As I have blogged before (see “2.c. The Persian Gulf” in this article), Iran’s best chance to substantially shut down the Strait of Hormuz is to lay mines, then target US minesweeping vessels. They are far less well defended than its capital ships, and more fragile than the double-hulled, compartmentalized behemoths that constitute modern oil tankers. Moreover, Iran has incentives to start on that as soon as it deems that probability of war with the US is sufficiently high. Otherwise, it would be too late and will start the conflict without the one ace its otherwise outmatched military has up its sleeve.
However, the very act of laying mines is a genuinely hostile act, and this will precipitate war. This is the very definition of a vicious spiral.
Consequently, there are very dangerous runaway dynamics in any serious attempt to use brinkmanship with Iran to extract concessions (or “bring it to the negotiating table” as they call it). It may well be that we are now approaching that point.
In fairness, this may very well be what the Trump administration is banking on. The likes of Bolton and Pompeo take the heat for their current warmongering and false flagging. Meanwhile, Trump gets to walk away with his reputation as an “antiwar” President intact, forced into conflict to defend global freedom of navigation against the evil Iranians. While a war against Iran that comes out of the blue is not going to be accepted by an electorate jaded by the Iraq War, I can certainly see patriotic boomers and many others lapping it up in this scenario. Moreover, the looming recession can be blamed on Iran disrupting the global oil supply.
Incumbency, patriotic fever, a recession “created by” Iran – Trump’s chances of a second term become rather good.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Iran is sanctioned by America, so they can export very little oil now – since May 2019.
Trump’s desire is that Iran will not respond to the sanctions, but try to “survive them”, so that as more time passes, their economy is cut off from funds, and Iran will begin to collapse internally. This will weaken Iran’s government, reduce their ability to project power, and possibly attain change of government without military costs for America (which would be Trump’s perfect scenario).
On the other hand, Trump is very sensitive to oil prices, writes Twitter messages when oil too expensive, and his reelection partly requires that oil prices will not be too high.
So Iran will try to manage 3, and increase the price of oil. The problem is between 1 and 3 is a difficult balance for them, and we probably see this now.
Best scenario for Trump’s Administration, is 2 – for as many months as possible. With the sanctions, Iran is going to start collapsing, or at least continuous recession, economically.
Sanctions on Iran, are not at all comparable to sanctions on Russia. American sanctions on Iran prevent exportation of oil, and now petrochemicals.
As a result, Iran have to store their oil offshore. However, after several months, Iranian oil storage will be full, and then they will have to shut down oil wells. Shutting down oil wells, will even permanently damage oil wells, and some will not be possible to reopen, or retrieve the same quantity of oil in the future.
Trump’s chances of a second term become rather good.
I don’t like the idea of killing Iranians in order to re-elect Trump. Isn’t there a better way?
I don’t completely agree.
Trump’s problem is that his first NSA (Flynn) was taken away from him, his successor, McMaster, had no interest in doing what Trump told him to do, and so he hired Bolton, who promised to do what Trump wanted rather than what he wanted. He hasn’t kept his promises, sabotaged the summit with North Korea, but is now on his way out.
Bibi and Bolton may want a blowup; Trump doesn’t.
Iran can’t survive these sanctions, and is willing to go to war, which would spread to Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, etc Such a war would probably make 2008 look like small potatoes.
Trump’s presidency probably wouldn’t survive the war, so the question is whether he’s willing to ease up on the sanctions.
I think he’s going to begin to back down.
This has to be the shittiest, lowest-energy false flag since the Gleiwitz Incident.
Though perhaps Ron Unz will soon pen a 20,000 word article about how the Gleiwitz Incident truly was an unprovoked Polish assault on Germany.
Thus far Trump doesn’t seem to be taking the bait. The Japanese for their part are continuing efforts at mediation: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/06/14/national/politics-diplomacy/trumps-request-abe-asks-iran-release-american-captives-source/
Indeed.
The one word adjective for this sentence of yours is, “Pissy.”
Though perhaps Ron Unz will soon pen a 20,000 word article about how the Gleiwitz Incident truly was an unprovoked Polish assault on Germany.
And will disavow any previous knowledge of the incident.
Yes, there is, and it’s very simple: go full-throated restrictionist or at least more restrictionist on the immigration question and campaign on it. Like 2016 times two or three.
That’s what the smart play would be. Or maybe I should say “would have been.” This would win Trump support among his base in the “heartland.” And as Steve Sailer has said many times, it would help him among Hispanics (contra the lies of idiot Republicans, Hispanics have a wide range of opinions on immigration restrictions).
Trump would still be weak if the economy imploded/exploded within 2-3 months of the election, but, under my plan, his base would be far more prepared to support him anyway. Also, if the Democrat candidate turned out to be a more obvious radical such as Harris or an empty-suit sodomite such as Pete, that would harden many voters into rejecting the Democrats no matter how bad the economy was – if Trump gave them even a modicum of a reason to stay motivated.
Pundits always underrate how hard it is for American presidents to not win re-election. But the President usually has to do something to appeal to his voters, which so far has not been Trump’s forte. But it’s a long way to November 2020.
As for why this likely won’t happen, well, you see, there’re these things called “Zionists” and “neocons” and it just so happens that the President is kinda sorta one of them. That’s why this play won’t happen.
With all that said, I like Karlin’s take here, though I suspect that American support for this obvious false flag was or is more tacit than explicit. It has that “half-assed” quality indicative of Saudi design.
Bolton will probably get his pink slip soon, Trump is fed up with him.
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/12/john-boltons-long-goodbye/
The forces arrayed against may seem formidable, but in reality US allies are all very fragile, Saudi and Emirati tankers, their refineries, pipelines, airports are all in range from either Yemen or Iran proper. US grunts stationed in Iraq all have targets on their backs, and even US bases and naval assets would not be immune to Iranian missiles. All on the background of a global recession. Yes Iran will suffer tremendous damage delivered by US&allies strikes (we’ll see how the S-300 fares then) but, which side has more to lose?
I don’t know if he can or is so inclined, but Trump needs to go more populist. Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, attack social media monopolies, push infrastructure (construction jobs), etc.
Have you read Trump’s Twitter, about the previous Foreign Minister, Tillerson? Trump is free entertainment, especially about his former friends.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/827113926517194757
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1131537528736100352
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1071132880368132096
The keystone populist issue right now is restricting immigration. You’re certainly right about the rest – particularly an attack on social media monopolies – but immigration ……… attacking immigration is a wonderful tool left in the box right now.
It is a universal truth of American elections that populist campaigns get traction.
Pat Buchanan made a career out of this truth, and helped get Nixon and Reagan elected.
But there are so very many competing factors impelling people to not go that route. Shoot, look at that Bernie guy. Anyone think for one second he wouldn’t have done better against Trump than Clinton? But the DNC and some FBI cronies were willing to create a hysterical anti-Russian conspiracy in part to stop Bernie and Trump from standing on that debate stage and agreeing, albeit for different reasons, that open borders immigration is, in Bernie’s words, a “Koch brothers idea.”
attacking immigration is a wonderful tool left in the box right now.
He has actually ordered enforcement of immigration law. The 1st President to do so in the modern era.
Pat Buchanan made a career out of this truth, and helped get Nixon and Reagan elected.
Yeah, and he got Dubya elected and he still has apologized for that.
This all about China, of course.
The US is putting China on notice that they can whip up some brouhaha and close up the strait of Hormuz whenever they feel like it.
Guess who’d suffer most ?
They don’t even have to hide their game. False flag, annoyed Iranians, they don’t care. Whatever works! Also, what a nice way to remind China just how impotent they are at preventing any of this.
Almost nothing has happened – the price of oil remains below where it was on Tuesday or Wednesday.
CENTCOM have stated they see no reason for war.
The Iranians have made no threats (so clearly didn’t do it as part of an aggressive policy).
It reminds me enormously of the false CW flag at Ghouta and the subsequent false western missile attack on Syria where almost none of missiles exploded, except one or two on the fake news CW factory in Damascus.*
The Saudis will carry on bombing the Houthis, that’s all.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-14/senators-switched-key-votes-bill-gulf-arms-ban-hours-after-tanker-attacks
*Since one doesn’t blow up a real CW factory in the suburbs of a big city in order to punish a President for using CW on innocent civilians, we can presume that somebody important in the US knew the whole thing was just a massive joke.
OTOH,…
https://www.reuters.com/article/mideast-attacks-insurance/ship-insurance-costs-soar-after-middle-east-tanker-attacks-idUSL8N23L2ND
It was so bad even the Japanese owner of the tanker called Pompeo out on his bullshit. Not to mention the impact of the supposed limpet mine on the ship was well above the water surface. It couldn’t be a torpedo either. How do you explain that? Epic Fail!
Outside of alt-right or dissident right echo-chambers such as this do you really think most people consider immigration to be a major issue?
If you really want a populist wave you want a candidate who will go for the throats of the banks and the mega-corporations who have outsourced employment to other countries. You want a candidate who will attack the two things that most people see as their real enemies – Wall Street and free trade.
Such a candidate will have to come from the Left.
In any case Trump can’t win on immigration because he has revealed himself as being fanatically pro-immigration. He’s not going to fool voters twice by pretending to be anti-immigration.
Reminds me of another ship, another gulf, another time…..
Well, the proper reply would require 10 pages with references.
At one hand I do feel I should shed some light at the issue; at the other I also feel it will attract certain characters which crave such ….ahm…debates.
So, I’ll try, briefly, but, really not into “debating” that.
If…..if…Iran lays mines which threatens the tanker traffic the response would be FULL.
Here is how it could work, or, how the planers in West would start. What happens after the first shot, yes, we could debate it for days here. I’ll pass.
First, it would be a massive effort to neutralize Iranian Air Force and Navy, including all coastal offensive capabilities.
When/if, that happens (all clear…), then, and only then, a mine sweeping operation would commence.
It’s very tricky and highly technical/tactical affair, so, a little me actually believes it wouldn’t happen before the regime in Tehran buckles. Or, to put it bluntly: as Serbs provided maps of their land mines minefields in Kosovo the same, just in naval world, would happen in this case.
Here is a scenario when TPTBs everywhere win. Everywhere:
Iranians mine the sea there->The Empire strikes->the regime in Tehran clears own house and then negotiates (Kremlin helps)->hostilities stop.
Result:
TPTBs everywhere happy. Regime in Tehran stays. Israel happy (Iran pushed back 20 years)->Neocons happy (credibility, money for MIC).
Cannon fodder dead/wounded. Comes with place in social structure. The same applies to “collateral damage”.
Now, it is possible that the thing could escalate. Call it Level 2.
There is Level 3 as well.
Level 4 is M.A.D.
Now, you (the author) can ask questions if you want. I’ll try to reply.
For everyone else you could ask if you can visualize how to “clear” this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te-1_rocket_propelled_mine
It’ll be an evil, unnecessary war, and we’ll burn in hell for it.
Wars of occupation inevitably become unpopular, but punitive expeditions tend to enjoy more support. The trick is making sure not to get too greedy when the punitive expedition is successful. Call it the teenage boy strategy (get in and get out, if you will).
And even then there is no guarantee a successful punitive expedition re-elects the man who won it. See George H. W. Bush, the 41st (and one-term) president of the United States.
Agree with your first paragraph. As for the elder Bush:
Bush Sr.’s timing was off, he won that war too early, almost 2 years before the next election. I wonder if Trump is waiting until its closer to the elections to do some things (like the China trade deal).
Perot screwed Bush Sr. If no Perot, he would have easily won. His loss was a fluke.
We should pray and hope this escalates to actual war: another failed war in the Middle East will wreck US prestige and budget, while making Russia rich from higher oil price. Not only that, it’s a perfect distraction for Russia to go in, and dismember the Ukraine. Europe wouldn’t dare pick a fight with us, while they have to rely on Russia as their ONLY source of fuel.
So go team Bolton! And let us hope that Orange Man will grow some balls and do what his advisors tell him to do.
That’s like saying “We fight ten times, I beat you nine times.” None of that matters – there was only one fight and he lost.
But I do think that Trump has better political instincts than Bush 41 (though that’s not saying much).
I’m sure if Trump was crazy enough to go on another MidEast war the MSM will use your comment as ‘proof’ that Russia secretly encouraged Trump to invade Iran and thus he is still Putin’s puppet.
Trump is too much of a coward to start a war, but he is dumb enough to be manipulated into it. We’ll see. All of our hopes lie with Bolton right now.
the current situation does clear up some things that have confused me for a while i.e. why the Iran deal?
1) it’s been obvious for decades that the western center-right parties (like GOPe) are all bought by the banks, Israel, Saudis etc
2) but i didn’t get till recently that the dems were totally bought by China (or maybe more accurately bought by the US based oligarchs who’ve been moving all the industry to China)
and so one of the side effects of off-shoring has been to make China dependent on middle eastern oil which leads to it not wanting a war on Iran.
so one side of the globalist faction have been doing something (off-shoring) which has made things difficult for the neocon half – hence the Iran deal, China (or China-focused Wall St.) getting the Dems to try and block a war.
in 2016 i saw bestTrump as America First vs globalist but there was always a second possibility that the actual split within the elite (and anyone who doesn’t understand the Mueller investigation proves there is/was a split needs to upgrade their CPU) was between neocon and ultra-neocon i.e. people who didn’t want to attack Iran cos of the economic fallout and those who didn’t care about the economic fallout.
(i still think it’s more likely bestTrump was America First initially and they got him with Mueller but it comes to the same thing either way.)
so anyway, conclusion being
tl;dr
there’s no reason for China not to put troops into Iran cos the motive for the current trade war isn’t America First (which would mean they could just wait it out until Trump leaves) it’s neocon.
#
from a personal point of view the economic collapse likely to be caused by a war with Iran is probably a good thing for western survival (cos the banking mafia are likely to go down in the collapse) but all the resulting starvation… not very nice (and i think there’s probably a better way of bringing down the banking mafia without billions of people starving).
The oil price spike will be short lived. While a war of occupation in Ukraine would significantly weaken Russia.
Though a short punitive expedition into Ukraine might make sense. I don’t have a firm opinion on this. (I don’t want it to happen, but I mean from a Russian perspective.)
What makes you think it will be short lived, you expect Iran to collapse in 2 weeks or something?
I think it’s wrong to use Iraq war as a model, this conflict will look more like war of attrition, with shipping in Persian gulf shut down completely for the duration of it.
found the actual culprit, so it clearly were those GRU war hawks who arranged attack of the tankers 🙂
When Reality TV is Reality.
Bolton is on his way out.
Houthis will start hitting Riyadh.
Oil is still at the lower end of its recent range, gold popped but has come back down after hitting recent highs.
Nothing will happen as Trump doesn’t want a war.
Iran’s ability to disrupt the flow of oil will be diminished after a short time. Plus swing producers will step in.
Not to mention that a very long campaign will not mean several years, rather several months. Yugoslavia lasted three months, though the Serbs could have lasted twice longer. So, six months.
Anyway, Iran’s ability to shut down Hormuz traffic will be greatly diminished. After a few months, they will still be able to cause a lot of trouble, but it will be on a scale things stood in the 1980s, not a total shutdown.
Campaign will last long enough for the US to admit its defeat, because Iran surely won’t.
Now put yourself into the shoes of a company operating a tanker: exactly how you calculate the risk of losing your tanker? The moment Iran starts targeting vessels, all private commercial traffic in the Gulf will stop. Period.
Operation Keverich to dismember (not occupy) the Ukraine would probably actually work, but its utility for Russia (all else being equal), besides scratching some imperialist itch, is questionable. However, the calculation changes in the event of a global conflagration. If the US decided to launch a war on Iran, Russia could simultaneously move on the Ukraine, while China could take Taiwan.
The fake and gay countries would fold faster than a house of cards and the US would be presented with a huge dilemma: Fight a global war on three geographical fronts against very capable enemies in their own backyards, or essentially cede Europe to Russia, and Asia to China, for the sake of securing the Middle East. It’s for this reason I doubt a US attack on Iran is imminent, it would be brutally “accelerationist”. My read of the situation is also that this is the informal agreement the three countries have with each other, since there is no formal alliance and no good reason for these countries to come to the aid of one another militarily.
It isn’t 2003 anymore, when Russia was still a shambles and China not even close to the powerhouse it is today. They won’t be sitting on their hands the way they did then.
It will do jack shit if Syria is any indicator.
Pretty fortuitous there was a drone in the area to capture all that on video. What are the odds?
Logic is often a factor leading to war: Tehran concluding it is best to start laying mines before losing the ‘one ace its otherwise outmatched military has up its sleeve’. But no one should be looking at the US 2020 elections, because with 2020 vision they will see the American administration is moving the world towards a greater war than just Iran.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
‘officially’ training isn’t completed- in reality this must be an excuse Russia uses to keep the skies open to Israel. It seems reminiscent of the stalling game with Iran, where its delivery was stalled for years. It all points to the considerable clout Israelis and their mafia have over Russian decision-makers.
