So as you might have heard Facebook has banned The Unz Review from its entire site. You can’t link to it on your Wall, in closed groups, or even mention it in private communications.
It has become The Website That Must Not Be Named, like South Front just a few days ago – another website that is critical of US foreign policy.
Yes, I suppose it’s “unfair.” As Ron Unz points out, we weren’t advising our readers to drink bleach, or calling for jihad against 5G towers. So far as just “science” and “facts and logic” go, many of us have been superlative, even if I do say so myself – supporting travel restrictions, calling for mass testing-tracing, and demanding universal mask wearing (something that Western health authorities are finally doing as well, their MSM-enabled hesitance having already cost 10,000’s of lives), while constantly being validated on our pessimistic predictions. Indeed, the very idea that a website that simultaneously publishes Chomsky and Eric Striker might have any kind of common editorial position is bizarre. On the Corona Question itself, viewpoints have ranged from “It’s Just the Flu Brah” (e.g. Israel Shamir said it was a hoax; Craig Murray compared it to the 1957 Hong Kong flu; Heiner Rindermann said the lockdowns weren’t worth the economic cost), to the rather more realistic/alarmist (cross out as per your preferences) coverage produced by Steve Sailer, Ron Unz, and yours truly.
- BTW, on this note, I gathered up a list of my keynote Corona articles here: https://akarlin.com/archive/#CoronavirusCOVID-19
From the geopolitical angle, I was speculating that it might have been produced by a bioerror at Wuhan’s BSL-4 facilities as early as January 27, i.e. well before it became cool (though I always stressed that zoonotic events do banally happen all the time and this was ultimately the most likely explanation). On the other end of the scale, relatively speaking, was Ron Unz, Godfree Roberts, and several other guest authors who theorized that it was an American bioweapons attack, including the very article by Ron Unz that was likely what precipitated our banning from Facebook. I would further note that the only columnist here who energetically propounded a theory that turned out to be wrong, and kept doing so long after it became obvious to everyone but the most obstinate, no longer seems to be reprinted here.
But it’s also sort of irrelevant. There is now a bipartisan commitment to “confronting” China, one that will probably lead to the Great Bifurcation of the world economy this decade (Corona-chan merely accelerated existing trends). I recall Boomer Bannon said something to the effect that the US only has 5-10 years left to “contain” China before it becomes the world’s premier superpower (this was in the mid-2010s, so margins are now short). FTR I think it’s way too late already, but clearly the deep state disagrees and it is going to run roughshod over dissenters now and in the coming years and many of them are going to have more problems that getting banned from some social media site.
So what’s even the point of being angry with The Zucc? If the “men in dark suits” can order around US Presidents, as Putin observed then, then ordering around some limp-wristed weakling is well within their capabilities. It’s not, after all, like Zucc is Durov, a true Chad who fasts every weekend, takes ice baths, and walks around with sunglasses 24/7 who sent both FSB and CIA rats alike scurrying with their tails between their legs. Besides, he might not be all that ardent of Sinophile himself, after all the efforts he made to ingratiate himself with CPC honchos and they ended up cockblocking his expansion plans in China anyway.
The Virgin Zucc
The Chad Durov
(And then they’ll tell you physiognomy is “pseudoscience”).
Nonetheless, continuing to offer Facebook the privilege of making powerful poasts on their platform while they censor my own articles would make me a CUCK. And getting cucked by The Zuck of all people is extra humiliating.
So I’m stopping my participation here until and unless they reverse their ban on sharing Unz Review articles.
I will continue exercising my freedom of speech at the Russian platform VK, you can follow me there: https://vk.com/akarlin88
You can also follow me on:
- This website/blog
- My personal website’s front page – https://akarlin.com/
I am not going to insist people follow me, since Facebook has practical utility for many (legacy + network effects). But for politics you’d probably want to go to VK if you need a Facebook-like platform.
Well yes, Russia has Yandex (Google), VK (Facebook). German nationalists use VK, incidentally.
And many dissidents all over the place use Telegram (which is blocked in Russia itself).
The future of global free speech relies on the spite of hostile Great Powers lol.— Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes) June 26, 2019
After the decriminalization of Article 282 it’s even safe for Russian nationalists.
On a slightly different topic, apologies for the paucity of posting of late. Don’t worry, I have yet to be “blessed” by Our Lady. I’ll have another flood of big posts in a few days.
This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.
If you are new to my work, start here.
They probably don’t need to explain their actions, but did they give any specific reasons for the ban at this time?
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1256377075713310727
We might find out, see #3. (But probably not).
With all due respect, considering that the Unz Review is hosting a whole bunch of its just the flu people, and kill the old and obese for the economy people, maybe this is a good thing?
That was quick to be proven wrong. I’ll just wonder aloud if him ceasing being reprinted had anything to do with it, or if he admitted his hypothesis is conclusively bunk as of now. One apparently simply doesn’t concede he was full of shit. Some ideas: he could argue that in fact, the Asian percentage of the population in the US, or in NYC, is much higher than reported (secret Asians) or that moribund Chinese and other Asians are coming to the US just to add to the Wuflu case and death count (death tourism), or simply that most of the million diagnosed American cases (and the deaths) are misatributted or fake (easiest one), or all of the above, or something.
And Mr. Karlin need not worry about catching Corona-chan. I have it in good authority (someone on the internet told me, forgot whom) it only affects 5’6” feminist betas with gynecomastia and low muscle tone.
My hypothesis is the multigenerational household cultures like Italy, or cultures where the older people are in regular contact with their children and grandchildren like China, are inherently better than nuclear household Northern European cultures, and are psychologically healthier for old people to live in too, in addition the older generation’s more conservative social values can help exert influence to keep the younger people from moral degeneracy, so the sacrifices in terms of young people staying home for 6 weeks to protect the elderly in times like these are worth it.
By “here”, do you mean Facebook or the Unz Review? I just want to clarify this part.
Take a wiiiild guess.
There is a sense that Americans are starting to celebrate – at least
those living in the states that have already re-opened or will re-open
May 4, which are mostly conservative Southern and Midwestern
states. The sense of elation is palpable, and reminds me of the
quiet sense of elation and disbelief on the morning after Trump
was elected president. I travel a lot and happened to be in the
Midwest when it happened.
As it is, medically the U.S. has weathered the pandemic quite well.
200 fatalities per million is much lower than the rates in W. Europe.
Considering that 40-50% of the Covid fatalities have occurred in
the New York City tri-state area where 18 million people are
packed like sardines into a small terrirory, the rate for (USA minus NYC)
is probably closer to 100 deaths per 1M, which is reasonable during
a pandemic. And who cares about New York anyway? It was an ecological
disaster waiting to happen. At least that’s how many conservatives think.
In other words, New York had it coming.
The American Way of Life, a phrase you don’t hear very often anymore,
provides at least two advantages during a pandemic, (1) low population
density as people often live on half-acre plots in the suburbs, (2) low use
of public transportation. Thus social distancing is built into the American
Way of Life. Of course, it’ll be difficult for the U.S. to approach the
rates in Central Europe (or Eastern Europe so far), where Poland, for
example, has had only 17 fatalities per 1 M. Poland was largely spared
during the Black Death ca. 1350, and I was convinced Poland would be
spared again, and this is turning out to be correct.
Was the hard lockdown in China universally applied, or was it only losely applied to isolated hamlets and villages far away from urban areas?
Because you people are more stupid than a box of hammers? Has it not occurred to you that Poland also low population density and still has a lower death rate, how many deaths did Hong Kong or Seoul have?
Everybody, listen to the voice of wisdom unlike any that mankind
has ever seen – 128 in all its glory!
How many pounds can Hitler, Netanyahu, or Ben Gurion lift compared to Pavel Durov, who has more political influence in their time?
I wonder how much of international travel is absolutely necessary? I mean tourism could probably be replaced by webcams? And business travel can be replaced by videoconferencing?
Nothing can really beat real life variable travel for excitement and the opportunity for a total immersion into new cultural explorations. It’s one of the important things that separates us from our ancestors’ sedentary lifestyle that very often didn’t extend much more than a few miles beyond ones birthplace. Of course the hippies of the 1960’s, prolific world travelers that they were, often dreamed of intellectual travel as being a superior means of travel. Take this trip: 🙂
https://youtu.be/YqOiZjwQKaU
The little Facebook nerd stole/copy/infringe the Facebook platform from the creators of Hi5 (by now it has changed ownership). Unfortunately, Hi5 creators were wrong ethnicity to succeed in the USA at the level the cheat Zucker succeeded.
I pointed this out on the Facebook and my account was immediately closed by the “nerd” servants.
Sure, but is Durov a ravenous irradiated cancer resistant immortal polyp? Zucc probably is at this point.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/04/chan-zuckerberg-biohub-14-million-coral-reef-human-biome.html
Let’s not worry about all those tourist businesses going bust. I don’t have a tourist business so I don’t care. And let’s not worry about entire towns dependent on tourism being destroyed, with every business in the town going broke and all the townspeople losing their livelihoods. I don’t live in such a town so I don’t care. And I don’t like travelling overseas so why the Hell should anyone else be allowed to do so? And we certainly shouldn’t worry about a large sector of the economy being wiped out.
Also I don’t like golf. Is golf absolutely necessary? Why not just get rid of it? Why should someone else be allowed to enjoy something I don’t like?
Here’s a list of relevant Lance Welton headlines since he stopped being reprinted here:
It might not be so terrible for countries which aren’t net recipients of tourism income. Even in Hungary there’s now talk of people going to Lake Balaton instead of Greece or Croatia, so some of it might survive. But the best Budapest restaurants mostly catered to tourists, or perhaps business travelers and expats. So probably the quality of restaurants will soon drop significantly. Some of the best restaurants will close, maybe most of them. That will drop the quality of life for those locals who patronized them. It’s not just a question of money, I know moderate income people who spend more on restaurants and less on having a nice (or any) car, and I know high income people whose idea of a good meal is having something delivered from a moderately good pizzeria.
Mass tourism was not perhaps the highest quality entertainment, but people will be objectively poorer without it. I certainly like traveling by plane.
Anon 2 is a very powerful commenter, we need his level of powerfulness.
@Anatoly
Unless I misunderstood your post, I think you have a typo: “So I’m stopping my participation THERE until and unless they reverse their ban on sharing Unz Review articles.” (i.e. you will stop posting on Facebook) – or did you mean you’ll stop posting on Unz too?
I feel bad for the Zuccster since he’s a nebbish and wimpy looking man so that’s always going to be part of his character. I’m genuinely surprised Facebook is still a big thing and hasn’t been out competed by culturally different models. It seems to me every choice FB makes worsens the platform to the point I don’t understand why anyone would subject themselves to that garbage just to stay in contact with acquaintances.
When will they upgrade the Trans Siberian to a higher speed rail, even if HSR is not possible because it is too expensive, it is still possible to cut the journey time down to 90 hours from a week, like what the Chinese have done with their conventional rail.
I am surprised the US didn’t launch attacks all over Iran. With oil in the negative and the market already in turmoil this is the perfect time to take on Iran (with zero oil profits and a terrible outbreak). Two trump cards have been nullified, if Tel Aviv needs to take a bit of shrapnel in this adventure who cares (they want this war the most). At least we would have gotten something else to watch instead of who can win the “most hysterical” contest.
But I guess if USN carriers can’t handle a bitch ass flu with all that CBRN equipment and training then Iran has nothing to worry about for the foreseeable future. Determination. LOL.
As for facebook. Only queers use facebook so this is a net gain. If you use facebook you should swallow your own gun for the betterment of mankind. I remember 15~ years ago(?) when Facebook launched and required college/university email to register. I never understood what facebook offered back then nor what it offers now to make it so dominant online. I assume its meant to keep the plebeians in order.
We’re slowly coming out of this lockdown and so far only 5% of those I see on the street have masks and they are, oddly, black people; yes I heard there is a disproportionate number of deaths amongst blacks in the US with covid-19. I’ve visited the US enough times to know there is a huge difference in the health of black people in Canada and the US. Black Americans are ashy, obese, appear significantly unhealthier, and are dumb as bricks (when I was 19-20 years old I had to visit Buffalo frequently as I would buy shit homes, fix them up and either rent them out or flip them: how people live really reflects their intelligence….)
Perhaps its because I live in an affluent neighbourhood now but white and Asian people do not wear masks here. The only place you can see masks is to go to the poorer neighbourhoods (primarily black areas like Jane and Finch here in Toronto). As a matter of fact very little has changed in my area save for liquor stores closing early. Restaurants are extremely busy with take-out orders (with freebies left-right-and-center). Social distancing is half-assed most of the time (if observed at all). Families are out almost everyday riding bikes, peacocking their sports cars or doing some outdoor activity with their children. People haven’t fallen for the novelty of playing with such gimmicks as masking (I guess only a handful of us passed biochem in university…)
My neighbour is a GP (Turkey season opened up April 25, had a nice hunt on one of his too few days off) and he is telling me he is diagnosing at least 1 covid-19 patient a day (at his clinic of 3 doctors, each at a rate of 1 per day) without testing, going off of what symptoms he can observe and government guidelines. This has been steady for months now. When I asked him how many developed serious symptoms and went on to be hospitalized and the answer was a big fat ZERO. No I didn’t wear a mask around him, I actually passed high school.
A big nothing burger. Everyday more and more news comes out how 100,000s (if not millions) already have antibodies. In northern France, in Florida, in New York, in California, in sporadic German towns…. The one guy who passed away from covid19 and gave me pause ended up being a diabetic (a 37 year old Brazilian jujitsu practitioner).
After all if a fat body like Boris Johnson can make it (and also have a healthy baby boy born right after) so can the healthy and more wealthy portions of society. But lets all pretend that didn’t happen and rush into MOP posture. QUICK! FULL RETARD MODE 1-2-3 GO!!!
If you’re masking chances are you don’t know what you are doing.
Speaking of gimmicks!!!!!
DISCLAIMER LONG DRUNK VR/GAMES/MODAFINIL POST BELOW, ONLY CHADS WITH BALLS OF STEEL ALLOWED TO VIEW:
So with all this free money Canada is throwing I finally got an Oculus Rift to try out Alyx and other VR crap. Couldn’t justify wasting money unless someone was giving it to me and here we are. Being a 32 year old man gaming has taken a back seat as I don’t have the time to pour 18 hours into Quake 3 like its 1999.
Long story short VR is totally a gimmick. I have a pretty big place to run around (I set up a private gym in my basement big enough that one can jog in a circuit separate from the mat space for jujitsu & weights; “more than your own life can depend on your physical fitness” is a philosophy EVERYONE should live by) and even so it was not as physically demanding as I wanted. No rolls. No running. No jumps. Just slight walking and the occasional semi-crouch. I understand they make these things for people seated in small tiny Japanese-style closet apartments but I was hoping for options. Walk to a window in-game and BAM teleport outside of it. Gay-alert.
For ~$1000 its not really worth it. VR was supposed to save gaming but I can’t see how. Even after downing a bottle of Stolichnaya and doing a couple of rails I couldn’t really get into it. I couldn’t “suspend my disbelief” as they say.
If I had to sum it up Alyx is just the combination of all the VR gimmicks on the market. Shoot people in the head by eyeing your shots (or throw bottles in the air and shoot them), swing objects like a flailing retard, throw and catch stuff with no skill (items MAGICALLY land in your hand when thrown at you), puzzles involving looking throughout the room in multiple vision modes tracing wires or sifting through junk for ammo….. Again, mildly amusing for 5 minutes until you realize you’ve done things in real life more entertaining… roughly 10 hours of gameplay with a half-way point that changes up the pace.
Non-VR games::
Bannerlord is alright, it still needs a couple of more years of development, so far its just Mount and Blade with graphical improvements and some minor additions but it is early access so all those beloved features will seep in slowly. Things like improving the AI and fleshing out features. Wait until 2021.
Doom Eternal… sigh terrible, I remember the days when Id Software would rock the entire industry with new innovations. Now it’s just another developer. I miss John Carmack, at least he would make his engine open source after a few years. Doom 2 > Doom Eternal by milestones. Doom Eternal felt like Painkiller (a 2013 Polish game). Go into a chamber, chamber locks, fight all the bad guys jumping around using character-based attributes, repeat.
DBZ Kakarot…. this game is 20 years too late. I have no idea who would play it now when the market is flooded with such clones (perhaps not in the same IP as DBZ but the gameplay isn’t unique). Nothing special.
Modafinil:
FINALLY I got my hand on Canadian made modafinil, two brands TEVA and AURO (instead of the Indian garbage online which is utter shit, all duds). Oh boy they weren’t kidding. Modafinil at baseline (no alcohol or other drugs) is very subtle. Unlike amphetamines which is easily noticeable due to the mood elevation Modafinil is only noticeable when you stop working and catch yourself back at work again. I program in C++ (as a hobby) and I can say it is a programmers drug. Modafinil can be used to extend workouts too but its not as thermogenic as Ephedrine + Caffeine (now that shit will burn fat and suppress appetites like a motherfucker). I can see why it has replaced amphetamine-based “go” pills with the US Air Force. Pilots can be extended out on patrol for days with minimal sleep and no mood change (unlike amphetamines which at higher doses produce ungodly paranoia).
So in conclusion Modafinil > VR. I would rather put a $1000 into modafinil then into virtual reality.
Spice Melange over Thinking Machines.
Time to see how well it stacks with phenlypiracetam and choline.
I’m glad this lockdown hysteria is starting to ease up and life can get back to normal. Shit China closed down Hubei province ONLY and just limited unnecessary travel in other provinces (work is necessary so that did not stop). But the West went FULL RETARD and closed everything and I’m not sure why….
Fucking Modafinil + booze, its 4AM and I feel like I can run a goddamn marathon.
The ultimate source of Corona-chan remains unclear but presumably the loose bioweapon angle was why the Chinese reacted so strongly. I get the impression that most governments did not connect the dots, however.
Just? That’s a pretty big deal, especially if most of your acquaintances live far away from you.
I just think white people countries have responded very incompetently.
Maybe you could classify areas as low risk, like countries without widespread community spread could be allow countries without widespread community spread to travel with each other fairly freely.
When you have a virus out there, you wouldn’t get too much tourism going even if the government is encouraging it.
Time to declare it a lost cause and exterminatus Stockholm?
IIRC, China only locked down Hubei Province (where Wuhan is located), which is just one of the country’s 34 provinces. I believe there were some travel restrictions for a time in the provinces surrounding Hubei, but no real lockdown elsewhere in the country.
Maybe that’s why China still has a functional economy after ‘the plague’?
Unless you are looking at a news source from planet Neptune (and how cool is that?) every city in China over 100,000 carried out tight movement restrictions, I am less sure whether your rural hamlet of a few hundred people also had lockdowns or restricted entry and exit, but it seems that they did also.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_lockdown_in_Hubei
Russian websites are quite good, I have found some interesting stuff at VK. I have a back-up email at Yandex, which is quite aesthetically pleasing.
You’re really wired, man (Dude)! 🙂
https://youtu.be/uwHBtUIKV70
Even better yet – for those of you out there that have a soft spot for heavies Led Zeppelin:
https://youtu.be/BQIdjHcS4m4
Listen to the entire album – still ahead of its time!
I’m confused by what “here” means in this sentence: “So I’m stopping my participation here until and unless they reverse their ban on sharing Unz Review articles.” You’re stopping your participation on the Unz site until Facebook changes something? Doesn’t seem logical.
Zuck to Unz. I HEREBY BAN THEE. Face Book is a piece of shit. It’s a pity anybody has to be kicked out to get them them to stop going there.
No need to feel sorry for the likes of Zuckerberg. Those earnest others with talent seeking a level playing field are the ones who (comparatively speaking) deserve compassion.
Related to this thread, Adam Schiff (an older version of Zuck) very recently sent an open letter calling for the censorship:
https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1255902443390599169
Prior to this latest development, Facebook, had some suspect aspects.
Never, despite industry lobbying.
Passenger rail competes with cross-country car trips, not airplanes. Saving hours and minutes is just not important compared to all the other variables.
If we’re allowed to discuss the coronavirus situation here:
Growth in infection today – a large part is driven from Moscow where we assumed plateau, but here I think it might be just be related to massive increase in testing in that city in recent days ( https://www.mos.ru/news/item/73504073 ).
Russian Federation
Date: 30.04 |01.05 | 02.05
Infected: 106498 | 114431 | 124054
Growth: +7099 | +7933 | +9623
Percent 7.14% | 7.45% | 8.41%
Moscow
Date: 30.04 |01.05 | 02.05
Infected: 53739 |57300 |62658
Growth: +3093 | +3561 |+5358
Percent 6.11% | 6.63% | 9.35%
–
What about deaths increasing as well.
Germany seems to have managed the first wave of the pandemic quite efficiently, and can already re-open. There it correlates a little to popular stereotypes about German intelligence, effective management, etc. Of Axis powers, only Italy really easily falls to coronavirus – which is what people would probably predict from traditional stereotypes.
Sweden is just behaving with their Scandinavian eccentricity – it’s not exactly incompetence.
Latin countries – fallen to the virus quite easily and disorganizedly, but can rely more on summer heat to ameliorate the epidemic in the next months.
Balkan races (well they maybe more half-way to the Middle East and semi-brown)- have responded with all the expected peasant wisdom, and avoided the first wave of the epidemic.
Great Britain is the one where it has broken all expectations in the wrong direction. One of the world’s most successful and capable countries, responding as one of the most incompetently. There is also the population actively undermining an extremely expensive lockdown, because of inability to delay gratification for a few weeks – which I would never have imagined from the good behaviour of the country in most other times.
Here is case fatality rate in Russia until today (just around 1%).
https://i.imgur.com/Ijvk7J2.png
^ However, it’s better not to hope on this too much, as hospital deaths are often after weeks – and the epidemic is still comparatively recent in Russia. Community spread is only beginning sometime in second half of March (Russia is an early lockdown/self-isolation country, relative to the epidemic development*).
–
* Although – of course people a lot behaved better than in the UK – lockdown regime in Russia is not uniform and perfect.
Here are photos of “stereotypically cultural people of Saint-Petersburg”, trying to recreate Fast and Furious films during a pandemic.
https://twitter.com/oldLentach/status/1256465353103814656
So I searched comments for words “opec” and “oil”. Found 1 mention of “oil”, in the context of imaginary US war with Iran. Moving on.
Already there https://vk.com/id237250008 . Hardly use it. No mad Brexiters to fight with. No, that’s Twitter. FB is friends and family only anyway.
It depends on the distance. From 200 to 500 miles, a fast train outperfoms car and air for speed, particularly city centre to city centre business travel. Suburb to suburb and maybe the lower limit is 300 miles. Take a taxi and the cost of rail or air becomes very high. $10 oil is about to change all this.
This website got banned the same day as David Icke. It was swept up in a mass banning of sites that host ludicrous conspiracy theory nonsense. The rest of the content is merely attached.
Your writing speaks for itself (in a good way – except on Covid, where your panties are twisted like the Gordian Knot), no need for the narcissistic cope of pretending that you were singled out for being especially dangerous or some other fantasy.
Facebook recently banned some people for posting pictures of English flags on St. George’s Day.
