney plus years before visiting Disney World where they… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
14 hours ago

The US may be “fragile”, but not all seems the same. For one, we have a division of civic duties among the States and the Fed’s. What did Syria have outside of a Federal government to assert order? But perhaps most importantly, Syria is populated by low IQ Arabs enmeshed in a religion of “death”. Healthy societies are not founded that way, especially after a successful revolution where factions were only held together by a common enemy. Now that Assad is gone, the factions immediately turn upon each other. Of course, this seems all planned by the CIA. The end… Read more »

pyrrhus
pyrrhus
Reply to  Compsci
14 hours ago

The US is protected by oceans and weak neighbors, so the much more likely result of our internal squabbles is breakup into cultural/ethnic based regional groups…which frankly should have happened a long time ago…

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  pyrrhus
13 hours ago

It is happening now. Let’s hope it is more successful than the suburbs proved out.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  pyrrhus
12 hours ago

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like the Russians developed the Poseidon nuclear torpedoes to significantly reduce the amount of protection the oceans afford the US.

Of course, this perspective assumes that the Poseidon exists and functions as is rumored on the interwebs.

Pozymandias
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
8 hours ago

It is quite clever of them to turn our own defensive assets into something to kill us with.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  pyrrhus
10 hours ago

” . . . weak neighbors . . .” Only to a point. Those ‘weak’ Mexicans and central American Indios have been easily invading AINO for decades. Barring organized cooperative violence and resolve on the part of Whites, the entire southwest will be indistinguishable socially and economically from their homelands in 50 years. And in addition to our moronic welcome of all the subcons, they are streaming in through the northern border. And that’s not even mentioning Hongcouver. Unless/until air and sea travel vanishes, oceans are no protection whatsoever.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  3g4me
9 hours ago

-3g4me

In addition to the factions you mention, AINO has a serious cartel infiltration problem.

Just think of how many politicians the cartels own on both sides of the border.

Law enforcement is even worse because they are infiltrated by cartel-affiliated gangs and actual cartel operatives. The LAPD and Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department are prime examples of this type of infiltration.

Marko
Marko
12 hours ago

Being a middle-aged white man with a family and a firearm, I think about collapse a lot. I can’t speak for Europe, but the USA’s collapse scenario might be: Cities will become warzones, and the warlords will be black. The test case was the CHAZ in Seattle in 2020. There will be African-levels of violence and pray for any pretty girl left behind. Rural and exurban areas will be better off, with communes or militias forming up. There will be scarcity, and death, but not a lot of violence. Hispanics and Whites may or may not cooperate. Best-case scenario will… Read more »

out on a limb sawin' away
out on a limb sawin' away
Reply to  Marko
12 hours ago

Once all the condoms and birth control run out, difficult pregnancies and STD’s will will become common. The only safe sex is no sex.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Marko
11 hours ago

I no longer subscribe to the collapse scenario. Rather I see gradual decline, dissolution, and balkanization, with the creation of independent states the ultimate outcome. There will be some dislocation and misery, of course, but absolutely nothing like we’d see in a collapse scenario.

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
10 hours ago

It’s an internet tradition by now to link to wtfhappenedin1971.com to point out that the collapse already happened. If collapse means something like “economic immiseration of the people,” there it is (was). The American Dream was obliterated at about the same time the average Z Blog reader was born, and we are not young men. Things—the measurable things libertarians used to put on charts—have been made a lot worse for normal people since 2020, and nothing measurable suggests that the making worse will ever let up. I don’t have much use for measurable things (except in pointing out that nerds… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Hemid
9 hours ago

That’s a good point. The fact that we use the term AINO in place of America indicates that something has already gone terribly wrong. But while the financial circumstances of the vast majority of AINO’s subjects are still quite tenable and even good, it is the culture around us that has utterly collapsed. America was a beautiful and admirable place. AINO is a disgusting pig sty. And that is because moral and aesthetic standards have been demolished. Still, when I speak of “collapse,” I mean a reduction of living standards to Third World levels, and that most assuredly has not… Read more »

Marko
Marko
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
10 hours ago

I don’t think we’ll collapse hard either….there would have to be a pretty awesome event like an asteroid or a global natural disaster for the world to revert to pre-industrial. The reason why a terrifying collapse (like Libya/Somalia/Syria) happens is because nobody has any real interest or investments in those countries. The USA is seriously tied up with the world’s fortunes, so we’ll get a strongman before we get a Syria. Russia or China would fall harder than even the cuckiest and softest Western country like Germany, because they are non-aligned and more or less on their own, and the… Read more »

Piffle
Piffle
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
10 hours ago

The end of the Roman empire, again.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Piffle
10 hours ago

This.

