Untold billions of dollars spent on new football stadiums. Lavish spending on football players. The hiring of some of Europe’s most expensive and prestigious coaches.
Results?
- Russia is 45th in the football Elo rankings
- Russia is 70th in the FIFA rankings
The Russian team has never been weaker in its entire history.
My guess is that Russia will probably eke out second place in its laughably weak (and hilariously improbable) group, and will be put out of its misery by Spain or Portugal as soon as it’s out of the group stages.
However, we can’t exclude that Russia will fail to beat laughably weak Egypt and/or Saudi Arabia. 538 gives a 27% chance that Russia will fail to even pass the group stage.
There’s no reason to be mad about this. Climatic factors mean that Russians are simply not cut out for football, as I explained in Why Is Russia Bad at Football?
Still, the kremlins are obsessed with big sporting events, because (in their cargo cult minds) it helps raise the country’s “prestige”, and perhaps more importantly, helps fatten their friends’ wallets. At almost $10 billion, Russia spent more on stadium construction than any previous FIFA World Cup host – Korea/Japan in 2002, South Africa in 2010, and Brazil in 2014 all spent around $6 billion on stadiums. This overspending comes on the heels of the most expensive Olympics in history, the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 – a vanity project that has only been rivaled by the white elephants in the Gulf Arab monarchies in the 21st century.
Robbie Williams is going to be performing at the opening ceremony, and no doubt getting paid millions if not tens of millions for “selling his soul” to the “dictator Putin.” Meanwhile, FIFA has banned pro-Donbass singer Yulia Chicherina from performing at the opening ceremonies in Rostov on Don, with official Russia not uttering a word of complaint about that.
In short, this is not Russia’s World Cup.
It is the World Cup of Putin, of the Rotenbergs, of Robbie Williams and sundry washed up foreign celebrities, of the Russian bureaucracy, of the FIFA bureaucracy, and of the Western media that symbiotically feeds off all of them.
Russia will probably fail humiliatingly, and I couldn’t care less.
You sound bitter. I hate this type of attitude.
I understand saying it once or twice. But I have seen you mentions this in comments and Twitter every chance that you get.
No one likes a nag and I agree with you.
From a public relations aspect, this is the best commercial/advert (regardless of football team performance) in history, as foreigners’ impression of the country will be reversed in some various ways after they visit, while millions more people will become interested in visiting for the future.
Whether this is a good expenditure of money is another question (I guess we will know in a couple of years in the future). It’s a question whether such a short and temporary event can contribute to the development of a long-term or permanent increase in tourism .
I think lots of people in Western Europe care less and less too, due to the ethnic composition of the teams and their use for multiculturalist/immigrationist propaganda. I can’t even begin to imagine how deluded a white Frenchman would have to be to cheer for the French team.
Besides, those cretins just get way too much money for kicking around a ball anyway.
But yes, probably a waste of money for Russia.
Well, sport is a completely stupid waste of money. But in this issue in Russia there is a complete unity of the population and the government. Spending money on sports, but not on useful things – it is the will of the people, “democracy in action”.
DDR was guided by the metric of the medal count. That’s why they did not concentrate on soccer and hockey with low medals/cost ratio. The individual sports had much higher medal/cost ratio. Still they managed to win with West Germany during the Wold Cup in 1974.
I somewhat disagree regarding the reasons for why Russia is so bad. The example of Hungary shows that a corrupt system can kill a great football tradition, and then sinking money into it just can’t fix it.
It’s also probably the most complex sport (or at least one of the most complex ones) out there, while superficially giving the impression to all that they are near expert level. This makes it very difficult to improve it from the outside.
Pouring money on it in Hungary led to a deterioration of quality, because talented players now stay at home. Why work your ass off in the German second class if you can make the same money in Hungary, and it’s easier? The players in our good 2016 squad were mostly older (it was I think the oldest squad at the Euro Cup), the next generation so far seems to be horrible.
There are a few talented players with zero work ethic. Some of them got some work ethic around age 25, but by then it’s too late for a successful career.
The coaches, especially the ones training the young talents, are horrible, stuck in the 1970s. They are also very good at blocking newcomers.
I guess Russian players have it good in Russia either. They can make a lot of money, so they aren’t motivated to go abroad. It’s easier to stay at home. I also think Russian coaches, once at the cutting edge (like once Hungarian coaches were there, too), must now also be low quality.
I’d just cut spending on it, it’s simply not good for the country. The only thing I’d spend money on is training young talents and training a new generation of coaches.
God I fucking hate sports “craptaculars”. The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics is going to be another rerun of Sochi, though thankfully significantly cheaper since we still have tons of facilities left over from 2008, you can bet the human rights ass holes are going to make even bigger nuisances of themselves then. I honestly hope there is a boycott so the Chinese people and the Communist Party shed their “win-win” illusions and realize that the only true power is coercive power and than the West is a flat out enemy.
That 10 billion could have paid for at least another 100 ICBMs, or 100 fighter jets, or 20 guided missile frigates. Counting the opportunity costs just pisses me off knowing that instead all of that money going to line the pockets of politically connected construction interests, it could have gone to something truly useful and kept the anglo-zio pirates at bay.
True, who cares about kicking ball, throwing large ball or beating small ball with big bat. These are amusements for the proles. The movers and shakers play larger game, and another round is about to begin.
Anatoly Karlin is a 5th columnist who wants Russia to be afflicted by radioactive paedophiles….it’s also clear he has an affection for these “cyborg” loser freaks
This fraud recognised that the traditional liberasts ( Gessen,Albats ,Kasparov and so on) are too stupid, laughable and blinkered that only 3% of the Russian population takes them seriously , so he has found a way of repackaging their message in a way that the 97% can unsuspectingly think is supportive of Russia. Must give him kudos, because he does it skillfully.
$1o billion on the football World Cup ? Wouldn’t it have been better spent on Ice Hockey ? ( If Russia had to waste it on professional sport )
There again, nobody gave England much chance in 1966 or Argentina in 1978.
Russia have been so low key, they must have a reasonable chance. I think that the semi-final is a decent bet.
If they don’t make the semi-final, then get your begging bowl out, Master Anatoly, and I will contribute 50 Euros or Pounds, or whatever, to your Trust Fund. ( If you are not already subject to primary or secondary sanctions )
Remember this comment.
I have always been fond of international sporting events, and I feel that hosting and winning both confer prestige. I was outraged that we were defeated by the dastardly Chinese in the 2008 Summer Olympiad. China put on an amazing display–it was the moment “New China” officially came out to the world. Probably the best Olympics since 1936.
The Sochi Winter Olympiad was very well done, and Russia won the games as well.
Olympic hockey has long been my favorite sporting event, though unfortunately the NHL has now murdered it.
The Kurt Russell film Miracle is an excellent dramatization of the Miracle on Ice, when an American team of college amateurs successfully defeated the crack Soviet team at Lake Placid, New York in 1980. Amusingly the film was shot in Canada, so the extras in the crowd cheering “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” were actually Canadians.
The Jewish sportscaster Al Michaels called the game for ABC, and his sterling broadcast (“Do you believe in miracles?”) made his career.
And really, it’s not like these sporting events cost that much money to host. I was outraged when Chicagoans themselves sabotaged Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. They apparently thought two weeks of increased traffic was too great a burden to bear in exchange for Olympic greatness.
Of course, like German_reader says it’s only fun if the national teams are, well, national. I assume we’re all rooting for Iceland aren’t we? 🙂
how..what..what the heck…
That’s what I thought. I think China can better afford these kinds of prestige outlays.
A case where they make a questionable deciion is building the football stadium in Saransk for $270 million.
Obviously local people are excited Ronaldo is coming to Saransk and it’s a good month for the city on all levels especially economically (they will receive 200,000 tourists in a month).
But what’s Mordovia going to do afterwards with the 45,000 seat stadium.
Previously this team’s stadium had a capacity of around 11,000 seats.
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Some issues also in Saransk. Less than two weeks before the world cup, – still all this shit on the embankment
I think you only need so many ICBMs for a credible threat deterrence. What the US and Russia have should probably be considered overkill.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c0/50/05/c05005004f8d7b9b779dd8811e46e93d.jpg
I wonder what would happen if someone really wore such a shirt in Russia.
Duke is pining for the New Ming Dynasty, so its never going to be enough.
Most Americans don’t give a shit about soccer. It’s about as exciting as listening to a golf match on radio. But civilized peoples are outraged by the slaughter of stray dogs for this world soccer bullshit. The story regarding the killings of stray dogs in Russia for this soccer match has been prominently displayed on The DrudgeReport, the most widely seen news source. Not good if Russia gives a shit about PR in the civilized world.
Should deterrence fail and the “unthinkable” happen, though, I suspect it really would pay to have the capability of utterly demolishing as opposed to just crippling the enemy. Considering that their attitudes may well shift from “hostile” to “genocidal” in the aftermath of a nuclear exchange, regardless of whether they’re hit with a dozen or 5,000 nukes. In any case, I would certainly seek to match the Russian and US arsenals if I was Chinese.
Al Michaels called the game for ABC, and his sterling broadcast (“Do you believe in miracles?”) made his career.
Good for him. He’s still an ignorant MF who doesn’t know that Dallas and Miami are located in southern states.
Does Russia have a lot of football hooligans and can we expect violence?
I know it would be bad for Russia’s image, but at least it might make the world cup more exciting.
https://twitter.com/ASLuhn/status/1001756990094413824
The Britbongs need to be punished good.
50 Bitcoin?
Russia should kill all the strays and anyone who declares otherwise is just a big whiney baby. The “civilized” world as you call it is really just the “infantilized” world who have become too detached from their farming ancestors and thus have started to anthropomorphize livestock and pets. You know who didn’t care about animal rights? Everyone when people were regularly beheading chickens and slaughtering pigs to get their doses of protein. If you’ve got four legs and weren’t economically productive, you got eaten.
You never see actual farmers or people who practice animal husbandry today at animal rights protests, but rather urban assholes who get their chicken breasts, pork chops, and beef steaks in sterile meticulous plastic packaging from whole foods devoid of all the blood, gore, viscera and the screaming that comes from actually having to butcher animals yourselves. People who are exposed to actual slaughter come to realize just how farcical and hypocritical the bleating about animal welfare truly is considering what the price is for anyone who eats meat. At least the militant vegans are consistent while being annoying. Eating factory produced chicken while moaning about stray dogs being clubbed in the head is just stupid.
Strongly agree.
4H should be compulsory in public education in order to immunize children against animal rights.
Counterintelligence agencies need to identify all animal rights activists, vegetarians, and (especially) vegans. They should then be rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
It should be illegal to serve vegetarian meals to anyone unable to produce an Indian passport.
Completely off-topic, but it appears that American Pew research center now recognises Crimea as a part of Russia. Look closely at this map:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfmZXAQXUAA9wCV.jpg
Notice the contrast between China and India. India really looks like a backward, third-world country with such attitudes.
Well it’s two different things.
Hooligans will not create any trouble during the World Cup. The security level in participating cities is very high at the moment, with thousands of police coming as reinforcements from other regions.
Foreign fans will be warmly and safely welcomed (they’ll go .
To focus just on Saransk again. They are boasting about how they’ve rebuilt the airport, rebuilt the whole city in preparation, restored many old buildings, and are going to keep all museums of local history into the evening.
They are even making a Latino-style carnival for the fans.
They also close down all the roads into the city, and introduce unprecedented level of security, which is annoying some local people.
Actually one of the stories is they kicked out students from university accommodation, and use the university accommodation to house hundreds of police reinforcements.
If you are using an American defense contractor, $10 billion may only get you one of the above.
Most Americans also have the IQ of a baseball, which explains why they can sit for hours watching some guy scratch his nuts, while everyone else stands around waiting for him to throw a damn ball. At least it allows guys with beer bellies to call themselves “athletes.”
No, if you had read my other writing elsewhere, I am against the restoration of the Chinese monarchy because it has demonstrably failed in the past and the ways it has failed always coincided with monarchs who either were incapable or uninterested in exercising actual power, leaving court decision making monopolized by a court composed of female regents and other cunts (I cannot stress this term enough) who should have no say in the affairs of state. Even in the case of a good emperor, a terminal case of nobles oblige is probably inevitable since an emperor by dint of being emperor will vastly removed from his subjects. I am not adverse to the restoration of an emperor as a reactionary shilling point just to spit all over Chinese liberals, but I do not see it as a long term solution to actual governance.
My ideal government for China is to adopt the civic militarist attitudes that proved so successful with small European polities and wed them to a minimalist quasi army-state administration whose only purpose for existence is impartial arbitration of Chinese law and war making modeled after post Shang Yang/Han Fei Qin. Rather than power centralized in the status of a singular abstract emperor though. Legal authority and thus suffrage should be limited to the upper proletariat, and lower and middle bourgeoisie males. Women don’t get a vote, in fact spinster childless women should cost their male relatives votes out of simple principal. In contravention of Chinese tradition, the elderly don’t get a vote either because the changing demographic balance is quite ahistorical and will be needed to avoid gerontacratic capture as has happened in the West. It may actually be more appropriate to not enfranchise individuals at all but family units. Only Han Chinese men with a minimal amount of financial capital from the ages of 18-65 with a minimum of 5-10 years of military service get a say in how the state should be run and the state itself should only be involved in 3 areas: Maintaining an army, maintaining the police and courts, maintaining an education system to feed the army and minimalist administrative demands of said army. All other factors the Chinese people should self organize and take care of on their own. Ideally I want at most 10% of the male population involved in political decision making.
Anthropomorphizing livestock is a sign of progress. Some degree of hypocrisy is also a very good thing. A society where everybody would speak whatever came to their mind would be unbearable.
Chickens are utterly monstrous animals – nobody should have any compunction about killing them. Their taste is their one redeeming quality.
Yamnaya boys supposedly raised dogs up from pups and then killed them to toughen themselves up. Pretty messed up, but it must have worked.
the kremlins are obsessed with big sporting events, because (in their cargo cult minds) it helps raise the country’s “prestige”
Yet these events usually result in lots of bad press for Russia. The Sochi F1 race is one of the worst on the calendar. The Western European F1 reporters often tell their audiences about their bureaucratic experiences getting Visas, etc, and Putin’s annual visit to the back room with the podium finishers – AFAIK no other leader does this – is always awkward for the drivers and the subject of much mockery from F1 fans. Virtually none of the GPs come close to even breaking even so a lot of money is being spent for this bad press.
Climatic factors mean that Russians are simply not cut out for football
I somewhat remember the USSR team in the 1980s. In 1986 they topped their group over much fancied France then after leading most of the match got knocked out in extra time by eventual semi-finalists Belgium. At Euro 1988 they beat the Dutch (and English) in the group stage then lost to the same Dutch team in the final. I assume the players were mostly ethnic Russians – maybe some Ukrainians too? – so they’d no trouble producing a world class team back then.
Why not just send them all to India, where they can be come Jainists? Meanwhile, those who won’t eat pork should be sent to Pakistan.
They have built stadium, roads, parking lots, hotels, clinics, parks… In Sochi they also built a new train connection and ski resorts. What would you prefer they spend the money on? Most societies spend incredible amounts on stale institutions that do very little, office buildings full of people having meetings, writing memos, watching the clock. Not much comes out of that. At least when a country builds something, it is tangible and is useful for a long time. We should do more of it, not less.
There will always will be waste and corruption on public infrastructure projects. It is like a tip added to our bill, maybe in Russia the tip is excessive, maybe not. But that’s a different issue. The cretins kicking the ball entertain us and live in one of the few truly merit based systems around.
Slepakov’s mocking of Kadyrov – is so popular today, it is even trending in international versions of youtube?
People keep dismissing the opportunity cost of money. Sochi was a feeding trough flushing Russian taxpayer money into the hands of politically connected construction oligarchs and the result of it was almost useless under utilized resorts. Yes, it is better than paying annual ever escalating Danegeld to murderous Muslims and Africans because those facilities are there should Russians actually desire to use them (most wont avail themselves) but Russia doesn’t have as much money to waste as the West nor can it afford to be so profligate. The money could have been spent better almost anywhere else.
Road maintenance, air force modernization, hospital upgrades, better school lunches for children, better pay for eldery pensioners, any of that would have been better than paying for someone who has swiss citizenship to fund a bigger yacht.
Worst of all they wasted that money in Sochi of all places rather than St. Petersburg or Moscow. Grand extravgant monuments in the vein of Ozymandias in your capital is one thing. Putting it where neither Russians nor anyone else will go to see and admire is something else.
In Karlin land, expenditure exists, but there is no such thing as income ( the World Cup will make Russia a few billion dollars profit you fool)
The Zenit Arena is nowhere near this list of most expensive stadiums…… London have 2, billion dollar stadiums in the revamped Wembley and the ludicrously thought-out Olympic Stadium whose costs have ballooned to the billion dollar mark because of the renovations to turn it into a more football friendly stadium ( and the new stadium of Tottenham Hotspur could reach 1 billion also)
Zenit Saint Petersburg are a very profitable club, one of the most profitable in Europe….the Zenit Arena is beautiful and will , eventually turn into a profitable asset
They could and perhaps should have allowed Krasnodar on the list of host cities, because they have a beautiful stadium built, from private money….but I understand the reasons why they didn’t.
A key promise they were unable to keep was the Kazan-Moscow ,High-speed rail but at least this saves on the budget. Real transport infrastructure improvement comes with this World Cup….with Russia having much more highly intensely populated cities than the rest of Europe and most of the World……this is significant
This is true, but Turkey have done the same thing as Russia in this regard, also with mixed to negative results, so to have England…with still horrible results for their national team…..but they do have a very profitable and successful league.
Because FIFA have risked everything to give Russia the World Cup, keep them as hosts, and promote them as hosts, you idiot Anatoly. They have paid financially for this from the Anglo-American thugs. FIFA are clearly not an anti-Russia organisation.
Wow….dumbass Leonid, anti-Russian cunt ….is a reliable source of news in Karlinland! WTF?
Sigh…..total garbage. Not only, obviously was the whole of Sochi improved ( backed up by summer AND winter tourism after 2014)..Gulf countries dont pay any of their own for the design and build of these projects
Not a fan of Olympic games or the Putin regime, but this comment is simply ridiculous. 6,5 million tourists visited Sochi in 2017. I don’t vacation in Sochi, but based on the reports Olympic-related spending made a difference. Even the viciously anti-Putin Washington Post somewhat agrees:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/that-sochi-olympic-boondoggle-russians-say-all-the-investment-is-paying-off/2017/11/13/65014bd0-b82c-11e7-9b93-b97043e57a22_story.html?utm_term=.035ecfb2e747
I always imagine the genocide phase to be bio-weapons, but I suppose nukes are a bit easier to manage.
Glad to know that Sochi’s tourism intake is doing well. It still doesn’t justify all of that wasteful spending. The article notes that the tax revenue from tourism was a mere $55 million. Even attributing ALL of that from the Olympics and assuming interest rates of 0% means that it will take 1000 years for Sochi to pay it off.
Well, technically its 7% of the Chinese population at the moment who rule the rest, so its not too far off from your ideas.
Overall, I don’t disagree much though I would prefer at least some Confucian ideals to keep their honored place; I think that it would be consistent with the notion of family units as the lowest political entity and I have a great deal of appreciation for compassion as a certain barometer for civilization. And there is, of course, something beautiful about the notion of striving for virtue and to be a shi in a fallen world.
I’m not sure how you’re using Legalism in this, to be honest; it seems to basically be the part of Legalism that would be roughly equivalent to “rule of law”, since your Legalism isn’t trying to centralize power in a state?
This is unrelated to your discussion.
Just wanted to say that I appreciate you and the Duke of Qin commenting to give us a Chinese perspective.
China is supposed to be a rival and enemy of America.
I sometimes wonder if these things really matter anymore.
Seems like Americans, Chinese, Russians, Germans, etc. don’t really have important quarrels anymore. The real enemy for all of us is within our own countries.
Perhaps we should unite and collaborate in destroying these enemies.
But no-one here, or on the whole website, is excited for the actual football? I need to find another forum.
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Obviously no-one expects a repetition of the fairy tale…
(Ignashevich who fucked up with the Van Nistelrooy goal, still in the team in 2018!)
The Communist Party is an imperfect organization, one part traitorous and two parts gloriously reactionary. It is the best out of a stable of bad choices though sub-optimal to what I have in mind. It is also unfortunately a civilian bureaucracy and not a military one. Mao was wrong in that the Party should always wield the gun, rather it should be that the Party is the gun. China’s most stable and prosperous periods were ushered in by men who came from the military aristocracy and decay inevitably set in when the military was de prioritized by a court governed by the families of Empress regents.
My definition of the rule of law is vastly different than what most of the West today would classify as rule of law. Laws emerge from the collective morals of their respective communities, that is they reflect the interests and sensibilities of men. There can be no universal law because each community has their own particular values. That they should be neutrally enforced and applicable to the extent of their communities I whole heartedly concur. What Chinese liberals and their degenerate race defiling enablers in the West mean by “rule of law” is actually rule by a blacked robed judicial commissariat. The law here being enforced is not so much community consensus by rather administrative fiat driven by a degenerate globohomo elite. Such as Hong Kong inviting two elderly British women to be judges.
Sending masses of Uyghurs to reducation camps would accordingly be against the rule of law to them. However effective policing of ornery Muslims is right and proper and within Chinese consensus, hence is perfectly following Chinese law in my book.
And Zhirkov is back within the team now (and of course still there is Akinfeev)…
The idea that investing in permanent infrastructure is ‘spending’ misses the point of what money, assets, debt, etc… really mean. If I build a house, I have a house – the ‘spending’ doesn’t disappear, it is there – in the house. Not all infrastructure works that way, but a lot of it does. It adds assets that can be monetised if needed. You can sell it, you can’t sell someone’s school lunch. Mixing this investment with transactional spending is a mistake.
You suggest some sensible transactional spending: health care, pension, etc…sure, why not? I am all for spending more, Russia has minuscule debt. They have been stupid and cautious for no good reason. Making money scarce is idiotic, it is our invention, we control it, within reason we should use it make lives better. Lately just about every country has erred on the side of austerity and we are coming to regret it.
Sochi has been a success, the investment will probably generate an order of magnitude more in economic activity over the next 50 years, and most assets will still be there at that time. I don’t like the way it was done, lots of people enriched themselves. But if the choice is to do nothing or do it with the usual corruption, I would choose to do it. It is just money after all, let’s stop being intimidated by the concept, we have invented it…
Homer wrote he couldn’t bear a man who believed one thing in his heart but said another. Masculine civilizations tell each other the truth. The food chain is the truth My grandmother used to roll a screaming pig on its back and stab it in the heart. Stop being so sentiocentric.
I think its mostly a struggle against entropy, including parasites and predators that naturally appear when society is weakened thanks to reduced selection. Entropy kills people, societies and even planets. Chaos seeks to consume all.
But it is not right to merely accept this. We should struggle and fight against it, and impose order against an encroaching end.
I refuse to go gentle in the good night.
I see what you mean, but isn’t that more specifically the “rule of man” that some Party academicians has been playing around a bit to try to promote, with the notion that laws have to be considered for their context and community, with obvious implication that it is to be delivered through the judgment of “virtuous men,” and that plays happy with the Confucian context, of course. In that world, we must cultivate virtue in order to judge well, and the judge presumably must bear the consequences of his decisions.
The Legalism argument would seem to be the opposite: the same laws must impartially apply to all, commoner and prince alike. In its most cynical reading: all humans are selfish and greedy, or close enough that we should consider them so. It is only through incentives and punishment can society be stable, and thus the rhetorical question and parable of: “Why is the same man a thief in one country and a good man in another?” with the answer of “Because of the differences in law.” One could almost see it as an argument for institutions. In this world, virtue is relatively unimportant(all men are evil anyway), only the clarity of the law and the correct incentives/punishments.
From what I can tell, you’re trying to hybridize the two while avoiding the the so-called “independent judiciary” which essentially ends up creating lawmakers with no skin in the game: a class of policymakers with essentially more power than any lawmaker while having no responsibility whatever.
I feel similarly about the Olympics.
Sometimes I wonder, if there shouldn’t be some new form of diplomacy. I don’t know whether it would be playing fire or not – but, for instance, crowdsourced videoclips to hijack the Left’s xenophilia. Ex: clips of Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese saying please don’t destroy Europe.
This part of it’s really crazy: I also thought of using the Left’s negrophilia for government oversight. Hiring a team of Africans for like $1/day to read various scripts to fight corruption in the US. Freedom of information requests, etc.
“We’re all rooting for Iceland”
Poland has an all-white team, captained by the great (but underpaid) Robert
Lewandowski. Poland’s FIFA ranking going into the Cup is 8, which is not bad.
I hear Lewandowski is getting huge offers these days so it’ll be interesting
to see what he’ll do next. He is still reasonably young so I wouldn’t be surprised
if in a few years he ends up with $100-200 million in net worth.
There’s some miscalculation here, if Sochi receives more than 6 million tourists each year, to assume the annual revenue with then is $55 million means each visitor brings only 9 dollars to the city. The accurate numbers are on billions, for sure, which makes Sochi a successful and profitable investment even before the long term.
