For a decade or so, Russian academic Igor Panarin (pictured to the left--and doesn't he look Russian!) has been predicting the United States will fall apart in 2010. Now he’s found an eager audience that wants to tell his message: the Russian state media. It seems that they are so interested in his story that they are now interviewing him twice a day.Professor Panarin seems to be a polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut and he insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for us is dire.
“There’s a 45–55% chance right now that disintegration will occur. One could rejoice in that process. But if we’re talking reasonably, it’s not the best scenario—for Russia.”
Professor Panarin, who is 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.–Russia relations.
Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the United States will break into six pieces—with Alaska reverting to Russian control.
Okay, question for you. Professor Panarin says that there is a 45–55% chance that the United States will collapse. Doesn’t that mean that there is a 45–55% chance that it won’t? I’m not great at math, heck, I’m probably not even considered good at math. But, with a 50/50 chance of collapse, I think my odds of predicting that America will not fail is just as valid.
Now, where are the members of the media to interview me? Any one? Any where? I’m waiting.
So, as you prepare for 2009, you’d best take advantage of the year. If Professor Panarin is correct, you have less than 1 ½ years before the fall.