I don’t really understand why that would be the case, though. The US has no obligations to defend Ukraine, so a Russian attack on it would actually cement European support for the Transatlantic alliance. Russia getting bogged down in Ukraine in a low intensity war of occupation would actually improve the American military position by greatly increasing European commitment and military spending, while consuming valuable Russian resources for security forces, which are unable to move the overall military balance, and are only able to keep the hostile Ukrainian population in check. So instead of modern WW3 weapons Russia would waste its money on a police force, meanwhile forcing the Europeans to buy more weapons from the US.
A Chinese attack on Taiwan might be similar, though I’m not that familiar with the situation in Southeast Asia to make confident predictions. Unless China could get its hands on TSMC technology, it would do very little to improve China’s overall position, so the question is whether the Southeast Asians’ (and others’, like Koreans’) fear of China will motivate them to join it or (more likely, in my opinion) greatly strengthen their commitment to the Globohomo Empire.
https://twitter.com/yarbatman/status/1139483368742170629
It’s the insurance company that calls the shots here. China (and Europe) might actually provide insurance to companies willing to ship that $200 oil from the Gulf. The Chinese also have the ability to build lots of ships. That’s what the Allies did in WW2: they simply built many more ships than the Germans were able to sink. Meanwhile, Iran’s ability to disrupt traffic in the strait will decrease by the day. They might also be unwilling to sink Chinese ships.
Gulf oil will actually be way cheaper than elsewhere, because the Saudis (and other Gulf Arabs) will be starved of cash. So in the Gulf it might be $50 oil with $150 (but quickly decreasing) shipping costs added on top. Not great for China, but not something it couldn’t survive for a short period of time.
Insurance companies will refuse to cover tankers operating in the war zone. Europe doesn’t practice state capitalism, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be able to respond fast enough. Chinese will not get involved. They never do. They can secure supplies in Russia, Africa and elsewhere.
My point stands: war on Iran means tanker traffic in the Gulf will disappear overnight. “Allies” would then have to devise an entirely new system for shipping oil from the Persian gulf. And I’m not sure what this new system could look like, but it certainly won’t come quickly and cheap.
I still think Trump is going down in 2020 for two reasons: 1) a significant fraction of his white working-class base has left him and this will count far more than gains made with blacks and Hispanics 2) 2020 may be the first general election for president where the majority of voters are not boomers. Anything other than a successful war on the level of the early 90s Gulf War will not do him much good.
My original point was that they wouldn’t be hurt that much.
Not for nothing did I dub you “Corporal Keverich,” you are a genius when it comes to believing that the side you like (Russia) will benefit from any future conflict, while simultaneously greatly underestimating the ability of others to respond to challenges.
Cheap? Probably not very cheap. Quickly? Nothing focuses the mind better than being in genuine danger. Europeans will figure out something, if they must.
“Yes, there is, and it’s very simple: go full-throated restrictionist or at least more restrictionist on the immigration question and campaign on it. Like 2016 times two or three.”
That wouldn’t work at all. Trump went on record claiming he wanted even more immigration than ever, just the legal kind. Legal immigration is far more damaging to the republican party’s electoral chances than illegal Mexican immigration as there are far more legal immigrants coming in – or at least there were before Trump’s comments spurred a massive influx at the border. Any attempt by Donald Trump to promote immigration restriction at this point would be met with derision and disbelief by the public. Everyone already thinks he’s a disingenuous liar as it is (he is). That would confirm it because we all know by now he and Kushner have no intention of doing anything substantive on the issue. What exactly is the point of a wall if all you’re going to do is mass immigrate people legally?
Face it, this clown is going down, most likely to Joe Biden, and that’s mostly due to his own lack of principle and character. His only really shot is running against Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, or Stacy Abrams. I won’t be letting the GOP trick me on social issues like immigration again. They are totally beholden to the Chamber of Commerce and don’t care; they want more immigration, as Trump has publicly stated – along with his echo chamber cadre at Turning Point, Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens. If the democrat is going to win, I might as well get something out of it because we know the republicans are liars who serve the interests of the rich alone. I’ll be voting Sanders, Gabbard, or Yang next year; at least then I’ll get affordable healthcare, an end to senseless war, or a universal basic income. I’ll sit out the election for Joe Biden, mayor buttplug, or Elizabeth Warren. I’ll advocate secession for Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, or Stacy Abrams.
“Yeah, and he got Dubya elected and he still has apologized for that.”
No, I’m sick of the lesser of two evils nonsense. That’s how we got here at the present. Buchanan was that man’s most principled critic. Kerry had every shot to beat him but didn’t and Gore could have worked harder than he did in periphery red states.
“Unless China could get its hands on TSMC technology”
I would bet they have made great strides in stealing much of that already with their track record.
It’s not very simple to steal it.
I forgot this:
They will get involved in buying oil for themselves. They always do, lol.
I am not one of the people who hype the Iranian military, but effecting regime change (at least in a pro-American direction, as opposed to an outright IRGC coup) through bombing them “back 20 years” seems to be a very dubious proposition.
It would be very interesting to see how long Iran could continue denying access through the Strait of Hormuz. Here is how the topology on their side of the coast looks like:
https://irantravelx.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/qeshm.jpg
I suspect they’ll be able to hide from US bombing for a long time, perhaps outright necessitating an outright occupation of Qeshm. And all bets are off if Russia was to supply them with much longer range advanced AS missiles.
All the more reason for an attack a Japanese ship while Japan’s leader was in Iran. Those helpful Japs need to be taught a lesson. Good thing the Iranians are irrational, eh?
They do seem to have a Penthouse Letters unreality in terms of setup to get to the meat of the story, but you still can’t resist reading them for the juicy details.
His loss was a fluke.
Not a fluke. Many people worked very hard to deny Bush reelection. And Bush knew he won’t table to win so he stopped fighting. You could see it during debates when he was looking at his watch to see him much more he must put up with that theater and false.
Sanction is war USA has started the war already Iran has right to respond But it has not .
Though these 2 media say interesting lies and spout pseudo analysis
NPR- USA imposed sanction on Iran after it walked out of JCOPA – Friday 14
BBC- Sanction is now hurting Iran . Iran can retaliate against sanction because it is hurting so it must be retaliating .
False flag- Ships go down all the times . Submarines don’t come out of water . We can make ship go under or Submarine stall under the water for eternity We can blame Iran – Patrick Clawson
They do seem to have a Penthouse Letters unreality in terms of setup
From the beginning (and before I knew it had a name, and indeed, before it was named), I have never suffered from the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, whether in regard to individuals, publications, organizations, etc.
https://www.businessinsider.com/top-researcher-suggests-israel-get-nastier-with-iran-sink-sub-illicit-false-flag-2012-9
Clawson advised Israel at WINEP to sink Iranian vessel to start a war .
Hey Trump-I’ll bet the Tsar thought war was a good idea in 1914 too.
Trump wars with Iran and America goes commie.
Iran from space
https://twitter.com/ArabianaINTEL/status/935959105709182983
The US and/or Israel perpetrated yet another false flag in the Persian Gulf in just a few days. The second one was even clumsier that the first. It is getting harder and harder to believe the US version, which puts blame on Iran. The Empire keeps pretending that nobody remembers the tube with laundry detergent that Colin Powell was shaking at the UN trying to “prove” that Iraq has WMD, which it did not have. Lies must be a lot better and less obvious.
As Holmes used to say, “It’s elementary, my dear Watson”. Of course, the perpetrators of this false flag had a drone in the area. Now guess who the perpetrators are.
Immigration is the #1 issue for both American and European voters (can’t comment on Australia).
But even as the #1 issue the trouble is that normies see it merely as one of many political issues as they are innumerate. Additionally, once an area is “diverse” people acclimate themselves to the diversity as if it were an unchanging fact of nature no different than the weather. The fact that undesirable people can be gotten rid of doesn’t occur to them.
Not necessarily. A punitive war could actually avoid a collapse if they can manage energy prices. There is a lot of oil-gas in storage and tankers roaming around full of oil. So it depends on the length of the disruption – up to 3-6 months it would be ok, a spike in prices, a drop in demand, and a year later all back to normal.
I agree that Western elites are hopelessly divided, but I don’t think it is as clean as two opposing sides. An attack on Iran has obvious losers: China, Korea, Japan, EU. Others would benefit: Russia, Saudis (if they can manage it), Latin America, and US.
US can ride out an economic downturn, but some EU countries might not and it could lead to dramatic instability (France, Italy, Germany).
The financial side is a fiction, an agreed on make-believe world. Because of very high debt levels, we basically have goods, services and assets that are claimed and partially used by two or more people. That’s what debt is – a claim on a real thing by both the lender and the creditor. When the number of claimants goes up to 2 or more, and the ‘payer’ is unable to pay, well, you have an obvious problem. Psychologically in a collapse of any make-believe scheme, first self-preservation kicks in and people demand more of it – more easy credit, more make-believe. And it can be done.
It is like a casino when it becomes obvious that the chips are not fully exchangeable, some will rush to cash out and get out, but that will a minority because most people simply can’t do it. Instead you get a demand for more chips to be created, fast and easy, with people hoping to make up the underlying loss of confidence with more of the same. It works for a while. Then you have inflation take care of the rest.
After 2008 some of the above happened, now for the inflation part (=devaluation of debts). That’s why Trump is going after cheap imports and – to some extent – ever cheaper labor, they must trigger inflation. Of course, inflation hurts a lot of elite people, so they scream and yell to keep the current arrangement going. But it cannot go on, it has reached a mathematical limit. Trump is a desperate attempt to fix it, so far not very successful. The never-Trumpers are basically selfish idiot, people with sinecures and stuff to lose. They might end up losing it all.
Very interesting, thanks for that.
My point was that if not for Perot entering the race Bush would have easily won. He also would have won if American elections had a runoff if no one gets over 50%. But no matter how politically skillful and successful he would have been, he would have had zero chance of winning with Perot in the race.
Similarly, if someone like Romney were to go third party Trump will have zero chance of winning. He would only need to get 5% or so to help the Democrat win.
Well, I actually didn’t mention “regime change” in my original post.
The (Israel) objective is to eliminate Iran as threat.
Syria is good example.It can’t threaten Israel anymore.
Intensive, INTENSIVE, standoff campaign against Iran would do that. Eliminate Iran, as threat to Israel, for the next 10 years at least.
That could open a chance for regime change there but that’s secondary option.
Yes.
Could be. Which opens that Level 2 scenario. Probably the only reason why Pentagon seems reluctant to embark on this enterprise.
I still think that more likely scenario is intensive standoff campaign followed by negotiations and some kind of international presence on the ground in Iran there.
I just see it as..more Iran threatens, more intense bombardment will be. Full assault on core infrastructure. The contest of will, if you will (pun intended).
I can see, with ease, Empire going “Dresden” if push comes to shove.
And, I just feel that all those countries wanting oil would support that. As I said ages ago I can, with ease, imagine Japanese Defence Force involved there, in mass.
Iran isn’t a joke. The problem is: TPTBs in West are weak. Very easy to get hysterical. Both internationally and internally (which could open an interesting conversation). I am quite sure they’d order tactical nukes on Iran if (in their minds…did I say minds) they feel cornered.
The next problem is Western populace. They shall, I am positive, support any sort of atrocity against Iran (or whoever, which could also be interesting conversation) to get their shopping and enterteinmant back.
Expecting from Iran to go against that is…….not quite realistic. They shall buckle and break under such combination of power and attitude.
I know that people in this pub have been desperately waiting for somebody, anybody, to “get back” to the masters of this paradigm. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Eastern Ukraine.
Maybe the answer to that problem (getting back) isn’t in the hands of some poor civilians in remote lands.
Anyway….
Morton Meyerson.
Reagan had a third party challenger, probably hurt Carter more in the end. I expect Johnson also took a lot of votes from HRC.
Expecting Iran to weather out 3 months of intensive standoff campaign is just not realistic.
And, worse (or better……), replenishing those stocks, just with dumb ordnance, would require production facilities in USA. Do we really believe the plans for that don’t exist and won’t be put into motion within a couple of weeks?
Here is my take on this event:
Not a false flag. A message from Tehran. They are hurting and, they did say before and are saying now, as:
“Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency quoted Revolutionary Guards General Alireza Tengseiri as saying that if Tehran was barred from using the Strait of Hormuz, they would “shut it down.”
We are just seeing a basic positioning before a possible escalation.
Slow, still careful, opening moves in a complicated chess game.
The problem with all this is as usual: TPTBs, sooner or later, get themselves into corner.
BANG.
Fortunately, Anatoly, Iranians are not as fantastic as you and they know that their best chance is avoiding conflict. They know the American public does not want war, and they keep repeating the promise of not striking first. On the other hand, they could reduce support to Hezbollah and let Arabs learn to deal with their own issues a bit. Honestly, I don’t understand why should West & East fight over which Semites to support, particularly while the richest & largest Arab countries are lapdogs of Israel (Saudi Arabis & Egypt). Basis of supporting Palestine should be only on a secular basis and humanitarian reasons, not religious.
Why should Iranians, Americans or anyone else must die or suffer hardships for Semites? Let them fight their own wars.
“It’s not very simple to steal it.”
They stole the F-35 simple enough.
“Immigration is the #1 issue for both American and European voters (can’t comment on Australia).”
Unfortunately, this is a true statement that the public disagrees with. Not only do polls indicate “Americans” (however defined) don’t put immigration at the top of their concerns, Europeans don’t seem to really care either as they would have rejected Macron in favor of Le Pen (about to be put on a show trial by the Ruling Class) if they did.
“Additionally, once an area is “diverse” people acclimate themselves to the diversity as if it were an unchanging fact of nature no different than the weather. The fact that undesirable people can be gotten rid of doesn’t occur to them.”
Aggregating all of your country’s media in diverse, unusually wealthy metropolitan areas tends to do that. Additionally, allowing your media to be ruled by hateful foreigners tends to preclude the possibility of removing invaders as doing so would directly impact said invaders; recall the enormous pushback on Trump’s family separation policy by these types. I can’t imagine Trevor Noah really wants to go back to South Africa, same with Jim Jefferies and other prominent “American” media bigots.
“Similarly, if someone like Romney were to go third party Trump will have zero chance of winning. He would only need to get 5% or so to help the Democrat win.”
Honestly, that’s probably the best thing that could happen now. Trump is going down anyway and some of his policies like professed (but disingenuous) immigration restriction might be blamed as a result by the media, so why not encourage a loser like Mitt Romney to jump in and take all the blame? His ego might just allow for it.
He hates Perot now (I know someone who knows M. rather well, personally).
Something like one-fifth of the world’s oil transits through the Straits of Hormuz.
Western Europe can plausibly live without Gulf oil, but East Asia can’t.
The moment private insurance disappears states like China, Japan, and South Korea will step in to provide it.
If Western Europe can’t survive on its own supplies, North Africa, and Russia then they’ll step in as well. They don’t need some kind of “tradition” of state capitalism to do so. And in any case European states already insure export credits, nuclear powerplants, and bank deposits. It’s not rocket science for them to provide reinsurance to private maritime insurers or even to insure cargoes directly.
The only scenario in which Gulf oil stops transit to customers is one in which Iran somehow manages to close the Straits completely, which I doubt very much they have the capability to do in the face of opposition.
The US and Russia both have the capability to increase supply, but not by enough to offset Gulf production. US supply is also constrained by infrastructure.
The USG is already at war with them.
Without positive results, Iranian strategic patience is going to look worse and worse.
https://twitter.com/yarbatman/status/1139393046628356096
What do you mean? Canada has always been a racially diverse country!
I suspect this is more of a coping mechanism by whites. “Well, we did have those darker Italians coming in 50 years ago. So really, all these Africans and Indians will turn out no different!”
Most whites are truly cucked and helpless people. It’s pathetic.
The fact that undesirable people can be gotten rid of doesn’t occur to them.
It does occur to them; they just don’t trust the people who are delegating the power to themselves to decide who is undesirable and who is not.
Bush 41 had a number of things working against him in the 1990 elections. A slumping economy never helps an incumbent candidate. Also, his raising tax rates didn’t sit well at all with his own Republican base, after vowing never to do so (‘read my lips’). Lastly, in a closely contested election, it didn’t help him that he appeared soft on Russia (they hadn’t come up with ‘collusion’ yet), and tried to appeal to the sympathies of many conservative anti-Russia block voters of East European descent that usually voted Republican. It was one of the only times that I voted for a Democrat, and I’m sure that there were many more like me:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Kiev_speech
Yeah, the whole independence thing and svidomism turned out really great for Ukraine and its inhabitants. Prosperity, growth, pride – the first 3 words everyone think of when Ukraine is mentioned.
The irony of you, a lifelong diasporafag, preaching along with other North Americans on the interests and policies of Ukraine in light of the disaster of last 3 decades somehow eludes you.
Even better, it would have been far better for Russia and Russian interests had Ukrainians gone full, explicit and public svidomist at earliest date possible, instead of 2004 mild and 2014 hardcore moves.
That sounds like one of those counterintuitive reasonings which make little sense at first read but on a second read make no sense at all.
