There is a non-trivial chance of a color revolution in Armenia in the next few days.
I don’t follow domestic Armenian politics, but the basic gist of it is that the two-term President Serzh Sargsyan – who is highly unpopular due to increases in utilities tariffs – has recently transitioned from the Presidency to the Prime Ministership. This was accompanied by a bill making Armenia a parliamentary republic, in effect extending his rule.
Although the opposition is relatively more pro-EU, the reality is that any minimally sane “maidanist” government in Armenia will still be pro-Russian, as I pointed out three years ago during a similar round of protests.
Here is the reason why in one chart:
Of course, the essential qualifier is “minimally sane.” But Maidanism is more of a religious phenomenon, so no firm predictions can be made.
Some of my old articles on Armenia:
https://twitter.com/mist_mental/status/988008528773304320
One thing I’m worried about is if Armenia implodes, we’ll get all the refugees.
A few thoughts:
I think Serzh rubs Yerevanites up the wrong way because he’s part of a cabal of Krabach veterans that have dominated the government since the second presidency and become quite rich off the back of it. This is kind of comparable to the way that Kievans disliked Yanukovych because he came from Donbass, even before he ever did anything.
The opposition leading these protests is made up of Yeravan yuppies and diaspora (not huge fans of Krabakh warlords). Though they’ve taken great care to not to make the protests about EAEU/EU, the Yelk movement is quite Euro-Atlaticist. There’s an element of “we’re real Europeans donchaknow” to their mindset; make of that what you will.
The place is absolutely awash with Soros/NGO money.
The protests have broader appeal than just opposition supporters: this guy is about as non-altanticist as you can possibly get https://twitter.com/zinvor
State department/EU haven’t been explicitly siding with the protesters and blaming the government for all violence as was the case in Ukraine.
Their new president is a maths professor and probably the smartest head of state in the world.
Speaking of color revolutions, is one being fomented in Hungary?
https://i.imgur.com/2M3Houd.jpg
Thread
This on the heels of the news that Soros is decamping from Hungary. Central European University, his primary brainwashing institution is apparently moving to Berlin. Many of his NGOs are also leaving after Orban vowed to tighten the rules even more for NGOs if he got elected. Maybe Soros and his network wants to go out with a bang.
Also, just as an aside, seems the swamp Germans are going to try to ramp up the economic pressure on Russia even more, though through EU channels of course. The Dutch have often punched above their weight and they are looking for allies. They will likely get all the Nordics, the Baltics and sizable portions of Central Europe along with them. If they get Big Brother Germany along with the ride, the chances of it passing are high. A further sign of estrangement. The “reset” is as dead as it ever was.
I have previously detailed the 2017 asylum statistics for the EU, however those were only applications. Some countries, on the basis of unfortunate geography, may get a lot of applications and may turn down a lot. Hungary in 2015-6 certainly belongs in that category.
To get a clear view, you really need to look at decisions. Until recently we only had up until 2016 for that, but Eurostat recently changed that fact and released the 2017 numbers here.
Overall highlights:
Sweden is no longer the most extreme on a per million basis. In 2016 they had 7000 positive asylum decisions per million, now it is “only” half that. Instead, it is Germany which is now in the lead with almost 4000 per million.
Just to re-iterate that it isn’t just geography. France accepts around 605 per million. This is around their historical norm. In 2016 they accepted around 550 per million. In fact, supposedly “right-wing” Switzerland accepts 1700 per million. Denmark, which is often painted as very right-wing is about as liberal as France.
Onto the V4. Slovakia now holds the crown with the harshest acceptance rate. 10 per million. Poland has 15 per million. Czechia is also at 15 per million. Hungary is at a very surprising 130(!) per million.
Quality-wise, Poland has the “best” refugees. Over half of ours are from Ukraine. 2nd place is Russia(though most of our “refugees” from Russia are in fact Chechens, literally all of them get rejected. We do in fact take in some people with Polish or even in some cases Ukrainian/Belorussian ancestry from Russia under the pretext they are oppressed). Only on third place do we get to Tajikistan. Which is around 35 people on a population of 38 500 000. Still too high, of course. By contrast, even Slovakia or Czechia has Syria/Afghanistan as #1 and #2.
Portugal is at 50 per million, so more than 2X as strict as Hungary though still behind the harshest (SK+PL+CZ). Of the major Western European countries with a large population, Spain has the harshest standards (100 per million). This is not new, to those who have paid attention. Ireland is also stingy (150). Austria is at 3865, higher than even Sweden and close to Germany. Hopefully the new government will end the utter disarray there.
P.S.
If you look at my profile, it seems someone has been using my name and posting comments on Israel Shamir articles. I don’t know what’s more insulting, that someone would impersonate me or that someone would even think I would post on such articles in the first place.
To be clear, I almost only post on AK blogs. I have posted a few odd comments on iSteve. To the extent I post anything outside those two blogs it is never on Russia. All Russia-related stuff(including Russian actions in Syria, which doesn’t interest me greatly to begin with) will be posted on AK. So if anyone sees my name on Shamir/Saker/whatever articles, know it is fake. I hope the imposter gets rooted out. I certainly don’t want to get my comment history wiped because of some douchebag using my name.
AK: This has been sorted out. The commend in question was made by somebody who shared your IP, so a case of mistaken identity.
What makes you think that Germans (and other Europeans) have much agency in this situation at all? The consensus view in Russia is that Washington is behind all these anti-Russian moves. The EU is a US-led institution that serves US goals – Michael McFaul, former US ambassador in Russia said it outright.
They (Soros, the NGOs, the opposition parties, and the demonstrators themselves) would of course love it, but I very much doubt it’d come to this. Jobbik is marching with them (but some of their hardcore nationalist supporters have gone over to Fidesz), but it’s mostly yuppies and intellectuals and the like. They are mostly not soldiers of some revolution.
First this criminal accountant mutated into a lawyer, now into an activist.
The problem in Armenia is their bad economy.
Lack of military spending is just symptom of that (along with lack of spending in every area)..
Aside from some lucky rich people – the best solution for average Armenians is emigration.
EU is a millenarian, religious-mythological project – very popular with some demographics in Europe.
The question is how would you develop the Armenia economy.
The unusually bad thing is that even as neighbouring powers, like Turkey and Russia, have had massive economic growth – Armenia has hardly managed to make advantage of the opportunity.
Their main source of revenue is Armenian emigrants, sending money back home.
Probably development of tourism is the best opportunity. I don’t really understand how they can not be successful , considering geographical proximity to many growing economies. Or that Georgia became one of the most fashionable recent tourist destinations where they now have too many tourists to be able to serve or accommodate.
Assad put up the price of basic necessities, and got a civil war. In hindsight, Russia should have given him more subsidies. The Soviet Union was financially drained by its empire.
It’s bad but not absolutely terrible. Last year’s growth was over 7%, albeit from a very low base and salieries are practically nothing. Its GDP/capita is about equal to Georgia’s which has gone the opposite direction politically. Saying that, Georgia is also very, very poor. Liberal Yerevantsy refuse to believe this fact though and think of Georgia as some kind of economic powerhouse where everything is perfect. The Georgians have been given bezvis to the schengen zone which has left Armenia relatively more isolated. This was a political bribe and wouldn’t have happened had there been no Ukraine crisis or brexit.
The economy has become quite heavily Yerevan centric since the collapse of communism. Vanadzor, in particular, looks like a pink Pripyat, though those guys aren’t the ones protesting.
That doesn’t explain anti-Russian agenda.
How is it that US-backed governments in Eastern Europe and the Ukraine can get away with raising the prices of basic necessities and only grow more stable as a result?
As a Russian I don’t agree with the idea that we must subsidise friedly regimes the way Soviet Union did. Ideally our allies must bring us profits, not costs.
It was always loosely atlanticist from inception, but, in the early 90s this was codefied with the common defense and security policy. The expansion into the old Warsaw pact has also injected a solidly anti-russian block at the same time as the economies, and thus influence, of the, relatively moderate, southern European counties became weak.
You also have, what looks like, the end of French de gaulism.
Georgia has much more to offer tourists naturally, in particular it has a coastline and a slice of the greater Caucasus. The nunber one country of origin for Georgian tourists is Turkey which is a nonstarter for Armenia. Flights are also considerably cheaper into Georgia due to Pegasus and whizz. Armenia severed diplomatic relations with Hungary after they released an Azeri axe murderer, so no whizz flights. Pobeda fly to Gyumri though for about $30.
Having said that, Georgia is now being bought out quite rapidly by Gulf Arabs and Turks. Last time I was there, quite a lot of restaurants were advertising halal meat; this was nonexistent just a year ago. This must be quite painful, given how nationalistic they are.
Yerevan has an extremely highly developed service sector which is surprising given its size and poverty. They export a lot of food and luxury goods to Russia and there’s some mining operations in the north.
Georgia has been in the same economic position.
But the tourist industry in Georgia is a sudden good perspective and windfall. Actually we somehow didn’t notice to mention it in the Georgia discussion post a few weeks ago.
Georgia received 7.5 million tourists last year. And they predict a massive growth in the future.
Tourism in Armenia is also going through a boom, but in a multiply smaller scale.
Armenia received 1.5 million tourists last year, the highest number of tourists they ever receive (which is an increase of three times over the last decade – in 2008, they only received 500,000 tourists). I would guess this increase is partly a spillover from Georgia, which became over-demanded.
I still think you guys imbue Europeans with more agency than they deserve. Estonia is the reason why new anti-Russian sanctions are being considered right now? Don’t make me laugh! These decisions are simply not made in the European capitals.
Think of the EU as a herd, and the US as a shepherd – this is how “Trans-Atlantic community” works IMO.
In rich countries, I think they can legitimately complain about things like that.
But in Georgia, what happens to tourism in the last 5 years, is something pretty amazing – that will benefit every area of their economy. It changes the whole ‘calculus’ for their economy.
The impact of this many tourists, in such a small economy – is transformative. They need to award Whizz Air as national heroes.
I don’t have any knowledge or opinion on that question.
But the EU project itself, is something like a religion in some European demographics – with a genuine religious passion and fanaticism.
It has more dimensions than just foreign policy, which in some sense seems the weakest component. And it is far from a rationally motivated project.
Aren’t they geographically more isolated than Georgia, and lacking a seashore? Hence, less tourists and less economic opportunities in general.
But Maidanism is more of a religious phenomenon, so no firm predictions can be made.
No, they just don’t like you. Get over it.
No, it’s a poorly constructed collection of bureaucracies. Vested interests leavened with bad social ideology.
There’s certainly an element of that, but it’s definitely not the whole picture. There was genuine alarm in Europe when Trump was elected and there was a possibility that the US would walk away from NATO et al. The event that brought about the severest EU sanctions was the downing of that jet. There haven’t been any over Syria. Sikorski and Bildt did more to stir up the Ukraine crisis than anyone else.
I don’t think the difference should be significant.
If you consider a number of tourists driving or taking the boat into Georgia – it is not going to be high.
Tourists arrive by air, so there is no physical reason Armenia and Georgia should get less traffic.
g2k has mentioned more political reasons. For example, about Turkish tourists being less interested in Armenia. Although Turkish tourists are one of the main growth sectors for Armenian tourism industry at the moment.
I just looked at data for Georgia in 2017. Without reading carefully, it seems that tourists’ spending in Georgia, was around 20% of Georgia’s entire GDP for that year.
Aside from some lucky rich people – the best solution for average Armenians is emigration.
Best solution to what? Emigrate to where?
Armenia is surrounded by enemies, even Georgia is close to being an enemy. I didn’t expect Georgian tourism to be driven by Turkish tourism.
Anyway, the lack of a seashore is normally quite significant, since many (most?) tourists are only looking for cheap sea resorts. I think way more tourists visit for example Croatia than Slovenia, even on a per capita basis, due to the much longer seashore.
The question is how would you develop the Armenia economy.
Annual growth rate in per capita income has been about 3.3% since 1990. They’re developing at an adequate pace.
Their main source of revenue is Armenian emigrants, sending money back home.
Remittances accounted for about 12.5% of gross national income in 2016.
The best solution for a significant proportion – especially young people, who want a job where they can afford a normal life.
The main emigration is to Russian Federation, although I’m not sure if there is data available on the exact number of work permits issued each year.
There are probably as many, ,or more, Armenians in Russia at any single time, than in Armenia.
The political considerations are not always that dominant for tourists, unless or until there is some ‘hot conflict’. And even then…
Consider that the most consistent tourists in Ukraine, are still Russians. Or that the most booming travel destination for Israelis – is Turkey.
–
The tourist boom in Georgia is not driven by Westerners though – but by Armenians, Russians, Azerbaijanis and Turks.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%BC_%D0%B2_%D0%93%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%B8#%D0%A2%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8B_%D0%BF%D0%BE_%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BC
That will have put some pressure on living standards as the Dram hasn’t budged at all against the dollar as the Ruble devalued in 2014-15.
It is not just anti-Russian.
It is also anti-British, anti-Turkish, anti-German, etc.
The European project wants to dominate western Eurasia and opposes everyone in that part of the world who does not submit to Brüssel.
You have already answered me three times, but you haven’t yet addressed my point about the lack of a seashore. Is there anything interesting in Armenia? I thought even most historical sites are in Turkey.
There are interesting things in Armenia, but quite a lot of those things are niche: Yerevan itself is a pleasant and cultured place to spend some time; a sort of cross between a mini-Moscow and Beirut, there are skiable mountains (albeit with crap lifts), a mountain lake with beaches, good food and drink and historical sights. All of those things and more are available in Georgia though (Tbilisi isn’t quite as cultured as Yerevan IMHO), for a cheaper air fare.
But people are not usually going to Georgia for the beach
I have never yet been on holiday to the region (so you better read g2k).
I’m sure I’ll write a lot of reviews in tripadvisor when I go eventually.
But all three of these destinations (Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan), get extremely good reviews with tourists, and it is the new fashion to go on holiday there.
My parents went on holiday in Baku last year and they sounded very happy about the holiday.
Is there anything interesting in Armenia?
https://velvetescape.com/places-in-armenia/
I don’t recall them freezing the assets of top officials in Erdogan’s government. That’s because Turkey happens to be a key ally of Washington. By contrast, EU policies are anti-Russian in a very literal sense. European bureacracy openly states that their goal is to cause Russia harm.
When you look at EU efforts to blocks Russian pipelines for example, they make zero sense from the perspective of European interests. Because Nord Stream 2 is going to make Europe richer. But they make perfect sense in terms of American interests, i.e. trying to sell its overpriced LNG in the European market.
The point I’m trying to make is that nobody in Europe submits to Brussels. Brussels is not even a power center. It is simply an agent of Washington in Europe.
Tbilisi and Yerevan are also where Tehran goes to drink.
They froze Turkey’s EU accession bid.
Considering that Turkey has to adjust its tariffs and duties to match those of the EU (Customs Union) and Turkey’s economic dependence on EUrope, that is not a good thing for Turkey.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/04/us-sanctions-loom-defiant-turkey-erdogan-pastor.html
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/04/turkey-why-gold-reserves-on-the-rise.html
So much, for “key ally of Washington”.
It makes sense from the perspective of the anti-Russian European interests who are opposed to Russia’s increasing share in the European gas market.
Exporting LNG, at least in large quantities, isn’t really in our interests at all.
This will cause our domestic gas prices to rise. In theory, they will rise until they will converge with high-cost markets like East Asia.
This will terminate our current competitive edge in industries such as petrochemicals and sponge iron.
Exporting American LNG is rather about:
1 – The interests of the oil companies themselves
2 – America’s absurd and dangerous Russophobia
Fortunately just this once I can be grateful to the environmentalists and NIMBYs. There will only be a limited number of LNG export terminals built, so our gas prices will remain low.
Brussels is not even a power center. It is simply an agent of Washington in Europe.
Unfortunately that seems to be increasingly true. While there is some historical anti-Russian sentiment in the West, I think that most of it can simply be attributed to the fact that any country that does not submit to US hegemony is ostracized. If Yeltsin redux were to take place, everything would be forgiven.
Bildt and Sikorski are on the payroll. No one in Europe cares about Russia, the people at the top are simply paid to care about Russia.
In Europe, they also don’t want to have Turkey accepted into the EU, because it will result in many additional millions of Turkish immigrants living in European Union countries.
This is probably a good idea, as Turkey has the same population as Germany – which would result in it as the joint largest country of EU.
In addition, Turkey has a relatively poor population, which would result in huge immigration from Turkey into Western Europe – of millions of people.
Turkey in the EU is nuts from a European perspective, the US pushes it to keep Turkey Atlanticist aligned. Same with all these less developed EE countries which should have been delayed.
Which would give Turkey immense political influence in the EU.
Given that Erdogan and his ilk – who are supported by about 50% of Turkish voters – are basically anti-Western Islamists who openly threaten, insult and blackmail European countries on a regular basis, this would be absolutely disastrous. It’s bizarre and a sign of European weakness that Turkish EU membership is even still discussed at this point.