Templar
Templar
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
3 hours ago

“I no longer subscribe to the collapse scenario.”

I don’t, either. Not out of some naive doubt it could happen, but the company such thinking attracts. Aside from countless predictions that never come to fruition, too many wish for it to happen at the expense of ignoring nasty problems already present. “Not much I can do,” they say, except sit on the sidelines and piss and moan whilst wagging a finger. Be prepared, but FFS, live your life.

Last edited 3 hours ago by Templar
Epaminondas
Member
13 hours ago

Alex Krainer is one of the sharpest geo-political minds on the internet. He is also very aware of historical precedence, something which seems to elude Americans. In this interview, his informed opinion is quite different from all the journalist jibber-jabber we’ve been hearing. He believes the Russians and Iranians decided some time ago to simply invite chaos into Syria as a way of finally defeating the West. In other words, they’ve sprung a trap. His argument is compelling. Listen carefully and listen to all of it…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0FQeGjPSc0

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  Epaminondas
12 hours ago

A simpler explanation is that the Russians and Iranians decided to cut their losses. Any other explanation is coping.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Tom K
11 hours ago

I tend to agree, but if the defense of Ukraine is draining us, imagine what the defense of Israel will do.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Tom K
11 hours ago

I heard it floated that Putin made a deal to trade Syria for Ukraine. I wouldn’t necessarily think so much about that, time will tell in any case, but just this week none other than ABC News came out and said on air that 1 million Ukrainian soldiers have died in the war.

Epaminondas
Member
Reply to  Tom K
4 hours ago

There are any number of explanations, but in that part of the world there are no simple explanations. Today’s friend is tomorrow’s enemy in the Mideast. Russia and Iran can afford to wait and see what develops. And Turkey may have now created a nasty neighbor right on its border. Israel, more so. Neither Russia nor Iran share a border with Syria. And Hezbollah will continue to get supplied…count on it.

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  Epaminondas
2 hours ago

I had watched that interview with Alex Krainer when it came out. I wasn’t convinced. I don’t see how it can benefit Russia or Iran compared to the status quo ante in Syria. I also watched an interview with Brian Berletic at the Danny Haiphong channel a few days after that interview and Brian didn’t seem to think the theory holds water either.

It might possibly benefit Russia and Iran as the chaos unfolds and provided the collective West overreaches but not as some kind of 3-D chess master move planned well in advance. Sorry, just don’t buy it.

MysteriousOrca
MysteriousOrca
9 hours ago

“the result will be a war zone where lightly armed war bands fight with one another for control of increasingly worthless land” This is how Israel has wanted it, planned for it, and enacted it. As I imagine most know, Zionist jews in the Pentagon developed a plan before 9/11 that the US would destroy the governments of Israel’s various perceived enemies, according to General Wesley Clark, “starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”. It seems like leaving each nation a Mad Max mess with no central government strong enough to field a… Read more »

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  MysteriousOrca
6 hours ago

“…leaving each nation a Mad Max mess with no central government strong enough to field a coherent military able to stand up to Israel has been the goal.”

Brilliant. Brilliant. That’s it.
That’s their strategy for the entire world. That’s why they sow discord everywhere; as the Zman pointed out, as a permanent minority cohered by well-earned paranoia, they then rule with ruthless suppression.

This was WW1, WW2, and will be WW3. WW1 and 2 vaulted them to global power, meaning WW3 – by war, by pandemic, by attacking the food supply, by financial collapse – WW3 must happen.

Last edited 6 hours ago by Alzaebo
MysteriousOrca
MysteriousOrca
Reply to  Alzaebo
2 hours ago

Great point tying this recent intentional nation deconstructing in the Middle East with the nation wrecking of the world wars. I had not put that together, and it is illuminating.

Vegetius
Vegetius
11 hours ago

The world is clearly moving toward something vaguely along the lines forseen by Huntington. The question is will clash be inevitable.