Wouldn’t work. There’s an excellent encapsulation of a leftist position here, by a leftist:
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2018/06/13/anthony-leaker/against-free-speech
The Left largely is undeterred by appeals to any abstract principles. As Mr. Leaker explains here, they seek specific goals which are impossible to be changed by argumentation, which in this specific case would be open borders. Any protest against it would simply increase their attack range, and indeed, this is already an easy link for them as per his speech: if Chinese, Japanese and Koreans oppose it, it is proof that they are authoritarian, illiberal governments(and all three have significant “undemocratic” elements). Therefore, the fight for democracy must further strike against such authoritarian elements of the world.
It’s mainly domestic tourism, so the money is just moving from one part of the country to another.
The important is to get foreign tourists to visit (moving money from one country to another).
For this, actually it is cultural sites Moscow and Peter which are the largest destinations (as in France, it is Paris which is the largest tourist attraction).
The secret here has a lot in relation to image and marketing. Paris is the world’s most popular tourist destination, because of an amazing success of France in marketing the image of Paris as a dream and romance city.
France itself attracts 89 million foreign tourists last year and Paris received 40 million tourists. Moscow gets 21 million tourists (mainly domestic).
Agreed, Uday Hussein had the right idea on the worth of football players, I recall you saying.
India has always been a shithole. The human capital there probably is on par with sub-saharan Africa, they have just been comparatively more lucky in lack of geographic isolation.
I’m sorry, but this is a retarded analysis.
Kremlins like sporting events and summits because they’re an excuse for direct federal funding of infrastructure.
Despite the memes, Russia is (and always was) a decentralized federation, and giving infrastructure money to regional powers is a good way to watch it get wasted.
Earmarking the money for concrete infrastructure projects is a way to control spending and corruption.
The FT had an article recently about a Russian billionaire who’s more optimistic about the potential of Russian association football, Sergei Galitsky: https://www.ft.com/content/98f3b1f0-639c-11e8-90c2-9563a0613e56
What is he singing about?
Minor scandal (in the Western media and marginal liberal groups).
KPRF deputy Tamara Pletnyova:
More politically correct than a Communist politician, RT omitted any aspect of the race angle: https://www.rt.com/sport/429625-no-sex-russian-lawmaker/
Western ones of course do the exact opposite: https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-lawmaker-pletnyova-warns-sex-foreigners-world-cup-soccer/29288609.html
Meanwhile, autistic screeching about this in pozzed liberal (but I repeat myself) quarters: https://varlamov.ru/2962737.html
Varlamov’s blog is one of the central nodes of Russian liberalism. This is his audience, and it is full of comments about how this makes Russia a Nazi country (I call this meme the Putlerreich). This is the progressive, upwardly mobile, anti-Putin or Putin-skeptical upper middle class, and this is the sort of opinion that’s dominant amongst them.
Meanwhile in Israel, from a member of a mainstream party: https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-lawmaker-lauds-supremacy-of-jewish-race/
Yet I am a ziocuck for being open to learning from the Jews.
It was the same team you showed there, who subsequently failed to get past Slovenia in a play-off for the World Cup finals! I think that’s why people are unwilling to even reminisce about 2008
It should be noted our “hooligans” didn’t trash up Ljubljana in response
Based commie тетка.
It’s funny how Russian communists (and not just Russian, same is true for our commies here as well) are more conservative than American “conservatives”.
I’ve always said that as bad as the old school commies are, they are like Aryan Ubermensch compared to modern liberals.
Of course I am referring to actual commies, not western larpers.
…true….but this is also the most racist, ashamed of Russia’s multi-ethnic composition and history, group of people in the country
Except to Jews, the Russian liberals is the most racist group in the country, far more than Russian nationalists are supposed to be
This is an incorrect analysis, money that would move from Russia to another country is now staying in Russia.
Hardly the worst. Last year at the Brazil GP, Hamilton’s crew got mugged at gunpoint. That was just one of five ‘incidents’.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/nov/13/mclaren-interlagos-security-f1-brazilian-grand-prix
http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/32421/11127441/rachels-brazilian-gp-diary
Reminds me of a story a colleague told me about attending a scientific conference in Detroit a couple of decades ago. There apparently was a corridor of police officers stretching from the venue to the main hotel. Those who ventured beyond of course got mugged.
This displays a rather astonishing level of ignorance about what Sochi was and what it has now become. Just the basic statement of “the most expensive Olympics in history” belies the fact that an entire world class winter resort was built essentially from the ground up. My suggestion is to go there, see what was built, and see how it’s used. Or, at least, just talk to someone who’s been there. Even the locals, who had to endure years of construction and love to complain, recognize the benefits of its transformation.
I agree with comment #1; your bitterness and nagging are on the verge of being unbearable. Like that commenter, I absolutely deplore organized sporting events like the Olympics or the World Cup.
Eh, soon enough in Europe everyone will have done that to an Arab.
An excellent troll by Tamara. I hope it gets reported in Sweden and thoroughly denounced by all the usual highly-placed crackpots.
What’s to say she’s talking about Russian-Tatar, Russian-Buryat,Russian-Armenian,Russian-Chechen (Dudayev, anyone) ,Russian-Georgian and so relationships? Nothing
What is to assume these are less mixed-race relationships then a Russian-African one?
Russians are the least racist country on earth
Nothing she says here is conservative or controversial or remotely racist……it’s pure common sense. A single mother with an obvious darkish looking child ( she doesn’t say refer to colour) will be looked down upon more than a single mother with the same race child…..whether in New York,London, Paris,Russia or Rome
As others have pointed out, domestic tourism is also worth a lot, if it’s money otherwise spent abroad. Basically like import substitution. Instead of going to a Turkish resort, those very same tourists are now traveling to Sochi instead: it’s a huge win for Russia.
RT is supposed to be a Russian propaganda outlet. Saying things like that is seriously bad PR, World Cup or not, so they competently scrubbed the racial aspect of what the lawmaker said. I’d probably have done the same, why generate extra negative PR in the West?
The only argument for including it in the reporting is that that way RT could generate a more impartial image. Especially if the news gets out anyway (as is bound to happen), then maybe it’s better to report it.
But it has nothing to do with the political correctness (or lack thereof) of RT.
What most people would call common sense in Eastern Europe is called “conservatism” and “racism” in the West.
The problem with building stadiums is that they are good for nothing but entertainment events, be it professional sports events or pop concerts or similar. In other words, they are not worth very much.
I agree that all countries need stadiums in bigger cities, but they don’t have to be the most modern or biggest or best stadiums (unless attendance is regularly very high), so for example Orbán building stadiums in Hungary (and probably, though I’m not well informed enough to make a decisive judgment, Putin building stadiums in Russia) is just a waste of money, unnecessary prestige projects.
Infrastructure is usually good investment, though corruption can make them bad (like in Hungary, we built highway bridges and tunnels in a flatland under the leftist government 2002-2010, and some of them are constantly empty; all the while one of the most important highways between Budapest and Vienna is crumbling and badly in need of a complete renovation), but even so, you can argue it’s worth building it.
R&D is another worthy place to put your money (incompetence and corruption can make it bad, but I think in Russia’s case there’s perhaps enough infrastructure and expertise that a moderate increase in funding would be well absorbed without much waste), and they could build some serious hi-tech industries.
These sizzlingly hot takes are good, but we need to recognize they are the same when Anatoly does them.
No. Sochi was a dump before the Olympics, and became a nice modern city after.
The Olympics was an excuse to fix sanitation, road and urban sprawl problems.
Sochi is a pretty big city of 500 thousand permanent residents, with who knows how many transient. The investments were for the people of Sochi first and foremost. You can argue that some other city should have received this windfall, but suggesting St. Pete and Moscow is just ridiculous. The two capitals are fine as it is already, they don’t need even more government money.
india can be considered a fourth world country.
But no-one here, or on the whole website, is excited for the actual football?
I’m quite looking forward to Spain-Portugal tomorrow (Friday).
f*** the “civilized” world and its manufactured dildo social obsessions. you know what’s civilized? not getting mauled by packs of dogs on your way to work. uncontrolled strays is the embodiment of 3rd worldishness.
they should go protest Big Ag, that’s where most animal suffering is.
USA! G-d continues to pour his favor upon the American people.
Suck it, Europe.
Have to admit that I’m disappointed and surprised by Eastern Europe. Russia was never that pious, even under the Tsars so I’m not surprised by the Russian numbers. To the Russians here: were any of the Russian Tsars known to be religious?
The Russian numbers may actually be even worse than they appear because Russian Muslims may be driving the number up.
It looks like Romania and Greece are somewhat religious.
The most surprising one has to be Iran. I thought that Iranians all hated Islam now? Is there any chance that the mullahs have more support than we have been led to believe in the West?
What would “humiliation” even mean? Passing the group stage would already be a success for Russia. The end. As long as Russia beats Saudi Arabia everything will be fine.
So that sounds like an overreaction. 2010 South Africa didn’t do well (but not terribly either IMO and they didn’t pass the group stage!), 2014 Brazil’s semi-final defeat is a meme, 2022 Qatar… enough said, 2026 likewise in regards to Canada especially, probably USA as well, 2034 (?) China… Host nation doing well is simply not that important at all. What’s the problem? The expectations are low, so that means Russia can pretty much only surprise positively (again: not that it really matters that much anyway…)
When it comes to rankings, they are kind of a joke. Well, atleast you are listing Elo ranking as well, but lately Russia has mainly been playing only against tough teams, they didn’t have to qualify,so less matches, etc… IMO, on paper Russia’s actual ranking is at worst somewhere between 20-30. FIFA ranking is useless.
Is Russia’s group really laughably weak? Remember Uruguay and look at Group H: Senegal, Japan, Colombia and Poland! And there have always been weaker groups during every WC, ON PAPER.
As a Finnish football fan I can also bitterly add that no one cares about hockey internationally. Don’t even think about investing huge sums in the sport and overrate it as much as “we” do.
So yeah, I love the FIFA WC and I’ll probably watch every match, just like in 2010 and 2014. The greatest sporting and entertainment event on earth. And of course the good thing is that it’s finally here, so it can’t be used against Russia anymore going forward, atleast not after the final (Ukraine, boycotts, all kinds of potential “false-flags”…).
You’re getting warm, but you need to take it one step further:
Are such views acceptable or common among commies in Russia?
In Germany the LINKE (successor party to the East German SED+West German leftie nutcases) have just gone full open borders on their recent party congress, demanding a global right of free migration and settlement and a popular front-style alliance against “fascism”. Hopefully this will mean the beginning of their end as a viable political party.
Then why not reeducate people to change that?
The “think of the children” argument isn’t exactly persuasive.
One of my favorite pet theories is that technology helped weaponize Leftism, that, for instance, in an agricultural economy (arguably what helped shape the DNA and therefore instincts) it wouldn’t be anywhere near as injurious. It has simply been catapulted beyond its natural checks and balances, into a very dangerous realm.
Therefore, it is tempting to consider technology as a possible way to combat it, or put it back into its bottle. One of the strengths of Leftism is how it manages to make focused attacks. Giving it more targets would potentially help to take away its ability to focus. Most on the Left are low-info proles that need to be whipped into action by the more insane variety. This would perhaps make it easier to disrupt, if things fell below some threshold.
There’s a strange theory that Alexander I faked his own death to become a monk:
http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/features/science-to-answer-russian-royal-mystery-did-tsar-stage-death-to-become-siberian-monk/
Even if nonsense, I can’t think of monarchs in other European countries that would have given rise to such rumours. The British king at the time George IV was mostly known for his many mistresses iirc.
A single mother with an obvious darkish looking child ( she doesn’t say refer to colour) will be looked down upon more than a single mother with the same race child
You seem to be making an argument about social ostracism – as if that is the only point to distinguish such relationships. It’s not: many such children suffer from a lack of identity. Mixed-race relationships – particularly those with blacks are inherently less stable. Potential mothers should be informed of that, rather than propagandized through Western media to idealize it. They should also be informed about IQ.
meat eating should not be glorified, nor should the infantilism of Western city-dwellers be counter-signalled with extreme callousness. people who are jerks to animals are often jerks to other people as well.
in trad cultures they have slaughter rituals, prayers etc. today’s people get their meat vacuum-sealed from the supermarket. there’s something very, very icky just looking at the numbers of animals killed, never mind the manner in which.
the problem is the “spic-nig cycle.” i.e., the thing has developed a “self-dynamic” that is over and above what should be necessary to supply everyone with animal protein (and there’s a perverse economic incentive to have more and more “everyones”). Which is why every year we read about fruit rotting in the fields. It’s only incidental that public opinion don’t yet tolerate tales of “animals that go unkilled.”
Considering that everything you hear about Iran in US is neocon propaganda, designed to promote regime change, the chances that you were intentionally misled are pretty high. Duh!
Negroes are considerably more different from us than Tatars, Buryats, Armenians, Chechens, and Georgians are. They’re also of much lower quality than any of those groups. Yes, even Chechens.
Furthermore, visibly negroes look much more different. Miscegenation with negroes is always immediately obvious in the looks of the disgusting offspring in question.
Women who allow themselves to be impregnated by negroes are complete trash and rightfully deserving of the scorn and contempt they receive.
If Russians are the least racist people on Earth (skeptical), then this is a national defect of character which Russia’s leadership must remedy. Racism is objectively correct and a wonderful thing.
This may have been mentioned before, but Russian government finally agreed to raise the retirement age. It will gradually increase starting in 2019, up to 65 years for men and 63 years women (it’s currently 60 years for men and 55 years for women).
As a (relatively young) Russian I think that’s fantastic news and long overdue as Russia’s life expentancy is fast approaching the European levels. I particularly like that the increase will be bigger for women: women in Russia will on average 10 years longer, the fact that they also retire 5 years early seems really odd to me – one of the bizarre relics of the Soviet era.
Also, the government insists it will NOT allow gasoline prices reach 100 roubles per litre. lol
It is currently sitting at 45 roubles per litre. An increase to 100 roubles would put Russia roughly on par with Poland – Russian gasoline prices are very low.
This price (45 roubles per liter) is about comparable to gasoline prices in America.
Euros have some odd obsession with making gasoline expensive.
Yours is a country that doesn’t know public transport. Using personal automobile is a necessity for most Americans. For Russians not so much.
The bottomline is Russian oil companies want to export petrol to Europe instead of selling it in Russia at a subsidised price. This is why the prices are rising. IMO they will keep rising until they roughly converge with European levels.
The price of 45 seems like correct pricing according to the international market. European prices are inflated by a criminally high tax on gasoline, so Russian producers probably cant make that much of extra money from selling to the EU instead.
There is public transport in major cities. Generally inferior to Europe, though it’s pretty good in older cities (by American standards) like New York, Boston, and Chicago.
But yes, most Americans (as well as Canadians and Australians) require cars.
Are you saying gasoline in Russia is subsidized? Our gasoline isn’t subsidized by the government, that’s a market price which includes taxes by both the federal and state government.
I suppose oil prices in America are lower than in Europe (https://www.bloomberg.com/energy), but we still have to import oil unlike Russia. By 2025 we should be self-sufficient.
High gasoline prices in Europe are a matter of high taxes, which were adopted in the 1920s as a luxury tax (Europe didn’t widely motorize until after the war) and never abandoned.
We have modest gasoline taxes simply intended to cover the cost of highway construction and maintenance. The same situation prevails in Canada and Australia.
Hysterical cheering for West-African sport stars has some tradition Europe, think of Muhamed Ali for example.
I agree with all points, except one: when the Tsarnaev brothers bombed the the crowds at the Boston Marathon, there were only about 100 Chechens in America. 2/100! I think Chechens might be worse than blacks – if not in all things, at least in violence.
It’s not a case to learn from such gopnik clowns in Israel.
The Likud is famous for being 50% of total clowns and hooligans (similar probably average IQ level in the parliament to in Kiev).
Generally the clown ones are not near the government, but they provide material for the television to condemn and say how “low cultural level” the party is.
Follow some of the topics for Oren Haza
https://news.israelinfo.co.il/tags/%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD_%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BD
https://cursorinfo.co.il/tag/oren-hazan/
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In Israel the funny politicians can be purged if they went too strongly – but it happen when they go on insults to homosexuals.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/women-who-have-abortions-become-lesbian-claims-female-mk/?fb_comment_id=10150866278117085_22410544#f2e5053eb8fd0ec
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/242542
Blacks are too stupid to succeed in terrorism.
That’s not true. Most countries seem to have higher fuel prices than Russia. Some third-world countries subsidize the cost of fuel. It’s allegedly $0,01 per gallon in Venezuela.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/gas-prices/#20181:United-States:USD:g
Russian producers have big plans for the European market.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-russia-diesel-exports/russia-ramps-up-fuel-exports-in-fight-for-european-market-idUSKCN1GP03T
Certainly true, although I don’t think Ali was as dangerous, since he didn’t pretend to be anything but black. A lot of those new athletes pretend not only to whites, but even certain national ethnicities of whites.
There was even some African who played on the Greek national B-ball team. His family were illegal immigrants from Africa, I believe. To the Greek’s good fortune, he moved to America, but many Greek-Americans embraced him there, and he gloried in his Greek connections.
Given the shortage of rational activities that modern societies can keep themselves busy with – and the resulting shortage of what we would call ‘work’ – entertainment and sports are a great area for expansion. Relatively harmless, with an immediate gratification, and relatively interesting jobs.
What should we prefer? More ‘social workers’ or security analysts? More lesbians throwing a daily temper-tantrums at universities? More people spreading democracy in Papua-New Guinea?
We have very efficient societies, let’s live like that. Orban might have made some parochial mistakes when building stadiums or roads, but it is a relatively harmless way to improve the society. The real problem are the kill-joy austerity fanatics who are obsessed with seeing ‘waste’ everywhere. Deep inside many of them simply dislike the new wealth creation that might devalue their small stash by what they consider irresponsible creation of money and credit. And by irresponsible they usually mean that the wrong kind of people benefit – e.g. younger people who had not suffered enough to earn it, or some sad provincial mayor.
Sochi was an economic success. Most World Cup stadiums are in large cities (Russia has plenty of them). If they use the stadiums for a local concert or an annual rally to support more ‘meddling in the Western democracies‘, hey, the entertainment value is probably worth it. And it pisses off the money-pinching sinecured Western liberals, and that is priceless.
This new idea I see gaining traction, that whites have nothing to learn from others but must double down on their (failed) culture is a symptom of denial and loss of the flexibility all life needs to adapt to circumstances in order to survive. Its petty narcissism.
Rigor mortis in the truest sense. In the great days of Europe, whites were willing learners from everyone.
Even Duke Of Qin, an extreme Han nationalist, is quite willing to contemplate learning from the Muslims, who he despises.
It’s mainly not substitution for foreign holidays – I don’t know anyone who substitutes a foreign trip by going to Sochi.
For example, Turkey and Sochi are not a typical substitute (it is a lot cheaper to go on holiday in Turkey).
Likewise, people like certain state workers are not usually going on foreign holidays.
As for domestic tourism contributing to the economy. I would like to see a paper showing evidence of this. It contributes to regional economy, but not to the national one.
From a national economic perspective (as opposed to local economic perspective) the important thing is to get foreign tourists (carrying foreign money) to visit, as this boosts countries’ exports category.
The secret will be increasing the foreign tourists.
From a local economic perspective, surely the local authorities are happy when money moves in some domestic travel from one part of a country to another part. But if local skiers go to Sochi, instead of Dombai – this does not create an economic benefit on a national level, but only a regional one.
Building bombs, may not be an activity that favors them but I don’t think it takes a lot of smarts to fire an AK-47 into a crowd, or drive a truck into one, or swing a machete, for that matter. Seems to me there have been a couple of black terrorist attacks in England.
They probably have many weaknesses, like time preference, ability to cooperate, to keep a secret. I bet they have a lower kill ratio, for lack of planning, but it is not something that is absolutely beyond them. Arabs and Chechens are just better at it.
In a real race war, I expect blacks would get absolutely trounced by whites. Classic example is how easily white mercenaries were able to lead teams of blacks in Africa to crush the destabilizing forces there – until there was liberal outrage at white mercenaries being in Africa.
How does that square with former DDR population being much more socially conservative than the West Germans? I remember seeing a recent map of Mosques in Europe and the West was infested with them but there was a clear dividing line that didn’t straddle national borders but rather internal dividing line between West and East Germany. Who are the main leaders in the LINKE? Were they born and raised in West Germany or the east? If the former, it is obvious that the German Communist Party was co-opted and eaten up by the Xi Ma (Chinese communist speak for Western Marxist faction that has abandoned orthodox class struggle for intersection all garbage).
Lol this woman is of German nationality (at least her father is German). So any bad publicity from this mentioned in the German media, I hope it is stated it is a German-origin woman.
There’s no connection between adopting foreign ideas and physical intermixing with foreigners (whatever one thinks about the latter). The Japanese adopted Western technologies without having their women impregnated en masse by Westerners.
It’s hard not to get the impression that you’re massively trolling us with your comments on this blog.
Must be her Nazi genes then 🙂
But then Lenin did have partial German ancestry as well iirc.
The roads were built by his predecessors. It’d be better if he built roads, too.
In Russia’s case, they can build the military. Do people care one way or the other? Just as many people get excited by the military (see the many internet fanboys of different fighter jets) as by football. Actually, I’d think it’s often the same type of personality. The military was relatively popular in the USSR (or Nazi Germany, even in present-day Hungary), and it’s popular in Russia. Russia can develop domestic high technology while doing so. Why waste the money on stadiums?
I agree that Sochi seems to be a different thing. The costs might be vastly exaggerated because they include huge infrastructure costs.
The good Soviet sides of the 80s were dominated by Ukranians, and Dynamo Kiev was the most successful club side.
But is Ukraine all that different in climate from European Russia?
They aren’t more socially conservative in the commonly understood sense, illegitimacy rates are higher in East Germany, also more atheist than West Germany. Many of them are more national-minded though, since they kind of had to suffer the consequences for Nazism and the war much more than the westerners and therefore don’t have the same wealth-induced feelings of guilt. The GDR with its interpretation of the Nazi past (workers and commies as its prime victims) was also in some ways less antinational than the west.
A lot of their personnel are now deranged Western lefties, but I don’t think there’s a clear East-West divison on the open borders issue. Katja Kipping, the party chairwoman who comes up with this rot of a “global right of free migration” was born in Dresden. There’s a hard core of former East Germans who apparently really believed all the commie propaganda of internationalism, antifascism etc.
I expect though that many of their voters will leave them because of that madness, imo long-term they’re going to destroy their electoral viability with it.
https://i.imgur.com/zky9Nol.jpg
White people should root for White teams.
I think you misunderstood. I was responding to Anatkolys last line – that he is called a ziocuck for suggesting there is something to learn from Jews.
I have noticed certain commenters turn viciously against me when I started suggesting whites have much to relearn from Jews, Muslims, and Asians, and I was told whites really need to just double down – because have been going so well lately, you know.
It’s just petty jealousy and resentment and denial – rigor mortis.
Ironically, a necessary precondition for greatness is actually humility!
The mystical “union of opposites”, as much as it baffles and irritates the Western mind, is actually the deepest expression of reality.
Judging from your comments on this blog, you’re probably not destined for true greatness if that’s true.
How is he trolling? Let’s go through what he actually said.
Here he mocks those being inflexible to learn from others.
Here he makes a deliberate point that white people used to be very flexible learning from others and links it to past glories.
Though I disagree with the description of Qin as ‘extreme’ (extreme by what standards?), he obivously praises him for his intellectual flexibility.
Seems to me you just misunderstood his comment and lashed out for no good reason.
538 are a joke, Nate Silver even more so, can’t believe he is still peddling his guesses. Robbie Williams is performing for free, maybe he gets expenses. The World Cup is about the only international event where you get your money back, and is huge for soft power.
Russia impressive so far.
As it happens Russia is absolutely clobbering Saudi Arabia–up 3-0.
Iceland’s first match is against Argentina on Saturday.
Old woman has some unconscious or conscious desire to embarrass the tournament organizers and tourist industry, and her comments are already headlines in international newspapers, and probably everywhere tomorrow reprinted even in India, China and Japan.
You can spend a lot of money on advertising to boost the tourist industry.
But then the daughter of a German communist politician who was an immigrant, is able to generate hostile headlines in international newspapers, which will carefully delete the only amusing irony in the story.
Western media would use anything they can find to bash Russia anyway in the current climate, so you shouldn’t care. And that kind of thing certainly wouldn’t keep me from visiting Russia, it’s actually a bonus 🙂
If you look at AaronB’s comments in their entirety, I find it difficult to believe that he’s always entirely serious (“Utu, my great eye of compassion even looks at you” – lol). And if he is, he should just find some gullible fools and become their cult leader.
Anyway, I don’t really care and have got work to do.
I forgot to mention the DC sniper and his pal – both blacks.
As sparks from the divine flame, we are all destined for greatness – including you, GR. Though you will kick and scream against it.
And even including utu, who my Great Eye Of Compassion does not neglect. And that, btw, was one of my most serious comments ever, though you see nothing but frivolity in it.
He’s semi-trolling, because as he has explained, he thinks that material reality isn’t real(it is only an side effect of deeper spiritual realms of existence) and thus being playful and silly is the best way about things. In that vein, anger is a good thing, since it is emotion and emotion links deeper into the spiritual world and thus allows one to better discover “truth” which is non-material.