With all respect for civilized and secular Turks who also exist – overall, you could not achieve a faster way to turn Western Europe into an Islamic zone, than accession of Turkey (and her huge population) to Schengen Area.
But at the same time they do not want to end the negotiations for EU full membership of Turkey which would be basically an admission that the European project has partially failed and continue the favorable customs union with Turkey.
Europeans who do that do not want to get the blame for ending the negotiations and retain European influence in Turkey.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/04/turkey-mildly-reacts-to-european-union-harshest-report.html
I was tempted to say that EU has some structural similarity to the Ponzi scheme, with its constant need to expand the member base.
But of course, this would be wrong to say, as in the Ponzi scheme, it is the new members who bring in the money, whereas in the EU it is the opposite – it is the new members which drain the money, and the old members who provide it.
Hence, it is a quite paradox, as there is plenty of incentive for new members to join the EU, but the incentive for existing members to accede the new members, is not. And yet the existing EU members nonetheless continue to looks for expansion, even to the edge of suicide (acceding Turkey would be such a suicide). It is here – in this irrationality – that the religious and millenarian aspects of the EU project become more clear.
I also add that the two dimensions of EU – width and depth of integration – are generally incompatible with eachother and should be trading-off, while the EU nonetheless attempts to raise the value of both variables.
If the EU would become more shallowly integrated, there would be far better benefit to cost ratio, when expanding its width. In its original form as just a free-trade area, actually even Russia would have been easily acceded.
I’m not even sure that we have much influence in Turkey…it doesn’t seem to prevent Erdogan from openly insulting and threatening Germany, Austria and other European countries.
A large factor in keeping up the pretense of EU membership negotiations with Turkey imo is fear what could happen if they end…Turkey might become even more openly Islamist and Erdogan might reinforce his attempts at using the millions of Turks in EU countries for subversion. European politicians have no idea how to deal with such a prospect and just keep kicking the can down the road.
No country with a GDP per capita higher than the EU average will join. Iceland has moved on, Norway is no closer. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Scandinavian countries look to leave.
Actually it’s the old members who drain the human and natural resources of the new members.
The “money” the old members provide is not that much – in Bulgaria for example, when the membership fees are subtracted, the net funds received are about 500-600 million EUR per year, which is not a big deal, even for our small economy .
Meanwhile, just the education of all the specialists who go to work in Western Europe costs billions of dollars more than the funds we received, and that education was paid with our taxes. There are all sorts of other hidden losses and lost profits as well – being forced to close perfectly safe nuclear reactors, to sell state monopolies and important industries to western entities under disadvantageous contracts that can’t be broken because of “free trade” or something, and many others.
Old member Germany is building a second Nord Stream while South Stream was denied to Bulgaria.
Anyway I think Anatoly said somewhere recently that one of the main reasons the USSR fell apart is because it was uncool. While I agree, I can only hope that this will be true for the EU as well, I can’t really imagine something more uncool than the EU.
And this is why I can’t understand for the life of me why are there sill sizeable factions in some countries that want to become part of the Western empire of niggerfaggotry, enormous and unaccountable bureaucracy (with commissars and everything) and hypocritical totalitarianism (the thought police varies from country to country but if this monstrosity doesn’t fall apart, then we will all live in 1984 sooner or later).
There is no freedom or prosperity waiting for you once you join these faggots – in fact, just the opposite.
That’s the logical and rational view.
But EU is also worshiped by some – middle-class and educated – Western demographics as a new religion.
Even in the UK, it was very divided, the society, on this question – and the end result of the voting was within a couple of percent.
And the UK – is the country in the EU, with the lowest approval ratings for the EU.
In addition, I would worry that younger generations are very brainwashed into this religion.
This is much more amongst people like Spanish. When I was learning Spanish, I used read sometimes the Spanish newspaper websites – and they publish many irrational and emotional articles saying how wonderful the EU is (it is a very accepted viewpoint there).
It’s true there is a brain-drain of the poorer countries, as well as many young people leaving to work, and expansion of markets for richer, old members’ companies.
So indeed, there is benefit to business elites in the old member countries, and loss for some of the new countries.
But for the standard taxpayers, there is a complete inversion, where the money of taxpayers in richer countries, is simply transferred to poorer countries (for ‘structural adjustment funds’).
Poland, for example, receives around twice as much free money or aid from the EU, than the entire world UN annual budget. I guess Poland might be the most aid receiving country in the world? (I wonder if anyone has done calculations of this topic?)
The amount of free aid money Poland gets is surely lucky for them, even if they have lost a lot of workers to brain-drain .
The money they receive from EU each year, is equivalent to what large oil exporting countries can earn.
https://msp.gov.pl/en/polish-economy/economic-news/4015,Poland-to-get-nearly-EUR-106-bln-from-2014-2020-EU-budget-pool-expected-impact-o.html
Bulgaria does not receive even close in terms of money, so it is clear to say that the distribution system of the aid money is not balanced across the new members.
Kiev was looking at Poland, and dreaming of this kind of wealth transfer (but of course it will not happen for Ukraine, and if it did, the funds would be lost rapidly to corruption).
These insults and threats are just rhetoric.
As much the EUropean politicians are afraid of what could happened if the EU membership negotiations end, the same applies to Turkish politicians who know that economically Turkey is closely tied to EUrope and they are the weaker side.
In such a situation being more openly Islamist would be a necessity for Turks as an ideological alternative* to the European perspective.
*Kemalist Turkish nationalism is pro-European and does not offer such an alternative
The goal of the EU and its supporters is an “ever closer union” which means that a shallow integration is not an option.
On the other hand, the logical endpoint of an ever closer union is the transformation of the EU into the European nation state which does require irrational elements and myths as basis for its nation building.
In the end, it is only partially about money.
The founding elites of the European project wants to spread their influence and values in Europe.
Expansion is only limited by their willingness to dilute their control in the enlarged EU.
That is why would not let Turkey and Russia join and oppose the ones in Europe who do not accept their vision.
I agree with this, but take it a step further, what makes you think that Americans (as in their politicians) have much agency? Their allegiance to Israel is absolute, the US is in turn a jewish led institution.
Pro-EUropean propaganda from the German magazine Der Spiegel
https://twitter.com/MattAndersonNYT/status/987644601673703429
Demands that more German tax money should be entrusted to Macron.
Is there anything interesting in Armenia?
Do they have a genocide museum?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsitsernakaberd
I’d suppose that doesn’t compensate for the lack of seashore though.
The best solution for a significant proportion – especially young people, who want a job where they can afford a normal life.
People’s sense of both ‘normal life’ and what they ‘can afford’ is derived from the context they’re used to. The country has a depressed labor market, but the outmigration rate peaked in 1995 and is now as low as it has been in 30-odd years (0.2% of the population per annum).
There are probably as many, ,or more, Armenians in Russia at any single time, than in Armenia.
The last census found 1.2 million Armenians in Russia, v. 2.9 million in Armenia.
I was tempted to say that EU has some structural similarity to the Ponzi scheme, with its constant need to expand the member base.
Don’t know why you’re tempted to say that. It’s a nonsense statement.
{I don’t follow domestic Armenian politics, }
It is obvious you don’t, that’s why you don’t know.
{but the basic gist of it is that the two-term President Serzh Sargsyan – who is highly unpopular due to increases in utilities tariffs –}
Former President, and now PM Serzh Sargsyan is unpopular, but it has nothing to do with utilities tariff: the tariffs issue was long time ago, it was resolved, and not a current issue. He is unpopular for other reasons.
{ This was accompanied by a bill making Armenia a parliamentary republic, in effect extending his rule.}
Nope, it was not a bill
You can’t do that by a bill.
There was a constitutional referendum in 2015, passed by 66% with ~51% turnout that changed the form of government so that instead of the President being directly elected by the people, the majority party in the Parliament would select both the President and the Prime Minister. There were some other changes, but that was the main reason for the referendum.
The title of ‘Prime Minister’ is a little misleading in this context, because generally in a Parliamentary form of government the PM is real head of state, the Commander in Chief, etc and a President is just a ceremonial post, if one exists. In Armenia the President is the Commander in Chief, responsible for foreign affairs, etc and the PM is for internal: economy and such.
The constitutional change was championed by Serzh Sargsyan. Understanding by the people for approving the change was that he would not seek to become the PM, and thus extend his rule indefinitely on the sly. He kinda/sorta promised as much when selling the change.
The current protests are because the people feel as if Serzh Sargsyan is just spitting on their face by becoming PM.
He made a BIG mistake.
He should have been happy with his accomplishments, and retired from public life honorably.
Now he is despised and ridiculed.
And the word from Yerevan is that the source of much discontent in Armenia – the group of oligarchs and big thieves who rob the country and the economy (…one of whom is his own brother), and who were protected by Serzh’s administration – pretty much forced him to take the PM position, because they are afraid to lose their privileged positions if new blood comes in.
{There is a non-trivial chance of a color revolution in Armenia in the next few days.}
One can never say “never”, but highly unlikely.
Too many reasons why something like that is a near impossibility in Armenia.
Maybe another post.
There are over 3 million Armenians at any time in Russia – and numbers are probably higher considering the situation with illegal and undocumented immigrants.
As for emigration rate, the majority come to Russia on work permits. However, if we look just at the minority that successfully obtain Russian citizenship – almost 1% of the total population in Armenia obtains Russian citizenship each year.
Actually now with the Customs Unions since 2015, they don’t even need to buy a work permit to come to Russia, and the purpose of their unlimited entry and exit to the country does not have to be recorded.
{There are over 3 million Armenians at any time in Russia }
How do you know this?
Where did you get that number from?
https://i.imgur.com/yNvMzzD.jpg
Poland isn’t even in the top 5 once you adjust for GNI. It’s true that Poland gets most in absolute terms, but that’s also because we are way bigger than most EE countries. I find a lot of economic innumerate to fail to understand this point and just repeat “yes but they get THIS MANY BILLIONS”. But without adjusting for economic size is meaningless. Sad to see that you are not smarter than this, Dmitry.
Also, this is counted from the year 2000. The latest EU funds flow constitute about 1% of our GNI according to our central bank. The next one will be half that, even if no change is done, simply on account of a growing economy and a closer realignment to the EU median.
Furthermore, whenever we are talking about EU funds this should be kept in mind:
https://i.imgur.com/YNiPO03.png
People only look at public fund flows, because it gives Western Europeans a moral edge (“see, it’s only thanks to us because of us generous we are!”). In reality, you should count both public and private flows. Once you do that, EE countries are being drained of capital on a net basis.
You can see this in sector after sector. Take retail. A German goes to shop in Aldi, Lidl or Kaufmann. All domestic firms. Poles and Czechs shop at the same stores, with Carrefour thrown into the mix. As you can see from the chart, the most drained country of us all is Czechia. No wonder euroskepticism is high there.
And I haven’t even talked about the fact that Western European countries benefit massively from labour and we lose, in some instances permanently.
Speaking of EU funds.
EU budget revamp set to shift funds to southern states
As can be seen from the chart above, Greece has benefited more than Poland on a total basis since 2000. Their GDP per capita (PPP-adjusted) is also lower than Poland’s. It’s a bottomless pit.
A quote from the article:
That means: take more refugees and accept Soros influence, or else.
Also, the article goes on the misleading nonsense of talking in absolute nominal values, the same mistake Dmitry does. Difference is that Dmitry is just ignorant, these people do it because they count on the fact that most of their readers are innumerate and won’t critically ask “okay, but what about adjusted to GNI as a percentage” or even “what about per capita”. We’re not even in the top 5 on both of these as of now and we’ll get even less after this.
What this means, in effect, is that there will be even fewer motivations to heed what Brussels says, freeing up our hands even more. Not just on migration but even on things like taxing foreign retail (which is almost completely colonised by Western European firms), which has been resulted in autistic screeching from Brussels whenever we broached the subject.
The threat of “what about FDI” is no longer as powerful either. FDI is still needed but far less than 15-20 years ago. Back then even basic FDI was required. Today we can do most stuff ourselves with only specialised FDI needed and you don’t even need EU firms for that. The investments into battery manufacturing supply chain is done by South Korean firms, for instance, in both Poland and Hungary.
Ultimately it had to come to this and better sooner than later.
Followed by…
Major contradictions here; they can’t really be seriously nationalistic if they are selling off real-estate to Arabs and Turks, right? That certainly doesn’t fit together.
Peace.
In Hungary the genius leftist-liberal government in the 1990s privatized most public utilities. So you get your electricity from E.ON, your water supply from Veolia Environnement, etc. Our first conservative government (not yet Fidesz) In 1993 sold our telephone monopoly to Deutsche Telekom. They immediately raised prices and “sold” the Hungarian subsidiary their own obsolete equipment which was due to be replaced in Germany anyway. Now the Hungarian customers paid for it anyway within a couple of years through higher prices, but now we’re paying them permanent dividends. They are now in the broadband internet provider monopoly business (in most areas there’s still very little competition, with either them or UPC, or sometimes some other firm), which could easily be done by a Hungarian owned company. Though at least cell phone service (where DT became also dominant due to its earlier presence in the telephone monopoly, when the mobile business was still insignificant) is the more important part (probably it needs a bigger company as owner due to economies of scale), but even here: I understand we needed foreigners to run the show, and I understand that the Germans are not worse than others, but please don’t turn this into a morality play of how they are supposed to “subsidize” us.
They do have some fabulous old Christian heritage stuff – really, really old churches and what not.
Maybe they can appeal to religious tourists; they must have some places where old saints are buried and stuff.
I know Turkey makes a killing off of people visiting cities Konya to check out the mausoleum and museum of Maulana Rumi (ra):
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hpEYudIBmNs/TF7eg1T744I/AAAAAAAACKg/ucptzaUSxhM/s1600/jalaluddin-rumi-02-500.jpg
Peace.
Though a significant portion of the profit repatriations is now manufacturing. There’s nothing wrong with it: the big German firms like Daimler or Audi (Volkswagen) built huge factories and now repatriate some of the profits. This is mutually beneficial.
What I don’t like so much is retail, telecom, etc., which are basically just windfalls for the foreign owners.
Just because the people selling their country to the highest bidder only care about getting the highest price doesn’t mean ordinary Georgians don’t resent it.
Considering how even in full-pozzed London I’ve heard ordinary people complain about all the foreign oligarchs buying up everything, I don’t find it hard to believe that Georgians might find it painful.
Well each abrahamic variant sets up its own ideal homogenized populace & empire।।
Now that catholic continental Europe finally got whore dom enlightenment infection since 60s EU will come।।
‘Enlightenment’ is the latest & most virulent abrahamic variant.
Which are those? You aren’t talking about the government of Poland, are you? LOL
FDI was 176 Billion in 2016. Polish GDP was 469 Billion.
https://tradingeconomics.com/poland/foreign-direct-investment
https://tradingeconomics.com/poland/gdp
They won’t converge. Domestic natural gas prices in the US will always be substantially below the international levels, because the costs associated with liquefying gas and trasporting it in tankers are immense.
@Felix Keverich
Aren’t they Europeans who have European interests?
If the German government and others can prevent South Stream and get away with it, why shouldn’t the Polish government do the same to NS II?
Ah, I see that GDP was in US Dollar. FDI in Euros. Apples and Oranges. Still, does not change the big picture.
I would guess that Old Europe has a majority share in FDI in Poland because of the unified market. That is probably also a huge incentive for investors from other countries because they can export their products from Poland to Western Europe which has much higher purchasing power.
Thanks for this comment.
Invaluable to have the input of an Armenian on this issue.
Was that a response to my comment?
We seem to have very different views on how EU operates, and in my opinion your views are ridiculous! It’s plain absurd to think that Eastern EU members like Poland can have much impact on EU decisionmaking.
It was Washington’s idea to block South Stream and Nord Stream. The European Comission then succesfully imposed Washington’s will on a little Bulgaria, but has struggled to impose it on Germany thus far. The role of Poland in this story is to act as a cheerleader for US-led action, nothing more. The role of the European Comission is to be an enforcer (comissar) for Washington’s obkom.
This is an oversimplification and Thorfinnsson also wrote “in theory”. Once the infrastructure is built (supertankers and LNG plants), the costs are not so immense. Furthermore, even if export prices were to fall, that infrastructure represents sunken costs which need to be recouped, even if that means operating at a loss.
This was seen with the shale oil industry in the US. Lifting costs, before 2014, were around $80/barrel. But they mostly kept on pumping even with the price at half that because their creditors would rather see $0.50 on the dollar returned than zero. Technology and adjustments down the services chain have reduced costs on shale oil, but they’re still not very far from break even.
US is dominated by its own “Jewish community”, but Washington is an actual power center, a place where political decisions are being made, unlike Brussels, whose main function is to relay and enforce orders from Washington.
Whole point of sunk costs is that they aren’t factored in and should be dismissed. In this case that cost is now irrelevant and if you get a higher return shipping to Europe or Asia than selling domestically then you should.
