Igor’s predictions

Dear American readers. Forget the global financial hissy fit. You have more urgent things to worry about. A Russian dude has been predicting since 1998 that the United States will break up, be no more, kaput by June or July 2010. Okay, mark those months in your calendars and pack the cat!

Russian academic, Igor Panarin, has been saying that an economic and moral crisis will hit the US and cause civil unrest, ultimately leading to the disintegration of the good old US of A.  Well, a break-up into six regional areas along ethnic lines. And like vultures, foreign powers will then move in.

Up until recently, the Russian professor was probably considered a bit of a looney but seems he’s being listened to now (particularly by the Russians who are most likely salivating over their Cold War enemy being kaput as well as blaming the US for their current financial woes).

Panarin is a former KGB analyst and is now Dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats. He has been warning that the “The dollar isn’t secured by anything… The country’s foreign debt has grown like an avalanche; this is a pyramid, which has to collapse.” He predicts that the US will plummet into worsening unemployment and family savings will be wiped out as the financial crisis worsens (which I believe it will in 2009). Dissatisfaction and civil unrest will escalate.

Panarin believes that Prez Obama’s election and first few months in office will be a veil of hope and Americans (and the world) will hope he can work miracles. However, Panarin darkly warns: “But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are no miracles.” The United States will then fracture into six parts: the Pacific coast; the South; Texas; the Atlantic coast, central states and the northern states. Hedging his bets, Panarin reckons it’s a 55-45% chance that the US will fragment and become the Former United States of America.

This Russian dude suggests that as the financial crisis worsens, the wealthier states will hoard their funds, withholding them from the Federal Government and secede from the Union. So California will become The Californian Republic largely under the influence of China.  The Texas Republic will be controlled by Mexico (Mexicans: you may wish to reconsider this as ex-Prez Bush has returned to live out his sunset years in Texas).

Washington, D.C. and New York will form an “Atlantic America” that may join the European Union (so you’d better start learning German or French). Canada will swoop in on the northern states and rename them as “The Central North American Republic.” Hawaii will be a protectorate of Japan or China. And Alaska? Well, the Russians will gobble Alaska up and Sarah Palin will be closer to Russia than she ever thought she was!

The handy map that accompanies this post will help you decide, based on the US state you now live in, which new independent country you should apply for citizenship from and what new language you should learn pretty fast.

I’m not really sure how the Americans are supposed to slug it out in this predicted break up. Will the North and the South have a rerun of 1861? Or will the six regions, that fall into supposed ethnic categories, battle it out? And what will happen to the Greenback? Don’t worry: apparently, the US, Canada and Mexico secretly agreed in 2006 to implement a new currency unit: the Amero.

Perhaps we could dismiss this guy as a looney tune if it wasn’t for a couple of things: he did correctly predict an economic collapse back in 1998 or so, 10 years before our current financial crisis. And there is a precedent for whacko predictions coming true – French political scientist, Emmanuel Todd, correctly predicted the collapse of the former Soviet Union 15 years beforehand when he was 25 years old.

Personally, seems to me this all smacks of anti-Americanism especially when you read that Panarin’s Moscow office is stuffed full of statues of double-headed eagles (the symbol of czarist Russia) along with pennants on the wall bearing the emblem of the FSB, the KGB’s successor agency.

If I were going to predict how the US would break up, I’d say it would go this way:

This is the so-called Jesusland Map, with blue states forming the United States of Canada and the red states being Jesusland (states that vote based on strong moral values).

You can watch a video of Panarin here. And if you read Russian, here’s an interview with Panarin.

You know: just in case this dude is right, here’s some advice for Prez Obama. Since he seems to be modelling himself on Abraham Lincoln, remember his words:

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” –Abraham Lincoln

Image credit: WSJ