For my part, I tend to believe the rumor that Zuck asked Xi to name his child, but Xi declined.
Yes, we don’t want to confuse “scientific truth” by introducing alternative views of what might really be at play.
The stats for Florida, AKA God’s waiting room, suggest an excess death rate approaching zero.
That’s just sad, dude. Do you really want to live in a world deprived of millions of views like this?
https://www.eyesighthawaii.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/AdobeStock_79367633.jpeg
I didn’t even know that this was on Facebook, but by now one would think that people will know that anything on international jew owned sites (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, an so on) will be censored.
American lawlessness in California. Lol the air force need to bomb this area with napalm.
https://twitter.com/BrutumF/status/1256623542264725504
https://twitter.com/realYDB/status/1256309898062647296
Americans need to hope that warmer (higher absolute humid air) and UV of California, reduce transmission in such open-air “events”. Otherwise, someone is going to win a lot of Darwin awards.
https://twitter.com/nbcsandiego/status/1256311846123917313
https://twitter.com/nbcsandiego/status/1256439788791570432
There may not have been an official lockdown in every part of China but the fear of the virus was universal and people stayed inside like a lockdown was imposed. From the start of the lockdown in Wuhan to the end of February, the streets were nearly deserted and it looked like a relatively air tight lockdown was in place even when it was possible to roam around freely and go to the few non-essential businesses that had stayed open despite lack of customers. This weekend is the middle of a 5-day May Day weekend and while foot and car traffic in city centers appears to be normal and has been for while, people are not returning to tourism. Mask wearing outside is about 100%. Many workplaces are still largely empty because workers continue to work from home. The fear is still there.
We were all scared chickens. When government said “Virus”, we all just hid in our home. There’s no need for government to say “Lockdown”. It just happened. Except maybe a handful in a country of a billion who needed “help” from police.
There’s really a difference between peoples. But I don’t think it’s because of some deep history or genetics, but rather, different people having different assumptions about their governments, and other simple reasons.
At the time we did not know that it mainly hit the old and unhealthy. Of course you were scared.
Chinese usually took bad news from government very seriously because it was assumed that government would not want to give out bad news unless it’s really, really bad.
I do think that somehow we love our elders more. Maybe it is because the family structures, and economic reasons too. Deep history probably plays a role as well.
I think everybody implicitly understands that there never is a choice between economy and health. Somehow westerners think there is a choice is quite a surprise. How is it possible to have a normal run economy when there is a virus out there? Oh, yes, maybe it is just the flu. Or maybe it only kills orientals.
I also think that most Chinese believed, from the beginning, that the virus will be done with after a few weeks. It is a surprise that it hit the world after it’s largely over in China (future is uncertain, though). The experience in HK and Singapore, even Korea, all suggest that it can be done with in at most two months. It means that any economic pain will be over soon. This belief, of course, is no more.
There is no pressure from the people for religious gatherings. And, in rural areas, government has that kind of authority, not exactly spiritual, but I am not talking about police authority. I guess I am talking about the simple fact that there is no other political or spiritual organizations.
And science weighs more on Chinese minds, believe it or not. Probably because of the history of recent 200 years. Or, maybe I should say, pragmatism.
“Mark, please listen carefully because this is extremely important to our relationship. I would like you to name your first son Adolf. Adolf Hitler Zuckerberg. May our friendship ever grow stronger, like a bundle of entwined branches. Yours in sincerity and long live the revolution.”
… that it is possible is because Chinese people cooperated.
The reason will probably be because China still has a nominally Marxism-Leninism state ideology. Marxism-Leninism is an Enlightenment ideology, which worships science and technology, and elevates these to the state religion.
In the USSR, this resulted in the greatest technical education in the world, for those youth with any talents for such professions. However, this can be fragile – you only have to see how badly technical education levels have declined now in capitalist Russia/Ukraine, within just a few decades since a collapse of the official ideology in a country which had deliberately and carefully created such a high level over many years.
Of course.
But I get the feeling that there are quite a few people who would be quite happy to see tourism and air travel permanently eliminated. And I suspect they’d be quite happy with the consequences reiner Tor has mentioned – such as no more restaurants.
What worries me is the emergence of an increasingly puritanical killjoy attitude on the far right. I get the impression that some alt-righters would like us all to live as small farmers in log cabins in the woods, with lots of guns of course. They hate the modern world (which is understandable in some ways) but they want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
There are lots of things that are unnecessary. Tourism is unnecessary. Restaurants are unnecessary. Going to the beach is unnecessary. Playing golf is unnecessary. Going to football matches is unnecessary. Going to the cinema is unnecessary.
But it’s the unnecessary things that make life worth living.
Frankly, this merely reveals that RUnzie Baby is doing an extremely poor job of the task he has been assigned.
Here is a list of the Top 10 Jews who have infiltrated the White Nationalist movement for the purpose of sowing confusion. Ron Unz could not even crack the Top 10 :
https://christiansfortruth.com/jews-are-leading-the-alt-right-white-nationalist-movements/
This, despite this activity being RUnzie Baby’s full-time job, as assigned to him by Jewish Central Command.
No wonder Zuck pulled the plug on RUnzie Baby (despite them being neighbors in Palo Alto). Zuck has effectively been directed to bestow his substantial resources and platform to Jews more equal to the task.
If you don’t stop it at the beginning, you just gotta weather the storm. Like Clemenza said.
https://youtu.be/69IvMs–aKA?t=72
As for Facebook, it should be called Defacebook as it defaces all honest debate.
Absolutely wrong. First of all the outbreak in China coincided with Chinese New Year celebrations during which the entire country was in an economic hibernation not too dissimilar to a “lockdown” anyway and which was then extended by several weeks until the pandemic had mostly burned itself out. In addition, local lockdowns were prevalent all across China and affected virtually every major city. My friends living in Shanghai and Guangzhou reported extremely stringent safety measures being enforced both on the local authority level and the individual housing/business level. You had to have your temperature taken upon both leaving and entering your housing complex and then again before entering businesses. Had to wear mask outdoors or be arrested by police. Could not bring visitors to your housing complex under any circumstances. Etc.
The way China was able to suppress the pandemic even once it had infected tens of thousands and created multiple epicenters was absolutely stunning in scope and thoroughness. The fact they are our rival and perhaps outright enemy should not prevent us from acknowledging the sheer power and competence they displayed during their outbreak, especially as we witness how the Western world has handled the issue even with a massive head start. With that said, the pozzed West has proven more incompetent than many third world nations so perhaps that is not the yardstick against which the Chinese response should be measured lol. But then I am replying to a just-a-flu’er so not sure why I even bother.
So Chinese people live in something called “housing complexes” where the government can control ingress and egress? Very interesting. And how exactly can something like that be implemented in the conditions of the typical American sprawl?
I suspect this is the main thing. It was in the old USSR.
I have no idea how Chinese law works in this regard, all I know is that residential complexes during the outbreak had/have a lot of power to self police entry and exit. Whether these are temporary powers granted during a national emergency or the way it has always been I don’t know. What I can tell you is that Chinese residential complexes or even individual apartment buildings mostly have 24 hour security and it is these security guards who enforce the regulations I spoke about, not the police.
Sure, and why not replace real sex by web porn? Oh wait, that has already happened.
The level of autism at Unz is something to behold.
Since your link slags everyone from Anglin to Enoch to Southern to Moly, can we have a list of “who isn’t a ZOG agent” in your opinion, just for comparison?
American “Conservatives” are retarded. As someone said, they couldn’t even conserve the bathroom.
This “pandemic” is mostly a stupid hoax, and the “American way of life” is swallowing it.
Also, there’s nothing particularly “American” about living in the country or in small towns, it’s how people have lived for thousands of years. It’s today huge modern cities such as NY or London which are unnatural.
You didn’t read my post.
For people doing cross-country car trips, the idea of getting to the destination four hours earlier just doesn’t figure into the equation. Of all the considerations that go into planning a cross-country car trip this one is perhaps the least important. (Of course I’m talking about real countries where this is even possible – USA, Russia, China.)
Same deal with trains. When I’m traveling with three kids and lots of baggage, a working USB socket and Wi-Fi is vastly more important than saving an hour or five.
Prepackaged travel experiences are fake and gay.
Example: the White Sea is really more beautiful than any ‘tropical paradise’ travel destination, but good luck getting there or even knowing that it exists.
“…more incompetent than many third world nations…”. – Keep in mind that many third world nations have much younger populations. Median age: 19.7 Africa, 25.7 Philippines, 30.5 Vietnam, 31 South America, 42.5 Europe, 44.9 Spain, 45.4 Italy. Their effective IFR will be much lower than that of European countries.
https://i.ibb.co/G0bBt5p/IFR-Italy.png
Many family meetings were cancelled. On the “office” business side, yes. But the Spring Festival was more dangerous actually, in terms of this virus spreading, because of families getting together and usually it was a big time for restaurants.
Any large scale “lockdown” will have to depend on the population’s cooperation. This simply cannot be something dealing with technicalities, legalistic or otherwise. (Best Korea notwithstanding. We are talking about a sudden change after all.)
It is comparable to a country going to war. You would want, say, bipartisan support of it.
The Western population in contrast believes what the government tells them. And the government told them not to worry, that they are well prepared, that masks don’t work, that herd immunity is the way to go, etc. With such “leadership,” East Asia couldn’t have handled it either.
And regarding the Chinese population assuming truth to be way worse than what the government tells them: it only worked because this time, after some initial coverup, the government told them the truth. After January 23, people were told the truth about the virus, even if the numbers of deaths and infections were probably doctored. But what they said about the dangers and the contagiousness or the severity of the measures needed to stop it etc. were all true.
Still they stopped the epidemic in Vietnam, with only a fraction of the resources available to first world countries.
How much of that cooperation was voluntary or “voluntary”? But yes in a shame based culture it is easier to get compliance of these things through social pressure, in a culture with a traditional 3-year mourning period for when your parents and grandparents died, back in the days. When you were supposed to abstain from sex, alcohol, meat, banquets, or other joyous activities, even Imperial Chancellors were supposed to resign from their jobs for 27 months as part of the mourning ritual.
Why do you hate freedom?
https://vdare.com/writers/lance-welton
You know that it is pretty easy to do that with universal tracking through smartphones, CCTVs everywhere with facial recognition, and the power of big data right?
A year ago I would have thought your post was too broad a satire, but now I have seen endless shut-ins bemoaning other people’s freedom to not be as miserable as them, and I think it underplays the issue.
Even if it doesn’t, I am certain that a lot of people at least want to give the impression that they’d prefer it if everyone in the world was locked in their homes forever.
You can only have so many polices. You only have so much money to pay the loyals. And the police need resources to do their job. More resources if the jobs are more difficult. Etc.
Large sudden change to society is impossible if most are against. Look at Iraq during the decade after Sadam was killed, USA had an army there, and huge amount of money to support local friendlies.
This point is throw around casually. But, frankly, I am not sure about the exact meaning of it. Maybe it is because most of the time I tend to have a microeconomic, game theoretic view of human nature.
In anycase, if it is not for the fact that the virus is spreading in the world, SARS 2 at this point could have been just a repeat of SARS 1. By which I mean that the actions by the Chinese government and Chinese people were not irrational or harmful that they need to be forced somehow.
You know, the Cathoics have the confessions. It is not strange to you I suppose, but it actually is quite strange. Maoist China had public self critique or humiliation, indeed. Just disgusting. Of course the two are different in essence and in form. My point is, of course, not to have a boyish playground verbal fight. Rather, I think it usually is a mistake to get to too deep an interpretation instead of having simple reasonings if possible. Chinese, deep down, are not very mystique.
You are smart.
Please post more.
I’ll post less.
To improve standards.
Thanks.
Self criticisms actually are based on ancient Chinese culture, even emperors did self criticisms, though couched in a lot fancier language, but the meaning is essentially the same.
Yes, they controlled it better. Still because of the demographics Vietnam mortality would be 3 times lower than in Europe for the same number of infected.
Vietnam has 7.2% population above 65 years old while France 19.7%, Germany 21.5%, Italy 23%.
Vietnam had less than 300 cases and no deaths for a population of 90 plus million, how many cases and deaths did Spain or Germany have? And unlike NZ and Australia they are not an island.
https://16iwyl195vvfgoqu3136p2ly-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/IEA_PVPS_Zubau_2019.jpg
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/21420.jpeg
Interesting times lie ahead.
1A couple of years ago i got a new job in a different city to my own and had to rent a room. My live-in landlord had such a sedantry lifestyle I was in disbelief. He would drive about 1.5 miles to work each morning (the city was congested and with awful parking so it actually took longer than waking) before coming home, microwaving a ready-meal and eating it in bed in his underpants (at about 18:00) then watching Netflix until he fell asleep. He’s either been furloughed or is working from home now, so I doubt he’s been out of bed for six weeks. Unsurprisingly, he’s posting “StayTheFuckHome” memes on Facebook nonstop and complaining about “covidiots”. I suspect I’ve massively underestimated how many people just like him exist.
Coronavirus election disaster brewing for the republicans?
I do not think coronavirus is killing enough old whites and working class whites to matter, plus it is killing more minorities than whites.
Well, what I mean is the shame based collectivist cultures find it easier to socially enforce quarantines which depend on social cooperation, and things like your neighbors shaming you to put on a face mask or practice social distancing.
It rather seems the opposite. Western people trust their scandal mongering media and their power and fame hungry “experts” more than they trust politicians. The politicians freaked out under pressure and reversed course – and then of course a lot of them realized that this is a great opportunity for a power grab. The result is the greatest mass hysteria in history over a simple flu.
Oh and btw hi everyone. I missed some time arguing against the lockdowns because I had to deal with a mess (related to lockdowns) and then I got sick. Yes I do think I was blessed by lady corona-chan, though I’ll have to take some antibody test to verify that I’m indeed one of the sainted survivors who can demand sympathy with the authority of scientific proof.
The symptoms match but then they match with any flu, except for the loss of sense of taste and some mild symptoms lingering on even a week after the fever is gone. Meanwhile the median age of people dead of corona here is 84 ie. people who have reached the age where dying of flu is basically a natural death. I have been staying inside, following the stupid orders of the stupid government, but it all makes me feel really stupid when it’s totally obvious now that the “herd immunity” plan was correct and that we should have just continued life as normal without worrying about getting this disease.
Good question with easy answer.
If you promote rape, violence, race mixing, whoremongering, porn, anime, “pick-up art”, MGTOW and other forms of faggotry and degeneracy you are ZOG agent, regardless whether you are paid or not.
If you promote loving and harmonious White families, you are true defender of White people.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-kills-people-an-average-of-a-decade-before-their-time-11588424401
3 and 2 days ago the case numbers were 7099 and 7933, but asymptomatic cases were 40%I and 45% respectively. That is close to the same number of ill cases for both days.
It is exactly the same for yesterday and today – 9600, asymptomatic 47% against 10600 ,asymptomatic of 50 % for today… so that is 5150 yesterday against 5300 new cases of ill people.
Against 4300 new ill cases for 2 and 3 days ago that is a sizeable increase BUT this increase is because of increased testing in Moscow, the epicentre for this virus in RF, a place that until recently was having testing numbers only slightly above proportion its population share to the whole country…. not in proportion to its share of coronavirus cases which the newer testing numbers are closer to. Add that into further increases as the other regions started with the virus later and are no showing steady but not disturbing increases…. then I think you have a situation, mostly, under control.
Most importantly, deaths, though tragic, are still relatively low (something for the whole world to envy) and are plateuing where the case numbers aren’t, particularly in Moscow.
For 2 of the last 10 days it has got to around 100,but the other 8 days- 50-60.
Spain and Germany coming out of lockdown are having far more deaths during recent days than Russia is having now!
1700 recoveries, yesterday , with only 600 from Moscow is actually excellent news. It is a higher number of recoveries than in Italy today
despite both countries having about 100000 active cases and Italy being a month longer into the crisis. I can’t think why a minority of the recoveries are in Moscow – but it is very good news if expecting Moscow to slowdown and other regions to go up in coronavirus cases
It’s not quite a fair comparison, as Vietnam has such a tropical climate, so outdoor airborne infectivity of the virus will probably be lower for a much larger time of the year (compared to European countries, where airborne infectivity will likely be higher for more months in each year).
A more unlikely comparison in Europe, is why all of the Balkan races have been more successful in avoiding the first wave of the pandemic, than all of the Latin ones? Balkan and Latin people have the same Southern European climate and culture, lifestyle, diet, demographic profile, racial similarity, and some (i.e. Croatia, Greece, Bulgaria) are even members of the European Union – so labour movement can be high between Latin and Balkan states.
I assume here is just simple differences of political culture in the Latin and Balkan worldview, which resulted in different top down decisions and results which no epidemiologist could predict.
For Great Britain, this was true about their government for some time in early March, when Boris Johnson was saying “wash your hands and sing happy birthday”. However, very rapidly, there was a reverse, and the government has ordered extremely expensive lockdown, which is closing the economy.
The problem is that for more than a month has been a certain type of disobedience of the population, which undermined the anti-epidemic effectiveness of lockdown, while still allowing its anti-economic effects fully.
So, population seems to believe “it’s good to do free activities like walking outside in the streets in large groups or visiting friends’ home to watch DVDs” – i.e. activities which continue the epidemic, while not contributing to the economy. However, activities which can cost money (i.e. help the economy), like to go to takeaway restaurants, or sit in an outdoor cafe – are banned.
If the people had been just provided adequate PPE and had been a bit more intelligent, and government added some military quarantines of infected areas – they could have maintained open maybe even most of the economy all these weeks.
Considering armed protesters in places like Michigan, trying to impose a military or a strict quarantine in the US will likely result in armed conflict.
You know that Texas has just become a swing state right?
Facebook later unbanned them, citing a glitch in the algorithm. I would not be surprised if what really happened was that the algorithm only intended to put them on a ‘watchlist’ but banned them by mistake instead.
High rate of asymptomatic a good sign about how much mass testing there is, and that the epidemic is not as bad as it looks in the spreadsheet. So, dramatic figures in Russia are more a result that a larger proportion of the infected people are identified.
However, I’m not sure how useful mass testing without connecting to policies to remove the infected person from the population, can be. In countries like Israel and China – people who has a positive coronavirus test result, are moved to isolation hotels, for quarantine. But in Russia, this test result is just a piece of information given to the person, and relies on the person to be responsible in self-isolating themselves afterwards.
In addition, the advantage of mass testing is a surveillance of the epidemic, such as in South Korea – but in Russia, this surveillance does not always seem to connect to quarantine policies. There are cities where there is no epidemic, which still have wasted a month of self-isolation (despite good surveillance that there was no epidemic there).
Authorities are copying successful policies of other countries, but without exploiting them in way which those other countries have, or with an indication of a coherent strategy.
And yet in the USSR, there had been the world’s most effective, coherent and intelligent, anti-epidemic state capacity.
There’s no justification for the lack of quarantine of Moscow in March and of not quarantining all returning travellers into isolation hotels in Moscow. Then whole regions were lockdowned for April, even when the only infected people were openly sent from airports in Moscow by Rospotrebnadzor to their home cities a few days before. It is like something from the film “Idiocracy”.
Do not worry, many people are working on it.
https://twitter.com/CoreysDigs/status/1256790668594360320
How do you explain Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, getting thousands of cases, a lot of the transmission is happening indoors.
On a lighter side, and definitely pointing to life beyond Covid-19, I found this trailer announcing the completion of a documentary regarding the history of the Ukrainian input into the NHL by the end of 2020. I know that Mike Averko might be interested in this film, perhaps AP and others too:
https://youtu.be/xHLf8IapX_I
You’re probably aware of Ron Unz’ recent announcement where he pretty much shoulders all of the “blame” for the recent banning on Facebook. He feels that it was a direct response to his latest piece detailing why a cautious American elite might feel threatened by his suggestion that it was they that launched a “deliberate biowarfare attack against China.”
It appears that anything that you may have written about this subject was minor in comparison to this “no guns hold” approach that Unz decided to level at those at the top of the US hierarchy.
Well it has happened I lost all interest in corona chan. So much politicizing going around this it is insane. Met with friends the other day. Head of house is very adamant [insert every “it’s just a flu bro” talking point].
Now that you mention it, I remember seeing this in someone’s China photo travelogue (Carl Zha’s?) There are these buildings with a wall around them and guards who only let in local residents with passes. Such arrangements exist in America, too. Here, they are called “gated communities” and are generally located near or inside ghettos.
Chinese need “cooperation” because they live in each other’s hair. Americans are plenty isolated as it is. Live in single family houses, drive cars everywhere… There are many cases in America now but they seem to be concentrated in pretty specific places.
https://twitter.com/ginasue/status/1255847979740794885
Regular people don’t see much of this. Take me as an example. I don’t even know anyone who tested positive, and I live in the middle of a supposed hot zone.
Is there a Russian website for birth and death data, something from the state statistics agency rosstat? The Russian Covid death rate is pretty low compared to others, but does not seem that extraordinary compared to others in Eastern Europe, are there excess deaths from other causes?
It’d certainly be interesting.
Gretzky’s ethnic background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Gretzky
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/gretzky-finds-roots-in-belarus/article753200/
https://belarusdigest.com/story/legendary-hockey-player-gretzky-meets-belarusian-relatives/
Surprised the linked trailer didn’t include Dave Andreychuk.
Re: Anon 2 is a very powerful commenter
“Polak, Węgier, Dwa Bratanki, …” (“Pole, Hungarian, Brothers Be, …”)
Gretzky was of mixed BelaRussian and Ukrainian ethnicty, his father was of BeloRusian background and his mother, born in Pidhajce Ukraine (Galicia) was Ukrainian. His father married Wayne’s mother in after a stint in the military and the only Slavic language used within the family home was Ukrainian. You can hear Wayne discuss his Ukrainian roots here in this video (starting around 1:18) at a large fundraiser dinner in Toronto supporting the Ukrainian cause against Donbas separatists :
https://youtu.be/kF54M2vXwS0
Don’t worry, there will be plenty of other great hockey players of Ukrainian background, besides Gretzky, that will be spotlighted within this documentary. 🙂
At least those high temperatures, will start to reduce the probability of airborne transmission of the virus via droplets in outside air.
Probably there is outdoor transmission still there, although with lower infectivity, as well as transmission in places like air-conditioned shopping malls, or via surfaces.
However, if you think about seasonality of the virus, and combine with what we know about studies on droplet transmission – and its temperature boundaries -, it seems to indicate that outdoor transmission is one of routes of transmission.
Let’s say 11000 infected people in Indonesia so far, is not very much, when considering it has 267 million people, or around 85% of the population of USA, and closer connections to China than USA.
Philippines – which claims to have a little over 9 thousand infected cases -, has 101 million people, or 70% of the population of Russia, and 215% of Spain.
Malaysia has 6298 infections total and around 100 dead, according to Worldometers – but 70% of the population of Spain, which has almost 250000 infections and over 25000 dead.
This is how China created a successful coronavirus self-isolation regime – they sent guards outside of everyone’s building. We needed something like this.
In Wuhan, it was strict, and they locked everyone in their apartment building, with guards outside preventing people from leaving their building for any reason.