I find it hard to believe US LNG will ever be cheaper than Rus nat gas, or MENA nat gas, for Europe. Building more LNG facilities makes no sense, unless justified by bogus geopolitical concerns. Reality is a number of EE countries joined NATO even whilst depending on Rus nat gas one hundred percent, and their elites pursue very unfriendly foreign policies regardless of dependency on Rus nat gas.
Yes, that was my point, perhaps I wasn’t being clear.
You and I may find those geopolitical concerns bogus, others take them quite seriously. The Euro currency doesn’t make much economic sense, but geopolitical concerns have managed to hold it together far longer than I thought would be tenable. As for the EE countries joining NATO while being completely dependent on natural gas, human nature seems to suggest that people often think it is feasible to have their cake and eat it too. Russia’s policy of subsidizing former Soviet republics with cheap gas and open markets in exchange for neutral (not even friendly!) foreign policies seemed quite reasonable, yet here we are.
I did think you meant that.
Yes.
Says the guy who denies Europeans agency.
Why are so certain that it was the case?
The German government would not back NS II as much as they did if it would not strengthen Germany’s role as European gas hub.
South Stream did not serve this role and was blocked.
For Poles, it would be beneficially not to reduce Poland’s role as transit country, hence they have a legit reason to oppose NS II which avoids Poland.
It is not always Washington to blame. Europeans countries are perfectly willing to screw each other.
One of the reasons why Americans are so dominant in Europe is that they can take advantage of that.
Irrelevant. I wasn’t making a comment on the commercial viability of LNG exports from the US. I said that the price of this exported gas will always be greater than the price of gas in the US.
To be sure American companies, under certain conditions, will export LNG at a loss. Even then the price of this gas must account for liquefaction and transportation costs.
Simply put:
Price of exported LNG = price of gas on the domestic market + liquefaction and transportation costs
(those include the cost of electricity for the plants, fuel for the tankers, wages – they remain substantial even after infrustructure is build).
^This equation will always hold in a market economy.
It was a stupid policy and Russia deserved to be punished for disregarding the rules of the market economy.
OTOH the Americans were also quite opposed to both Streams. I remember back when in 2008 the then leftist Hungarian PM Gyurcsány had good relations with Putin, and pushed for South Stream, and the Americans were criticizing us for it.
http://tass.com/world/1001285
What next?
It would be pretty strange for Armenians to not like their only guarantor against Azeri designs on their territory, and their only friend in the region apart from Iran.
(Though as Felix correctly points out, not exactly something that would bother Russians, since Armenia benefits from the relationship far more).
But it’s not strange, because you are making things up, as you are regrettably wont to. In reality, Armenia is one of the few countries where Putin is even more popular than in Russia itself.
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/world-map-putin-approval-2015-details.png
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/developing-transition.png
Another factor driving Georgian tourism is that it’s really prestigious among the Moscow yuppie hipster crowd. For instance, one acquaintance of mine – half-Jewish, MacBook toting “creative” person – is going there to get married this weekend. Neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan has this sort of “soft power” among the spending classes.
The Caucasus isn’t anywhere near the top of my to go list (that’s reserved for China, India, and a bunch of Mediterranean and ME places, inc. Israel and Iran). However, if I was to go there, I’d go to Armenia or Azerbaijan before Georgia. Armenia has a more impressive history, while Baku is the biggest city in the region and people say good things about it. Last draw is Georgian cuisine, but I am of the opinion that it’s grossly overrated.
It was 3 million – two years ago.
https://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2528568
By now the figure will be over 3 million, into the customs union.
https://regnum.ru/news/2316978.html
They’ll be lower than the cost of LNG.
They will not be lower than the cost of gas compared to other major producing countries such as Canada, Russia, Qatar, etc.
This has already happened in Australia in fact.
http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/gas-cartel-is-pushing-gas-prices-up-in-australia/news-story/61acc1864d54fb6eb4801c332e683fbd
And it appears that in parts of Australia gas is somehow now more expensive than LNG in Japan.
The United States should strictly limit its gas exports and ban the building of any new thermal fossil fuel electric powerstations in order to keep domestic gas prices as low as possible.
Of course, this will require rounding up atomophobes and herding them into concentration camps. The trout fishermen who don’t understand the concept of “fish ladders” in dams also require reeducation. But these things are already 100% necessary.
Coal should continue to be used at existing powerstations for economic reasons, but no new ones should be constructed. Export infrastructure to deliver coal to Asia must be built. Currently this is being held up by environmentalist criminals in Washington state for “water use” reasons. These people need to be rounded up and shot.
“OTOH”? This isn’t really up to a debate. The only side who is interested in stopping these pipelines is the US. The European Comission is simply following orders from the US.
There are over 3 million Armenians at any time in Russia –
Known to you, but not to Russian census enumerators.
There’s nothing ignorant in noting that Poland has received more of the aid than any of the countries.
You can interpret this how you like, or complain that it still hasn’t received the most in per capita terms. The country/economy has the received most, and the numbers are amazing.
But if Ukraine thinks they can repeat the story in the future, it is going to be heavily disappointed.
Why?
Legacy of its cuisine reputation in the USSR?
Saakashvili?
Georgia to me is another irrelevant joke. Of course I’m not Russian.
You forgot about Iran. Iran has massive natural gas production, but can’t export due to sanctions, so gas in Iran is practically free. You want America to be more like Iran?
Obviously, allowing more exports will raise the prices on the domestic market. But I can guarantee they will still be much lower than prices in SE Asia, where US will export.
So Sargsyan resigned his post as PM. Perhaps Avery could comment on what to expect next?
I’m not sure how to read the graph – i.e. I’m not sure what is the y axis showing?
About the general economic situation.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2018/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=15&pr.y=6&sy=1999&ey=2016&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=911%2C912%2C922%2C915%2C186%2C926&s=NGDPD%2CPPPGDP%2CNGDPDPC%2CPPPPC%2CLP%2CGGXWDG_NGDP&grp=0&a=
I looked at the countries in the IMF database – I’m not sure how negatively to interpret their situation overall? I think of all the economies, it is the one I would like the least after Ukraine (the three – Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine – with negative population growth).
I suspect that the Parliament will appoint Karen Karapetyan as PM.
There are other major gas producers besides the one I listed, yes, and not just Iran.
The USA unlike Iran has no barriers to global trade (other than idiotic self-imposed ones thanks to our sanctions love affair), and we are a much more developed country with a much better business climate.
The shale boom has led to a renaissance in the US chemicals industry, which previously had been migrating offshore for decades in pursuit of lower input costs.
I’m not able to find it now, but a few years ago the CEO of Dow Chemicals wrote an essay decrying the rush to export surplus gas. He produced a list of $100 billion worth of capital investment being made in America owing to low gas prices. Other corporate executives denounced him for “protectionism” since our business class has largely gotten high on its own supply.
My general position is that with the exception of labor costs it should be government policy to keep input costs as low as possible (without resorting to subsidies of course) in order to gain a competitive edge against rival foreign countries. We’re not any better at engineering or management than Western Europe or Japan, but we do have bountiful natural resources unlike them.
It’s okay to export surplus raw materials within reason, but you never want to do so when the opportunity cost results in foreign industries adding value instead of your own industries. Mercantilism 101.
It’s not enough to have lower gas prices than gas importing countries. Gas prices must be competitive with other major gas producing countries where modern industrial plants can be constructed.
Give the CSA a chance, brother.
https://d1u5p3l4wpay3k.cloudfront.net/alphacentauri_en/b/bd/AC_Fac_Ldr_002.png
The census will only track a fraction of emigrants/workers. You can see above that officials are not using it when estimating for this question.
Maybe some Russians are making pilgrimages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin_Museum,_Gori
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stalin%C5%AFv_rodn%C3%BD_d%C5%AFm.JPG
What is interesting about that map is how the world community thinks about things vs the “world community” (i.e. all the puppets of the US that the media declares to be the world).
With India and China you already have a big chunk of the world population, assuming that the rest of Africa leans like Nigeria and Congo, then you have the bulk of world actually being pro and not anti, contradicting the narrative of the cuckservative and SJW media.
Sure – I feel the same. I’m much more excited to think about visiting places like Cuba or Argentina. But Tbilisi or Baku are a cheap ‘weekend’, it is not comparable to more expensive holidays.
Iran will be interesting with the visa-restriction going to be removed soon – but presumably the kind of place it would be easier to visit in a tour-group.
Correct, though only true for the sovok generation.
Georgian restaurants in the USSR played the role of French restaurants in the US, as the elite place to go to place for status signalling purposes. Only French cuisine really is world class, whereas Georgian cuisine isn’t (same for the wines). Now that there are mid-range Georgian establishments, the older Soviet people like to frequent them, since they continue to regard them as prestigious, even though there are no end of much cheaper (and better) restaurants and eateries.
For the Moscow yuppies I think it’s more about Georgia’s (admittedly not entirely fictive) success at larping as a “European” country. This allows them to status signal how European and progressive they are.
I’ve never have been. But you can see the popularity for people.
Relatively cheap flight – and you end up in an exotic (but easy to navigate culturally/linguistically) destination, with colourful local people/traditions.
Everything is also cheap and you can eat Georgian cuisine a lot more cheaply than in restaurants outside Georgia.
As Karlin says – they are also clever at viral marketing themselves to kind of hipster, middle class tastes
OK – makes sense – it’s much of the same everywhere; the elite sell out the locals to the highest bidder.
Peace.
It’s a good hypothesis – but I’m not sure that can be true for people who actually like their holiday in Georgia though.
People I know was there, say that they like it because how cheap, primitive and ‘crazy’ the atmosphere is – the kind of same reason people talk about countries like India or Mexico.
The kind of tourists who like clean, European destinations – it’s a slightly different taste, although sure there’s plenty who like both (both primitive and sophisticated destinations, but it’s difficult to confuse them).
I like both kind of destinations but I would not confuse them.
I like the developed and posh places like Cambridge and Oxford and Salzburg. But also like undeveloped looking places like Israel. But although Israel is economically rich and allied with Western powers, you could never confuse it on the ground with a Western country. Israel is very primitive, Middle Eastern, chaotic, undeveloped atmosphere country. On the ground, surely much more similar to Tehran (not that I have been there), than to New York .
The way a country allies is not so much reflected in the experience a tourist has. For example, in Moscow, you get a much more ‘Western European’ style experience than you would get in (say) Mexico City.
And the kind of energy you get in Georgia will surely be quite an opposite, of what you get in the actual West.
This is all very plausible.
There’s been occasional stories in the media about Jewish repats who went back to Russia (i.e. Moscow) because Israel was too provincial for the tastes they’d developed.
In other news, it seems I was broadly correct (despite my lack of knowledge of Armenian political specifics as Avery pointed out).
Sargsyan has resigned, but there has been no wave of anti-Russian sentiment to go with it.
Instead of hanging on to unpopular foreign leaders, Russia has maintained neutrality over what is an internal Armenian political squabble: https://www.facebook.com/maria.zakharova.167/posts/10216573046828327
(Before anyone rushes in to make the Ukraine comparison, that wasn’t really a choice in 2013-14, because the Maidan was explicitly anti-Russian from the start. Unlike the Ukraine, Armenia really does need Russia).
I’ve read this viewpoint (I think in Bloomberg article).
But a lot of industry can be made more competitive through productivity gains and investment in capital. Not from having cheaper energy costs.
If you can compare it to farming for example. America did not become the world’s largest food exporter, by ‘lowering the costs of water and soil’.
It came from the investment in capital/technology.
That and very favorable geography which includes cheap water and soil.
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/usa_great.jpg
Yes compared to Moscow, it is surely very culturally provincial, in every sense.
But the chaotic, primitive Middle Eastern, atmosphere is a different issue entirely (some people instantly fall in love with chaotic Middle Eastern atmospheres, some people hate it).
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3591450
As for Georgia. I haven’t been to the region. But the atmosphere surely something similar there. And plenty of tourists are falling in love with these more chaotic atmospheres. But I don’t think they will confuse it with the West.
Sure, and I’ve long maintained that human capital trumps natural capital.
And generally machinery (if we could somehow separate it from the kn0w-how needed to operate) trumps natural capital.
But there’s no reason to ignore the role of natural capital. The choice between processing natural gas into higher value-added products like chemicals, fertilizer, steel, fiberglas, etc. vs. simply exporting it makes it clear the former is more valuable.
Keeping input costs low (without subsidies) is a form of low-hanging fruit. Capital and know-how on the other hand take more time to build up.
And while the investment into know-how, farm machinery, improved genetics, etc. are obviously very important for why America is the world’s largest food exporter, it should also be noted that we have more arable land than any other country in the world. #2 and #3 in arable land area are India and China, who for obvious reasons can’t export as much food as us. #4 is Russia who with its smaller population perhaps will one day export as much as us (already has surpassed us in wheat exports).
Even here my thinking is relevant. The #1 cash crop in America is corn (maize). A huge fraction of this is wastefully turned into sugar and fuel substitutes. In the absence of our bullshit ethanol and HFCS industries, we would export far more food.
If you want a real investment story for agricultural success look to the world’s second agro-exporter…which amazingly is the tiny country of the Netherlands.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/
The Glendale-Burbank-LA Area, quite often.
You will surely be right that having lowers cost of inputs – should improve competitiveness of industries that use them.
But to go back to the gas discussion, why is keeping the domestic gas price lower (and thereby subsidizing some industries), preferable to exporting more of gas as LNG, and directly managing to ‘cash in’.
I guess the answer would require study comparing the two situations.
But there seems no intrinsic reason why the former is better.
And the latter would seem preferable to me, because the result of lower gas prices in America (combined with export restrictions of LNG or I’m not sure what you propose), will be lower gas production other things equal.
Seems right. I have met two Armenians who were born and raised in Moscow, one now settled in Glendale CA and the other in Burbank CA.
I’d guess there are as many Armenians in the USA as in Yerevan (a million), with at least 250-300,000 of those in Glendale-LA Area alone (LA and cities bordering LA to the north such as Burbank, Montrose, and La Crescenta).
Yes. A prescient warning about the folly of Turkish EU membership.
Austria would be the first to go not only Muslim but simply Turkish. Turks by the millions would flock to Austria and Germany to join their large kin networks that are already in place. Already Austria, with its tiny population and consistently low fertility rate, was on the road to drastic demographic and cultural change in the near future. Beautiful Vienna will be a more savage, intolerant place ruled by sharia:
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4229/austria-muslims-vienna-schools
That column was written four years ago. The population numbers are slightly worse now.
What did all those brave men suffer and die for at the gates of Vienna in the 1600s and centuries before?
What did all those brave Roman men suffer and die for at the gates of Anatolia in the 900s and centuries before?
China gets around 100-120 billion USD per year in FDI. Who knew that Poland gets 50% more than China with less than 1/20th the population?
Please, learn basic math first before opining. Your basic common sense should have kicked in long ago when you even typed that comment.
Low domestic gas prices are only a problem if it results in production dropping below domestic demand, with demand substituted by imports.
Obviously this will not happen since the imports themselves would be LNG, excluding Canadian imports which are benign (and Canada doesn’t have enough reserves to replace American producers in bulk).
Increased gas production to satisfy export demand will simply result in us running out of gas reserves sooner at the expensive of a smaller heavy industrial production base.
In the long-term I’m also skeptical of the viability of LNG in any case. With the development of OBOR and Russia’s own efforts it’s inevitable that FSU and Persian Gulf gas will be delivered to East Asia by pipeline.
It’s also worth pointing out that according to the US Energy Information Agency that China presently has the world’s largest reserves of technically recoverable shale gas. Exploitation is a problem owing to distance from water resources and a lack of technological expertise.
These are surmountable problems as proven by America’s fracking industry. Both the Eagle Ford and Bakken formations are in dry areas not very close to fresh water, and the fracking industry didn’t even exist at the turn of the century. Dick Cheney promoted invading Iraq because his energy working group predicted that by this time America would be importing 90% of its oil consumption.
Meanwhile larger and more competitive industries in chemicals, steel, fertilizer, plastics, cement, etc. add more final value and represent a greater overall level of product complexity and technical efficiency. As most of these products are themselves intermediate input goods they’ll increase the competitiveness of our final goods industries as well.
Another possible use of our gas supremacy is in our world class freight railroad system. Currently this system is diesel-based. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad (a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary) is currently experimenting with gas-powered locomotives.
There’s a significant difference between taking in selective FDI in key industries and outright letting “foreigners run the show”. East Asia and especially China did the former. Are you sure you are a nationalist?
My argument is much simpler. The West gains more from the East once you consider all three factors: public funds, private funds and labour movement. In the debate, we only hear about the first. We never hear about the last two.
Therefore, the solution I prefer is clean and simple: we stop receiving public funds(literal pay-off money) and they stop getting free labour+monopolistic access to our domestic market. Don’t forget that 75% of our EU funds are re-invested in Western European companies.
The thing is, the West knows this. Günther Öttinger, who is in charge of cohesion funds has all but admitted this. There’s a quote I’m too lazy to google where he says in half-jest that if anything the EU should pay EE countries more. But instead of that, my preferred option would achieve a far cleaner break. However, the West would also never agree to it, precisely because they know the real scorecard, which is why their threats of cutting EU funds during the asylum crisis was always a hoax.