An analogy would be that your presence here on the forum is only an “emission” of your actual physical being, and therefore for him to merely engage with your online avatar(clicking on your name, etc) would be mostly futile. Therefore he must try to engage with you, using methods likes words which can pass through that medium. By the similar reckoning, your “soul” can only be reached with methods of “emotion.”
Karlin is probably going to do more of his bah humbug routine even with a 5-0 win.
When GR accused me of trolling rather than being serious, I immediately thought – why can’t I be both?
Why can’t I be trolling and deadly serious at the same time?
Great comment, btw.
That women of the country (of which there are many single, beautiful, slim ones), would not be allowed to have a relationship with you (if the old communist woman was dictator)?
It’s the worst anti-advertising for more indirect reasons as well, e.g. even for old female married tourists will not react positively to these kind of headlines.
Anything that portrays hostility to foreigners, is the best way psychologically to create foreigners unconsciously hostile to you (even female married audiences will think more negatively reading this).
Also think about why teenagers – recently millions of the teenage girls in Russia – are falling in love with Japanese and Korean culture. A lot of it is the teenagers unconsciously dreaming about having a Japanese/Korean girlfriend/boyfriend. It’s all in a world of fantasy of course, e.g. what proportion of Japanese have relations with foreign tourists? (A larger proportion of Japanese are famous for having relations with no-one). But the Japanese/Koreans now benefit from the soft power over millions of young people.
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As for the actual issue. Having something like actual sex tourism is bad for the country. The way to stop it is through legal legislation and economic success (e.g. no-one goes to rest in America for sex tourism).
Well..
I’ve been collecting “utu’s best flames” and I think that you’re probably going to be destined to be one it sooner or later.
she speaks to a real phenomenon – “children of the festival” (or, “Olympiad”.)
https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дети_фестиваля
I don’t know how much of a problem this really is (could be a liberal meme for all I know), but if it exists, it’s a flaw in the Russian national character that needs to be fixed stat because the perception of EE women as easy translates into disrespect in all other areas as well.
I’m pretty sure if anyone was going to be deterred from visiting Russia by random statements by politicial figures, Mr. Zhirinovsky has already successfully claimed that accomplishment.
I doubt most people will interpret those comments as referring to Japanese or Korean men who aren’t known for casually impregnating white women and then ditching them once the child’s been born. It’s about Africans, and to a lesser degree other dark-skinned foreigners, who may be sexually attractive to some women because of their virile image, but who are unreliable as partners and in general bring a whole host of problems.
At least that’s how a nasty racist like me would understand it, obviously I can’t speak for the normies.
And it’s not even someone from Putin’s party, just some old commie, so even more irrelevant.
You can tell I spent way too much of my time studying that stuff when I was younger. I’m not sure what I think about it, but its certainly interesting. I have a secret fondness for premodern conceptions of reality, alternate physics, and other visions.
The game is not a reliable indication of how well Russia will do from now on. Saudi’s defensive mid position was a gaping hole for the entirety of the match and they had not prepared to play against a pressing side.
Russia won 5:0! Does AK have insight what is the psychological comfort he and many other Russians get from the gloom and doom defeatism?
The government still sponsor huge numbers of random Africa/Arab students to live and study in Russia, as the legacy of her ideology.
(These had – in the past – a history of being a bit uncivilized – my mother actually has some story as a student of being harrassed on a train by an African student in the 1980s, she was left on the same compartment of).
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The important tourist growth market for Russia will be EU/China. The Japanese tourists are all flooding London and Paris with their money, and mainly absent in Russia.
It is antinomian reading of Kabbalah. Being good and doing all the good things will not bring Messiah as fast as doing bad things and going against the customs and rules. You get Sabbat Zevi and Jacob Frank. One thing they got was lots of random sex. Jacob Frank even had orgies organized while he was in prison.
But your comment, Daniel, is as much BS as comments by our Mahayaha Tzadik. He is trolling and his goal is to created semantic confusion that undermines your beliefs. A good slap in the face and some flogging would restore his faith in materialism right away.
Haven’t you said that faith in evolution, which I would associate with a strict materialist belief system, should be tested by torture?
Even so, it was a memorable achievement. All his endless graphs and numbers and all his gloom, he needs to see things in a different light sometimes.
I only got into this stuff when I was older but I was always into fantasy and the Romantic movement in Europe and things like that.
I don’t think you really have to have any clear opinion about it – the important thing is to “dwell” with these ideas and let your mind be affected. When I first started engaging with them I approached like a typical European and wanted hard, clear truths I could cling to and sink my teeth into. I totally failed to “get”it.
They are all metaphors anyways. Newtonian science works even though we know it isn’t strictly true – what should our opinion of it be? We just use it.
I can speak only for myself, and only in relation to the Hungarian national football team. I had always been pessimistic, so that they won’t disappoint me. Any surprise will be to the upside. It’s psychologically much easier to prepare for the worst and then occasionally get a positive surprise than preparing for the best and then nearly always get my dreams thrashed by reality.
Then I changed my stance to a more realistic approach after Dárdai became the manager in 2014, because at least he knew what he was doing, unfortunately had to go back to Hertha BSC. Then came Storck, and he led us to the Euro Cup by beating Norway. I became cautiously optimistic. It was great. But then Storck lost to Andorra (he was playing the B team or rather C team for some reason), and so I reverted to pessimism. It’s better to expect nothing.
mysticism was to pre-moderns what extreme social constructivism is to post-moderns.
either way, it’s anti-reality and prolly part of the same anti-Enlightenment neofeudal agenda.
The Mahayana Tzadik says you should not slap AaronB in the face, or flog him. It would be a great sin.
And The Great Eye Of Compassion is ever fixed on you, utu.
Medvedev has announced the proposal to raise the retirement age step-wise from next year.
It’s an intelligent (although unpopular) policy, but they know the correct day to announce it for reducing media coverage.
*constructionism
They were good goals though, that would indicate they can score goals against better defences.
Google news feed is pushing some gays were bashed in Russia, yawn. I see Peter Tatchell has been drawing attention to himself too.
“It’s hard not to get the impression that you’re massively trolling us with your comments on this blog.”
He is a Jewish/Anglo-Zio supremacist and religious extremist posing as a friendly smiling reasonable “philosopher-next-door”, suggesting seemingly “harmless” or “beneficial” courses of action to what he thinks are gullible white goyim – like a paid piper of Hamelin.
This attack was from a group of Muslims (originally from Dagestan).
Almost certainly a standard robbery (probably as gay tourists – if visible from body-language or clothing fashion – they appeared as a weaker or wealthy target to the thieves).
I think this might be the mechanism that develops when there were too many disappointments so lowering expectations is a natural response. When I was growing up the great successes of Hungarian team were still very much remembered, so I was very disappointed by their performance in the 1978 World Cup when they totally fell apart to the point of having tantrums. I do not remember who did the play against. It was clearly psychological because they started well but some setback broke them. A very sad and embarrassing spectacle to watch. I stopped watching soccer about 15 years ago but sometimes I do when forced by social circumstances. German friends made me watch Germany team during the Word Cup in South Africa. They were quite good so I was greatly disappointed that they were totally helpless against Spain. They were awful. Very un-German. Germany almost never falls apart. At first I suspected that they sold the game or that some drugs were involved but then I have learned that their coach Joachim Löw was totally at awe with Barcelona and considered them the apex of football achievement and the Spain’s team was 90% Barcelona. So I thought that he somehow passed this belief onto his team. They did not believe they could win.
Hopefully this only applies to Russian women. Russian men should be free to continue the proud and venerable #bleachright tradition of Afanasy Nikitin.
Indeed I said it however I forgot and had to go back and look it up for the context. There is no contradiction. Ultimately it is about the faith which we conflate with knowledge. So some materialists can be irritating because of their unawareness and lack of depth but the hucksters who are peddling an antidote in the form of idealism are almost always liars. Materialists are more likely to get basic facts right even if they do not understand the foundation of their certainty while the hucksters always are at the service of the destructive anti-civilization force.
And subsequently it is also announced they will raise VAT to 20%.
(All the unpopular policies from Medvedev announced on this day).
https://ria.ru/economy/20180614/1522693970.html
He might be genuine in his anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish utterances but this is irrelevant. He is driven by some destructive psychopathology which seems to have a Jewish origin. As I wrote earlier hucksters peddling some idealism as an antidote against the whatever almost always are at the service of forces that are against the civilization. In this case against our Western civilization that is based on philosophy of Greeks and legal doctrines of Romans. Our source of strength is in Athens not in Jerusalem. We relate to the reality and the concept of truth just as Greeks did and not as the Talmudists do. The antinomian idealism this creature is peddling has anti-Hellenic angle that the truth does not matter. As always there is a seduction: abandon your beliefs, your truth and you will be liberated or that is the only way to get out of your troubles. The war of ideas between Athens and Jerusalem is going on for over 2500 years. Jews still can’t get over the fact that they encountered civilization much more developed and accomplished that the set of semi-coherent Bronze Age ideas on which they based their culture. Greek language was pushed out from the schools right after WWII and then very soon Latin was purged form European schools . Europe was defeated and conquered by two non-European powers which both drew more form Jerusalem than Athens. The first via Protestantism and the second via Bolshevism.
The most surprising one has to be Iran. I thought that Iranians all hated Islam now?
You’ve probably been reading David Goldman, aka Spengler, as he has been the most prominent pusher of that line for over a decade now.
In the US, they always do this type of thing on a Friday. Best is before a holiday weekend.
Greek and Latin have been the biggest hindrances to European civilisation.
Even if you argue that they impeded the cultivation and use of the vernacular which is true, that seems excessively harsh.
It’s bad enough that we’ve got only fragments of ancient civilization. Imagine if all that were gone and we’d only have the Bible, with the pre-Christian past nothing but some barely recognizable negative foil for the true faith. We would be like Muslims, and it would be horrible.
I am afraid that the neo-feudal agenda directly stems from Enlightenment. People like Ben Franklin who fetishized the rational mind were perhaps not aware of it and it is possible that the medieval mystics understood better where the enslavement comes from and how to protect us against it. Fetishizing a piece of paper like Constitution or Bill of Rights and setting up the checks and balances did not protect us agains the neoliberalism. What did we miss?
Ignoramuses are always proud of their ignorance. And nobody can be as haughty as Anglos.
The West is dying because it chose the wrong side of the Greek heritage. The Slavic East chose the right side of the Greek heritage, so will survive.
I don’t think DFH is ignorant, he’s generally quite knowledgeable.
I suspect part of his reasoning (apart from Latin having impeded the development of vernacular culture for centuries) might be that traditionally the British upper classes placed excessive importance on classics, disdaining and neglecting more practically useful subjects. And such mindless adulation of the classical heritage can certainly be a problem. But it’s not one we’re suffering from today.
Having Latin as an international language, although useful in some ways, probably also delayed the development of national consciousness. I also think (although this is, I will admit, difficult to demonstrate) that they pointed people towards a pointless dream world, as Christianity is often accused of doing. The attitudes of the British ruling class certainly deteriorated after proper Classics teaching was reintroduced in the 19th century.
I doubt that Greek philosophy and Roman law are as significant as the previous commenter made out. Post-Cartesian philosphy (which is probably not very significant anyway tbh) has very little to do with Greek philosphy, and in Northern Europe Roman law only survived in some concepts which would have been developed anyway.
We have most of the actually good and important stuff in terms of literature, philosophy and history.
That is a good point, although something like that happened anyway up till about 1450 and it was aided by Classical authorities like Aristotle.I think European culture would have broken out of it anyway, as the classical influences on vernacular philosophy and vernacular literature were relatively superficial.
I had an excellent Classical education, thank you very much.
Almost no-one else has as much to be proud of
You make good points and your judgement is clearly based on a wide-ranging education, so I won’t argue with any of that, even if I would still see some things differently.
I wrote
and now it occurred to me whether the economic difficulties of Greece could be somehow connected to this. Is Greece still being punished and disciplined for the past glory and humiliation it brought on the Jews? Does the fact that Greece keeps coming up as the most anti-Semitic country in Europe year after year in the ADL’s reports plays some role in how Greece is being treated? Where does this Greek anti-Semitism come from? Yes, Greeks tend to support Palestinians or at least they do not overlook their situation but this is not the chief reason why they top the ADL’s list. Is it possible that Greeks have cultural memory of the 2500 years old struggle between the two cultures and they are unwilling to betray. They can’t accept the new overlords and the new Masters of the Universe while their memory reminds them that once they were superior and Jews were those barbarians afflicted with the most extreme form of religious fanaticism and obscurantism. Jews were not the ‘Light to the Nations” to Greeks. Swedes may buy this BS but not Greeks. Probably Greek Orthodox Church also plays some role in maintaining the continuity with the past for Greeks.
So Greeks must be modernized. Nothing modernizes people as as fast as war, ethnic cleansing, uprooting and losing your connection to land as your property. It worked as charm on Russians. Bolsheviks did an excellent job. Why does NATO permit the high tensions between Turkey and Greece? Greece spends lots of money on military.
I think the Revolution needs something like the 60s idea of never trust anyone over 30.
The Old Guard will always try and squash fresh ideas and will angrily lash out at anyone trying to chart a new course. The Old Guard is always rigid, bitter, resentful.
I find it significant that that the relatively young Thorfinsson and Polish Perspective showed the merest smidgen of sympathy for my ideas – although they obviously dislike me and disagree with much of what I say. Still they have the flexibility to adapt, which means survival.
The Old Guard of aged men is frantically trying to crush any fresh idea and double down on the old ones – they cannot accept that these ideas have failed, because these ideas have become their identity. No one wants to accept their identity has failed. It is understandable but dead wood must be cut loose.
Failed people will try their best to make others fail – this is a well known phenomena. The guy who starts getting good with girls suddenly finds that his old friends try bitterly to make him fail. Many of us have experienced this.
The Old Guard of German Reader, Reiner Tor, utu, DFH – we must have sympathy for them and make their journey into that gentle night where their worn out hearts will find peace as painless as possible.
The task for young whites is to grow strong and valiant, flexible and adaptive, open to fresh ideas and fearless, to cut out those elements of the Greek heritage that ends killing its host every time it is adopted like a cancer and perhaps rediscover that side of the Greek heritage that spells life and health, and to relearn basic truths from Asians, Muslims, Jews, and Russians – and be willing to learn from anyone anywhere anytime.
Greek antisemitism is easy to understand if you consider Greece as belonging to the Eastern Mediterranean rather than the “West”.
Greece is being punished because of the German sparfuchs mentality. I witnessed a particularly amusing conversation consisting of my German uncle attempting to explain to my Greek sister-in-law the German position on the Greek debt crisis.
A victory for Qatar (Airways).
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfqsRQOXkAEdXoL.jpg
“A single mother with an obvious darkish looking child ( she doesn’t say refer to colour) will be looked down upon more than a single mother with the same race child…..”
I have the strong impression that at least in Germany having a half-westafrican child makes people rather look UP to you.
Wouldn’t you prefer occasional ‘mindless adulation of the classical heritage’ if our culture remained faithful to its classical heritage and thus possibly would protect us from whatever ‘we’re suffering from today’?
Latin did not impede development of vernacular culture. Quite the opposite. W/o Latin the vernacular languages would not develop to the level of being viable communication tools able to convey higher levels of thought. Try two imagine people communicating in English w/o Greek and Latin (via French and from Latin) influences. I think you can find people like that in England. They are clearly lower forms of life.
I know what you mean…David Haye with the Union Jack as headband, Balotelli the Italian hero and winner against the nasty Germans etc.
I don’t have to imagine it; it’s called German.
Most of the Enlightenment/liberal thinkers (if that is what you mean) were very well acquainted with Classics (even Tom Paine).
Yes, and upgrade the Budapest subway. I am not a big fan of military spending. It is mostly pure waste and silly posturing. One can see it as entertainment and sometimes I do, but people get hurt. For Russia having nuclear weapons seems sufficient. I agree it helps with technology.
My basic point is that we have become too obsessed with managing down, with foregoing experiences because of the so-called ‘cost’. Having Olympics, World Cups, decent trains and airports is better for the economy than the endless public and private activities that we currently eagerly sponsor. More cheap crap imported in a container from Asia? Woopie, more the better, it ‘increases GNP‘. But spending money on local activities, sports, culture, infrastructure is often described as waste. We have it upside down. We are not using the incredible possibilities that our very efficient societies with enough material goods to go around would allow us to do. And in that respect Russia mimics West and both are wrong.
I think it did, and in England there was extensive use of the vernacular for both literary and administrative purposes already by the 10th century. That Old English literary culture was destroyed to a large extent by the Conquest, but I don’t think that should be seen as a positive development that somehow improved the level of civilization in England.
I agree with you on the larger issue of Latin and the classics though, their removal from the school system is a very negative development imo.
Please tell me about German language and the word formation and word creation. When Germans encountered Latin and Greek texts when translating them how many new German words did they have to construct or assign new meanings to existing words to convey the meaning of the text? They also adopted some Greek and Latin words but not as many as French or English. My point is that Latin and Greek texts could not be translated to German without a simultaneous expansion of the German language. So if German language evolved in isolation from Latin and Greek it would be less rich or it would took much longer to get to the level to convey notions and ideas that languages that were influenced by Latin and Greek could. So even if German has less words etymologically from Latin or Greek than English it does not mean that German language could exist as it is now w/o Latin and Greek participation in its formation.
I do not know the history of the ten century English. But I suspect that the reason it lost in competition with a ‘new version’ is simple; because the old one was inadequate and comparably poor.
These processes were kind of natural but still man driven. The translators were the constructors of the language. Monks and priest who knew religious texts when communicating in vernacular had to come up with new words or assign new meanings. The process was mostly top down. So it was not dissimilar to more artificial language constructions like the one that happened in Bohemia in 19 century or in Israel in 20 century. They were just condensed into much shorter time.
So far the first day, the World Cup is already clearly very successful.
Even American and British media has changed and started reporting positively about the atmosphere.
–
And – it is surreal, but the foreign fans are often waving Russia flags.
E.g. See at 16:30 in the video
The Moroccans are supporting Russia.
And 15:00 even the Saudis looking happy despite their embarrassing defeat.
No, it was simply a question of power after 1066, the old elites were dispossessed and the conquerors brought their own literary and administrative culture with them.
Anyway, I don’t think I really disagree with you on the crucial issues, I think the classical heritage has played a very important role in European history and our civilization would be much poorer without it, so we should cultivate it.
At 3:00 in the video,
The Iranians and the Saudis have become friends. And both shouting for Russia.
(It seems like the atmosphere so far has been unusually successful and peaceful).
We say that one swallow doesn’t bring spring, but today was a decent day. I have noticed that the British seem obsessed with some guy named Robbie who showed a ‘finger’ at his stadium performance. Not sure to whom and not clear if he did, but in the spirit of what-could-happen-news, it must be called a major protest against Russia. Or something like that.
Our local media (Slovakia) is split down the middle between straight sports news about a happy festival in Moscow, and the ‘German’ owned elite media that is covering stray dogs, looking for ‘hooligans’, and declared that today’s match was between ‘two weakest teams’. They barely mentioned who won, but went on and on about the length of Putin’s limousine and the above-mentioned ‘finger’.
Thank you Germans, or whoever it is who is hiding behind the ‘regional German media conglomerate’. This is fun. Tomorrow, tell us about the lesbians and their travails with the always-burly Kozaks.
If I were a Saudi, I’d be happy anytime I left S.A.
When did German acquire/create the word künstlich? Would it appear without the influence of Latin by using the existing template arte->artificialis even if we assume that the meaning of the word Kunst in German had the meaning of arte existed prior to contacts with Latin? What I am positing is that w/o Latin the form künstlich would not exist in German.
A similar situation would be in the pre 1066 English. The concept of ‘artificial’ would take more time to be elucidated w/o the existing template in Latin. Eventually there would be some adjective with the meaning of artificial but most likely it would not have the root of Kunst. And perhaps in English it would be handmade or manmade instead of artificial,
The fans are very happy so far – and they realize the negative claims were falsifications (look at the guy at 0:17 in video below).
If the event can continue like this, it will definitely be creating long-term positive momentum for the tourist industry.
Looks like they are taking their job pretty seriously. I mean the job of indoctrination. It sounds very crude and I suspect most people will reject it just as they were able to be skeptical about the communist media but some of it will get to people. The most important message people will get is that it is OK to disrespect Russians and also the contempt. Some people will buy it because they like to think they are better than somebody else.
This is pretty evil and all those young reporters and pretty girls who do this look so innocent and earnest, right?
These are interesting questions about word formation, but tbh I can’t really answer them (at least not without some serious effort for which I don’t have time right now), sorry.
Is that the Springer media conglomerate? If so, not surprising, it’s just non-stop Atlanticist propaganda with them.
They will have to do something. The beauty for the Western media (and their managers) is that since they fully control the story-line back home even very small idiotic minutia events can be spun as part of the ‘evil Russia’ narrative. That actually helps because they can stay small. But there might be fanatics who will try to go for the jugular. It will be an interesting month…who will the next Iceland?
Yep, it is them. And CME. What is amusing is that their local staff often goes overboard and fulfils the editorial direction above 100%. That gives one an insight into the ‘talking points’. I have seen them write out verbatim what looks like an instruction sheet, with no nuance. They are both lazy and unsure of themselves, so they stick with what they receive.
Unfortunately the most important message most of the population gets is that media is always propaganda. It is taken as a truism. That makes rational discussion harder, because people just want to know ‘who do you work for?‘.
(By the way, pretty girls in Bratislava are seldom innocent.)
Pretty girls anywhere are seldom innocent.
Girls like to screw too.
News at 11.
That’s why their sexuality needs to be controlled.
Your ideas may or may not be valid, but you need to improve your rhetorical skills. I think I mildly dislike you – but mainly the way you talk just makes me feel indifferent to your ideology.
I can hate someone who is serious, but I can’t hate someone who seems like he doesn’t actually believe in anything.
The Moroccans are supporting Russia.
Not surprising. They claim Saudi Arabia led a campaign in favour of the winning USA/Mexico/Canada World Cup bid against Morocco. Typical sentiment expressed by Samira Sitail, a director of some sort, at a Moroccan TV channel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Samirasitail1/status/1006618434338283520
Yep, but I can only do so much. One of me, and so many of them…
Hilarious, I am saving that…
.
You would think, right? And yet I have found that the most polarizing attitude I can take is this kind of “indifference”. I find people get furious at me for it!
I would expect people to have your reaction – that’s natural. But somehow not taking “the world” seriously seems to seriously piss people off.
I think it gets to the root of metaphysics – “realists” are infuriated by idealists.
Its not that I don’t believe in anything – I believe in Nothing.
For the record I like AaronB and intend to make him my court Jew when I take power.
It seems that this is mutual as well. As I understand it AaronB not only likes me but also doesn’t consider himself fit for leadership, but does consider me to be.
He’s kind of sloppy at times but whatever. Like I told him before when your only tool is a hammer the more everything looks like a nail.
It’s falling with each generation although – both in America and in Russia.
Japan I believe, is just somewhere a little further into the future, but other advanced countries are going through the same process.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teens-sex-drugs-lowest-rates-in-decades-cdc-finds/
court jester would be more appropriate.
I don’t really care much for watching professional football (or any sport really) but it is very good that the KSA suffered a humiliating defeat.
Why thank you, Thor, for your kind words! I do indeed like you, though there is work to be done smoothing out your rough edges.
Correct, I do not covet the burdens of leadership. And while I am honored you would consider me for the position of Court Jew, I am afraid I am like the Taoist sage, who would rather be like the turtle who drags his tail contentedly in the mud.
And with the state in capable hands, I can finally retire to my mountain but and contemplate eternity in peace.
In your own way, GR, you understand me better than anyone here!
You know, my non-Jewish side just happens to be German – we have a bond, you and I, do we not?
I feel it.
But go you will, keyboard warrior.
What work is needed to smooth out my rough edges?
I am going to take over this world.
And I want your assistance in this project.
Smart move. They are doing it to protect themselves from the wrath of the Russian hooligans.
Of course, because they are so relieved the danger has passed. They are thinking the hooligans will have no reason to attack them now.
That actually makes sense if you think about it. Just look at the greatest “Germans”, whose names will never be forgotten: Beethoven, Einstein, Marx. What did they have in common? They were all part african:
https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lypdk5KnkH1qglqe6.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/05/03/16/4BCD9CDB00000578-5687445-A_16_year_old_Albert_Einstein_in_1895-a-64_1525359896736.jpg
https://i1.wp.com/thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/le_jeune_karl_marx_01-copy.jpeg?fit=440%2C476&ssl=1
But, but, if Russian women are told to seek out mates based on IQ wouldn’t that leave Russian men handicapped? After all in the IQ rankings:
Jews > East Asians > West Europeans > Slavs
Just important tourists, and not English hooligans- they won’t be in fear of anything.
English media will make their hooligans scared soon probably even of the teenage girls
Although the girls are a little scary
Actually Beethoven, Einstein and Marx were all women who had to pretend to be men to make careers in man dominated society.
