Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics"
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@aleksandrs1422 The Ruble was about 24-29 to the US dollar at the time. I stayed in Saint Petersburg, Pushkino, Moscow, and Obninsk, so I saw a lot of different areas. You really needed a car to shop at Globus. Globus was a German department store that was focused on food, but also had a travel agency, dining room items, furniture maybe, and household goods.
The ruble is now 103 to the USD.
I have also lived in Germany and Japan. They are different worlds. Strangely, Russia reminded me more of Korea for some reason. I found it far more Asiatic than expected, mainly because of the effects of 250 years of Mongol rule still not washing off yet.
But people in Russia were generally very poor, and relied on weird hidden schemes and alternate methods of revenue just to get by, even with energy and food prices deflated by the government.
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@baolichang6019 Saudis will provide security in the Central Asian Republics? Saudi's entire security apparatus is built on internal control of Shiites and preventing uprisings instigated by Iran, while also fighting Yemenis. They have zero reach into the Central Asian Republics with their military.
Have you looked at a map of the Belt & Road plan? Imagine trying to move goods through Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey.
It's as if they gave a fat crayon to a mongoloid and said, "Draw me a road from China to Europe. Bonus points if it goes through some of the most unstable, thief-ridden regions of Asia, and over as many mountains as you can find."
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Jack Smith Zeihan's analyses are based on decades of white papers for foreign governments, large corporations, heavy industries, shipping, manufacturing, and intelligence services.
His teams start with the question, "Where could we be wrong?", then work from there.
The problem with Belt & Road is that China is trying to service a collapsing European demographic with a trade route through geographic and thief-ridden challenges, to bypass the South China Sea, Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, and Suez Canal.
China has launched this long-term trade program as their own population is headed into demographic winter, self-inflicted by One Child Policy of 35 years of infanticide.
Put that recipe in the oven and see what it looks like when you open the door when the timer goes off.
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We've always lived in a world where information was controlled by those in power.
Because of the internet, there's a struggle over that power base and people are ignoring legacy media tunnels with abandonment of corporate advertisement-based groupthink.
When Peter referenced the lunatic fringe conspiracies that used to be espoused by the left percolating into the right in US politics, he didn't specify which conspiracies, but he's right.
The main ones are:
* JFK assassination had US government involvement in both the murders and the cover-up via the Warren Commission. This was a pillar basis of politically-active academics and journalists who affiliated with Democrats from the 1960s-forward.
There were also people across party lines who thought it was a conspiracy, didn't buy the WC narrative. These are just the facts about people's perceptions and instincts, supported by the Church Committee, Assassination review Committee, and ARRB acts from 1975-1992.
* Another big one is pharmaceutical giants' manipulation of media and ads through corporate media, while concealing their harmful products.
People on the left and right are seeing more eye-to-eye on these types of topics, which is alarming to those who are used to ruling through division.
Peter skips over these details, though he has discussed the overall trend towards a new populist political movement in the US.
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@paulallen2680 I attended public, on-base, and private schools growing up all over the US and the world, so I got a lot of samples sizes. I went to 7 different high schools, not including my exchange student program to Japan.
The Prussian Reform model format is pretty universal, except in Montessori. Lecture format, children abandoned for the day, 45 minute blocks of limited instruction, Pavlovian bell-ringing on the intercom to switch classes from Junior High and up, behavioral modification and conditioning focus, very limited academics.
Private schools were ahead by about 2 years on average, but still the same structural model mostly, with their own unique cultures driven by the particular sect.
I’ve also had my kids at various types of schools in 4 different States, 2 countries, and now home schooling for the younger ones. My older boys went to a unique academy in Europe, so they’ve learned foreign languages by immersion.
If you’re not going to learn anything in school, it might as well be in a foreign language.
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There's a really great article written by 3 former Soviet professors basically explaining in great detail how the collapse of the USSR wasn't a singular event, but a massive series of trends that began decades prior to 1991, and continues decades after.
Key points include:
* Planned economy failure
* Black market allowed it to function under the table
* Major industrial initiatives were utter disasters, like Chernobyl
* Their spending on military was excessive and still failed to come close to matching the West. Bekaa Valley 1982 humiliated their fighters, for example.
* Soviet-Afghan War
* One of the only things that kept the Soviet economy afloat was massive revenue from oil and NG.
* Orders from Moscow to all the mines, production facilities, and plants dropped in free-fall mode once the government collapsed.
* Workers, technicians, scientists, and engineers left their more remote cities to gather in large cities or fled the country if they were smart.
* Education had already been suffering, then went into free-fall in the 1990s as well with so many professors, engineers, and researchers moving internally or leaving the country for Western Europe, US, Canada, Australia, etc.
Putin was put in place to right the ship in people's minds as a strong man, even though everything was still in collapse.
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