Can Russia Survive Until 2020? Can China?

The key factor that will determine Russia’s collapse will be the price of oil. Five years ago, a balanced budget required only $30 per barrel of oil. This year, it has jumped to $115 because of higher government spending, waste and corruption. Next year, the figure will increase even further to $125 per barrel. If the price of oil drops to $90 a barrel, this will be the beginning of a serious economic crisis for Russia. The stabilization fund might be able to hold the budget over for a couple of years, but inevitably the state will have to cut back on social programs. These cuts in social spending will only exacerbate public discontent. It may also provoke self-sufficient regions to rethink their loyalty to Moscow. _MoscowTimes

Russia's economy is critically dependent upon the price of natural resources -- specifically gas and oil. The growing global boom in shale gas due to North American methods of horizontal drilling and fracking, have cut the legs from under Russia's extortionate pricing for natural gas sales to Europe and elsewhere. Now, if a global economic downturn causes sustained lower oil prices as well, Russia's government will be hard pressed to maintain popular morale -- or more properly, popular indifference to the Moscow government's corruption and mismanagement.

Most Russian adults do not vote, largely because they have lost faith in any hope that post-Soviet elections can be pluralistic, free and fair. The one factor that has kept middle-class Russians distracted from politics is their high level of consumption. As long as they have money to spend, they will have much more interest in consumer goods than who is sitting in the State Duma, local legislatures, Kremlin or White House — or their policies. But as soon as this relative prosperity drops, civil protest will surely awaken.

Any student of economics can name a dozen factors that carry a risk of economic collapse. Among them are the high dependence on natural resources; low productivity; an ineffective, corrupt, bloated and overly centralized state apparatus; dependent courts; technological backwardness; and an unattractive investment climate. These factors, among others, generate a vicious cycle of poverty and excludes the implementation of a long-term development strategy for the country. It also guarantees a flight of capital, as well as Russia’s most talented and innovative people to freer and more open societies. _MoscowTimes

All of these problems contribute to the low morale, disastrous state of public health, high crime and corruption, massive levels of generalised neglect, and a great sense of quasi-suicidal futility that one easily finds in Russia today. The failure of Russia's core population to reproduce to replacement rates is the result, leading inevitably to the collapse of Russia's current borders sooner or later.

As for China, the many failures, weaknesses, and shortcomings of the Beijing government and its regional extensions have been well documented. The recent crash of two of China's high speed passenger locomotives puts the exclamation point to several of China's poorly concealed, underlying problems.

The leaders have pinned their own and the country’s prestige to high-speed rail. From a standing start, China has built the world’s longest high-speed network—a genuine achievement, but one the leaders exaggerated. High-speed rail was a patriotic symbol and the next great export. Yet even before the crash, the network was plagued by breakdowns. Earlier this year the railways minister was sacked on suspicion of vast corruption. A darling programme is in trouble.

Second, the authorities have this time bungled the public relations. They first tried to blame the weather (lightning) before faulting the institute that designed the signalling. Rescuers rushed to bury part of the wreckage, either in haste to get the service going again before all the survivors had been accounted for, or because they wished to hide technology (either Chinese, or some lifted from foreign companies). Corpses were not at first handed over to families. And Grandpa Wen took days to pay his respects to victims. He had been sick, he said, which raised more questions than it answered (see article).

Third, in their unprecedented anger over the crash and its handling, ordinary Chinese and the state media have, amazingly, suddenly found common cause against the government. China has nearly 500m internet users. On Twitter-like microblogging sites, criticisms spread so quickly that censors could not keep up. Even the state-controlled media sharply questioned official explanations for the crash and criticised the government’s response to the accident. On July 29th, when the openness threatened to get out of hand, the censors ordered an end to it, but even then some state publications defied orders. Mao Zedong said that a single spark could start a prairie fire. The capacity of both journalists and the public to speak up in huge numbers has breached a firebreak not crossed since the Tiananmen protests in the pre-internet age. _Economist

The CCP government has been lording it over the Chinese people for several decades now. Although many Chinese have become quite wealthy under the more liberal economic regime of the past two decades, hundreds of millions of Chinese people continue to live in extreme poverty. In addition to poisoned water, soil, air, and food, the quality of life for large numbers of Chinese people is burdened by a toxic atmosphere of censorship and oppression. The current economic and financial bubble within China could create severe repercussions, if not allowed to deflate carefully.