It’s interesting, but perhaps not surprising, that Eastern Europeans like yourself have completely and whoolly swallowed the “you should be grateful” meme, while warning about “morality tales” when you aren’t advocating for your own colonisation of “letting foreigners running the show”.
The guy named himself after Frederic Bastiat, what do you expect?
Bastiat is the same genius who proposed that France should unilaterally disarm, and that this good example would inspire Prussia to disarm.
Louis Napoleon thought otherwise and wished to expand the French Army to a million men, but his liberal ministers were more inclined to agree with Bastiat’s thinking though they didn’t go as far as unilateral disarmament.
Woops…
I wish more Frenchmen were like him…
Europe would be a better place.
This is exactly my thinking. I’ve always thought it made exactly zero sense to export raw materials or fossil fuels in the long run. There might be short term reasons for that, but exporters should aim to move away from that and instead add value.
An example could be Emirates or Qatar Airways. By taking advantage of their fortunate geographic location and the low fuel prices resulting from their hydrocarbon reserves they are selling a service with much higher added value than just exporting oil.
Eurostat is out with numbers on book reading. Curious trivia.
https://jodi.graphics/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/People-reading-books.png
France looks curiously low. And share is not the same as time spent. Here’s that:
https://jodi.graphics/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Time-spent-reading-books.png
So France continues to underperform. Very strange. Finally a map:
https://jodi.graphics/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Share-of-people-reading-books-2016-Eurostat-Jo-Di-graphics_.png
Unfortunately the mapmaker is retarded. It isn’t the “share of people” but “time spent” that is being highlighted. I was positively surprised by Greece and to some extent even Turkey. Outside of France I’d say the biggest negative outlier is Austria.
https://jodi.graphics/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Expenditure-on-books.png
Though if you look at expenditure on newspapers, books etc, both the French and the Austrians do decently well. Maybe they just buy more expensive books which are more intellectual but read less? Or maybe their newspapers are high-brow enough that less of book-reading is needed.
I’d be interested in the quality of books rather than just time spent on books. Someone reading Harry Potter, 50 shades of grey and a ton of chick-lit isn’t on the same level as someone reading a few major intellectual tomes per year. But I guess that would be too “elitist”, or maybe hard to measure.
It rather depends on the quantity of raw materials available vs. the real and potential domestic demand.
Dubai for instance has far fewer reserves than Abu Dhabi, which is why they went for major diversification.
Admittedly Emirates (as well as Etihad and Qatar Airways) could get into trouble in the future as a result of the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350. But if they do they had a good run, and Dubai’s value as an entrepot remains.
But yes, the classical mercantilist formula is to reduce the cost of raw materials and increase the amount of value added by your own industry. There were some flaws in the formula of course such as the obsessive focus on the accumulation of bullion, and while “comparative advantage” is complete nonsense there are still advantages in less managed trade.
“the old members who drain the human and natural resources of the new members”
Most British working people experience the drain on themselves, through lower wages, increased crime and worse public services. British employers, on the other hand, love the fact that they consider $10 an hour a great wage.
The vast majority of the 3.5 million foreign workers in the UK are doing low-paid jobs, and paying little tax (for the others, see my next paragraph). One Polish child at a UK primary school costs about £6,000 a year, paid from taxes, while the tax paid by a minimum wage worker is about £880, so you need the tax from seven workers just for one child’s primary education.
Male real median wages in the UK are lower now than in 1997.
“the education of all the specialists who go to work in Western Europe costs billions of dollars more than the funds we received, and that education was paid with our taxes”
You have a point there. My sister’s dentist surgery has dentists from Portugal, Bulgaria and Romania.
My mistake. The figure I cited was probably FDI stock. FDI net inflows are much lower, of course. Actual figure is 16 billion.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.KLT.DINV.CD.WD?locations=PL
I stay corrected.
You mean they’ll find them once you’ve told them where to look.
I used it in the context of cell phone providers, where at least two decades ago there could have been some need for economies of scale. I’m not wholly sure.
In general I think my comment wasn’t clear enough, I mostly agreed with you. E.g. the “morality tale” referred to the supposed western “subsidies” which we lazy Easterners supposedly receive.
Anyway, now there are some points you made which I actually disagree with.
It’s impossible. Our educated elites (and even the not so educated unwashed masses) actively want the ability to choose to go to work in Western Europe. Short of Eastern Bloc style border fences and criminalization of emigration, how can you prevent the West (actually, the western elites) from taking advantage of your labor force?
And short of capital controls and full scale nationalization, how can you prevent the profit repatriations?
So the EU funds will be cut, unless the V4 can somehow show some force, but it’s unclear how. Cutting those funds is actually popular in Germany, I’m sure.
France is no longer a European country.
Georgian restaurants in the USSR played the role of French restaurants in the US, as the elite place to go to place for status signalling purposes.
They did? I can’t recall a single one in my home town, where live 600,000 people and (at one time) the world headquarters of several major corporations.
Only French cuisine really is world class, w
“World class”? What does that even mean? Are you referring to quality, snob appeal, or something else?
how smart are Armenians?
Armenia blows but all the Armenians in the diaspora are geniuses. And you can’t just say that all the smart Armenians left because Armenia does well in all the chess olympiads and kicked the shit out of the much bigger Azjerkoffistan or whatever it’s called in their war.
The Census Bureau has it that there are 63,000 Armenian-born people in the 4 counties around LA. Not bad for a circumscribed area, but not a horde either.
You can’t stop braindrain. On that we agree. But you certainly can stop the great masses. We certainly didn’t see the kind of flood we saw post-2004 before and that is entirely by design.
Capital controls may not be a hugely bad thing. China still maintain them. It’s important here to distinguish between FPI (foreign portfolio investments) and FDI. It’s the latter which you want, and even then I’d say that only some types of FDI is actually beneficial, and only if it is directed towards genuine productive and technological capacity. As for full scale nationalisation, it isn’t feasible today nor would it even be preferable even if it was.
I don’t think the state should be running retail stores. I do think that we have enough domestic firms to do a good job today. Given that we can’t wrest control out of foreign ownership hands, we can at least tax them appropriately given their massively monopolistic position. However this has been blocked by Brussels at every turn. In an environment where modest EU funds get cut even more, I don’t see why we should restrain ourselves despite massive Brussels screeching on this.
On an annual basis, Germany contributes around 0.1% of GNI. It’s a rounding-error. I don’t think the general public actually cares much, and I also don’t think the general public which cares even understands how little Germany pays.
That said, none of this changes my stated position: the best outcome would not only be cutting EU funds but completely eliminating them – in exchange for ending Schengen and ending monopolistic market dominance. The latter two will never be accepted by the West because those are the two areas where they are draining the Eastern part of Europe. This is also why we never hear about them in the debate, because it doesn’t the fit the narrative of “we’re subsiding the poor EEs”.
The best outcome is rarely the most realistic outcome, but I honestly think less EU funds will be good for us in the long term. At any rate, the current EU funds is about 1% of GNI according to our central bank and it has halved for each funding cycle. This is what successful convergence is supposed to mean. So us losing EU funds will not be a huge blow at any rate and it will free up political capital to go after areas which causes a lot of butthurt in Brussels in the economic sphere. It will also make us even more immune to blackmail on 3rd world quotas.
Walmart is said close to $12 billion-plus deal for Flipkart
Why should you care? Because if this deal goes through, a major Indian giant in the making will be snuffed out. We need more competition among the tech giants away from the US-controlled dogma.
I had earlier speculated about the far more Westernised Indian elites and how that plays badly into a divergence path – as compared to Chinese elites who are far more rooted in their own country. If you look at India’s digital landscape, virtually nothing is different from a typical Western country in terms of what tech they use.
The irony here is that Snapdeal(an also-ran) and Flipkart were both loudly talking about imposing capital rules which would have meant that foreign investors can invest but they can’t get controlling interest. Something similar was mulled in China after Naspers got a big stake in several Chinese companies, but those companies remained in Chinese hands even with a lot of foreign capital. This may now not happen in India.
The NDA – the ruling Indian coalition with the BJP as its head – exposed the lie of them being any different than the Congress – the previous rulers, who are dynastic in Indian politics – when it refused these proposed rules.
I actually read the BJP 2014 manifesto all those years ago and was excited when they mentioned a break with Western dogma. Sadly it was all fluff. They have maintained a neoliberal line and they don’t seem to understand the importance of your own domestic tech sector. India is one of the very few countries which can pull it off. I’ve argued before that in order to get Big Tech you need a Big Market first.
So India is throwing this away, if the deal is completed. This on the heels of Indian elites embracing SJW trends like feminism with gusto in a way that doesn’t appear to be happening in China to even nearly the same extent. Of course, Polish elites are of low quality, but our excuse is that given our precarious position and our far smaller economy, it was inevitable that we were going to end up in someone’s orbit. India is big enough to chart its own course far more independently but the tragedy is that it seems completely unwilling or even incapable of doing that.
So only China will truly challenge the US dominance in all fields. India seems intent on playing the supplicant. Russia is the only other major country which stands up to the US and for that it needs our thanks, especially in foreign policy. If even the Indian “nationalists” won’t do this, there’s no hope for the opposition. Then again, the Congress has actually run a more independent foreign policy than the BJP, interestingly enough. Especially when it comes to regime change etc.
You are correct, but the chart doesn’t show that. It’s quite misleading.
In only compares the net inflow of EU transfers to the net outflow of capital income.
Other inflows include:
• FDI (FDI into Poland for 2016 was around 3% of GDP it appears–more than EU transfers)
• Exports
• Foreign portfolio investment (i.e. investment into a business short of direct control, as well as bond purchases)
• Bank lending
• Repatriated foreign earnings and debt repayments
Other outflows include:
• Outbound FDI
• Imports
• Outbound foreign portfolio investment
• Outbound bank lending
• Foreign aid
In theory the capital (FDI, portfolio investment, lending) and current accounts (trade, debt service, repatriated earnings) must always balance, though in reality this isn’t always true (see the Eurodollar market for instance).
Depending on what EU funds are actually used for they could represent a very good deal in that EU funds do not represent FDI, portfolio investment, or lending and thus involve no obligation to service foreign debt or send capital income to foreign investors. Knowing the EU I doubt the funds are used for anything useful but you would know better.
In general outside of East Asia fast-growing and/or converging economies run current account deficits in order to grow faster. Norway for instance ran a current account deficit of 13% of GDP while it was getting its North Sea oil industry off the ground.
If you want to avoid that you have to suppress consumption and increase domestic saving, hence the famously high household savings rate in China (and Japan until recently). Or you accept slower growth. Inbound FDI also makes it easier to acquire foreign technology and know-how.
A good way to split the difference is through joint ventures and forced technology transfers.
Sure, but ALDI, Lidl, Kaufmann, and Carrefour doubtless have higher productivity and better merchandising skills than anything that existed in the Visegrad 4 or could’ve come to the fore in the post-communist period.
As a result Visegrad people exchange lost profits for lower prices, better quality, and improved product selection.
Of course you can argue that efficient retailers would’ve developed anyway, but this surely would’ve taken more time.
The real question is whether the Visegrad 4 can create successful multinational corporations or if they will forever be comprador economies controlled by the German 1%. There are worse fates than that incidentally. Australia and Canada have been a comprador economies from day one for instance.
China (and Asia in general) are going to be severely water-stressed over the next few decades.
I doubt most Poles would be keen to ditch the opportunity of making German wages out of some sort of nationalistic amour propre.
And all those waterways connecting to the world ocean. Almost free transport.
Outside of a few ritzy neighborhoods which would have been out of reach of the ordinary locals going back decades, foreign oligarchs have not been buying that much property in London. Low interest rates are the primary reason prices have skyrocketed.
The young quite like the prospect of being able to work, travel, study and live without restriction in a polity of half a billion people. How they live their lives and spend their time predisposes them to favour the EU.
Russia is not irked by the resignation. Declarations indicate indifference toward the unrest.
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/moscow-reacts-to-resignation-of-armenian-prime-minister-sargsyan-61243
“So that a man’s right to publicly dress up as a fruity Roman soldier shall not perish from this Earth!”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/4549794-3×2-940×627.jpg
If it weren’t for those darned Turks, it would be happening in Constantinople too!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/7545282-3×2-940×627.jpg
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-27/turkish-anti-riot-police-officers-disperse-lgbt-community/7545284
“So that the poz shall perish from the Earth!”
Peace.
Might be able to compile this from an index of sales stats based on popular, widely-translated science, history, etc. books (though I imagine Eastern Europe will be a bit underweighed due to widespread piracy).
Well that’s what I hear from people there. Although, you are right that the perception and actual cause of the problem are not necessarily the same.
http://beta.nydailynews.com/news/world/ten-people-dead-15-wounded-van-plows-crowd-toronto-article-1.3950187
In related news, another 10 people are killed with truck in Toronto, and the alleged perpetrator is Armenian. At the same time color revolution is going on in Armenia, is it mere coincidence?
What does the local Conspiracy Command thinks?
No, that’s not the ambition of the census. As you can see the officials, estimate over 3 million Armenians in Russia.
It’s more that Americans are incredibly stupid on average – so that any foreigner who arrives there will seem like a genius.
OT
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-23/70-taiwanese-willing-fight-china
I’d be interested in Daniel Chiah’s comments.
Different topic:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-23/us-centcom-chief-makes-secret-and-unprecedented-visit-israel-russia-mulls-arming
Even though the Americans seem to be clinging to the claim that not a single missile was shot down by Syrian air defense (maybe it’s just weaseling, because they think it was the Russian air defense which took them down…), both they and the Israelis seem to be terrified of the prospect of having the most modern Russian air defense systems installed in Syria.
Well, they didn’t let the masses in. Now that they are letting them in, how can you prevent them from leaving? It’s up to the Western Europeans to stop the flows, and they won’t be doing that. (Maybe the UK.)
German_reader might correct me if he wishes so, but I think most people’s impression is that they are paying a lot while there are still poor people inside of Germany (even many poor Germans), and the other thing is that they are net contributing something closer to maybe 0.5% of GNI.
And of course perceptions matter a great deal: if people think that they are paying a lot, then cutting those contributions will be popular, no matter what. I can assure you their media won’t do anything to correct their perceptions. Those unwilling to pay will now have virtue signaling on their side. “See, we’d like to pay, but not to those racist dictatorships unwilling to adhere to our European values…” Where “our European values” stand for “accepting anyone to Europe, except those unwilling to accept anyone to Europe.”
No. But their introduction would induce a huge panic among our populations. It’d be difficult. Most people associate the end of capital controls with the end of communism. One of the negative effects of communism (the positive effect being protecting us from western poz) is that they inoculated us against the idea that the West could be rotting while we’re developing into a happier, nicer future. Because, umm, that’s what the communists used to say, and how’d that turned out?
You might even close the borders if everyone agreed with us, but even relatively based people (the redneck/vatnik types) are just following their instincts, and I don’t think that, if there will be a bank panic among rich people while the government is introducing capital controls and strict border controls and getting into a huge political conflict with the West, then their instincts will tell them to just stay calm. And let’s face it, our intellectual classes are hugely pozzed.
Daniel Chieh, sorry, I think it’s the second time I’m committing the typo.
With the S-300 for Syria, Russia has again put itself in a difficult position — if it doesn’t in the end give them to Syria, it’s going to look like it folded to US/Israeli pressure (and it will certainly be perceived by the latter 2 countries as the case).
They shouldn’t have announced it in advance.
I wonder if the recent softening of sanctions (Rusal sanctions to be lifted if Deripaska sells it) has anything to do with it.
There was also some European pressure – Rusal sanctions will have major impacts on jobs in some European countries – but not sure this would play much of a role in US calculations.
Russia should tell the Americans privately that they will sell S-400 to Iran in response to any new sanctions. I know the Russians don’t trust or like Iran (and the feelings are mutual…), but I think it’d be an even more effective deterrent.
OT
The incorruptibility of the British governing class is legendary.
https://www.ft.com/content/b558418a-43ee-11e8-803a-295c97e6fd0b
David Cameron is now working for the Chinese, and took the job just weeks after he was talking about China to the UK chancellor. He’s the British Schröder. Or the British Blair. Oops…
As they say, Beethoven was the Mozart of music!
He supposedly was an incel who worshipped “supreme gentleman” Elliott Rodger and wanted to kill “normies”. So probably just coincidence.
Did you reply to your own post just to say that?
Also please to link to FT unless you know of a way of bypassing their paywall and are willing to share.
More polls.
https://jodi.graphics/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Generally-speaking-most-people-in-your-country-can-be-trusted-of-_Agree_-answers-Eurobarometer-471-April-2018.png
http://www.archive.is
Reading between the lines of today’s news, I get the impression the actual reason for the years of delay has been that Syria cannot pay the $1 billion pricetag.
Because the news Kommersant is claiming today, is that they now plan to give it to Syria “for free”.