Especially the comparison with WW2 grates:
1) Open sea vs. narrow strait
2) Far from coastal areas vs near costal areas
3) German submarines getting whipped really badly by airpower, radar, and cracked comms vs. on-shore missile systems that will probably work against tanker ships
4) Cheap and nasty liberty ships vs. large specialized oil tankers
5) Convoi strategy vs. no convois strategy
Lviv in 1990 – dirty, poor, wrecked. About 20% Russian. No electricity after 9:00 PM, hot water only for certain hours of the day. Lviv 2019 – prosperous, busy, interesting, clean, Russians mostly gone (down to 10% or so). Night and day.
Lviv 1991:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBi0zk9GGrk
Lviv 2018:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L0OVrSw3Ow
It’s a catastrophe, right?
Independence worked out great for its biggest fans 🙂
Saudi-Arabia, Israel, US/UK/Yurop trying to kick Shia management out of Syria by sponsoring the elimination of its population centers was a dick move though. If there is a God dispensing payback, immense Ebola breakouts won’t be the only problems that will plague those entities.
Yet another argument against immigration–you get voters who vote based on the interests of foreign nations rather than the interests of America.
Granted, I’m not sure that the territorial integrity of the USSR was an American national interest. But I understand why GHW and his “wise men” (Scowcroft, Baker, etc.) were generally in favor of stability and the status quo.
To be fair just about anywhere in the Russian Federation has improved dramatically more than Lvov has since 1991.
Ukrainian independence can’t really be called a success, though the failures of independence are not due to independence but the same pressures that turned Russia into a hellhole in the ’90s. Russia simply had the good fortune to turn the corner long before the Ukraine did, which might honestly just be down to good luck.
But a lot of places in Russia (and I’m sure it’s even much more in Ukraine), are worse now than they were in 1991.
Lviv is a typical east European shithole outside of the center, which averted destruction only by historical accident.
Western Ukraine was spared the most destructive and traumatic years of Soviet rule and is therefore socially healthier than the rest of the former Soviet Union. Other than that, Ukraine has very little going for it. It is significantly poorer and less functional than its neighbors save for Moldova. It’s not a 3rd world country, and it will continue to experience modest growth – but it will converge with the west much slower than Russia does, despite the Maidanist delusions of joining the EU and becoming like Germany. Ukraine losing its centuries long lead on life expectancy over Russia is just one example of that. Western Ukrainians really are incompatible with Russians, but independence has not been positive for the rest of Ukraine. Enjoy your trips though, compared to whatever decaying 50% white American city you live in Lviv really is paradise.
I think it is sensible to be optimistic for Lvov (it has tourist potential as a result of its inheritance of historical architecture, and is so geographically close to booming economies of the EU).
But this is just picking out raisins from the bun.
It needs to look at the representative sample of the country, not a single city that has unusual potential.
Bush screwed Perot, because Perot would have won if bush had done the right thing and endorsed Perot and stopped running.
Yes. Which is why anti-immigration parties in Europe (and Australia) have been complete electoral failures. Immigration is not an election-winning issue.
If an anti-immigration party were to offer other attractive policies on things like health care, energy prices, etc it might actually have a chance of winning.
Yep, I agree on that. In fact western populace will support any atrocities against any country that the media tells them are Bad People, even if their shopping and entertainment aren’t threatened. Especially the American populace. There’s nothing Americans love more than war.
Only if by “center” you define an area 20 km (at least) around the city. While the gated communities and suburban malls are not nearly as nice as the center, they are not Sovok shithole places either. There are still crappy Sovok housing areas outside the center (some still exist around Moscow too) but they no longer characterize the place outside the center.
This mall outside the center, weirdly, looks exactly like one in Canada, the type one sees in the outskirts of Montreal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR6nF8pgxEU
I live in a clean, white and Asian upper middle class east coast suburb close to mountains and ocean, that has annoying leftist politics but otherwise is very nice. And when you mostly hang out with eastern Europeans and transplants from elsewhere, the local leftists don’t bother you.
They’re selfish and short-sighted. As long as they have money to buy smartphones and as long as they have social media and porn and superhero movies they don’t care about the future of society. They don’t care about diversity as long as it’s not happening in their street, and as long as their one child can go to a nice white school.
They’re not helpless. They just truly don’t care. They just want to be told what to do and to be able to consume without ever having to think.
It’s very hard to care what happens to them. White civilisation today is a cesspit anyway. It’s just a tragedy that they’re going to take the rest of the world down with them.
I wouldn’t go that far. The clearly improved parts are at least 20% of the country (much of western Ukraine plus places like Vynnytsia and Zhytomir in the west-center). Ivano-Frankivsk is much smaller than Lviv but has also gotten a lot better since Soviet times. Another third is about the same. The eastern parts have gotten worse.
Here is Cherivstsi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1rACa4wlzY
They show the center at 5:15.
Clearly poorer than Lviv but much better than Sovok times.
“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone……”.
To practical matters:
All countries, from Japan to Australia, should their presence is required, will participate. And, even at Level 1 they’ll be required to, at least, provide some token presence.
At Level 2, when all this could start becoming interesting, I am sure the populace will line up just fine, from Japan to Australia.
Now, the really interesting part is….what happens to that (tiny minority) showing their unwillingness to jump on a bandwagon?
And, what happens, related to that, if/when local Muslims, even without any hint from Iran/wherever, start pulling some stunts? Yes, the state will clamp on them for sure. The girl in Wellington won’t be wearing any hijab then.
BUT, I just have a vague feeling “they” will cast that net a bit wider. Just to balance the thing. Get 10 (potential) Islamist terrorists and, say, 1 (potential) “rightist extremist”.
If the thing escalates into Level 3, oh my………
So, things could be just a little more complicated, internally, from those seen so far, from Yugoslavia to Syria.
Ukrainians squat in Polish and German cities that were spared from being razed by Stalin or Hitler by pure chance. And they feel entitled to act like complete snobs over things they had no significant part in creating and which has nothing to do with the general state of the country.
Let’s play your game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKz_Qabpmwg
According to this video Pskov is a clean, wealthy city with a very high level of culture. But the difference between Pskov and Chernovsisto – Pskov is a truly Russian city, built by Russians, inhabited by Russians for 1000 years, and a representative of traditional Russian architecture.
And I was thinking of your Swedish immigrant forebearers who were always the standard bearers of liberalism and the welfare state in their newly adopted country. 🙂
Seriously Thorfinnsson, please reread my comment that you’ve chosen to reply to. If you notice, I’ve provided two other reasons not to vote for Bush 41, that played more heavily upon my own reasoning for not to voting for the man. Even though I was fortunate enough to be employed in 1990, a lot of my friends were not. The economy was stagnant and needed something new. For all of Clinton’s faults (and there were many), getting the economy going again wasn’t one of them. At election time, isn’t the old American aphorism ‘It’s the economy dummy’ the rallying call of most Americans? Besides, when was a president’s foreign policy stances off the board for consideration when choosing a leader. I want an American leader who most closely reflects my own domestic and foreign policy views – Bush 41 was seriously deficient in both areas.
The reason for genocide in Syria is not Iran or Shia management. Syria is a Sunni majority country. They want to empty North Syria to create a corridor between autonomous Kurdish state in North Iraq. The end goal is creating a Kurdish state with sea access (otherwise this state would be short-lived). Of course, the reason for Kurdish state has nothing to do with West’s care for Kurds, it is all about Israel’s security.
What are the actuarial tables for Khameinei?
Who are his most likely successors as Supreme Leader?
There appears minimal odds of a popular uprising. But I suspect higher-than-nothing odds that there is a factional struggle between the IRGC and the regular military; which boils over into the political process should Khameini depart this world.
Armenia is landlocked. Presumably a Kurdistan could survive being landlocked as long as it maintained the loyalty of one of the surrounding states, or the Great Powers.
The current push is for Kurdish autonomous zone in Syria, to match the one in Iraq; presumably Turkey is forced to cough up autonomy next.
Armenia is struggling a lot, and it is in Russia’s orbit. Besides Armenia got its independence from Russia, has no strategic position or resources and there is no significant Armenian population in its neighbor states. None of it would be true for an independent Kurdistan. It would be a dagger inserted in the middle of Arabs, Iranians, and Turks. As all these states would be hostile to the Kurdish state, Kurds would have no option other completely submitting to the US*. Normally such a plan would never work because the majority of North Syria was Arab (and Turkmen). However, thanks to gigantic and sustained stupidity of the Turkish government (I think one of the biggest strategic blunders of the 21st century already), it is not totally impossible now.
Iran won’t be able to sink many ships. It will also probably try to avoid sinking Chinese ships, for obvious reasons. But the small number of ships that it will manage to sink or damage will be repaired or replaced. It will be a problem, but not impossible to solve.
The tanker captain called out Pompous Pomeo out as well. Crewmen stated that they saw a flying projectile hit their tanker. No torpedo or mine. I wonder if that Iranian boat they show on the black and white video is the boat that picked up the 44 crewmen, not a boat trying to pluck a mine out of the ship.
Lviv – always about 15-20% Ukrainian (vs. 50% Polish and about 30% Jewish), founded by a Galician prince and named after his son Lev. Old Ruthenian area in the city’s very center, off the market square. Greek Catholic Mother Church on a hill overlooking the city. “No significant part of creating” is nonsense.
Lviv became shitty under Soviets, was restored under Ukrainians.
Chernivtsi (you couldn’t even write it properly, and made some claims about its history) – under Austria it was 33% Jewish, 19% Ukrainian, 17% German, 15% Romanian, 15% Polish.
Certainly looks that way.
So? Ukrainians are a traditionally rural people, like Slovaks, Balts, and Finns. Do you also think Estonians are squatting in German Tallinn? Slovaks squatting in German-Hungarian Bratislava? Finns squatting in Swedish Helsinki?
But Ukrainians have really restored Lviv and made it nice again.
Not in Russia, not really. Try visiting the real world sometime; or else refrain from commenting.
Well, your words, not mine.
Was Dmitry even alive in 1991?
Nothing to be proud of, and there are no “Ukrainians” in this story.
Galicians used their corruption and media megaphone clout to steal monies from the ever-dwindling Ukrainian budget and funnel it into their hometown. Your having a “nice” looking Lvov means that millions of other Ukrainian citizens are living in literal stone-age conditions.
For example, here’s the so-called “highway” between Kiev and Odessa, Ukraine’s two largest cities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXuB7RqH6FU
P.S. And the saddest part is that, despite all this monumental effort by Galicians in money funneling, Lvov is still a below-average city compared to other Eastern European countries. You had a vampire-like stranglehold on one of the largest countries in Europe, and this is all you could come up with?
The thing is, the places that are really shit are disappearing. There’s enough internal mobility inside Russia that you can move to a place that isn’t so shit, and those without the means or motivation to move are dying out. It’s now been almost 30 years, after all.
I don’t think this place has much tourism potential. The place is nice, but inferior to almost any town in Germany or the Czech Republic or Hungary. The argument “better than in Soviet times” is rather strange. In Russia, too, almost any city is better than in Soviet times – and what? And in Soviet times, almost any city was better than in tsarist times (lighting, Sewerage, transport)
Is this a comment born from history and experience, or are you just talking out of your ass? Heck, they’ll probably spend a year just arguing over responsibility and where the money to pay compensations is going to come from. Europe is even more disfunctional, than Asia in this regard.
It was a Sovok myth that Donbas was feeding Lviv. So with Donbas gone Lviv must be starving.
Well, isn’t it funny that with Donbas destroyed Lviv just keeps getting better?
One can only do so much when the country is controlled by Easterners.
LOL, there has never been a Galician president. Kuchma was from Dnipropetrovsk, Yushchenko from Sumy by the Russian border, Yanukovich from Donetsk. Lviv is the best run place in Ukraine but it doesn’t run the country.
Helsinki was rebuilt as the capital of Finland after the conquest of Finland by Russia. As a Swedish city can be considered the Abo or (for example) Vyborg , but not Helsink
If you look for the “Russian” equivalent of Chernivtsi – it will be Sortavala
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=MKe2SujfYPs
or the same Vyborg.
I’ve certainly seen worse German towns (in terms of how they look), ones that were bombed out and rebuilt. Haven’t been to Hungary or Czech Republic.
Conversation started with Epigon implying Ukraine has gotten worse. So I showed a video of Lviv 1991 vs. Lviv 2018. Then when someone said only Lviv got better I showed Chernivtsi today, which seems to be very nice.
Sure, but let’s not pretend it wouldn’t have improved without Soviets.
OTOH I suspect if Lviv remained Soviet all these years it would not have improved much.
Helsinki still had more Swedes than Finns in 1870 and only after 1890 did Finns become a majority:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Helsingfors_spr%C3%A5k.png
sure – the point i’m injecting is a large chunk of Wall St. (and their pet politicians) make their money from factories they off-shored to China so China’s interests are their interests (e.g. not wanting oil supplies disrupted) and this puts them in conflict with the neocon agenda.
By the way the name Bratislava is a modern invention, no one called it Bratislava until 1919:
By the way, it’s great to have another shitshow about Ukraine under a post nominally about Iran.
A war with Iran will finish Trump’s presidency. There is almost no support in the US for a war with Iran, outside of the Beltway and the west side of Manhattan, and none of the people living in those places will vote for Trump even if he nukes Tehran.
Furthermore the US does not have the reserves to prosecute a land war against Iran. The best it could do is blockade Iran, which will lead to the Iranians making the Straits too dangerous for anyone else to transport oil through it.
What the hell are they thinking!? It’s sad seeing The Empire lapsing into insanity as the playing cards start falling down in slow motion.
I’d really love to hear what the Chinese think of all this. They are facing the prospect that the brave new world they anticipated taking over, being wrecked by the premature collapse of the previous order.
Was thinking the same. Netanyahu and his US collaborators have been trying for years to get the US to attack Iran, and it’s so obvious that even the general public can see it.
It only serves to push Europe towards Russia and China, and actually isolates the US not Iran. A lot of Europeans now want to disentangle their countries from US systems (SWIFT, NATO etc.).
I was thinking the same thing, the only places in Russia worse off now than in 1991 are rural villages where the capable have decamped for greener pastures, the type of place the NYT would profile in an article about dying Russia. All the urban centers seem to have improved dramatically, though perhaps Russia has its own version of Detroit somewhere. My guess is Dmitry has come to this conclusion via a Varlamov blog post, it doesn’t sound like the objective impression of someone actually living in Russia.
Soviet rule is not the alternative scenario because they were heading off the stage. Imagine a Union formed in the spirit of March 17th 1991 referendum.
Ideal case would have been amputation of non-Rus (see what I did there?) and anti-Rus areas.
So, respecting the referendum – Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova are said farewell and good riddance, with Narva, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Gaugauzia kept.
Regarding Kazakhstan – south Siberia returned to where it belongs, while as many Rus and Europeans repatriated from -stans as possible.
Lvov/Lviv improving is a natural development of a once peripheral (in closed USSR terms) city far from center (Moscow) prospering due to proximity to economically more developed areas of EU.
Where do you two idiots come from (you and anoynmous coward) and where do you continue your stupid guesses? You really think e.g. Asbest is better now than thirty years ago? Even if you know any quite below average place like city of Kurgan – if you compare between now, and the end of the 1990s. A few new buildings in the centre, a lot more cars, a lot more advertising – but most buildings simply are more and more decayed.
Hmmm… you sure?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%81%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BE%D1%8E%D0%B7%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%84%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%83%D0%BC_%D0%BE_%D1%81%D0%BE%D1%85%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D0%A1%D0%A1%D0%A1%D0%A0
Russia 73% yes
Ukraine 71.48% yes
Byelorussia 83.72% yes
Azerbaijan 94.12% yes
Kazakhstan 95% yes
Kyrgyzstan 95.98% yes
Tajikistan 96.85% yes
Turkmenistan 98.26% yes
Uzbekistan 94.73% yes
I do not think this (new and improved union of brotherly nations) is what most people in this forums would like.
But it is nice to see that the so maligned Central Asians had so much more dedication to noble cause of proletarian internationalism than the ungrateful Slavs.
https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/5011/103548746.22/0_c4ece_a875c1fc_XL.jpg
So then why do they do it?
The rest of your post largely disregards the hypothetical of the US first getting bogged down in Iran, so that they would then be hard pressed to devote resources to other theaters. This would not cause the Europeans to want to strengthen the Transatlantic alliance, it would expose said alliance as being unable to meet its commitments. This is already happening gradually, anyway.
As with you, I’m less familiar with Asia, but I imagine the situation is similar. The Japanese have made major efforts to improves relations with Russia recently, and I suspect this is because they are scared of the Chinese and doubt the US’ ability for, and commitment to, its defense, and so are hedging.
Operation Keverich involves none of the above, the two of you have spent considerable time discussing it. As I noted, in isolation the plan doesn’t do much for Russia, but if the US goes full retard and starts a war with Iran, the entire situation is different. Which is why I think it won’t happen.
Trump is destroying his Presidency with the Iran nonsense, he has painted himself in to a corner at the B Team’s behest and is now obliged to back down. Oil at $200 will be disastrous.
Nah. Donald knows what is important.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1139878112701927424
And even the MSM is calling it out:
https://www.newsweek.com/intelligence-experts-question-iran-video-us-track-record-ginning-evidence-war-not-good-1444169
I can’t talk about 1991 as personal memory. But I know a lot of places where the situation of appearance, is just deterioration. This isn’t talking about quality of life, but about city appearance.