Under the one-child rule, most of the new Chinese have neither siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts, nor non-familial close relations. Chinese society is become the very picture of alienation in an existential sense. The Chinese people are typically intelligent, ambitious, hard-working, and goal-oriented. But how much more corruption, oppression, and top-down greedy mismanagement will they tolerate before the nation is torn apart?

China vs. Russia: Tug of War with Siberia as the Prize

Mirnaya was once a thriving garrison town with a movie theater, a kindergarten and a park. The Soviet army maintained a base here to keep an eye on neighboring China. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and the military left. To survive, those who stayed behind gradually dismantled and sold off what was left, piece by piece. First they removed the windows from the prefabricated buildings where the officers had once lived and sold them in Chita. Then they ripped radiators and pipes from the walls and sold them to scrap dealers, who then sold the metal in China. The buildings now stand like skeletons in the steppes, evidence of a ruined country. _Spiegel

SpiegelCompare China's border gate on the left, above, with Russia's gate to the right. You can see yet another load of Russian lumber moving into China. In fact, a lot of raw materials and natural resources have been moving from Russia into China, recently. The Chinese then turn the materials into finished products to sell at a significant markup.

The main thing going into Russia from China is Chinese settlers and investors, building Chinese colonies and outposts inside the very heart of Russia's source of wealth and economic power.

The border between the fallen superpower Russia and the People's Republic, which is gradually becoming a superpower, measures 3,645 kilometers, one of the longest borders in the world. And perhaps this border, where Europe's last offshoots encounter 1.3 billion Chinese, and where Christianity collides with Buddhism and Confucianism, is also one of the most important in the power struggles of the new century.

...Siberia, which covers three-quarters of the landmass of Russia, is home to only a quarter of the country's population: 38 million people. This is the equivalent of the population of Poland, except that Siberia is 40 times the size. It is a situation that many fear could once again spark the eternal rivalry between Russia and China, a rivalry that last produced military clashes in the 1960s.

Chinese investors have already bought a former tank factory in Chita, where they are now producing trucks. They already control the markets in Russian border towns, where they are the richest private business owners. "China invests more in the Russian Far East than our own government does," writes the Moscow newspaper Niezawisimaja Gazieta.

...Years ago Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's eloquent NATO ambassador, said half-jokingly that the Chinese would soon be "crossing the border in small groups of five million." And Vladimir Putin, shortly after being elected president, warned: "Unless we make a serious effort, the Russians in the border regions will have to speak Chinese, Japanese and Korean in a few decades." This hardly seems an exaggeration, given that there are six million Russians living in Eastern Siberia, compared with the 90 million living in China's northern provinces.

...Russian tourists heading to China to buy inexpensive goods are forced to wait up to 12 hours in their cars. These people, who work for distributors and are popularly known as "silk worms" or "camels," travel to China several times a month to bring goods to Russia: jeans and blouses, electric shavers and children's toys, athletic shoes made by a low-wage manufacturer called "Adidos" and chainsaws labeled "Stihl." They are pirated products, and are manufactured in southern China.

... the Chinese aren't just interested in Russian lumber. They also want Russian oil. Some 1,300 kilometers farther to the east, past empty steppes where a driver is likely to encounter no more than three cars an hour, is the small city of Skovorodino. It is the terminal point of the most expensive infrastructure project in the new Russia, a "pipeline with geopolitical significance," as Prime Minister Putin raves.... _Spiegel

Not only does China want Russian timber and Russian oil, they want Russian land and everything on and under the land. Specifically, the Chinese want Eastern Siberia. And since Russia is finding it harder and harder to staff its military with ethnic Russians or to supply its military with state of the art weaponry that actually works, eventually China will have Eastern Siberia. Not that China will be able to hold the land for long. China itself is destined to break up into warring factions sometime in the not so distant future. But Al Fin gamblers are betting that Russia goes down first.