But what will happen if the $1 billion free present will be bombed by Israel, with some airstrike at night, in about two years. I can predict this will happen – and at the same time the Kremlin would have to seem to respond for the destruction of $1 billion system (but with few options – economic sanctions on Israel? Closing down the Israeli cultural center in Moscow?).
I don’t have a subscription any longer, I just clicked on a link shared by someone, and copied the URL from the browser. But this was the exact link I clicked on:
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2Fb558418a-43ee-11e8-803a-295c97e6fd0b&h=ATNqFaTvojN5xgzEvSTs-mB3p0TdAyPc8KYBMzSuuS4rtSMmhi22c88oiiTfMsQTa6BHLPuBvJrcpmdMepiiTkgxk6ho7TYNnjHxiUEBj5iqLXBJog
Edit: it doesn’t work from here.
They can bomb it before it’s installed. It’s highly mobile, so difficult to destroy.
I just wanted to say how much I enjoy your comments on here, always a good read.
“The young” means the endless hordes of Sub Saharan Africans, as they are the true youth demographic of the world. The few remaining young whites left in Europe will not like that very much.
I agree that this is not going to amount to much as stated it is likely a parting blow from Soros etc. The majority of Hungarians support Orban and the 2nd biggest party Jobbik is also Nationalist.
I’d guess Israel would bomb it after it’s installed, in about two years, at night, at a time when the tensions are low.
Israel has surveillance over Syria. On Mount Hermon, you can see a large complexes, with radar dishes pointed to Damascus. They put so much investment and bases up on the mountain, just to read Syrian electronic mail and listen to their telephone calls (well it makes sense after a surprise attack in 1973).
I doubt Syria has the OPSEC to hide the positions where they move the missiles between for long.
The thing is, Kremlin cannot allow this to happen without retaliation, if it is a $1 billion (or $900 million) free gift.
There would have to be shown some kind of retaliation against Israel.
I would predict the kind of option would be something bizarre seeming, like to close the Israeli cultural centers in Russia. (If you know the history, these centers were closed down for a while, and only allowed to re-open after years of negotiation, something like 2011.) Also it would kind of match the idea of money wasted on both sides. Although the damage would be on some innocent teenagers who are the only people who use the centers.
Alternatively, there could be some economic sanctions on Israel. This said, the idea of restricting tourism to Israel would anger pilgrims. Russia supplies oil to Israel, but this is substitutable, unlike gas which requires pipelines.
It will be similar to the situation after Turkey shoots down the Su-24 in 2015.
The irony is that if Syria would pay for the S-300, then it wouldn’t matter if it was destroyed (probably this is another incentive to Syria, not to pay for the complex, since it means that there will be much more feeling of protection for them if it is a free gift).
I assume then that you don’t think much of Armenians, but what is the general feeling towards them in Russia?
I doubt it will come to that. The Israelis, unlike the Americans, seem to have a good sense of how to deal with the Russians. They’ll strike some backroom agreement that the S-300 won’t be used against their aircraft so that they can continue to bomb Syria wantonly. Officially, the S-300 is being discussed as a response to the FUKUS attack, and so it can be explicitly targeted at repelling namely such attacks in the future. Israel made a lot of noise about the S-300 sale to Iran, but it went ahead anyway and they haven’t attempted to destroy it as far as I know.
Look at America to Mexican immigrants. Probably the mainstream American society is very tolerant of Mexican immigrants and has warm feelings for Mexico.
But there are some racists who are not. Or (a larger group) people who are not racist – and who like Mexicans in Mexico – but are not fans of seeing too many immigrating to America.
What ‘officials’? Is ‘officials’ your new name?
It’s more that Americans are incredibly stupid on average – so that any foreigner who arrives there will seem like a genius.
And, yet, we incredibly stupid people outproduce our Eurotrash detractors, year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation.
Israel tries to act quite friendly to Russia. And there is some measure of genuineness, because of their periphery diplomacy and because they can’t escape their cultural part-ancestors (I’m amused by things like how all the country names in Hebrew are just direct translations of Russian with a difference suffix); or the fact half the tourists in Israel are Russian.
But if Israel thinks it can be allowed to blow up something, they will do it. It’s not like they really care about what Russia thinks (about ten times less than they care about what America thinks), unless there is some obvious red-line established between the countries, or boundaries made clear. I’m not sure there is (in post-Soviet era) any precedent of them not blowing up something because of they were told not to by Russia.
So if S-300 transfers for free (as Kommersant is saying it might), I imagine Israel destroying the equipment in a couple of years, and then an international diplomatic incident between Israel and Russia.
People like aide to the President of Russian Federation.
These economies were economic colonies of other English-speaking countries from day one.
It’s one of the great social/economic mysteries.
America is the world’s most successful country. The leader in all kinds of areas – even of human knowledge.
Yet if you look at American things like the GRE – you would be shocked at the stupidity of the population.
The GRE maths component is something any non-lead poisoned or fetal alcohol syndrome suffering, 16 year old should score 90-100% on, with a few weeks of classes or exam specific training, And the ‘verbal’ portion, is easy even for non-English natives (how on earth are these even questions for native speakers of English?).
And yet, – they use the GRE to examine 21 year old Americans, for post-graduate education.
No country for young white men
http://abload.de/img/dbpc3nnwaaebh7hq7s2g.jpg
The Israelis didn’t retaliate more strongly for their downed F-16 because Putin called Netanyahu and told him to knock it off. There seem to be very well established red lines between Israel and Russia, which allow them to both operate in theater, against each others’ proxies, without creating public diplomatic incidents. Russia and Israel both tend to disregard what others think in favor of results on the ground.
Well, it would be a more GERMAN place 😉
Depressing picture, sadly symbolic of Germany today.
Surely it’s more, and I’m counting Armenian-Americans. Easily four to five times that number.
There are probably more than 100,000 Armenians and Armenian-Americans in the city of Glendale alone (more than 40% of its population, I think).
Also thousands of Armenians in montrose and again la crescenta.
Or do I spend too much time in Glendale? 😉
Seven Dutch arrested in Prague for assaulting waiter
What the story doesn’t mention is the ethnicity of the “Dutch”. You can take a wild guess who they really are. A lot of Dutch redditors pointed this out on the /r/Europe thread and got banned as a result.
This on the heels of a gangrape in Prague a few weeks ago of an Irish tourist. They were also EU nationals, but not ethnically European. “French” I believe. Similar ethnicity as these gutter trash.
I talked earlier in this thread about closing down Schengen for economic reasons but we might as well add cultural/social reasons into that mix.
Many Western European countries’ populations under the age of 25 is not very European anymore. The best outcome would be to have a partial Schengen. Ethnic Europeans can visit and non-Europeans need a permit/visa, but that would never be acceptable in Western Europe for obvious political/social reasons.
Moroccans?
Though I am not a Christian, this caught my eye:
German state orders crosses mounted at government buildings
Bavaria has a state election in October of this year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_state_election,_2018#Opinion_polling
CSU has a steady lead of 25-30 percentage points. So I don’t see why the alarmism. Are they afraid of losing an outright majority? Isn’t voting in Germany strictly proportional?
At any rate, SPD and Grüne both trade blows with AfD at 12-13%. I would certainly love to see AfD storm to power in such a powerhouse state like Bavaria, but I wouldn’t mind CSU be reduced to such a level that they had to resort to teaming up with AfD to stay in power. Ultimately, AfD cannot seize power on its own, it has to work through coalitions. Maybe change can start at the state level and only then up to the national level.
What the Dutch redditors were saying were North Africans and Arabs, so nothing as specific as you were, but given the size of the moroccan diaspora in the NL, the odds are strongly in favor of your guess being true.
Yes, pretty much that. The CSU’s special status is built on their domination of Bavaria and regularly getting absolute majorities there…if they lose that on a permanent basis, it will be very bad for them and might start their descent into oblivion.
Personally I don’t see any chance of them entering into a coalition with AfD…it’s more likely there’ll be a CSU-SPD or a CSU-Greens coalition.
The bit about crosses in public buildings…that’s just useless symbolic politics which the CSU is very fond of. They make some noise about how “Islam doesn’t belong to Germany”, but are completely unwilling or unable to take the necessary measures to prevent further Islamization (one has to remember: the CSU leadership is completely ok with 200 000 new “refugees” a year coming to Germany…that’s merely national suicide at a somewhat slower pace, not a real alternative). It’s meaningless theatre.
It is that easy to get banned from /r/europe, huh.
Sounds like Polandball will share Finlandball’s fate.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/dd/8f/3f/dd8f3f9f4b55ab0d1d0e0195fa9ec7ab.jpg
Moroccans should be kept away from alcohol; I approve of firm measures to make sure they don’t slip up. They are already assaulting waiters, letting them get drunk will not help the problem.
Enforcing Shariah on Muslims in the EU should be advocated. Those that came to escape strictures in their societies will have more of an incentive to go back if they know they can’t simply treat the EU as an escape valve. You do NOT want Muslims in the EU that do not live by normative Shariah standards, they’ll mess with your women and go axe-chop happy on them; we are not sending you our best, send them back.
Peace.
It is just a distraction.
In 2012, the finance minister of Bavaria Markus Söder proclaimed in a speech that Islam is a part of Bavaria (“der Islam ist ein Bestandteil Bayerns”): https://www.merkur.de/politik/soeder-islam-bestandteil-bayerns-2338369.html
Last month, he was elected leader of Bavaria.
I know, Söder is absolutely not to be trusted imo.
It’s somewhat sad because the CSU has done a decent job of running Bavaria, and my very first vote (in the elections of 2002) went to them…but after the past few years one can’t really claim anymore that they’re more authentic or conservative than the CDU. They’re just as rotten as the rest of them.
It depends on what you believe about the performance of the Syrian air defense recently. I also don’t think air defense assets are that easy to destroy. They didn’t manage in Yugoslavia. I doubt a few Israeli raids would manage to do so in Syria.
I agree with all of your analysis. Your point about theatrics is especially important. I remember reading a lot of Seehofer’s statements during the immediate fallout to the 2015 wave, especially in Spring of 2016. This was before I was a bit more knowledgeable about German politics so I took him, perhaps naïvely, at face-value. However I quickly realised that he made a bunch of passive-aggressive comments directed at Merkel but never had the balls to pull the plug on their government.
I also remember reading that in the CDU-SPD coalition talks, it was actually CDU which was pushing for an even lower refugee intake than CSU, which surprised CSU and forced them to make noises to the media in order not to lose faith.
The “crosses mounted outside of buildings” is typical symbolic politics, yes, but it shows that they are worried. That is a good sign. Ultimately even AfD is not what Germany needs to save itself, but it is a hell of a lot better than what’s on offer now.
I don’t think it is realistic to expect a nation-wide revolt. It’s human nature to start slow and piecemeal. That means that state elections will be important. Of course, immigration policy is set at the federal (and increasingly supra-national, via the EU) level. Nevertheless, if SHTF, then Germany could very well dissolve and return to its HRE days with a loose coalition of alliances and networks between various states. That would free up more right-leaning states to ally themselves with Austria+V4 and perhaps even (Northern) Italy. They could then rebuild Germany after a lot of turmoil and trauma.
I’ve written before and I’ll write it again that Germany has one huge advantage over either France or the UK. It has a much better ideological and philosophical legacy. France is by far the worst country in Europe from an ideological perspective. The French revolution was essentially the first globalist one, they even explicitly mentioned exporting the revolution worldwide in somekind of ideological crusade. The UK is better, but its dominant mores are thoroughly liberal. Only Germany has a deep conservative intellectual legacy without parallell. Burke is more of a cautious liberal, and nothing compared to Schmidt or Hegel, not to mention Nietzsche.
When things are harsh, people go back to the roots and Germany’s roots are of a far higher intellectual caliber than any other major European country. And as Thorfinnson likes to point out, once white people actually decide to fight, even being outnumbered 10 to 1 won’t matter much because the qualitative difference is that high. In fact, I think the biggest enemy to nationalists will be white leftists when it comes down to it, as well as the eternal normie whose sole existence in life is based around the exertion of minimal effort in everything he does.
While Dutch news outlets avoid the topic like the plague, our based Czech brothers have no such compunctions at all!
http://www.extra.cz/cisnika-v-praze-napadli-turci-z-nizozemska-povedlo-se-je-zadrzet-diky-vsimave-svedkyni/galerie/3
You can already see in the URL what they mean. They have put photos on all of the suspects. Spot the Dutch if you can 😉
Let’s hope it pans out as you surmise it could, with at least part of Germany waking up, fighting back, and refusing to submit to Islamic oppression or African/Arab violence, fraud, stupidity, sloth, and filth.
But I fear you’re too optimistic, by far, about the facts on the ground.
Germans could certainly reclaim their country and eliminate the invaders, but the numbers for those many House-to-house and block-to-block fights get worse every year.
How does a crowd of 10,000 Germans with average age forty-seven fare against even a roughly equal number of Islamic and/or African invaders with average age FIFTEEN TO TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER? With hardly any firearms in the hands of the private german populace. Not well.
That doesn’t even account for the fact that the large recent invader waves have been heavily younger men. So German women, as well as German men in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, will often face off directly against men aged teen through forty. Disastrous slaughter for our people.
The problem is West Germany, where de-Germanization through immigration has been underway for decades and where many people really believe in postnational constitutional patriotism and similar concepts, have in fact made it the central element of their identity. Given the demographic trends and the stupidity of most voters there I’m quite pessimistic.
East Germany is different, because people there haven’t been quite as brainwashed into cosmopolitanism and the narrative of mass immigration and multiculturalism as atonement for Nazism; the established parties also don’t have as deep roots there as in the west, and people are less attached to them. If there’s any hope for change at all, it’s probably in states like Thuringia and Saxony.
A break-up of Germany might indeed be the best outcome…if the East and Bavaria seceded, I’d go there immidiately. But for now, that’s unfortunately just a dream.
I’m afraid you’re vastly overestimating Germany with that…whatever it may once have been, the country today is quite pedestrian, intellectually sterile and notably unheroic in its self-conception.
Good points about France and the UK. I’d add that in Britain any expression of English nationalism is also greatly impeded by the electoral system. Englishness as an ethnic identity is probaly significantly stronger than one would suspect from the dominant narrative.
I somewhere read that a surprisingly large number of German households have firearms. Maybe a quarter or even a third.
Here’s the number:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country?wprov=sfti1
Though the 30 per 100 inhabitants number is probably a vast exaggeration:
Do you listen to Kollegah?
I almost persuaded myself to listen to the “controversial” song out of sheer curiosity. Also to find out if it really is that bad, or just innocent meme type humor. Of course one should never make jokes about the holy tenets of our religion. Which would be Holocaustianity.
Yet if you look at American things like the GRE – you would be shocked at the stupidity of the population.
See, we’re so stupid here, we haven’t even gotten the idea that you establish a serious point with trash talk. You have to be a brilliant continental European to have such an insight.
Certainly not.
Haven’t followed the affair in detail (don’t read much German msm anymore)…basically my attitude is “a pox on both their houses”.
Kollegah is certainly underclass trash (also an Islamic convert…which I find quite creepy).
On the other hand, I resent the hysteria about antisemitism cooked up by the msm. If a German (or some foreign legal resident like Chinese students or tourists) is raped, stabbed or murdered by “refugees”, it’s just collateral damage on the road to multicultural utopia. But if harsh words are said about Jews, it’s cause for the gravest concern… (and we’re all responsible for it, the guilt is on all of us!). It just shows what a pathetic country Germany is, forever a prisoner of its past.
And I have to admit, when Kollegah dissed and mocked politically correct “punk” singer Campino (big fan of Angela Merkel), it brought a smile on my face 🙂
More likely, Rusal sanctions had to be softened because they blew up global metal markets.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-18/metals-gripped-by-turmoil-as-rusal-s-sanctions-fallout-spreads
https://iq-research.info/en/average-iq-by-country
The Richard Lynn votaries say American psychometric scores are the same as those fetal alcohol syndrome cases in the Czech Republic and France. And, whaddaya know, a point higher than those registered in the land of Stoly-it-isn’t-just-for-breakfast-anymore.
LOL! I just noticed that the sign actually has some Arabic on it when you zoom in, which was obviously not written up by an Arabic speaker.
It translates to (literally):
“Lack of the presence/existence of a translation”
They probably tried to translate their sentence into Arabic through some online translation tool and it spit back the default answer for when it can’t translate the phrase. And they just went with it assuming it was the proper Arabic version.
Cute graphic though.
Peace.
The assets would be turned off most of the time (so they can’t be located). So it would all depend on intelligence about where they are stored, but Syria is the country which is most highly surveilled, with all kinds of different suveillance.
The German economy seems to be unbeatable though – even with the constant spending to subsidize EU and endless destructive immigration, it continues a steady growth rate.
GRE scores are based on norms. Most people get most answers right.
Sailer provided PISA scores for Americans by race vs. other nations:
https://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/12/overall-pisa-rankings-include-america.html
Euro-Americans beat most European countries. And that includes people from places like Alabama or West Virginia. Only Finland, Estonia, Poland, Netherlands and Switzerland beat Euro-Americans.