People were going crazy after a while. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opFCAWZHpzg
On the other hand, in Beijing (where the epidemic never developed so much), it was more relaxed as people could leave once a day for food – however, still strict as there are people outside your apartment building to check your ID. It was better organized and less stupid than e.g. QR code checking in Moscow.
Me neither. Hahaha. And I am in China.
Somehow I think that if the government delayed the “lockdown” in Wuhan for another week, maybe I’ll be happier? Cheers.
Nonsense.
Distinguish between North American born (sometimes being of another ethnicity) and Ukrainian born (ethnic Ukrainian, part ethnic Ukrainian and non-ethnic Ukrainian).
There’re also numerous past and present Russian players with names suggesting they might’ve roots on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR (Tarasenko, Datsyuk, Tretiak, Kovalchuk, among others).
A great Ukrainian SSR born Rusyn player:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bondra
More about Gretzky’s background at this link with some other missives:
https://hfboards.mandatory.com/threads/ukrainians-in-the-nhl.2199551/page-3
Excerpt –
For a long time, Polish transplants and their progeny that lived in Ukraine clung more closely to their Polishness.The vast majority that live there today have been absorbed into their vastly larger Ukrainian neighbors. Similar processes have occurred with Ukrainians living within both Poland and Russia. These are normal processes and one would hope that promote good inter-ethnic relations.
You are absolutely correct.
At the same time, White Trashionalists in the US are adamant that assimilation never happens. To this day, they insist that Jews are not white. This is something that, if mentioned to Ron Unz, drives him to madness, since he is adamant that Jews were always considered ‘white’ in America. The truth is, when Poles, Italians, and even Irish were new in the US, they were not quite considered ‘white’ in a social sense.
Assimilation happens faster in descending order of the following traits :
i) Similar appearance (Poles assimilating into Ukrainian society, etc.).
ii) Similar economic competence of the new group relative to the host population (leading to intermarriage)
iii) Similar religion (e.g. Irish marrying Italians, and both marrying Mexican-Americans in the US).
If neither i) nor ii) are true, it is very hard for a minority population to fully assimilate (e.g. blacks in the US).
And whorehouses could, theoretically, be replaced by telephone sex. But something would be lacking.
Was Unz.com banned from Facebook before or after Anglin was added here? I wonder if Unz would add the chairman of NAMBLA next?
I know one personally and several persons through one other person.
Given that Bernie was a cuck, and Jesse Ventura can’t make up his mind, maybe POTUS 46 should be this bloke: https://twitter.com/jackcalifano/status/1252312958421483521
Now that The Wall is nearly completed, President Trump can go after social media barons.
Well, I am still waiting for proof that this virus is much deadlier for non-elderly, non-respiratory-impaired people than a bad flu. Why do you assume that congregating is dangerous for the rest of us?
Apparently it is still the case that just repeating something ad nauseam is enough to get most people assuming that it must be true. Every government and corporate and media email and website refer ominously and dramatically to “The Age of COVID-19” without any reliable numbers on fatality rate for non-elderly people who actually tested positive for this virus and did not have a major comorbidity.
Whenever I see national parks I always ask myself, are all those trees really necessary? Couldn’t we just digitise them? I’m sure there are plenty of videos of trees on youtube. Forests look kinda dangerous to me. Aren’t there bears and stuff in forests? There’s really no need for people to ever leave their homes. If you can order home delivery pizza online and you have wifi you can have all the friends you need on social media and if you have pornhub as well you don’t ever need to leave Mom’s basement.
It’s very much like the postmodernists’ idea of hyper-reality. There’s no difference between reality and a simulation of reality. Unz Review shows us what a world of hyper-reality would be like. Everything is real if you believe it’s real. Actual reality doesn’t exist.
Competent government with very limited resources is better than incompetent government with unlimited resources.
Like all post-modernity, this is return to ancient tradition.
The chinese were there first when they asked: What is the difference between beautiful garden that was destroyed long ago, and beautiful garden that never existed?
What makes reality “real”?
http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/features.php?searchterm=013_zikai.inc&issue=013
In his ‘Record of the Garden of Nothingness’, the Ming writer Liu Shilong describes the efforts of a certain Liu Yuhua to create a garden-retreat of his own far from the clamour of worldy affairs. He notes that all the famous gardens of the past like Shi Chong’s legendary Golden Valley Garden had been devastated with the passage of time, ‘nothing remains of [such splendid places] but words on paper. Thus even if [Yuhua] was to build a magnificent garden like that, countless generations from now all that would survive is nothingness….’ Liu decides therefore to fabricate a Garden of Nothingness, a place built for eternity; it is to be a garden of immutable beauty, a lexical pleasance, for it is a demesne that exists only on paper.
Yet, they are assimilating. I can remember in my childhood when blacks (they were called “Negroes” then) looked much closer to their African counterparts: much darker complexions, curlier hair, wider nostrils etc;, and not all due to cosmetic surgery like Michael Jackson. The sound of their speech was much different back then too, and I don’t mean just some additional slang words either. I’m not sure how this trend will continue though, as so many of the new imports from Africa are from Somalia. Locally born blacks even consider the Somalians as being too rusticated and wild for their tastes! 🙂
should be:
“and the changes that you see today are not all due to cosmetic surgery, like in Michael Jackson’s case. “
You ever heard of anything but a completely dysfunctional black government before, neither have I. What matters is demographics first, you can’t have discussion of big vs small government (and other such debates) when you have the wrong demographics.
For an East Asian government, China and the Wuhan government brain trust seemed to have really messed up its initial response which caused this to become a global pandemic, honorable mention for Abe-san also. Plus all of this crap may have been due to a lab accident.
Plus the Chinese government did not place an immediate outbound flight ban to prevent the virus from spreading. Contrary to what people here think, I think the US government acted as well as it did, considering US society, politics, and culture, or does anyone expect here the US government to shoot people just to impose quarantine, although a LAV25 would have made short work of those armed anti-lockdown protesters. Because if US police tried to arrest them a firefight with several dead people would have happened for sure, do people want to see a civil war breaking out in the US over quarantine violations here?
I took my dogs to Richmond Park today just to spite you, Dmitry. Only once did I come within ten metres of a stranger.
I don’t see any policy ever working to ever halt something like Corona virus spreading. If a patient zero only displays symptoms after 10 days or so, that means it has already spread too far to ever contain globally. The only way it could be contained in any one country is if that country closed down all contacts to the outside world, before the virus is even detected, and this is not just tourism, this includes all halting diplomatic staff movement, all workers in port cities, etc.
I can’t see how this virus would not have spread to the world had it started in any country, even North Korea. I am definitely not a pro globalist, but the speed of travel means that these things are practically impossible to ever contain in one location.
Lol, thanks.
Yes, post-modernism has certain affinities with most ancient traditions, and in fact the “hard” realism of modern times is what is unusual – and philosophically – and scientifically – indefensible, and believed in for psychological reasons.
Reality – which we can’t really know – is much weirder than modern thinking allows for.
Much of the “misery” and pessimism that began afflicting the West in the 19th century, and that was written about so extensively by the classic novelists, poets, and philosophers of the time, and that led so many Western adventurers to turn their back on their culture and seek exotic climes, was rooted in this belief in “hard” realism (materialism).
Post-modernism is a necessary “loosening up” stage where we free our selves from the prison of “hard” reality – it is only a stage though, but a hopeful one.
his ceasing and forgot who
As an aside, will the 2nd Amendment work against an invader or government who is willing to use Mongol or Roman tactics of counterinsurgency?
What proportion of the Chechen population owned firearms in 1999?
Don’t you remember that maybe two months ago, our host, Mr Karlin himself, explained that we live in a simulation that will soon become weird because it will run out of gigabytes? For him, shit was virtual anyway. It’s like Bishop Berkeley, but you still have to buy HDDs.
I think they just assumed that health care systems in Western Europe would perform much better.
52 deaths in Moscow today, 2 bad stats yesterday in that deaths were greater outside of Moscow for the first time…. and deaths were lower for the day in Germany ( though that should not be too surprising given the respective stages of the virus in both countries)
If deaths tomorrow are at about 100 or lower tomorrow then we can still call it as in the ftplateau region. 120+ deaths and then it is probably not.
If we are in a position to restart after 12th May, then that is a very good result. We started (lesser) restrictive measures about 3 weeks to a month after most of Europe, plus with the May holidays and many having long holidays in this period anyway…. only 3 working days would have been lost from the 2 week extension of “non-working weeks”. Of course the people whose businesses rely on people enjoying their holidays are in bad position…. but overall effect on economy not too bad. Officials have given false hope talking about us continuously being 2 weeks away from the end throughout each week of the first “non working” week…. now they are going the other way and saying we are not anywhere near the peak!
From a single construction site, there are now 1680 workers identified who were infected with coronavirus in Belokamenka (Murmansk region).
These infected are contract workers for Novatek (oligarch Leonid Mikhelson), and constitute most of the people who have been infected Murmansk region.
The government had to build an emergency hospital for these infected workers, and then they refused to build a second emergency hospital as it was too expensive.
So now Novatek has hired a giant cruise ferry, which they are going to use it perhaps as a hotel, so workers will have more living space, or some kind of hospital.
https://mmk.news/wp-content/uploads/Princess2-1024×768.jpg
This is probably not a good indication for the second wave in autumn, as temperatures in the region are around 5° currently. Workers crowd close together in this environment, with temporary housing.
Case fatality rate is around 1% currently, which is very low by international standards – and indicates a high amount of testing and that people are identified early. Likely this will still increase significantly in the next weeks, as it lags.
https://i.imgur.com/pjLbrOA.png
Infection fatality rate was estimated at 0,66% by Lancelet. This was based on Chinese data, so of course it could be wildly wrong.
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S1473-3099%2820%2930243-7′
Other early estimated were 0,6%
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32234121
Italian researchers are estimating much higher infection fatality rate of 1,29%, from Italy.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.18.20070912v1.full.pdf
Italy has second oldest population in the world so that could be part of the explanation for their high fatality rate – although it still sounds far too high as an estimate.
Epidemiologists in the Ministry of Health (Russia), are claiming it is around 0,2% for people under 40 years old, over 60 is 3,6% and over 80 is 15%. https://rg.ru/2020/05/04/v-minzdrave-rasskazali-zhdat-li-vtoruiu-i-tretiu-volny-covid-19.html
–
Considering that more than 70 doctors and nurses have died with coronavirus already in Russia and the first wave of the epidemic is not yet at the plateau – if it is “just ordinary flu”, then the media should be criticized for underreporting the dangers of ordinary flu (if dozens of doctors would die every few weeks from working with flu patients?).
I heard one official say 70 have died…. but is it actually true? I have read individually about 15 doctors and nurses who have died, infections of medical people about 7-8% for all the cases in the whole country.
100% sure that he did not say 70 have died “with” or “of” coronavirus. Maybe 70 have died since the start of the coronovirus crisis… of course stress related to dealing with coronavirus patients can be a cause ( notably 2 doctors have died from jumping out of the hospital building in the last week) – but that isn’t the same thing.
They want to open a cooperative travel program between New Zealand, Czech Republic, Israel, Denmark, Greece, Australia and Austria. These all seem to be little countries where they believe that coronavirus infections rates are falling, so it would be relatively safer to open tourism between them, and try to save their economies.
To rescue the tourism sector, they would presumably need to market to the large “source market” countries like Germany, Japan, Poland, and China.
However, opening border restrictions to large countries like China before the USA, probably that would anger Trump too much. So, perhaps such little countries will only open to larger countries, when USA ends the first wave. (Tourism-based economies like Greece will still be a disaster this summer).
Saint Petersburg has about the same size population as Finland, Denmark and Norway……. but SP experienced much less coronavirus cases, and a small fraction of the deaths…. even though as an intensely populated city, it should be more vulnerable. Many in SP would have been travelling to the Scandinavian countries over the winter holiday period also- far more than muscovites who tend to go south instead!
We had lots of stories of dead medical workers and they all turned out to be bogus. Some journalist sees a doctor among the dead and doesn’t check whether the dead doctor is actually working or whether it’s some retired old guy in a nursing home.
The US government could have done several things which it didn’t. It could’ve organized mass testing capacity, just in case. It was spectacularly unable to test even a few thousand people by the time the outbreak was clearly under way. The lack of test kits was a massive failure. The lack of PPE for healthcare workers and other officials was another. Masks were unavailable both for the general public and for the hospitals. I’m pretty sure that the US federal government could have done way better with the massive resources at its disposal. Even when started, mass procurement was disorganized, with states trying to outbid each other for these. It looks like no one thought about the need to organize mass supplies for these. The same is true of ventilators (though it now seems they don’t help that much), and similar. Simply based on what we knew in late January the USA government could’ve organized an effort to procure all these, and requested funding from Congress for this (I guess that it has some reserves in the budget for emergencies – could’ve used those until Congress provided funding), along with emergency powers for a possible pandemic. Even regarding rules of quarantine powers could at least have been requested, for example to make breaking of quarantine rules a federal offense. Congress may not have provided any of those, but then Pelosi would be to blame.
The only thing the US federal government did okay was the relatively early closing of the border. It could’ve started at least checking body temperatures of all passengers way earlier. (It was only done initially for passengers from Wuhan, when already it could be known that other Chinese provinces, and possibly other countries, were or could be involved.) The closing of air traffic was done in a chaotic manner, though I’m not sure how much better it could’ve happened. I guess everyone saw the scenes of huge crowds of people crammed together at the airports, including passport control, without face masks or any other pieces of PPE. Maybe it would have helped if it wasn’t a surprise to all involved, with no plan prepared. Preparing plans for emergencies costs little, and was clearly not done.
I’m sure we could think about many more points.
Grammatik macht frei!
I’m sure there must be a worldwide conspiracy involving Xi, Putin, the Italian doctors’ association, and the CDC.
“The toll includes retired doctors” “over 65 years old”
That’s the part of the story that hasn’t been reported so much when the press screams about dead doctors. It’s a good example of why we have such a panic – people have been mislead into thinking that there’s some deadly doomsday bug out there actually killing young medical workers and that’s just not true.
I have no idea what they are doing bringing retired people to fight a virus that’s actually dangerous to them. It seems like Italy is one of those countries that needs to be punished for misleading people.
WASHINGTON—Lambasting the rival superpower for what he called “reckless” and “irresponsible” behavior, President Donald Trump publicly blamed China Monday for acting too late in coordinating the U.S. Covid-19 response. “China knew our nation was facing a deadly threat as early as January, and yet they did nothing to develop a plan we could use to slow the spread of the virus,” said Trump, noting thousands of American lives could have been saved if Chinese president Xi Jinping had only taken the threat seriously from the start and implemented a strategy to reduce the negative impact on the U.S. economy. “The Chinese government just kept waiting and waiting, sitting on their hands as the outbreak spread through the U.S. rather than leading our nation in the way it so desperately needed. States shouldn’t be left out to dry, putting together piecemeal pandemic responses. What else is a strong Communist Party for? And now they’re trying to cover it up, claiming the U.S. isn’t their responsibility.” At press time, Trump added the administration had obtained new intelligence suggesting the Chinese government had engineered coronavirus in a lab in Washington.
https://www.theonion.com/trump-blames-china-for-acting-too-late-in-coordinating-1843243502
I think the US is just willing to treat its workers a more ruthlessly and exploit them more, part of the reason why it is a superpower, US GDP per capita is 20 percent more than well run European economies like Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands, not to mention countries like France, even though they are not really that more efficient. US workers also work a lot longer and get hardly any vacation time compared to Europeans, but the upside is that they produce more widgets. If the US was more lax with its workers and treated them better, and everybody gets a month off per year, total GDP would be a fourth to a fifth smaller than it is today, which is a very big amount, especially when it is caught in a rivalry with China. US workers are fungible commodities and you can always get more and more to replace and ones that are worn out.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-economy-models/index.html
Patriotism is not the simplest concept to define, but when I see the look of this soon to be opened Cathedral of the Armed Forces in Moscow region, then I know that the sensation of national pride felt by any normal Russian because of the cathedral is infinitely larger than anyone from any other country, be it a nothing, fake state or a proper one as Germany, Italy, US, UK etcetera, can feel in their own country. I can’t believe how right they have got it.
An incredibly stunning building, mixing old and modern styles (normally I would be the biggest snob on modern interpretations on classically based buildings…… but this cathedral is simply perfect)
It is perfect in showcasing the greatness of Russian civilisation, recent past, present and of course its style is perfectly suited to being
representive of our military.
I’ve followed it from the beginning- even the bells made off-site. If I was pleased about it before….. I was openly salivating seeing the images of different parts of the interior.
Perfect….. we have built a cathedral to inspire the nation and that will still be doing it in 200,300,400 years time. Can’t wait to visit it
On my unit (I will not be specific about the type of medical setting – AK knows) half the patients had symptoms and were tested positive, as did about 1/3 of the staff (presumably those who were asymptomatic were also positive, given the proximity and poor usage of PPE). A young person in their twenties just had a light fever for a day, others struggled for a few weeks. There was one serious case requiring transfer to ICU. A very healthy nurse in her late thirties told me that she had never in her life been as sick as she was with this virus, although she did not leave home when sick. Overall this has been much worse than any flu outbreak (although most everyone gets vaccinated for flu so that is not surprising). But there have not been any deaths, thank God. Total N = 3-4 dozen people. All but two people are under sixty, however there are a couple obese people.
There have been several deaths in another unit full of elderly people, however, which was shocking.
We have one elderly nurse (over 75!) who wisely stopped working and hasn’t been back. She has been safe and okay at home.
So my overall impression based on personal anecdotal experience is that for people under 60 it is easily the worst “flu” ever seen but is not of a different category than flu in terms of deadliness. For elderly people, however, this is a truly unprecedented killer.
Am just off for my walk in Richmond Park now.
Its deadliness is not the real problem. If it was a garden-variety virus, even a deadly one, we’d know how to handle it.
This thing isn’t a flu. It’s similar to a common cold, except this time different, in very strange and unprecedented ways.
Its novelty is what’s scaring the powers-that-be shitless. (Also giving credence to the theory that the virus is a bioterror/bioerror incident, and not natural.)
P.S. The people I know (under 40) who had it say the primary symptoms they felt are the worst fatigue they’ve ever felt for two weeks.
Hospital ships were quickly replaced with outdoor tents around Boston Harbour during the Spanish flu. Doubt there will be a second wave for those who experienced the first, it is dying out now and looks comparable to a nasty flu season, the economy on the other hand…
White Anglos are just too lazy, decadent, selfish, and are too much of slobs to function well in a first world society nowadays compared to East Asians, they used to be able to compensate for that by having a slightly greater amount of inventiveness, back in the 19th to early 20th century, although once the East Asians caught on they were able to improve on things faster, like the Long Lance torpedo, optical rangefinders in WW2, Sony vs. RCA, or Toyota vs the Big Three, but now that is gone also, and now they are just lazy decadent disorganized selfish individualistic slobs.
How would all the East Asian countries rank if you grade them on a curve, I am including Mongolia here for racial reasons, and Singapore and Vietnam for cultural reasons.
The Feds are putting flourides in the water to make you see things. This coronavirus thing seems to be the equivalent of a broken clock being right twice a day as far as the establishment is concerned?
According to what standard? Anglos are surely the second least lazy, decadent, in Europe, after the other Germanic language speaking countries.
And outside Europe and colonial projects of the English world (Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand), there is really only Japan which is less lazy, decadent, etc.
I would not exaggerate too much about a “disciplined capability” of East Asians, from focusing only on the one Asian nationality which has shown a North Western European style of capacity (Japan).
Similarly, in Europe, you wouldn’t generalize very well, from choosing the few most successful nationalities like Germans, English or Swedish. E.g. German worker excellence, does not generalize so accurately to e.g. modern Romania, or modern Greece, even though distance is only a few hundred kilometres.
If you thought of Europeans as synonymous with Germany, you would assume we are a naturally conscientious, lawful race – and you are going to be very confused by life in Italy, let alone Ukraine.
In recent history, it was only Germany/Japan which had a reputation for mass making consistently good quality consumer products, and they have both this greatly undermined in recent years by offshoring much of their production to countries with less conscientious standards.
In Asia, Japanese brands seem to have mostly undermined all reputation for their quality in recent decades, by offshoring production to China.
In Europe, much of German brands are offshoring production to countries like Romania, Hungary. People now especially try to get from brands like Miele, because it’s one of the few where you can still buy made by German workers (or Turkish gastarbaiters in Germany), rather than nationalities like Poles and Romanians.
Who can predict if Chinese production will go the way of Italy, instead of Japan? Perhaps Chinese brands start making the world’s fastest supercars, but that their mass market cars will develop more like Fiat, than Toyota.
Have you compared the death rates between Korea and the UK, or Korea and the US lately? Or seen the comments of the right wing Anglo posters here or at Unz? Plus libertarianism and Austrian economics were popularized by Anglo whites. Anglos basically invented libertarianism, and made the Chinese opium addicts.
White Anglos invented a lot of things in the modern world, like modern trains, machine guns, gatling guns, aircraft, modern ocean liners, telephones, telegraphs, mass produced cars, moderns rockets, jet engines, computers, radars, etc. Also wrote the book on successful relatively non-violent counterinsurgency tactics in the Malayan emergency and their belated victory in the 2nd Boer war.
To be fair, a Jew invented the first properly automatic one
In Asia you didn’t mention Korea, which has become comparable to Japan.
Otherwise you are probably right.
Here you go Anatoly:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/05/three-russian-doctors-fall-out-of-hospital-windows-under-mysterious-circumstances-n388158
Seems Putin is murdering all the brave heroic doctors that try to speak out about how Ruskis are dropping like flies.
I don’t know how you guys escaped the blame for creating this virus in the first place. Someone clearly dropped the ball. Jennifer Rubin must have been too busy sheltering in place and reporting her neighbors to the police for going outside.
Strange though, that a few Russian doctors working with Corona virus patients have suddenly taken to jumping out of windows?…shabby window construction, no doubt.
Bloody Putler is making them do it.
Just ask the Economist, they’re a reputable news source!
All of the news has been suspect since the original “Pravda” was gutted and split up into several different versions, run by Greeks, Jews and who knows who? It used to be, that if you wanted the real unadulterated truth, you knew where to go. But today?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/RIAN_archive_669616_Wartime_city_life_-_Moscow_in_October_-_December_1941.jpg/220px-RIAN_archive_669616_Wartime_city_life_-_Moscow_in_October_-_December_1941.jpg
“The truth shall set you free” 🙂
Off-top (if you can be off-top on an open thread)
Bay of Pigs in Venezuela: pigs lost again.
Following multi-million contract (who paid?) between vaudeville “president” of Venezuela Guaido and Silvercorp USA Inc owned by Jordan Goudreau a bunch of mercenaries going in speedboats from Colombia attempted landing in Venezuela. Their fates differed: some were killed, some captured. Two American citizens are among those captured. Maduro openly celebrates victory and demonstrates their US passports.
While victories have many fathers, pathetic failures tend to be orphans. Both Trump and Colombian government denied their role, or even knowledge, of this failed attempt. Guaido immediately disowned it. However, Goudreau published on the web his contract with Guaido, demonstrating for all who wants to know that Guaido is not just a cowardly nobody, but also a liar. Stay tuned.