Adapted from a posting at Al Fin Potpourri

Young Russians Fleeing a Sinking Ship

Scared, fed up and feeling disenfranchised, many successful Russians are investing in citizenship in Western countries, according to consultants who have made a business of facilitating such emigration.

"It seems that the whole generation of 25- to 45-year-old Russians is actively thinking about running away, especially considering the prospect of seeing the same people in power for another 12 years, starting 2012. All dinner conversations tend to finish with this subject," said the general director of a multibillion-dollar multinational company in Russia, who asked not to be identified because of the blunt nature of his comments. _MoscowTimes

In our People Risk study, we found that Russia currently has the highest brain drain risk compared to the other three countries (see Figure 2). The issue of an ageing population is also an important factor for companies to consider as it can, and will, impact the company's workforce planning and costs in the future. Russia poses the highest risk of an ageing population, with close to 18% of its population above the age of 60, as compared to Brazil (9.9%), India (7.4%) and China (11.9%). _aon.com

Al Fin has been told by several readers that he is too hard on Russia. But compared to many young modern Russians, Al Fin's criticisms are quite mild.

In recent times, the posting of one blogger, who has left Russia, is popular in the Russian segment of the internet.

He, in particular, writes: «Russia is an evil, moreover – of a worldwide scale. Evil must be annihilated. Consequently, everything that is directed against Russia is a good.

…In general, to emigrate is much easier than this seems from Russia. To get a tourist visa now is not a problem, a residence permit – of course, is more complex, but here too there are different paths. As an example, if there are no provable grounds to ask for the status of a refugee – one can get a work visa to Australia or Canada; there, unlike in the USA, they give it automatically, if you gather the necessary quantity of points, given by profession (from a rather large list), education, knowledge of the language, age (the younger, the better), etc. Of course, nobody’s waiting for us anywhere with open arms, certain difficulties, especially at the start, will have to be overcome everywhere. But what is being spoken of is not getting into paradise. What is being spoken of is breaking out of hell. From a hell that in the foreseeable prospect is going to be getting ever worse and worse. By the way, a country and a people consistently standing up on the side of evil don’t deserve anything else.

I still don’t know how my own personal destiny will turn out, will they give me asylum in the USA or will I have to look for another country for myself. I know one thing – I will not return to Russia in any event…» _EurasiaReview

The situation inside Russia can be very bleak for the young, bright, and ambitious.

As chief of the migration laboratory at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Zhanna A. Zayonchkovskaya has studied previous waves of emigration, including in the 1990s, when as many as 6 million people left. But her desire to research this one puts her up against the wall others are confronting.

“Brain drain is a very urgent topic now,” she said. “We would like to study it, but we cannot get the money to do it.”

President Dmitry Medvedev drew attention to the brain drain in October, when two emigre scientists born and educated in Russia won the Nobel physics prize. They work in Britain, where they have attracted a number of other Russian-born scientists.

“We need to make an effort so that our talented people do not go abroad,” Medvedev said, adding that the government had failed to invest sufficiently in research. He has been trying to recruit foreigners to make Russia more competitive. _WaPo

Russia's human infrastructure is crumbling along with its physical and technological infrastructures. Vodka makes Russians feel warm at night, but it is a false warmth with no future.

For many educated young Russians, Western countries seem to have an intractable allure, whether there are more work opportunities, a better educational system, or simply nicer weather. While this last reason may seem trivial, many students are beginning to wonder if the grass is literally greener on the other side.

