Orlov then switches to the West. It, too, looks unstoppable, he says. It isn’t, he says. Here is my point: there is substance in the West’s social order that never existed in the USSR. The West will not suffer a comparable disintegration. The West is not a Potemkin village.

But the separate ways that all of these societies are heading are in fact side roads along the same highway. Western fascism is still the model for all of them. They call it something else, but that is what it is. It is the alliance between the state and the private sector. This is the dominant Western economic outlook today.

There is no serious challenge to the Western political model. There is simply competition among brands.

The web was not envisioned as a form of television when it was invented. But, like it or not, it is rapidly resembling TV: linear, passive, programmed and inward-looking.

When I log on to Facebook, my personal television starts. All I need to do is to scroll: New profile pictures by friends, short bits of opinion on current affairs, links to new stories with short captions, advertising, and of course self-playing videos. I occasionally click on like or share button, read peoples’ comments or leave one, or open an article. But I remain inside Facebook, and it continues to broadcast what I might like. This is not the web I knew when I went to jail. This is not the future of the web. This future is television.

First they sent a SWAT team to New Zealand to capture Kim Dotcom, a German national, for something that’s legal in both New Zealand and Germany, and I did not speak out — because I was not in the computer business. Then, they conducted drone strikes and assassinations and renditions around the world, and I did not speak out — because I was not a swarthy foreigner. Then, they invaded countries, from Granada and Panama, to Afghanistan and Iraq, and I did not speak out — because I believed we were always on the side of truth and justice. Then, they prosecuted the FIFA guys, and I did not speak out — because I couldn’t care less about rich guys making money from soccer. Etc. Etc.

If you touch our shores with your corrupt enterprise, whether that is through meetings or through using our world-class financial system, you will be held accountable for that corruption.

In other words, the Department of Justice’s indictment alleges that since a part of the alleged corruption may have been planned in the US — even if it was then carried out elsewhere — they are in charge. And the use of US banks to transfer US dollars gives them additional jurisdiction.