The meme that Americans are dumb is generally based on one of two factors:
1) Willful ignorance of America’s non-white population (also practiced within America by yankees who hate the South)
2) Confusing the lower worldliness of Americans relative to Europeans for stupidity instead of realizing it’s just a fact of geography
I realize I troll you on the Ukraine (I do genuinely hate Ukraine’s existence but I play it up on this blog for effect), but I have to thank you for being an objective and patient man.
Sure it sounds as plausible, until you mention ‘PISA’.
PISA is ten times worse than GRE. It makes GRE look like a work of genius in comparison. (I want to apologize now to GRE, that the comparison to PISA is made).
Posts about PISA tables and ‘scores’ seem impressive, until you investigate yourself and look at the tests.
(An old sample test PISA)
https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/Take%20the%20test%20e%20book.pdf
The ‘maths’ paper has no maths.
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2012-2006-rel-items-maths-ENG.pdf
It has some kind of counting questions, which are written in a way designed to confuse people.
What is this supposed to show this test? That the children can sit still long enough and somehow not be confused by the strange questions.
PISA is effectively a proxy IQ test.
If you want to measure the quality of education TIMSS is a lot better. And sure enough Russia does better than America on that, though America does better than much of Western Europe (probably owing to more local political control of education).
You are also exaggerating.
I clicked on your link.
The very first question is a math problem.
That’s a geometry problem, no?
I caught it on several bases. One – probably silly way – was just finding so many stupid people on the internet who seem to be from America.
For example, here on Karlin it is better, because it seems to have less of them.
This might not be fair, and just comes from being on websites like this one, instead of one which have more educated professionals from America.
This month my friend is preparing GRE, so over skype and Teamviewer we were preparing the exam, I’m not taking it, but was shocked by how easy it was.
The maths part is completely shocking – it is maths for 16 year olds. It was impossible not to laugh at those questions.
But even the English verbal part is easy, and just requires the vocabulary you need to read any academic books in English. So how on earth do Americans, who have English as the native language, make mistakes in the verbal part? How is this possible?
And they use this exam for graduate university entry, for native born Americans who speak English as the first language?
I feel like I must have made some kind of mistake and misunderstood the purpose of the exam.
The language of the internet is English, which is America’s native language. And America has 320 million people–more than Germany, France, and Britain combined.
You can find smart Americans on the internet as well. Such as myself or many other commenters here.
If we’re so stupid then why are we so rich? An obnoxious argument but not a bad one.
Regarding your GRE critique I have not taken the exam and will never do so as I only have a high school education. Being rich there is no reason for me to ever pursue higher education.
That said psychometric exams show that Americans are not dumb, and that white Americans are in fact smarter than most European countries (not all).
To the extent multiplying two lengths, and then multiplying another two lengths, and then subtracting one total from the other.
I would say more counting,
The thing tested with this particular question really is whether you can decode confusingly written questions, with strange pictures including irrelevant details. It’s like a question of whether they can distract you with strange pictures and gnomic phrasing.
Calculating area is a geometry question by definition.
It’s not sophisticated geometry, but it’s geometry.
And this is even a good real world question. I am in my 30s and no longer remember sophisticated math as it’s not relevant to my career. But I do remember every formula for area calculation and use said formulae.
This could be a cultural barrier.
Story problems are a standard way of teaching math in America. I experienced it throughout my childhood.
I do not know how math education is done in Russia.
America is the world’s most successful and powerful country. And even when China catches it on GDP maybe within the next 10 years, it will only be because China have almost five times more people.
So sure, it is a good mystery and we could talk about it for hours.
Obviously I’m being a bit hyperbolic about Americans, but you know I’m not being totally hyperbolic.
I think success, and economic success, – and particularly of countries – is related a lot less to individuals being good at academics, than some people claim on websites like this one.
I can understand using story and pictures if they are testing someone’s reading skills (or question decoding skill – perhaps this is an art itself).
But here they are asking simple counting and multiplying (and a bit of dividing) questions, but then ‘raising the difficulty’ by writing its questions as confusing stories.
Most skill here tested is in decoding the questions. And then maybe 10% or 20% of your effort will be actually doing ‘calculations’.
One could ask why we became the world’s richest and most powerful country, no?
And yes, I realize it is simply because we were and are the largest white country and avoided unfortunate communist experiments. And we had the good luck of winning both world wars and mostly used that to our advantage.
Point being we are not dumber than Germans, Russians, Frenchmen, etc…these are ridiculous ideas.
I think this is just down to cultural differences then.
This really is how math is taught in America.
I can’t speak for other countries.
If you want to tell me how math is taught in Russia I am all ears.
I don’t know – American success is some kind of a topic for which there could be dozens of books, each with a different narrative trying to explain it (geographical, ideological, ethnic, religious, etc).
Some things I’d guess, with a few seconds superficial brainstorming: the protected property rights; the English law system; theProtestant culture in which energetic practical life-style is idolized (without taking many holidays); the long-term commitment to free market capitalist ideology from highest political echelons, etc.
talk more about what PISA isn’t a good proxy for IQ.
I’m having a hard time figuring out why Armenia and Georgia have such low PISA scores and yet have so many great scientists. Something isn’t adding up.
The problem is their Church has been dogmatically different from most others since the Halcedon Council of 451. It’s not regarded as heresy (the sacraments of Armenians are recognized by Orthodox and vice versa), but still as something alien. Armenian and Greek Churches especially aren’t fond of each other:
https://youtu.be/Jn90BNz729k
This is right. Like many of the Churches of that region, they weren’t on board with the Byzantine version of Christianity in toto. I’ve even read that Armenians sometimes mounted joint raids with Seljuk Turks into Byzantine territory prior to the Battle of Manzikert.
So I can see your point. For instance, Sunnis and Shias don’t much visit each others’ respective important sites (barring certain shared ones). That’s too bad because they really have some of the oldest churches in that area.
Those fisticuffs you showed are one of the reasons a Muslim family has been entrusted with the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for centuries:
https://www-m.cnn.com/2016/03/26/middleeast/easter-muslim-keyholder/index.html
Peace.
I suspect he won’t get 100%.
It’s not only possible but almost certain. GRE is correlated with IQ. Someone with an IQ of 135 (top 1%) would expect to get a GRE score of 1300 on Verbal plus Quantitative – would get a few answers wrong.
These were probably at least somewhat important, but a very important factor is inheriting the biggest arable land with a nice weather and lots of natural resources like oil and coal and metals etc. (The area depopulated sometime after Columbus due to the diseases brought by Europeans, before even the first Europeans showed up in the area… bugs traveled faster than people. So its conquest was not harder than the Russian conquest of Siberia. Except that it’s worth much more than Siberia because it’s better suited to agriculture and so a higher population density could be achieved, which makes it easier to exploit it.)
Being separated from the rest of the world by two oceans helped a great deal, too: they could always stay out of foreign entanglements if they chose to (even Pearl Harbor was just a result of the embargo and ultimatum sent to the Japanese Empire, they could’ve easily avoided it. And anyway, by that time all other major powers had already been bleeding (not only literally, but also in terms of economic resources etc.) for two years on average. It wasn’t really “luck” that they won both world wars, but a simple fact of geography: they could not be harmed by other powers, while they could enter wars at the time of their choosing, and they were big, meaning they had a lot of weight to throw around, their entry to both world wars was decisive.
Tl;dr
A high IQ population stumbling upon a relatively isolated, but gigantic and extremely valuable area, leading to a huge economy and a large (still high IQ) population rich even on per capita terms, as a result of which military-political-cultural success came easily.
We’re talking about a bunch of trucks and similar, which are somewhere. They are not huge, and could move easily. The fact they aren’t turned on also means it’s difficult to measure their exact location, and without exact coordinates it’s not very easy to hit them.
I’d guess they could perhaps be damaged, but completely destroyed would be near impossible.
Arab incompetence is the only hope there is to destroy it, but for at least a year it will be manned by Russians, and maybe later, too.
I just want to take a quick second and thank you for posting here so prolifically. While your worldview is mostly anathema to mine, your heavy handed commenting style, immodesty, and eschewing of social norms are quite endearing. AK’s blog is a great place to converse with interesting characters you’d probably never get to meet irl (and even if you did, would unlikely be as honest in conversation as they are here).
Here’s another take on the missile strikes two weeks ago:
http://www.unz.com/plang/are-the-russians-correct/
I think it’s obvious that the Syrian air defense systems under a unified (Russian) command perform relatively well. (Maybe the Russians were told of the targets in advance? So maybe it was more similar to a military exercise for both sides than a real military engagement? On the other hand the most modern equipment was not even engaged. Both the Americans and their satellites and the Russian/Syrian air defense got some target practice.)
If it was so easy to destroy them, why would Israel be so angry or worried about their deployment?
China could catch up and start exceeding in just 4 years. Also 325 million v. 1.4 billion so about 4-times population wise.
Our Hungarian superstar, reiner Tor, nailed it.
I’m Swedish–a country which has very secure property rights and has basically always had them. Sweden has never undergone invasion or suffered a revolution. We Swedes are also very high quality people.
Yet America is in fact much richer than Sweden and mostly always has been (Sweden was very close in the 70s).
I do agree the factors you mentioned matter, but mainly as reiner Tor said it was a quality population having the good luck to stumble into an empty and rich continent.
And today America’s wealth is reinforced I think by our power and the deference the American government gives to business management. As an example I can legally fire my employees at any time for any reason. That’s not the case in most other Western countries, including Anglo ones.
Thank you for your kind remark JL. You should absorb my worldview completely.
I am open with my views IRL, though I try (and mostly fail) to avoid discussing politics etc. irl as it’s not conducive to making money.
And yes AK’s blog is a hothouse of interesting people. As an American I especially enjoy the European and Russian commenters.
I am going to start calling reiner Tor the “Magyar Miracle”.
I looked it up, this Campino is the lead singer of Die Toten Hosen, that band is not unknown in Hungary. Politically correct punk bands are just pathetic, punk was supposed to be about being rebellious or something.
Kollegah was born to a single mother, and he converted under the influence of his Algerian stepfather at the age of 15. I think you have all information on what kind of upbringing he had. Who can blame him for converting?
It correlates with basic knowledge or preparation in these areas tested. A clever person in Africa, that didn’t go to school, and doesn’t have access to English books, would find the exam impossible. While a stupid person from an English speaking country, who has some preparation and takes classes to discuss the questions, will find it easy.
My friend is planning to apply later in the year, for postgraduate in Computer Science. Particulary – Stanford University.
However, the entrance and scholarship requirements are just – the GRE test, three letters of recommendation and an English language test.
There’s no additional ‘difficult exam’, to distinguish a person through.
This seems to make the admission process very unfair.
So how can you guarantee entry to the university? How do you show that’s you’re a good student, when they give you this kind of exam.
The GRE score should be near to 100% in the maths – as the questions are simple and there’s nothing difficult at all contained in the exam. But probably the score will be less in the English, as a some of the questions are sometimes badly designed and confusing (with more than one correct answer).
Hajnal Line is moving east.
Teachers probably cannot get all the children sit down long enough to bother to finish this boring test, or to explain how to make sense of these gnomic questions.
Possibly the bright kids in the class, are the first ones to reject the test.
FT links usually open if you just search their title on Google and enter them from the search results.
Also doing it from Chrome Incognito would probably help.
Works for me 95% of the time.
The radar and some of the missiles can cover their whole country, and even light up on civilian aviation across the whole country.
So I understand why they would complain.
As for destroying it – it would be a question of knowing where it is being stored at that time (this might be the easier part – it depends on their surveillance), and of international relations, in particular with Russia (this is a difficult part – there has to be a response against Israel if they blow up the $1 billion free gift)
Exactly…hard to take “punks” seriously who admire Angela Merkel…
Campino’s just a stupid, rich idiot. Like most pop stars.
Still feels wrong to me, evokes the kind of feelings the John Wayne character has in “The searchers”. But I see your point.
Just think of Islam like one of the weirder semi-Christian sects, like Unitarianism.
Okay, that didn’t make it less creepy. Think of it like Marxism then?
We? Americans are people of European heritage. You’re a Semite. Do not speak for them, jew.
We’ll see. Provided the Russians will indeed deliver it.
That is nonsense. Russians invaded Sweden and in fact ransacked your whole coast in the 1720s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Pillage_of_1719–21
In fact, there’s even a pub in Gamla Stan today which is named after the Treaty of Nystad, which followed Sweden’s decisive defeat. (“Den Gyllene Freden” or ‘Golden Peace’ in English). This is because Russia got away with comparatively little compared to how thoroughly Sweden was beaten. Why? Because of diplomatic interventions by the UK which sought to maintain a balance of power in the Baltic Sea and not because of some heroic Swedish efforts, plus the fact that Peter the Great frankly saw Sweden as a dimished power by then and wanted to focus on internal reforms.
Nords in general are probably the best people on the Earth. Though among Nords I’d rank Danes ahead of Swedes currently even if historically the best-achieveing Nords were Swedes. But you can’t rest on your laurels.
In what universe do you exist?
https://i.imgur.com/jrbIHyO.png
Granted, it is lower if you look at PPP-adjustments, but even then, consider that GDP per capita is also influenced by the hours worked. Swedes work fewer hours than Americans. If you normalise per hours, the two countries are very close. And Sweden has better life expentancy, better institutions, lower corruption, much lower debt and it is running a strong budget surplus. Sweden is maybe less exciting, but it is certainly a better country by most measures.
Art Deco isn’t Jewish, he’s just a conventional middle-aged American nationalist who’s easily triggered by what he perceives as slights to US national honour.
And please, with all due respect, but it would be better if you didn’t resort to racially based ad hominems, it doesn’t improve the atmosphere of discussion around here.
Yeah, it does feel wrong. But understandable.
Compare this single Russian raid to, for instance, your own history. Coastal ransacking is not good but it isn’t an invasion.
Danes beat Swedes today simply because of politics. Fortunately the Sweden Democrats continue rising but the mainstream tendency in Sweden continues to be self-abolition.
The universe of purchasing power parity, as you already hinted at.
I see the lower number of hours worked in Western Europe compared to America as a failure rather than a success. These countries could be as rich as us but instead waste time with their stupid vacations. You can hardly get anyone on the phone at all in Sweden during the summer. People even have automatic e-mail responses announcing they won’t get back to you until vacation is over.
The other metrics you are touting go beyond GDP. Most are true but can be lawyered in the details.
One point I specifically do not agree with i that Sweden is a better country. I have citizenship in both countries and fluency in both languages and thus am able to vote with my feet. I am definitely not going to the country with a 25% VAT and a top income tax rate of 56%.
The biggest quality of life advantage Sweden has over America is that its cities are all walkable and that the people are much better looking than Americans. But that has its downside as well since in America I am better looking than most people whereas in Sweden I am just average looking.
Interesting idea, might be a new approach for combating Islamophobia…just think of Muslims as today’s commies, what could go wrong…Oh wait 🙂
By those standards, the US was also invaded in 1812, not to mention the War of Independence.
Vacations + reading books on public transportation >>> spending more time in the office and having somewhat better cars to spend your time in doing nothing useful while commuting
The Czechs created more good music, for example, though. The Germans were perhaps more numerous, but the Czechs?
LOL. My paternal ancestry is Varangian (familytree DNA suggests Norway, rather than Sweden despite Norway being further). Oddly, despite the fact that my people entered Rus 900 or so years ago, those of us who look like our fathers look Scandinavian. When I did the Euro trip with friends in my late teens I was often confused for a Swede. When my in-laws from Russia visited Stockholm on vacation they kept seeing mine and my father’s face all over the place. AK met me, he can probably confirm.
On that elite level he may be close to 100% on math, but even that is not absolutely certain.
Some logic is involved, and that requires not just rote learning but intelligence.
Vacations are extremely irritating.
They cost money.
They distract you from your work, and when you return you are confused and have to catch up.
Travel itself is stressful.
Packing suitcases sucks.
When you arrive you always find you forgot something.
You’re forced to eat out for every meal.
It would be better if this bad idea had never been invented.
And as a political matter the obsession commoners have with vacation, time off, and other such distractions reduce the nation’s economic output and indirectly its military power.
If you don’t like your work and you have a triple digit IQ you are a failure and don’t deserve to go on vacation to begin with.
I do like reading on the train but my office is only two miles away. 🙂
And no, the point of working more is not to have a slightly better car. That’s loser thinking.
I was told by an Uzbek cabbie that I look like a“real original Russian”.
I recall John Derbyshire stating that Russians are just Scandinavians in fur hats.
There’s some sort of commonality.
I like you even more now.
Your being so young got much more believable, by the way.
If world history began a few centuries ago, sure. There’s no question that Sweden played its cards quite well in the last 300 years, while Poland did not. But if you take a longer view, things get a bit messier.
Nevertheless, you’re now blatantly goalshifting. The debate isn’t over which country has the ‘better’ history, however we may define it. The debate is over whether Sweden was invaded, which you flatly denied. It clearly was and it was ransacked thoroughly and badly beaten.