“Each year, I ask my master’s students where they see themselves three or four years from now,” Moscow State University economics professor Alexander Auzan said at a conference in the Polytechnic Museum this year. “In September 2010 roughly half said they envisaged themselves working abroad: not just anywhere but quite specifically in Germany, Britain, Ireland, or Argentina.” _Indrus.in

Young Russian women may find more paths open to them for emigration, not all of them with happy endings. But for the young who are bright, well trained, and ambitious, the rest of the world holds many possibilities.
For most of the men who stay in Russia, the picture is not very pretty.

RUSSIA is suffering from a serious shortage of men, with a high male mortality rate fuelled by heart disease and alcoholism, The Moscow Times reported today.

Preliminary census results showed that Russia's population dropped by 2.2 million since 2002 to just under 143 million, suggesting the government's efforts to boost the population were not working.

Just 46.3 percent of Russia's population was made up of men, down from 46.6 percent in 2002, the report said.

"Women here live longer," the newspaper quoted demographics researcher Boris Denisov as saying.

Men "do not want to live" in Russia, he added.

Russia has experienced a dramatic drop in population since the fall of the Soviet Union, fueled by alcoholism and unhealthy lifestyles as well as emigration. _HeraldSun.au

Interestingly, Russian women live about ten years longer than Russian men, but retire 5 years earlier at 55. Sadly, most Russian men never live to 60 to enjoy retirement, while retired Russian women have only the vodka to keep them company those long cold winter nights.

No wonder so many young Russians want to leave, to avoid such fates.

Russia: The World's Largest Dying Empire

There are four main areas that made 2010 a record year for Russia’s degradation:

1. The country declined on the 2010 United Nations Human Development Index from 57th place five years ago to 65th place this year ....

2. The state has become more corrupt and criminalized......

3. The economy has become more state-controlled and ineffective....

4. Most Russians are overcome by cynicism and anger over their declining standard of living and the fact that the ruling elite abuse their power and continue to embezzle money and assets from the people and businesses with impunity. In short, Russians have lost all hope for the future under the current leadership. This is reflected in rising crime, xenophobia and violence.... _MoscowTimes

MoscowTimesRussia can still build nuclear power plants and certain weapons systems -- both very much in demand both in the emerging world and in several oil states such as Venezuela and Iran. Even China -- which prides itself on the ability to steal technology from its trade partners and allies -- has found it difficult to duplicate some of the Russian systems.

Purchases of some items [from Russia] continued - S-300 air defense systems and billions of dollars worth of jet engines. An engine China made for its Su-27 knock-off would routinely conk out after 30 hours whereas the Russian engines would need refurbishing after 400, Russian and Chinese experts said.

"Engine systems are the heart disease of our whole military industry," a Chinese defense publication quoted Wang Tianmin, a military engine designer, as saying in its March issue. _WaPo

Even so, Russia's military is rotten and rotting from the inside out. The situation is not helped by Russia's demographic nightmare.

the main problem is that political and military leaders ignored a basic demographic reality that makes it impossible to draft 750,000 new conscripts a year even under the best recruitment efforts. There simply aren’t that many able 18-year-olds in the country. _LaRussophobe_quoting_MoscowTimes

Demographic shrinkage is also leaving Eastern Siberia open for Chinese takeover.

Moscow is also warily watching China's unauthorised movements into Siberia and the Far East.

Beijing is about six times closer to the port city of Vladivostok than is Moscow, which has very weak administrative control over its eastern territories.

Already, an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 Chinese nationals have illegally settled in these oil, gas and timber-rich areas.

Beijing is also tempted by Siberia's freshwater supply, given that China already has severe shortages throughout the country.

The Russian Far East is inhabited by only six million people, while the three provinces in northeast China have about 110 million Chinese inhabitants. By 2020, more than 100 million Chinese will live less than 100km to the south of these Russian territories, whose population will then number between five million and 10 million.

As Medvedev recently admitted, if Russia does not secure its presence in the Far East, it could eventually "lose everything" to the Chinese. _RealClearWorld

Russia's people are demoralised by the increasingly totalitarian nature of Russian life. Putin's hands can be clearly seen controlling the puppet Medvedev from behind the barely closed curtains. The recent conviction of former Yukos chief Khodorkovsky on trumped up charges has not helped matters. Thousands of Russians recently rallied to demand Putin's resignation.