And if you hear parents and grandparents – there are a lot of buildings and area which look terrible today, which were even considered attractive some decades ago.
This isn’t to say the average is falling. A problem is when someone picks the raisins from the bun, like a video of central Lvov of AP. If you want to sample extremes, you can also show many area which show the opposite in any country.
Everyone knows about historic centres of these two famous cities. Both have some very beautiful historic architecture in its centre and a lot of tourism potential. My question is what it looks like in the average city in Ukraine, and what in the below average city, not in the the showcases.
If you have a comparison city of ordinary places, and it really looks so much better visually?
I’ve never mentioned Donbass anywhere, you dipstick.
Maybe it is a symptom of poor human capital of the altright that the blog owner can’t even be bothered to clean up his own blog of off topic threads and ban the people who consistently post office topic comments? Or maybe the blog owner is just too lazy and lethargic to care about the quality of the comment thread?
Of course it is. It was shit 30 years ago and continues to be shit today, except with better quality of life for consumer crap.
Of course the differential between shitty places and normal places is much greater today in Russia than 30 years ago, but even the shitty places are steadily improving compared to what they were.
If you look at video or photo footage from the 70’s and 80’s, you’d see that these places were just as dilapidated back then.
They only looked attractive because there were no clean and nice buildings to compare and contrast with.
It has a lot of beautiful architecture, is historically not very damaged, and is not so far from booming economy countries, which can visit without a visa. How is there not potential for tourism?
I’m pretty sure everyone else was talking about quality of life, not city appearance, at least I know I was. This makes AP’s video of central Lvov as evidence of Western Ukraine’s relative affluence all the less relevant. It’s certainly true that architecture and urban planning don’t seem to be among modern Russia’s strengths, but I assume this is a question of priorities among the general public.
I can, and with some context. I lived for a month in a provincial Russian city in 1990 and it left some lasting impressions. For example, the alcoholics who would stand in front of the food stores, desperately looking to trade their flour and sugar ration tickets for vodka ration tickets, which were for something like two bottles a month. But the buildings were less dilapidated, so there was that.
Asbest was “best” (ok this sounds funny) from the 1970s-1980s, from when there is the modern housing, some neoclassical buildings, and they were developing amenities for residents. Since then, it’s nothing new, except deterioration of buildings.
For example of a deteriorating city which was good – Nizhny Tagil. It was in that era an important and very flourishing city, it had a lot of new construction and a lot of attractive buildings, and good quality architecture in the centre (of the Stalin epoch).
I visited Tagil some years ago with my parents – maybe you would think there is an improvement because of Burger King chains. In general, attractive architecture is in state of deterioration. This is a city which was attractive in peoples’ memory. While buildings which were mediocre when new, are also deteriorating.
Overall, on balance, of course, there is improvement. There’s no question Russia, averaged by a thousand cities, is living better. But for a lot of cities which improve, there are a lot who have deteriorated, and some of these like Tagil were not “shit places”, but should be attractive cities.
Its gotten worse on everything that matters, only measuring GDP is a sign that one is anti white, pro mass immigration and pro miscegenation. If you measured what mattered then you would know that Ukraine is already at deaths door. Being a US puppet, following the globo homo religion, declining birth rates, handing over the economy to US corporations, the list goes on.
Lviv has a lot more to offer than just old churches and museums to the tourist seeking new experiences. It’s quite a vibrant city that has a well developed coffee house culture including several venues for jazz music. The Leopold jazz festival (an annual event) will begin next week for three days and will showcase talent from around the world, including legendary Chick Corea. Quite frankly, Lviv is a swingin town:
https://youtu.be/3LnkWiSZ5fw
Au contraire, I agree with the author. War will increase his chances of winning re-election. I don’t think the democrats will come out against a conflict that clearly benefits the entity that shall not be named, and a wartime president will wave the flag to get his base out in force.
I can imagine MSM editors telling their owners to please work harder at these False Flags, and make them minimally believable. The present clownish lies only serve to destroy what’s left of MSM credibility.
As you said. No one talks about invading Iran – the plan is to bomb, bomb, bomb and then bomb some more, reduce the country to the stone age conditions. Few casualties for US, magnificent show on TV for the spectators.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg
The justification for the masses will be that when Iranians are bombed enough, they will rise against the “moolahs” and bring democracy.
The professionals in Pentagon know well it will not happen, that Iran even in state of ruins will remain enemy that will require permanent bombing (“mowing the grass” as Israelis say). The better for Pentagon, there is something to do for perpetuity.
Everything is ready – only some casus belli is needed. The late false flags were so pathetic they had to be Saudi work. Some more credible, more imposing show is needed.
https://www.jarofquotes.com/quotes/1631809.jpg
The blog owner did not make another Open Thread as promised three days ago.
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/world-tension-meter-is-inching-up/
This is now the replacement OT.
It’s full of white people which is good enough for me…
Night and day compared to France, for instance. Or Canada, or America, or UK, or ….
I don’t get this obsession with muh economic growth. Sure, Ukraine could have joined the EU and “grown” like Germany. And also “grown” in diversity.
As long as you can get by, there’s no reason to restlessly pursue economic growth at the expense of your nation and people.
Anything the US does to prop up Ukraine is seen in Europe (by the majority of normies) as extra American effort to provide European security. As you must be aware, Europe is militarily stronger than Russia (or at the very least as strong as it is), even without any American help. (For example there are more AWACS and other AEW aircraft than Russia has, overall European NATO air force is several times stronger than the Russian air force, even excluding Turkey, etc. Though in some types of weapons, like battle tanks, the Russians have a numerical advantage, although their tanks are currently less modern, on average, than European tanks. The most modern Russian tank, the T-14 Armata, is probably better than any European battle tank, but it’s not yet deployed in significant numbers.)
Therefore, even if the US completely abandoned European NATO, it wouldn’t mean a Russian military dominance over Europe. Economically it’s a different question, but economic blackmail rarely works to change policy. (See the Arab embargo against the West in 1973 – it didn’t stop American support for Israel, and in a few short years, Egypt actually made a peace treaty with Israel and left the united anti-Israeli Arab front.) And it’s needless to say that Russia needs economic relations with Europe as much as Europe needs it with Russia, and Russia is way smaller.
In other words, it all boils down to European perceptions. If the Europeans think that the Russians are threatening to them, they will draw closer to the Americans, as has happened in the past.
The only commitment Europe needs from the US is the nuclear umbrella. Otherwise, Europe is already at least as strong as Russia. However, the US could engage in an extended air war of attrition with Iran, while increasing its presence in Europe. The latter is already happening. For example currently there seems to be a near-permanent or quasi-permanent US armored presence in Hungary, and I think some US planes are being stationed there, too. Apparently the most important Hungarian military airport is being renovated and rebuilt extensively, so that it will be possible to base F-35A aircraft from there. (Though one rumor has it that Hungary also might buy this type of fighter jet, the main reason seems to be an increased American presence.)
The US Air Force wouldn’t be used up too much – after a few months, Iranian air defenses would get considerably weaker (and the air force nonexistent), after which most of the fighter force could be relocated to Europe and East Asia.
So I’m not quite sure what you imagine would be happening in Iran.
Now let’s get back to Ukraine being overrun by Russia. Russia would need to station a huge police force there. Would it be good for Russia? Obviously not.
USA has failed in ME Afghanistan Venezuela and Somalia as far as any real objective defined by the aim of any war is concerned . That means military complex is doing well but the tax payers of US are getting skimmed and milked . Iran war will add to this by few order of magnitudes. Iran will also take the illicit petroleum -dollar business out of the equation that adds billions to American treasury by shutting Hormutz .
. Dollar will be kaput . Air planes will fall from sky and won’t get off the ground .
Europe is divided along many irreconcilable lines as far as Russia is concerned. Does Russia need Europe ? No . Does it fear invasion from EU? No . Will EU win? No. EU did nit win in Libya until USA stepped into. Russia needs once its economy is diversified , shut the valve. Poor supply of energy will bring winter .
A Russia -EU war will generate more ISIS inspired war and more Nazi White supremacist violence and will polarize the white population along ideological lines in France /Germany/ Nordic .
Now a new factor has been introduced . China has to step back in HK. China knows where the support is coming from . China will if not stupid take fresh stock of the situations- Huwaei, Tariff, and now HK and behave accordingly That behavior points to pro Iranian stance unless Trump pedals back . But that pedaling back and forward depending on Chinese Russia situation will give either rise to new reality – acceptance of multipolar world which US is trying to avoid at great cost -or continued hammering on the head of the nail hoping something different will happen this time.
. It is USA who doesn’t know how to escape . It is stuck in a blind alley .
At home war with Iran, will add to more deaths more violence making soldiers and civilians more propaganda more economic stagnation and more corporate stealing . This time 2008 will be ten times worse and no money to bail out again without dollar reaching the depth of Zimbabwe dollars .
It is done. Mission accomplished.
https://twitter.com/Elizrael/status/1140077718291255296
https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1139534000635207680
BTW, does anyone know whether Donald qualifies as “family member of Jew” to come to Israel under the Law of Return? It would be so cool if he could retire in his own village.
Any Israeli lawyer in da house?
This is not a question of pure military strenght but a matter of political will as it is non existant – both Germany/France populace have that beaten puppy Stokholm syndrome regarding Russia coupled with openly bribed/recruited/blackmailed highest level politicians like Shroeder or LePen, which make any real only european counteraction possibilities nearing to zero.
It doesn’t matter what outsiders think what would be good or not for RF cause the highest moral imperative there is neighbouring landgrabing no matter the cost as it makes them feel really very good at least for the moment. Everything else is being relegated to that goal – be it cucking to China or raising the pension age, it is still worth to do it as the mental pleasure is still bigger from landgrabs.
Defeat or more destruction wrought on Iran will have same blowback as was Iraq Libya and Syria brought to US and EU. 2008 will be seen as nothing compared to what would unfold .
EU will fragment more
USA will have more social unraveling .
Shia and Sunni will join forces.
Saudi Royal will disappear .
Lebanon and Syria will retaliate big time against Israeli aggression to precipitate a wider war
Americas’s Suez moment will come
But will it be rehabilitated by Chinese as was UK by USA?
Ok, now write the downsides.
They recorded the video on a FLIR camera instead of a normal camera for some reason. I’m not sure about that boat tbh.
Not true, Slovaks called it Bratislava since 1830’s based on its first recorded name Brezalauspurc, or Braslav’s castle. The dispute about it only exists among Hungarians.
The inner city had German majority until 1919 as did many other cities in the region. But the metropolitan area had Slovak majority with villages being mostly Slovak. The reason it became a Slovak city so quickly after 1919 was redrawing the city boundaries to include suburbs. The constant focus on the inner city is deceptive.
A lot of things changed since that time. Russia, including Moscow, most provincial cities, extremely long inter-city roads (remember, just European part of Russia is much greater than the whole of the rest of Europe) look and feel so much better than they were in the Soviet times that it’s hard to believe. I was there at the peak of decay (1998) and then last year – it is stunning. Moscow looks and feels grander than London, Rome, Madrid, or Berlin, not to mention Paris, which became run down (French even managed to burn down Notre Dame, shame on them).
Bottom line is, the majority of Russians now appreciate that it was a good thing to get rid of parasites (“brotherly” republics and “brotherly” Eastern European countries, all of which got exactly what they deserve). Apparently, new parasites, thieving oligarchs, suck much less lifeblood out of the country than the old parasites.
They don’t. Lip service is not defense. The US only wanted to use cheap hapless morons as a battering ram against Russia. The US failed to take into account that something so thoroughly rotten cannot serve as a battering ram. Now the US switched tactics: Ukraine is expected to remain a festering wound on Russia’s doorstep. It festers successfully and will keep festering for a while yet. Smarter residents run away in all directions (both West and East, some even to Turkey), so that the fraction of old people and “patriotic” nitwits in the population increases. No wonder that (borrowing the term coined by a Ukrainian human rights defender Montian) they elected a hologram President to replace a thief.
Lvov’s tourist potential (excepting burgeoning Turkish sex tourism) is very limited. In essence, it is a smaller and crappier version of Prague. Prague really gets a lot of tourists that want to see the place, rather than just hire cheap prostitutes for the night.
Absolute, yes. At least the places I saw in Soviet times and today in central and western Ukraine. Sovok worker’s paradise of Donbas might be different.
Relative to its neighbors (perhaps other than Moldova) – no. It has maintained its position (poorest of the three Slavic republics) but fallen behind.
The problem wasn’t independence itself, but who controlled Ukraine after independence. In Ukraine’s case, Sovok comprador elite. Inclusion of Donbas made this possible. That gangrenous part should have been amputated in 1991.
This is a different thing than saying Ukraine is worse with loss of Sovok. A better case can be made.
But I suspect your view of the March 17th referendum isn’t realistic. People chose maximum independence they were offered, when full independence was an option few months later they went for it.
Sure, but Moldova and Transcarpathia are just as peripheral to Moscow and just as close to prosperous western neighbors and they have not done as well as did Lviv.
Life expectancy, infant mortality, are best in Ukraine and have improved since Soviet times. As have salaries and disposable income (as evidenced by all those cafes, nice clothes on people, and cars seen in the video of central Lviv).
Ukraine was a lot like that in 1990 also (I don’t recall the alcoholics as much).
You can look at numerous youtube videos of Lviv and see almost no Turkish faces. There are many more middle eastern people (Caucasians) in Moscow than in Lviv.
You are reverting to your form when you insisted that
It is also perhaps 1/3 the price of Prague, with comparable quality food and beers (I have not been to Prague, but have been to Krakow and Lviv is no worse in terms of food and beer). So it can attract eastern European tourists or people on budgets such as students. Also, people who have seen Prague and want something similar but new to them.
The “players” posting here all say Lviv girls are too conservative, even compared to Poles. Lviv isn’t Donbas. OTOH, one has a lower chance of getting HIV in Lviv than in Donbas.
Toys don’t win wars, people do. Afghanistan is the most glaring example of that: NATO troops with their sophisticated and ridiculously expensive toys are holed up in their heavily fortified bases, whereas Taliban with cheap Kalashnikovs and medieval mentality roam the country freely.
Such as?
.
Lviv all all-European.
LOL.
Other than birth rate you write nonsense as usual.
Here is Vynnytsia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFB6fbDsVK0
It is no Lviv, but certainly not a shithole.
It’s economy has improved since 2014.
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/kamienczanka/8592045/728003/728003_900.jpg
Kamianets-Podilsk is another quite livable town in West Central Ukraine. A friend of mine who is from there and who finished medical school in Chernivtsy tells me that it’s even nicer than Chernivtsy. I’ve been to both and would place Chernivtsy a slight notch higher.
The Wikipedia article I quoted uses this article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080227082043/http://sreview.soc.cas.cz/upl/archiv/files/171_235SALNE.pdf
Peter Salner could be reached here:
http://www.uet.sav.sk/?q=sk/peter-salner-phdr-drsc
Perhaps he will be interested in your insights.
Regarding the suburbs, those were just neighboring villages back then. Historians concentrate on the downtown area because that was the city until the 20th century.
I don’t think the last paragraph is true. For reasons, see my comments #153.
You mean that gay pride parade enforced with heavily armed soldiers did not happen, or handing over companies to deep state cockroaches such as the Biden family also did not happen? Oh did I forget to mention your head of state real Ukrainian that, you must be proud.
Total Cuckrainian = total fool.
You could be onto something here.
The former, I mean.
Gets worse. “We” here at least pay attention and spend some effort to post something about the event/topic.
80 % of general population can’t even be bothered with that very basics.
So, here we are.
I only noticed one non-white – a female tourist, I think, with black African features – in Lviv. I didn’t see any Turks. Mind you, it was the last week of January so not exactly ideal weather for a holiday in Ukraine.
There are a lot of Turkish Airways flights but they are not just carrying Turkish men. Istanbul is much more affordable – especially hotels – for Ukrainian tourists than most west European cities. (I don’t know if Ukrainians watch Turkish soap operas like they do in the Balkans, if so, that would also make Istanbul a more popular tourist destination).
This makes sense and is what I assumed. Slovak nationalist government adds villages to German-Hungarian Bratislava, and suddenly it becomes majority Slovak.
A couple hundred gay supporters protected by armed police for a couple hours is insignificant.
Jewish guy from ethnic Ukrainian heartland is better than Russian guy from Russian-inhabited fringe area.
Some kind of white nationalist such as you insulting one of the whitest places in the world is rather funny.
Some of the Eastern European republics have done the same turn around. I just visited Tallinn which isn’t grand in size but it has done a pretty amazing transformation from run down hellhole (which was fun to visit as a kid though as pirated games and CDs were sold openly in stores) to a really attractive place, I want to move there as it feels better than Helsinki which is decaying fast due to poz and escaping taxpayers.
Finns stopped going there in massive numbers as their prices are up but there are now amazing numbers of Asian tourists in Tallinn. The charming medieval parts are really worth showing to them since in much of European capitals you’ll just just see Arabs now. We went to an old Soviet era prison now turned into a “horrors of communism” museum and curiously none of the Asian tourists wanted to go there nor did I encounter anyone speaking Russian there, it was all Western tourists…
I noticed no Turks when I was in Lviv in June 2017. I wasn’t looking for them mind you, but if there were significant numbers I would have noticed. I notice Caucasians and Central Asians in Moscow.