Wow…female Droogs – impressive trajectory post-modern man is taking. Certainly throwing the old dystopian writers for a spin.
Peace.
If they actually did it. A lot of that affair didn’t make much sense.
And conquer you shall! The world is ripe for the taking.
You do not sufficiently appreciate the moral level – you are harsh. Not enough love.
Will I never be free to retire to my mountain hut?
Pffffsshshshsh; the guy probably has both eyes intact – no sale!!!
Peace.
No? Well, I’m not sure.
The man seems more connected to his emotions than many. That is power.
Don’t forget other Africans, like Jerry Seinfeld:
http://moveablefest.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/DyingLaughingJerrySeinfeld.jpg
Emperor Hirohito of Japan:
https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/v1492196419/cheats/2014/09/09/emperor-warned-against-u-s-wwii-attack/140909-emperor-hirohito-cheat_dfsehs.jpg
Rose McGowan:
https://www.billboard.com/files/media/rose-mcgowan-june-2-2018-billboard-1548.jpg
Etc.
It was a joke about Dajjal, sorry it was too cryptic.
When Umar ibn al-Khattab (ra) was passing away on his death bed, he made sure the Ummah would not put his son, Abdullah Ibn Umar (ra) a wise and capable young man, in power after him, saying; it is enough that the family of Khattab has borne this burden once.
That is power; to have conquered half of Byzantium and all of Persia and not care.
Peace.
I apologize Talha! I do not know about Dajjall, would you care to explain?
I always value your comments.
Ah, thanks for the explanation.
I very much agree.
In short; the Dajjal is the Anti-Christ – he will have one good eye and be blind in the other. He will be allowed sovereignty over much of the world – he will be the epitome of materialist-minded “will to power” the personification of the ultimate Pharoanic god-emperor system. It’s Islamic eschatology; again, apologies for being cryptic.
One thing that is interesting is that our community has kept this quite alive; we teach our children about him, we ask God for refuge from the trials he will bring. Many, many will lose faith. I wonder if Christians still teach their children about him or if he is considered like Santa Claus…it is mentioned that he will manifest when people stop warning each other about him.
Peace.
I was recently about Dajjal when I saw a trailer for something pop up on YouTube for something on Jack Parsons (arguably one of the most important rocket scientists ever). Possible that space flight (and thus satellite communication) would not have been possible without his work.
http://www.indiewire.com/2018/06/strange-angel-cbs-review-jack-parsons-sex-cult-1201974757/
He was an adept of Alister Crowley and claimed association with an entity that had visited him calling itself Belarion Dajjal and that he was doing work on its behalf.
The rabbit hole goes deep my friend…this is beyond red pill…
Peace.
Russia has a good chance to advance to the second round (16 teams) because of the lopsided score against the headchoppers. If Russia ends up tied with Uruguay or Egypt for that second spot out of the Group, Russia would probably win the goal-differential tiebreaker.
Good start to the Cup today.
Now for Germany defeating Mexico on Sunday morning 🙂
I now understand that you’r joshing us with your we wuz kangz posts.
That said I can’t resist.
We wuz Junkerz ‘n sheet 🙂
Specifically only Ashkenazi Jews, and they don’t have an IQ of 115. More like 108. Comparable to Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Lutherans in America. Ron Unz has also documented a collapse in Jewish academic performance.
As for Songbird you’re sandbagging him.
Isn’t that what I’m paying you for?
What am I even getting for my money?
These people…
One of the war aims of Japan was to conquer the rich watermelon-growing land of SE Asia.
Soccer is a game for pansies. Russians are a tough and manly people. They shouldn’t even be playing this game. English Rugby perhaps, American Gridiron or Australian Rules Football would be much better suited to them.
I strongly disagree about the military. The military is something like an insurance: it’s rarely needed, but the consequences of not having it could be catastrophic. I also don’t understand how building stadiums could be more (as opposed to less) useful than developing your military. The military could at least conceivably be useful. Stadiums are entertainment only.
Domestic tourism is useful economic activity, like producing cars and then selling them for your own population. Why do you only consider exports to be valuable economic activity? I don’t get it.
I’m also unconvinced that the people traveling there would’ve only chosen domestic destinations or they wouldn’t have traveled at all. I think it’s very likely that those visiting Sochi would’ve gone abroad instead, so it’s probably a net positive for the Russian balance of payments.
People dislike your comments because you come across as a pompous windbag. Some people are more invested in this online thing than others and don’t realize that to a large extent one can separate real people from personae.
It’s the same economic fallacy as people who say “New Year’s expenses are helping the economy”. If the money spent on a holiday was not spent on that consumption, then it would be spent on another consumption in the same economy, or available to the same economy as savings/investments.
I doubt there is any paper which finds any connection between domestic tourism and economic growth on a national (as opposed to regional level), except through the import substitution mechanism you mention (where people are substituting foreign holidays for a domestic holiday).
There are papers arguing for connection between foreign tourist arrivals and economic growth.
For a proportion of the visits, it may be substituting (for example, they have some luxury things in Krasnaya Polyana which can substitute for the Alps resorts in Switzerland/Austria/France).
But the majority of the visits will surely not be substituting for a foreign holiday.
Watching (on television) Egypt vs Uruguay in Ekaterinburg Arena.
It’s disappointing there many empty seats on the front of the grass . There must be something wrong with the tickets distribution? Everyone prepares for this event for so long. There was a huge online queue to buy the tickets, which sold out. (And all on the temporary seats they built in the sky are looking full).
AaronB with his idiotic comments (I’m unsure if he thinks they are profound or just made in jest, but I don’t care) simply disrupts communication, and it’s annoying. His comments about “spirituality” are very similar to what one can read on any stupid postmodern esoteric website with empty phrases like “as sparks from the divine flame, we are all destined for greatness.” He reminds of the “spiritual” people I knew while at university, reading horoscopes, esoteric books, etc., all the while being hedonistic (i.e. drinking, doing drugs, and f*cking) all the same.
Anyway, the main point is that commenting here is both a pastime and a venue of communication with likeminded people, and his trolling us with his empty and meaningless comments is just annoying.
I understand that in person he might be nice company, but I find it unlikely. He’s either at least somewhat serious (in which case he’s more or less a windbag, as you put it), or he’s just fully trolling, and I’m having a hard time imagining what kind of person would find such an empty entertainment as trolling like this on such a website. Besides, I don’t really care what kind of person he is. I just find his comments annoying, that’s it.
So it’s worthless to develop a car industry, if it will only be producing for the domestic market?
Instead? Would they be traveling inside Russia? Where? Is there a similar destination with similar weather within Russia? (Maybe Crimea in the summer. But it’s not yet as developed. Are there similarly developed skiing destinations in Russia?) Or are you proposing these people would not be traveling anywhere?
I get the impression that most people traveling there would be traveling abroad, simply because there’s no similar destination within Russia at all.
Girls copying fashions from Vine
Guys made flying punch popular
And so girls weakly copied it
Equal jack-assery of the sexes I guess…where are these girls’ fathers?
So is this a thing now? Random street fights for no reason? Like eating Tide pods?
I guess dentists are happily keeping busy.
Peace.
are those videos real?
if so, 2 things:
Russian guys can’t fight for shit. This fits with my experience sparring with Russian guys back when I used to box. Russians aren’t fast, they don’t hit hard and they aren’t very physically strong. They look the part and are fearless, but, with some exceptions, they can’t actually fight. This would explain why “Russian” boxing and MMA are dominated by Chechens. In fact, I am going to fly to Moscow and find a bar where Spetsnaz hang out and tell them what I think about their people’s hand to hand combat abilities.
Watching girls try to fight is the most pathetic thing ever. They look like they are moving under water and they have all the coordination of a baby deer. Stick to the kitchen and the bedroom, ladies. You are good for nothing else.
I cannot speak to AaronB in this vein, but mark my words; historically, without a legal framework like the Shariah (or equivalent non-Muslim one) to keep it in check, mysticism leads to the poz (or it’s historical equivalent)…always.
Peace.
We could all go to the neighbouring city next week, live and spend there, instead of here. It will make the neighbouring city richer, but not the country, as the money spent there will not be spent here.
If you show a paper linking domestic tourism with economic growth, I would be corrected. I’m not an economist (although I know and can ask a professional economist this question).
The only mechanism though that makes sense logically here is the import substitution one.
There’s a lot of nice tourist resorts in the summer, even in the Urals for example, there are beautiful lakes with pebbly beaches.
And there are around 2 million state employees who come under the ban in travelling abroad, so they have to go somewhere.
Sochi is becoming a little expensive and fashionable though, with luxury restaurants – so in some sense it is a unique holiday resort.
But I don’t think many people would substitute e.g. a holiday in Thailand, or in Europe, or even in Turkey, for Sochi.
Imagine you are interested in seeing Sochi, but you would not substitute a visit Cuba or Thailand, for that.
The only reason foreign travel fell in the last period was the economic recession and the devaluation of currency.
It’s a hobby for fans, like a weekly exercise for them – for people which enjoy being kicked on the head and dropped in the hospital.
Thanks but we’ve learned more than enough from the Jews already. Far more than was good for us.
But why? They have Tinder!
The 58.8% obesity and overweight stat for women in the US might have something to do with that.
Everyone has to have a hobby, I guess. If you like getting your teeth kicked in, it sounds like the thing to do? Did this all start with Fight Club?
Peace.
No, there’s always a reason to want to kick someone’s head in. If you haven’t found the reason, you need to drink more. The reason will soon arise.
You venture to insult customs and traditions
On my first (and so far only) visit to the USA I saw some people so obese that I almost thought someone must be feeding them for slaughter.
I consider that a symptom of the general collapse in European ability to think complexly.
They can’t distinguish the person from his personae, no sense of humor, can’t understand how humor can be deadly serious, no elan, etc.
I don’t like Nietzsche, but I understand his exasperation with his contemporaries now.
It’s a hobby of the stupider fans (football fans) – as in many countries. But at least they get eercise
Here on the day of a football match:
Are you not embarrassed that I, a Jew, have to say these things while your own “leaders” like SteveSailerr are quietly telling you to accept Jewish superiority and that you can’t change your situation?
*Exercise.
A point I recently made in another thread. The poz is just religious ideals without the supernatural element – applied to this world rather than the next.
That’s why the poz is literally inevitable in every society that goes secular. Period.
Which actually suggests that religious ideals are universally felt as correct by everyone, and if they cannot apply them supernaturally, they will seek to apply them in this world, without understanding what they are doing.
do middle and upper class Russian guys get in a lot of fist fights when they are in high school? How many fights were you in when you were in high school?
Well, I didn’t say no military spending. But there should be a limit, beyond certain point it is just a show. With nukes that limit is relatively low.
I have a weak spot for entertainment and comfortable architecture. It has an immediate impact. Most gadgets are junk, we produce too much of it – and military spending produces a lot of material gadgets. None of that lasts. My country is about tp spend 2.6 billion euros for 14 fighter planes – about 500 Euros per taxpayer. Plus the annual maintenance and training for decades. We can’t fly them too much at home because they are noisy and scare cattle. This happens all the time – nobody thinks it through and does the numbers. The planes cannot be used to stop the migrants marching into Europe, our only real threat.
I’ve been sober all my life so I’ll have to take your word for it.
I’m not against kicking in heads per se; it can be a highly meritorious act, rewarded by God in proper context.
This is just knuckleheadery…but I’ve never had the pleasure of getting my head jumped on so maybe I just don’t know what I’m missing out on. Is money involved?
Peace.
Clearly you must drink more.
Woody Allen’s Zelig did a fine transformation (chameleon like) when in the company of a New Orleans jazz band. 🙂
1 sounded wrong so I glanced at Boxrec. In heavyweight top 10, Povetkin and Tony Bellew are the only 2 white guys; in cruiserweight there’s Lebedev and Vlasov in the top 10; in light heavyweight there’s Kovalev in the 10 and Mikhalkin just outside of it. Several Ukrainians as well.
Can’t argue with MMA, although it might be due to it being centred primarily in US. They haven’t had a white heavyweight champ for years anyways until a Croat stepped up.
Yeah, I don’t know how this is avoidable in the long run.
The poz are absolutely filled with what one can parallel with religious fervor or zealotry.
Peace.
LOL – “more” would imply I drink some. Maybe it’s all it’s hyped up to be. No clue, but I’ve never particularly cared. Now a fine ginger ale or root beer is definitely a weakness of mine.
Apparently there will be plenty of wine to go around in the Afterlife (assuming one gets invited to the after party) – rivers of wine.
Peace.
Do volcels get a lot of virgins in the Afterlife too?
Eh, as embarrassments go it’s fairly negligible. I don’t really buy your vision in the first place and Sailer is just fine as he is.
However, even if you came across strongly as ‘hello fellow whites’ at the time, I did think this comment of yours was good (no. 39): http://www.unz.com/isteve/forward-is-jordan-peterson-enabling-jew-hatred/#comment-2327860
But maybe that’s the final lesson too.
Feeling the quiet glow of spiritual leadership yet?
Believing men (who make the cut) get a lot of houris. The numbers aren’t fixed because different hadith describe different numbers, but a lot. A lot.
Of course, the believing women who make the cut will outshine them all in beauty and splendor:
“The women of this world will have superiority over the hûrs (houris) just as the outer lining of a garment has superiority over the inner lining.” -reported in Imam Tabarani’s collection
What you do with them is up to you; if you want to cuddle or bake cakes or play chess surrounded by beautiful female forms, well I guess that’s one’s prerogative.
Lack of sexual desire maybe be an affliction or trial that is cured in the next life like depression or other mental or physical ailments.
Peace.
It used to be those specimens were uniquely American — I can remember as a child marvelling at a newspaper photo of an enormous Iowan mother-daughter farmer pair — but nowadays there are plenty of blimps in Europe too. You seldom see any 400-pounders though.
much older. it’s called “stenka na stenku” (“wall on wall fighting”) and there are actually rules (don’t attack from behind, no kicks except to trip, no punches in the face etc)
https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Стенка_на_стенку (no Eng)
I think the prole variety emerged in schools in the 70s.
Thanks for the info. Still seems weird. Why not just take up boxing?
Also, it reminds me of some of the videos of street battles between immigrant youths in parts of Paris and such but at least those guys were fighting over turf. What are these guys fighting over? I just don’t understand the incentive…
Peace.
Have you never been in a fight? Its fun, especially if you’re with a bunch of fellas. Its probably one of the most essentially tribal things of mankind.
might be a hold-over from simpler times when it was just guys from one village and it was in good humor…
field report plz
You mentioned volcels, but I’m going to add something about icels (since that is kind of on people’s radar right now).
I am sometimes shocked at the men in the Muslim community that are able to find mates. These are are totally incel material (and some of them are my friends and fellow students of my spiritual teachers). They would never have a chance at finding mates in a normal one-on-one market; skinny, socially awkward, not very good looking, etc. These are not in the majority, but they are definitely there. But usually they are fairly good academically or making a good salary – basically serious nerds.
And yet, somehow, they get hooked up for marriage (often with fairly good looking sisters – I don’t really see what they look like, but I can often tell in their kids that the good looks do not come from the men).
I think this has to do with the patriarchy that is still present, where the fathers convince their daughters to marry these guys or block them from marrying smooth-talking gigolos.
Greasy, do you see the same thing in the Jewish community; because I see some of these guys walking around in my area of greater Chicago and they are monster magnets – oy vey!
Peace.
Not outside of sparring in Taekwondo – don’t know if that counts. But I got my ribs kicked in pretty good once – two side kicks in the same exact spot. And my instructor was a very solidly built Syrian guy. I’m planning on joining my sons for BJJ in a bit also once my schedule allows for it.
I have no clue if it’s fun or not, but we have rules – you can’t just beat up human beings for no reason – it’s sinful behavior (especially if you are striking the face – you’re supposed to avoid that even in combat). I don’t make the rules; God tells you to treat person A well in one context – you do it – He tells you to kill same person A in another context – you do it.
I’m not a pacifist – men should learn how to apply violence (this is an essential part of being male) in a disciplined form and use it in its proper context. As I’ve mentioned before; the warrior saint is an important part of our tradition; the third Caliph Ali (ra) – and to a lesser degree his uncle Hamza (ra) being the archetype of the ‘faaris’ (knight). He was known for his learning, wisdom, asceticism, generosity, tremendous spirituality and the ability to cleave a man nearly in half. There was a famous incident where he had outmatched an enemy on the battlefield and had him on the ground and was about to deliver the final blow and the man spat in his face and so Ali (ra) let him go and walked away. When he was asked about it, he stated; “When I was about to strike, I was killing him for the sake of God, but when he spat in my face, I was going to kill him for myself.”
Drunken brawls for bragging rights don’t count. But to each his own.
Peace.
Yes please, assuming you can still type.
Peace.
Fun is a reason. You should do things for fun. For example, I shitpost for fun.
I do; I play street hockey for fun, I bite my youngest son’s cheeks for fun, etc. Sinning for the fun of it doesn’t compute.
Taekwondo was fun when I was taking it.
One should have fun otherwise…
https://giphy.com/gifs/jack-nicholson-the-shining-torrance-6vm8u786n3MBO
Just not at the price of the integrity of other human beings’ skulls. But what do I know.
Peace.
Didn’t Muhammad behead an entire tribe of Jews once?
You should consider taking up drinking, then.
“Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!”
― Martin Luther
You have no idea how well this speaks for you. Vital signs are not dead.
Crazy stuff.
I think all science depends on some kind of connection to the supernatural, and that science is stagnating now because we’ve become complete materialists. We all know Newton was a great mystic and Copernicus was inspired by the divinity of the sun.
The Great Age of science was when Europe was still religious but growing more materialistic every day. So there was this kind of fragile balance between the supernatural and the material. But it was a process – it wasn’t a stable point – and every decade brought us closer and closer to pure materialism.
Eventually this process ended today in pure materialism, which spelled the end of science as the connection to supernatural inspiration was finally completely cut off.
Parsons may well have been inspired by done maleific entity, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
No – just the majority of their males. A punishment for their treachery during a siege in which Muslims were completely surrounded.
To paraphrase my earlier statement; when God says to kill off the adults of tribe A to send a message that betraying His emissaries will not be tolerated – you do it.
If you read the account, the Prophet (pbuh) was taking off his armor after the siege was lifted – he was going to deal with Bani Qurayzah diplomatically, but the archangel Gabriel (as) came to him dressed for war and told him that God had asked that he march on Bani Qurayzah.
Keep in mind, not all Jewish tribes that fought the Muslims were treated like this; Bani Qaynuqah were exiled and Bani Nadhir were allowed to remain on their lands while providing a yearly tribute of their date harvest.
Peace.
Keep in mind: the neck is below the face.
“Whoever drinks beer is violating God’s law.” – every Muslim scholar ever
I remember joking around with my younger brother once when said he planned to start a Sufi Order where the disciples were taught to ward off temptation to sin by immediately falling asleep. I think he wanted to call it the Sleepiwiyyah Order.
Peace.
Exactly. Beheading was the most clean and least torturous way to kill someone in the past. If I was captured and slated for execution in Late Antiquity, I would certainly choose that above anything else. You?
Peace.
Edit: Adult males of tribe A.
I actually have an opinion on this– I always thought that the three most humane and dignified options for execution were 1) hanging, 2) firing squad, and 3) guillotine/beheading. Obviously 2) was not available in the early medieval period. 3) really should be done using a machine, because an incompetent or distracted headsman gives horrible results, but I understand that such machines were rare before the early modern period.
Evidently the ancient Romans thought so too, which is why St. Paul, being a Roman citizen, was beheaded rather than crucified, which latter is a truly awful way to die.
But why? Why were Latin and Greek taken from school curricula? Laicized schooling was a demand placed on both Karl of Austria and Alphonse XIII of Spain –part of wider social demands– before they were driven from power. Is there a relation? The Bible languages were no longer thought relevant, I suspect, and translations of classical authors more readily available.
This is obviously barbaric and was never considered just among civilised people. Like sex slavery and having sex with 9 year old girls. At least it is probably made up, like the rest of early Muslim ‘history’.
Short drop hanging (the norm until the 19th century) is essentially death through strangulation, which is rather unpleasant. Similarly, you’d have to be quite lucky to have an executioner take off the head in a single blow.
So I am watching Portugal vs. Spain.
These are two first class teams, with Spain still superior to Portugal (despite my higher sympathies for Portugal). Spain is actually amazing.
But either will wipe the floor with Russia, a decidedly second class team (if not quite third class, as I was expecting them to be).
The victory over Saudi Arabia was cool but of little relevance, because the Saudis are decidedly third class. No defense, no offense, no midfield, no nothing. The game with Egypt will be a slog, and I expect Uruguay will sooner win.
My prediction still stands: Russia will advance out of the group stage, but will get crushed by Spain.
I half suspect that Spain will win the World Cup outright.
So calling it now:
* Narrow win over Egypt
* Loss to Uruguay, coming second in the group
* Blasted out by Spain
* Spain wins the World Cup
Hmmm, bit of a contradiction perhaps?
But reducing this issue to Jew vs Athens is not only parochial but also wrong. In fact it is one specific strand within the wider Greek tradition against the rest of the Greek tradition and all the other traditions of the world.
It reminds me of how Nietzsche saw Christian morals in local European terms, as Jewish revenge, without connecting it to the world at large.
In fact Christian morals are not unique – many other traditions are quite similar. Even Nietzsche realizes this when he said Plato was proto-Chtistian. So even the Greeks had a version of Christian morality, yet it is a merely parochial affair between Jews and Europeans?
This kind of parochialism is found today in social sciences, where only WEIRD countries are studied and the results are assumed to be about basic human nature rather than to specific conditions in WEIRD countries.
I am glad you liked that comment! I think it contains a profound truth, one that goes to the very heart of what is killing the West today.
Yes, I had long or measured-drop in mind– note that I also included death by firing squad. Re beheading, I don’t know how “lucky” you’d have to be. Some notable executions were horribly botched, but quite a few others went cleanly.
I doubt mass executions were ever very clean but what do I know?
Short-drop hanging (essentially garroting) doesn’t sound fun, but compared to other ancient methods like being thrown from a height or crucified or beaten to death it’s not that bad.
I beg to differ.
One aspect of being tough and manly is not giving a hoot about what others think of you, and that more or less includes your choice of sport. It seems to me that the Russians, tough/manly or otherwise, don’t seem to be hampered by the notion you describe. (that is, if such a notion exists in Russia like it does in the US, Canada or Australia) So unless I’m mistaken, there’s little to no need to fix something that isn’t broken.
My two rubles worth.
That game was football at it’s best.
If I recall, science started out connected heavily to alchemy. And Newton wrote an exegesis on the Bible.
There were also religious men like Farraday who was looking for signs of God in the phenomenal universe in his explorations of magnetism.
But doesn’t that just put a bee in people’s bonnets; one of the premier rocket scientists of the last century was an occultist?
Peace.
From what I’ve read about hanging, it could take a long time to die while you are essentially being choked to death. But I’ve never been hung.
Yes, decapitations could go badly; which is why it is reported the Prophet (pbuh) put two very strong young men to the task; Ali (ra) – same as before (no joke was he, he killed the Arab champion Amr ibn Abd Wudd in single combat, a man who was said worth a thousand men) – and Zubayr (ra).
Yeah – the other ways to be killed in those times were not fun; being eaten alive by animals or being roasted/boiled alive tops my list of “Sir, can I have another option?”
Peace.
The most humane and dignified option for carrying out a death sentence is letting the condemned man fast until death.
The benefits of fasting are known to all spiritual traditions. Ingesting only water a man can survive for upto 3 weeks or so. Let him spend this time praying, meditating etc
He’s Russian, not Jamaican, what do you want?
A side benefit of this is that it’ll also give us fodder for more plays like Antigone.
Incorrect – you should really read up on what the Romans were capable of. Civilized people incinerated entire cities of human beings within living memory. A man like Charlemagne executed 4500 pagan male prisoners at Verdun and was punished for it by being eventually crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
Pre-Islamic Arabs certainly had sex-slavery. Like the prostitution rings of today; they would forcibly pimp out their slave girls. Islam put an end to all that, but kept the concept of concubinage. Man could own a female slave and could have sexual relations with her if he wanted. No different than practice of civilized people such as pre-Christian Romans, Greeks, Persians, Chinese…was even practiced in the New World by Aztecs and Mayans. Islam is a universal religion and certain fairly universal practices of various civilizations were allowed to carry forward.
If she bore him a child, she became um-walad, a status only slightly lower than a wife; he could no longer sell her and she was automatically freed after her master’s death:
http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e2424
This is haram, sex with pre-pubescent girls below 15 is off limits. Sex with 9 year old women – those having reached puberty – was permitted (before most Muslim nations raised marriageable age). Those having bled, but under the minimum of 9 years were also off limits.
Again, this was fairly routine practice among even civilized Europeans until close to the 20th century:
“The French Napoleonic code provided the legal context in 1791 when it established an age of consent of 11 years. The age of consent, which applied to boys as well as girls, was increased to 13 years in 1863….In 1875, England raised the age to 13 years; an act of sexual intercourse with a girl younger than 13 was a felony. In the U.S., each state determined its own criminal law and age of consent ranged from 10 to 12 years of age. U.S. laws did not change in the wake of England’s shift. Nor did Anglo-American law apply to boys.
