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Long time lurker, very occasional poster. Does anyone else find it creepy how much of the world events from Hidden Empire are popping up in 2014?
* Russia threatens/launches a subtle invasion of Ukraine, premised on protecting Russian ethnic minorities.
* And the world quickly forgets about that thanks to a combination of genocidal Islamists and an outbreak of an unusually communicable form of Ebola. The U.S. president, not wanting to commit large amounts of troops, sends special forces units to aid the ethnic minorities threatened by genocidal Muslims.
Granted, the countries for the second part were slightly different--the Ebola outbreak was in Liberia, not Nigeria, and while Nigerian Islamist atrocities have made the news this year, the genocidal group is in Iraq. And yeah, all of these elements were fermenting in 2010, but that they'd start happening all at the same time in 2014?
Posts: 170 | Registered: Mar 2001
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Gentlemen, I am the steely-jawed action hero necessary to defuse this situation. I am fresh from thwarting some big ol' insurrection in the U.S. of A and I have the perfect combination of daring-do and level-headed traditional values necessary to restore order.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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seriously though this current ebola outbreak is not by my current understanding "unusually communicable" — it's just regular old ebola thriving in nations with ineffectual governments, uneducated populaces, and a lack of any effectual medical infrastructure. places where mobs will literally break into ebola quarantine centers and steal mattresses and crap like that. the R0 is still around maybe, like, 2
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Edgehopper: I noticed the same thing. When this new Ebola outbreak began it reminded me of the little boy who hides in trees from Hidden Empire and how whole villages were wiped out.
Posts: 298 | Registered: Sep 2011
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: It's one of the only books I have ever stopped reading 1/2 way though.
Same. Put it down and never picked it up again. Took awhile to be willing to read anything Card again.
Posts: 164 | Registered: Sep 2012
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quote: * Russia threatens/launches a subtle invasion of Ukraine, premised on protecting Russian ethnic minorities.
It follows logically that OSC is influenced by the work of George Friedman (of hyperconservative Stratfor fame), in his political research of future world events.
Aside from being the darling of foreign policy hawks across America, Friedman also circulates some fairly persuasive arguments regarding real politic, and resource based geopolitics. One of his persistent predictions has been that Russia would eventually annex Ukraine in order to secure its access to the Black Sea corridor.
As Friedman would say, it only seems unlikely until it is inevitable. It helps that Putin has been floating annexation ambitions since the 1990s. As I recall from reading his most recent book, Friedman actually predicted Ukraine's annexation to within a couple of years. If it's any consolation though, he also predicts Russia's collapse no later than 2025.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I think Friedman is just sort of a parallel evolution of descent into bizarre talks of arch-conservative commentary. Like bows and arrows developing independent of each other on multiple continents
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I think Friedman is just sort of a parallel evolution of descent into bizarre talks of arch-conservative commentary. Like bows and arrows developing independent of each other on multiple continents
So, one continent develops the arrow, and the other continent gets the bow? It seems improbable. Must be Aliens.
But in all seriousness, I happen to know that Stratfor is bedtime reading for conservatives in the security state, and Friedman's books have the advantage of being wildly entertaining, deadly serious, and just the right kind of crazy to make them catnip for the part of the beltway that has fantasies of us going to war with Japan again in 50 years.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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