by Francis Lee for The Saker Blog INTRODUCTION: I first wrote this article in 2012 and have had to make a number of minor alterations. Of course a great deal has happened since that time, most of it bad. We now seem to stand on the threshold of an even bigger and deeper crisis than in 2008, plus additional worrying features, viz. the pandemic and possible future pandemics as well
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog Between 1989 and 1992 Soviet GDP per head fell by approximately 40 per cent. What happened? The short century of the Soviet Union which began in 1917 reached its nemesis in 1989. The great experiment was, to all intents and purposes, over. Symbolically this was occasioned by the fall of the Berlin wall when huge crowds of East Germans simply strolled, unmolested by
by Francis Lee for The Saker Blog Unquestionably, the world – circa 2020 – seems currently to be moving away from democratic forms of rule and transmuting into more totalitarian systems (liberal totalitarianism if you will – see below). This has been a prolonged historical metamorphosis beginning in the late 19th century and ultimately borne out by a complete rejection of the Enlightenment and its values. The late 19th and