Maybe Trump is thinking about a new Big Three or Four Policeman arrangement with himself, Xi, Modi, maybe Putin.

Extending and invitation to Xi to attend the innaugural is simultaneously intriguing, hilarious and shrewd. As would be an invitation to Putin, which would have the added benefit of reducing the “foreign policy community” by half through strokes and heart attacks.

Tars Tarkas
Member
Reply to  Vegetius
10 hours ago

The problem is China has a lot of the same problems the US has, only worse. China has a corruption problem that makes America look like a utopia in comparison. Chinese soldiers removed the liquid fuel from rockets to cook with and replaced the fuel with water. The food system is so corrupt that the CCP has its own farms run by and for the party to supply party members with high quality food. China has a problem with gutter oil. Used cooking oil literally sucked out of gutters, “filtered and treated” and sold again as new. A big scandal… Read more »

george 1
george 1
12 hours ago

Notice that Israel is occupying a lot of former Syrian land. This will continue and expand. The media will be showing the head choppers in action and this will justify the occupation as Israel will be “protecting” itself. So we are financing the greater Israel project. I liked the photos in the Syrian government buildings with the pallets of U.S. currency. The pallets had a QR code that shows the origin as the NY Federal Reserve. They don’t even try to hide it anymore. It was funny to see Trump, while all of this is going on, exclaim that “We… Read more »

Marko
Marko
Reply to  george 1
10 hours ago

They used to call it Lebensraum

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
12 hours ago

It would be like them to time their planned demolition of the stock market to coincide with Trump’s ringing the bell. But that is only an economic collapse, we’ve seen those before. GD 1.0 strengthened the regime. (or was the panic of 1873 GD 1.0? and the crash of 1929 GD 2.0? making the next one GD 3.0? and where does 2008 fit into that timeline?). Anyhow, that’s illustrative that there can be a lot of collapses, economically, without any of them having to be “final.” Nor do they need to weaken the state. As we have seen, they can… Read more »

Last edited 12 hours ago by Jeffrey Zoar
Anna
Anna
14 hours ago

6 Syrian Druze villages are asking to be annexed to Israel’s Golan Heights and become a part of Israeli Druze population.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Anna
13 hours ago

Giving Israel some new targets when they need to drum up a casus belli against their neighbors.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Anna
12 hours ago

Those Druze have paid their dues…

Gideon
Gideon
Reply to  Anna
6 hours ago

Now, if Israel would just be considerate enough to offer the same right of self-determination to non-Jews living in Gaza, the West Bank, and perhaps Israel itself, they could all be happy.

Alex
Alex
12 hours ago

I’m in the middle of Eric Cline’s 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed and its a fascinating overview of the collapse of the multi-polar societies of the eastern Mediterranean. Syria has been collapsing for millennia it seems.
Also, n.b. Peloton is a publicly traded company that is still going…

TomA
TomA
12 hours ago

The hardest truth is that a collapse is often the only cure for what ails us. An addict must hit a hard bottom if he is to have any chance at redemption. That is nature’s eternal lesson. Normie will not get off the couch until he must do so or die. Hunger is the seminal motivator. Parasites cannot be rehabilitated. You are either strong, smart, and productive, or the gene pool has no use for you. And as for the Syrian example, let’s see how well a creative narrative, woke indoctrination, and pissing & moaning survives in that environment.

Gideon
Gideon
12 hours ago

The Israeli-backed, Turkish-paid “moderate Islamists” who’ve taken over Syria are an interesting phenomenon. Mark Collett sheds light on this in a short video. The evolution of these Islamic insurgents resembles that of the Serbian nationalist Black Hand organization, which in 1914 existed primarily as an asset of Serbian military intelligence.

Ride-By Shooter
Ride-By Shooter
Reply to  Gideon
11 hours ago

That video is another reminder that John Derbyshire, a known sympathizer of Israel on civilizational grounds, is a clownishly naïve mf.

Pella
Pella
Reply to  Ride-By Shooter
10 hours ago

Math graduate with a too high opinion of his abstract reasoning.

Gideon
Gideon
Reply to  Ride-By Shooter
9 hours ago

Mr. Derbyshire’s well-known philosemitism is fortunately less consequential than the Western leaders who are in complete thrall to it. That and the fact that most Israeli politicians make 1910s Serb militarists look moderate by comparison.