UK has just edged out Italy and became the second (after the US) country in the number of coronavirus-associated deaths. Truly, the Anglos lead the world. The only problem is, the majority of the world population does not want to move in the direction where Anglos lead. Ungrateful bastards, no doubt.
5 more medical professionals have been killed with coronavirus in Saint-Petersburg, even though the epidemic is still very small in that city.
Perhaps this is also normal with flu in May, but if so, then there is surely chronic lack of reporting by the media about the dangers of flu for medical professionals? – as a reader of media for years, we causal people don’t hear reports about flu killing the doctors.
https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2020-05-05-four-doctors-with-coronavirus-died-in-st–petersburg.BkEl1MLyq8.html
I don’t know personally and haven’t been in Korea – but my impression was prejudiced from hearing from people who visited South Korea, saying it was more low quality, boring imitation of Japan.
What this man I talked to was studying for some months in Korea, and he visited Japan from Korea for a week -and was shocked by how much better Japan seems to him, and that Japanese seem a lot more cultured.
And reputation of Korea is damaged a bit in our minds that – while the American occupied South half of Korea became a quite developed, civilized country, with powerful industries (if culturally boring imitation of Japan) – the Northern half of the country can still be a completely primitive third world place.
If South Korea can develop almost to a Western European level; but the other half of the country is more like a bad stereotype of an African dictatorship. (It does show how false the theory is that race can determines a country’s success is; there is no racial difference between North and South Koreans, yet one country is total failure and other is quite successful).
It appears that you’re one of the few “grateful bastards” then, eh Mr. Tennessee 🙂
https://i.tyzhden.ua/Content/PhotoAlbum/2014/6_2014/16b.jpg
Venezuelans know that. That’s why his support in the country is in single digits, despite the fact that many Venezuelans have legitimate beef with Maduro and his government.
Would you inform of your observation those governments who recognized this incompetent nonentity as president of Venezuela? Including the US government. You can even start with your supervisor.
“Anglos are surely the second least lazy, decadent, in Europe, after the other Germanic language speaking countries”
UK and Germany negotiated planeloads of Romanian agricultural workers. Austria negotiated trainloads of unqualified “healthcare workers” (read, old peoples’ ass wipers). Austrians had to convince the Hungarian Orban (not to be confused with the Romanian one) to allow passage for their trains.
Those Austrian Zoom meetings must be never ending, longer than Weihan’s study hours. And who is in the mood to see their own grandparents, after a hard day’s work on Slack?
Just how old must one’s grandma be when one sends her to Recycle Bin, in order to qualify to the “hard working” description?
It makes sense that Japan is more impressive culturally as it has a population about 2.5x that of SK. And that comes with secondary effects, like market size. If you compare films, it seems to me Korean films are often more modest, as their domestic market is smaller and a hit there generally doesn’t make much money.
I watched the movie Train to Busan recently. Of course, it had some flaws – I don’t think you can make an entertaining zombie movie without at least five plot holes – but I think it was better than any Western zombie movie that I can remember seeing.
I’ve been thinking about the related idea that China has a weak cultural sphere for their size, and I’m not so sure the difference is as dramatic as it seems at first. First off, you can’t compare vs. Hollywood in 1939, or ask where their Buster Keaton (Jackie Chan?) or peak Schwarzenegger is, because that’s not a fair comparison, if you are looking to evaluate the present. You need to compare maybe the last ten years, up to 2020, and I have trouble thinking of any good Hollywood films from that time.
Next, it should really be split into three groups, rather than China vs. America – 1.) Multicult Hollywood, 2.) non-multicult white films, and finally 3.) North East Asian output – combining Japan, Korea, and China. I don’t know how translatable my psychology is on a global level, but I prefer #3, as it is pretty hard to find #2 these days, and I think diversity is like cancer to art. Practically every film with diversity in it has some political message. Even if it is hidden, it is supporting the fiendish process of globalization.
This is about the price of labor. It has nothing to do with natives refusing to do the work. It is hardly surprising that natives don’t want to live in dorms paying rent to their employers, and working for slave wages. The companies know this, and when natives apply they hire Romanians instead.
North Korea is also quite successful. A stable, secure, Stalinist state that stays this way through two handovers of power and decades after real Communism ended almost everywhere else. It is a perfectly-done realization of a terrible system, so in this case success is bad for the people living there. Comparisons to Africa are absurd. Africans wouldn’t build nukes, rockets, hack Sony, maintain a competent state terror apparatus, etc.
An interesting reply.
Regarding Korea: in the US, ESPN is airing Korean baseball games live and on tape. They play before empty stadiums. If a player suddenly falls ill from Covid-19, that league will shut down for three weeks.
“hack Sony” – This is unlikely to be a difficult achievement – these companies often almost without any security, and such hacks are usually from phishing emails.
“build nukes” – North Korea have the world’s most primitive nuclear weapons, and they are based on Pakistani technology.
“perfectly-done realization of a terrible system” – Not really, that kind of tribal family dictatorship which is in North Korea, just requires violence. They don’t need complex political technology. You kill the people who disagree with you and ban the things you don’t like.
“maintain a competent state terror apparatus” – The majority of dictatorships in the present and past have a far more competent state apparatus. North Korea survives on foreign food aid and the population is starving.
“North Korea is also quite successful.” – It’s one of the most unsuccessful third world countries. Population is starving and country lives from foreign aid. It is not Nazi Germany. It is more like al-Bashir’s Sudan, or similar family dictatorships across Africa.
My comment is a bit unclearly written. I’m not saying Koreans will have shown high “racial potential”, comparable to white races. But the fact there can be the world’s least successful, starving country in North Korea, and then a quite successful one which can make our televisions and cars – from the same race, shows what a total joke “a racial determinism model of development” would be, as all historians have written for centuries (blood is only one of the many other ingredients in the recipe, as historians usually explained for centuries).
I don’t think it’s a question of quantity. Japan has usually some kind of strange, original or aristocratic interpretation on most of everything for at least a century.
South Korea culture seems to be mainly importing Japanese and Western ideas, and sometimes creating a new re-popularization of old fashions e.g. synchronized boy/girl bands of the 1990s America. There also seems something more American (perhaps lacking “Buddhist” insight), in the popular culture’s obsession with pretty aesthetics.
Although there are new popular cultural trends from Korea like Mukbang, which is similar to some of the weirder ideas from Japan.
The less original culture, might be a result of historical misfortune, of suffering decades of foreign occupation by Japan – in addition, a large part of the population had sadly lost their native ancestral roots in 20th century conversion to Christianity by American missionaries, which might add an additional historical discontinuity. (While of course Japan has always been very careful about missionaries).
But the answers here will be in history books, rather than my amateur speculations.
In terms of “artistic quality”, Hollywood improved in the last couple years. For example, the most Hollywood famous films of this/last year: Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Ford against Ferrari, 1917, etc.
^ These are 6/10 or perhaps even 7/10 films. They’re not great films at all, they are not great art. But they are also not very bad, unentertaining, unwatching, etc.
Cultural influence and originality is not necessarily about quality though. Things like Marvel films are wildly popular and successful cultural export of the last decade.
Come on Twinkie, hit us up ! You know you want to.
In terms of socio-economics, up until 1970, maybe mid-1960s, North Korea (if I’m not offhand mistaken) didn’t compare so unfavorably to South Korea.
South Korea was one of the world’s poorest countries at that time, and already now it has developed to Western European level. On the other hand, North Korea still cannot industrialize agriculture to early 20th century methods.
The divergence is wildly extreme, and surely far more than anyone would have predicted 60 years ago.
It’s almost like a laboratory, political experiment – as the division was an arbitrary foreign imposed one, and does not correspond to any “natural” division (that is in countries like Italy).
This “documentary” is more like Korean government propaganda. However, part of the message is that they really understand and adapt both Western and Eastern markets – it’s one of benefits of being a victim of colonialism from both sides.
Does anyone else simply not care about Corona anymore?
Still, North Korea, rather isolated, heavily sanctioned and with only 26 million people managed to build its own nukes and to build medium range missiles with a range of hundreds of kilometers. Hundreds of millions of Arabs haven’t been able to do this, and you compare North Korea to Africa.
Mass starvation is a feature of Stalinist systems. USSR under Stalin, Mao’s China, Ethiopia under the Derg all had mass starvation.
Of course it is not Nazi Germany. While evil towards outsiders, Nazism treated its own people much better and provided them with much better lives than do Stalinist systems for their own people. Whom would you rather be in 1933 – a Berliner or Bavarian, or a Muscovite or Ukrainian? Nazis didn’t starve Germans to death. Soviets starved Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs to death, Mao starved Chinese, etc.
This is just a damnation of Communism. It makes even the lives of East Asians dirt poor and miserable. It’s not surprising. Look at the squalor of the Soviet Union, which was a much less extreme form. There is an old expression – “socialism makes smart people poor, oil makes dumb people rich.” I suppose that Venezuela proves that the effects of socialism outweigh those of oil.
Again, the system in North Korea is successful by its own standards. It is much more successful than any other Stalinist system has been. The others all disappeared, this one is still going strong.
Trump already declared victory, so we just have to take his word for it?
No, that’s not what I mean.
I just find the whole thing boring and fatiguing now. It’s the only thing people talk about anymore, and that has been the case for almost two months now.
I should note that I live somewhere with zero cases, which probably contributes to my view.
Only because Israel bombs the projects (Iraq, Syria), or because they don’t want to be sanctioned by the world (countries with sensible governments like Egypt).
They didn’t build their own – they were from Pakistani blueprints.
In the USSR, starvation was only during the process of industrialization of agriculture. This was temporary transition point.
And of course, the comparison (to the Soviet Union) is not possible to understand. Stalin has left the Soviet Union as possibly the most powerful country in the world (or equal to the USA).
Nazi Germany was the most powerful country in Europe and still a culturally dominating power (even as the terrible government resulted in loss of large proportion of their scientists, writers, musicians, even to the USSR e.g. Kurt Sanderling). The point is that North Korea is not a normal European style of dictatorship. It’s not even a South American “Banana Republic” – which exports useful products like bananas.
It is an African level of family dictatorship (where the leader has a harem, etc), that cannot industrialize to third world levels, and only has the benefit of some industrialized looking Potemkin villages – so naive observers will think that they are industrialized.
North Korea is actually a mainly subsistence economy.
It shows that the political layer (rather than factors like race, or even culture), can be completely determining success or failure of the country.
In North Korea, this political layer is a African style of family dictatorship.
It is not “damnation of communism”, as we know what life in communism can be like with more adequate leaders. USSR has been the world’s only superpower (apart from the USA) in the last century, and people lived very well by later stages. But this is similar across Europe: life was not so terrible in countries like Yugoslavia, German Democratic Republic, either.
My theory is that this has something to do with economics. Japan was already filling a lot of cultural niches with its produce that had an advantage of a larger domestic market. What seemed to be left open for Korea was heavily manufactured music, and Korea actually had an advantage here because the process of grooming these young music stars is actually pretty brutal, and the relative poverty of Korea at that time made it seem more attractive. And there was a carryover effect, even as standard of living rose.
I haven’t seen any of them, so I can only comment superficially.
Joker I understand has some sort of implied miscegenation with a single black mother or something.
I refuse to watch anything Tarantino does – I was never a great fan of him, ever since I saw Pulp Fiction , which depicts violent sodomy. Inglourious Basterds and especially Django Unchained, seem like revenge fantasies of Jews and blacks respectively. Django had a really abominable scene against a white woman. After seeing it, I decided to call it quits on him permanently. Some have called Once Upon a Timea white-friendly film, but that still doesn’t matter to me. Anyway, I have heard he is deconstructionist to Bruce Lee in the movie.
1917 I understand has a stereotypical German villain scene. I realize film is often like that. You need villains, at least to a certain extent, and I don’t want to appear like the Indians who have a problem with Last of the Mohicans because it depicts noble Indians vs. savage Indians, but with Germans, there are added layers of complexity, on a historical and cultural level. I abhor seeing what this cultural vilification of Germans has done to Germans. If we were living in the 1980s, I’d be okay with it, but in 2020, after seeing the process of the past few years, and following German politics at least on a shallow level, I’m deeply disturbed by it.
I recently watched the Russian movie Zashchitniki (2017). Bad movie and very derivative, but it got me wondering what might have happened, if the USSR had tried to create popular movies with a team of heroes from different parts of the Union. Though, personally, I feel worn out, when it comes to seeing superhero movies – the fantasy elements seem a sign of civilizational decay. And they are very multicult and feminist.
One of the most interesting aspects of Corona-chan is how it has interrupted the standard newsmedia cycle, helping to reveal how dumb, derivative, and superficial it is.
Great point.
Although they also enjoy “polish”, the Japanese actually look for and prefer imperfections in physical beauty (both people and things).
There is something superficial and shallow in Korean standards of beauty. It lacks depth and character, no eccentricity or quirks.
Yup, building cathedrals is the way, as every gamer knows.
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Cathedral
Grand cathedral in Yamoussoukro made Ivory Coast great again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Our_Lady_of_Peace
The Armed Forces cathedral is not so great
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Cathedral_of_the_Russian_Armed_Forces
but it will make Russia great again too, because it is perfectly designed to trigger all libs worldwide.
What could make liberal madder than cathedral?
Maximally based, maximally redpilled CATHEDRAL OF STALIN!
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-and-stalin-exalted-beside-angels-in-russias-pagan-temple-sb5ptswhq
Are you cereal?
Soviet Union may have had squalor until after WW2 as it was still a very much developing country. Then after the war it rapidly obtained first world standards ofl iving and surpassed Europe.
Finally, to answer some of your other questions regarding the USSR (which you seem to be poorly educated in given your traitorus Ukranian (i mean polish) roots:
regarding “starvation” caused by stalinist regiemes. Sure they did happen, just like they happened in many places at that time outside USSR/communist countries. Furthermore, you seem to have a hard-on for the Tsar, but totally ignore how much Tsardom was hated by its own people – as evident from the writings of the contemporaries of the time – this accounts for constant peasant revolts and the development of a strong state security appartus by the Okhranka which later became the bases for the CheKa and NKVD. This is easily seen by how the Decembrists were treated.
Under Kolkhoz, workers would work 100 days a year (after it was established) and still have a great deal of money they saved – evidenced by how farmers financed tanks and planes for the RKKA during WW2.
From 1947 to 1953 (year of stalin’s death), every march 1st (I may be wrong, it might be may) the prices for essential food items decreased by about 1.5-2x.
Despite much loss and destruction, under stalin’s rule the USSR increased industrial output 20x compared to other countries in europe that increased no more than 2x in the same period.
During WW2 the USSR lost >20 million people, 1710 cities, 70k villages, 32k industries, 65k km of railroads, etc which was all rebuilt rapidly after the war WITHOUT outside help.
Soviet production under Stalin exceeded the expected results for the 4th five year plan:
-industrial capacity was increased 48%
-rebuild and build 5900 factories, 85 million sq m of housing in cities, 3.6 million sq m in villages
-surpass before war levels of industrial output and integration with the newest agricultural technologies of that time
-rapid increases in QoL for the population
Regarding things like Operation Bagration or the losses that the USSR suffered during WW2. After the winter of 1941 the USSR was always in a counteroffensive – and generally in offensives well defended positions are attacked which naturally leads to greater losses. There is little evidence that Zhukov or that WW2 Soviet commanders (past 1941) where useless. To say otherwise is being a wehraboo.
It was not until Khruschev’s “reforms” and shitting on Stalin that the first deficits started appearing. Furthermore, had OGAS been implemented the USSR would have been 10 years ahead of the USA in internet exploitation.
We know why Karlin hates the USSR:
-Because his ancestors where traitorous white officers and naturally he hates that their land was lost and other priveleges.
-He was raised to hate it and thus seeks to confirm his view in a confirmation bias.
-What we saw in the USSR was the best educational system in the World – far superior to what was present in Tsarist Russia (this is why only 15% of the population was literate) and what is present now.
It’s also obvious why you hate the USSR
-You are a svidomiy ukranian (or should I say pole – because western ukranians aren’t actually ukranians but poles).
-Poles have historical beef with Russia (since they got defeated in the 1600’s and the PIC was broken apart)
What is “naz” about you, fren? Your comments are 100% pure “bol”.
Not that there is anything wrong with it. Real debate needs all points of view;-)
Maybe it has exposed how shallow and lacking in redundancy the modern supply chain is?
thats because the modern world needs more naz 🙂
I wonder if Corona-chan has caused Anatoly to reevaluate any of his ideas about nuclear war.
Most days, I suspect I would be turned into plasma or something, if an H-bomb dropped nearby, or at least be beyond any hope of survival. But, if I try to imagine myself in a very rural location about 100-200 miles away in the mountains, and safe from radiation, I still think that the supply and economic situation might become pretty scary.
To be fair, North Korea did very well while it was propped up by Soviet money and resources. At that time, North Korea was also able to trade with China/USSR and was able to obtain resources that are not present on the rocky Korean peninsula.
I have heard accounts that South Korea would not be doing too well either, if not for American money propping up its economy – as outside 4 main companies (Samsung, LG, Hyundai, SK holdings) the south korean economy is not productive. It also doesn’t need to spend much on military as its protection is guaranteed by America.
It would be interesting to see how well South Korea does if America entirely withdrew.
So what you are saying is that you still believe Anglos and Germos are most hard working, but the current pay rate prevents them from showing it? (FYI, Romanian farm workers live in crowded conditions simply because they don’t make the money to live at The Ritz. Most of them would stay at The Ritz, like any consoomer, given the chance.)
How is that “hard working”? How can “hard work” depend on the pay rate? Italians and Spaniards would wank abut on Zoom and Slack for 30 an hour, just like Anglos and Germos, given the chance. You can’t call them lazy simply because their economy is not based on wanking on Zoom.
Also, sending your grandma, like the Austrians do, to an old people’s house, to be washed by a spic, is beyond hard working / lack thereof. You should be able to care for your family even if you are not paid, and even if your living conditions get a bit worse. Most of these 80-year old disabled Austrians have 60-year old children, who are retired as well. Their failure to care for their parents is more than laziness. It is not “refuse to work”, it is not “poor housing”. Your parents f**ng hosted you for almost 20 years, fed you and washed you. Austrians are unChristian satans.
You’re right. Anglos and Germans are not as hard-working as Balkanoids, just vastly more competent and productive (also better-looking)
You are confusing them with Japan.
Korea does have US forces on its soil as far as I’m aware
It’s not Germans – it’s Germos, or else you will leave out the parent-hating Austrians.
Btw, do you know if your parents are still alive? Last I read, there were more covid deaths in your extracommunitarian shithole than in the whole of Asia and Europe taken together. Perhaps you should stop your hard work here, and make your annual phone call, while they are still alive.
(With a disclaimer that I think that Maddison Project Database must be a bit of unreliable trash, in how it tries to calculate real incomes.)
In 1983, just as the economic disaster begins, Russian real GDP per capita is 96% of United Kingdom real GDP per capita, according to Maddison Project.
While today it is (according to them) 63% of United Kingdom real GDP per capita – although I would say a lot lower in reality.*
In either way, it matches our unfortunate intuition that the distance of incomes with the Western European is greater now, than it was at the beginning of the 1980s.
*It’s definitely seems less than 63% of United Kingdom, from intuitive comparison.
And yet North Koreans accomplished this.
And Soviets stole their plans also.
North Korea has made nukes and has missiles with 13,000 km range. A remarkable achievement for an isolated and sanctioned nation of 26 million.
I visited USSR in its later stage. It was squalid, and horrible. The poorest Americans in housing projects lived better than “middle class” Soviets, materially.
There was also mass starvation after World War II.
USSR was importing massive quantities of grain, it couldn’t feed itself:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/1982-03-01/soviet-agricultures-dependence-west
USSR had about 182 million people in 1950. USA was only 152 million. USSR was the most populous country in the world after China and India. And yet it had to settle for second place after the USA. Its military could keep up (barely) but its standard of living fell behind that of Greece or Portugal.
North Korea is probably the most powerful nation on Earth with a population of 26 million. It too has a shitty standard of living, but a powerful military that nobody wants to mess with. North Korea, like the USSR, might not be able to feed itself consistently, but it supports a military of 1.2 million. If such a country had the population of the USA, it would be a military of 15 million people. If Russia, it would be a 7 million man military.
I’m fairly agnostic on a hierarchy of work ethic among various European peoples. I am not a mega-industrialist, with the personal experience of employing large numbers of each people, and it is not a question I lose sleep over. But I do know this: if wages were the same in Romania, Romanians would not be harvesting crops in England or Ireland.
So you never lived there? That explains alot about your ignorance.
Sure if you visit a shitty city like Shahtyu you will see squalor and filth. Visit nicer places and they will be nicer. Just like anywhere else.
You should probably go visit a housing project, then you would see how ridiculous your statement is.
Right, lets not ignore that the USA had 150-200 years of uninterrupted growth whereas the USSR went through three wars with significant population losses, where it had to rebuild from scratch. As its said in Russian, “сравнил хер с пальцем “.
The fact that the USSR surpassed almost all capitalist economies in the world despite this is miraculous.
According to whom? You? The Western Media? If you’re on UNZ one expects that you don’t buy into the media lies. Go actually see videos of people who visited North Korea (not just Pyongyang), you can see the people live quite well.
There was also a livejournal run by a Russian whose dad was a Russian diplomat to North Korea who wrote about the day to day life of average people. He dispelled many myths about it.
I think you lost track. My first message in this thread, and the only reason I decide to waste my time providing content to a blogger who’d write 5 screens on Lord of the Thrones, is message #173, that I even quoted. It says “Anglos are surely the second least lazy, decadent, in Europe, after the other Germanic language speaking countries”.
I am debating that. If anything, the fact that Austrians farm their elderly, shows they are worse than lazy. Maybe at other times, you could have said “Austrians are busy building space ships”, or “Romanians know best how to wipe ass”, or “it’s a matter of supply and demand”. But we know that covid is particularly bad for farmed elderly. Austrians are paying Romanians to infect their elderly. Not only they won’t care for them now; they want their elderly dead, so that they’ll never have to care again for them. Peak laziness.
I generally think that people are all the same, if external factors are similar, but this shit got me thinking about Austrians. Sadly, Dmitry is not the thinking kind.
Now, how can I involve you in our discussion? Or would you prefer to carry on the stream of consciousness path?
If I recall you had a tourist experience (for some days?) in Ukraine in 1991, when the country’s economy had worst collapse in modern history for 6 years already.
I’m sure it’s an interesting experience, to see such a collapse. But I’ve seen squalid in my own tourist experiences in America (and I’m sure more easily if I visited in the Great Depression, rather than the 21st century), but I won’t confuse a squalid tourist experiences with the economic data.
I think Maddison Project obviously overestimate significantly when they claim Russian GDP per capita was 96% of United Kingdom real GDP per capita in 1983. That is not true. But the fact is that Russia was an advanced industrialized economy by 1980s, and that the population lived well, with a GDP per capita not so distant from Western European countries. My parents who say they lived well in their youth, which was in the USSR of that time, are not addicts of LSD and psilocybin, so we can’t explain their experience as an example of hallucinations.
