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Loading ...Top Russian Scholar: US will collapse next year, partly due to gays
03.04.2009 11:09am EST
(Moscow) If you’re inclined to believe Igor Panarin, and the Kremlin wouldn’t mind if you did, then President Barack Obama will order martial law this year, the U.S. will split into six rump-states before 2011, and Russia and China will become the backbones of a new world order.
Panarin might be easy to ignore but for the fact that he is a dean at the Foreign Ministry’s school for future diplomats and a regular on Russia’s state-guided TV channels. And his predictions fit into the anti-American story line of the Kremlin leadership.“There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010,” Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy – a lecture the ministry pointedly invited The Associated Press and other foreign media to attend.
The prediction from Panarin, a former spokesman for Russia’s Federal Space Agency and reportedly an ex-KGB analyst, meshes with the negative view of the U.S. that has been flowing from the Kremlin in recent years, in particular from Vladimir Putin.
Putin, the former president who is now prime minister, has likened the United States to Nazi Germany’s Third Reich and blames Washington for the global financial crisis that has pounded the Russian economy.
Panarin didn’t give many specifics on what underlies his analysis, mostly citing newspapers, magazines and other open sources.
He also noted he had been predicting the demise of the world’s wealthiest country for more than a decade now.
But he said the recent economic turmoil in the U.S. and other “social and cultural phenomena” led him to nail down a specific timeframe for “The End” – when the United States will break up into six autonomous regions and Alaska will revert to Russian control.
Panarin argued that Americans are in moral decline, saying their great psychological stress is evident from school shootings, the size of the prison population and the number of gay men.
Turning to economic woes, he cited the slide in major stock indexes, the decline in U.S. gross domestic product and Washington’s bailout of banking giant Citigroup as evidence that American dominance of global markets has collapsed.
“I was there recently and things are far from good,” he said. “What’s happened is the collapse of the American dream.”
Panarin insisted he didn’t wish for a U.S. collapse, but he predicted Russia and China would emerge from the economic turmoil stronger and said the two nations should work together, even to create a new currency to replace the U.S. dollar.
Asked for comment on how the Foreign Ministry views Panarin’s theories, a spokesman said all questions had to be submitted in writing and no answers were likely before Wednesday.
It wasn’t clear how persuasive the 20-minute lecture was. One instructor asked Panarin whether his predictions more accurately describe Russia, which is undergoing its worst economic crisis in a decade as well as a demographic collapse that has led some scholars to predict the country’s demise.
Panarin dismissed that idea: “The collapse of Russia will not occur.”
But Alexei Malashenko, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center who did not attend the lecture, sided with the skeptical instructor, saying Russia is the country that is on the verge of disintegration.
“I can’t imagine at all how the United States could ever fall apart,” Malashenko told the AP.
Old news is so exciting! Panarin has been trumpeting this notion in the press for months now, and even a casual glance at his diagram of the expected fracture of the U.S. will give any American a chuckle. The six regions are drawn more from geographic convenience than any realistic understanding of the cultures of the states that make up those regions.
I predict Russia will collapse, partly because of idiot deans of Foreign Ministry schools.
Wish fullfillment disguised as objective insight. Laughable and quite sad.
Just like the collapse of the USSR? Must have been because of all those Russian Bears!
If the US does collaspe its because our culture has become so heterosexual in nature i.e. violence (yes, heterosexuals are more violent) and know-it-all attitude.
SCHOLAR=NUTZ !!!
Geez, I wonder if this Moscow guru predicted the collapse of Soviet russia as well? LMAO! Ever notice how all these great intelligent “predictors” never seem to offer any kind of plausible realistic cause and effect reasons to justify their naysayer status. If ANYTHING the U.S. will become STRONGER by granting us MORE rights!
Some in the republic of Georgia (Sakartvelo in Georgian language)predicted the eventual collapse of a country called Russia that invaded neighboring Georgia and with which the Georgians have had a love/hate relationship for a long time. Many Georgians can speak both Georgian (a non-Slavic language with its own alphabet) and Russian and Georgia has had both Georgian and Russian influences on it and its culture as well as Turkish and Persian influences.
The Georgians are very proud of their culture, language, unique cuisine, music, and of their beautiful and ancient country. Many of them are very angry at being trapped in a destructive and disruptive Russian invasion that hasn’t quit for months and which has in many ways damaged and paralyzed Georgia.
While the Georgian one night action by Georgian president Saakishvili against South Ossetia’s capital city was inexcusable, even worse was the Russian response to it which has yet to end. The Russians have broken numerous commitments to withdraw and has left small countries like Estonia and bigger ones like Ukraine that used to in the old Soviet Union distrustful of Russian intentions toward them as well. And some in the European Union do not trust Russia as well.
Back to Georgia, some in Georgia mindful of the loss of territorial integrity of Georgia’s ethnio Ossetian and Abkhaz areas are prdicting that the same in the multiethnic Russian Federation. That it will fall apart when the various Finnic (Karelian, Sami, etc) Slavic, Tartar, Turkic, Caucasian and native Asiatic Siberian ethnic groups in Russia want to make all their areas autonomous or independent of Moscow (Moskva). Predict Russia will one day fall apart out of its own ethnic diversity. Russia encouraged the Ossetians and the Abkhaz to form their own countries and dig huge chunks out of Georgia’s territory and small Georgia’s pay back time will be if and when huge Russia starts splintering apart.
I don’t think many of the people of Georgia will be sad at all if and when that happens to their persistent bully Russia.
Like I would take advise from a country that collaped allready.
too much vodka I think- don’t russians average 1 gallon per person per day of the stuff????????
Like I would really take anything Russia (let alone Panarin) says seriously.
The country collapsed once already. USSR.
He probably is having trouble coming out of the closet.
Why even publish this? Yes, it is easy to ignore because this guy is from Russia, easily the most disorganized and splintered country on Earth. Any kook can say anything they want to-people predicted our collapse as early as the mid-1900’s, within as little as months timeframe. It never happened. What this guy is doing is simply rabble-rousing the Russian people and kissing ass to the Kremlin.
Nothing new.
I’d LOVE to see the US split into “6 autonomous regions”! California ought to be it’s own country anyway. But we’ll take Oregon & Washington with us. And Nevada, if they’re cool.
Mo-
What Happens in Vegas, Stays In Vegas…
and if it doesn’t, just sneak away to Reno.
Also let’s ask Hawaii if they’ll join our “region” (I haven’t seen the map yet so I dunno if they already were or not), Hawaii’s cool enough.
People like this really make me chuckle. Mainly because the idea of Russia predicting the end of the USA. Russia being a country that has colapsed, and is far more corrupt that the US. People like this and the chuckle-heads in Moscow can’t come up with good answers to their own problems, so like the rest of the world, they blame the US for their problems. It seems that the inability to accept responsability isn’t localized to Americans. Its always easier to blame someone else for your problems. Afterall, consider what most of the world does when they have a problem. Its always the fault of the US.
The only way to make these people go away is to ignore them so long as they don’t become dangerous. I don’t see the US falling to little bits by 2010, though I do see King Obama dragging our country further backwards and making the life of anyone making over 40K/yr a living hell.