Ahead of the verdict, hundreds of supporters gathered outside the central Moscow courthouse.

Security officers, who maintained a heavy presence outside the building, whisked several people away while others stood in below-freezing temperatures chanting "Freedom" and "Russia without Putin" -- referring to the prime minister. _CNN

Russia has lost a large number of competent people via emigration to the west and to Israel. Between the emigrants and the competent people that Putin has jailed, it is a wonder that any production is achieved in Russia today.

But Russia is losing its population year by year, and allowing much of its remaining population to waste away via alcoholism, drugs, HIV, TB, suicide, and a generalised, nonspecific malaise which discourages family formation or thoughts of a positive future.

This is the hollow hulk which US President Obama continues to make concessions to and bow down before. In the end, Obama may be even worse for the US than Putin is for Russia.

To people of both Russia and the US: Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

Debt, Power, and Revolution: In Media Res

Image Source
We are living in interesting times, and any attempt to predict exactly how our world dynamics will resolve is doomed to fail. Here are some things that are happening around the world.

The Western World

The western world is looking at massive and growing debt combined with an enormous demographic transition. That particular combination points to a coming of potentially cataclysmic change in the everyday existence of most of the region's residents.

...once the fatal spiral begins, how can a state escape disaster? There are only eight options: (1) higher taxes; (2) less spending; (3) more growth; (4) more lenient interest rates; (5) worse inflation; (6) war; (7) external aid; or (8) default. All eight options have been used in the past, but only one of them is both plausible and desirable today: growth. A growing economy (which raises tax revenue) permits the absorption of debt and restores sustainable public finances. Then borrowing can resume—if it will encourage further growth. Responsible governments do not finance their everyday expenses by borrowing, and they keep their investments at a level they can repay.

History offers one final lesson. The power of sovereign states can foster a sense of impunity that encourages excessive debt. In the past, sovereign states have sometimes rid themselves of creditors by simply driving them out (as they did repeatedly with Europe’s Jews), by tormenting them, or by simply refusing to pay. When modern states borrow from a range of anonymous investors on global markets, sovereign immunity protects their assets against seizure—China cannot seize the White House as collateral for U.S. Treasury debt. But creditors can still negotiate, even with sovereign debtors. When a state loses the market’s confidence, the threat of a financial cutoff is a jolt back to reality. Just ask Greece, as its leaders scramble to reduce its public deficit as quickly as possible. The West needs to wake up now, shake off the yoke of public debt, and take the path of liberty. That path is long and difficult. It means balancing budgets and stabilizing the financial sector. But the great reward will be a return to confidence and growth—for those who put in the effort, and for those with the audacity to see it through. _Newsweek

Russia

The recent second conviction of former Yukos head Khodorkovsky opens a window on what may be one of many potentially fatal dynamics at the core of Russian power.

the real meaning of the Khodorkovsky case is that the authorities are weak, and scared. If the first trial of Khodorkovsky was a kind of perverse victory for Putin over the once-powerful oligarchs, the second trial shows that the Kremlin is afraid of showing what it sees as weakness. More, the ham-handedness of the charges themselves, and the heavy police presence and mass arrests at the trial today, betrays a dangerous amateurishness. Totalitarianism is scary. Incompetent totalitarianism is actually scarier.

For evidence of just how totalitarian – and now incompetent – Russia’s authorities are, look no further than the desperately eloquent scene in the courtroom during the trial, day in, day out. On one side sat the state prosecutors in their 1980s-style uniforms, surrounded by stacks of paper bulging out of Victorian-style ledgers. They mumbled their evidence in a monotone. At several points in the trial their accusations were so absurd that even the judge burst into laughter (my favorite prosecution malapropism – “The defendant is doing an excellent impression of being a normal person.”) On the other side sat the Khodorkovsky defense team, smartly dressed, each with a laptop. In a glass cage behind them, looking more at ease and in a strange way freer than anyone in the room, sat Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, taking turns to follow the documentary evidence on a large Mac screen set up in front of their box while the other made notes. It was as though two Russias were sparring in the courtroom, one mediocre, nervous and browbeaten, the other smart, modern and surprisingly relaxed. As Khodorkovsky himself said last year, a country that plunders its best companies and jails its brightest businessmen and instead puts its trust in the secret police and bureaucrats has its priorities seriously wrong.