RealityRules
RealityRules
12 hours ago

“You can’t get the new order until the old one collapses.” Yes. However, in post-America there is a willful and highly organized project of controlled demolition happening. Very powerful and organized networks and institutions are willfully executing a controlled demolition of the carcass of America. Clinton was pushing for it 30+ years ago. Petreaus and other generals have been advocating for it explicitly for nearly 25 years. The point? Well, it is quite possible that what we think of as The Regime being incompetent and dying is not what it is. It is a misreading or a cope. Maybe what… Read more »

Panzernutter
Panzernutter
12 hours ago

Does anyone know the name of that movie about the stasi in East Germany , black and white, the lady gets hit by a truck at the end. Ty

John's Spam
John's Spam
Member
Reply to  Panzernutter
11 hours ago

“The Lives of Others”, I believe, for which I give 2 thumbs up.

Panzernutter
Panzernutter
Reply to  John's Spam
10 hours ago

Thank you sir

Moss Grimmick
Moss Grimmick
Reply to  Panzernutter
11 hours ago

The Man Between 1953 with James Mason.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Panzernutter
11 hours ago

The Lives of Others?

I haven’t seen it, by the by.

Felix Krull
Member
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
2 hours ago

It’s a great movie if you’re into German film, which is to say gloomy and intense. I visited East Germany right after the Wall fell and it really was like that: run-down, falling apart, towns smelly and grimy with lignite smoke, empty shops, ridiculous cars, surly people, shitty, lukewarm beer, excellent vodka, strong John le Carré-vibes When it came out, the movie sparked a wave of Ostalgia, nostalgia for the East, from old Ossies who’d seen their children being stripped of all culture and inner life and have it replaced with vapid Hollywood movies, porn, consumerism and anomie. A bit… Read more »

Last edited 2 hours ago by Felix_Krull
Arshad Ali
Arshad Ali
12 hours ago

Of course, once you start thinking about those conditions, the West begins to look a bit fragile.”

Merely a question of time. There were war bands in the aftermath of the collapse of the western part of the Roman empire. In the USA I would guess the collapse into roving war bands will be initially along the southern border.

trackback
13 hours ago

[…] weekly podcast. Highly […]

John Bechtel
John Bechtel
2 hours ago

Question for next week: A while back you mentioned you had been reading a biography of Bukharin. What was the title and author of that book, and would you recommend it? I have been interested in learning more about him and his relationship with Stalin for some time. Or you can send this to me offline. Thanks!!

Hokkoda
Member
2 hours ago

A strategic retreat from runaway globalism would do a lot of good in the US. But some sort of purge is going to be necessary. Not necessarily guillotine purges, but certainly something that exiles people from access to power permanently is necessary.

4 years is a blink of an eye. But 12 years? We could wipe them out if Trump does a good job with Vance.

Felix Krull
Member
3 hours ago

The Order of the Garter is the oldest English knight order, established in 1348 by Edward III when, at a ball, he noticed a lady losing her garter on the floor.

As he picked it up and offered it back to her, he noticed his court smirking lewdly and said: “Honi soit qui mal y pense” – “shame on he who thinks ill thereof”, the motto of the knights.

Steve W
Steve W
4 hours ago

Probably the most spectacular “collapse” known to us is the fall of the Aztec Empire to a band of 100 or so Spanish ruffians with gold on their mind. Or – similarly – Pizarro’s conquest of the Incas. We’re talking not only collapse, but revolution in the lives of the unhappy inhabitants of those empires and the economies they served. From agrarian peasants, to Potosi mining slaves in one lifetime.

Lesson: It sucks to be weak.

Last edited 4 hours ago by Steve W
Jack Boniface
Jack Boniface
Member
6 hours ago

The one economist who predicted the Soviet collapse was Judy Shelton with 1989’s “The Coming Soviet Crash: Gorbachev’s Desperate Pursuit of Credit in Western Financial Markets.” She examined Soviet balance sheets and found them unsustainable. Trump appointed her to the Federal Reserve Board in 2019, but the Senate stalled her appointment and in Feb. 2021 Biden withdrew it. A warning of our collapse?

tashtego
Member
7 hours ago

Sweet ride Z.

TempoNick
TempoNick
9 hours ago

We pretend to have such high morality yet we continue to do this to people over and over again. We are the Great Satan, just as the Iranians say.