To be honest, adding those villages made sense. Budapest was formed by adding three cities, but its area already contained lots of rural, agricultural areas. By 1950, when further cities and villages were added, many still remained, but now they are all gone. The villages and cities added in 1950 were not always well connected to Budapest, but it was easy to foresee that they would be in a short time.
I suspect something similar happened to Bratislava: the added villages quickly became integrated into the fast growing city.
Hungarian nationalists often have this alternate history where all the Hungarian cities would assimilate both the Germans and the Slovaks. When in reality any city with a Slovak hinterland would have become majority Slovak anyway. So Bratislava was bound to become a Slovak city.
Another policy already planned by the previous regime, postponed due to the war, and then implemented by the commies, who then took credit.
As much as would like it to be truthful, this is too much rational bevahiour, therefore when push comes to shove all such talk will be forgotten in a second.
Recent case in point was Belarus, which was bashed for years as being economic parasite leeching on RF oil&gas, but the the very moment the talk and possibility of landgrabbing them altogether started to float at high political levels, absolute majority in RF started to drool uncontrollably at the mere thought of such expansion.
I don’t like the idea of killing our sons and daughters or Iranians in order to re elect a Trump. What else do we have?
I just visited Tallinn which isn’t grand in size but it has done a pretty amazing transformation from run down hellhole
I was in Tallinn in 1991 and 1992, and it certainly didn’t appear like a “run down hellhole to me”. On the contrary, I recall telling people what a stunning place it was (at least the medieval parts) and what amazing tourist potential it had.
Aren’t you from Portugal though? That’s the poorest country in western Europe. Jaakko is from Finland.
(I do not mean to offend Portugal, just saying that economic difference wasn’t as vast as between Finland and Estonia)
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=EE-PT-FI
Delete duplicate please
The medieval town walls looked fine but soft parts of buildings sure didn’t in my first visits (late 1980s). The old town was the first place they fixed up and filled with Finnish and Swedish tourists. Lots of Finns made ton of money buying up the old town properties for nothing and fixing all the leaky roofs, water damage etc – now it’s worth a lot.
When you got outside of the city center places like Lasnamäe and Mustamäe looked absolutely shocking to me. (That’s commie block neighborhoods with lots of Russians.) Mustamäe was one of the most popular attractions for Finnish tourists at the time because of the marketplace (where pirated stuff was sold openly and drugs, guns etc almost openly). Decay, poverty, beggars everywhere, impossible to get on a bus without running into some drug addict with sores that you wanted to stay away from.
The old Soviet neighborhoods like Lasnamäe and especially Mustamäe have improved so much it’s a totally different world.
Old Bratislava (or Pressburg) before 1919 is what is now Bratislava-Old Town; it has around 50k people, similar to pre-WWI. The ethnic composition of that small part of Bratislava can only tell you so much, it is apples and oranges.
Salner is an outlier, what he writes is his own group’s ethnic mythology and self-pity (German Jews), it often seems that West is only interested in those views, thus wiki. That is not representative.
Sure. Have you been to London lately? Or Paris, LA, Brussels?
Decay, poverty, beggars everywhere, impossible to get on a bus, drug addicts everywhere. One can’t stay away from it. It is also quite dangerous, and definitely not very European.
These old capitalist neighborhoods are actually getting worse. Maybe Russians are moving in?
No, its exceedingly significant, it perfectly depicts what is important to the state, this was a request from likely both the European and American establishment, and they were clearly happy to follow orders.
As for white nationalism, yeah, one does not normally support a people that openly support anti white ideas and anti white regimes.
What else do we have?
A mental exercise as to whether it would be worth it if that was the only way for Trump to be re-elected.
Don’t know about Tallinn, last time I was there was 1989 or 1990. The medieval part (built by Germans) looked nice and clean, certainly not like a run down hellhole. But that’s in the eye of the beholder. After Moscow in 1991 Philadelphia looked like a run down hellhole to me, but later I sort of got used to it. The population of Estonia dropped by less than 300,000 since 1991, with ~1,3 million remaining, so in this regard they did better than the rest of Baltics.
I see Russian tourists (or at least Russian-speaking tourists – abroad Ukrainians and Belorussians pretend to be Russians and speak only Russian) in every museum n Europe, large and small, in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, UK, etc. I am sure most would skip that “horrors of communism” museum simply because most of the stories there are downright lies that Russia grew out of in the 1990s. What’s more, older Russians know that those stories are lies from their personal experience, so it would be even less appealing to them. Like, I wouldn’t go to a flat Earth or Creation museum for that simple reason.
Have to confess, I’ve never been in Helsinki, either – life is short, and there are too many countries a lot more significant and/or interesting than Finland.
Yes, I am watching this with disappointment. Quite a few Russians don’t seem to have learned lessons from history and are prepared to repeat the gravest mistakes of the USSR.
Is that why they opened a café in Lvov named “Hvoidarnya”?
Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dicYeyP7-d0
(For those who don’t speak Ukrainian, “Hvoida” means “slut”, so “Hvoidarnya” can be best translated as “Sluttary” or “Slut-house”).
Like a country full of John Boltons?
Actually, the West somehow manages to do decay often without visible poverty. You see those jobless immigrants somehow wearing pretty nice clothes, talking with smartphones, hanging out in cafes all day long. I walk past tons of gypsy beggars every day these days but they’re surrounded by bourgeois wealth and a neighborhood in repair, not decaying buildings with water damage and collapsing facades that no one plans to repair any time soon like I saw in Estonia and Russia in the 1990s.
The commie built neighborhoods in Tallinn turned into hellholes very fast as the USSR fell. Here’s some retro Lasnamäe from Soviet times (Lasnamäe is the newest commieblock place, it wasn’t even finished when the USSR fell):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4ROZpmOUMU
Super bleak commie blocks but at that time the USSR still had its jobs going and there’s some strange retro commie optimism in that bleak landscape. Then this happened…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKVhrzhAI8I
…and big chunks of the place were left in half finished state. All the Soviet provided jobs disappeared, leaving these neighborhoods full of mostly Russians who no longer had an economic purpose to be there. People with education, intelligence or something else that you can sell escaped, leaving the commie built neighborhoods to complete social collapse in the 1990s. (And it’s not just Russians in dysfunction there but it’s Russian heavy for the obvious reason that these commie neighborhoods were built to be filled with Russians.) A ton of people there had nothing else to do than drink or do drugs so you get this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNxV087tQ84
Older commie block Soviet neighborhoods like Mustamäe were no better, in some ways even more shocking as in that construction everything falls apart when no one is doing any repairs at all and nothing is being maintained. Lots of stuff there still looks like run down poverty scenes, eg.
https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustam%C3%A4e#/media/Tiedosto:Mustamae_Sopruse_pst_Busstop.jpeg
You can’t find anything like this in Finland, Sweden etc. You can have much more dysfunction in some Swedish immigrant ghetto but somehow the economy seems to handle maintaining everything in good repair so the dysfunctional immigrant ghettos around Stockholm look much wealthier than the less crime ridden commie block neighborhoods in Tallinn. But it’s all improving from the 1990s when it was all run down, much worse than this, and the poverty facades will soon disappear completely.
I have to admit that Helsinki is not very interesting. It was a fishing village with a naval fortress before the 19th century and it’s only interesting unless you want to see that naval fortress (which is actually cool but has been turned into a total tourist trap) or if you have nostalgia for what was basically a 19th century Romanov hobby project (but then, since “old” Helsinki is mini St Petersburg, why not just go to St Petersburg instead?).
The small countries of the eastern Baltic makes a nice package tour, though, since you can see so much varied influences in a small space – Catholic, Poland-influenced Lithuania, German influenced Latvia, Estonia with much more Scandinavian influence and then you can easily pop in Helsinki with much more Russian influence despite much fewer Russians.
Russians, by the way, don’t want to go to “glories of communism” museums either. We have one of those in Finland…
http://lenin.fi/?page_id=151&lang=en
Russian tourists seem to be much fewer in Finland and Estonia since Crimea.
For better or worse, no. A country full of John Boltons would self-destruct in no time and stop being a threat to others. However, when only 5% of country population are John Boltons, it becomes a long-term grave threat to itself and everybody else.
Tourists with money have choice. Judging by where I met Russian-speaking tourists in Europe, they mostly were people with money. Poorer people go to “all-included” Turkish or Thai resorts. Since Baltics and Poland keep claiming that Crimea is Ukrainian (which it never was and never will be), Russian tourists take their custom elsewhere.
Having successfully worked in the US science since 1991, I have a lot more money than most Russian tourists. I wouldn’t go to Baltics for a different reason: those “countries” are third-rate Europe, new and not quite successful derivatives of real cultures. I’d rather see the originals, while these originals are not yet overrun by third world savages. Then, there is Asia. I liked Korea, Japan, Malaysia, and even Indonesia, although the latter is a bit too backward and Islamic for my taste. I liked even China (Beijing, Great Wall, Ming tombs, Xian, and Shanghai; many things still left to visit), although there are way too many people there and, not being Chinese, you stick out like a sore thumb. There is also Latin America (I was only in Mexico and Argentina in that neck of the woods), Africa, Polynesia, and Australia + NZ. Heck, even in Russia I can spend quite a few 2-3 week vacations visiting places I never saw before: Kamchatka, Baikal, Altai, Siberia, etc. The world is big, you can’t see it all in your short lifetime (especially considering that it’s unwise to leave your lab unsupervised for more than 3 weeks per year).
Lviv people can joke (there is a cafe serving “meat of Moskal” – I’ll bet you will claim people there are really cannibals who eat Russians).
Check HIV and STD rates for reality.
I know that normal Ukrainians (in contrast to “patriotic” nitwits) have a good sense of humor. Moreover, just like Russians and Spaniards, they tend to prefer black humor. I was born in Lvov and grew up in Ukraine when it was (or at least appeared to be) mostly normal.
As to HIV and STD rates, if you believe Ukrainian stats, I have a bridge to sell you.
Actually, it was a joke and not even a real place:
https://dyvys.info/2016/12/08/skandal-u-merezhi-chy-isnuye-persha/
PR project for ad agency:
https://zaxid.net/persha_lvivska_hvoydarnya_viyavilas_prproektom_reklamnogo_agentstva_n1412580
:::::
Thanks for demonstrating your ignorance and gullibility regarding Ukraine again.
And you’ve lived in TN for decades, near a huge GM auto plant, and insisted all US automakers had left the USA. You don’t know what’s under your very nose and say nonsense.
LOL, but you though the ad agency prank about the whore cafe was real. 🙂
HIV stats run by UN.
If you sincerely believe that the UN has staff to collect independent info, rather than simply relying on local stats, I have two bridges to sell you. Hurry to get volume discount.
UN tricked by Ukrainian stats, Anon from TN who believes fake ads not tricked.
Oxford University:
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2018/01/09/1701447115.full.pdf
“We investigated the movement of HIV-infected people within Ukraine before and during the conflict. We analyzed HIV-1 subtype-A pol nucleotide sequences sampled during 2012–2015 from 427 patients of 24 regional AIDS centers and used phylogeographic analysis to reconstruct virus movement among different locations in Ukraine. We then tested for correlations between reported PWID behaviors and reconstructed patterns of virus spread. Our analyses suggest that Donetsk and Lugansk, two cities not controlled by the Ukrainian government in eastern Ukraine, were significant exporters of the virus to the rest of the country
In general, we might expect an increased export of HIV from eastern Ukraine (historically the most heavily HIV-affected region) ”
The East location is heavily affected by HIV: 24% of all nationally registered HIV cases, and the largest number of HIV-positive PWID (45,000), live or have lived in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Donetsk is the largest city in the area and has some of the highest HIV prevalences in Ukraine among PWID (33.5% in 2015), sex workers (17% in 2015), and the general population [0.9% of pregnant women were HIV-positive in Donetsk in 2015
:::::::::::
Donbas: HIV rate of Africa, birth rate of Japan.
Ukrainians (and Russians too) should be careful not to sleep with Sovoks from Donbas.
Yea, tell me more about “scientific papers”. Even pharmaceutical companies (employing people who are certainly not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier) tumbled to the fact that many scientific papers are not reproducible (in plain English – fakes). They found the hard way that the higher the impact of a journal, the lower the probability that the paper published there is true. There is even a joke among biologists “even though it was published in Nature, it might still be true”. LOL.
Why would even you want that retard re-elected to begin with? He’s comprehensively failed, or backed out on every single issue that got him elected.
Most people don’t care about politics that much when picking tourist destinations. Since Crimea it’s harder for Russians to travel to Finland or Estonia with the exchange rate and harder to get visas, Russia also counter-sanctioned a lot of goods so they can’t shop in Finland the same way anymore.
The sanctions brewed up some strange stuff, like cheese smuggling (apparently there’s a black market for basic super market Finnish cheese in St Petersburg)
https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/oltermanni-salakuljettaja-jai-kiinni-tullissa-yritti-vieda-lahes-sata-kiloa-juustoa-rajan-yli/6531444#gs.ixpayi
LOL, Donbas Sovok doesn’t believe in scientific papers, UN stats, etc.
But gets fooled by PR stunt by ad agency:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/iran-escalation/#comment-3273848
I can assure you it’s the #2 issue in Australia at the very least, since the 1990’s the anti-immigration “One Nation” party has been the most important minor party in Australian politics, despite it being founded and led for the former female owner of a Fish-and-Chip shop.
In the 2000 election there was the “Children Overboard” scandal, where the Liberal (the centre-right Party in Australia) claimed asylum seekers attempting to arrive by boat had deliberately thrown their children overboard to facilitate their rescue. Anyway, it won the Liberals the Election against Labour, whose lead until that point was quite narrow.
Recently there has been Bob Katter’s “Australian Party”, which bases its support on anti-immigration rhetoric, whilst espousing protectionist/paternalistic economic policies instead of Libertarian/Neoliberal cancer, similar to ‘People’s Parties” in Eastern Europe.
Actually this can be seen in Australia with Chinese/Vietnamese, as Pauline Hanson (One Nation party leader) used to rail against Australia “being swamped by Asians”, and even Australia’s ex-PM was forced by public pressure to concede that “there are some concerns regarding the… pace of Asian migration to Australia”.
Nowadays One Nation has switched its rhetoric exclusively to Muslims, as any sort of anti-Asian sentiment can no longer be repeated in polite society anymore, and would be seen as passe anyway, as they totally dominate inner-Melbourne and Sydney to the point they are launching their own political candidates. Almost all of the intense construction boom (in Melbourne in particular) is Chinese financed, usually as blatant as the enormous banners draping the scaffolding being covered in Chinese Characters, with a footnote of the company’s name in Latin letters underneath.
Indians however, are generally ignored in elections, as they’re not violent (just unpleasant to be around), don’t represent a ‘hostile’ government (a bit rich when Australia’s economy is utterly dependent on them), and generally take low-level jobs and hold minimal political clout, unlike Chinese.
https://media.dyvys.info/2016/12/41e099532f-696×435.jpg
Photo of AP who uncovers more fake news that Janissary falls for! 🙂
Дивись.info – https://dyvys.info/2016/12/08/skandal-u-merezhi-chy-isnuye-persha/
In my opinion, JL’s observations are closer to reality than yours, which however were quite legitimate as late as 5 years ago.
https://twitter.com/Irkutyanin1/status/1138648141237051395
I was very encouraged to see even post-Soviet dumps such as Bryansk having been beautified and SWPLfied.
It’s worth noting that JL actually lives in Russia and travels about it quite a bit, whereas I get the impression you spend more time in Israel, London, and other foreign destinations these days.
Pozsony (Hungarian name for Bratislava, official name before 1919) had over 50,000 inhabitants (most of them German) within its then city borders (whatever those were) in 1890, and an 1890s encyclopedia lists several factories (including a tobacco factory, where its mentioned that it employed 1,050 people, so not a small workshop; three machine building factories; an ammunitions factory; an “Alfred Nobel dynamite” factory, specifically mentioned to be at the outskirts of the city; textile etc. factories; a university and a few other institutions of higher learning; several secondary schools; a number of banks and other financial institutions; etc. etc.), and it also specifically mentioned a certain “Old Town” within it. By 1910, its population (again, within the then city borders) swell to nearly 80,000, with a German plurality and a nearly equivalent number of Hungarians. So I doubt that the pre-1919 city was what is the Old Town now. (Unless the Old Town is really huge and is vastly larger than the original Old Town.)
I have zero information regarding Salner’s ethnicity, merely thought it interesting that an academic of Slovak citizenship holds those opinions, when you wrote that those opinions were only held in Hungary.
Another interesting point is that the name Bratislava was created in 1837 by a Slovak scholar called Pavel Jozef Šafárik. However, he believed that the names Braslavespruch and Brezalauspruch referred to present day Bratislava (there’s no evidence for this), and that this was based on the name of a Slav prince (a vassal of the Franks) called Braslav, whose name he mistakenly believed to have been Bratislav. Anyway, the name was rarely used before 1919. Can you translate this part from the Slovak Wikipedia:
Why would even you want that retard re-elected to begin with?