The oligarchs were, unarguably, bad for Russia. They used their money to buy political power, and in the process corrupted the Duma, the press and the government. But the bureaucrat-kleptocrats who succeeded them are far worse. Khodorkovsky, in his years of incarceration in a Siberian labor camp, has transformed himself from a symbol of the hated oligarchy into a bellwether for a different sort of Russian rottenness. The oligarchs abused their money, the Kremlin now abuses power to silence opposition and to cover up the mass theft by the bureaucratic class of what has been estimated as a third of Russia’s GDP, annually. Medvedev is right that Russia is rotting from within; he’s even put his finger on exactly how. But the second conviction of Khodorkovsky shows that Medvedev, with all his brains and talk of reform, hasn’t made a whit of difference. _Newsweek

China

China is widely celebrated as the economic success story for the 21st century. The rapid growth of China's economic and military power suggests that the world may be approaching a change of hegemons. But is it possible that both China's military power, and its economic prospects, may be somewhat overstated?

When a government loses control of monetary policy, inflation follows. A few months ago, only the scariest "China bears" predicted 6% inflation for next year; now the People's Daily is admitting it may reach those levels "in some months."

The nonindependent People's Bank of China, staffed by reform-oriented technocrats, is being allowed to raise interest rates a few basis points. But allocating credit on the basis of its cost threatens the whole political economy. The state-owned companies have become accustomed to negative real interest rates. If the price of capital rises, many of the Communist Party elite will face a crunch. _WSJ

When one looks beneath China's Potemkin facade, one is apt to see enormous corruption, infrastructure overbuild, massive misallocation of resources, and a shockingly shoddy level of construction and impending collapse of poorly-built structure.

Emerging Markets

There is a lot of money to be made in emerging markets, if one understands some of the hazards involved.

...there is evidence of growing state involvement in both the economy and corporate sector across many emerging markets. This could hurt investors in a number of ways, most notably by governments forcing companies to prioritise social or geopolitical objectives over economic returns.

From an economic perspective, the main issue facing investors in emerging market equities is currently the degree of overheating, which is evident across a number of economies in the form of rising inflation and/or current account deficits.

Commodity price increases in particular have had a more inflationary impact on emerging than developed economies, because of their higher weightings in price indices and – more importantly – the narrower output gaps. _FT

There are more reasons for caution in the linked FT article.

One Ring to Bind Them, ... To Rule Them All
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) aims to write the rules and set the standards which the entire world will live and work under. The goals of the IPCC are ambitious: a massive transfer of resources from the developed world to the undeveloped world. As justification for this resource transfer, the IPCC claims to be saving the world from a cataclysmic collapse resulting from anthropogenic greenhouse gas-caused climate change. How good is the IPCC's record?

Remember all the media brouhaha about global warming causing hurricanes that commenced following the devastating U.S. 2004 season? Opportunities to capitalize on those disasters were certainly not lost on some U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change officials. A special press conference called by IPCC spokesman Kevin Trenberth announced "Experts warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense activity."

But there was a problem. Christopher Landsea, a top U.S. expert on the subject, repeatedly notified the IPCC that no research had been conducted to support that claim--not in the Atlantic basin, or in any other basin. After receiving no replies, he publicly resigned from all IPCC activities. And while the press conference received tumultuous global media coverage, Mother Nature didn't pay much attention. Subsequent hurricane seasons returned to average patterns noted historically over the past 150 years, before exhibiting recent record lows with no 2010 U.S. landfalls.