People often lived in ways which can be considered bourgeois in Western Europe. To give one example – a child wants music lessons and to play the piano. In Soviet times, with any ability, they have access to all this for free, and lessons with a professional teacher, and on a professional piano. On the other hand, today (in Russia, but probably also many Western countries) only a small minority of children have parents which will afford this in the private route, at least at a high level, with professional level piano and teacher.
As for materially – my parents in their youth had material things (e.g. cameras, portable cassette players, hi-fi system, consumer electronic products, etc), not of a different kind – perhaps slightly lower quality – than belongs to people in Western Europe of that epoch. I.e. they had material goods typical of industrialized countries of the 1980s.
Iraq and Syria would, if Israel does not bomb their nuclear weapons projects. Similarly, as Egypt or Morocco could, if they didn’t have adequate governments that prefer to avoid sanctions.
This is called “Nuclear Nonproliferation”. Countries didn’t develop nuclear weapons not because of lack of technology or human capital (which is now blueprints from Pakistan for North Korea or Syria), but because they don’t want to be sanctioned by the world for nuclear proliferation.
It’s a strange comparison. Soviet Union developed the world’s most advanced military capacity, and has dominated many areas of science and technology, as well as being the dominant cultural and athletic power of the second half of the 20th century.
On the other hand, North Korea has developed the world’s most primitive nuclear weapon program, and according to Pakistani technology. Moreover, they have built some unfinished Potemkin village to pretended to be industrialized, and still not finished Ryugyong Hotel. While the population live on subsidence level.
There is no original R&D. It’s following Pakistani blueprints, and recreating things which were solved by others in the 1940s.
Don’t confuse original invention of such weapons, and the requirements to follow blueprints to recreate mechanisms developed 70 years before. The difficulty there is not anymore technological, but the reaction of the international community. It is primarily a diplomatic, rather than technological, difficulty involved.
I don’t think this is a good metric. Its nuclear program is the most primitive one that exists (e.g. weak countries like Israel and Pakistan have a much more advanced one, from decades earlier), and is a result of a country having “nothing to lose” diplomatically, rather than any indication of power.
It has a subsistence economy, and has failed to industrialize, even after more than 70 years of trying. Abstract numbers about soldiers? – it does not seem useful information, although such numbers if actually true or based in some reality, could indicate the amount of unproductive free labour in the country.
Infections everywhere are around 100X what is reported, since the majority don’t even have symptoms. You can pay some attention to ‘Covid Deaths’ but even that is highly untrustworthy. If you had a 8 bypass surgeries, and died of a heart attack and happened to test positive, you are a ‘Covid Death’. At this point in the US they are feverishly padding the numbers (now you don’t even need a positive test, just similar symptoms), in order to justify the insane lockdown and the suspension of civil liberties, like the idiotic 2-meter rule, and bandito masks. You can trace the course of the epidemic to some extent in individual countries but trying to compare them is almost useless now.
If I recall correctly, AP visited Kiev in the beginning of the 1990s, and was depressed by poverty and general sadness he saw, compared to in America.
Part of this will be because he came after 5-6 years of terrible economic collapse (I’m sure the atmosphere in America was not too happy, during the Great Depression). This is also during political crisis, and a time of peoples’ spiritual and even public health collapse.
Another part of his experience, might probably be because he visited from one of the world’s most wealthy countries – America, and probably not from South Bronx. If you live in a very wealthy part of a wealthy country (even for a couple weeks), then you can receive such culture shock when you leave the plane, and walking in a normal area of a normal country. I have this experience a lot, after living in a wealthy part of Northern Western Europe.
And part of his observations accurate – that a large part of Soviet housing stock is low quality, compared to e.g. American, German or English housing. That this comparatively can reduce living standard. Also buildings can be dirty, and badly presented for tourists. Etc (just like in a lot of cities still today).
Although you can visit countries like Israel now in 2020, and see even worse housing stocks. And yet if you investigate a bit more, you might find the population has quite high standards of living in other ways. Or even in countries with very good living standards like Spain today, most people live in small apartments, in ugly concrete box buildings.
Ah I see. Kiev in 1990’s is not representative of the USSR or how the people lived at all. By that time the government had essentially collapsed, infrastructure was destroyed, and it was gangsterism everywhere.
Although I’d disagree with your observations about housing – the people who lived in shitty, old khruschevka’s were mostly working class and this is very often the case for people from most countries.
But you are absolutely right, if AP lived in rich cities of America (I went on a road trip through Connecticut and the squalor and destruction I saw looked worse than what I saw in the 90’s) then its not surprising he had such a culture shock.
Also, lets not forget that much of the Soviet housing that existed at the time where built as temporary housing after the war and was supposed to be replaced – I read about how the Soviet leadership planned to do a gradual upgrade and replacement of the khruschevka’s on a large scale throughout the country by the late 80’s – but it never happened because of the collapse.
Finally, a brief mention on North Korea (so I don’t spam posts) – I greatly respect the fact that North Korea is keeping its country closed and protected from the general cultural degeneration that we see throughout the West (and in South Korea itself). Also, people overestimate North Korean poverty and government incompetence (they have extensive military R&D but are severely limited in resources) and underestimate the effect isolation and sanctions are having on it.
I think it was 1990. I stayed at tourist hotels but also with family, and visited many relatives in their apartments, so I saw how people actually lived. By Western standards it was poverty. Large numbers of people crammed into small apartments. Few cars, and those that existed were of quality so low I had never experienced it. Not much, and poor quality, food (except bread, which admittedly was perhaps the best I have tasted). Quality of clothes as in the third world.
There was no war, plague, or other event to trigger such a collapse. It was a manifestation of the system’s inherent inferiority.
And it is no different in other socialist countries such as Cuba, Ethiopia, and now Venezuela. There is always an excuse.
I don’t have time to hunt for the graph for 1983. Wiki has 1973. In 1973, the USSR had about half the GDP per capita of the UK and slightly more than one third that of the USA. It was worse than fascist Spain and Portugal. It was only about 20% higher than in Mexico:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita#1%E2%80%932008_(Maddison)
A disproportionate amount of the Soviet economy was tied up with the military so the discrepancy between the Soviets and the others in terms of civilian life was even much greater than that indicated by the GDP figures.
We hosted an aunt and uncle from the USSR in the early 1980s (their kids weren’t allowed to join them because the Soviets wanted the parents to return). They were shocked, for example, when driving past an auto plant to see all of the cars the workers drove in the parking lot. Not only by the number of them but by the quality; they were much better than Volgas, and no comparison to Zhigulis. Their initial thought was: this was propaganda, a show – the government parked those cars there to make it look like workers were so wealthy. They were amazed by the stores, supermarkets, houses, private swimming pools, etc.
This is possible when everyone is equally poor. The physician, factory worker, street sweeper, and engineer make about an equally low income so all can equally afford a piano teacher, who is also very poor.
In Soviet times people “lived well” because they weren’t starving, they could afford some basic low quality things, and everyone was about equally poor so they did not have much cause to be envious.
So do the poorest Negros in America. So? And you will notice there are many cars in housing projects or trailer parks. A 15 year old car owned by an American lumpen was still better than a new Soviet-era car that most Soviets could not even afford.
Meanwhile when one of my relatives was a baby in Soviet Russia during Brezhnev times, she and her brother lived with her parents, grandmother and great-grandmother in a two room apartment. Kids, grandmother and great-grandmother all shared one room, parents had the other room. In America only the poorest lumpens have such crowded conditions. Her parents were both university professors.
There is of course a vast cultural difference between poor lumpens in America and middle class Soviets. For this reason one would certainly prefer to live among the latter than among the former. But materially, in terms of living space, number and quality of possessions – not much difference.
Soviet military capacity nearly matched that of the West but everything else was far behind. Just as North Korea’s military capacity matches that of its Westernized neighbors but the country otherwise is far behind.
North Korea has developed the powerful military capacity to deter attacks on its nuclear project. This is part of why it is such a successful country, according to the Stalinist model..
A small country of 26 million under intense sanctions and scrutiny. An amazing feat.
If you are thinking of Hiram Maxim, he was not a Jew. He was born in 1840 of old Puritan stock in Maine. Puritan New Englanders were fond of Old Testament names, perhaps giving rise to the misconception. Maxim was an atheist, but told this story about himself:
https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi694.htm
Ukraine was sovereign but not yet independent, I was there in 1990 when the USSR still existed. People were actually optimistic and happy, this wasn’t like 1995 or 1999.
They were just all very poor and everything was scarce and of very shoddy quality.
I had driven past Chicago ghettos and rural trailer parks. Obviously these were more dangerous and more littered, because people were different. But materially there was little difference.
I was in high school, so I was often focused on silly things – crappy clothes, many women didn’t shave their legs, lack of deodorant, third world public toilets where people had to squat and shit in a hole. Girls were very friendly, but unappealing if one wasn’t desperate. The public shared a water glass which was disgusting (but the fact that no one stole or destroyed the glass was remarkable; no doubt North Korea is similarly disciplined). I had never experienced a car as bad as the Lada and it was a luxury there, not every family had even such a bad car. Ukraine seems to have been richer than Poland at the time, and poor Poles were selling stuff in Kiev (they were called spekulanty).
Wonderful experience though, due to the warmth of family reunions. And a great lesson on the economic effects of socialism.
@AP
So your entire argument comes down to small apartments and cars and lack of luxuries.
Some apartments were small, but if you really wanted a big one, it was easy enough to trade for a larger one. My parents and grandparents did a number of such trades and ended up living in 4 bedroom apartments in Odessa. Furthermore, living in houses like America would be impossible in the USSR (even in much of Europe) due to the way cities are built.
Cars were not needed due to a proliferation and very well developed public transport system (that is not seen in America).
People had the luxuries they needed – we had hifi stereos, radios, televisions, western movies and music, books, etc as did all of our friends. What specifically were we missing? All of this stuff worked as well.
Regarding food, there was no shortages of food until the late 80’s when the Central Planning appartus had begun to be dismantled by Gorbachev’s administration.
Sahl on Peckinpah
Fake news. North Korea has half the population of South Korea, and yet has more newborns. North Korea will literally inherit the earth, and South Korea literally won’t.
This is the only metric of ‘success’ that matters.
This reminds me of the joke about the child’s conversation with his grandfather:
Child: “Grandpa, who was it better to live under, Putin or Stalin?”
Grandfather (without hesitation): “That’s easy, son, Stalin.”
Child: “Stalin?! But…Why?”
Grandfather: “Because, son, I could still get it up under Stalin.”
Btw, hallucinogens are not addictive.
Crushing the curve is more than possible without all patented CCP’ied China nonsense (ignore&deny everything early, silence the news&whistles, let it spread massively, then start welding everybody inside etc):
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXXMCIPUYAAhhrT?format=jpg&name=large
Was your trip in 1990 your first close-up experience of Ukraine? For some reason, I thought that you were actually born there and left as a child?
‘AP’ is the grandson of a Nazi collaborator who fled to North America, so no.
If you were born somewhere in the West, I applaud you for learning Russian to such a high level that you were subsequently able to give scientific lectures at a Moscow University. Would it be presumptuous on my part to assume that you grew up in a Ukrainian speaking family?
Continuing the pattern of being wrong in almost everything you write.
It was just a guest lecture at a medical institute. My wife sat next to me, translating if I couldn’t find the words.
When I no longer have kids in school I might try to do a one year Fullbright if I can get a Russian passport in only a year.
Scarcity of everything, and inferior quality of everything that existed. Sovok food was awful, other than bread and ice cream. Greasy sausages. Stuff like bananas weren’t even available all year.
Crappy food presented by surly waiters, slow service.
Sovoks sold the rich Christian legacy and traditions for the sake of materialism and got awful, second-rate material well-being.
Odessa has only about a million people. In cities of that size, American or Canadian middle class people with families do not live in apartments unless they are luxury apartments with underground parking, gyms, etc. (and don’t compare the USSR to Western Europe, which is small and densely populated; compare it to North America). Rather they live in their own houses where every adult and most kids over 16 have their own automobiles. So this is housing for middle class families in the Ukrainian part of Toronto (population 3 million), close to a subway:
https://cdn.repliers.io/IMG-W4412323_1.jpg
Very modest middle-class Chicago-area housing for families:
https://images1.apartments.com/i2/Hxm26W0dRSOgid2fVXuPiXqwtq1o6hFb5ILukR9hgEE/117/1401-elmhurst-ln-schaumburg-il-primary-photo.jpg
Housing project for impoverished black people in Chicago:
https://media.npr.org/assets/news/2010/12/06/chicago-176e8cb0fb2f87289bbda3bfd2b8b4f492fa572d-s800-c85.jpg
Which one resembles housing for middle class Soviet people?
Moscow’s and Kiev’s metros are beautiful and in large cities, but living in a cramped apartment in a small city and having to rely on a bus is just sad for a non-poor family.
This is typical shitty Soviet housing in Prpyat, a city of only 50,000 before it was abandoned:
https://66.media.tumblr.com/5f0ca428dccbb984f7590c23bd755c62/3caf03a6d3fd2a38-2c/s500x750/f6fd9c0b02f1d74d7494f3d20d26e333fdac93a5.jpg
Nice housing for Sovoks, a Sovok engineer could live in such a place. It resembles an American housing project.
Oak Ridge TN is a small city with nuclear research. Here is typical middle class housing there:
https://ap.rdcpix.com/c42a36660c3fadaad7fc683bbbffc9fal-b2096500134xd-w400_h320_q60.jpg
Stereos, TVS, radios, movies and books – American lumpens have all of these things too (except for books, but they don’t want them). Next time you see an American ghetto, note the satellite dishes. And I’ll bet American lumpens’ TVs and stereos were nicer than yours. Here is an American ghetto in the 1980s:
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/uploads/2013/12/do-the-right-thing-radio-raheem-puerto-rican-music-duel1.jpg
Everyone one of those cars driven by American underclass lumpens in the 1980s was more luxurious, larger, had more features, and was safer than Soviet Zhigulis, Moskvichys, or Volgas:
https://i.redd.it/4przsw8s85801.jpg
And more lumpens owned such cars than did middle-class Sovoks. And this is a ghetto in New York, which has effective public transportation.
Thanks for correcting me
Nice squid ink. Lemme guess, you take issue with the “Nazi collaborator” part, right? Poor granpa dindu nuffin, he just wanted a better life for his children!
I usually use the “LOL” button in a sarcastic way, obviously not in this case. So, if you actually were born in the West and did indeed grow up in a Ukrainian speaking family, where did you learn Russian? These facts are interesting to me, because even though I’m older than you are, we do share the immigrant family experience. I picked up Russian in school and hanging out a lot with “newbies” in the 1990’s. I’d never consider speaking to an audience in Russian at a medical institute. I’m more in for the “rybalka” crowd surrounding the Bar-b-que. 🙂
You are wrong as usual but here you manage to be wrong in multiple ways. None of my grandparents worked for the Germans in Ukraine. Moreover, by your wrong standard everyone not imprisoned was a collaborator. So a medical student, part of whose duties included treating Germans at the hospital – collaborator. A schoolteacher who taught kids how to read and write and got a government salary – collaborator. Farmer obligated to give some food he produced to the Germans – collaborator. Guy who owned a business and paid taxes – collaborator.
Also, since in 1941 Galicia was not a recognized part of the USSR, any Galicians who did work with the Germans against the Soviets were by definition not collaborators. The only collaborators were those who cooperated with the Soviets.
Definition of collaborate:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collaborate
“ to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one’s country and especially an occupying force”
Since the Soviets were not the Galicians’ country, a Galician working with the Germans against the Soviets was not a collaborator. You are just misusing the word, as leftists misuse words.
Russian wife, university friends, living in Moscow.
Again, we didn’t experience any scarcity and we lived throughout the European portion of the USSR all the way from the Urals to Odessa. We had everything we wanted and didn’t need to engage in corruption to do so.
Again, according to whom was everything “inferior quality”? To you?
The food was great there. For example, I remember acquiring American tushenka (don’t know the word for it) once. It was in beautiful packaging and I was greatly excited to eat it thinking it would be heavenly. Once I opened it and ate it I almost spit it out because of how much salt they put in. This had been my experience with almost every American food product I had acquired at the time – looked beautiful in packaging but was not good.
Personally, I enjoy greasy sausages and didn’t find them particularly greasy either.
This whole ‘food quality’ argument you are making is entirely subjective and cannot be taken seriously as a result of this.
Trading up was common – there were constant trades going on – we moved around from Urals to Rostov to Mariuopol and to Odessa – all through trades – because my parents did not like staying in one place too long.
Also, what you wrote is your experience of n=1. My dad’s supervisor was a professor who had his own driver, lived in a nice stalinist flat and had his own dacha outside the city.
Finally, USSR is further incomparable to the US – scientists and doctors are very well paid there. In Europe science has never been well paid and does not continue to be so, where even doctors earn about $15/hour in the UK (compare that to doctor salaries in the US).
Outside the anglo world (UK, America, Canada, Australia) most people in Europe live in flats. In Germany (The richest European country) more than half the population lives in flats and doesn’t have cars.
So your argument about Soviet families not having 2131221 cars and detached houses is hardly an idictment.
https://www.quora.com/How-is-living-in-Europe-different-from-living-in-North-America-What-are-some-little-things-that-one-experiences-on-a-day-to-day-basis
You can’t compare the USSR to North America because while Europe is small, most people in post-USSR live in only a few regions and in densely populated areas. So much so, that most errands could be achieved by walking or (like going to get groceries, going to the theatre, etc) or public transit. Getting anywhere without a car in north america is impossible or very difficult considering the amounts of sprawl that is present.
The Soviets achieved the greatest public rehousing project in human history, giving everyone in the country free housing with community amenities built in within a short distance especially when millions had no homes after the war. This article by Guardian surprisingly well describes this situation.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jun/12/moscows-suburbs-may-look-monolithic-but-the-stories-they-tell-are-not
What’s funny is that you hate the ‘sovoks’ so much but they guarenteed a decent/dignified standard of living for most people – whereas now in Capitalist Russia outside of a few major cities people continue to live in the old Soviet houses (no upgrades are going on) and in places like Moscow – the new housing complexes are built with Soviet methods and are so expensive as to be unaffordable for most people. The article addresses this.
In fact, here is what moscow looked in the 1950’s. It was very nice and corresponds to the experiences of my family members. People do not look like they are deprived of anything there (which they weren’t).
Stereos, TVs, Radios, movies and books were something that not only the proles had but the middle class and the rich had too. Based on this measure shall we say American whites are no different from black lumpens that had these things? I mean if we’re measuring things based on whether they had these things, then there is really no difference between american lumpens and basically everyone else in the world.
If you think New York has effective public transportation then I am sorry, but you clearly have no experience with effective public transportation. I suggest a trip to Japan or China to rectify this situation.
My verdict from speaking to you:
1. You are a sophist – intentionally misrepresenting things (for example, comparing the USSR housing situation to north america from which it was much different rather than Europe). Plato warns about your ilk in Protagoras, when he says that sophists make arguments that sound convincing on the surface, but digging deeper they reveal numerous attempts at misdirection.
Yeah, those were the days all right! Do you think that we can turn the clock back and recreate this worker’s paradise? How many millions of its own citizens had to be liquidated in order to create this heaven on earth? It doesn’t really matter, as you can see from this accurate depiction of life there in the 1970’s, it would certainly be worth it today!
https://youtu.be/dDZxQp7gphk
Not necessarily collaborators, yes. But if the retreating Germans were obligated to take you with them due to fear of advancing Soviet troops, then you definitely were.
And yes, there is a fine line. Working as a medic for the SS definitely counts as collaboration. So does propagandizing little kids.
Uh, no. Working for Nazi Germany counts as Nazi collaboration. Who owned your little chunk of clay and when is completely irrelevant to the question.
Very weak sauce, my man. There genuine ‘dindu nuffin’ cases that you could have cited, q
, like the very many people who were taken as slave labor by the Nazis and decided to stay in Germany after the war.
Will address most of this later. It’s funny that you forget Sovok food shortages though. This is about meat shortages in 1976:
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/06/10/archives/soviet-diet-still-starchy-as-meat-drive-lags.html
In the decade since Leonid I. Brezhnev took power in 1965 meat consumption per capita has risen from 90 pounds to nearly 128 pounds last year, according to Soviet statistics. This is still about half the American consumption per capita.
So Americans ate steak, Sovoks ate kasha or potatoes.
My wife recalls grandmother being sent to the store early in the morning to get food before the stores got empty.
More:
Supplies Are Irregular
In Moscow and, evidently, in other Soviet cities, meatless Thursdays have been mandated for restaurants, though not those serving foreign tourists. In Moscow alone, this measure has released 300 tons of meat every Thursday for local markets.
But supplies are irregular enough to produce inevitable grumbling. “There are no chickens anywhere, and when there are, the line is too long. and I’ve forgotten what pork looks like,” said a shopper in Moscow.
Some Muscovites also complain that their markets are being raided by shoppers who come in by train or bus from other cities. Moscow and Leningrad are believed to he getting first priority in distribution of food and consumer goods, because they are “hero” cities that are also visited by foreigners. By contrast, Russian from the Chelyabinsk region of the Urals reported that his home town had only potatoes, bread and vodka in the stores last winter.
The distribution pattern has given rise to a joke now circulating among Russians, in which a collective farm chairman promises his workers that under Communism each farmer will have a helicopter some day.
“Why do I need a helicopter?” a farmer asks.
“When there is no sausage in the stores, you can fly in your helicopter to Moscow and buy it there,” the farm chairman explains.
Millions of citizens is a meme firstly.
Secondly, its easy to sit back in your chair and criticize. Lets see you do better, without 20/20 hindsight.
Finally, shall we analyze how many millions of people have died due to starvation (by not being able to afford basic necessities like food), died in wars over resources/money, that were enslaved (and continue to be enslaved in third world countries) in order to produce cheap widgets for the owners of the means of production throughout history all over the world? And continue to do so in the modern world?
Or shall we analyze the 20 million or so population that was lost in Russia alone due to immigration, deaths from crime, deaths from disesase/drugs/trauma/suicide/etc, due to lack of births (fall in birth rate), starvation during the gangster privitization of the 90s? What about the 20% of the population currently living in poverty? Or the millions that cannot afford living expenses due to lack of work in modern russia? The gangster capitalism of the 90’s was worse than world war 2 in terms of the effects on the country.
Sure the USSR had its problems, but at least MOST people had the basic necessities of living.
Your wives experiences are not my experiences and not the experiences of family members and friends.
Also nice propaganda piece you posted, you sure its accurate?
Its funny you think your n=1 is better than my n=30 (which coincidentally is far more statistically significant)
Also, you continue to make inaccurate comparisons – the USA had 150-200 years of non-stop development, never suffered massive population loss from war, had a great deal of help from great britain durind industrilaization, etc vs the USSR that had 30 years to industralize and had no help from anyone else and was isolated in terms of trade whereas the USA had the entire world to leech from.
.
Wrong again and as usual. Germans weren’t obligated to take anyone.
Most people just made their way west on trains or on foot on their own, as refugees do everywhere. It wasn’t rocket science to know that life would be much better in the West and this was the last opportunity to get there. Sovok nightmare of 1939-1941 was enough of a taste. Germans had more important things to do than hunt anti- Communist refugees.