He is the last chance to prevent civilization from disappearing from the face of the earth.
There will not have been improvement in many of cities which were becoming worse. I said some examples above e.g. Asbest, Tagil, Kurgan, since in 2015, but other people can write here others.
You can laugh about my selection, but my parents remember at the time of their youth (they do not come from there, but they remember), how Tagil was an attractive, groomed city and flourishing. Now it is quite opposite. Of course, compared to middle 1990s, it will be far safer and less collapsing. But this improvement is more like present reduction from its cosmically high rate of decline in the 1990s, than end of decline.
Well it sounds good in Pskov. But I was not in Pskov.
Where my parents live, there is constant investment and construction. Improvement is not everywhere or generally very beautifying, but overall there is a lot of improvement. And the most impressive and luxurious residential construction is in places where tourists or visitors will not even see (unless maybe they are lost driving on the way to Ikea).
However, my point – it is not like this in every city.
When I visited Israel last year, I stay with my Israeli friend in Bat Yam. He immigrated to there from Saratov. I have not been in Saratov personally (maybe someone here knows?). But he says it is shit and deteriorates. So here is probably another example of a deteriorating city, and this is a major city.
Now, the funny thing is that the city where he lives in Israel (Bat Yam), is shit. And he says Bat Yam is great. So it’s possible his rating system of Saratov is even understating its situation.
London and Israel are socially opposite barometers, when it refers to Russian-speaking people you can generally meet. In Israel, more are arriving (escaping) from declining and less pleasant cities. On the extreme, that’s why they receive so many immigrants from Donetsk. On the less extreme, it’s why they receive a lot of immigrants from Chelyabinsk.
–
As for what we were originally talking about. I am sure AP is correct about Lvov. Lvov will be a city with unusually high potential for the future, for various reasons (beautiful architecture, location). But I doubt, he is representatively sampling.
Isn’t this perhaps more result of change in a balance of power?
I read a similar story about Japanese in Brazil. When Japan was weak, Japanese were considered one of the lowest nationalities, and were imported as agricultural workers.
However, after post-war economic development in Japan, there was a total reversal of social position of Japanese in Brazil, and today they are considered the most prestigious (or one of the most prestigious) race in Brazil.
Lvov is very beautiful architecturally. Historically, it was even named “Little Paris”.
In addition, there is a very interesting intellectual, cultural, scientific legacy of this city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Caf%C3%A9
I’m not connected to the smallholders and journeymen of Smolandia (Småland) who constitute the bulk of Swedish-Americans. And in any case politics are saner in North Dakota (the most Scandinavian state) than they are in neighboring Minnesota. But certainly the troublesome political proclivities of any immigrant ethnic group must be addressed.
The correct choice in 1992 was of course H. Ross Perot. Realistically GHW Bush and Bill Clinton were quite similar with the main difference being Mideast policy (GHW the last President to seriously challenge Israel) and stylistic (GHW had a Greatest Generation sense of propriety, dignity, and patriotism that the Baby Boomer Bill Clinton lacked).
After all GHW was one of the architects of both NAFTA and bringing China into the WTO, two signature “accomplishments” of the Clinton administration. Perhaps GHW would’ve been more restrained on Yugoslavia and NATO expansion.
This info is for humans, not for Ukies.
Here are the links about numerous retractions:
http://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-leaderboard/top-10-most-highly-cited-retracted-papers/
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/what-massive-database-retracted-papers-reveals-about-science-publishing-s-death-penalty
Here are some views on why high-profile journals have more retractions than medium-impact journals:
https://www.nature.com/news/why-high-profile-journals-have-more-retractions-1.15951
https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-faq/transparencyindex/
Even Wiki acknowledged the massive problem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retraction_index
Remember, retractions follow only when the authors are caught red-handed. Many untrue papers are never retracted, which does not make them true.
Sorry for being unpatriotic, I was born in Lvov, but the truth is the truth. “Little” is the key word there. Paris it is not, it does not even measure up to Prague.
As to intellectual and scientific legacy, there was a Lwow-Warsaw school of math. Today there is math in Warsaw, although not first rate, but there is much less, if any, in Lvov. As far as biochemistry and cell biology go (the areas that I am most familiar with), Poland as a country is somewhere in the 50-s, whereas Ukraine is nowhere (somewhere at at the level of Cameroon).
Tagil is the russian city that’s most similar to Donetsk. Russia’s pastiche of ‘little britain’ made fun of it.
https://youtu.be/qUI9vLf4k0w
Nevertheless there’s YouTube footage of the reverbaratory furnace chimneys being blown up, and not just left derelict, due to replacement by electric arc furnaces which is evidence that someone reasonably high up the political/economic food chain gives a toss about the place (if you’re a metal bashing town, at least do it well, with the most modern equipment), even if the electric furnaces were most likely sourced from Germany. As someone who cares about air quality, that’s surely an improvement.
https://youtu.be/JuMT2uWnK5w
Horrors such as this have probably stopped (bypass the paywall whichever way you please):
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=16405&PAGE=1
It was almost identical, and much more densely populated. Large parts of old Bratislava were torn down and turned into parks and river front. For example the district under the castle was completely demolished in the 60’s, replaced with roads, bridge and parks. The city center was also depopulated as office buildings/shopping were built. This is similar to most cities in the 20th century – often the central areas have less people (e.g. Vienna). People used to live on top of each other.
People like Salner exist in all societies – an old bitter revanchist whose audience is abroad (and in English and German). It tells us something about the totalitarian oppression that he was able to study and publish. Commies were basically ‘internationalist’.
The wiki (another ‘objective’ source) says that official name changed in 1919 to Bratislava, the text says nothing new. The 9th century texts for Brezaulspurch an Devin (Dowina) are well documented, there was also a massive battle there in 907. It was revived in 1830’s and adopted as a name by Slovak national movement – they used it in all of their texts, newspapers, etc… Anything can be questioned and the context gets lost. But the silly statement that ‘Bratislava’ name was somehow invented by in 1919 is wrong. Or one-sided. There was more to it.
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I can take pictures like the ones above in most Western countries without much effort. Or worse. The reality is that most people are pre-conditioned to ignore it in their home countries – or they literally never go there. But when you walk around Paris suburbs, London slums, Brussels, you can see drug addicts, people sleeping on the street. Recently I saw a white guy face down in front of a shopping mall entrance (English city), everyone just pretended not to see it. If I took a picture it would look a lot worse than what you put above.
My point is that creating a narrative of this-or-that system leading to dirt, drugs and decay is almost always based on conscious cherry-picking. These pictures can be (unfortunately) taken almost everywhere.
I’m not sure about scandinavia, but urban decay in the late 80s-early 90s in the cities of northen England that had suffered de-industrialisation was absolutely horrific. New-Labour stopped most of the visible rot in the centres and projects/council-estates by hosing these areas with copious amounts of taxpayers’ money. Having said that, they also subjected the, privately owned, inner suburbs of the same cities to Ceaucescu-style demolition in an attempt to replicate the massive house-price inflation seen in the southeast at the time, destroying thousands of cheap, victorian terraces: scumbags.
It is like saying “my car does not even look as beautiful as a Ferrari”.
Lvov has so much beautiful architecture, which most cities would dream to have. In addition, it has a historical legacy as a centre of intelligentsia, science and literature.
Which is embarrassing its present cultural level – once famous city of Banach and Ulam, is now becoming infamous for people like Vladimir Vyatrovich.
I don’t know Donetsk and was never there, but until 2014 Donetsk was surely one of the most important, wealthy and successful cities in Ukraine, and simply one of the best cities there?
–
I discuss Tagil as an example of a city which has deteriorated in postsoviet years. It was remembered as quite attractive in soviet years, and yet now it is unambiguously ungroomed, shabby and creepy. I’m not saying the cultural level of the residents is noticeably low (at least on a visit), or that it is the worst city you can visit – but it is unambiguously less attractive externally, than how old people can remember it was in soviet years.
But cities which have deteriorated since the end of the USSR, are not something so unusual and unique. Most cities improve on balance, but net declining ones are not particularly unknown at all.
Overall ecological situation in Tagil will be still very bad though, and it is a bit known for that as well.
If Vyatrovich were the only problem Lvov has, it’s d be lucky city: after all, every village has its idiot. The decay started long time ago: in 1941 Bandera followers organized a pogrom of Jews, Poles, and everyone else who was not as mentally retarded as them. Funny thing is, German army stopped that.
After WWII Lvov was just a provincial city of a Ukrainian province of the USSR. Although its University was still better than most regional universities, it never rose to the level that it had before WWII. So much for culture and science. Svidomism and promotion of morons continued in Soviet times: Ukrainian commies were dumber and more dogmatic than Russian commies. In fact, Farion is a typical example of a Ukrainian commie, now “patriotic” nationalist: dumb, ignorant, and proud of it (the fact that she is uglier than a crocodile is just a cherry on the cake). The process accelerated after 1991, so Vyatrovich and his ilk that we have now is an inevitable result of decades of dumbing down.
Lvov had certain charm and potential. Even in Soviet times there were lots of small cafes with excellent coffee, tasty and varied sweets, candy produced by Lvov factory were among the best in the USSR, etc. But nobody promoted and preserved what the city had. Even in terms of language, svidomy morons never produced a good dictionary of Ukrainian, which would have helped to develop the language. Instead, they proclaimed their cowherd dialect with pathetic vocabulary the only official language in their boondocks. No enemy ever did as much harm to Ukraine as svidomy “patriots”. It would take decades of reasonable government to get Ukraine out of the hole they dug for it.
They’re busy preparing an attack using the tanker incident as a pretext. Could it not be obvious now that it was a false flag?
https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran-News/UN-officials-US-is-planning-a-tactical-assault-in-Iran-592832
Relevant to the topic: Trump is a delusional idiot. He just fired his own pollsters who showed him losing badly to Joe Biden. He then bizarrely lied, claiming that he was winning everywhere they were polling. Maybe impeachment should be on the table. He’s dangerous. But I wouldn’t expect Pence to be any better anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
There is a rather interesting aspect of the present situation that could be playing out regarding Iran and the United States.
It’s a bit remindful of the numerous odd little parallels (see link below) noted since 1963 between the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations. While some have seen this as mere random chance and ‘coincidental’ others have seen it as being indicative of a very bad joke being played upon humanity by some very powerful people.
The United States since its founding in 1776 has had many features about it which closely parallels ancient Rome. Indeed, land carefully chosen circa 1790 to construct it’s capital city (Washington DC) upon, had been called ‘Rome’ complete with its own Tiber running through it. (see links below regarding Rome)
Accordingly, many of Washington DC’s monuments are modeled upon those of Rome. Amongst powerful elements of the Anglo-Saxon US power elites and hangers on, there has long existed an ideology that the United States is the ‘New Rome’, and will dominate the world as such.
Interestingly, just three months ago this past March in Jerusalem, Netanyahu would pointedly refer to the United States as ‘the New Rome’ while thanking US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Netanyahu in these same brief remarks to Pompeo would also stress the perceived threat the state of Israel felt in regards to Iran. (see link below regarding these remarks)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Triumvirate#/media/File%3AFirst_Triumvirate_of_Caesar%2C_Crassius_and_Pompey.jpg
First Triumvirate from L to R: Julius Caeser, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Pompey the Great
Now, back in the very late Roman Republic, there was something called the ‘First Triumvirate’ which informally ruled over Rome. This consisted of three men: the Roman billionaire and real estate speculator Marcus Licinius Crassus, his protege the lawyer, politician, and soldier Julius Caeser, and the politician and soldier, Pompey the Great.
Crassus would ultimately meet his demise along with his legions when he made a disastrous decision to launch a military campaign against Parthia (present day Iran).
Now only Julius Caeser and Pompey were running Rome. They would engage in a power struggle (civil war) in which Caeser defeated Pompey. Pompey at age 57 would meet his end shortly after by way of his assassination in the Middle East (Egypt).
This left only Julius Caeser whom would be proclaimed ‘dictator for life’, thus marking the end of the Roman Republic, and heralding the birth of the Roman Empire.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Secretary_Pompeo_Poses_for_Photo_With_Advisor_Kushner%2C_President_Trump%2C_Advisor_Ivanka_Trump_and_Vice_President_Pence_%2841854393881%29.jpg/1280px-Secretary_Pompeo_Poses_for_Photo_With_Advisor_Kushner%2C_President_Trump%2C_Advisor_Ivanka_Trump_and_Vice_President_Pence_%2841854393881%29.jpg
Photo-op of L to R: Jared Kushner, Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Mike Pence
This is where it gets really weird if you don’t already see where this is going.
President Donald Trump, his Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are three of the most politically powerful people in Washington DC today.
The billionaire real estate speculator President Trump, straining at the bit to attack Iran, has obvious parallels with Marcus Crassus. Indeed, a search of ‘Trump Crassus’ will find quite a few Anglo-sphere establishment journals which compare Trump directly to Crassus since his entry into the 2016 election. (see example linked below)
Jared Kushner, though (for now) without military experience, is Trump’s protege, has real and significant political power as his senior adviser, and has some legal training having a JD.
The Italian ancestried Mike Pompeo’s sirname is a literal derivative of the Latin name Pompey. Pompeo is a retired military officer, former Director of the CIA, and current Secretary of State.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_of_Titus#/media/File%3ARom%2C_Titusbogen%2C_Triumphzug_3.jpg
The Arch of Titus (Rome) – ‘The Spoils of Jerusalem’
Wouldn’t it be ironic if Jared Kushner, as a modern day Jewish Julius Caeser, rose to the highest office of the land to rule over the ‘New Rome’? And, could this be perceived by some as a symbolic (and perhaps not so symbolic) ‘revenge’ against the actions of an old Rome?
I won’t delve here into Jared Kushner’s insistance that 666 West Fifth Street in New York be his company headquarters as the entire thing then becomes just too bizarre. 😉
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln–Kennedy_coincidences_urban_legend
https://alison-morton.com/2015/06/21/rome-and-washington-dc/
https://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/the_new_rome_or_the_united_states_of_the_world_1853
https://www.state.gov/remarks-with-israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-before-dinner/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Triumvirate
https://www.macleans.ca/politics/washington/the-donald-trump-of-ancient-rome/
I’m not sure about Donetsk: I’ve never visited either. The one thing I’d noticed about it was that in Yerevan and Tbilisi (pre 2014 that is), long distance marshrutkas would advertise it on flyposters as a destination alongside Moscow, Petersburg, and Russian border towns (Volgograd, Stavropol etc), which obviously indicated that there was money to be made there. Wizzair started flying there about three years after kiev. AP will come along and say that this was a vulgar, moneyed upper-middle class able to hire tradesmen to do renovations and build dachas, whilst the rest of the population stagnated. There was, and probably still is, a lot of very unfashionable smokestack industry there; it’s one of the last places in the world that still uses open hearth furnaces for steel making, so the money made has probably been skimmed off and not reinvested. Still, steel has to be made somewhere, and not everywhere can be silicon valley. The poor people who work/worked in those plants prabably get/got about $400 pcm, so still highly profitable, even though antinquated. I suspect that the aids rate and other social ills are a result of urbanization; the population of the donbass probably reside in satellite towns of the major cities, so still urban. I can’t imagine N/Mikoliev or Odessa being much better.
“Tactical Assault” is now a new name with “Coming out of very avoidable fight you started yourself with a bleeding asshole”
I hope the guys in land bases in the Middle East have good insurance.
Pleased based Putler, if you really do read this blog, please send military assets to Iran ASAP to prevent war, just like you did in Syria. The Americans are planning an attack as we speak. Someone has to stand up to this madman. Someone has to do something. Perhaps coordinated economic and political sanctions on the United States in response to war – coordinated with China and the EU? … someone has to stop these people. When you look at a map, it is clear what the Empire is doing: Syria (attacked to prevent a Russia pipeline, IIRC); sanctioning Germany to prevent Nordstream II (Russia gas en lieu of imperial gas); Venezuela (largest proven oil reserves); Iran (large oil reserves + defiance of the US among nations in the region that have oil). They are trying to seize all the world’s oil resources to keep the rest of the world dependent on their oil as China rises to overthrow them. They are desperate. They are dangerous. Can Russia, China, the EU, Japan, India, and the rest of the world let that happen? Perhaps a joint naval taskforce of Russian and Chinese ships to deliver aid to Iran as a show of force? Amen.
The pics didn’t come out right in my previous post (#224). If the moderator’s not able to fix that I hope he’ll indulge my reposting the pics here where they should come out okay.
The first pic on top is the First Triumvirate of Rome, L to R, Julius Caeser, Roman real estate tychoon Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Pompey the Great.
Just below in comparison is a photo-op pic also L to R, Jared Kushner, Mike Pompeo, Real Estate Speculator and Pres Donald Trump, [Ivanka Trump, and Mike Pence]
Bottom pic is the Arch of Titus (Rome) – ‘The Spoils of Jerusalem’
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Rom%2C_Titusbogen%2C_Triumphzug_3.jpg/800px-Rom%2C_Titusbogen%2C_Triumphzug_3.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Secretary_Pompeo_Poses_for_Photo_With_Advisor_Kushner%2C_President_Trump%2C_Advisor_Ivanka_Trump_and_Vice_President_Pence_%2841854393881%29.jpg/800px-Secretary_Pompeo_Poses_for_Photo_With_Advisor_Kushner%2C_President_Trump%2C_Advisor_Ivanka_Trump_and_Vice_President_Pence_%2841854393881%29.jpg
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_of_Titus#/media/File%3ARom%2C_Titusbogen%2C_Triumphzug_3.jpg
Kushner is no Caesar.