Much global warming alarm centers upon concerns that melting glaciers will cause a disastrous sea level rise. A globally viewed December 2005 BBC feature alarmingly reported that two massive glaciers in eastern Greenland, Kangderlugssuaq and Helheim, were melting, with water "racing to the sea." Commentators urgently warned that continued recession would be catastrophic.

Helheim's "erratic" behavior reported then was recently recounted again in a dramatic Nov. 13 New York Times article titled "As Glaciers Melt, Science Seeks Data on Rising Seas." Reporters somehow failed to notice that only 18 months later, and despite slightly warmer temperatures, the melting rate of both glaciers not only slowed down and stopped, but actually reversed. Satellite images revealed that by August 2006 Helheim had advanced beyond its 1933 boundary.

According to two separate NASA studies, one conducted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the other by the Langley Research Center, the oceans now appear to be heading into another natural periodic cooling phase within a typical 55- to 70-year dipolar warm/cool pattern. Although Greenland has recently been experiencing a slight warming trend, satellite measurements show that the ice cap has been accumulating snow growth at a rate of about 2.1 inches per year. Temperatures only recently began to exceed those of the 1930s and 1940s when many glaciers were probably smaller than now. (We can't be certain, because satellites didn't exist to measure them.)

A recent study conducted by U.S. and Dutch scientists that appeared in the journal Nature Geoscience concluded that previous estimates of Greenland and West Antarctica ice melt rate losses may have been exaggerated by double. Earlier projections apparently failed to account for rebounding changes in the Earth's crust following the last Ice Age (referred to as "glacial isostatic adjustment").

Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden, argues that any concerns regarding rising sea levels are unfounded. _Forbes

The same abysmally misleading alarmism as was applied to glacier melting and sea level rise has been applied to "ocean acidification" and "polar bear extinction". Polar bears are thriving, and ocean pH continues within normal historical ranges -- except in specific third world harbour and river delta areas where dumping of waste will continue regardless of what the IPCC says or does.

It is time for thoughtful humans to understand that they must use their own judgment when evaluating the future prospects of nations, regions, and intergovernmental alliances. Everything is now in a state of flux, due to the collapse of leadership in much of the Anglosphere and in the EU. Debt and demography are combining and building to a coming chaos.

The forces of dissolution have been loosed, consequently. Temptation to revolution, secession, and violence on national & international scales will grow as economic and social conditions deteriorate.

The one counter-trend which can be glimpsed across Europe and the Anglosphere are the popular and grassroots movements -- still small and in minority status -- which are opposing the damning trends of debt and demography. It is possible that these groups will provide a mitigating force, at least in particular regions and countries.

Locate the islands of stability which will provide the safest harbours for you and your families. Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

Without Siberia, What Will Become of Russia?

With an area of over 3,727,000 square miles, Siberia makes up roughly 75 percent of the total territory of Russia. If Siberia were to secede from Russia, it would be the world's second-largest country, with only Canada being larger. Major geographical zones include the West Siberian Plain and the Central Siberian Plateau. _Source

The population of ethnic Russians in Russia has been collapsing in a morass of high death rates and low birth rates. The Nicholas Eberstadt video below goes into much more detail in explaining the what of ethnic Russia's collapse.
Growing numbers of Russian children are being abandoned to the streets, where drugs, violence, alcoholism, TB, and HIV hold sway.

It should be obvious that Russia's time as a grand empire is running out. It is uncertain how long Russia can hold onto the resource rich but relatively unpopulated regions of Siberia -- with a shrinking number of Russians to project power into what are essentially colonies of Moscow.

When will Siberia secede from Russia? Siberian separatism has been simmering below the surface for many years, and the centrifugal forces pulling Siberia away from Moscow can only grow stronger as the number of Russians shrinks.

The recent trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former chairman of Yukos Oil, highlights the problem of perennial recurrent Russian autocracy and tyranny -- and much of the reason for a pessimistic view of Russia's economic future. Russia's "one trick pony" reliance on energy to prop up an otherwise crumbling economy, is a fool's game. The stupidity of the strategy will be made painfully clear when Siberia finally does break away from Moscow, taking most of Russia's energy wealth with it.