Behind the inconsistency of these different laws was the lack of an obvious age to incorporate into law. Although scientists and physicians had established that menstruation and puberty occurred on average around age 14 in Europe at this time, different individuals experienced it at different ages — a fluid situation at odds with the arbitrary line drawn by whatever age was incorporated into law.”
http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/230
You can look at this chart to see how age of consent legislation changed over time (and how recently):
http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/case-studies/230?section=primarysources&source=24
So that I can take your claims seriously, please do the following:
1) Openly denounce men like Charlemagne as uncivilized barbarians; call for the removal of his statues and renaming of any buildings and institutions named after this “barbarian war criminal”.
2) Publicly declare that any society that had concubinage cannot be considered civilized; demand the rewriting of history books to update assessments of Greeks, Romans, Chinese, etc.
3) Openly denounce all European societies in the above table as pedophiles and/or enablers and only started civilizing in the late 1800s; demand this be noted in your history books.
Otherwise, we Muslims can dismiss your statements as hypocritical virtue-signaling.
TL;DR…meh.
Totally made up, I don’t know why people get so upset about it. Also, there was no Caliph Umar (ra), he didn’t send Khalid Ibn Walid (ra), Ubaidah bin Jarrah (ra), Amr ibn al-As (ra) to command armies to expand the Rashidun Caliphate – the Byzantines and Sassanids are still around, Egypt is still a major supplier of grains to Byzantium.
Peace.
The difference is that I don’t endorse any of those things, whereas you think they were carried out by the best man who ever lived on the orders of God.
Because, unfortunately, people like you exist
You’ve unwittingly highlighted the difference between these events, recorded by contemporaries and attested to by material evidence, and your various fables only recorded several hundred years afterwards
There is a young Polish fellow who is married to a beautiful Russian
woman. They met, of all places, in Brazil, and based on their PDAs,
seem very much in love. They are currently residing in Moscow but
he sent her far away for the duration of the World Cup, presumably
for the sake of her safety. Is this happening a lot right now in Russia?
There are at present 10-15,000 Russians in Poland. This number probably
does not include the guest workers (I recall how in the mid-’90s when over
100,000 Soviet troops, stationed in western Poland, were finally being
sent back to Russia and Ukraine, they were extremely reluctant to
leave Poland, and behaved like they were being sent back to Mordor). Those
Russians who move to Poland are usually pleasantly surprised because
in Russia people tell them they hate us over there, whereas they experience
no such thing in Poland. My sources tell me that it is the Russian Jews who
are very prominent on TV in Moscow who, due to their anti-Polish bigotry,
try to sow dissension between the two Slavic nations. Does anybody know
how large is the Polish community in Moscow? I know of a number of
Polish actors and actresses in Russian TV shows and movies, but that’s about it.
Archangel or archdemon? Mohammad’s imaginary friend sure wasn’t angelic going by the definition.
For example: when Mohammad lusted for the wife of his own son (adopted) he received a timely revelation from Allah via “Gabriel” telling the muslims that it was righteous of their Prophet to violate the conventions of his time and marry her. He was just setting a new convention for them to follow!
His favorite wife Ayesha (whose virginity he had taken when she was only 9 years old and he was in his 50s) had this to say about such timely “revelations” that justified Mohammad’s bad behavior: “How conveeenient”. Lol. (Sahih Bukhari 6:60:311)
It’s also very cheap. The oubliette with a water fountain– something you could market to world governments? China maybe?
There is a major difference between something being permissible and something being laudatory – this is a vital mistake most non-Muslims make when dealing with the historical reality of the Prophet (pbuh). Just because he did something, doesn’t mean it is a recommended course of action. The Prophet (pbuh) divorced a woman; no scholar says divorce is recommended. I cannot think of a single scholar in our history that says it’s a great thing to marry a nine year old that has reached puberty. The one marriage that is held as the most exemplary was the one with his first wife – the Lady Khadijah (ra) – who was 15 years older than him. Top Muslim scholars and institutions around the world denounced Daesh when they tried to revive slavery in their territory.
But this issue is, you want to denounce him, but refuse to denounce your own ancestors for the same conduct because “muh Evropa” – it is inane and not respectable.
So yeah, his conduct is a yardstick that allows your ancestors to save face at a minimum that they weren’t barbarian-war-criminal-pedophile-sex-slavers.
I swear, some people who consider themselves conservatives are actually liberals on time delay.
Arabs are liars…got it. Again, don’t know why it bothers you guys so much – do you get upset reading Beowulf?
Re “civilized people”, I don’t think DFH counts anybody as that but 19th-century Brits.
Nobody caims Beowulf is an accurate representation of historical events that actually happened (and still have relevance today), it’s obviously a fictional poem. So your comparison doesn’t make any sense.
And it’s not even about conscious lying, given that the Arab sources for Mohammed’s life were written down decades later (based on what? Oral traditions? It’s very controversial how accurate and stable those can be), there’s lots of room for unconscious distortion.
The difference is that nobody claims the Europeans who did all those horrible things were chosen by God as his mouthpiece to lay down a divinely sanctioned order. Most non-Muslims, if they give much thought to the matter, cannot but conclude that Mohammed, as described in Islamic tradition, was a horrible person of very low ethical standards. Why would a just God choose someone like that as His prophet? (and no, you don’t need to answer that, since ultimately the discussion is completely pointless).
This is opinion being posited as fact. Zayd (ra) himself had wanted to divorce her, but the Prophet (pbuh) told him to keep her. It was to make clear that adopted sons were not real sons and thus their widows or divorcees.
You will interpret the events in the worst way possible – obviously. And we will interpret them in the best way possible – obviously.
This is why we are Muslims and you are not.
The hadith from Lady Aisha (ra) doesn’t have to do with this event. She also did very cute things like this:
Aisha reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Indeed, I can recognize when you are angry with me or pleased with me.” I said, “How do you recognize that, O Messenger of Allah?” He said, “Verily, when you are pleased, you say: Yes, by the Lord of Muhammad. But when we you are upset, you say: No, by the Lord of Abraham.” I said, “Yes, I do not leave out anything but your name.” – reported in Bukhari
But yeah, Allah (swt) liked to make the Prophet (pbuh) happy at times (that is what He does for the slaves He loves) – though He obviously did not fulfill everything he wanted:
“(Muhammad), you cannot guide whomever you love, but God guides whomever He wants and knows best those who seek guidance.” (28:56)
You have many very rich fantasies about Russia.
Says who? The entire Qur’an is preserved by oral tradition. I just stood in prayer behind imams that recited the entire Quran from memory during the prayer – in the instance of the few mistakes they made, a person behind them corrected them. There are places in the Muslim world to this day like in Mauritania where they still crank out people who memorize the entire Qur’an based completely on oral transmission.
People in societies with high literacy and things like smart phones have no clue what people in oral cultures are capable of memorizing. Here, how many phone numbers of friends and family can you write down from memory.
That’s not at question here; we have already established that you believe he was a false prophet – I am not trying to convince you otherwise. What he was – by all standards of human history – a man (an illiterate shepherd and merchant) who abolished paganism with transcendental monotheism, set up certain legal standards, reformed social issues, produced a piece of Arab poetry that became the standard of world-wide language and took a band of small persecuted followers and won a protracted civil war between two city-states against overwhelming odds, finally uniting the Arab tribes for the first time in history, eventually paving the way for his followers to roll up the Persian and (half of the) Byzantine empires within a span of less 30 years – a feat the empires could not accomplish against each other in centuries.
Good – so denounce all the others that I pointed out that did similar acts. Why don’t you simply denounce them as horrible people of low ethical standards? Is Charlemagne a barbarian war criminal? Will you ask for his statues to be removed? Was Napoleon legally endorsing pedophilia by using the age of 11? I’m waiting.
Or is it just because you don’t like it when dirty Arabs do it? Which is fine, just be honest.
ISIS was just doing what Allah commands muslims to do: follow the example of his Last Messenger to Mankind.
By denouncing ISIS for practicing slavery these “muslim” scholars are denouncing Allah, Mohammad, his Companions, and all the muslim scholars who saw nothing wrong with slavery.
If you think western post-Enlightenment morality trumps the Quran then why the hell are you still a Muslim?
Cool – the guys that had their women wearing hijab:
Totally. Down. For. This.
Peace.
Oh OK – so you know Islamic “doctrine” better than our top “scholars” and “institution” like “Al” Azhar and “Nadwat ul” Ule “ma”.
Never said that. Prophetic conduct allows for us to deal with the modern world just fine; there is no command to execute prisoners of war (it is an option left to the sovereign), there is no command to own slaves (it is an option left to the sovereign), there is no command to marry women that have just experienced menarche (it is an option left to the sovereign to interdict).
The only people insisting we must necessarily do these things are people like you. How many Muslims come to seek out Shariah legal verdicts from you exactly? You can round up if you like.
To expand on this point.
Judge him as an Arab leader and the founder of their nation.
Case in point, when he took over a rival capital city, he granted them amnesty and there was no loot, no plunder even though they kicked him out of his home city, tried to kill him and warred against him for years – they converted (or joined his side, if you like) en mass.
Alexander’s army burns down the rival capital of Persepolis:
https://www.ancient.eu/article/214/alexander-the-great–the-burning-of-persepolis/
And they call him “da Great” – look, this stuff is fine, but don’t expect us to take this stuff seriously.
Interesting though, Michael Hart put him at #1 most influential man in history when he did his ranking – if I recall, Newton was second:
https://www.amazon.com/100-Ranking-Influential-Persons-History/dp/0806513500
My wife’s mother is one, though she was deported to the middle of Eurasia as a kid and speaks Polish poorly. Other than occasionally going to a Roman Catholic church, she almost never sees Poles and doesn’t socialize with them. She even supports Russia in any Poland-Russia conflicts, despite her solid Roman Catholicism and dislike of the Orthodox Church.
My impression, admittedly based on limited data, is that there is no organized sort of Polish “community.”
Don’t lie. You just denounced ISIS for reviving slavery. That means you are denouncing Islam itself for practicing slavery from the beginning until very recently.
Was Mohammad the role model for mankind till the Day of Judgement or not? Since you are taking modern western abolitionists as your role models instead of the Last Prophet does that not mean that Allah will torture you mercilessly for ever and ever?
Awww, but, but – taqiyyah awesomeness!!!
Prove to all of us that reviving slavery after it’s been dead for decades is part of the Sunnah. Please reference our qualified scholars.
Also please provide the number of fatwas you have been consulted for by Muslims, again, rounding up is totally fine.
Yup they’re poor & non christian.
It’s a controversial subject in general in history how reliable written texts dealing with events long before their time and presumably based on oral traditions are. There was an acrimonious debate in German medievalism during the 1990s about the first Ottonian king Henry I who came to power in around 919. Basically an argument was made that the main account for those events, a chronicle written almost exactly 50 years later, doesn’t make much sense in its presentation of events and reflects what people in the 960s thought/imagined had happened, not what actually had happened, and that the view of events is distorted because memories in oral or semi-oral societies get continually reworked, adapted to present realities and contaminated with later or unrelated events. No consensus was reached about that, and maybe oral societies are indeed much better than modern Westerners could imagine with preserving a reliable account of events. But it’s a serious issue, and even if you’d like to wave it away, the potential implications for Islam’s origins are obvious.
I regard both Charlemagne and Napoleon as tyrants and warmongers (though they also did some good things, like preserving classical texts and legislative activity). But again, your comparison doesn’t work. Few if any Westerners claim that Charlemagne or Napoleon was the most perfect man who ever lived whose conduct should be a model even today. How many Frenchmen have threatened violence lately because of Napoleon caricatures?
The Henry who didn’t become king of France was very pious, as I recall.
you’re anti-civilization.
the problem is spin and intellectual fads in light of insufficient evidence, not people questioning things as such. the solution is keeping sh**y, manufactured science (fake clinical trials, a lot of the theories in sociology, all of the objective-morals nonsense from the likes of Sam Harris) from informing public policy and also recognizing what things we simply don’t yet have good scientific theories about.
That requires radical free speech and intense public debate for people to be able to call out shy science on its shiness.
what you suggest is a return to taboos and medieval dildo mysticism.
at least those who tell you you must question stuff, plan to deceive you by spinning evidence for or against something when there is not enough of the evidence or it isn’t good because the field doesn’t lend itself easily to controlled experiment.
the person who tells you not to question won’t even do you that courtesy of inventing a fake dildo reason for you, they would rather you lowered your intellectual standard before you accept something and be content with taboos, feelz etc.
anti-civilization.
Sacrebleu! One does not insult le Petit Caporal!
“fondness for premodern conceptions of reality”
You may want to check out “A Course in Miracles” (1976)although, at 1333 pages
it’s not for the faint of heart. I wouldn’t describe it as premodern but rather
transmodern, using Ken Wilber (America’s most translated philosopher)’s
brilliant elucidation of the pre/trans fallacy. It states, among many other things,
that one of the greatest challenges of being alive is to develop a correct
relationship to time.
As to the nature of time, if you don’t have a Ph.D. level understanding of modern
physics, I’d recommend any of the recent books by Carlo Rovelli like “Reality is
not What It Seems” and, his latest, “The Order of Time.” He’s already being
described as the new Stephen Hawking.
If you look into it Islam is of course a silly/childish ideology, perhaps even a little more than the other mainstream religions which we like to laugh at.
But Islam – although infectious – weakens its believers, and results paralyzing spiritual/behavioural stagnation in any population group going to it, something even the 20th fortune of having the largest resources of oil and gas under the lands of the Islamic world could not reverse.
So despite infectiousness of ideology, that resulted in vast numbers (a quarter of the world population) coming under it, the ideology itself acts as the long-term self-regulator on its own spread by weakening any populations that follow it, eventually making them vulnerable to domination and rule by non-feebled nationalities of other ideologies.
Putin alone has more geopolitical power than the Islamic world of 1.8 billion people who lay at his feet, as he is their benefactor, asking for help or sympathy in their disputes.
There is not a single Muslim leadership country on the UN Security Council, a statistical improbability. The G-7 countries decide the world without them – and only noticeable absence anyone mentions about G-7 is of Russia, China and India (the remaining non-Muslim powers).
Look at this statistically. What is the probability that of the 10 world powers G-7 +Russia, China and India. Not a single of these 10 countries has Muslim leadership, despite 1.8 billion Muslims?
Muslim world’s geopolitical power to population ratio, is about similar to its football powers.
In the optimistic way, however, the model for the Muslim world future will be what secularizing Azerbaijan has achieved thanks to Russian civilization.
Azerbaijan is considered the most disbelieving and secularized Muslim nation in the world.
A result – visually seen signs of flourishing in the population. (And people yet really are still claiming that secularization and Russian culture was negative on these people.)
Aaron & talha there can be religions which command their ideals for this world.
https://www.manglacharan.com/home/ugardanthi-explanation-bansavalinama
http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/History_of_Guru_Nanak%27s_travel_to_Mecca#Karni_Nama
Like destroying Islam।।
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
Russian women have been bleaching Indo Iranian Men since Antiquity।।
Like I’ve said before, Chief – you know where to find us. We’ll try to keep the Turks from going postal on you guys this time around…you have to forgive them, they can get a little carried away.
By the way, I don’t understand you – you reference Sikhism a lot, but Sikhism is very monotheistic and a revolt against the caste system which you think is the bee’s knees…what gives?
Well, I think there is a kind of barbarism of reason – Leopardi invented the term.
Obviously too much ignorance and irrationality is barbaric, but too much reason is also barbaric.
Civilization is the conditions needed for humans to flourish and develop all their capacities to their highest form – too much reason creates barbarity by leading to the neglect of our emotional and aesthetic life, which is necessary if we are to live fully human lives. And neglecting the rational side of life leads to an inability to create an environment suitable for our needs as well as emotional disturbances.
I advocate a “multi-layered” approach to life – logic has its place but so do our other faculties. In fact, they interpenetrate – science depends on irrational inspiration, which is then subjected to rational analysis, while reason is necessary to develop the techniques needed to build the great cathedrals.
The modern world has become one-dimensional, and this is reflected in the poverty of our thought – we think in simple essential categories and have lost the flexibility to handle complexity.
You, who advocate ceaseless questioning of everything, are a mere barbarian.
Talha, for once I actually agree with you. We should acknowledge that great (which is not necessarily the same as good) people in the past could achieve significant things while at the same time they did things that would not be accepted by current-day morality.
The important thing should be that if we find something wrong in the present we should encourage people to stop it – rather than lambasting dead people for not having the morality of current-day people.
It’s not about Mohammed (who may possibly never even have existed like it is claimed in Islamic tradition) and what he did 1400 years ago, it’s about Muslims and their insufferable behaviour today.
Then it is probably better to discuss their misbehaviour in the modern day (for which there is certainly much).
Attacking them on the one subject they are most touchy about seems like it will just cause them to become defensive (as Talha showed) and not accept what we are saying.
YAWN.
hardcore trad Catholic Michael E Jones and every Muslim cleric appeals to “reason.” Are they barbaric?
there can’t be too much reason. you can misapply reason (for example, I’ve a suspicion that all of the POZ that has been foisted on society wouldn’t have worked if they didn’t systematically deconstruct, censor and mock people’s moral intuitions. Xtians and other religionists intuitively understand this, but lack the vocabulary to express it in a way that doesn’t scare away people.)
all of the utopianist schemes are not due to reason but – wait for it – utopianism. In the past, they used religion for that. What’s the difference between “we must free the proletariat and spark a world socialist revolution” and “god wills it”? At least you can debate Marxism. Many people did, found it wanting and their countries didn’t get it.
They will use anything to justify their schemes,gods, no gods, science, reason, etc. That’s not a problem with”too much reason.”
BTW, the reason trad religions look so unbearably larpy (like a CPGB rally) is because it’s reason, but from an earlier time with different standards of intellectual rigor and different social engineering objectives (consolidation of tribes into feudal statelets etc.) Powerful using the intellectual toolkit of the time for their ends.
dude, when you say “crush the loathsome thing” (meaning the Enlightenment), that’s not multi-layered, that’s all-out obscurantist and a call to return to “g’d wants a bigger goat!!!1”-type mysticism and feudal conditions (most of) humanity has luckily grown out of.
Let me quote what I said:
That’s what I suspected – unlike in Berlin, there are very few Poles living
currently in Moscow. Karlin just dismissed my comment which confirms
my suspicions that being a newcomer (and v. young) his knowledge of Moscow has a lot
of holes. For example, I occasionally have read about Polish actors and actresses
participating in the Russian/Soviet show business. Not a lot but it happens.
Two examples: Edita Piekha (1937- ), raised in Poland as Edyta Piecha. In 1955 she
went to study in Russia, which was not uncommon in those days, and remained in Russia
becoming a well-known singer. Anna German (1936-82) was a famous Polish
singer who was extremely popular in the 1960s-’70s throughout the Eastern Bloc,
including the Soviet Union.
Pious Muslims won’t accept any criticism from us infidels anyway, because they think they’re in possession of divinely revealed truth and that their way of life is superior and bound to prevail on the entire globe. If you strip away Talha’s politeness he’s basically telling us all the time “Your societies are shit, you’re decadent godless trash, your women are whores, you need to accept Islam, and if you don’t Islam will prevail anyway because you decadent losers don’t have children, and once Islam is dominant in your societies, we’ll establish an Islamic legal framework so there’ll be no going back”. There’s no basis for meaningful dialogue about that, it would be like trying to reason with a commie who thinks the laws of history are on his side and that reactionaries will soon be history. Best you could get is some kind of truce.
I agree though that the “Mohammed was a pedo” line is rather tired, even if I can see why people use it, the temptation to trigger Muslims with it is just too great.
Anna German is claimed by some Volga Germans (in Germany) as their and they get very triggered when she’s identified as Polish.
You forgot Barbara Brylska from the cult comedy film Irony of Fate.
Please don’t insult actual great powers by including Canada in the first class.
Canada isn’t a great power at all. Or a real country at all.
You know, I started considering your ideas and a strange not entirely unpleasant lassitude came over me, my passion dissipated like cobwebs in the wind, I looked around me and couldn’t remember why I cared so much about anything, I began to feel an urge to surrender to Muslims and be submissive to Jews, and I thought, what’s the point of anything?
Then I thought, naaahhh….:)
Your ideas I refute with the marrow in my bones.
The only question I ask of an idea is, does it increase my vitality and feeling of life? Does it make life more beautiful and inspired?
As the Underground Man said, if for some reason I don’t like the idea that 2+2=4, why should I accept it?
Freedom is not the ability to say 2+2=4, as some Englishman or other has said somewhere, but to deny it if for some strange reason I don’t like it, as some great Russian or other has said somewhere else.
I do not see any benefit of dialogs with Muslims.
Utu is right. The time for dialogue is over.
Lines have been drawn in the sand. We all know where we stand, and who we are.
Let the battle commence.
In 25 years, the ideas most consistent with life will have won.
To obey a higher law is the only freedom worth experiencing.
man, you are a windbag. “inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.”
how in the world did you read that into what I wrote.
Oh noes, the Jooooies.
As they say in Russian, “trying to scare a hedgehog with his bare bum” (I’m the hedgehog.)
Reason, scientific method etc is Judaization. The way to resist Judaization is to undo the last 500 years and pray to crystals.
Also, fundamentally re-engineer Western societies so that people with hunting-gathering proclivities are not condemned to a sad existence on the margins of said societies.
okey-dokey.
Mohammedans are correct when they call us decadent and point out that our women are whores.
They are incorrect about the solution to our problems of course.
I’m not interested in discussing their heretical religion with them. But I’m fine discussing subjects with them like how to manage your wife and keep your daughters off the pole.
Agreed. And 2+2=4 is only a “lower law” – and obeying it will blind one to the Higher Law.
So why do so?
This is a good example of the “stupidity” of the over-literal logical mind
You do not have the mental agility to understand a relatively simple shift between levels of meaning.
It is over. The loss of dimension and complexity in Western thought is final.
Change or die.
A stupid argument. Any “muslim” scholar who, influenced by modern western liberalism, denounces the Sunnah of Mohammad as shameful and abhorrent is effectively calling Islam a false religion.
By condemning ISIS for following the example of Mohammad you have rejected the authority of Allah who has commanded believers to follow the examples set by his Last Prophet.
Face it: if Islam is true you will be roasted in Hell for eternity.
So, how the hell is denying that 2+2=4 most consistent with life?
Well, Anna German sang mostly in Polish (and what a voice
she had!). You can find her songs on YouTube. However, when
she performed in the Soviet Union, she did sing in Russian, and
as a result had a huge following in Russia.
The converse of this is the Russian-born Sasha Strunin who moved
to Poland with her parents when they both got jobs with the Poznan
Opera. She also became a singer, and even represented Poland in
the Eurovision contest with a group Jet Set over 10 years ago.
When I was in Moscow this April there was a show on the culture channel about Polish actresses famous in Russia (such as the star of Irony of Fate, the cherished New Years movie). The actresses were of course saying pretty much only nice things about Russia and Russians. Apparently some of their careers suffered in Poland, as “revenge” for becoming popular in Russia.
maybe I just played dumb. Actually, you know, making oneself clear is something to be delivered by the writer, not to be collected by the reader.
You don’t get to spam nonsense, then say the collocutor doesn’t appreciate your profound insights (well, you do, but you have to be a French philosopher.)
Are you sure you’re not PoMo? The attacks on modernity, feelz over realz, etc. I mean, functionally, if it walks like a duck, …
http://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/dawkins.html
I’m flattered you diagnosed this based on this one interaction but if it helps, I’m not at all representative of “Western thought.” Prolly 90% of the regular commenters here are more acute thinkers.
The West is circling the drain. We need to remodel the world on cultures that never left the drain and learn from the times of our own intellectual infancy, or the Jews win.
That wasn’t a cult film it was very popular and a holiday classic, like It’s a Wonderful Life, or Miracle on 34th Street in the USA.
okay. I forgot for a moment “cult film” had a precise definition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_film
One that is fit by MLP (unintentionally, to the mild disapproval of the producer) and Green Elephant alike, btw.
What I was referring to is a very common occurrrence
at mass sports events in the West: the better class of people go on vacation,
and the city is left largely to the proles. This phenomenon was observed, for
example, at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles (1984) and in Atlanta (1996).
In the U. S. case, the Americans view the Olympics as relatively boring, at least
compared to the quintessential American sports like football, and leave mostly
to get away from the crowds, rather than for safety (although there was a terrorist
incident in Atlanta).
There is a charming chapter in Musil’s book about this –
Science smiling into its beard, or first full-dress encounter with Evil
A few words must now be said about a smile, a masculine smile at that, with a beard attached to it, whereby the general activity of smiling in one’s sleeve was transposed into the masculine one of smiling into one’s beard. It was the smiling of the men of science and learning who had accepted Diotima’s invitation and were listening to the celebrated men of the arts. Although they smiled, it must on no account whatever be believed that they did so ironically. On the contrary, it was their way of expressing homage and incompetence, a matter that has already been mentioned. But one must not let oneself be deceived by that either. It was true enough where their conscious mind was concerned; yet in their subconscious—to make use of this customary word—or, to put it more exactly, in the sum total of their being, they were people in whom a propensity to Evil crackled like the fire under a cauldron.