Still,…
…this is uncanny.
Yeah it is.
Pompey was 57 when assassinated in the Mid-East (Egypt). Pompeo at 55 is close in age, with about a year and a half difference there.. Pompeo was first in his class at West Point, served as a tank platoon leader in West Germany. Pompey was a General. Facially Pompeo actually looks a lot like Pompey.
Parallels between Crassus and Trump already noted. Crassus was the patron of Julius Caeser when the latter was just starting out, helping him out financially and politically.
Jared Kushner parallels with Julius Caeser in that Trump has been his patron politically as he is just starting out (ie appointment as Trump’s senior adviser and additional office). Both Kushner and Caeser had limited involvement with the legal field, the former having a JD, the latter practiced law for a period. Each was the youngest of the three. Some similarities in appearance betwen the two.
Admittedly the military aspect is not there for Kushner at present. However, as Trump’s senior adviser he has real political power and significant influence.
Perhaps Kushner just has to grow into the role. 🙂
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/First_Triumvirate_of_Caesar%2C_Crassius_and_Pompey.jpg
First Triumvirate L to R: Julius Caeser, Marcus Licinius Crassus, Pompey the Great
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Secretary_Pompeo_Poses_for_Photo_With_Advisor_Kushner%2C_President_Trump%2C_Advisor_Ivanka_Trump_and_Vice_President_Pence_%2841854393881%29.jpg/800px-Secretary_Pompeo_Poses_for_Photo_With_Advisor_Kushner%2C_President_Trump%2C_Advisor_Ivanka_Trump_and_Vice_President_Pence_%2841854393881%29.jpg
L to R: Jared Kushner, Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump, [and Ivanka Trump, Mike Pence]
Apologies for O.T. guys.
Some quotes from MSM a couple of hours ago:
Hardline/smart/heroic fraction within Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps pulled the stunt without getting clearance from the top, perhaps.
I had never been in Donetsk. However, it is always written that, until 2014, Donetsk was a very successful and beloved city, by its residents. Moreover, the way its former residents write still about it today, reflects its former popularity.
In terms of statistics, Donetsk region was the second most economically successful region in Ukraine after Kiev, had the second most wealthy people after Kiev, it had the highest quality of life in Ukraine after Kiev, and the most educated population in Ukraine after Kiev. This is how it was before 2014 (obviously nowadays, all this has been lost).
Problem is, the crew and the owner say otherwise. The crew says that the tanker was hit by a projectile above waterline. That’s exactly why it did not sink.
Bottom line is, nobody except perpetrators (the US, KSA, and Israel) is even pretending to buy this false flag. Mind you, the second false flag in the Persian Gulf in a few weeks, and a dud (again).
Most of the world vividly remembers the vial with laundry detergent that Colin Powell was shaking at the UN to “prove” that Iraq had WMD. The US and Israel need a lot better and much more believable false flag. Ask your curator whether the third one is coming soon.
Might be they’ve got other plans for him in the works. 😉
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cc/Omen_III_the_final_conflict.jpg
Some things about Jared Kushner are just plain…umm…odd.
Jared Kushner’s 666 Fifth Avenue business headquarters with primary tenant Millenium Management. (See link below)
First definition of ‘Millenium’ according to Webster’s Dictionary:
Millenium: The thousand years mentioned in Revelation 20 during which holiness is to prevail and Christ is to reign on earth.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/666_Fifth_Avenue
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/millennium
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omen_III:_The_Final_Conflict
I am sure Trump knows no history, but he might repeat the fate of Crassus, nonetheless.
They got 5.4% of the vote in the most recent Australian election.
Further proof that right-wing nationalist/anti-immigration parties are never going to get any real political traction. One Nation is a long established high-profile party with a leader who is a major media celebrity and they can only persuade 1 in 20 Australians to vote for them. That’s how big an issue immigration is. When it comes to voting it’s a complete non-issue.
When it comes to voting the issue that matters to most people is money. Which party is offering me the bigger bribe? The so-called leftist parties bribe poorer voters with more handouts. The so-called right-wing parties bribe richer voters with tax cuts.
Immigration is just not an issue for the vast majority of voters.
So assuming he wins in 2020, what are you going to do in 2024? The disappearance of civilisation might be delayed by four years but what’s the point?
I do agree with you about the urgency of the situation and the grimness of future prospects. I agree entirely. But
The problem with Trump is that he’s not going to do anything whatsoever to prevent the destruction of civilisation. Nothing at all.
Would you be able to, kindly, provide a link to where I can watch and hear a member of the crew saying that?
Hahaha…owner, a?
Those types would never lie, a?
It’s reasonable that nobody sane should trust Washington. But trusting “owners”, well…..
The funny part in all this is that nobody, really, wants the truth. Nobody.
Whatever flew into that ship must’ve come from somewhere. That all that surveillance there didn’t pick that up is not even funny.
I am sure that around,say, 1000 people at least, know exactly what happened.
This exercise is actually perfect. Shows the paradigm we live in. Here it is:
Majority of people, “normies”, don’t even know it happened.
TPTBs are able to not provide proper information in spite of all the..ahm..”free media”.
People who would like to see what really happened can’t, in spite of “information highway” and that place being monitored by a lot of players.
Facts really don’t matter anymore.
Where did you find such statistics?
It was indeed wealthy (coal and steel provided hard currency), otherwise it was a disaster.
Prior to 2014, low life expectancy, high crime rate, high HIV rate, low birth rate combined with high % of out of wedlock births, high abortion rate, etc.
2012 life expectancy:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/UkrLifeExpectancy.PNG
2010 robbery:
https://i.imgur.com/yJLWMKs.png
tuberculopsis, 2010:
https://i.imgur.com/siWW5ii.png
The facts are simple: Israel and KSA are scared shitless of Iran (as Persians are not Arabs, when they shoot, they hit the target) and want the US to fight their war for them. It is, indeed, symptomatic that even ship owners have more credibility than the US government.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/owner-says-kokuka-courageous-tanker-crew-saw-flying-objects-before-attack-suggesting-ship-wasnt-damaged-by-mines/2019/06/14/177c0c92-8e5e-11e9-b6f4-033356502dce_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6303415d1a91
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/14/tanker-owner-contradicts-us-account-of-gulf-attack/
Well, we came to the point when even used car salesmen have higher credibility. There is a good reason for that: the last time the truth came from the US government was … not in my lifetime. Besides, when three well-known liars, the US, Israel, and KSA, say the same thing, you can be 200% sure it’s a lie. And that’s a fact.
LOL, so scientific journals are worthless, UN stats worthless, but random internet PR stunts are the truth in the Sovok’s mind.
Authors described how HIV spreads from Donetsk to other parts of Ukraine (mostly the South and Kiev). Published by the American Academy of Sciences, author affiliations include Oxford University.
But random internet PR stunts are more credible.
And you live in Tennessee now, and write utter nonsense about it. Since you know nothing about where you currently live, what you write about where you once lived is even less credible.
Lviv has 800,000 people – smaller than Donetsk but a lot bigger than Luhansk. It has a much lower HIV rate.
We never bothered with that in the US. Neighborhoods are largely left to decay, while considerable amounts of money has went into downtown developments like sports stadiums; and to university campuses.
The local public university is steeped in debt from its building boom, surrounded by speculative student housing for an enrollment increase that never happened.
A bit more on Jared Kushner.
According to the New York Times link below, a couple weeks ago both him and Pompeo represented the United States at Bilderberg.
Kushner’s office is the physically closest of anyone’s to Trump’s at the White House.
Jared Kushner’s right at the center of power of the United States.
[Interestingly as an aside, all three of Trump’s senior advisers are Jewish: Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Stephen Miller.]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/President_Trump%27s_First_100_Days-_69_%2833573171263%29.jpg/800px-President_Trump%27s_First_100_Days-_69_%2833573171263%29.jpg
Kushner with Trump during the Syria missile strike operation – (April, 2017)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/world/pompeo-bilderberg-meeting.html
Not in 1991 when I was there. It was decayed, nothing going on, long lines for simple things, crumbling, etc. Safe though, unlike parts of Tallinn in those days. People were decent.
One can compare for themselves the difference between Sovok and Ukrainian Lviv:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=xBi0zk9GGrk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L0OVrSw3Ow
Sovoks didn’t. Ukrainians do.
Remind me how many top chess players emerged form Lviv after Sovok fell?
Depending on source, Lviv has Ukraine’s third or fifth top university:
https://www.4icu.org/ua/
http://www.abrostudy.com/info/ranking/top-10-universities-in-ukraine-2018/
Internationally:
Lviv is ranked above some Russian universities such as Saratov State, Voronezh State, South Urals State (Chelyabinsk), Lodz Polytech in Poland, etc.
https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/eeca-rankings/2018
Overall Lviv is in 101st place out of 300 universities in eastern Europe, Turkey and the former USSR. So above average.
Kiev, the top one in Ukraine, is in 34th place. It outranks all the universities in the Balkans (Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia), Latvia and Slovakia. Three schools in Poland are better.
While this is not great, it is not the picture of Africa that you describe. The most African thing about Ukraine, in fact, is the HIV rate in Donetsk.
Sounds impressive for the uninitiated, i.e., those who don’t know that “Ukraine’s third or fifth top university” is at the level of Shithole community college in the US boondocks. LOL.
Man can’t stick to the script.
‘SENATOR TOM COTTON CALLS FOR ‘RETALIATORY MILITARY STRIKE’ AGAINST IRAN AFTER TANKER ATTACKS’
Not yet, damn it. There’ll be a bigger attack; I promise.
Yout analysis of the possibilities from Iran’s point of view.
‘…1. Iran do something, and America attack militarily. (Worst scenario).
2. Iran do nothing, economy continues under sanctions, and Trump is re-elected (second worst scenario).
3. Iran do something, and America does not attack militarily, oil prices raise, – and Trump is not re-elected (best scenario)
And then from America’s point of view…
This is like analyzing a choice from the peasantry’s point of view, and from the merchant’s point of view — but not from the king’s point of view.
What’s the best scenario from Israel’s point of view?
Actually it ranks above various provincial Russian universities such as Southern Urals (Chelyabinsk), Saratov State, Voronezh State, etc.:
https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/eeca-rankings/2018
Are there any stats for urbanization in general. I get the impression that in Western Ukraine, with a few exceptions, there are the cities, then deep countryside. In the donbass there’s lots of, probably not very nice, towns with around 50k population where most people in those oblasts live.
Why do you think is 1 (assuming that 1 means the defeat of the Iranians) the preference of Israeli leadership? Trump does nothing for nothing, he and the foreign policy establishment including Jews (plus the US military) would insist they were entitled to substantial concessions from Israel on the Palestinian issue, if America were to topple the Iranian regime and make the country harmless.
The Palestinians–especially the West Bank Palestinian–issue is the real danger to Israel, because unless Israel is willing to take the heat for expulsions, resolving it means the end of Israel as a Jewish state. The Israeli leadership are happy with having Iran as a threat to Israel, it’s their excuse why they cannot make concessions to the Palestinians and must continue with the supposedly temporary status of Palestinians.
I don’t think there is much of a long term Israeli ‘US war to crush Iran plan’ in Israel at all, the people in charge are mainly concerned with short term political considerations keeping things as they are. and the basically Jewish neocon movement takes its cue from Israeli leadership.
Iran is not going to try and fight America openly, their secret services have got overconfident after getting away with sneaky cat’s paw terrorism in Eastern Iraq, and I am sure the Iranians responsible for the recent mine attacks on tankers have been severely reprimanded.
When all is said and done, American capital and the American advances in technology resulting from all the free-money-aided development of fracking has rebalanced the correlation of world force away from oil exporting countries. Iran is a paper tiger that it suits Israel to keep around.
Crassus, Ceasar, Pompey etc. were great men. At least compared to these nobodies. Ceasar’s works on the Gallic War and the Civil War have literary value, and are striking in their honesty, including descriptions of several scenes of Ceasar’s own troops panicking and occasionally Ceasar’s bad decisions. These men led their troops in battle and took enormous personal risks, with Crassus famously dying in his vain search for glory. Meanwhile, Trump is near illiterate and Kushner wore a designer suit under his body armor while visiting troops in Iraq. Okay, Pompeo actually served in the army, but still. This comparison is pretty ridiculous.
To be honest, those Iranians who want the regime preserved have every incentive to start the war on their own terms instead of going down without a fight.
It’s on a way smaller scale, but a similar situation the Japanese faced in 1941. And obviously the Japanese didn’t have international law (or justice, if you like) on their side. But those things don’t matter anyway.
No better example to show what a cuck Bannon is. There he is looking on from the background like a good little goy while the jews are in charge. Truly sickening, that is why the true nationalists in Europe want nothing to do with him.
So assuming he wins in 2020, what are you going to do in 2024? The disappearance of civilisation might be delayed by four years but what’s the point?
Four more years will allow the “Trump” faction of the Repubican party to consolidate control of the party and deny power to the sewer settling pond scum types like Mitt Romney. It will allow the rise of a “Trumpism” candidate that will not have Trump’s negatives and who can develop a platform that is more favorable to the working class which should be able to get 20-30% of the black vote and 30-40% of the Hispanic vote.
The problem with Trump is that he’s not going to do anything whatsoever to prevent the destruction of civilisation. Nothing at all.
Buying a little time. It’s called a rear guard action.
So, Clinton was just Bush 41 light. At least people went back to work under his presidency. Perot might have been the best choice in your estimation, but even if he had won, his presidency would have been marred in incompetence and stagnation, as he had noone in congress to support his platform (at that time party support meant a lot more than it does today).
I suspect not. Expanding US presence around the world was as much a Republican strategy as Democratic. After all, isn’t the CIA just a front for our ‘Deep State’, and the Bushes just patsies for the Bbilderberger boys (Skull & Bones)? 🙂
Bush 41 not only tried to promote ‘Chicken Kiev’ but he was the first presidential spokesperson for the ‘New World Order’ (part and parcel of ‘Chicken Kiev’). 🙁
EU is many different nations. A fractured behemoth is still fractured. Plus there is a lot of hype about western militaries that is unfounded.
Anecdotes about German troops being beat by afghan security forces or German leopard tanks performing badly during Turkeys military action in Syria. Not to mention gay and fake countries. Does Poland produce any of it’s equipment?
You are correct. Lviv oblast is 61% urban, Luhansk oblast is 87% urban. While Lviv is a lot bigger than Luhansk (800,000 vs. 425,000 people before the war), about 1.5 milli0n people live in cities in Lviv oblast vs. 2 million in Luhansk oblast.
This alone should not explain a three times higher rate of HIV in Luhansk oblast, 2.5 times higher rate of syphillis, over twice higher rate of out of wedlock births, etc..
And what exactly would Romney done differently? On immigration Trump has done worse than nothing, on foreign policy he is a total neocon, white people are being hounded as kulaks, other things like tax cuts are exactly what Romney would have done.
‘Why is 1 (assuming that means the defeat of the Iranians) the preference of Israeli leadership? ‘
You’re assuming Israel’s behavior is dictated by some rational calculus.
Of course Iran isn’t a threat to Israel — or by extension, to us. However, Israel has a pathological need for an enemy at the gates, and Iran has become the most plausible candidate. So she feels compelled to seek the ruin of Iran, and uses us, her slave and tool, to bring that about.
Curiously, it’s a different matter for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates. They have large, restive Shi’a minorities, and so a stable, militantly Shi’a state right across the Persian Gulf poses a genuine threat.
However, that isn’t our problem, and it certainly isn’t Israel’s. Moreover, there’s no justification at all for seeking to address it by starting a war with Iran.
And the beat goes on…
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1140647726209781760
I somehow think that Kushner’s life in New York and trips to Jerusalem entail more risks than Pompeo’s “military service”.
Iran, as a state, isn’t a threat to Israel, but Hezbollah, their proxy, certainly is. The anti-Iran hysteria only really started after Israel got waxed by them in 2006. That war exposed a lot of Israel’s weaknesses, political and military, and these are people not particularly inclined towards forgive and forget. Not to mention that their enmity to Iran has allowed them to develop relations with Iran’s Arab enemies, something unthinkable just a short time ago. So it’s not irrational.
Trump is complaining that Iran is going to break an agreement which he has already broken, and Europe is not keeping its part of the deal either.
The economy always recovers. Clinton deserves no credit for the great economic expansion of the 1990s, and nor does GHW deserve blame for the recession of ’90-91.
Bob Rubin in his memoirs claims that Clinton’s fiscal policy was responsible for ’90s boom by reducing interest rates, but that’s taking way too much credit. Especially since Clinton simply built on the existing Budget Enforcement Act and GHW’s deeply unpopular tax hike.