Who has the most to gain from Siberian secession? Clearly China will be in a dominant position to control Siberia's destiny, assuming China does not collapse or lose its economic shine first. International energy companies will likewise have much to gain from access to Siberia's rich oil and gas fields. The US is also likely to find many opportunities for advantage within a nascent independent Siberia.

In addition, Alaskan and Northern Canadian secessionists would find much to celebrate in a free Siberia. If destructive US central government autocratic policies are not reined in, more and more Alaskans will view separation more positively. Likewise, many Northern Canadians will consider breaking away from Ottawa should the leftists regain control and resume the destructive policies of earlier leftist governments.

Governments can be overthrown very precipitously, as was demonstrated in Eastern Europe of the late 1980s and early 1990s. They can fall like dominoes in a row, should conditions shift in certain directions. Watch and learn.

Russia Goes Darker; China Tries for the Light

A sign of a growing tyranny in Putin's Russia is the re-furbishment of the KGB, as the FSB. As Putin's government grows less popular with larger parts of the populace, it is reconstituting the instruments of oppression which terrorised the people of the USSR so effectively.

The new powers give the FSB more authority to do whatever they want, just like in their good old days (when the communists were in charge). The FSB is believed to directly control over 100,000 personnel, and have authority over many more in other government departments (like the national police force).

...What bothers many Russians is the ultimate purpose of the FSB. The KGB was known as the main protector of the Communist Party. The FSB is seen as the supporter of wealthy criminals who used their KGB connections and powers after the Soviet Union collapsed, to grab ownership of many state owned assets. The current Russian government is acting more and more like the autocratic rulers Russia has suffered under for centuries. The FSB seems to act like the palace guard, not public servants. _StrategyPage

Meanwhile in China, talk of a strong move to democracy is coming from high levels in the Chinese military.

Chinese Lieutenant General Yazhou Liu has been giving speeches to his fellow officers in which he insists that China must embrace democracy, or perish. Liu recently got promoted, and his speeches and published articles continue. What is going on here?
Liu has been pushing his ideas for nearly a decade. Five years ago, he was ordered to shut up. So his public presentation of these seemingly heretical ideas ceased. But Liu kept talking to military and government officials in private. Now he has been allowed to go public again.

...Liu's backing of democracy is purely practical, and really has nothing to do with political beliefs. He describes American democracy as a system designed by a genius for effective use by stupid people. As Liu puts it, ''a bad system makes a good person behave badly while a good system makes a bad person behave well. Democracy is the most important reform for China, for without it there can be no sustainable growth.''

...Liu points out that communists can compete in a democratic environment, especially since Chinese communists have abandoned the most destructive aspects of traditional communist doctrine (state control of the economy). But growing corruption, especially among communist officials, is crippling China and threatens the economy, as well as continued communist control of the country. Better to compete in a democratic environment, and risk losing national power, than to proceed with the current system and risk everything. Liu is being listened to by a lot of senior officials, both military and government, who back clean government. But the "dirty communists" are opposed, and that is a formidable opponent for someone like Liu. _StrategyPage

Chinese insiders such as Liu are able to see the huge cracks in China's military, government, and economic facade which are largely hidden to outsiders -- particularly to outsiders who portray themselves as experts on investing in China, or who recommend a western subservience when engaging with China. (Think of Obama bowing to foreign leaders, including top Chinese officials.)

Russia's demographic situation is dire, and Russia's leaders are unwilling to open the nation sufficiently to give the people hope for the future -- so that Russian women will start having children again. Putin and his henchmen may have decided to strip the country to the bones for their own benefit, and to the utter misery of Russia's people.

China, on the other hand, has at least a few decades of demographic health ahead of it before its aging population collapses on itself. If China can open itself politically, economically, and socially, it could put itself in a strong position for most of the 21st century. The alternative is the destruction from within by corruption, autocracy, and inevitable rebellion.