Uh no, only in the case of people working against their own country on behalf of the Germans. Not true of Hungarians, Balts, Galicians.
The fact from the article that Sovoks consumed only half as much meat as did Americans in 1976 was accurate.
Sovok food rationing and shortages in 1981:
https://www.csmonitor.com/1981/1201/120145.html
Yes because my n=1 corresponds to countrywide data. Your alleged claims do not.
Always an excuse. Why not blame serfdom? Western Germany was destroyed by the war but didn’t have meat shortages and rationing in the 1970s and 1980s. And Germans never reached most of Russia.
My n=30 corresponds to countrywide data. Yours corresponds to what you want to believe
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1990-12-02-1990336114-story.html
Here is an article from the baltimore sun that indicates the exact opposite, there were no significant food shortages, USSR outsripped USA in terms of agricultural production and kept its population well nourished.
The point is this, you have a hard-on for luxuries. You are a petty bourgeoisie much like Karlin. Did the Soviet people have everything they needed to be healthy and thrive? Yes. Did they have the basic luxuries? Yes. Everything else is extra and nice to have. This is where the USA does well. But how does the USA produce everything? Via sweatshops and quasi-slave labor (much like European colonial powers would leech resources and slave labor from their colonies).
>Always an excuse. Why not blame serfdom? Western Germany was destroyed by the war but didn’t have meat shortages and rationing in the 1970s and 1980s. And Germans never reached most of Russia.
Because West Germany (and most of Europe) was rebuilt with American money via the marshall plan. Germany without American help would not have rebuilt as fast or as well.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2004-10-12-0410120132-story.html
And yes, Germans did not reach most of Russia – but most of Russia is uninhabited but they did reach most of European Russia where most people live so much of the productive portion of russia was destroyed.
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-most-people-live-in-the-European-part-of-the-Russian-Federation
This article says the opposite of what you claim. It says store shelves are empty. Not due to lack of production but due to Sovok incompetence.
For impoverished Sovoks (as for lumpen in American ghettos) having a house and eating meat whenever I want is a luxury. But it’s just normal for regular people.
So because Germans reached European Russia in 1943 Soviets couldn’t supply their citizens with plentiful housing, meat, good cars, consumer products in 1981. 🙂
No. The article says that they overproduced things, but they couldn’t distribute it because the centrally planned apparatus was dismantled by Gorbachev as I said before.
Look at the date. 1990 – 7 years after the Soviet Centrally Planned system was being dismantled it still produced sufficient food to feed everyone and there were no dangers of famine.
Again you demonstrate your sophism. Most of the world did not eat meat and you keep comparing the USSR to the USA whilst totally ignoring examples of failed capitalism like in Central and South America for example.
If we are to talk about the failures of capitalism, why has modern Ukraine/Russia not reached German levels of economy after becoming capitalist? Surely capitalism solves all ills?
And yet most people still cannot afford luxuries, struggle to buy food and housing and the economic productivity of Russia/Ukraine is below that most of Europe. Furthermore, over 21 million russians live in poverty – caused by the capitalist system – which would be impossible under the Soviet rule.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/07/30/21m-russians-live-in-poverty-official-data-says-a66618
Before you bring up communism again, explain why Italy is unproductive or Greece who have been capitalist since the War. Also, explain the economic failure of India/Africa.
So the issue is not with capitalism/communism, but rather historical factors that led to success of certain countries over others – for example that the USA had extensive help from Britain during its industrialization, it had 200 years of uninterrupted development, and relied on being Europe’s banker while it fought in wars while being isolated by an ocean.
Whereas the Soviets had to deal with multiple wars, economic and political isolation and numerous other factors and yet were still able to build a functional state and offer their citizens everything they needed to survive.
On the other hand, public transport was one of the best in the world, and only surpassed by countries like Japan or France.
Cars are a “mixed blessing”, of course, and can’t be considered simplistically as a metric for living standards, or economic advancement – e.g. cars kill more people than coronavirus ever will, just by their accidents, let alone their pollution; they are energy inefficient; they distort urban planning, etc.
Central planning has inherent epistemic inferiorities, due to lacking the price-signalling mechanism, as was explained by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek since the 1920s. (Although probably in the future it will become possible to reduce these inferiorities, as this was partly a technological problem – for example, internet cookies now, are better than surveys were then).
However, economic collapse of the USSR was not spontaneous result of inefficiencies in central planning. It was a result of external shock from oil price collapse, as well as deliberate deconstruction of central planning mechanisms, and deliberate deconstruction of decades of protectionism and import substitution policies, etc.
It was a “perfect storm” of external shock conditions, at the same time as deliberate dismantling. Here is the oil price collapse in 1983.
https://i.imgur.com/GjoZsVY.png
According to Maddison, in 1973 we (Russia) are 90% of real GDP per capita of the United Kingdom, while Ukraine is 59% of real GDP per capita of the United Kingdom.
In their “multiple benchmarks $” which they recommend for cross-country income comparison, then in 1973 Russia are 90,6% of real GDP per capita of the United Kingdom, while Ukraine is 50,7% of real GDP per capita of the United Kingdom.
In Venezuela, there is populism, with government allies controlling the main industries. It’s a mixed economy. There isn’t an attempt in building a centrally planned economy.
American car ownership is amazing today.
However, the fact Russia has been able to “catch up” to some extent, or massively reduce the gap, in this metric in the last 35 years, at the same time that the economic distance has only increased between the two countries – shows it’s not such a useful metric.
And in terms of quality of life, public transport might be more important – and for example, Americans are shocked when they travel by train in Japan or Europe, and a significant proportion of them prefer it; while this option has failed in America.
Gorbachev was shocked in visiting Washington DC, about how they could plan the catering system, for so many different kinds of restaurants he saw there. There was some stubborn, chauvinistic, intentional idiocy in this, trying to pretend that non-centrally planned economies didn’t exist for much of human history.
Piano teachers – with a curriculum – and pianos were provided by schools which had a music branch, if the child can pass music exams to qualify. So a couple of hours every day they could to the music school, and the rest of the day they are in the general school.
This is dismantled and ruined now, so that music is mostly available for families where parent will be able to pay for a private teacher and the instruments at home.
If you want to relate ironically it to 19th century history – Karl and Jenny Marx had to sacrifice a large part of their income, to be able to hire music teachers for their children in London. Until the USSR, formal musical education was something mostly limited to the bourgeoisie. While the USSR could provide such amenities to a wider proportion of the public, and at a higher quality level.
I know we are on bit of a weirdly race-obsessed forum, but why do you expect I will be surprised by the consumer possessions of African Americans.
African Americans have better consumer possessions, than half of people in Europe. Their economic problems relate to unaffordable healthcare and education. In addition: extremely high rates of imprisonment and a recent, depressing decline in cultural contributions (when last century they had added more to music than many whole countries in Europe).
Unironically AP
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fknowyourmeme.com%2Fmemes%2Fconsume-product-consoomer&psig=AOvVaw3nw1Y1J1VIPtQjAWn3FA22&ust=1588964295064000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCID_57W3oukCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAw
Incessant food shortages across the iron curtain block played a huge role in bringing the whole charade down. It’s obvious that your family was part of the nomenklatura that was taken care of, therefore your lousy whining to this day elicits no tears from anybody except from you. Remember the little private stores set-up only for your own parasitic class consumption? Don’t say that you don’t know what I’m talking about, sovok-man.
Soviet Food Shortages
Description
The 1980s posed many challenges for the everyday lives of the average citizens of East Europe countries, including daily difficulties created from shortages. Buying such necessities as food, clothing, and hygiene products was recurring obstacle to the average consumer. Food shortages were the result of declining agricultural production, which particularly plagued the Soviet Union. This chart reflects the widespread underproduction throughout the Soviet Republics. Only Ukraine, Belorussia, and Kazakhstan produced a surplus. The most populous republic, Russia, was dependent on imports of all food categories in order to reach subsistence level. While these statistics are from 1991, the CIA estimated that production was only a small percentage (5.4%) below its average throughout the 1980s. In other words, the Soviet Union never produced sufficient food to feed itself.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/files/display/192/fullsize
Source
Central Intelligence Agency, “The Republics of the Former USSR: The Outlook for the Next Year,” September 1991, table 5, Cold War International History Project, Documents and Papers, CWIHP (accessed May 14, 2008).
How to Cite this Source
Central Intelligence Agency, “Soviet Food Shortages,” Making the History of 1989, Item #182, http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/items/show/182 (accessed May 07 2020, 2:56 pm).
Tags
Soviet Union, Environment, Economy, Chart
It was constructed for 30 year lifespan, and it was good housing when it was new relative to where people were living before.
This prefabricated building design is low quality, but they usually placed it in excellent infrastructure, transport access, and every apartment equipped with electricity (which was exciting in the 1960s).
The design specifications were only for 30 years, and the idea was that it would all be demolished and upgraded. As we know, the country collapsed before.
It can be fine to live in those building, but only depending on the cultural level of your neighbours. The disadvantage was the difficulty to avoid having drunks in your building, and not being able to filter out your type of neighbours by price. If everyone in the building is behaving in a civilized way, then they can be habitable.
This link means nothing. As has been already mentioned multiple times on this thread – in the 1980’s systematic dismantling of the Soviet Planned economy had already begun so naturally there were shortages.
My family was an average family. We were nothing special.
It’s obvious you and your ilk were bourgeoisie in the pre-Soviet times, or were various assortment of traitors or jews and thats why you hate the USSR.
The fact of the matter is (and that you never addressed) Capitalism killed far more people than the USSR ever did, and Russia alone lost more people after the capitalist privitazation of the 1990’s than it did in WW2.
And if the smell of alcoholic urine doesn’t bother you while you try to get the elevator to work.
The alternative is to climb 5-6 floors to get to your “penthouse” view. 🙁
The Soviets recognized it as part of the USSR.
The “Galicians” en masse had issues with being a part of Poland, with many becoming displeased with the Nazi occupation.
You really exhibit a profound learning disability by not recognizing that colloborate means to work with.
It’s accurate to say that many Galicians didn’t feel like they betrayed the USSR on the basis that:
the Soviets first had that territory for a brief period after M-R and before the Nazi attack on the USSR
many Galicians weren’t pleased with what they initially encountered under Soviet rule.
In the US and some other places, that kind of structure isn’t often inhabited by the civilized behavior you reference.
My family was one of very many that lost members in the famines perpetrated by the soviet government in the 1920’s & 1930’s, not in the 1980’s. By the 1980’s, much like your own family, it had learned to make the best of the system it was forced to live within, waiting for the day that it would perish. It’s quite telling that the vast majority of ex-soviet citizens never really demonstrated against its demise. This conversation really isn’t going anywhere, because there’s really no movement afoot within the ex soviet states to return back to the type of system that it once had. Not from the people and certainly not from its ex-leaders. The leaders are now able to steal much more than what they were used to under the old system, and have built up unimaginable oligarchic fiefdoms.
Well that’s the crux of the issue is it not. You personally have an issue with the system — therefore you seek to confirm your own bias.
Very few you mean. Very many people lost their lives during WW2, so much so it affected most families. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who had someone or who knew someone who died in the famines
Isn’t this the case for every system?
Why would it have perished in the 1980’s when the Soviets ate more nutritiously and the same amount as their american counterparts?
Yes, they did not. In fact there was a Union wide referendum where the population voted to keep the Union intact. 80% of the citizens of the Union voted to keep it intact
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum#Results
Because of propaganda fueled by ex-leaders who want to steal as much as they can. Ukraine is a prime example of this.
You said so yourself:
So of course there is a great deal of misinformation (деза) that is fueled by people with a bone to pick (such as yourself, Karlin and AP) often through sophism and misinformation.
You remind me of housing conditions in London now. You can have an upper-middle class, professional job and yet still only be able to (for half your salary) afford a room in a flat with four other people and no living room.
The point that I have a serious issue with the system does not confirm my bias, but actually goes a long ways in forming my opinion about it – that’s kind of the way things work in the real world, Mr. “So Sad” Sovok.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c1ee670af20965d2a58436e/1555251213191-CJUAEY8PN3WIQPZ0L7DY/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kOjMGMtX1INcnkhA1n8gf8JZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWhcwhEtWJXoshNdA9f1qD7Xj1nVWs2aaTtWBneO2WM-uuWLZX1zqRCM3HnsAXhNAZgis6qyU0ds_rCjIEpR0asw/image-asset.jpeg?format=300w
@Mr. Hack
What is your issue?
That the soviets didn’t eat as well as the Americans? This is easily disproven by the CIA factbook
That the soviet people were against the USSR? This is false too as shown by referendum results.
By the fact that some houses had drunks in it? That’s the case anywhere
What then specifically is your issue?
Oh then it must be that you had a few family members starve during a difficult period of industrialization. So you nitpick this detail and “form your opinion” around it, whilst totally ignoring the tens of millions that were affected by the collapse of the USSR for example, or how the USSR totally dominated the scientifica and athletic spheres of the world. But it didn’t affect “меня любимого “, so you don’t care. Also, its not really brought up in MSM so you don’t know much about it.
Like I said, you, AP and Karlin are spreading misinformation – through sophism.
I don’t know about any sort of “sophism”, but I am totally convinced that you suffer from some sort of serious sovok derangement syndrome, that must be a result of brain “softism.” 🙂
https://youtu.be/kaHJAtFoGnM
Go peddle your junk somewhere else, it’s stale and useless in this day and age.
Since you don’t know what sophism is let me define it for you:
soph·ism
/ˈsäfˌizəm/
noun
a fallacious argument, especially one used deliberately to deceive.
Now, with that out of the way, you have been unable to offer any counterpoint to my points – instead resorting to posting caricatures – this is indicative of someone without an argument.
Further you continuously appeal to pathos (just like AP) and have demonstrated a disregard for logos.
Either present a coherent position or gtfo, because you have no position like a liberal. And Russia doesn’t need your liberalism. Go spread your deza elsewhere
You seem to have misunderstood me, I didn’t state that I didn’t know what the word “sophism” means, only that I didn’t think that it applied either to Karlin, AP or myself. Did you watch the video? It applies to mindless sovoks like you, your stuff stinks and nobody needs or wants it anymore!
Well clearly you thought wrong, because you’re arguments are easily disproven and the one main argument that you admitted to basing everything around is based on emotion (pathos), so you search for something to confirm your bias and misrepresent any arguments to the contrary –> sophism
AP uses comparisons that he clearly knows are invalid while failing to address the nuance or presents facts that are wrong or misrepresents existing facts intentionally –> this is sophism.
Karlin admitted to being from a family of white emigre’s, so it automatically makes anything he writes regarding the USSR suspect, he has admitted to treating Solzhenitsyn seriously, and fails to address nuance in his arguments (for example he made posts on how coal production in Russia has reached soviet levels after 30 years attributing it to capitalism, while failing to account for technological changes in coal mining). He often does this which means he either does it unknowingly or intentionally, I’m leaning towards intentionally –> this is sophism.
Yes, there are pockets like that too, in Manhattan, and San Francisco.
But in the USSR even small cities had this problem, which is shocking.
In certain Western places this is usually caused by progressive politics so socialism is in part to blame. How a city avoided this:
https://www.city-journal.org/montreal-affordable-housing
An accurate self-diagnosis, sophist-sovok.
Shaving habits are not really indication of economic level, except that women’s shaving is a fashion likely first popularized by capitalism in the 20th century, as being able to selli razors to women doubles your potential customer numbers. Popularizing women to buy to razors is an inevitable progression of that sector (“induced preferences”), just as popularizing men to use moisturizer or even perfume has been quite successful.
It doesn’t necessarily indicate anything about economic level, considering that France is one the wealthiest countries in Europe, and French people are often proud to avoid deodorant and showers, despite that they invented the word for the latter, and own a lot of the companies which produce the former.
A funny thing I heard from colleagues who come from Northern Spain (which is poorer than France), claim that “one of the main differences when you cross the border you notice “body odour of French people”. I haven’t noticed myself.
–
Since the 20th century, with most people having access to running water, showering habits are much more cultural than anything – as showering is a free or almost free activity.
But even in 16th century Japan, people were obsessed with cleaning themselves, centuries before industrialization. And, in 21st century, ultra-wealthy France, it’s still cool to avoid showers.
These are not only Russian, but even more common in France. Again, France is one of the most wealthy countries in Europe.
On the other hand, Kiev metro would be as effective as the one in London or Paris, and had more stations than the one in the capital of the USA at that time (How many stations were open in Washington DC metro in 1990?)
Comparison of housing stock between America and the USSR is not very revealing, as they were solving different problems, for countries with very different situations.
After the Stalin died, the Soviet Union was able massively increase housing for tens of millions of people, in a very short time, who had been living in terrible housing conditions before. This was solved in a very successful way using prefabricated building technology.
In post-war America, they only build mass government housing, for poor people. There was a large existing housing stock, and the 20th century trend of new construction was determined by the automobile. This allows middle class to evacuate the cities, and buy privately constructed suburbs designed by people like William Levitt to exploit the car.
In Spain, for example, most people live in such apartments. Spain is considered one of the world’s most advanced countries, with one of the highest UN HDI rating.
Yet even Varlamov has to admit Spaniards live in basically Russian conditions. By the way, the majority of Spanish people live in buildings like this – although apartments inside Spanish buildings are larger than Soviet ones (as well as larger than apartments in most modern Russian anthills).
https://varlamov.me/2019/barsput4/15.jpg
In Israel – which is a country with actually very high living standards – their 1950s housing stock is worse than the Soviet one, and the buildings are constructed with aggregate made from seashells. Israel is also an active earthquake-zone, so if you live in these buildings, you are gambling with a 1995 Neftegorsk scenario.
https://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx108/puerrtto/Israel/DSC_0061%20Medium_zpsqn3uvcom.jpg
http://sfilev1.f-static.com/image/users/329884/ftp/my_files/FreeImages/38.jpg
http://blog.tapuz.co.il/kmusa/images/2784370_392.jpg
The situation is the opposite way round.
In countries like Great Britain, quite a lot of the housing stock are these beautiful traditional English houses, which matches all our romantic images of English life. However, such housing is too expensive for a large majority of workers, who have difficulty affording the overly high prices of even modern houses (although this is balanced slightly by easy conditions for housing loans).
In the Russian Federation, the model is for massive construction of concrete boxes, often built in empty fields with no infrastructure. Prices for small apartments though, are affordable even for average people. Unlike in Soviet times, I won’t say such anthills in Russia, are something to celebrate, due to the lack of infrastructure and souless architecture. But we have to admit, the massive scale of construction, and large supply of Central Asian gastarbaiters, has allowed for modern “affordable housing” to exist under capitalism.
Khrushchev’s introduction of mass, modern, free apartments to the population, was one of the country’s greatest achievements, and experienced by millions of people like a miracle.
In 1990 food was rather scarce, I suspect that razors and deodorant weren’t on people’s minds.
It does if people are not French. And I visited Paris the same summer as I did the USSR; I didn’t notice stinky people there, as in the USSR.
These are all trivial things of course, but they stand out for a high school student.
I never saw this in Paris, but I saw it in the USSR.
Kiev is a large city and needs a good metro. But it is ridiculous for people in small cities to be forced to rely on public transportation. In that case, public transportation is compensation for poverty, for having too many people be too poor to afford personal transportation. A blind man develops keener hearing; an impoverished society has better buses for people who can’t afford cars. In both cases the subject is defective.
From another post:
Western Europe is small and densely populated. It is silly to compare Russia to Western Europe, and more realistic to compare it to America or Canada, places that like Russia have a lot open spaces.
A blind man develops keen hearing. A society too poor to provide personal transportation for its citizens develops better public transportation. These are compensations for defects, nothing to brag about.
Japan is very small and densely populated. Excellent mass transportation is normal for such a place. As for a huge sparsely populated country like Russia – see my comment above. It’s a symptom of severe dysfunction.
So an element of Venezuela, of course.
Russia has reduced the gap because America was and is at the normal maximum (nearly every adult owns a car) so there has not been much room for additional cars per person. But the impoverished Soviet Union had a shortage of cars, as for everything else, so now as Russians become wealthier they are catching up while Americans stay in place with respect to this item.
Japan and Europe are very densely populated. Mass transit makes sense there. Outside major US metro areas it does not in the USA. It is for poor people who can’t afford cars, and there aren’t enough of them to support an extensive network. In the USSR, everyone was poor so an extensive network of public transportation was necessary.
Most of my friends in Moscow have cars and drive them to work, but I would’t want one there, to deal with frustrating slow traffic (except to go to the dacha). OTOH, in a smaller city one can drive to work in a few minutes, drive to friends’ houses, got to stores without carrying stuff around. No dependence on schedules, routes, minimal exposure to bad weather, and much faster.
So in a small or medium-sized North American city a schoolteacher married to a nurse (two middle-class people, not upper middle class or rich) would have their own house and yard, with separate bedrooms for each kid, two cars, perhaps their own private swimming pool (above ground, which is cheaper). My Soviet uncle and aunt were teachers in a small oblast capital in Ukraine. They and their two kids had a two room apartment with no elevator. No cars, they got around on buses like poor people. Aunt’s brother had a Zhiguli which was such a bad car it was funny. I guess they could have piano lessons for their kids.
Socialists has shortages in 1976, 1981 and 1990. Each time there was an excuse of some kind, but the bottom line is that while Sovoks didn’t have stuff or had stuff rationed, people living in capitalist countries had these things.
I’m comparing USSR to other European people with lot of land and natural resources, not to African pygmies or Mayan Indians in the jungle. When you try to compare Soviets to Guatemalans you are the one engaging in sophism.
USSR had similar caloric intake to the USA, but Americans ate twice as much meat per capita. Soviets were eating lots of potatoes and kasha instead.
But there is one European-populated country in South America – Argentina. In 1973 Argentina had a higher per capita GDP than did the USSR or any Eastern European Communist country.
Who ran the “capitalism” of the 1990s in Russia and Ukraine? Sovoks. The elite produced by the Soviet system.
In constant dollars Russia’s per capita GDP is higher than it had been in 1989:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=RU
Moreover, while only 4% of Russia’s current GDP is spent on the military, in Soviet times in the 1980s it was 15%. So regular Russian people have far more wealth than Sovoks did. As is obvious for anyone who has seen both the USSR and Russia with their own eyes.
And before most of the people lived in near-poverty, this was better?
In 1973 Italy and Greece were richer than the USSR:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
Every country in the world has unique circumstances. You are using the to make convenient excuses to why Soviets were in poverty. If the Soviets had no war but America did, you would say that war made Americans more resilient, innovative and stronger, that’s why Soviets are poorer. But the bottom line is that everywhere Communist countries are poorer than their capitalist analogues. North Korea is much poorer than South Korea. East Germany much poorer than West Germany. Czechoslovakia and Hungary much poorer than Austria (they were very close before Communism). China before it became capitalist was much poorer than Taiwan.
Communism unnecessarily killed tens of millions of people, and destroyed beautiful traditions and cultures, for the sake of materialism. And it just made people a lot materially poorer than they would have been otherwise.
An epic farce and tragedy.