Now that, of course, looks like a paradoxical remark, and any professor at a university, if it were made in his presence, would presumably retort that he simply serves the cause of truth and progress and has no other concerns: for that is his professional ideology. But all professional ideologies are high-minded. Hunters, for instance, would not dream of calling themselves the butchers of the woods; they prefer to call themselves the real friends of animals and Nature, just as business men uphold the principle of fair profit, and the god that thieves also take for their own is the business men’s god, that distinguished promotor of international concord, Mercury. So not much importance need be attached to the way an activity is mirrored in the consciousness of those who practise it.
If one asks oneself in an unprejudiced way how science came to have its present-day aspect (which is in itself important, since after all it dominates us, not even an illiterate being safe from it, because he learns to live together with countless things that are born of science) one gets a quite different picture. According to credible traditions it was in the sixteenth century, an age of very intense spiritual emotions, that people gradually ceased trying, as they had been trying all through two thousand years of religious and philosophic speculation, to penetrate into the secrets of Nature, and instead contented themselves, in a way that can only be called superficial, with investigations of its surface. The great Galileo, who is always the first to be mentioned in this connection, did away with the problem, for instance, of the intrinsic reasons why Nature abhors a vacuum, so that it will cause a falling body to enter into and occupy space after space until it finally comes to rest on solid ground, and contented himself with a much more general observation: he simply established the speed at which such a body falls, what course it takes, what time it takes, and what its rate of acceleration is. The Catholic Church made a grave mistake in threatening this man with death and forcing him to recant, instead of exterminating him without more ado. For from his way of looking at things, and that of those whose outlook was similar, there sprang—in almost no time at all, if one applies historical measurements—railway time-tables, factory machines, physiological psychology, and the moral ruin of the present age, against which the Church no longer stands a chance. It probably made this mistake from an excess of shrewdness, for Galileo was, after all, not only the discoverer of the law of gravitation and of the earth’s motion, but also an inventor in whom, as one would put it today, high finance took an interest; and he was, besides, not the only one at that time seized by the new spirit. On the contrary, the historical reports show that the matter-offactness that inspired him spread and raged like an infection. And however disconcerting it may sound today to speak of anyone’s being inspired with matter-of-factness, when we think we have too much of it already, at that time the awakening out of metaphysics to clear-cut scrutiny of things must, to judge by all the evidence, have been an out-and-out intoxication, a very fire of matter-of-factness!
But if one asks oneself why humanity took it into its head to change in this manner, the answer is that all it was doing was what every sensible child does when it has tried to walk too soon: it sat down on the ground, making the contact with a dependable and not really dignified part of the body, in other words, precisely the part on which one does sit. And the remarkable thing is that the earth has shown itself uncommonly susceptible, and since that contact took place has let inventions, conveniences and discoveries be wormed out of it in downright miraculous quantities.
After such a history one might think, and not quite without justification, it was the miracle of the Anti-Christ that we find ourselves in the midst of now. For the ‘contact’ simile that has just been used is to be interpreted with reference not only to the dependability of the part of the body that is involved, but also to its aspect of the unseemly and taboo. The point is, before intellectual man discovered his delight in facts, the only people who had such a delight were warriors, hunters and merchants, that is to say, the people whose nature it was to be cunning and violent. In the struggle for existence there are no philosophical sentimentalities, but only the wish to kill off one’s opponent by the shortest and most practical method. There everyone is a positivist. Nor would it be a virtue, in commerce, to let oneself be taken in instead of putting one’s trust in solid facts, profit being in the last resort a psychological vanquishing of one’s opponent, arising out of the particular circumstances. However, if one investigates what qualities it is that lead to discoveries, what one finds is freedom from traditional scruples and inhibitions, courage, as much initiative as destructive spirit, the exclusion of moral considerations, patient bargaining for the smallest advantage, dogged endurance on the way to the goal, if necessary, and a veneration for measure and number amounting to the most acute mistrust of all uncertainty; in other words, one sees nothing but the old hunter’s, soldier’s and merchant’s vices, simply transposed into intellectual terms and re-interpreted as virtues. And though by this means they are raised above the urge for personal and comparatively vulgar advantage, yet the element of primal Evil, as it might be called, is something they do not lose even in undergoing this trans formation. It is apparently indestructible and eternal, or at least as eternal as everything humanly sublime, since it consists in nothing less, nothing other, than the pleasure of tripping that sublimity up and watching it fall flat on its face. Who does not know the malicious temptation—when contemplating a beautifully glazed vase, all voluptuous curves— that lies in the thought that one could smash it to smithereens with a single blow of one’s stick? Intensified into the heroically bitter realisation that one cannot rely on anything in life except what is clinched and riveted, it is a basic emotion enclosed within the soberness of science, and even if, for reasons of respect, one does not want to call it the Devil, the fact remains that it brings with it a faint whiff of brimstone.
A good comment 🙂
Not PoMo. Too hard to explain.
I have to read Musil.
If you can’t see, you can’t see.
Thanks for bringing him up. When I discovered him many years ago I was fascinated with his book but now after reading this passage I just thought: OK, Musil I know what you are trying to say but does it have to be that long? Or is that long because if what you are trying to say was distilled to its essence it would be trite or possibly not true for everybody to see?
It’s a very serious issue and I’m ot waving it away. It’s Westerners who have waved it away – all of any criticisms of Qur’an preservation have been done through textual criticism. It’s the only science they understand – they have not been oral cultures for far too long, they actually do not have the tool set to evaluate the preservation of an oral tradition because they have no parallel to compare with.
We’ve preserved the exact phonetic pronunciations and intonations of the Qur’an – completely, we have an Ummah-wide consensus on it:
I know memorizers that have all the variants memorized that are only preserved (to this day through oral transmission). The transmitted variations on the lettering that they have memorized will not be found in any of the Qur’ans printed in the Islamic world.
In UCLA, we had the pleasure of hosting a elder female scholar from Syria; she had memorized the entirety of the collection of Imam Bukhari (ra) including the variations and every single name on the chain of transmission for every single hadith. She was graduating others who were memorizing the Sahih collections as well. These people exist – today. You guys make fun of how much we pay attention to details of religion remember? People have the fruits for what they labor towards.
Excellent! At least you are consistent. So you wouldn’t mind if a movement started, like in the US, to tear down their statues right? I mean, we can’t put up monuments to tyrants, can we?
Now I have no issue with the conduct of Charlemagne at Verden because, though it is not optimum way to deal with POWs, their is nothing intrinsically wrong with executing adult male captives given a pressing circumstance. The Prophet’s actions with Bani Qurayzah were a one-time deal and thus it is a sound practice. We now have international treaties that interdict option this so we should follow the dictates of the agreements we have all pledged to.
The ideal way to deal with POWs is derived from another instance; after the Battle of Badr a verse was revealed to treat captives well:
“And they give food in spite of love for it to the needy, the orphan, and the captive. [Saying], “We feed you only for the countenance of Allah. We wish not from you reward or gratitude.” (76:8-9)
As Imam Ibn Kathir (ra) explains:
Ibn
Abbas said, "At that time (when this Ayah was revealed) their (the Muslims') captives were idolators.'' Proof for this is that on the day of Badr the Messenger of Allah commanded his Companions to treat the captives respectfully. They (the Companions) would give them preference over themselves when eating their meals.Ikrimah said, “They (captives) are the slaves.” Ibn Jarir preferred this opinion since the Ayah generally refers to both the Muslim and the idolators.http://www.recitequran.com/tafsir/en.ibn-kathir/76:8
This was the conduct that made a great hero out of Emir Abdul Qadir (ra) when he fought the French in Algeria (yeah, Iowans named a town after him):
http://www.abdelkaderproject.org/about-emir-abdelkader/
Not my argument. I was pointing out the tribal hypocrisy in certain criticisms of the Prophet (pbuh); they denounce him for things (even assuming he was just a great Arab leader of his people) that they never do for their own. At least you denounced a man who many would consider the father of the German people as a warmonging tyrant – good for you. Also, my question was if Napoleon’s code institutionalized legalized pedophilia.
Why would people care about caricature of a man they think is a warmonging tyrant? Makes no sense.
You know, you have tried to put words in my mouth before and it’s not respectable conduct nor appreciated. Trying to make me sound like some invading Salafi jihadist is a straw-man tactic. I’ve been very clear about how I feel about the welfare of the people of the West. As I stated to another:
This and Musil made me think of Paul Feyerabend and what he said about physicists of Feynman’s generation:
The hidden dichotomy here is between the continental Europe on one side and British empiricism and American pragmatism on the other side. Musil to make his point went all the way back to Galileo and emphasized the triumph of empiricism and its negative cost. Then there is another dividing lines of pre and post classic education and Greek and Latin in schools we were talking about before. Bohr, Einstein, Schrodinger, Boltzmann, Mach went to schools in a different era than ‘the Feynmans [and] the Schwingers.’ And it showed.
Ernst Mach was the last great philosopher-physicist. Robert Musil was writing his Ph.D on Ernst Mach. Not sure if he finished.
Mach, Musil and Feyerabend were all Austrians.
Thank you for getting my point. I’m really simply asking people to apply the same principles across the board fairly. If they don’t, that is fine – we can dismiss them as virtue-signalling hypocrites. Now G_R actually called out a man like Charlemagne – so good for him in being consistent. He still hasn’t called out previous European generations as pedophiles, but baby steps…
This is something that Prof. Jonathan Brown spoke of when he noted the first criticism of the age of Lady Aisha comes at 1905 (after the West has started changing its own laws):
https://youtu.be/5gsFiLm-veo?t=5m30s
It seems a little cynical to us honestly.
Now as far as today’s conduct, I will say that I fully agree that far too many Muslims are behaving extremely horribly, committing extremist violence, violating others’ rights, etc. It needs to be reigned in – 100% agree.
One thing I would respectfully like to point out:
The point I am trying to make is that, sure we can come up with better or optimum ways to conduct ourselves. Making international pacts of non-aggression, stopping slavery, working together to stop pollution, etc. all good, I’m all for it.
However, if one takes the stance that morality changes and that one can judge previous generations by today’s yardstick – from a moral standpoint, then one is opening some very serious floodgates. If morality (in its essence) changes then how does one stop the poz – because that is essentially their position – “Morality is not fixed, human beings define it as we progress and aren’t we the most evolved human beings? Of course we are, look at our material and technological advancement!”
And if it is fixed, who exactly draws a line in the sand and says; “this is the universal basis of moral conduct”?
Or maybe there is no such thing as universal moral standard, in which case; back to square one.
Some things to think about…
Peace.
I’m in general against tearing down historical monuments (even ones that are somewhat irritating, like the Soviet victory monuments in Berlin). But I’m not even aware there are that many Charlemagne statues. There’s that stupid EU price named after him…that could be abolished as far as I’m concerned. Charlemagne with his empire-building and wars even against fellow Christians like the Lombards couldn’t be a model for a united Europe anyway.
I admit though that by world historical standards Mohammed was hardly the most evil man ever, and probably even had some positive qualities. There’s not much reason to like him or his deeds though from a non-Muslim perspective.
I’m not putting words into your mouth, I’m just giving a somewhat polemical rendering of your views as I interpret them. It’s a very consistent theme in your comments that you regard the West as decadent, because of too much tolerance for homos, no patriarchy, materialism etc. You’ve also made clear that your ideal version of society would be some kind of Islamic state with fairly harsh punishments for blasphemy, homo sex and presumably other offences. And as you write in your comment directly above, you think Islam is the solution to our alleged ills.
I can’t even really blame you for all that, obviously it’s what you’re supposed to believe as a devout Muslim. It’s just not a view I can have even the slightest sympathy for.
https://www.manglacharan.com/home/vedas-gurbani
Keep reading more brit prot stuff about Islam, Hindu Dharma & Sikhi|| LOL
https://www.manglacharan.com/home/devi-in-khalsa-dharam-shaastar
The Turks run when they see us, you need to find fault in Hindu Dharma to justify your circumcision. God help you,
This is what I have been taught:
1) Display a respect for women such that she expects respect from men. Leave porn, stop going to strip clubs, stop ogling women and be chivalrous and courteous in your respect to them. Treat your wife with respect and let your daughter see that. Then she will expect this kind of conduct from men and consider those who have low standards to be avoided.
2) Be the man you want your daughter to marry. Set high standards for yourself such that she sets a high standard for her husband.
3) Be careful about the friends she keeps and don’t be afraid to prevent some bad company from seeing her. Talk to her about stuff she is interested in, even though it is stupid nonsense – don’t shut off that line of communication, otherwise she will tell her troubles to people who will listen and they may not give her the best advice.
4) Love her and let her know she is special by doing those acts which make her feel special:
“Aisha said:’I have not seen anyone closer in conduct, way, and manners to that of the Messenger of Allah in regards to standing and sitting, than Fatimah the daughter of the Messenger of Allah (pbuh).’ She said ‘Whenever she would enter upon the Prophet (pbuh) he would stand up for her and kiss her, and he would sit her in his sitting place…'” – reported in Tirmidhi
5) #4 should not be confused with spoiling her, otherwise you are setting her up to be a parasite on future husband and if he is self-respecting, he will send her back to you.
Just some things I have learned…and if you do that; hopefully you will have the key to half of her heart and she’ll be ready to let you hand it to a young man that you approve of because she trusts your judgement. After that, you reap the rewards of the work you put in for the years to get her to that moment.
This will require work; surfing may have to wait, financial opportunities may have to be sacrificed…
Peace.
Why should I, as far as I can recall I’ve never criticized Islam for Mohammed’s marriage with that girl, which doesn’t really interest me much. You must be confusing me with other commenters.
I will argue against this interpretation. Islam’s theological obscurantism may be enfeebling but there isn’t any empirical proof that it is so debilitating as to render them hors de combat. I maintain that Islam is weak because Muslims in general are idiots. Their quarter of humanity they converted also happened unfortunately to be the bottom quartile. It would be unfair to evaluate Christianity via its current largest demographic pools, namely black Africans and sundry New world Mestizos so likewise one shouldn’t judge Islam’s mediocrity based on the fact the most believers are inbred Arabs with not insubstantial sub saharan African input via their slaves or the lower caste subcontinentals. The Anatolian Greek population converted to Turks are the most capable of all Muslims and they also happen to be a shrinking minority.
Just to make sure there is no confusion, I don’t actually hold this view. I was trying to say that I think it is unfair to judge the actions of past figures by contemporary morality only – rather context of the era they lived in should be used to evaluate their actions.
I generally hold the position of ‘pluralism in different countries’ that we shouldn’t seek to impose our cultural views on other peoples in their homelands but neither should we allow them to impose their views on us in our homelands.
If foreign countries want to change or advance their culture then I would approve of that but only if they wanted to, not because an occupation government told them to.
I think that being genuinely willing accept that differences exist between peoples rather than some superficial proselytising ‘multiculturalism’ is the best way to make conflict between countries low-key and at a safe level.
It’s very difficult, and maybe impossible, to determine the standards of orthodoxy of a faith that you yourself don’t hold. In America, we are seeing lots of liberals who hate Christianity say that separating Latrino children from their parents at the border is “un Christian”. In reality, liberals just don’t know what they are talking about.
I would say that the bare minimum somebody would need to accurately interpret the Koran is to have read the entire book themselves as well as the major commentaries on it by the elite scholars. Anybody who hasn’t done that is certainly within their rights to criticize behavior of Muslims, but they probably should avoid critiquing the faith itself until they have properly studied it.
I mean, people can do whatever they want, that’s just my opinion and I apply it to all religions, not just Islam.
More upper caste converted..
The Islamic practice of pulling out likely shredded iq while Europe banned birth control.
This is one theory I’ve read
Ok – so Sikhism is both polytheistic and agrees with the caste system, correct?
They didn’t used to, but maybe you’re right. Thanks for heads up, I’ll tell them to get their stuff together:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-tGL-buZ94Y
Can I haz foreskin?!
Cool – again thanks for being consistent.
Ok, but I don’t know why you are taking such offense from me pointing this out when plenty of Westerners have since before I was even born. If you think the only problem with the West is the presence of people like me, I’m cool with this. If enough of others agree with you, simply kick us out legally and your future looks fine and dandy. Fine AND dandy.
No, I’m a Hanafi; we’re very flexible on this – I think starting out with a fine or short term imprisonment is ok, then we can progress to public flogging or long term confinement or exile, etc.
Yes, for Muslims that do it publicly in front of four male witnesses – that’s just asking for it. As far as non-Muslim homos, you deal with them in your millets as you like. You can make them your leaders and millet representatives like Ireland. What do we care?
I recently found out Malta is pozzed; as they have a gay pride parade in their capital.
And a Christian thinks it’s Christianity, so? Why are people so upset by this? Like I also said, it’s fine if you don’t like it – just come up with an alternative. Your future, your choice.
But my approach nor attitude is anywhere close to your caricature of it whether you sympathize with me or not – I’m simply asking for respect in accuracy. Not much to ask.
Peace.
Seems fairly respectable, thanks for sharing.
Peace.
You can’t separate the content of ideology from this observation. E.g. why is Islam only encountered amongst less educated or intelligent population groups?
There are 1.8 billion Muslim in the world (around 25% of world population). And there are G-7 powers – plus those powers which people consider are missing (China, Russia and India).
Not any one of countries considered world powers is Muslim (or has Muslim leadership).
10 world powers (G-7 +Russia, China and India). 0 of these 10 countries has Muslim leadership, despite 1.8 billion Muslims.
You can blame this on Muslim demographics being feeble for some other reason than Muslim religion/ideology, but then you have to explain random and extraordinary co-incidence? That Islam is co-incidentally mapping only onto feeble populations (and their underlying strength is even weaker than their current low influence, as a large part of their economic share of the world is coming from another co-incidence – oil wealth).
The mapping between feeble populations and Muslim religion is itself, the thing that now you have to explain.
A qualitative observation which could help here is that Muslim religion/ideology is probably intrinsically more less interesting – as an ideology – than more complicated or interesting religions like Buddhism. Or equally, that Muslim religion both encourages laziness and finds resonance only amongst lazy populations (this pattern seems quite plausible – that ideologies that encourage a certain weakness, will have resonance in population prealigned to that weakness).
The process could be some indefinably circular one – an ideology that due to its content helps create feeble populations, but also due to the same content (as a common cause of a single variable) will have more resonance with populations already prealigned for feebleness.
My apologies – I can see the grammatical mistakes I made in this text (it’s from typing on the phone).
Dimitry, don’t worry so much – as long as your meaning gets across easily it is fine.
Polytheism is the judaic idea that a reader cannot differentiate between the physical type on a page from knowledge broadly.
Caste system is the anglo idea that social mobility is entirely found in the genital region
Turk means muslim
Peace.
Strangulation (at least by hanging) typically induces unconsciousness after a period of seconds; however those last seconds are doubtless decidedly unpleasant. Still, it sounds vastly better than the gas chamber or the electric chair. It was also used quite a lot by the Romans, and also by the Ottomans, especially for executing important people. The Spanish in the 19th century developed a “humane”mechanical garotte, but I as I recall they replaced it later with something designed to sever the cervical vertebrae.
One advantage hanging has is that it is fairly simple to kill a lot of people at once, fairly quickly and cleanly– relatively speaking, of course. By contrast beheading a whole lot of people by hand seems somewhat more iffy.
We don’t, actually. Christianity is not a solution to all social ills– judging by Muslim countries, neither is Islam. Christian mores are a solution to some problems, or, rather, it should be said that any specific method of denying God will result in some set of social pathologies.
This theory of the Karlin blog does not feel so explanatorily strong.
Otherwise, why are most of the top footballers not from South Russia.
And also, South Russia has a population of around 26 million citizens. Which is the same size as the total population of Belgium, Portugal and Denmark combined (i.e. enough for the two of the strongest World Cup teams, and then one mediocre one combined).
Sometimes it doesn’t.
Is this supposed to be “much less interesting”? I think so but am not sure.
Here we see an Indian mystic demonstrating how to put these ideas into practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7aSZvgbOGI
Given that the rest of the sentence is:
Given the comparison I’d say yes.
Eid Mubarak Talha.
Can we get the thread back on-topic please? I was expecting to see some comments on Spain v Portugal, not 200 posts on Islamic history.
Eid Mubarak, bro – may Allah swt accept all your prayers, fasting and other efforts.
Wa salaam.
Totally agree here.
Peace.
Is there any other possible meaning? I can’t think of any.
This is witty and all but pretty dildo as far as philosophy and anti-science sentiment goes. Also I sense class hang-ups and bitterness for the “Austria that we lost” (when was this written?) and physics envy. Anyway, there’s better philosophy in NRx. Or CS Lewis in The Abolition of Man. Or the SETI people. Am I barbarian? No, the harpies who scream “dead white may-uhls!!!” are barbarians, I just DGAF and in any case my own capacity to visit barbarism on Western civ. is limited. And also the aesthetics of the Dual monarchy were top-notch, if they had programmable electronic computers I’d regard it for all purposes as peak civilization.
Hungarians often remember it fondly (okay, that’s kind of collective remembrance, since basically no one alive today can have many conscious memories of it), but of course we had our nationalism and the multicultural empire 2 in 1. It was interesting, for example in Hungary lots of streets were named after Kossuth (the leader of the 1848 anti-Habsburg revolution and the lost war for independence) or other 1848-49 heroes, and there were many monuments dedicated to same. The king (and emperor) Franz Joseph didn’t care, because it was the law that the municipalities could erect monuments or rename streets. Interestingly he supported to bring home and rebury in Hungary the body of Rákóczi, the leader of another lost war for independence (against the Habsburgs) in the early 18th century, who died in exile.
However, Franz Joseph did insist to erect a monument in the Buda Castle to Hentzi, the Austrian commander of Buda Castle, who held the castle in 1849 against the Hungarian forces almost literally to the last bullet, and fell in battle. In Hungary Hentzi wasn’t quite popular, not only because he fought for the enemy (i.e. the Habsburgs), but also because he ordered to destroy the Pest side with artillery fire during the siege. This was the second destruction of Budapest (then still two separate cities, Buda and Pest), the first being the 1686 siege, when the Christian armies liberated it from almost 150 years of Ottoman rule. (Then it was destroyed again in 1945, and there was a lot of destruction in 1956, too.)
So you had monuments in Budapest to both sides of the conflict. Hungarians were fond of the good king Franz Joseph, but they were also fond of their anti-Habsburg heroes.
I like that attitude.
The Italian/Middle Eastern/Germanic-Slavic mutts calling themselves Ashkenazi Jews these days are indeed more intelligent on average than most other groups in the world in some measurable ways.
See Jon Entine, Genetic Literacy Project, October 8, 2013 re the FORTY PERCENT Italian genetic contribution to the typical “Ashkenazi Jew” genome. (The Italian side of my family says “you’re welcome. We helped ameliorate (though clearly not CURE) your natural physical ugliness and the obvious medical and psychological problems that had arisen from your long term inbreeding of unattractive semites with too-closely-related unattractive semites.)
But I’ve never taken Steve as advising the rest of us to continue enduring discrimination, dishonesty, political and media manipulation, and unfair market practices from that self-chosen group. Where does he say that?
Luegenjude. (Almost as catchy as Fahrvergnuegen, but more serious.)
My father was of the same opinion. However, except for a few which were protected by international agreements (the Soviets insisted on keeping a large monument at the center of Budapest), most monuments or statues reminding us of the Soviet occupation or communism have been removed, the most prominent of them to a dedicated park of such monuments and statues.
The Soviets and communists themselves often had a similar attitude, a number of monuments and statues have been removed, many irrevocably lost. In Germany after 1945, some statues have been irrevocably lost, like many of the statues of the Reich Chancellery building. The building itself survived the war largely intact, but was destroyed after the war anyway.
I think the monuments in Berlin are protected by agreements with Russia as well, and iirc some of them are even connected to cemeteries, so they couldn’t be easily removed anyway (I wouldn’t be in favour of it). In any case, at least they’re interesting as historical relics, a reminder of the lost Soviet civilization. That stupid Holocaust memorial they built in the 1990s is much more irritating imo.
Except for calling Andy a barbarian, I agree with your thoughtful comment about the need for both reason and emotion / inspiration.
Beautifully and sensibly put. You need not accept the irrationality and cruelty of Islam to continue advocating and living in this morally good and practical way. It’s the way that I am trying to live and raise our daughters.
Steve believes that Jewish dominance is the result of their higher intelligence.
So he doesn’t challenge Jewish dominance, he just tries to plead with Jews to be more reasonable. Steve is aware that the science shows Jewish dominance cannot be the result of higher IQ, but he ignores it.
One can understand someone who is courageous enough to follow the truth wherever it may lead, however unpalatable. One cannot understand someone who claims to be led by hard scientific fact only to ignore the science in order to assert the things he supposedly finds unpalatable.
It is less puzzling once you work out Steve’s metaphysics from his posts. He is a basic modern materialist – thus he worships the fact of success and considers it to be the result of unalterable physical causes.
He reasons backwards from his assumptions – Jews are on top, this must have purely physical causes, therefore it is valid and normal and we cannot fight them but must plead with them.