The Swedes at the time knew this, which is why the Treaty of Nystad was called the ‘Golden Peace’. Because despite losing the entire Baltics, Swedes knew that they could have lost a hell of a lot more if it wasn’t for British intervention and the relative disinterest in Sweden from Peter’s side who saw you as diminished and finished as a power.
Read the wiki. Umeå was burned to the ground by Russian troops. I’ve read a book on this war recently, so I’m going to push back on your soft-pedalling. Nyköping, Södertälje, Gävle were all wrecked. Many Swedish peasants lost everything and some even refused to go back after the war since they had nothing to return to and they had built up a new life far deeper inland.
Senior leaders of SD have been caught red-handed co-operating with Expo, which is the Swedish version of $PLC. They are the literal definition of a Kosher Nationalist party. A mere safety valve to distract the goyim. Their immigration plank is also being re-written as I write this by Paula Bieler. Guess her ethnicity. Hint: it’s related to the Khazars.
What was her first act? To abolish the previous requirement that Sweden must remain majority ethnic-Swedish. You’re either ignorant of this or you’re soft-pedaling again. Either way, the Based SD is a giant meme and one you shouldn’t push. I’m not nearly as blackpilled on Sweden as a lot of people are. There’s a very dynamic nationalist scene in Sweden, true nationalists, but it’s important we are correct in our diagnosis and do not peddle false dawn solutions and safety valves.
O-ok? I guess I agree with that, but how does that change what I said. A people which isn’t good at collective politics is of a lower quality. Of course, quality can change over time. A people can learn and adapt. The last few centuries were a long demonstration of Polish incompetence. Now its your people’s turn. Let’s hope you turn it around sooner rather than later.
Which is largely nullified by hours worked. Also, Sweden has better social services. Contrary to myth, the vast majority of Swedes do not use welfare. In fact, Sweden’s employment rate is higher than America’s by a non-trivial margin.
The reason why the Nordic welfare state works is because it was adapted to a people with a great amount of self-discipline. You have either unconsciously or out of ignorance adopted the GOP stupid propaganda lines about the welfare state. It can actually work, and the Nordic nations are proof that it can work, and without any major social pathologies(drug use, alcoholism, violence) which are all very low among the ethnic Nordic population. Even on innovation, Sweden has a very high amount of VC capital and a large amount of start-ups per capita, possibly most in Europe. Another GOP stupid myth busted.
What is productivity.
OTOH, Sweden has little to no punitive taxes on wealth. Gaining wealth is hard in Sweden, true, but keeping it is easier. Though I personally think it should be the other way around. One of the few things I like about the US more over Sweden is that it is less inhibiting of smart and hard-working ambitious people. But in any population these are a minority. And my argument was based on the whole nation, which implies a comparison which is relevant for all people. Not just a tiny slice of it.
Heh 🙂
There’s another downside, partner choice. Getting a very beautiful woman in Sweden is easy, since most women are above-average compared to the standards in most of the rest of the world. In most other countries, there’s a much clearer trade-off between beauty and brains and that trade-off is softer in Sweden than arguably almost any other country, except other Nordics and possibly Estonia. Even the introverted librarian types are very good looking.
My friend is nothing elite or unusually intelligent – but would like to go to a more famous university abroad for post-graduate (after some years of working).
Some of them are quite badly written questions – although you can still get the right answer by using a process of elimination.
But considering we (foreigners) can answer these verbal questions (it feels like a basic test to see if you can speak English), how on earth can they use this to test native English speaking Americans?
How do Americans find this difficult? How can they live 20+ years, and not learn their own language’s vocabulary?
As for the quantitative section. Sometimes the question seems confusing, but then you understand it you will laugh at how easy it is. (They ‘raise the difficulty’ by writing the question in the confusing way and trying to trick people into thinking the question is more interesting or difficult, while it is secretly very easy.)
So people who are not careful, could make more mistakes or be confused by the question (this is why people take some preparation classes).
But overall, they make it extremely, extremely easy. And this is in fact a real problem, because if you are a good student, how do you show that to the university admissions for the popular programs?
If they would set a difficult computer science exam for admissions, then it could become a fair entrance system, in which you could show you were the better student. But instead this joke exam – which results very unfairly as you cannot show you are better than other students, and you cannot be sure of admission.
These were probably at least somewhat important, but a very important factor is inheriting the biggest arable land with a nice weather and lots of natural resources like oil and coal and metals etc.
Agriculture and extractive industries currently account for about 5% of value-added in this country. Try another excuse.
Nebraska has its virtues. Nice weather is not among them. You’re not from around here, are you?
I do not want a reputation for dishonesty so I will accept your correction on the matter of invasion. In literal terms it is true.
That said I had in mind something more like which has unfortunately befallen Poland repeatedly–the complete conquest and occupation of the country by a foreign power. That has never happened in Swedish history, which is quite unusual in Europe.
I am fine with civic nationalist movements as a means of gaining cooperation from authority and normies. That doesn’t mean I agree with said ideology.
SD is indeed “kosher nationalist” but you have to start somewhere.
A fair point, but it seems this problem is common to the entire West outside of the Visegrad group. And the situation is precarious there as well.
My POV on this is that Swedes are natural religious fanatics, and today the dominant religion is progressivism.
Social services are for losers. This is not a point in Sweden’s favor.
I wonder what the employment rate of Swedes is versus Swedish-Americans. Probably lower if I recall my Timo Sanandaji correctly.
A higher employment rate is also not necessarily better as it is often the result of more women in the workforce, which is undesirable.
I do not claim that the welfare state cannot work at all.
I claim the welfare state is for losers.
Why waste money on losers?
Output per hour worked in Western European countries like Sweden is not higher than America other than Norway, Luxumburg, etc. These countries are simply suffering from lost economic output as a result of their stupid obsession with vacations.
I do not make arguments on behalf of the whole nation other than avoiding the replacement of the whole nation.
Commoners are what they are and no worldly power can improve them much. Any money they have will be rapidly squandered. Even America’s postwar labor aristocracy, the richest working class in the history of the planet, was unable to accumulate any kind of wealth.
It is the nobility for whom government is a real concern.
The range of female IQ is much narrower than the male range, and female intelligence is generally pointless as the emotional disposition of women makes it impossible for them to use intelligence properly. It’s easier to simply state that brains do not exist in women as a functional matter. And that’s fine.
Why? The security check is bad, but usually takes just 10-20 minutes. Hanging out at the airport doing nothing, while reading a book and listening to music is good. Doing so at the airplane is okay, too.
Create a permanent list of things you need when traveling. (E.g. underpants, socks, T-shirts, phone charger, etc.) Before packing, check the list if there’s a special thing (e.g. I had an eye infection last time and I needed the medicine), and update it accordingly. It usually takes for me at least ten minutes, but it’s not as boring as it sounds, as I can listen to music while doing this.
Then go through the list (marking if something’s ready – my list is on my phone, and I simply copy everything done to the front of the list, leaving one empty line as a separator between the “done” and “not yet done” groups), and pack everything. Since you’re going on vacation, you can just throw your things into the suitcase (like T-shirts – you can wear them crumpled, no need to iron or pack them neatly folded), which for me usually takes almost half an hour. Again, listening to music helps.
I usually do this the night before traveling, or the morning of traveling (if it’s a late flight, like around noon or later). I rarely if ever forget anything.
If you have a girlfriend/wife, you can tell her to pack her things. She can pack kids’ stuff better than you, but for kids you can also keep such a short list just in case. Until they’re short, they don’t need much. If they grow bigger, you can tell them to keep track of what they need extra (like toys or whatever).
What’s wrong with that?
I think reiner tor was writing about the historical situation, and the US has been undoubtedly blessed in that regard, e.g. it was self-sufficient in oil until the 1950s (or even later?) which was a huge advantage compared to most potential competitors.
Another advantage of the US has of course always been an educated and highly capable workforce (iirc the New England states were pretty much the earliest societes on earth to achieve mass literacy)…it’s true that the stereotype of the dumb American which many Europeans have is rather misguided.
But man, you’re really a bit sensitive…what is it with so many Americans, citizens of the most powerful country in history, but immediately throwing a tantrum when some foreigner dares criticize their country? Looks really insecure and immature (and if you call me “Eurotrash”, you’re just proving my point!).
You are young and (I would guess) childless. Eventually, you’ll come to appreciate time away from work.
Firstly I live in a rural area, so getting to an international airport means a five hour drive.
Alternatively I can drive one hour to a regional airport to take a surprisingly expensive 45 minute flight with a 10% risk of cancellation.
The airport itself is NOT good. Airports are crowded and filled with fat and ugly people who I do not want to interact with or even look at. Even worse, many colored people as well.
Then of course you have the embarrassing and tedious security theater, which is even worse in America than in Europe.
And even though I do not fly cattle class, aircraft themselves are always uncomfortable. Your fellow passengers, should you choose to converse with them, are nearly always boring.
Does any of this sound enjoyable to you?
The last thing I want to do is make a list of things I need to pack in my suitcase.
The alleged purpose of vacations is to have fun and relax. In order to have fun and relax, I supposedly need to make a detailed list of things or employ a woman to do so for me (a highly useful purpose of women incidentally).
Forced to wait for service and for your food. Unsure of what’s actually in the food. Most restaurants cook worse food than I do personally. Sometimes loud and crowded. Need to spend at least $100 per person to avoid fat and ugly people, and even then there is no guarantee.
And it’s a chore.
Read my argument once more, and repeat until you understand it.
Being an oil exporter makes a difference from the perspective of national security. It’s not of much interest in the realm of economic development – see Japan and South Korea. A qualified exception might be the early stages of British development, when coal was fairly accessible.
But man, you’re really a bit sensitive…what is it with so many Americans, citizens of the most powerful country in history, but immediately throwing a tantrum when some foreigner dares criticize their country?
I very seldom hear actual ‘criticism’ of my country from abroad and I didn’t hear it from him. I heard a stupid insult. If you want a civil answer, you’re going to have to do better.
https://www.themaven.net/mishtalk/economics/eu-hit-by-massive-aluminum-shortage-trump-considers-easing-sanctions-VRbJlHygPkaW_8nXLQkw2A/
The integration of Russia with the rest of Europe has caused those latest US sanctions to backfire. More integration with Europe please.
It seems like the S-300 to Syria is going to happen:
I understand your argument. Your argument is wrong. American advantage over Europe has persisted even as the significance of agriculture has declined dramatically. It has persisted as transportation costs have declined. It has persisted long after war reconstruction was complete. It has persisted in the face of our large military expenditure, which it was fashionable to decry a generation ago as a diversion from civilian R & D.
Of course you don’t understand it. You are also pretty thin-skinned, there was nothing in my argument which could even be interpreted as offensive. You might need to go back to your safe spaces.
The argument was simply that a high IQ population stumbled upon an empty continent with nice weather. Nebraska or Arizona weather doesn’t change the fact that the US as a whole has nicer weather than any comparably large area outside of Europe and East Asia, both of which happen to be occupied.
This led to a population explosion among the high IQ population. Also, after the mid-19th century, immigration. Is it a wonder that the immigrants chose the US over Canada or Australia? Australia and Canada provide the example of what would have happened if the weather was worse. Hint: neither became the sole superpower of the planet.
Once you had the huge population in the huge country, you could exploit the natural resources as soon as technology reached the point where it became feasible. Population provided (and continues to provide to this very day) economies of scale.
In Europe there was less area (so for example higher real estate prices), less natural resources (Germany probably lost a couple of world wars as a result), more fragmentation (less economies of scale), etc. The high IQ quality population was there, but perhaps even you can understand how it was different. It also started out as overpopulated, so it could never be as rich as the US until fairly recently (and if you consider the size of your home and garden as part of your living standards, then not even today).
Some interesting points. Although I would say American success – it is not so simple as geographical factors or intelligence of population.
Just look at Ukraine. The best farming land in Europe, not the most terrible weather, and containing a typical population – and yet (obviously a lot of historical disasters along the way which is out of their locus of control but still….), the poorest country in Europe, with a GDP per capita lower than Angola in Africa.
I don’t know if you were following the news today (I would hardly blame anyone who would not, as the story is never-ending) ? In the morning they were claiming that the S-300 had already been given to Syria over a month ago. And then in the evening, the morning story that it was already given over a month ago was denied.
These peculiarities explain your aversion perfectly well.
You can take vacations closer to home, like within driving distance. Or stay home and do fun things at home. I’ve lived in countries where traveling to a third world location and doing fun things (for example nothing) cost less than staying at home. Air travel included. (Okay, I travel on economy.) Norway is certainly such a country.
The bad news is that you have to do that anyway, irrespective of going on vacations. As you have already mentioned, occasionally you do need to travel anyway, probably on business trips. And to top it off, you even keep forgetting things. So you need to have a list anyway. (It has to contain business attire – when packing for vacation, you can immediately put business attire in the “done” list.) The good news is that you have to create it only once, and you can keep it in your phone forever. There are just enough bits and electrons to keep it there forever. It makes packing a quick straightforward process. Including lazy breaks, packing itself never takes more than half an hour.
I propose you do that immediately right now.
Development is path dependent. Ukraine was never separated from the rest of the world the way America was, so it got incorporated into an empire which reduced its population to serfdom. Then it got incorporated into a communist dystopia. Then, right after independence, it became a cleptocracy, not independent of its previously mentioned history.
(By the way neither its population nor its real estate is as high quality as that of the US. At least the US founding population.)
This is a stupid Russian nationalist meme. PPP it’s of course double. And unlike Angola, it’s not based on oil wells operated by foreign engineers.
No, I understand your argument. It is wrong.
There’s honestly no way of knowing what the psychometric scores of the population were in 1607 or 1776 or 1865. There are disputes over the evolution of such scores in the last century,when there were tests actually administered.
Every place has it’s seasons, renier, but this ‘nice weather’ meme in your head is confusing you. The parts of the country with high agricultural productivity have high levels of continentality – blizzards in the winter and baking heat in the summer, not to mention ferocious thunderstorms of a sort which are rare in the rest of the temperate zone. The zone to the west of that consists of desert which have no analogue in Europe and Alpine zones you only see in Switzerland. Normal snowfall where I grew up you see in Europe only in Russia, Switzerland, Austria and perhaps Scandinavia. (And we have a mild climate compared to much of the Midwest). And, of course, there’s the Deep South.
We didn’t require a ‘huge population’ to ‘exploit the natural resources’ of the country on our way to affluence. See the Maddison data for the period prior to 1840. We were a comparatively affluent country (lagging behind only Britain and perhaps the Netherlands) before our population ever exceeded Britain’s much less that of France and at a time when immigration rates were modest (gross inflow of 0.125% of the extant population per year) and drawn from the British isles.
And, of course, none of this historical discussion addresses the evolution of the country’s productive base after the frontier was closed in 1890, or the development of our industrial economy, or the maintenance of advantages after war reconstruction.
Sweden’s tax system looks like it was designed for the sake of the Wallenbergs. I spent a couple of months in Stockholm and don’t agree with your opinion of the local women. Nice people who dress stylishly, are rarely overweight and are very polite and helpful. However you are much likelier to see real grade A bombshells in Paris and London.
FWIW the country with the most elegant, attractive and feminine women I have been to is easily South Korea. Nearly every woman I saw made a real effort to look as good as she could.
Are you testing the limits of how gullible are people on the internet?
I just came upon a Russian forum where a user claimed she lived in California, had British citizenship, her husband had Swiss, and they jointly earned 90 thousand dollars a month. Also, either the guy or her (unclear) was 25 years old. She was called out by two people on that same page. One said in order to earn that much realistically, the husband had to traffic illegal immigrants from Mexico or invent Uber. The English-speaking audience here seems to trust you more – is it the Hajnal Line thing?
Although I have previously been a skeptic about Russian air defense systems, I’ve since come around on them.
The s-300 is by all accounts a capable system and I am sure that it will serve the Syrians well. Even so, it is hard to imagine it will be able to match or exceed the intercept rate of infinity that Syria’s s-200’s attained in the last Israeli non attack.
This just goes to show how proactive and forward thinking the Syrians are. Despite just recently achieving a mathematically impossible success rate, they refuse to rest on their laurels.
I may be getting ahead of myself here, but it seems like the Syrians are hoping to make the transition from imaginary success to real success; possibly even within the next 2 to 3 thousand years.
G-d bless the brilliant Syrian people!
The thing I find rather disturbing is that SD seems to actually become more politically correct.
I mean, ok, it’s one thing if you don’t want to be associated with genuine violent neonazi types, at some point one probably has to draw a line…but cooperate with Antifa in purging your party??? That’s not even civic nationalism anymore, it’s totally selling out.
Whatever their faults, I have a hard time imagining AfD doing something like this (not least because many AfD people have actually been physically attacked or threatened by Antifa). If you accept the framing of your enemies (and Antifa are enemies of any serious nationalist movement, there can be no peace with them, it’s absolutely futile to try placating them), you’ve already lost. Sweden must be in even worse state than I had imagined, if even “nationalists” are stuck this deep in the official narrative.