I think Maddison methodology overestimates the impact of oil when calculating GDP. According to Maddison, in 1973 Iraq had a higher per capita GDP than did any western European country and Venezuela was almost the same as Finland. So Russia’s number was probably inflated, (like Iraq’s and Venezuela’s), and the figure for Ukraine, which has no oil, was closer to reality.
A positive effect of this coronavirus is that it may bring an end to budget airlines and overtourism, the place where was so overwhelmed with out of towners of late that locals can no longer eat at the restaurants on weekends because of the tourists hogging the seats, and places like Lwow, Venice, Kyoto, Milford Sound, and Queenstown would be better off with 10% of the tourists that they have now.
Zetas.
Vladimir Putin is on board now with the Bill Gates – WHO coronavirus programme?
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/05/06/claims-of-coronavirus-manmade-origin-are-fake-russia-says-a70196
Not bad for DW:
At least the first 15-20 minutes. Thereafter, it gets progressively standard.
Point is that the fashion for women to shave, was created in the 21st century (likely in America). It’s a quite recent fashion, and the motivation for it was not existing in a centrally planned economy (as it exists where there is a shaving industry with a private financial motivation to promote such a fashion).
There’s a lot of people claiming that there was washing less and more body odour in the USSR (it is true). But there’s even more common to hear this about said France today (it is also true – French really smell more).
In either case – as I said above – it is not related to economic wealth, but cultural practices and cultural norms (e.g. 16th century Japan was not especially wealthy, yet obsessed with self-washin; 21st France is not poor, but known for avoiding showers).
You either have not travelled much in France, or are intelligently avoiding their toilets. I have seen this type of toilet multiple times in France and Italy.
I have definitely seen it in Spain as well, but it is a lot less common there. However, in Spain, public toilets can be equally as disgusting as what you see in Russia. (Disgusting public toilets is likely not related to economic development or standards of living, as Spain is usually viewed as being near the top in the world in standards of living.)
Arguably cars have more negative, than positive, aspects – the most dangerous transport, the most polluting transport, the most energy inefficient transport, the most space inefficient transport, and the transport that destroy urban planning and city fabric.
So, from a central planning point of view, it is a good idea to avoid them, rather than an indication of poverty.
I honestly think that the one of the best achievements of the USSR, was avoiding the automobile. Certainly it means that hundreds of thousands of people are alive now, who would be dead if the USSR had used the American model for transportation.
Urban areas in Russia are usually more densely population than in Great Britain (this is at least my personal observation).
From a rational perspective, public transport is more desirable, than the particular kind of personal transportation (automobile) that you refer to, in which the disadvantages seem far greater than the advantages. An intelligent society should promote public transport, and try to minimize use of the automobile.
On the other hand, if you were writing about a personal transportation where the advantages are greater than the disadvantages (i.e. the bicycle), then Soviet cities have indeed failed in comparison to places where bicycle is the main transport – i.e. Oxford, Cambridge, Amsterdam.
^ Note that the bicycle is the main transport in some of the most intelligent and civilized cities.
Cities in Russia are densely populated, and more similar in this respect to Japanese cities, than to certain American ones which have been designed around the automobile.
Venezuela’s economic system is a “state capitalist” system – more similar to the Russian Federation – than to the centrally planned USSR. The difference is that in Russia today, there is an extremely competent and conservative financial management (although the economic management is not competent by comparison), while in Venezuela it is the opposite, and they were throwing petrodollars at citizens in exchange for political support.
I’m not to advocate for a use of central planning (see arguments of Ludwig von Mises/Friedrich Hayek). But Venezuela is neither a very good counter-example to it.
Again, cars are not the most sensible transport solution. They are the most energy inefficient transport, the most dangerous, the most polluting, the most space inefficient, and they uglify cities and distort urban planning.
In Russia, between 200000-300000 have been killed by autoaccidents since 2010, while they will also be responsible for part of the 2+ million premature deaths caused by air pollution in that time.
I don’t have a car, and go around in the city I live – in a civilized Western country -, with buses, and walking. On the other hand, I would not be categorized as a poor person.
This view about needing cars, is a product of a century of American acculturation, just as Gorbachev’s amusing incomprehension about the restaurants in Washington was a result of his country’s acculturation.
*I mean 20th century.
This strongly suggests that French body odor is voluntary whereas Soviet body odor was a symptom of poverty and/or lack of access to the means of avoiding body odor. Given chronic shortages of meat, why would deodorant be abundant?
As I said, I had only been to Paris and I didn’t notice them there. But they were common in the USSR.
Or it could be both. A rich society that chose to limit cars would have few but nice ones. Soviets not only had few cars, but they were incredibly bad ones, cheap and shoddy. By the cars as well as by the clothes, one could immediately see – this is a very poor country.
Another point unrelated to Soviet poverty (specifically) is personal vs societal POV. From a personal perspective a car is unnecessary and inconvenient in a large city but highly preferred in a small city with little traffic due to small population. That is, if one has the economic means, one might not want a car in Moscow, New York, Tokyo, St. Petersburg, Kiev. But how much easier or more pleasant would it be to have one where there is no traffic and where distances are larger because everyone has the means to have large private houses? Only poverty would force someone in that kind of environment to take a bus to a grocery store, etc. How inconvenient, and time-consuming (time is also worth something).
The “standard” is appreciatively negative on what’s going on in Russia. You have no problem with the ultra-nationalist “fun fests” on display here? No wonder the ROC has lost so much respect in the world. Having street thugs do their dirty work is no way to run any kind of a church. 🙁
Says you and that particular airing which contradicts – initially characterizing them as street thugs/ex-prisoners and later on saying they were in reputable positions/professions.
Like the OCU and UGCC are completely exempt of violent intolerance.
I don’t automatically believe everyone claiming to be victimized on account of the numerous instances when such claims were found to be BS. I didn’t see them beat anyone in that segment. I don’t recall them expressing support for that kind of violence.
So, you don’t believe the guy shown at 22:08 who states that he was beaten by the natioanalist hoodlums because he filed a police report, stating that they told him that they would:
How about the woman named Natasha, at 22:30, clearly approaching a police officer:
#300 resubmitted with a couple of corrections:
So, you don’t believe the guy shown at 22:08 who states that he was beaten by the nationalist hoodlums because he filed a police report, stating that they told him that they would:
How about the woman named Natasha, at 22:30, clearly approaching a police officer:
What would these middle aged and elderly protesters gain my making such claims for a documentary if they weren’t true?
Just to try and blemish the unspoiled view of Putin’s Russia that you so slavishly try and protect?
From whose rational perspective? Not for the individuals. Is it better to pick friends up in a car, and drive together to a picnic in some park by a lake? Is it better to drive to a beach or take a lot of stuff on a bus. Is it better to drive 10 minutes to a store, park near the door, buy things, and return? Or to get there in 30 minutes on a bus, and carry stuff around. Some of us don’t like stores so we buy in bulk in order to visit them rarely. One can’t do that by lugging everything around.
Notice that when Russians started having more money, after Communism could no longer make them poor, they started buying a lot more cars.
Most American cases occur in places where people don’t have car-driven lifestyles – nursing homes and New York City.
You live in a densely populated place, presumably with no family. You probably don’t have your own individual house, and everything is near your flat. I would not use a car in such circumstances, either.
On the matter of believing, you’re probably familiar with Tawana Brawley and Jesse Smollett. For that matter, Adam Schiff said he had proof of Trump-Russia collusion. Ditto Poroshenko saying that Jews in Crimea are unable to observe their faith, since that area has once again come under Russian jurisdiction.
The two folks you mention in that particular show come across as having a political agenda. I’ve a good record of second guessing BS. Hence, I reasonably seek more clarity on the points in that show which you’ve chosen to highlight.
What more do you need to know? The people being interviewed obviously had nothing to gain by making such accusations and put their own lives in harms way by doing so.
The only “political agenda” is that these local citizens felt that they had plenty of churches within their community and thus wanted to safeguard the local park that they had depended upon for some outdoor activity. You seem to value the outdoor park areas where you live, why is it so hard for you to believe what is obviously the truth here?
About currents tricks of corona death counting in RF:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/05/08/russia-is-boasting-about-low-coronavirus-deaths-the-numbers-are-deceiving-a70220
The hardest working U.K. natives are probably not the sort of people who work low wage jobs. For this reason, it may not be methodologically sound to compare native laborers with Romanian migrants. Low wage laborers in developed countries might be low quality people.
It’s also not a totally crazy idea to suggest people with greater incentives will work harder, and there are large wages differences between the U.K. and Romania.
I suspect Romania has lazy people too.
Most probably explanation could be that UK blacks obviously have genetic roots which have come from way sunnier places and are largely deficient in natural Vitamin D production under pale grey skies?:
Situation in USA probably is not that different, so this could also explain Trumpian gamble with reopenings as there may be a hope that potential black voters for Biden will be killed in such numbers that will offset the numbers of old white republican voting boomers dying?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-ethnic-groups-death-rate-black-males-covid-19-england-wales-a9503201.html
You duck the examples of Jesse Smollett, Tawana Brawley and Adam Schiff, which concern the issue of lying to favor of a given agenda.
Part of a park’s property (not all or even most of it) has been used for building a church. Without knowing the specifics, it can be subjectively inaccurate to say that there’re already enough houses of worship in a given area. A number of areas in NY and elsewhere in the US have clusters of churches and synagogues.
I share your sentiment, Thorfinnson. But I’d note that your area, like mine, very likely has many thousands of people who already caught this virus and recovered without ever being tested, let alone being hospitalized.
Yep, I sure am. I don’t know much or anything about them and therefore don’t feel like researching these situations to play along with some kind of wild goose “whataboutism” that has nothing at all to do with the case at hand that we’re discussing.
The proposed church, at least at the time of the video that you included, was not yet built. The protesters, good Russian citizens (except that they weren’t docile servants of an authoritarian state) clearly indicate that there are already four (4) ROC churches in the vicinity, enough to fulfill their community’s spiritual needs. Why not just entertain the prospect that this is just another example of an ROC and state collusion that is going woefully awry?
….. were prevented from developing even the relatively primative standard nuclear weapons of North Korea upto 1989 due to their patronage from either the US or USSR deliberately preventing them you dummy.
Taking your nonsense to include all middle east /north africa then you have many with the patronage issue, many insecure leaderships watching their backs all the time for people loyal to the previous leader they overthrew – thus making the secrecy required to develop nuclear weapons impossible without 20 years of rule and purges. Throw in Israel, Arab spring, Gulf war, 9/11 and the west/Israel, making positive business/trade moves at various times then you have a much different situation to North Korea–a highly militarised state that hasn’t fought any war in decades, ruled continuously by the same dynasty, strong intelligence apparatus and neighbour China and Russia.
LOL did I read that comedy right? The fantasist who “defends” failed state Banderastan criticises a state that is significantly wealthier per person, better run (relative only to Banderastan) and isn’t a prostitute of the Americans!! Seriously dumb tactics. At least if you had kept to North Korea……
LOL…. it was a feature of failed blackhole reject areas like Galicia, that experienced severe famine and disinterest under Austrian rule.
I must say its news to me that the British Empire was “Stalinist” for the mass famine in Ireland (proportionately much worse than the USSR) . LOL. Or in India. Hopeless Poland was disproportionately affected by famine for centuries (when Russia didn’t rule these inadequate clowns), Ireland again,France,Italy and even Spain have suffered many many famines in the last 400 years, so has Russia – the only thing linking them all being that industrialisation stopped them from occurring afterwards you dummy.
Seeing as mass famine affected many anti-communist regimes in Africa and Asia, seeing as Ethiopia has had frequent and worse famines than what occurred under the Derg…… how dumb, sad and disingenuous do you have to be to have made the inept argument you just made?
Germany has to have been one of the least famine affected lands in the last millennium you absurd cretin. It is an idiotic comparison….. Hitler made his purges immediate,and viscous straight into his rule. Stalin started his long after a time span in which Hitler had ruled, initiated and lost the war and killed himself. Nazi Germany had no terrible civil war either in the interwar period.
Throwing his men away to fight for Italy’s struggles in North Africa, fighting wars against multiple great powers on two fronts losing millions, frequently going against his generals advice is not “looking after you own people”.
It’s obvious that you have no idea what the term “Stalinist” even means ( creator of ukropia the best fit? )
Anyway you are not in any position to comment on the great USSR and his many achievements…. certainly not from the perspective of the rotting in hell, evil loser, sadist eye-gouging “humans” that you fantasise as your relatives escaping via the CIA to some sick, closed community in North America
From Los Angeles, I concur with you.
Other than the very high-“earning” slice of society, most people are able to get by living here without sinking into debt or cramming into tiny spaces only if they
(1) receive “section 8” housing vouchers or other assistance at the expense of the taxpayers, or more accurately from “money” that the fed gov has borrowed or printed out of thin air;
(2) inherited a paid-for house from family who lived here before it became overcrowded, nonEuropean, and unaffordable for the middle class.
If you don’t have an inherited home and aren’t poor enough to get the government to subsidize your housing, L.A. is an unsustainable and unfair proposition for anyone who wants to raise a family and not live like a fucking ant / Asian.
My Sovok stalker is dumb:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
GDP per capita, 2019:
Ukraine: $3,592
Venezuela: $2,547
Venezuela is now even poorer than Moldova.
You are living in 2017.
Per capita GDP in Galicia, 1890 in 201o dollars: $1,947
Per capita GDP in Russia, 1890 in 2010 dollars: $1,550
Poor Galicia was richer than Russia.
Actually, in the 1890s Galicia’s per capita GDP was higher than post-Sovok Ukraine’s in the 1990s.
The last large-scale famine in Galicia was in 1847-1848, with about 370,000 deaths.*
The Russian famine along the Volga in 1891-1892 caused 375,000-500,000 deaths.
These were of course overshadowed by the artificial Sovok famines in the 20th century (!!!) that caused 1-2 million deaths in the early 1920s and about 6 million deaths in the early 1930s.
Sovok subhuman doesn’t know Sovok history. Sovok thinks that Stalin started persecuting people after Hitler died. LOL.
Average annual household income of Ukrainian-Americans, 2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income#By_ancestry
$72,449
Average annual household income of Russians, 2019:
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/russia/annual-household-income-per-capita
$6,533
That must really hurt, doesn’t it? 🙂
*In per capita terms this was about 3/4 as bad as the famine in Sovok Ukraine in 1932-1933. Galicia had about 5 million people in 1840s and lost 370,000 (7.4 % of the population). Ukrainian SSR had 31 million people of whom about 3 million starved to death in 1932-1933 (9.7% of the population). Of course, technology etc. was much more advanced in the 20th century than in the mid 19th century so the situations were not really that close.
Toronto, New York, San Francisco are all the same. It’s the result of progressive politics. Soviets also were unable to adequately provide comfortable housing for most people. At least, unlike in the USSR, there aren’t food shortages in LA or NYC.
It’s funny when a person who considers Ukrainian shithole as a typical USSR pontificates on things s/he has no idea about.
My father-in-law sister worked in a grocery store in the USSR and beyond. She says that when “there was shortage of sausage” they sold 1-1.5 tons daily, but when “abundance of sausage” arrived, they are selling 200-300 kg per day at best. Appearances are deceptive, easily deceive fools.
In China, as well as in Hong Kong and Korea, the vast majority lives in housing estates, which consist of several high rises sharing common facilities such as a pool, parking podium, shopping mall… (Japan is different because of historically earlier urbanization, diffuse land ownership and lack of strong eminent domain law due to American occupation-era laws after 1945, also earthquakes made high rises uneconomical until recently.) These always have human-staffed, controlled entry at some point, whether for the entire complex or the individual buildings. In our complex in Hong Kong (on the island, middle class), we had: six x 25 story towers, three means of entry into the complex (one car, two pedestrian), key card controlled at night, open in the daytime except for cars. Doorman at every building, would open the door for you if he recognized you. Cameras everywhere. And it felt normal and fine. Except for the thought that, in an instant, all the residents can be locked down with minimal effort.
HAHAHAHA!! I suppose that it’s not your fault you have allowed yourself to be duped by this cretinous, lying psyop BS written by some Dutch faggot and his equally dumb Liberast boyfriend…. all for the purpose of disguising the fact that Russia has done a very successful and great job fighting the virus.
So Chelyabinsk either has:
I) a miraculously low number of deaths, much better than Lithuania, which has the same population amount
OR
II) with the “conspiracy”….. a miraculously low number of deaths, much better than Lithuania, which has the same population amount!!
How dumb are they to use the figure of “233%” when we are talking about a supposed increase from only 3 to 10 people in a multi-million region?
5.If you falsely increase Russia’s deaths from covid by 700%….. then it’s death rate will STILL be below Germany – are testing rate is above theirs too now. They were always likely to have all their regions having it at once because of all the international hub airports and trainstations…. Russia always likely to be Moscow first then slowly into the other regions
It’s funny when someone living in Tennessee, near one of the largest US auto plants, insists that no USA auto company has any factories in America:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/donbass-or-death/?highlight=cars#comment-2499199
“Isn’t it curious that only Japanese (Toyota), Korean (Kia), and German (VW) cars are now assembled in the US, whereas “American” cars are now assembled in Mexico? ”
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/donbass-or-death/#comment-2499610
Everybody assembles in Mexico, but very few assemble in the US. There are no American car makers among these few. I have VW Tiguan assembled in Mexico and did not buy VW Atlas assembled right here in TN because it is too big for my taste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Hill_Manufacturing
General Motors looks to expand the plant’s facilities and influence in the North American and Global Auto industries, and is currently the company’s largest plant in North America/
Given that you know nothing about the place you live currently, any claims you make about a place you lived in 30 years ago ought to be viewed with a big grain of salt.
This was one way to get food for one’s family – having someone work in such a place.
LOL.
This is from an official Russian news source:
https://www.rbth.com/russian-kitchen/331765-what-soviet-people-eat
What Soviet People Ate
“Breakfast usually consisted of semolina porridge; lunch was at home, consisting of an instant soup, and dinner, too. Sausages and cheese were a rarity. We had meat once or twice a week. But there was a great variety of pasta and vermicelli, although of rather poor quality,” says Alexey Karamazov from Yakutsk (Siberia).
“We were not starving,” says Olga Bozhedomova from Khabarovsk (in the Far East). “Dad went hunting and fishing, so we always had meat and fish. Which could not be said of the stores, maybe just with the exception of the central ones.”
As for fruit and vegetables, Olga’s family got those from their dacha, where they grew stuff and then made preserves for the winter. “Stores sold potatoes, carrots, beets, and cabbage, which would go a bit off by the end of winter,” she says.
“Dad used to say: our food is shchi (cabbage soup) and porridge [this Russian proverb means simplicity in food],” recalls Natalya Nechaeva from Perm (in the Urals). “On an ordinary day, we would have sauerkraut (we made buckets of it at home) and potatoes, then mother would bring cutlets from her factory canteen; meat was hard to get, same as sausages.”
Perm, too, had a market where everything was sold at exorbitant prices, Natalya recalls. But what you could always buy in a store was bread and milk. “It was a real joy when they distributed food parcels at the factory. In addition to chicken, which was always in demand, and a can of condensed milk, you also got two kilograms of sugar,” she says. Meat and fish were made to last longer by preparing dumplings, meatballs or fish cakes from them. “If you managed to get hold of mayonnaise and sprats, you saved them for the holidays.” As for cakes, people usually made them themselves or went to get them in Moscow, where you could buy everything, and at cheaper prices, too.
Price belts
During the period known as “stagnation”, many Soviet cities experienced a shortage of essential goods, from meat to vehicles, which was caused, for the most part, by the shortcomings of the planned economy. However, this was not the case everywhere.
“In 1986-1987, I lived in Moscow and when I went back home to see my parents, I brought them coffee, sausage, cheese, Pepsi and Fanta. Moscow had it all,” says Natalya.
The USSR had a system of so-called “supply categories”: special, first, second and third. The special and first categories included Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg now), the capitals of the Soviet republics and “closed” cities; the second category covered most of the territory of the USSR, while the third consisted of the Far North (Yakutia, Chukotka, Murmansk Region and others). In addition, foodstuffs were given “zone prices”, which – among other things – depended on transportation costs. For example, in the first zone, a pack of sugar cubes cost 94 kopecks ($1.3 that time); in the second, 1 ruble and 4 kopecks ($1.4); and in the third, 1 ruble and 14 kopecks ($1.6).
It is not surprising that residents of other cities often traveled to Moscow and Leningrad in search of sausage, meat, and cheese… People would buy sacks and suitcases full of food that was in short supply. There were many jokes about so-called “sausage trains”. Like this one, for example: The American president asks Brezhnev: “How do you manage to deliver food to such a large country?” – “It’s very simple: we bring everything to Moscow, and from there people transport everything themselves.”
Natalia says that they had relatives living in a military compound near Vladivostok (in the Far East), who every year sent them red caviar and fish to Perm. Whereas, Olga recalls that in Khabarovsk people had to line up to get dairy products. “In 1984, when I went on holiday to the Baltics with my parents, I ate syrniki (cottage cheese pancakes) with sour cream at the canteen for the whole month we were there, they were in ample supply there,” she says.
Sweet taste of childhood
At the same time, everyone remembers that although chocolate was in short supply, getting something sweet was not much of a problem. “Candies and cakes were brought from business trips to Moscow and Leningrad,” recalls Olga. “As for ice-cream, there was always a great variety of it, all very tasty. I remember vending machines in the streets selling soda, with and without syrup.”
“Shops in Perm sold candies made in Moscow and at a local chocolate factory,” says Natalya. “What you usually saw in the store windows were hard candies and toffees, so when chocolate candies appeared, we were over the moon. The Prague cake was usually brought from Moscow.”
You’re entitled to not learn from proven lying for the purpose of scoring some kind of political/social point. Such are the less0ns to be learned from Jesse Smollett, Tawana Brawley and Adam Schiff.
That documentary made some broad points that can overlook other particulars. Those protestors don’t reflect everyone. Their numbers in that filming don’t appear to be so great.
Contrary to what you suggest, not everyone protesting the Russian government are by default noble and better alternatives.
“proven lying” where? I didn’t see any. Are you sure that your ideas about lying aren’t a part and parcel of your own deep seated imagination?
If they’re so insignificant, why didn’t the police follow-up and investigate any complaints, instead of hemming and hawing and burying their heads in the sand? As far as the numbers go, this wasn’t any sort of a nationwide plebiscite, but a demonstration by a few brave neighborly citizens.
Did I state any such thing? Again, you’re giving full vent to your own uncontrollable imagination.
(most) People don’t wanna live in anthills, they want sprawl (atleast for themselves)!
Smollett, Brawley and Schiff are proven liars. Your favorites in that video are claiming some things, which apparently haven’t been conclusively proven.
My deep seated imagination as you put it is appears more logical than what you offer.
Joke! If it’s such a police state, why did they allow that video to appear? I don’t recall seeing anyone beaten. The police in that video don’t look like they were behaving irresponsibly.
I don’t really give a rat’s ass about Smelit, Brawler and the Shifty one that you keep bringing up and they have absolutely nothing to do with this situation – let’s just discuss the situation at hand, and leave your pet peeves at home.