Materialist metaphysics cannot allow one to question the basic set up of the current order – it is always the only possible order, as material causes work themselves out without input from the human will or psyche.
That is why Steve tries to mildly modify the current order and tries to show the power holders their policies don’t produce the results he mistakenly imagines they want, rather than challenge the basic set up – which he regards as valid.
Which is the same size as the total population of Belgium, Portugal and Denmark combined
You could have Iceland as statistical error (1%), currently ranked 22 by FIFA.
I look forward to your comments, Dmitry, typed on a phone or not. I would be delighted to write in a foreign language as well as you write in English. I can write in German, but not like you write in English.
And congratulations on RUSSIA’s victory over the headchoppers in the World Cup opener. With Uruguay and Egypt playing to a 1-1 tie, Russia has a real chance to advance out of the Group (on goal differential tiebreaker) even if it merely ties its remaining two games. (Of course, if you guys beat either Uruguay or Egypt, you’ll be “in like Flynn”, as Americans used to say.)
When Russia advances to the Round of 16, we will probably see speculation that “Putler” used some nefarious scheme to drug the opposing teams by having secret agents tamper with their breakfast.
A particularly insufferable US sports columnist -the appropriately named Jason Gay – actually was so childish and low-class that he refused to even cover the games of the current World Cup in his column a couple days ago, right after the Cup host Russia had the big win in its opening game. What did he write about? The World Cup coming to the USA years from now. Embarrassing.
God bless you and both our countries, Dmitry. And from a patriotic American: GO RUSSIA!
Presumably muhammad chose beheadings because they are more terrifying and degrading to the “infidel.” And because his followers had that cruelty and evil inside of them that we all have to some degree: they simply ENJOYED the beheadings then, as they do now, more than other means of murder.
Can we get the thread back on-topic please? I was expecting to see some comments on Spain v Portugal, not 200 posts on Islamic history.
Nobody here seems to care much about the World Cup except Dmitry and me. Ronaldo’s free kick in the 87th minute to tie Spain (his 3rd goal on the night) will certainly wind up on the highlight films for this World Cup, and perhaps as the “goal”. Here it is from something like 16 different angles:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6lz7e9
So you had monuments in Budapest to both sides of the conflict
Like the US of A, in the old days.
I learned all this from my teachers who are Muslim scholars in both legal and spiritual spheres. I cannot take credit.
Your opinions for why you are not Muslim are duly noted.
Peace.
I concur this time:
I was also going to mention that Denmark have a “not terrible” record.
5 million population, but they won the European Championship in 1992.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Euro_1992
I am not sure what you mean by this. I assume from the reference to divorce, you mean that it is a necessary evil; in other words, that it would be better if situations requiring divorce/mass execution did not exist, but since they in fact do, divorce/mass execution is a morally correct action.
Do you think that Mohammed did something morally incorrect in the mass execution of his enemies?
On what grounds, if it is permissible?
So did Mohammed do something wrong in marrying a nine year old? (a girl can have at most just started, and certainly not gone through puberty at nine). Do you think that marrying nine year old girls is permissible?
When did I say they were liars? I don’t think anyone believes that Beowulf is historically accurate, nor even King Arthur or the early English chronicles when they talk about events significantly before they were written.
There was also a Polish actor playing a foreign spy in a Russian
TV series recently but his name escapes me.
Back to the Polish fellow married to a Russian woman. He worked
in Norway for several years but was utterly bored there. He said,
“Nothing ever happens in Norway. The beauty of the fjords gets
old after a while.” (Parenthetically, I have a sneaking suspicion
that one reason the Swedes brought in a lot of migrants is to make
their lives more interesting. Sweden is cold, dark, and boring much of the year
so at least now they have some excitement!). This is an argument against
SJW’s who presumably want to create a perfect society. As Pascal already
warned us, perfect societies are boring, and boredom is a vastly underappreciated
motivator. I think one reason for the exploration of space is that we’ve become
bored with the Earth. One solution: Explore the inner space – there’s an infinity
of expanded states of consciousness to investigate. You’ll never be bored.
What he loves about Moscow is that he is never bored. It’s a very interesting
city (although a little too cold for his (and his wife’s) taste. His wife’s family
have a dacha so they can escape the city whenever they feel like it. One thing
he warns against is buying a snack from a street vendor. The hygiene standards
are still not up to par so one has to exercise judgment in such matters.
No, he’s just a christian if he really believed iq = rule he wouldn’t hate on the supposed caste system of India.
No Pagan priesthood has ever been treated kindly by mosaics. (mosaic monotheism. If A then b does not exist),
Catholic priests can rape kids but any Pagan ritual is manipulative, exploit, etc
University pumping hormones = progress
You are not thinking rationally. Or morally. For you are making points against yourself:
There are historical saintly personalities from over a thousand years before Mohammad and from every generation since who were far, far better men morally than Mohammad. So isn’t it twisted of you to believe that Mohammad was the holiest one while his moral superiors will be tortured forever in Hell for not joining his cult?
There you go again. Justifying Mohammad’s behavior by pointing fingers at others.
Mohammad is your role model for all time. By marrying widows, and by consummating his marriage to Aisha when he was an old man and Aisha was just a child of 9, he set examples for muslims to follow till the Day of Judgement.
Ditto for using female slaves for sexual intercourse.
Obscurantist nonsense. When has Sailer (or AK for that matter) ever said anything like that?
For your information ignoramus, the Arabs were equal opportunity slavers. They enslaved millions of Europeans, Eurasians and Mongoloids as well. Most of their battles and conquests were north of the arabian peninsula.
It was from Chinese slaves captured in the Battle of Talas that the Arabs apparently learned the technique of paper making.
Oh boy. It seems the concepts “implied” or “deduced” have fallen victim to the intensifying inability of Europeans to think complexly.
If it ain’t stated explicitly, its obscurantist nonsense, as the definition of obscurantist grows wider by the day.
Idiocracy grows upon us daily.
So where did Sailer imply it or where did you deduce it from? Or is it just something that you made up or an impression you somehow got because thinking about humanity in terms of concrete facts makes you feel uncomfortable?
Liar. Zayd had not wanted to divorce his beloved wife until he found his father, Mohammad, lusting for her (after having seen her half naked). Basically he felt compelled to offer his wife to his father the Prophet because his father’s lust for his daughter-in-law was so uncontrollable.
Mohammad’s behavior in this sordid case violated the ancient moral standards of the Arabs, so, to appease the outraged Arabs, his imaginary friend, the angel Gabriel, came to his rescue and whispered a “revelation” from Allah justifying his misdeed.
The latter.
But no, seriously, if you look at post number 789 in July 7th 2009, that is where he implies it, and then again in post number 2043 in August 3rd 2014, that is where I deduce it from.
Wow. You really live in a pretty simple world.
Russia’s hooligans are brutal and well-organized, but I have no doubt that Mr. Putin will keep them under control during this showcase event.
Is that where that US Congresscritter got the inside information about Guam tipping over into the ocean if too many B-52’s are parked there?
Did anybody mention Russia – 5, KSA -0?
Yes. Neutral mentioned 5-0 win. I mentioned Russia beat the KSA.
LOOOL! Lots of hot stuff in those unsourced maghazi texts, eh? Hubba, hubba! Nudge, nudge, wink, wink – say no more…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ona-RhLfRfc
Glad someone’s found a use for it since our “scholars” laugh about that nonsense. But you do you.
Peace.
Thanks for more opinions on why you are not Muslim. I support your right to believe your opinions are correct.
You seem to be asking in good faith so I’ll indulge.
In essence, yes. One must understand what we mean when we say moral as opposed to immoral. Immoral is something that is a sinful act; something worthy of opprobrium and potential punishment on the Day of Judgement.
An action can be harsh, it can even be not the best course of action – but that is different than being immoral. In fact, I deem the punishment meted out to fighting-age males of Bani Qurayzah to be quite harsh. That was the point. One must understand the context. In the Battle of the Ditch, the city of Madinah was completely surrounded – they were besieged by the largest confederate Arab force that had ever been assembled in the peninsula. The situation was dire and there was no doubt as to what awaited the Muslims if the Quraysh won – they had been quite clear about it:
“The infidels of the Quraysh wrote (a letter) to Ibn Ubayy and to those who worshipped idols from al-Aws and al-Khazraj, while the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) was at that time at Medina before the battle of Badr. (They wrote): ‘You gave protection to our companion. We swear by Allah, you should fight him or expel him, or we shall come to you in full force, until we kill your fighters and appropriate your women.'” – reported in Abu Dawud
Treachery in this circumstance was dealt with extreme prejudice – Bani Qurayzah got what was sure to happen to the Muslims if they had lost. Harsh? Yes. Immoral? Not even close.
As I said – this happened one instance; it was not his normative practice. In his greatest victory over the Quraysh, the capture of their capital city. He led his army in the reverse situation and completely took the city by surprise and overwhelming numbers. They were granted amnesty and converted to Islam by the hundreds.
It’s not permissible; it used to be permissible. But all Muslim nations have signed international protocols that prohibit the taking of slaves. The Ottoman Caliph also prohibited it. Will it return? Possibly. As one of the top scholars of the Ummah, Shaykh Taqi Usmani, stated – if non-Muslim nations renege on these treaties and start taking Muslims as slaves, Muslim nations will no longer be bound by these protocols since they will have been violated by the other side. In this case, it would be our prerogative to return to turning war captives into slaves. I suggest both sides adhere to the rules.
To bring forth an example of how this works. It is not immoral to chop down trees for use. But if the nations got together and put quotas on this activity in order to curb deforestation and the Muslim nations were signatory; then it would be a breach of a covenant to not adhere to the agreed upon limitations because treachery is immoral.
No.
That’s a loaded question – did you watch that video by Prof. Brown?
Marrying 9 year old girls is prohibited. Marrying 9 year old women is permissible.
“Biologically, an adult is a human or other organism that has reached sexual maturity.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult
That is the only scientific definition of adulthood (in any animal) – everything else has changed from time to time, people to people. I’m willing to be open to another universal definition, but haven’t found anything sound yet. Menarche in 9 year olds is common enough to be consider normal range:
“Menarche generally is considered early if it occurs before the age of 9 years and late if it occurs at or after 15 years of age.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470216/
This is very much in line with traditional Catholic teaching:
“The marriageable age is fourteen full years in males and twelve full years in females, under penalty of nullity (unless natural puberty supplies the want of years).”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01206c.htm
Now the second question is, what is the law of the land? If the land you live is has raised the minimum age of marriage to a certain level for societal benefit or to ward off harm, then one must adhere to the rule.
Another example; there is nothing immoral about driving a car 100 MPH, but if the law says you have to drive lower than 75, then you need to obey the rules of face legal penalties.
OK – sorry for misreading you. I understand Westerners don’t give much credence to the preservation of an oral tradition, which is fine by us really. This is how little kids still memorize the Qur’an in very pre-modern places like the Sahel Desert (which is almost stuck in the 10th century in a general sense):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Madrasah_pupils_in_Mauritania.jpg
Their teacher (who has memorized the Qur’an) dictates their portion of the Qur’an lesson for the day. They write it on tablets and memorize it. Then they recite it back and have it approved by the teacher. The next day, they erase the previous lesson and go to the next one. They have no need for a printed version – they’ve been doing this for centuries.
Peace.
Note: As a courtesy to soccer fans, let’s end our discussion here and save it for one of the open threads in the future. I have no problems answering questions to the best of my ability (especially since you asked in a civil manner – much thanks for that), but it is off topic and may be bothering others – including our host.
I don’t currently have a TV, so the only match I’ve seen was the Croatia-Nigeria yesterday. In the company of Croats, so not a bad thing. Objectively speaking, it wasn’t a very good match, I expected more from the Croatian midfield, but the result was good enough.
Saudi Arabia is home to the birthplaces of Islam: Mecca and Medina. Slavery was legal by Sharia (Islamic Law) in Saudi Arabia until 1962.
So slavery, including sex slavery, (as practiced by Mohammad), lasted continuously for over 13 centuries in Islam. It ended very recently only because of moral pressure from the Enlightened West.
Now muslims like you are denouncing this practice as something abhorrent and unacceptable. Does that not mean that you have rejected the finality of Mohammad’s prophethood?
Simple, serious question. Don’t dance around it.
I already answered the question; please read through again, slowly this time.
The Quran and Hadith and other muslim texts take this sordid story very seriously. It is a famous example of how Mohammad’s behavior offended the ancient moral codes of the arabs. Here are a couple of links that include numerous quotes from Islamic sources:
https://davidiqbalkarim.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/33/
https://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/zaynab.htm
Someone should make a movie out of this story. They can call it Zayd and Zaynab.
5 million population, but they won the European Championship in 1992.
Although they didn’t even properly qualify for the Championship, as I recall (being a last minute replacement for an “evil” country).
Nobody takes the Tarikh Tabari seriously on these matters except critics of Islam – it is unsourced material without chains of transmission so our scholars find it amusing but it is dismissed as inauthentic apocrypha or fabrication. But again, I’m glad you like that stuff – juicy, juicy!
We like the more authentically reported stuff:
“When this Ayah was revealed: ‘But you did hide in yourself that which Allah will make manifest… (33:37)’ about Zainab bint Jahsh, Zaid has come to the Prophet complaining, and he wanted to divorce her, so he consulted with the Prophet. The Prophet said: ‘Keep your wife to yourself and Fear God.’” -reported in Tirmidhi
But knock yourself out!
Also, really good stuff in Christian apocrypha:
“The Philip Gospel, part of the Nag Hammadi codex, is most famous for the section that says ‘And the companion of the savior is Mary Magdalene. The savior loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her [word missing]’…”
https://newrepublic.com/article/107506/top-three-heresies-gnostic-gospels
Ooo la la!!! Say no more!!!
Anyway, can you knock this off, no one is interested in this topic any more. Maybe on another thread you can convince us all how Shakespeare was part Black or something.
I don’t currently have a TV, so the only match I’ve seen
You don’t need a television, if you have VPN you can always find a live broadcast, and in many cases also replay all or parts of a recorded match (BBC iPlayer is particularly good in this respect).
By the way, have Hungarians recovered yet from the Wunder von Bern (not sure how that translates into Hungarian . . .)?
It is simply pointless to discuss with that windbag “Talha” who is just trolling the comments section of a WN website whose quality his ilk is incapable of equating.
I don’t know what he is trying to achieve here, other than further ridiculing the idiotic collection of fables of which he is enamored, but in any event it would be great if his useless comments were removed so readers can focus on the interesting commenters here. AK is this possible ?
I don’t spend much time upstairs (where my computer is), watching TV was possible while having a family life. I think I’ll buy a TV next week (wanted to already since April when I sent my older one to my brother who needed an extra TV and I was about to buy a newer one anyway).
Regarding the final in Bern, Hungarian football has been going downhill ever since. The only real improvement in my lifetime has been 2014-16, but it was short-lived, so, whatever. I occasionally hear it referred to in Hungarian as the “berni csoda” (wonder of Bern), but only as a reference to how the Germans call it.
It’s occasionally lamented that there was a disqualified goal by Puskás which was, according to some analysis of the video, was not offside (and which would’ve equalized the score), or that the Germans were doping at least some of their players with methamphetamine (though I think it was not formally prohibited back then), or they had better Adidas shoes, or whatever.
It’s not the highest on the list of our football disasters (which are not in short supply in recent decades), that honor going to Irapuato, which is the name of the Mexican city where we lost 6-0 to the Soviets in 1986. After this, the Hungarian national football team failed to win any important matches anywhere, with the notable exception of 2014-16. We haven’t qualified for the World Cup ever since, for example, and we only qualified for the Euro Cup in 2016 because the number of teams has been raised to 24 from 16. Anyway, at least we beat Norway in the playoffs, so I’m still happy with it.
It’s not the highest on the list of our football disasters (which are not in short supply in recent decades).
So it would appear!
Totally agree that everyone should simply ignore my comments and not respond to them so I don’t have to respond further. Mr. Unz has made it very easy; click on the Agree/Disagree button and there is an “Ignore Commenter”. If my comments just raise your blood pressure, you doctor would also concur. Please don’t harm yourself trying to read through my comments, life is too short – not worth it, brain aneurysms are not a laughing matter.
“And because his followers had that cruelty and evil inside of them that we all have to some degree: they simply ENJOYED the beheadings then, as they do now, more than other means of murder.”
You are absolutely ignorant on this matter.
“The answer therefore is that Quran 8:12 does not command beheading, but fanatical Muslims are using the words from their Scriptures to justify unspeakable violence and terror. Instead they should listen to their own moderate and wise teachers. Many Muslim leaders have spoken out against the barbarians of ISIS. ”
https://aleteia.org/2014/09/03/does-the-quran-command-beheading
Muslims have condemned beheadings…
https://www.ucanews.com/news/christians-muslims-condemn-abu-sayyaf-beheading/79025
…as well as terrorism committed by their brethren.
https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015-12-18/yes-moderate-muslims-do-denounce-terrorism-though-the-media-ignores-it
Coutinho.
Wonderful, the non-Muslim weighs in on whether beheadings are permissible under Islamic law. Do favor us with your opinion; maybe al-Azhar will take you on as a professor.
So the next step is to get them to condemn their Prophet who beheaded numerous people, including a mass beheading that makes ISIS look like small timers.
If you condemn beheading, slavery, polygamy, pedophilia, killing of apostates etc, you are condemning Islam itself.
Btw, public beheadings are still the norm in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam. And in some other muslim countries as well.
Lol. Begging for mercy? You don’t deserve to get away with your lies.
The self-anointed Last Prophet was a lecherous old man. The saying “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac” clearly applied to him. This is just one example of his lust causing him to cross moral boundaries. There is the example of 9 year old Ayesha, of teenaged jewess Safiyah who he picked for himself after killing her husband, of the Christian Coptic slave Maria that caused a family crisis requiring more revelations from Allah to sort the mess etc
The guy whose link I posted sums up well the indefensibility of the Zayd-Zaynab affair that caused humiliation for Mohammad:
We are aware that many Muslims have rejected some of these Islamic sources, specifically the commentaries of al-Tabari and al-Qurtubi, which is obviously due to how severely embarrassing and humiliating they are to Muhammad’s integrity and prophetic claims. Yet no matter whether a Muslim accepts these sources or not these points are clearly supported from the Quran itself:
Allah caused Muhammad to start lusting for a married woman who happened to be the wife of his adopted son.
Allah even caused Muhammad’s son to divorce his wife so that Muhammad could then marry her.
The reason why Allah did this was to show others that it was permissible for them to marry their adopted sons’ former wives.
Yet later on Allah forbade the adoption of children and prohibited calling any one the child of someone other than his/her biological father.
Therefore, Muhammad’s marriage to Zaynab was unnecessary since Muslims have no chance of ever marrying the former wives of their adopted children since there is no more adoption in Islam!
Furthermore, Muslims believe that Allah knows all things which means that he knew beforehand that he was going to abolish the practice of adoption. Why did he then commission the divorce between Zayd and Zaynab in order to allow Muhammad to set an example for others to marry their adopted children’s divorcees when he already knew in advance that he would prohibit adoption altogether?
Conversion is still possible, Talha is here to help you.
Yes – this is getting annoying. I would be disappointed actually if you didn’t look to the most inauthentic sources on the matter for the worst interpretation of the event. There is little doubt this was a very touchy and sensitive event and speaks to the authenticity of our tradition; the Lady Aisha (ra) stated once that if the Prophet (pbuh) would have ever hidden anything revealed to him, it would have been the verses dealing with this subject.
Fortunately there is a very easy way to deal with all this; mubahala. We end this very quickly by letting God decide and be the judge.
In summary…
You say that the Prophet (pbuh) once saw the Lady Zaynab (ra) half dressed and started lusting after her. After which he came up with a verse from the Qur’an to coerce his adopted son-in-law Zayd (ra) – who was happily married to her at the time – to divorce her so that he (the Prophet [pbuh]) could subsequently marry her and fulfill his sexual desire for her.
…sound right?
I say that the above is a complete lie.
Now, are you ready to call the curse and wrath of God down upon whichever one of us is lying about the event?
Ready to go when you are.
That way we can end this in front of everyone without further distractions.
LOL! Labbayka!
Peace.
Talha, what does this ‘ra’ suffix mean? I think it is an abbreviation but when I search for it I only get some Egyptian sun god.
‘ra’ is a short form of a prayer and can mean two things, depending on who I place it after.
If I place it after one of the Companions of the Prophet (pbuh); it stands for ‘radi Allahu anhu/anha’ – ‘may God be pleased with him/her’.
If I place it after someone who comes after them, like a scholar or other personality that has passed away; it stands for ‘rahmat Allah alaihi/alaiha’ – ‘God’s mercy be upon him/her’.
Hope that clarifies.
Peace.
Note: The “Labbayka” above means; “At your call/service”.
America is already (mostly) Mexican.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dfr8C4RWkAEbeZ6.jpg
So you use classical Arabic in your religious learning? Do you know how different is it from the various vernacular Arabic dialects? Are they mutually intelligible or not?
Correct.
Depends on where you are. People who have traveled to Yemen have reported they speak a very close version (though in pronunciation, they have slight differences – like they say ‘ق’ like ‘gh’ instead of ‘q’). Others speak something very different – like the Moroccans are off the charts. Most Arabs can basically understand a fair amount between each others’ dialects; Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian, etc. but there are some things that are not intelligible – and they all complain about not understanding Moroccans.
For my part, I have a very difficult time understanding any of the regional dialects. I can understand most of a sermon or speech if the person is giving it in classical Arabic (or what they call “fus’ha”). My sister in-law went to study Arabic and live in Egypt after she converted and can speak and read both classical and Egyptian dialect. Even though she teaches Arabic now at a university level – Modern Standard Arabic – which is patterned closely to the classical. At home they teach their kids the regional Egyptian dialect.
Peace.
Thank you for the explanation, Talha.
Most welcome, my pleasure.
Peace.
After reading Hyper. I agree, but my mind naturally scans “more less” as “more or less” and that makes hash of the rest of the sentence–it doesn’t help that the idea doesn’t make that much sense to begin with. Nobody except idiots or AaronB types adheres to a religion because it’s “interesting”; normal intelligent people do so either because they they think it’s true or for personal reasons like love or coercion or whatever, so Dmitry’s criterion should have the opposite effect.
My take on why Islam has a relatively large proportion of relatively stupid people:
(etc., but edit window is somehow applied)
I think the rest of your comment got cut off, maybe try posting it again?
Edit:Perhaps you are still editing it, if so ignore this comment.
What is this based on? Polls? Surveys?
“Wonderful, the non-Muslim weighs in on whether beheadings are permissible under Islamic law. ”
No, it’s actually Muslims. Are you really that ignorant?
https://www.usip.org/blog/2015/03/muslims-condemning-violent-extremism-count-ways
“So the next step is to get them to condemn their Prophet who beheaded numerous people, including a mass beheading that makes ISIS look like small timers.”
And what was the context here? What historical sources do you have that indicates he went on this murderous rampage?
“If you condemn beheading, slavery, polygamy, pedophilia, killing of apostates etc, you are condemning Islam itself.”
Please educate yourself.
http://www.muhammadfactcheck.org/
“Btw, public beheadings are still the norm in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam. And in some other muslim countries as well.”
As capital punishment.
Good link, lots of high ranking scholars and well-known institutes are referenced.
Peace.
Okay, that was weird, I never had that happen before.
Recruitment: Islam, again like Bolshevism, recruits members to the Party (sorry, the Umma) in conquered areas, in early stages, by promising integration into the ruling elite at the cost of alienation from friends, relatives, and countrymen. Sex slavery ensures these people children. Not surprisingly, like Lenin’s Bolsheviks, these are not the fine flower of the nation. Here’s an interesting video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhXuj_gBXAA Now this dynamic is not constant and was employed more in some places than others, but I think it has had a definite effect in, say, the former Christian ME.
I think I had other things to say but I have forgotten them… Ah well, that’s enough.
Corvinus has produced references that beheading is prohibited in Islam?
In other words, that Mohammed was either a murderer or torturer under Islamic law?
Well, color me surprised.
Unless: Corvy is talking about something completely irrelevant, as usual?
Yes, sorry, see #452.
I adhere to religion because I think its true. Certainly not because it’s interesting.
I 100% believe there is a non material realm that is the source of all goodness and value and that the most important thing in life is establishing contact with this realm and living by it.
I believe all extant religions are in some sense true – about as literally true as Newtonian mechanics is. Quantum mechanics has shown Newtonian mechanics is not absolutely true – but it is in some sense true, it does work at connecting us to absolute truth to some degree.
Likewise all extant religions work at connecting us to the immaterial realm that is the source of all goodness or they would not have survived.
While I do not think heaven is a place where you get 72 virgins, I recognize Islam as a whole as having proven itself capable of helping people connect to the immaterial other realm of goodness. And for some people, believing in actual virgins may be their best bet at establishing an intuituve connection to the immaterial realm.
Pos-modernists believe truth is arbitrary – you can make it up as you go along, with no constraints and no feedback from the world.
Pre-modernists believe that truth is created through feedback with the external world and cannot be arbitrary, but that the images and concepts we use, while constrained by rules and feedback, are not literal but only in some sense true – “we see, as through a glass darkly” is the most famous way of traditionally putting it.