Yes but probably one of those typical practical Russian forums where people are asking real questions how to report their taxes, or to renew their visas. It’s important that you are getting the adequate advice or the middle age moderators will delete your messages .
Whereas our forum is some entertainment of impractical and random debates, with some camaraderie, but you would not exactly follow the advice of our forum-members – let’s say that Greasy Williams, for example, whose life-advice is that you should never date a woman who does not look exactly like Taylor Swift.
The missiles will surely do ‘what it says on the box’.
But it is written that air-defense network, as a whole, is ‘only as strong as its weakest link’.
Are these claims really extraordinary to you?
Let’s review the claims:
• Dual citizen fluent in English and Swedish
Since you are known as Toronto Russian you might yourself be a dual citizen of Russia and Canada and fluent in two languages. Maybe not but you doubtless know such people.
My parents emigrated from Sweden before I was born and spoke Swedish at home.
• Better looking than most Americans
The average American is severely overweight so this is certainly not a difficult feat to accomplish.
• $100/person for restaurant meals
Well, this is an exaggeration rooted in my hobby of bashing broke people. I do enjoy such meals (big fan of steakhouses and french haute cuisine), but honestly I am also a big fan of McDonald’s. Standard order is four double cheeseburgers, and I discard the buns.
I’m not sure how any of these either individually or taken together are equivalent to the story you are describing. That said about half a million Americans do in fact earn more than $90,000 a month. My father is one of them for instance (though he no longer lives in America).
As an example take a look at how much CEOs of the largest public companies earn: https://www.epi.org/publication/top-ceos-make-300-times-more-than-workers-pay-growth-surpasses-market-gains-and-the-rest-of-the-0-1-percent/
Note that Americans don’t consider living in California or possessing European passports to be status symbols. Actual Americans are fleeing California. Europeans including Russians possess outdated views of California and still think it’s a desirable place.
Åkesson is playing a dangerous game. With the possible exception of Spain no country in Europe is more cucked than Sweden. He’s managed to build up the second largest party in the country regardless and that should be remembered.
The debate is shifting. A serious Swedish journalist, who is not a nationalist, publicly predicted that soon repatriation will enter serious political debate in Sweden.
That said:
This I certainly agree with, but it’s very difficult for Westerners to accept that racism is good and hate is a human right owing to decades of communist brainwashing.
Can you please just fuck off, you sad little man? Most likely you’re some overgrown kid living with his parents painting your power fantasies that will never be realised.
That you feel the need to state “I’m really rich” in nearly every post on an anonymous message board really is quite sad.
I doubt you’re even Swedish, Nords very rarely display such pompous philistinism and narcissism, though you are quintessentially American in that respect.
On topic, commenter Avery summed it up nicely, can’t disagree with anything there.
An alternative is needed.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Da_hrPZWsAAgWtX.jpg
Just 1.8% of Poles in the Netherlands on welfare benefits, lower than natives (2.3%) and entire population (2.6%)
Comparison chart:
https://i.imgur.com/FlavTvJ.png
Most of the turks living in NL are either 2nd or even 3rd gen immigrants.
AfS has explicitly gone on the record saying they reject ethnic nationalism. I’ve talked to Swedish nationalists about AfS and according to them the split that caused Kasselstand et al (the founders of AfS) from SD was not ideological. It was simply a power struggle.
If you look at their actual positions, they are essentially SD of 2010 vintage. The historical record of political parties is that as they get more popular, they get more concerned with staying in power than with changing the ideology. Look at Vlaams Belang in Belgium. An even more shocking example is the ‘True Finns’ party which completely sold out.
There’s also a great deal of internal force applied to the leadership to become softer. Therefore, starting out already compromising on your core principles is a terrible tactic. This is assuming the most generous interpretation, namely that they are secretly /ourguys/ but just hide their powerlevels to the public. This is likely a coping strategy, just as the retarded 4D chess memes were of Trump.
If you’re not advocating genuine Blood & Soil ethno-nationalism, then you’re frankly not relevant. This isn’t the 1980s anymore. There are no soft and gentle corrections to be made. And the scope of ‘suddenly radicalising once in the heart of the enemy’s institutions’ is a fanciful delusion. Either be radical from the start and hold the line or go home. Notice that the left never softens their demands, but right-wingers are constantly obsessed about fitting in and pleasing the normies. It’s a loser mentality and a sign of a mentally weak person, always trying to please others and having no principles. That’s how you end up with cuckservatives, whether in the GOP or SD.
None of Thorfinsson’s claims are unbelievable, but, more importantly, none of them are consequential to the topics at hand.
Actually, the woman you mention also isn’t unbelievable. A lot of the low-chance things she claimed about herself are hugely correlated to each other. E.g. having a British passport for a 25-year-old Russian correlates with being brought up in the UK, which correlates with her parents being rich expats, which correlates with her being acquainted with a lot of other rich people, which correlates with her getting married to a (possibly older) high income Swiss guy (I personally know a few people who were above her income level while still in their thirties, one of my best friends is still not yet 40 and his net worth is already roughly $5M, and he’s a Hungarian national in Hungary), all of the above correlates to being cosmopolitan and moving to California (presumably the nice, expensive parts, where a yearly income of $1,000,000 doesn’t make you rich), etc.
But does it matter? I don’t mind being gullible about eminently believable (though perhaps not very common) statements, which, even if untrue, are inconsequential. I reserve my skepticism to consequential things. In a comment thread, it would be if Thorfinsson’s positions were based on his statements about him – like for example if he claimed to personally know Trump and Jared and knew precisely what role Jared played in the Syria strikes. Those statements would not be totally unbelievable (I’m sure some of Jared’s and Trump’s many acquaintances do occasionally comment on comment boards somewhere), but I wouldn’t just believe them without further ado.
It’s actually the same as some of our commenters’ age. Maybe they lie. Who cares?
One more point. I did comment a lot on a Hungarian online forum. I participated in meetups. A lot of commenters got acquainted to a lot of others. Such things are impossible for participants of English- or Russian-language forums or comment threads, because the vast majority of commenters live huge distances from each other. (I’d guess the same might be true of Armenians, because too many of them live in Russia or the diaspora elsewhere. The Czech or Slovak commenters might have had the experience of meeting dozens or more of commenters IRL, but not the rest.) In Hungary it was not the case – almost half the commenters were from Budapest, and a lot of the rest could easily travel there. So, meetups happened. Let me just say that a few well-known (in Hungary) people (including a few well-known and at least in one case relatively rich media personalities, or for example the presidential military aide of the first president of the Hungarian Republic in the early 1990s, a retired general) did comment on that online forum. A couple monikers were rumored to be used by X or Y politician. (A few politicians commented openly with “blue checkmarks.”) Interestingly, while most people were somewhat different from their online personalities (and online hatreds and harsh words etc. rarely transferred to IRL meetups – the opposite was rather true, i.e. IRL hatreds of people who had known each other before, transferred to online debates, but online opponents, however fierce, were usually civil and even friendly to each other, with a strong sense of camaraderie), you could triangulate their IRL personalities from their online persona. (The two are never the same, of course.) I don’t think the margin of error is vastly larger than after a series of IRL conversations, but you need to meet several online commenters to fine-tune that.
That’s actually a good thing – math having no relation to “math” as it is formulaically taught in schools actually makes PISA more of a genuine IQ test.
I agree with Thorfinnsson. American whites are pretty smart. Some of their whites – e.g. those in New England – are some of the smartest population groups on the planet. And the roots of that are deep – for instance, the literacy rate of the early-to-mid 17th century Puritan settlers was around 60%-70% [Albion’s Seed], which is amazing for that time, as was them founding Harvard University at a time when their population was a mere 40,000 people.
http://primat.org/_ph/22/2/46753176.jpg
All the smart Georgians and Armenians have been emigrating for the past couple of centuries.
(Though you could say the same about Ireland).
Anyhow, I don’t view it as too much of a puzzle. The general Caucasus IQ level seems to be a Balkan-like 90.
Right, it was a forum about tourism, and the girl shared some adequate information about her friend’s trip to Canada before going on that strange bragging spree. Why would real international millionaires even bother wasting their valuable time a commoner tourist forum? They have personal secretaries to organize trips for them.
Still, having an opinion on Taylor Swift’s looks is not the same thing as making unprovable claims that you’re so awesome all Taylor Swift lookalikes are actually dying to date you. The latter is, well, not very believable.
I speculated about some of the reasons for America’s overperformance on GDPcc relative to IQ levels here: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/national-wealth-and-iq/
Additional reason I encountered since: Americans have much greater labor mobility than Europeans. Going to work from California to Texas happens all the time in the US – you don’t see that either in the EU, nor even within European countries.
https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/07/labour-mobility
You don’t seem to know anyone with an annual income of $1,000,000.
Simply put, you don’t hire a personal assistant with that kind of income. A personal assistant costs something like $50,000 annually at the very least. Would you seriously spend 5% of your income on a personal assistant? Especially if you live somewhere expensive, where $1,000,000 doesn’t get you as far as at a cheaper location.
I think you need an annual income of at least $10,000,000 to be in the personal assistant territory, and even then only if either your income is very stable (i.e. little chance of it dropping to negative next year), or if you’re a dumb celebrity who needs an assistant to deal with the tabloid press etc. anyway.
I cannot open the picture.
You haven’t missed anything, it’s just some horrible maths stuff, endless equations…I feel reminded of maths classes at school and re-traumatized just by looking at it.
It’s possible it was untrue, I don’t know. But simply because you wouldn’t brag about such money means nothing. Maybe she was a gold digger who just found her rich Swiss husband, and is unhappy in her marriage. The only thing she likes about it is her bragging rights about her (husband’s) income. So she keeps bragging about it wherever she can.
I know a guy (well, don’t really know him, but I know his IRL identity) who is an academic, a mathematics professor at various international universities. He loves bragging about his being smart to… his blogs commenters. Or in his blog posts. Why? I don’t know.
That’s human nature for you. Some people are different from you.
I would have a hard time believing this, but a Swedish nationalist acquaintance (who has spent time in the US and now works in London) claims the same thing.
We’ll see, I guess.
Just a note that while I have yet to meet Thorfinnsson, we do go back on the Internet for about a decade now, I know his IRL identity, and can confirm that he’s not lying about his background.
Although he has taken humblebragging about his wealth to something of an art form, it’s not something he makes up.
I actually quite like it. It makes me slightly depressed that I have failed at making money to date, which is pretty embarrassing, but it also encourages me towards self-improvement.
I can open it from my smartphone, fortunately.
Sorry, but claims of personal awesomeness that nicely align with the forum’s popular ideology just make me suspicious. Many right-wing people hate college education for its leftism – and here you are, someone who skipped it and still became a rich businessman. They despise leftist cities and worship rural living – you say you live in a rural area. Then there are white nationalists in whose eyes you must be an Aryan superman, etc.
Permanent resident. Most people in the area are from diasporas, either already dual citizens or wanting to be, but someone from a first-world country like Sweden is very rare.
But why would you?
Looks like teaching methods in Russia are quite “traditional”. Probably mostly a good thing though, certainly better than the ridiculous softening and lowering of standards I see in Germany.
Maybe his first name is “Chad” – you never know.
Peace.
He didn’t claim to have a wife or rather a harem and dozens of children. Or to have served in the military.
Did you believe what Twinkie wrote of himself? (Just to recap, East Asian guy, probably Korean, Nordic wife, both of them with Ivy League degrees, I think he also has a PhD, traditional catholic, served in the military in some kind of elite unit, high income, GMC Suburban to transport the eight kids, I hope I didn’t leave out anything important.)
I don’t know Twinkie IRL, but I’m not overly skeptical of his claims. Of course it’s not very important, nothing happens if it turns out he’s a virgin guy commenting from his parents’ basement. But even if I had to bet my house on it, I’d probably bet he’s roughly what he says he is. It’s not so easy to consistently fake a person.
I have dealt with the seriously wealthy in the past. At that level they would not have personal secretaries but could have work PAs who would deal with the pesky personal admins if they were bosses of their own companies. If they were employees they would just hire travel agencies who would handle all the arrangements. At that level time is the most scarce resource not money.
It’s not that hard to believe. If you have wealthy parents you also likely have access to connections, trust funds and other family wealth and can get parachuted into in family-owned companies to get a head-start in business life.
It’s a good example of a hard question that can be solved with elementary techniques. A high school student ought to be able to solve it, in theory, but if you miss the trick in the first step, you’ll struggle.
It reminds me of the problems that that Israeli guy posts on cut the knot.
Beginner’s analysis exercise – to calculate the integral (which is – I have double checked the answer sheet on my calculator – correctly 12).
The problem is this answersheet – presumably students are distributing.
I’m afraid to say I just type everything into my Texas Instruments Nspire and get the solution in 2 seconds.
As for teaching methods, – I am sure they are no different to Germany.
I’d appreciate it if you didn’t bother me with such stuff. I know it’s necessary for civilization and admire the people who are good at it, but I’ve successfully forgotten everything about advanced (?) maths I learned at school and am glad about that.
I see where you are coming from.
I did not skip college out of some ideological hatred of college. I was simply a bad student as I hated school, compounded by an unhappy childhood. My older brother, who was a good student, attended an Ivy League university.
My family has a successful business so there was an easy path for me, though I did spend some years trading and engaging in black market activities independently.
I would not recommend someone with a triple digit IQ to avoid college in general, simply to avoid unproductive college (poor majors, excessive debt, etc.).
I live in a rural area because my factory is here. While the area has its charms (no commuting, noise, crime, non-whites, etc.), believe me, Karl Marx was right about rural areas. I previously lived in one of the country’s largest cities and enjoy it more than where I live now.
Lastly, yes, Swedes permanently emigrating is unusual in the past 70 years or so. My father is very independently minded and felt stifled by Swedish society.
The Magyar Miracle is also correct that my actual background is not very relevant to our political discussions, though I like to think we are developing some camaraderie here on Karlin’s blog.
I realize I have literally commented, “I’m rich”, which is fun and amusing to do. That said I don’t even have eight figures of wealth, though I suppose my father does (but not nine, nor anywhere close to nine). It is of course a goal to get there.
I am financially independent and have no family or housing expenses. Nearly all of my income is reinvested, but I do spend money to avoid things I hate (such as cattle class) and to signal social status efficiently (e.g. good clothing and grooming is efficient, whereas expensive luxury cars are inefficient).
I’ve said before on this blog and elsewhere that I recommend all political dissidents become financially independent. Financial independence can also be achieved with a relatively low asset base if one opts for frugality (see Mr. Money Mustache for instance). You never want them to be able to break your rice bowl. The theorist John Boyd was famous for his frugality, which he deliberately adopted to ensure his complete independence.
Your failure to make money is not embarrassing as you have produced an excellent corpus. The simple fact is that you can either make money or you can be an intellectual, not both. You can of course transition as evidenced by Nassim Taleb.
I wouldn’t consider myself “seriously wealthy”, but let’s say I’m in the neighborhood.
Rather than having a full-time personal assistant, one simply outsources certain tasks a middle class person would do himself to various employees or outside services.
For instance I had a tree cut down on my property and was planning to spend time chopping it into firewood, but then it kept snowing and alternatively melting repeatedly–ruining the wood.
When the snow FINALLY melted this past week, I asked my executive secretary to contact the groundskeeping company who maintains our factory grounds to have all the ruined wood removed.
Most of the work she does is of course strictly business related, but I will offload certain personal tasks onto her.
And if the Magyar Miracle is reading this, yes, your financial calculus is correct. I wouldn’t hire a full-time employee to deal with personal b.s. as it has a bad ROI.
$90,000 monthly income is not “seriously wealthy.”
Yes.
Depends on the source of income.
If that’s capital income it represents assets of about $30m, which is the current standard for “ultra-high net worth” (granted, we are not looking at the debt picture here–but let’s assume no debt).
When I wrote “nice weather,” I meant nice climate. That is, temperate climate, no drought, etc. Without it, you hadn’t had a population explosion. Without which you’d have no economies of scale, and wouldn’t be a superpower.
The US was rich already before industrialization because it had a lot of land.
All this is so simple I don’t understand how it can even be controversial.
How did you calculate this? It sure doesn’t sound like a very good return, especially considering the raging bull market in US equities.
The US was rich already before industrialization because it had a lot of land.
No, it had people who knew how to work the land. By contrast, the Netherlands and Britain were affluent though they had dense populations. Human capital. It’s great stuff.
When I wrote “nice weather,” I meant nice climate. That is, temperate climate, no drought,
The climate is more pleasant in most of Europe than in the United States. Russia and Scandinavia are the exceptions.
The UK was industrializing already in the late 18th century. So was the Netherlands shortly afterwards. They both had huge trading empires, which might have generated extra income (unavailable to the US), and of course it’s well known that in the 19th century European travelers were astonished how tall and well-fed Americans were. Because, you know, empty lands.
Europe or China might have a better climate than the US, but they were not empty, both (especially China) had huge population densities. Europe was also fragmented, so no European country could hope to be dominant over the US. (With the possible exception of Russia, but they blew their chances in 1917 or perhaps already in 1914.)