If Perot had become President there would’ve been no NAFTA, no WTO, no PNTR for China, no NATO expansion, etc.
That’s an extraordinarily optimistic scenario. Do you think the sewer settling pond scum types (and that’s a very apt label for them) will allow any of this to happen? Has Trump actually established a viable faction within the party? Would the Republican Party’s owners (the donors) support a Trumpist faction?
How does that contradict what I said? There are lots of third-rate colleges in the world, some of which have the audacity to call themselves universities. Lvov University is one of those. There are a lot fewer first-rate colleges, some of which do not call themselves Universities (e.g., MIT, CalTech).
So much discussion about which particular type of shit is shittier. Both branches of Republicratic party are that substance and smell the same.
I’d guess a war now seems more likely than not.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-18/jerusalem-post-us-bombing-iran-will-be-massive-will-be-limited-specific-target
This is quite clear.
GDP per capita 3rd highest in Ukraine, however, after Dnepropetrovskaya region and Kiev.
And on city level, Donetsk had second most wealthy people in Ukraine after Kiev.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120813005732/http://focus.ua/society/241242
This comment of me, is more ambiguous or inaccurate, because of low level of health and life expectancy there.
Here I made mistakes in my last night post.
Donetsk region was low in some forms of education (primary level, but this is not relevant).
In higher education, Donetsk is 8th out of 27th (so still significantly above average level for Ukraine, but not one of the superstar regions). In areas like technological readiness and innovativeness, 3rd and 2nd highest in Ukraine.
Donetsk was doing very well overall.
https://i.imgur.com/TyxEd9h.jpg
http://www.feg.org.ua/uploadfiles/ckfinder/files/reports/2013/FEG_report_2013_body_rus.pdf
HIV rate does not match better or worse cities – otherwise, you would assume e.g. Ekaterinburg is one of the worst city in Russia, when it’s one of the best.
Here we have many factors for an HIV epidemic, including geographical ones (position relative to Silk Road from Afghanistan), response of local government to heroin rehabilitation, etc.
Birth rate, more often, is inversely correlated to income and productivity, both on international level, and on regional level within the same country.
So I don’t see the relevance of this.
If we would look at regional comparison in Russian Federation, for example, fertility rate in Tuva is around 130% higher than Moscow.
Clearly no.
http://www.feg.org.ua/uploadfiles/ckfinder/files/reports/2013/FEG_report_2013_body_rus.pdf
And if we talk about city, rather than region. I can’t say beyond images (perhaps someone knows the city here?) – in images, centre of Donetsk looked attractive, clean and prosperous (for regional standards).
Poor performance in a poorly led war of choice in Afghanistan (with many contradictory requirements and zero political will to do what it takes) is not a good proxy for whether Russia would be able to overrun Europe. (Except the Baltics, which would be easy, due to geography and logistics.) Even worse to expect Europe to be dominated by Russia while Russia is bogged down in a war of occupation in Ukraine. Expecting Europe to just give up after Russia occupies Ukraine is a serious misreading of the European mind, regardless of country. Expecting the same to happen due to economic blackmail by a hostile power (Russia is considered to be such) is an even more serious misreading of the European mindset.
1) Turks used the tanks exceptionally poorly.
2) Those tanks were obsolete models produced some 40 years ago, upgraded to late 1980s standards.
Yes, Poland has a relatively well developed defense industry. (Unlike Hungary, where other than a few trucks we can produce nothing for our military, and now trying to re-establish production of small arms and ammo for small arms.)
Yes because the UN has knowledge of top secret US military operations. More example of the decline in Jewish intelligence that they would cook up such poor disinformation.
Europe has said no, except those useless odds and sods in Westminster and Trump has already declared the tanker attack a minor event.
‘Iran, as a state, isn’t a threat to Israel, but Hezbollah, their proxy, certainly is. The anti-Iran hysteria only really started after Israel got waxed by them in 2006. That war exposed a lot of Israel’s weaknesses, political and military, and these are people not particularly inclined towards forgive and forget. Not to mention that their enmity to Iran has allowed them to develop relations with Iran’s Arab enemies, something unthinkable just a short time ago. So it’s not irrational.’
Israel has only herself to blame for the existence of Hezbollah in the first place; the organization never would have appeared if Israel hadn’t invaded Lebanon.
Moreover, Hezbollah is only a ‘threat’ to Israel in the sense that its existence would make any future invasion of Lebanon prohibitively expensive. Hezbollah’s stance is emphatically defensive; if Israel leaves it alone, it leaves Israel alone. This was demonstrated during Israel’s last strafeexpeditione into Gaza; Hezbollah very pointedly sat on its hands and watched.
Certainly Hezbollah is an uncomfortable reminder that Israel does not in fact rule supreme over all. However, it’s not actually a ‘threat’ — except in the sense that it interferes with Israel’s delusions of grandeur. No, you can’t actually beat up the neighbors with impunity; sorry.
You wrote that Lviv Polytechnic National University was the equivalent of ” the level of Shithole community college in the US boondocks. ”
I pointed out that it outranks Voronezh State University, Southern Urals Sate University (Chelyabinsk), Saratov State University in Russia. It actually outranks about 2/3 of Russia’s universities and institutes:
https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/eeca-rankings/2018
So you claim that 2/3 of Russia’s universities and institutes are even worse than “the level of Shithole community college in the US boondocks. “
All that would have been correct if Russia wanted to occupy Ukraine (or anything else, for that matter). As Russia is not interested in occupying any neighbors, Ukraine, like an aging prostitute, would keep waiting for a client that never comes. The same goes for the rest of Europe, including Baltic vaudeville states.
As to military equipment, it is a lot less important than the mindset of combatants. The example of Afghanistan, where NATO is suffering a monumental failure despite having vastly superior toys, shows this clearly. I am not sure about Eastern Europeans, but Western Europeans would lose any war with any determined adversary before it even starts. Europe security lies exclusively in the fact that Russia does not want it.
The US, Russia, and China need advanced military toys exclusively to be able to destroy each other half a world away. There is sort of parity there. If it ever comes to close ground combat, the US forces would lose to either Russia or China, and the US military brass knows it. That’s why the “wars” are waged on Twitter and Facebook, and the rhetoric is kept threatening only to convince sheeple that huge waste of resources going to MIC is not waste. Fat cats grow fatter, sabers are continuously rattled, but never used. Pentagon profiteers grow richer, but remain alive. Both things make them happy. BTW, that’s the reason why the US talked the talk about NK, but never walked the walk. The same scenario was played out recently regarding Venezuela, and is unfolding now regarding Iran. Cowardice is the best (for the rest of humanity) thing neocons and the rest of globalist elites have today and will ever have. That’s why I am cautiously optimistic.
Donetsk had a lot of wealth because it produced steel and coal, which provided hard currency. This was its only advantage. Otherwise – high crime, low life expectancy, high infant mortality, etc.
It’s population was 2nd out of 27 so this is actually a bad result. Urban people are usually more highly educated – but not in Donetsk.
Anyways, I have to finish packing and will be gone for a couple of weeks. Will be visiting one of my urheimats, in Tyrol 🙂
But first to Budapest. Thank you reiner and melanf for your advice, it has been appreciated!
We were talking about a hypothetical situation above.
That’s an extraordinarily optimistic scenario.
Yes it is, and with a limited window of opportunity, but it gets even better after a couple of Coors.
It is known to anyone with half a brain that the rankings are determined by who does the ranking, not by the reality. In the area I know (biochemistry and cell biology) Russian, Czech, Hungarian, and Polish science is weak, while Ukrainian is non-existent. I strongly suspect that regional Russian Universities are as pathetic as all Ukrainian ones. I had once an applicant who got her PhD from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev, which is considered the best in Ukraine. She gave me printed official summary of her thesis and a paper she published in English. I was appalled: materials and methods section of my lowest grade papers have more substance than her whole thesis. She would never be allowed to defend that pathetic stuff at Moscow State or at St Petersburg University. Naturally, I did not even invite her for a talk at our lab meeting. Beijing University or Tsinghua University in Shanghai are at about the same level as Moscow State, way above Kiev University, even though they wouldn’t make it to the top 50 in the US or Europe. As one of the bloggers aptly put it, if Ukraine is Europe, my tabby cat is a tiger.
Yep.
Definitely.
hezbollah was formed as a defensive organization and that is its sole purpose, because of Israeli interference and control over lebanon
O…..K.
You’ll have to take up your complaint as to the quality of the comparison regarding the First Triumvirate with the US/UK establishment itself.
Since Trump’s entry into the 2016 election, as in the two examples linked below from the New York Times and the Financial Times of London, amongst quite a few others, Trump has been routinely compared by the US/UK corporate media directly to the Roman billionaire/real estate speculator Marcus Licinius Crassus.
Similarly, the US/UK establishment has long compared itself to the Roman Empire, ie the ‘New Rome’, seeing itself like the Rome of old as predestined to conquer the world. [Such as in the US published 1853 geo-political book linked below, entitled the New Rome, which outlines in three steps just how in the future the US and UK will proceed to do so ie. 1) US and UK reunite to form a practically unbeatable mega-force 2) Conquer and consolidate control of Germany, the center of power upon continental Europe 3) Smash Russia via global projection of US air power, Russia being identified as a potential contender with the United States for the control of Germany, and thus of Europe and the world. The book, though widely reviewed in the United States at the time, was largely dismissed as ‘moonshine’.]
Power elites of the US and UK for a long time, only somewhat cryptically, have often broadcast what they are planning to do. The link below regarding ‘a dark intrigue’, the language of people at the time to describe it, outlines how both the future British Prime Ministers Palmerston and Disraeli in writings well before the fact, described the events of the officially ‘spontaneous’ 1848 Revolutions across much of Europe.
Palmerston did so in the form of the lead story of the front page of the Spectator of London in 1846, and Disraeli in the form of a book, Coningsby, some years before that.
As mentioned, Trump’s already been connected by the US and UK establishment to the Roman Triumvirate as Crassus. The rest is just connecting the dots, and in this particular case, not many at that.
Secretary of State Pompeo’s sirname is literally an Italian derivative of the Latin Pompey. Besides that, this politically powerful person looks almost like the physical reincarnation of Pompey the Great himself. Pompeo would seem made to order for the comparison.
The Roman real estate tychoon Crassus was the patron of the young up and coming 30 something Julius Caeser, helping him out financially and politically.
And what do we find with Trump? He’s the patron politically (and somewhat financially?) of the young up and coming 30 something Jared Kushner.
Anyhow, trying to run away from it, or burying one’s head in the sand, or simply not liking it, won’t change the fact of these power elites and hangers on engaging in these types of cryptic forewarnings (for their own reasons) from time to time.
And while they don’t always follow through, ie lucky Obama -for now- and the near continuous comparisons made of him with Lincoln and Kennedy while in office, not noting it when it’s blatant and in your face as this seems to be, won’t change it either.
One certainly shouldn’t lose their head about it, but still…
The best thing that all three of these persons, Trump, Kushner, and Pompeo, could do (that’s if they even can) is quietly resign from their office and retire.
And come to think of it, that’s probably what the members of the First Triumvirate, each of whom came to a bad end in their quest for an over abundance of personal wealth and power, should of done as well.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus_Louvre.jpg/220px-Marcus_Licinius_Crassus_Louvre.jpg
Marcus Licinius Crassus
https://www.ft.com/content/95271efa-e62a-11e5-a09b-1f8b0d268c39
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/opinion/the-trumpiest-roman-of-them-all.html
https://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/the_new_rome_or_the_united_states_of_the_world_1853
https://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/a_dark_intrigue_the_revolutions_of_1848
Yep.
What happens when the optimism runs out could be an interesting question.
We’ll see that within next 3 years, at the most, IMHO.
What happens when the optimism runs out could be an interesting question.
Then we sign up with Peter’s irregulars!
In the US, the 2020 election, and all those for the foreseeable future will be decided by the actual % split in the white vote. White people will be deciding the political fate of the US (and The Free World) for some time.
Good.
I’d suggest, in meantime, cutting down, just a bit, on “barbecues and ball games” and trying to acquire necessary skills.
Marksmanship and “getting” the MOUT, in particular.
Oh, BTW, I’d leave leadership to men 10 times better than me.
I’d be happy to work for them.
Now…let’s just wait and see will such a man (or a woman, actually) pop up, somewhere, in the next 3 years.
White….. vote..in 2024, and after?
O.K.
Ah, yes, sorry, a bit more.
Those (plenty) who do have those skills I mentioned above could cut down, a bit too, on falling (mentally) apart, substance abuse, and suicides.
Ah, yes, one more.
Those really having enough and acting out, well, could choose their targets a little bit better. Be, how to put it, more selective there. I know, directly related to the paragraph above (falling apart/substance) , but still.
just a bit, on “barbecues and ball games” and trying to acquire necessary skills.
Screw wasted time, just give me a M79.
Hehe…..good comment, actually.
Quite perceptive, in fact.
One could, based on THAT understanding, build a quite effective “outfit”.
About ten or fifteen years back there was a big hullabaloo about an expectant war between Iran and the US. The BBC (IIRC) even had journalists pre-positioned on US aircraft carriers and ships in the Persian Gulf. Nothing came of it.
Hopefully that’s the case with this situation.
Pompeo has set the ‘trigger’ condition for a US military ‘counter-attack’ upon Iran as the death of a single US service member as a result of Iranian action.
Pompeo warns Iran about trigger for US military action as some in administration question aggressive policy
https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/03/32/66/17673635/213/920×920.jpg
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at State Department (June 13, 2019)
‘Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has privately delivered warnings intended for Iranian leaders that any attack by Tehran or its proxies resulting in the death of even one American service member will generate a military counterattack, U.S. officials said…’
https://m.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Pompeo-warns-Iran-about-trigger-for-US-military-14016197.php
This Crassus might be about to cross the Euphrates:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1141711064305983488
100k likes in three hours.
Replies from MAGA crowd look like this.
https://twitter.com/EdwardAshton30/status/1141711405466488833
Not good.
LOL….actually I saw a ranking of about 1400 Universities in the world….Ukropia had the grand total of ……….ONE!
Lvov has amongst the shittest Universities in the country you cretin. Getting pseudo points from the international commnity for EU funded pseudo-research into the fake Ukrainian history ( Ancient Greek culture was actually “Ukrainian” and all that BS) is not something to be proud of
Can anybody remind me what public toilets the Lvov philarmonic Orchestra are performing a concert at for the opening?
AnonFromTN is one of the most perceptive commenters out there. You however have , multiple times been proven as a compulsive liar, fantasist and spamtroll freak………evidenced in spectacular fashion by your unambiguously total lack of any knowledge of the double meaning ( of in fact either meaning ) of the Russian word “mir” ( ironically , the only Russian word you do know is “Golodomor” in addition to your whole (copy and pasted) posts of language of Russia/Ukraine which if not for your cowardly anonymity on the internet , would have shamed you into never posting on the internet ever.
Seriously get those posts on language up again…that “lesson” is ” invaluable (LOL_)
LOL….So even with graphs proving Dmitrys point – Lvov ghosttown shithole has by far the highest crime in the west because it is the biggest “economic centre” there with the most urbanization, Kiev has by far the biggest crime in the whole country and of course in the main economic centre with the biggest metropolis – you persist if falsifying with more tmewasting drivel.
As for the TB graph – in view of the series of way above average outbreaks of disease, including TB , hovering over the west of Ukraine….that is a particularly dumb comment – shows even as much as the exceedingly incompentant language posts how little you know about Ukraine
The life expectancy differences are practically minimal and irrelevant – high male to female expectancy exists in both Lvov and Donetsk – Lvov exists as a shitter version of the North Caucasus – not a great selling point
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HAHAHAHA……I’ve just come back from the beautiful Mallorca on holiday – just the perfect place to go for anybody in a country with a free-visa regime with the EU – except coming across 1000s of people I did not hear ONE Ukrainian-speaker, and nearly as rarely did I come across or hear a “Ukrainian”.
Russians , by contrast were there in abundance, every time at the beach there was at least a group of Russians in the set of chair/umbrella next to us or in the circle around that. Then I nearly always heared, or speak to and meet Russians at any bar or club we went to. At the amazing Palma cathedral I would put the number of Russians there as second to only the Germans, and ahead of the British and Americans ( the cathedral being the only place I saw and heard Americans all holiday). Ukrops? None – scumbag excrement like the North American Banderatards posing twice a year in Delaware in vishivankas like they were an African tribe – does not count.
So, there are many embarrassing ratio’s involving ‘Ukrainians” to Russians….like the 4:1 in russia’s favour of wage size,
or 30:1 of cars sold in Russia compared to Ukraine in the last year
What I really am almost embarassed to write is of the 754:0 ratio of Russian speakers to Ukrainian speakers on one of the worlds premier tourist destinations.
“Slight” improvement for Ukrainians on nationality though – I came across a ratio of 750:4 of Russians to Ukrainians!
As for your supposed holiday – we all know it is a disinformation fantasy for a tramp like yourself . You have literally nothing better to do then spamtroll lies on here for 20 hours a day – fantasist roleplays like the fake holiday are as low as it gets
I’m both too lazy and too much of a brainlet to figure out how, do I just use a site like Scihub.ru or what?