Modernists – whose heyday has already passed – believe in literal truth that is precise and clear. It is s childish position. They do not believe we see through a glass darkly – anything we see in that manner they reject as nonsense (3/4 of human experience), although the most delicious irony is that science is now showing the hard clear and precise truths of the moderns as in fact also seeing through a glass darkly.
Logic and epistemology have also shown that the modernist position is illegible – but this has been widely ignored in the West, though accepted in the East. Like I said, modernism, whose heyday was 1500-1900, was childish. It simply lingers on as even its own child, science, has moved past it.
So the end result of all our journeying is to return to where we’ve begun, although wiser and more chastened, and deeper and stronger.
However, I don’t expect the modern mind to understand any of this – to understand requires a schooling in a different way of thinking, and the modernists has abused his mind through too much over-literalness, and is like an obtuse bull when it comes to any question that requires subtlety.
I watched the first half of the video. While some of the finer points were unknown to me, the general view largely confirms my suspicions of Lenin and his ‘children’.
He produced many links – this is the difficulty that non-Muslims have; they don’t have a filter to be able to distinguish the good from the bad.
The link I thought was good says nothing about the act of beheading per se; it says plenty of ulema have condemned extremist groups for beheading innocent people. It’s the same as if they started hanging people. Hanging someone who is actually guilty of something might be totally fine, but hanging innocent people is murder.
It’s actually not a difficult concept to grasp – people seem to get caught up on the beheading thing – which has always seemed to me a juvenile way to approach things*. Also, beheading is not explicitly demanded either – if there are now more humane ways of executing the guilty, then that is fine too.
Interesting set of articles:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/11/guillotine_death_penalty_lethal_injection_is_cruel_and_unusual_punishment.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-bringing-back-the-guillotine/361569/
Another link he cited (http://www.muhammadfactcheck.org/) is run by Ahmadiyyahs and is trash; if those guys were around back in the day, we would have never been able to kick out the Crusaders.
Peace.
*Note: And frankly is simply cultural. Like some guys were talking about how the current meat industry has made the concept of killing an animal to get meat into an abstract thing. There was a time in (Christian) European history when crowds would come out with their kids to see a man burned at the stake or drawn and quartered and then probably go have a meal somewhere close by enough to still smell the searing flesh.
Are you familiar with Guénon or Eliade?
I think my response to you died an unnatural death. You make some good points, though I would dispute some others.
I agree especially with
It concurs with some thoughts I have had.
It’s not my business to dispute your personal motivations, though I’d say you probably know some “AaronB types” out here on the East Coast, even if it doesn’t describe you.
Well, sure. Thanks for the analysis.
I don’t disagree with that particular point, and neither does anybody else*. You have my thoughts on capital punishment upthread; I’d be happy to talk more about it if necessary.
Personally I think the reason Mohammed’s Arabs killed by beheading is very likely cultural– Arab swordsmanship emphasizes long sweeping strokes, coincidentally the method Arabs use to cut off the head. There were definitely more outre things like the trench at Najran, but they were probably not common, hence the horror evoked by that incident.
*I very rarely take Corvinus seriously enough to follow his links; your work (much appreciated) has justified me in this opinion.
There’s a difference between proper executions and ISIS-style mutilations, but in general I don’t think beheading are that terrible (although if it was my execution I think I would prefer the reliability of a bullet over an axe). It certainly is not bad if the alternative is being set on fire or torn limb from limb by running horses.
I agree, it seems Daesh likes to make it so that they slice away or saw away at their victims throats as if they are slaughtering animals or something. Probably for the shock-effect or to put across the message; you are animals so we will slaughter you like them. The problem with groups like this is they are completely off on their own so there’s no way to evaluate what justification they have for their actions; I read they burned a few women alive in their territory (when they had it) because they objected to their sons being forcibly conscripted.
Their nonsense seems to have been put down – I’m glad to see they failed miserably within a span of 2-3 years.
Peace.
Corvinus has produced references that beheading is prohibited in Islam?
In that case Wikipedia needs to be corrected. Or perhaps Saudi Arabia is not practicing “true” Islam
Probably. It seems pretty common for the time though – that’s what Charlemagne had done to the 4500 heathens in Verden.
I’d imagine building gallows would have been too much effort.
You mean As-Sahb ul-Ukhdud?
Peace.
I am familiar with both.
I don’t really click with Geuenon – he has some good points, but he’s so abstract and too aggressive.
Eliade I haven’t read too much. I like to read the old religious writers more.
Right, that’s true.
Flaky types exist within established religion as well as in less structured spirituality such as my own – so I see it as more just a general danger.
“I mean what I mean” as Kamal Hassan described the fish in Michael Madana Kama Rajan.
As for methods of execution, beheading vs. strangulation or hanging, hanging has been historically very common in Europe and not so common in other places, though certainly present. Trees help: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/The_Hanging_by_Jacques_Callot.jpg
Which ones?
The old Christian mystics, the Mahayana Sutras, the Taoist classics, and much Chinese and Japanese poetry as well as some Zen writers have spoken most to me.
I sometimes read a bit in the Bible and Hinayana Buddhism as well, and done Sufi writers.
Its more of an immersion experience that subtly transforms you rather than any hard and clear and precise truths you can sink your teeth into. You’ll be very frustrated if you approach it like a typical modern Westerner. The truths are few and simple – love, the underlying unity of everything, it’s Oneness, the emptiness of individual phenomena, the illusionionary nature of the world (but not its unreality).
Its not an intellectual thing – the point is to transform your experience if the world and develop your intuition. So instead of searching for clearly formulated dogmas, you transform your experience and develop your intuition.
I am also beginning to think meditation – and prayer – are far more important than reading anything – than words and intellection. The point us experience, not more words, not more grey concepts.
That’s also why think westerners go very wrong when they read devotional literature – they want concepts, dogmas. We will never overcome modernity through concepts – only through an experience.
But we need to get out of heads and relearn to think with the heart.
Excellent stuff!
Peace.
Soccer.com’s Top Selling Jersey by State
Excellent in plan, but not quite there. You cannot start from “The point [is] experience“; that has to come later.
Sure – I’ll agree there – though I think different approaches are attractive to different people). I think what AaronB is talking about is that it has just become waaaay too theoretical about how all this is analyzed in the West.
It’s like what my spiritual teacher once told us about tasawwuf. He said, go into any Muslim library and you’ll find tons of books on exegesis, hadith commentaries, creed, jurisprudence, etc. – but the smallest numbers of books are found in the section for tasawwuf – because it’s not something you read about or contemplate, it’s something you practice and experience.
Peace.
Well, the reason it’s theoretical is that a lot of people have issues with the theory. Also, I think, though this is just an opinion,that the main forms of Protestantism tend to discourage spiritual practice because of their focus on the “conversion experience”, after which things will be just peachy, which in real life they aren’t so much, and that this has leaked to some extent into the general Western worldview.
Eastern Christianity is a bit less “legalistic” than Latin, it has often been remarked. Personally I think both need each other. Anyway, we Latins often need a framework for our spiritual exercises, at least to start out with, and there’s quite a bit of literature out there on it. (The use of a spiritual director –or even several– is also encouraged, and in some senses necessary.) Thank God, it’s not the kind of thing you can set up a Curial department for, though.
Funny you mention this, I was recently discussing with some brothers how ubiquitous Protestant culture (and its derivative culture) has affected much of the worldview of many Muslims in the West; sola scriptura, slacking in spiritual efforts, etc.
Agree big time, otherwise this results in what we (in the circles I’m in) refer to as; Goofy Sufis
Peace.
The World Cup can definitely be categorized as a success now – even if it is an expensive one.
–
In Ekaterinburg an Egyptian fan found the apartment he had rented over the internet, was locked.
Local people saw him standing in the street and invited him to stay in their apartment. He is now very impressed.
https://static.ngs.ru/news/99/preview/6c1c7efc3b692b6cc0cf355c7053c82b211a139dc_581_700.jpg
–
In general all the fans are falling in love with Russia.
Even the English were impressed with the newly upgraded airport at Volgograd and the friendly welcome they had.
From 0:45 in the video:
Velocity of circulation also matters. More activity more circulation and not every trip to Sochi will be substitution. It has created new capacity in the conference industry for example. It has excellent air connections and a warm winter climate. To think that only foreign earnings (get the gold) are good is mercantilism. When the British, with starving horses, paid in gold for French wheat during the Napoleonic wars who had the biggest benefit? The British averting famine or the French stacking up uneatable gold.
Foreign trade deficits mean your population has a better living standard than it would with a surplus. Trump doesn’t understand this. He serves narrow producer interests not the wider population. Keeping Harlan county going 6 more years doesn’t solve the problem of a dead coalfield. I am writing this in South Wales. We are glad the collieries have almost gone.
In summary:
You say that your Prophet (pbuh) reluctantly obeyed Allah’s command to marry his daughter-in-law in order to let muslims know that it was OK by Allah to do so if the son was adopted. Then a short time later Allah commanded muslims to give up the very practice of adoption (making the previous command meaningless).
We don’t need a lightning strike from Allah, common sense is enough to conclude that it’s you who is on the side of the lie. Admit it, unless you want to ridicule the source of the above too. Lol.
I’ve had my head kicked. Dancehall fight. Not pleasant. 5 of them, 3 onto me, 2 onto my mate. I have no idea how I managed to stand up. They came back with even more after we left but we weren’t taken by surprise that time. (much fitter, adrenaline). Police rescued us though.
Don’t waste my time any more. One of us is lying – why are you chickening out? If you have conviction in your narrative, put your money where your mouth is and be ready to call down the curse and wrath of God upon whichever one of us is lying about the Prophet (pbuh) and the Zayd-Zainab incident.
Come on and show everyone you have the guts to stand up for what you believe and deal with the consequences. C’mon homie, you’ve got a couple of articles from an apostate and a Christian apologist to back you up – so what are you afraid of?
I say that is a lie – let’s do this.
I’m ready to go at any time; your move.
You don’t think with your heart. You think with your mind. The goal is to stop thinking.
What I’ve never understood is why the British government allowed British manufacturers to export uniforms for the Grande Armée
Lol. True.
And perhaps the Quran does not teach Islam, Mohammad never practiced Islam, what was considered “Islam” for 13 centuries was not really Islam.
Detached from thoughts is better. If you actually suppress thinking you are engaging in an effortful activity that will build your ego.
In non-dual thinking, nothing needs to be suppressed or eliminated, we just can’t cling to any one thing. Striving for a state without thoughts is dual – you should think and not-think at the same time. That’s non-dual.
Simply watch them come, watch them go – without taking them too seriously.
Tell that to your “sufi” buddy Talha. He is so looking forward to going to that whorehouse in the sky.
But he rejects all the true hadiths that limit the heavenly virgins to such a small number. So much for his endless talk of relying only on authoritative sources.
He thinks he will get to screw hundreds of thousands of virgins but didn’t come up with a source for that number when challenged to provide it.
That’s not non-dual. That’s nonsense. Like your claim that 2+2 is not 4.
How is the transcendent state without thoughts dual? It’s the opposite.
Practicing detachment is not effortless, it is a way to suppress thinking. The ego is itself a thought.
Virgins are metaphors for divine bliss 🙂
So then don’t practice detachment. Simply watch thoughts come, watch them go. Practice watching. Is that an effort? Sure, but it is an effortless effort 🙂
And bliss – 2+2 does not always equal four. It both equals four and does not equal four 🙂
You have answered your own question – as long as transcendence is opposed to this world, you have duality. In reality they are one.
A few years I too approached these ideas like a typical westerners demanding the law of non contradiction apply and things be clear and distinct.
But if you allow yourself to dwell with these ideas without trying too hard to understand them, just sitting with them, and you meditate and pray, they will begin to make a kind of sense.
The words are imperfect attempts to explain an experience gained through meditation and prayer – don’t put too much stock in the words. They are mete signposts.
Love it 🙂
Would you consider me a goofy Sufi, Talha?
Lol. Calm down moron. Stop making such a fool of yourself.
Hard to believe that you actually think debates can be decided by calling down curses from Allah. I knew you were stupid, but not that stupid.
If you didn’t have such a stake in this lie (do you make a living preaching this BS to gullible fools?) you too could easily see that the second Quranic revelation (no more adoptions) makes a lie out of the first one (I did this to let you all know that it is halal to marry your son’s wife if the son was adopted).
The fact that you refuse to see it proves that you can’t handle truth.
Not sure, we usually use that for the Muslim Sufis that do real off the wall stuff; you know like going around and putting hooks and skewers through their body, circling and slobbering all over graves, getting high for Allah, etc.
But if you want the title, then I formally initiate you into the Gufiyyah Order. I don’t have the authorization to, but hey Goofy Sufis don’t care.
Peace.
Note: On the serious side, this is a very good resource on Tasawwuf – I had the pleasure of hosting the author, Shaykh Nuh Keller, in my apartment near UCLA when he did one of his first tours of California:
https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Without-Shore-Manual-Sufi/dp/1590080661
I accept the honor 🙂
Not sure what I am. I struggle with categories.
Thanks – I will check it out!
Always appreciate the links.
Put up or shut up. I have put up with you calling me a liar for far too long. Now I’m calling you out as a liar and a coward. Are you going to back off or are you ready to call down the curse and wrath of God on whichever one of us is lying about the issue as I outlined?
I don’t have an atom’s weight of doubt in my mind that what you have stated about it is a pack of lies so I have no reason to hesitate.
Don’t waste everyone’s time, show us what you’re made of.
I am extremely disappointed that the Britbongs have yet to be whipped by the Tsar’s roving bands of Cossacks.
They need to hurry up.
Also not near enough hooliganism for my liking. Has everyone cucked out?
It would be nice if chopping the heads off was a metaphor for shaving.
What’s the difference between detachment and your definition of watching? And how is an effort effortless?
Yeah right, you keep saying that as if it is the most meaningful thing you have ever learned. So 2+2 could be any number. Where did you learn this absurdity?
You are confused. Duality is an illusion. Transcendence by definition cannot be opposed to this illusion.
This was a short ode he used to have students sing along with in his gatherings.
“The sun is asleep and Layla has arisen…”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd2OLZ5oQn0
Lots of references to Layla, Majnun, being drunk off the wine of Layla, etc.
Good stuff, good memories…
Peace.
I believe it is in some cultures 🙂
One is striving for a particular state. The other is both striving for a particular state and not striving for that state.
No, it cannot be any number. That would be post-modernism. But it can be 4, while at the same time not be any number.
Correct, but if transcendence is opposed to non-transcendence, then you have duality. Is this not logically incontrovertible?
If duality is an illusion, then transcendence and non-transcendence are One.
There is a famous Buddhism saying – form (what we see in the world) is emptiness, and emptiness is form. They are not two.
The underlying reality is One.
If you meditate and pray, you will see.
I actually enjoyed that. Thanks. Very nice.
Couldn’t understand a word, of course, but I like the idea of being drunk off the wine of Layla.
In a way, being drunk is a very good metaphor for spirituality, seen from the perspective of ordinary life, because it exploded all mundane categories and lets you rise above the categories of every day life.
I call you a liar and a fraud for that’s exactly what you are. I have proved it many times.
I don’t believe in your stupid curses or your imaginary god, so why the hell do you keep challenging me to bring down a curse from your god? That makes sense in your screwed up brain?
Why don’t you go ahead and do it? If you really believed that you are telling the truth you would just unilaterally bring down a curse from Allah to prove it. The fact that you don’t, proves that you know you are a liar and could be struck by lightning if you did. Right? Lol.
In the last third of the night before dawn, the tavern is open for Layla’s lovers. If you are fortunate enough, Layla will send you an invitation. The wine flows freely, commensurate with the tears.
Be there while others are sound asleep, you’ll never regret a single moment.
Peace.
Same pig, different lipstick. So how can you strive and not strive at the same time?
So 4 is not a number? Interesting. Where did you learn this?
In transcendence the state of non-transcendence doesn’t exist. So how could the idea of being opposed to it even arise?
In transcendence non-transcendence doesn’t exist.
The hooligans, or main ones – closed down more than a year ago.
English media became obsessed with hooligans in the recent months, so not having them was a way to surpass the English expectations.
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English fans now in love with Russia.
At 4:15 in the video:
Unlike many here, I like you. I think you’re both highly intelligent and obviously interested in spirituality.
Many of your questions were my own a year or more ago. I think with time and experience you will understand.
A small minority of the world’s Muslims are Arabs. Unfortunately, Islam has spread far more widely than that.
There are more than 200 million Muslims in India, effectively none Arab.
Pakistan has 215 million people, 95% of them Muslim and none of them Arabs.
There are more than 200 million Muslims in Indonesia, again none of them Arabs.
There are well over 100 million Muslims in Nigeria, and they are not Arabs.
Iran is majority Persian; almost all Persians are Muslim, and they are certainly not Arabs, as they will be happy to emphasize.
Virgins are metaphors for divine bliss 🙂
What virgins?
There you go flattering yourself again. You nutty narcissist. Anyone can see that my questions to you and your buddy Talha are the questions of an interrogator not of a student.
What you “understand” as profundities are often laughable idiocies. You took a wrong turn somewhere. Retrace your steps and try again.
And I shall try to answer the questions of my interrogator as best I can!
The excuses you proffer are lame. If you have proven that I am a liar, you have nothing to lose since the curse will obviously fall on me. And if I worship a false deity, there is no harm in calling down curses from it anyway, let me show you how it’s done:
If Apollo exists, may his curse and wrath be upon me and my progeny for all of time.
Easy.
Sure, I’ll start us off…
I swear upon God, besides Whom there is no other god, that the following statement is false:
May God’s curse and wrath be upon me if I am lying.
Now it’s your turn, Cochise. Here, I’ll make it easy for you, I’ll type it out, and all you have to do is copy and paste it in a reply to me – takes all of 5 seconds. I’m also using the name “Allah” instead of God since you believe He doesn’t exist and thus nothing will come out of it.
“I swear that Talha has made a false oath. May Allah’s curse and wrath be upon him if I am telling the truth – and may Allah’s curse and wrath be upon me if I am lying.”
Do it, coward, or stay silent and don’t waste any more of my time – everyone is watching…
I don’t know if anyone here is actually watching the football but Poland, right now, against Senegal (70 minutes in), seriously letting down the white race.
No offense to the Polish commenters, and I know it sounds harsh, but they reminded me of the Hungarian national team.
Mohammed lacked the terminology to describe what he really meant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La4Dcd1aUcE
Also he got the number slightly off– nobody’s perfect.
These comical own goals are getting annoying.
Anyway, at least Russia is performing above expectations.
This has aged as well as certain other Russia predictions
https://twitter.com/SamWallaceTel/status/1006793665539465218
Germany and Poland the only two that lost to non-European teams.
But The Moscow Times is not the Russian press. It’s owned by a Dutch foundation and written often by foreigners. It’s also English language, so probably not too typical.
It concurs with Karlin. What foundation owns Karlin?
I used to read it because it was free and in English, but I got bored of its relentless anti Putin bent. I remember hearing a newly arrived English girl in a bar comment about how the Moscow Times really seems to hate Putin. I even manged to get misquoted by them to give a negative spin on something.
Only on the topic of the Russian team being weak.
NOT RUSSIA’SWORLD CUP:
World Cup record for number of goals in 1st 2 games:
Russia 8 (2018)
Italy 8 (1934)
World Cup record for goal advantage after 1st 2 games:
Russia 7 (2018)
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1009005933794652161
http://www.atimes.com/article/why-china-is-looking-forward-to-the-world-cup-in-russia/
Beating a couple of mediocre Arab teams should be matter of course even for second rate teams. The fact that people are going wild about it sort of makes the point.
Moreover, I did predict that Russia would beat Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Now if Russia was to repeat this with Uruguay, only then would it be worth taking it more seriously.
Beating a couple of mediocre Arab teams should be matter of course even for second rate teams.
Beating them is one thing, winning in the exemplary fashion that they did is somewhat out of the ordinary.
After all, there have been more than 400 teams in World Cup finals since 1930, not one of which has matched what Russia did, so surely this is something not to be entirely belittled, wouldn’t you agree? Regardless of what happens in the remainder of the competition.
Has a decent second-rate team played two third-rate Arab teams in the first two games before? I imagine if Spain or Italy had been in Russia’s position it would have exceeded those results.
On just a football side, I agree with Karlin – winning with lots of goals against Saudi Arabia in the first game of the World Cup, is not unusual.
Also winning with a lot of goals against a bad team, is not an indication of being a good team (often in second football leagues, teams win 5-0 – it doesn’t imply that the winning team will have a high probability of defeating AC Milan or Real Madrid).
But his prediction is just a most probable outcome (to lose to Spain/Portugal in the 1/16 match).
In football there is a very large randomness factor. E.g. European Championships 2004? (Greece won with a very bad team, but with a lot of good fortune). So with this high randomness factor, there’s still a perfect possibility of Russia going further than the 1/6 stage. Karlin is posting with a little too much sureness.
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Here is Saudi Arabia losing 0-8 in their first game in the 2002 World Cup.
In football (as the character of the sport), I personally do not view winning in a low football-quality game, with lots of goals against other bad teams, as impressive.
In lower football leagues, teams are often winning 5-0, but it does not imply the winning team is going to win in a higher football league.
It’s a lot more difficult to win 1-0 against a good or equal team, than e.g. 8-0 (as Germany in 2002) against Saudi Arabia.
The thing where Karlin is speaking with too much sureness (there is a lot of randomness in football tournaments – compared to a league format, it allows a lot more randomness. Greece winning 2002 European Championships – most evident example. It would be even more improbably for them win if it was in a league format, but the tournament format increases the probability of worse teams to win with good fortune.
Isn’t Karlin’s view on the football team before the tournament, the standard view of most media and sports journalists.
His view of the tournament itself – is not sensible in my view (too negative).
The reality is that two things can be true without contradiction.
They were spending too much money (it is the most expensive over-spending for any World Cup), but it is also extremely successful for international relations, domestic atmosphere and tourism, and the team does not have to win the 1/6 round for this to be true.
The hosting of the World Cup so far, succeeded on every level or competence, and even the residents of the host cities are contributing to improve the atmosphere for fans.
But Karlin is pretty typical, no? So many people are now complaining online about ass licking of foreigners.
The joke people are saying is that if you want to have good service now in Moscow, you just go to the shop and pretend to be a foreign fan, and pretend you cannot speak Russian, and suddenly they smile and give you excellent customer service.
And then Karlin has not yet complained they are using the tournament as a distraction while raising his retirement age and VAT, so in some ways he is quite positive than the average.
No problem. “Germany” and its team will be non-European all too soon.
If Russia can even tie Uruguay, that will be impressive. Russia might get trounced in the next round, but let’s hope they get a good matchup and squeak through to the round of eight.
Good luck to Russia on Monday.
Sometimes the other way around.
Senegalese fans in Moscow, and Japanese fans in Saransk, were filmed even cleaning the stadiums after the football games.
https://twitter.com/FarEasterner/status/1009444515726417920
Senegal’s goals against Poland were a matter of luck, while Poland’s goal against Senegal was a matter of skill, so Poland didn’t let down the white race.
Thus far Uruguay have been mediocre against weak teams. A draw against them would likely mean playing Portugal in the second round. The Portuguese are not that good. Even their win in France was probably the luckiest championship since at least the 1970s. (They scraped their way into the expanded tournament, losing to Albania along the way; they didn’t win a group game, were trailing Hungary three times in the final one, and only went through due to a change in format allowing three teams to go through; all their knock-out wins were in extra-time or penalties except one – against lowly one-hit wonders Wales). Russia could scrape out a win against Portugal and make it to the QFs. That would be considered a success by just about everyone. If they lose to Uruguay then they likely play Spain and their tournament will end in the 2nd round.
how come Japanese people have such slight builds?
girl on left: yes
girl on the right: yeah but without enthusiasm. Too ethnic. Not a fan of the Russian crazy eyes. You know who does pull off the crazy eyes though? PartisanGirl.
https://twitter.com/hannahgais/status/1009115713934635011
View of foreign fans in Ekaterinburg (English).
All happy – except they complain about the low average level of English, as expected.
…
https://i.imgur.com/B5Zw25z.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/iNFMkXD.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/iNFMkXD.jpg
^ Sorry – the English video with some depressing comments.
E,g,
This is a naive person excited to meet foreigners, and a realist to destroy their expectations.
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And a million lazy people commenting they shouldn’t learn English, but foreigners should learn Russian.
(The latter, true – but what is the government doing to promote this around the world, it’s people totally clueless about the situation)
Rita-Rita wrong about ” ordinary rednecks”.
Mexican fans in the Moscow metro:
https://i.redd.it/laz76umkhy411.jpg
https://mobile.twitter.com/assinmanbapa/status/1010593531013017600
I will be extremely disappointed if Gündogan manages to score for Germany.
The Germans were really good in the second half. But I wonder how they’d have done if Sweden was awarded the penalty (and Boateng the well-deserved red card) already in the 16th minute. It’s very difficult to play with ten players for basically 80 minutes, and they’d needed two goals with only ten players.
Not Germany’s World Cup either, lol.
Well, it might be Russia’s World Cup. It’s certainly not Spain’s…