The fact that the demonstrators were being interviewed by foreign reporters would explain why you didn’t see anybody being beaten up on the spot. At least two of the demonstrators stated that they had been physically punished in the past by the nationalist thugs. The vigilante thugs had been shown to take joy in practicing martial arts in the film, or did you miss that part?
My personal auto mechanic recently purchased a used VW Tuareg sports utility vehicle. He likes it so much, that he recently purchased another used VW diesel car for his wife too. He’s suggesting that I make a similar move. I’m doing some research on these VW diesel engines and was wondering if your Tiguan is a diesel, and what you think of VW products in general?
I know that Thorfinnsson is biting at the bit to discuss something besides the infamous virus, and also knows a lot about cars?…………….all responses welcome!
AnoninTn had the VW, I just pasted his words.
Well, maybe he’ll respond? Hopefully, he knows more about his auto than he knows about where it was made? 🙂
Unlike some people, I know what we ate in the USSR from my own experience for 33 years, not from propaganda and unverifiable “eyewitness accounts”.
I lived five years near Lvov, where we had meat every day, and eggs and milk ad lib. Then I lived 13 years in Lugansk, where we also had meat, eggs, butter, and milk ad lib, except for a short Khruschev period when you had to stand in long lines to get the food you wanted. Then I lived eight years in Moscow, where the food was more available than anywhere else in the USSR (except you had to stand in line for 30-40 min for exotic things, like bananas). If you could afford it, Moscow markets had greater variety and better quality of foodstuffs than anything I saw in 30 years in the US. Only France can compare, not always favorably. Then I lived eight years near Moscow. There everything was available except for the last year before the USSR was dissolved. However, to get meat, you had to go early to the market in nearby bigger town (Serpukhov) or to stores in Moscow (which was 100 km, i.e., ~60 miles away). I never in my life ate porridge (except during my brief visits to the UK), and still don’t.
BTW, shchi , like borsch, are based on meat broth and contain quite a bit of meat. Classically both borsch and shchi are based on beef, but other meats were also used; my grandma used pork and also mashed some “salo” (pork fat) with garlic into her borsch for better taste. Meat stock was so thick that her cats ate borsch along with humans.
Now tell me more fairy tales you and others like you sincerely believe. They are truly funny for those who know the reality.
FYI, now I drive VW Tiguan assembled in Mexico. My previous two Passats were assembled in Germany.
If you have some time, see comment #324. It appears that I should have addressed it to you.
Baba’s borshch sounds great, but I thought that borshch was usually made with pork, not beef (my sister always makes hers though with beef). I once had a cat that ate my borshch too and liked it. She ate fresh corn off of the cob too, the kernels of course, cut away from the cob.
Just curious, do you remember the “specialty stores” for party members only? I once experienced a trip to such a store, quite an eye-opening experience for me.
Practice what you preach by leaving your pet peeves at home.
They’ve everything to do with the situation at issue. A good deal of unsubstantiated claims that leave plenty of room for reasonable doubt.
The fact that those demonstrators weren’t arrested or beaten runs contrary to the image of a police state. The coincidence of foreign journos being at a limited demo suggests the possibility of staged BS. The involved media folks were apparently not told to knock it off.
Am of the impression that Moscow and other Russian municipalities have guidelines for demos needing formal approval beforehand. I wonder if that demo was approved? If so, it shows freedom. If not, it reveals how such a law isn’t enforced – a far cry from a police state.
What nationalist thugs in particular and what in fact is their relationship with the ROC?
Since the Covid-19 restrictions, Trader Joe’s in the US are like that (at least the ones by me). They’re well stocked once you get in.
I’m not too familiar with VWs.
My brother in law drives a VW station wagon, with a turbo diesel engine in a stick shift. His has a bit of a retro look (at least to me) relative to the 1960 sixties-early 1970s VW station wagon.
He bought it about a year ago in prime looking condition (red exterior, light tan/dark white leather interior) from a dealer with 53 thousand miles on it. I take issue with his following the manual recommendation for oil changes at every 10,000.
With a used turbo diesel, I’d go full synthetic every 4000 miles and with a top of the line filter like the Fram Ultra sold at Walmart for about $10.
I find it remarkable that VW has a model named after the Tuareg.
I know there are a couple of American vehicles named after Indian tribes like the Comanche (famously savage), the Cherokee, and Winnebago. And I suppose the Tuareg were romanticized quite a lot about a 100 years ago in novels like Beau Geste, but it still strikes me as quite odd for many different reasons.
It is a bit like naming a car after Somalis. I wonder if there are any other car companies in the Old World that have models named after savage ethnic groups.
Housing in Los Angeles is not expensive, though, relative to how high salaries are.
Salaries in Los Angeles for skilled labour will be significantly higher than in the UK, while the cost of houses is far lower than in London.
One of the main unpleasant things about California is the automobile lifestyle; while in London there is still a normal non-car, city life-style.
You live near the largest US auto company plant in North America and insisted there were no US auto company plants in North America. So what you think you ate 30 years ago is questionable.
I posted an article from a Russian news source.
So you remember food availability when you were four years old. Suuure. A nice fairytale.
So long food lines under Khrushchev, and long lines for bananas in Moscow which had more availability than anywhere in the USSR.
Sure, for some people. My uncle from Lviv was the chief engineer at a factory that produced electronics for missiles. He used to get anything he wanted, like being able to order watermelons from Uzbekistan which would then be specially sent over after the request. Regular people? Not really.
So you confirm that outside Moscow, meat was hard to get.
You are the expert at telling fairytales.
However you have admitted that for time under Khrushchev there were long lines for food, and that meat was hard to get outside the Moscow bubble.
You should also have noted that food often disappeared from stores later in the day. It was the grandparents’ job to go to the store early to get food for the family, before it disappeared from the shelves. This was a cool thing for them – they felt very useful, and got to gossip with other grandparents.
It is unpleasant because LA is a huge city with lots of people and therefore lots of traffic. On the other hand, a smaller place such as Santa Barbara is like paradise and the auto lifestyle isn’t bad there. San Diego is somewhere in the middle.
LOL FFS- any non retard could see that “time span” I wrote, refers to the
first 12 years of Stalin’s rule, not 1933-45- years of Hitler rule. Hence why I did not write “1933-1945” you dummy! Its a stupid and deceitful comparison by yourself anyway, because of the war. You are that desperate to project your failings – you are inventing more garbage when reading my posts.
Did you do this stupidity because you know Stalin in the 1920s is much cleaner than Hitler in the 1930’s – the “least worse” comparison? Of course for Stalin/Michael Buble he has the aftermath of very bad civil war, a state unrecognised by the west and no massive western loans in the 1920’s… the exact inverse situation for Hitler in the first 5 years of his rule.
I thought it was clear before but I will repeat. That Felix K. account posted the true figure which put ukrops as the worst white immigrant category in US, money value way down….. you, heavily embarrassed, get to “work” and by “magic” this figure goes from ukrops in 60th position to far up. LOL- pitiful BS.
Well, your “life” consists of staring all day at wikipedia… I have not bothered to look at Venezuela’s for 2 years, so I made this assumption, which still doesn’t dilute the central point-
2.That fake ukrop figure I count as still making Venezuelans earning 4 times more than ukrop since the start of euromaidan! Lol
4.ukrainians are poorer than moldovans
As for the Galicia random BS statistics and lies- just more time wasting. It was a cultural, scientific and economic blackhole- a reject of 3 countries. Most Austrians don’t even know they had it! There is more desire to live as 9th century Albanians than to have Galicia back.
Yes, there were those stores (although neither myself, nor my parents, ever were among those allowed to shop there). To the best of my knowledge, their distinguishing feature was ridiculously low prices. Of course, Soviet elites never were allowed to steal as much as current Russian elites (or American ones, for that matter), but they had their undeserved privileges. I cannot imagine anything with more variety and higher quality than Moscow markets, though. I have never seen anything like that in 20+ countries I visited.
Funny story – my wife’s dad worked for the ЦК КПСС in the 1980s. Later in perestroika when everything was falling apart a lot of food items were hard to find even in Moscow, even for connected people. But he had access to the special stores. For some reason black caviar was extremely plentiful there, but meat was not, so for awhile the family were basically just living on spaghetti and black caviar.
I never had a diesel. Both my Passats were stations wagons with gas engines. When I shopped for the latest car, I discovered that Passat station wagons are discontinued. So, I got the most station wagon-like, Tiguan. I considered Atlas, but decided that it’s way to big. VW boasts good engineering, excellent safety, and crisp handling (in contrast to ridiculously over-assisted American cars). In contrast to Japanese cars, they are made of metal. I once had to rescue my post-docs wife when her Toyota was hit by a Chevy when she tried to get onto the main road from a side one. The Chevy had one headlight broken and minor damage around it. The Toyota looked like a bomb went off in its engine. Besides, the Toyota was thrown out onto the grass (luckily, it landed on its wheels). I had bad feelings about Japanese cars even before that, but after seeing that I would never buy a Japanese car.
In 1990, it is voluntary in both cases, as everyone has access to water and soap in their apartment.
In France, there is a perhaps conscious resistance to the Western norm to wash everyday, and people also think their bidet is sufficient substitute for showers. In the USSR, there was just not a convergence to the Western norm yet for showering everyday, likely because of more cultural isolation compared to nowadays.
Those toilets are common in France (and also even Japan). It’s not something specific to Russia; the same old toilets exist in many countries.
France is a very rich country, and they have this toilet style very commonly. Similarly, Spain is a very high standards of living country, and yet their toilets, although not with this design, are often extremely dirty.
There’s not a necessary connection between these things (old public toilet designs, disgusting public toilets, etc) and levels of poverty, or GDP.
If it was considered a prestigious to the powers to have nice public toilets with modern designs, then we all know the USSR would invested to have the most clean and modern ones in the world.
It’s true that most European countries produced better quality cars. But then there is Spain, which is a country with one of the world’s highest standards of living, and they did not produce better quality cars than the USSR.
Or what about the USA? For a few decades, American designed cars have been generally inferior to those produced by other developed countries.
It can be better for an individual to do a lot of things that harm society.
You were complaining about body odour, but car odour is far more unpleasant, and actually permanently harms the people who breath its fumes.
Driving a car can be convenient (I enjoy it personally), but rationally you are adding toxic pollution to anyone nearby, you are being space and energy inefficient, you are contributing to horrible urban planning, and you even add unpleasant noise pollution.
When you drive, you harm the people that you drive past.
That’s aside from the fact that spread over time, cars kill vastly more people than coronavirus ever will.
A large part of why the modern world – both cities and countryside – is less pleasant, than it would be in the 19th century, is the automobile.
Have you wondered why American cities are so much less pleasant to walk through, than European ones which were designed before the invention of cars?
I don’t have a car because I am gastarbaiter and it would be inconvenient in my situation. But despite not driving, my standards of living are excellent and I am also not damaging the standards of living of others.
The idea that driving is necessary for a good standard of living, is only because American style 20th century urban design made it intentionally difficult for people not to drive, and created a lot of unpleasant side effects in the process.
Also this horror about buses and public transport, is because American culture has made public transport something that only lumpen people will do.
Car driving is one of the “class signifier” for 20th century America, and also proves correct some of the Marxian criticism of America and neoclassical economics: i.e. you can artificially induce preferences for things which are harmful, and many markets are imperfect, and result in negative externalities which the consumer does not pay.
I really don’t remember a whole lot, as to what was actually sold there and what the prices were. It was close to 40 years ago. Somebody in my family was obviously a partiynik, and probably felt proud that he could take us to this exclusive store. What I do remember is that it was rather small, and if I recall correctly, it kind of resembled a US post office, as those behind the counters, the sales people were behind glass barriers. You kind of had to know what you wanted and the salesperson would get it for you. You didn’t have the opportunity to really look at or handle the product before you bought it.
I have to admit that when I was there the stores were generally stocked Okay. As we were there during the summertime, all of my family had access to plenty of delicious fruits and vegetables and meats too.
Cheeses like tvor, budz and bryndza were all homemade and plentiful. You’re right, the dark bread in Ukraine is top shelve. I always have looked forward to the bread, salo and kovbasa whenever I visit. I love the Hutzul type retaurants in Western Ukraine, with all of their regional goodies, including boletus mushrooms.
So after a year of driving it what does he think? Any problems with passing air quality tests?
Sure, and most pianists will want a Bösendorfer or Fazioli, but they will be lucky to get a YoungChang, especially with the average Russian salaries.
Salaries in Russia for most jobs, are far lower than in Western Europe; yet, new housing is usually more affordable, relative to local salaries, than in Western Europe. In my opinion, this is a successful story (that new housing can be affordable for the ordinary people in Russia today), although of course it involves some “sacrifices” of architecture and space, to write it in a polite way.
I haven’t heard any complaints. Will follow-up with him. This is a good venue for getting car info:
https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/forum_summary
Stupid Sovok adds failure to failure.
First you amazingly stated that Stalin’s horrors occurred after Hitler died.
Then you amazingly claim Stalin didn’t kill millions of Russians, Ukrainians, and other Soviet people during his first 12 years in power.
IIRC someone posted the figure from 2015 and wikipedia was updated for 2016 figures.
It still hurts you that while Banderists in America were prosperous you Sovoks were living off scraps, waiting in long lines just to buy meat.
Lets repeat:
Average annual household income of Ukrainian-Americans, 2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income#By_ancestry
$72,449
Average annual household income of Russians, 2019:
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/russia/annual-household-income-per-capita
$6,533
Sovok “engineer” doesn’t know how a computer of the internet work.
It literally takes under 5 seconds to pull up GDP by country on wikipedia.
Sovok engineer can’t add.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
Nominal GDP per capita, 2019:
Ukraine: $3,592
Moldova: $3,300
GDP per capita, PPP, early 2020:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
Ukraine: $10,130
Moldova: $ 8,161
Have you started getting lessons from anonymous coward lol?
Source for 1890 per capita GDP in Galicia and other Austrian regions is here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=TepeBUZDCKsC&pg=PA230&dq=per+capita+growth+regions+austria-hungary+dalmatia&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_tRiUerEIYaS0QG0w4HQAQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=per%20capita%20growth%20regions%20austria-hungary%20dalmatia&f=false
Patterns of European Industrialisation: The Nineteenth Century
by Richard Sylla, Gianni Toniolo
Page 230.
For Russia in 1890, here:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.361.386&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Well, in 1890 Galicia was richer than the Russian Empire per capita.
At that time, it was about the same as Slovakia.
Does that hurt you too?
Victory Day concert from Inter in Ukraine. Seems like nationalists were too scared of coronavirus to protest outside the studio this year.
Circa 1960s USSR, I recall our family having a tour guide with a VW Beetle.
As for more recent times, I’ve an anecdotal observation that might not be right. Russians seem to be more likely fond of VWs and other German car brands when compared to Americans.
My general limited impression of VWs is that they aren’t as reliable as Toyotas and Hondas. Nissans have become unreliable since the merger with Renault. Been told that Mazdas are especially more reliable in a stick shift.
This guy isn’t a fan of VWs:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=scotty+kilmer+volkswagen
According to him, VWs downfall happened when it started to become more luxury oriented.
I’m not really familiar with the Touareg tribe of people, but they must have butted heads against the Berbers at some point? Anyway, I found this Canadian review (that is quite positive) about the VW Touareg, that had this to say about the exotic name chosen for this upscale SUV:
http://www.canadianautoreview.ca/reviews/2015-volkswagen-touareg-tdi.html
Beautiful – and somewhat idiotic – Victory day parade in Minsk. The temperature was only around 18 degrees today, so the weather was simply not hot (i.e. absolute humidity high) enough to stop potential airborne infectivity of the virus between a crowd of spectators.
Clutching at straws? That’s understandable. Tell you what, I don’t remember what was in stores when I was 4 years old, but I do remember what was on our table. That’s a lot more important than what’s on display in the stores.
FYI, from mid-March to Mid-April my supermarket looked exactly like Soviet stores in 1991. Now it looks better, although milk is still scarce, eggs are limited, and the selection of meat is way below normal. The shelves where bathroom tissue used to be are empty for two months. Luckily, I have a stock that should last another month. A couple of weeks ago paper towels reappeared. So, if super-efficient market economy does not manage to produce enough bathroom tissue even in three months, we’d have to switch to paper towels.
On a hot summer day soap is not sufficient to prevent BO. The fact that when Soviets stopped being Soviet, and poor they also stopped smelling tells us that this was not voluntary but the result of no access to deodorant.
Spain is traditionally a poor Western European country. It is only wealthy compared to countries that were severely impoverished by Communism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
So in 1937 Spain had only about 60% of Czechoslovakia’s per capita GDP PPP. In 1960 this ratio was about the same (Communists hadn’t yet completely impoverished Czechoslovakia in the first 12 years, plus Spain had a fascist economic system).
But by 1973 Spain was already a little higher than Czechoslovakia, but still lower than that of every Western European country.
It’s not a huge difference and there is overlap.
They are much better than Sovok cars.
Modern Western cars do not emit so much harmful fumes. This is more of a problem in China and India.
Everything designed when Europe was dominated by monarchies and the Church was more human and pleasant. This is not a car problem, specifically. Relatively car-free Sovok urban were no less ugly than American living spaces with cars – actually, probably even worse. Suburbia with nice lawns and gardens and weaving roads beats rows after rows of ugly Sovok asphalt.
There is nothing artificial about, say, preferring to be able to take your family with the towels and umbrellas in the car and drive to the beach quickly whenever you want, rather than trying to do so by bus. Or driving for a random hike and picnic in some secluded spot in a park. Do you think it’s artificial to prefer to drive up to a store and putting stuff in a car trunk rather than carry it around public transport?
I enjoyed taking a train and easily eating a meal while looking at scenery when reaching the Alps. But exploring villages and old towns in a car, parking and wandering around wherever I wanted, for as long as I felt, was even better.
The fact that when ex-Soviets started having money they started buying cars right away tells you that they were artificially prevented from doing so by their Soviet-era poverty.
You remember what was on your table on a regular basis when you were 4 years old but you don’t know there is a huge GM factory in your city and insist there isn’t one. Funny.
What other fairy tales will you tell?
So Soviet stores had everything other than toilet paper and cleaning products? LOL.
It’s telling that it takes a plague to make American stores look a little like Soviet ones under normal Soviet circumstances.
Here in the northeast, toilet paper is back but Clorox cleaning wipes are still missing. That’s about it.
Rubbing alcohol and peroxide, as well as dumbbells (sold at about a dollar a weight) at Walmart.
TP has been more readily available at the smaller grocery stores, which many don’t shop at in as great a number.
As someone (don’t remember who) rightly sad, on May 8th those who lost are grieving, while on May 9th those who won are celebrating.
Price-wise, VW is certainly not luxury, at least in the US. Our Tiguan is about $10,000 cheaper than Japanese near-equivalent Subaru Outback.
The right have lost the argument with this Coronavirus crisis. All the right have done is promote conspiracy theories that there is no virus and people aren’t really dying, or selfishly demand that their rights are reinstated because they want to do as they please with no concern for anyone else.
Many people also see the right as opportunistically and tenuously linking the virus to mass immigration despite the fact that tourists are far more likely to spread it than permanent immigrants are.
In addition to this, most of the major “right wing” world leaders are perceived to have acted recklessly and basically to be out of their depth. Leaders like Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, etc.
The right does not have monopoly on stupidity and ineptitude. The governor of NY State is ostensibly “left”, but he is at least as dumb and inept as Trump. His spats with Trump remind me of the episode in Tolkien’s Hobbit when the trolls started calling each other perfectly true and applicable names.
What makes it weird is exactly that it is a forum – that there is a fair amount of freedom of speech represented in the ability to comment without heavy moderation.
Within an American context, sites that are race-obsessed are fairly mainstream, although it is generally done from the perspective of progressive politics. For example: the NYT, or Washington Post, other news sites, as well as countless entertainment sites. But you cannot comment freely on these sites. Many have even removed the comment section – likely due to race.
I would also say that whether being race-obsessed is weird or not, depends on the environmental context, and the direction of the obsession. For blacks living in Britain to be obsessed with whites is clearly odd and pathological – such people should move to a non-white country to experience a healthier mental state, if a decreased standard of living. On the other hand, for whites living in Britain, it appears pathological to not be obsessed with race, when you consider the rate of immigration, or how it creates a worse environment for the natives.
Just the other day I heard someone say something like “I don’t care if in the future there are no more whites in Britain, as long as the culture continues – that is the important thing.” Surely, giving an opinion like that is a very odd behavior precipitated by this new idea that it is wrong to care about race.
I actually find the state forced poppy-isation of the imagery for these events, switched to the 8th,in Ukraine to be the most despicable thing about all this amongst the revisionism.
Its just so fake, insincere and pitiful attempt to ingratiate with the west (who aren’t interested either way how they go about it) …pictures of surviving UPA scumbag vomit and Red Army veterans greeting each other in uniform in staged photos at these events are also disgusting.
But despite all the brainwashing in Ukraine….. private enthusiasm and joy for all these GPW songs, dances, uniforms, symbols, weapons, imagery and stories are still as high as they are in Russia – that’s what I have seen.
Technically, the Tuareg are part of the Berbers, though I am sure they’ve had many conflicts with non-Tuareg Berbers, as well as darker skinned peoples to the south.
They are an interesting people in many ways. One is that they have a caste system, with darker skinned Tuareg (likely descendants of slaves) being on the bottom. Unlike Indians, they’ve been involved in more recent conflicts – 1990, 1997, and 2012 – the US perhaps being responsible for arming them in the last one. They want an independent homeland in the Sahara, and some say they have worked with a branch of Al-Queda in 2012, when they were involved in the takeover of Timbuktu. They have their own flag.
I guess that for Europeans the Sahara has some of the mysticism represented for Americans in the American West. Probably part of it has to do with how thinly populated it is, and there is something really evocative in that old expression calling camels ships of the desert.
Still, I find it a bit surprising that the model came out only in 2002, and that it is not a legacy name from the 1970s or so, when there was less sensitivity involved in these things. Not that I personally consider it an insult to have a car named after you, but Germans have been very deracinated and sensitive for many years. I have heard that they were trying to remove Germanness from German brands almost constantly since the 1960s, but that cooler heads prevailed.
The US mainstream media is much more overtly race-obsessed than the British mainstream media, although obviously from an anti-white perspective.
The British media is much more inclined to just avoid all overt mention of race and basically pretend that race doesn’t exist. They are more “anti-British” than anti-white, in the sense that they are as likely to portray Eastern Europeans as being victims of “British racism” as much as they are to portray blacks and Muslims as being the victims of racism.
The US media’s obsession with race would be considered rather vulgar in the UK, even by most leftists.
The US media frequently addresses white people directly as “white people”, whereas in the UK to even acknowledge that such a thing as “white people” exist in any context would be considered unacceptable.
Majority of the population do not use deodorant today (in 2020). So this would not explain a difference in smelling between now and 1990.
The problem was that people didn’t shower every day. In addition, there can be related to not washing t-shirts as regularly (or drying them sufficiently – lack of clothes driers is also a large part of why people smell).
Today, Spain has higher standards of living than America in many ways – it’s one of the world leaders in many human development measurements.
In terms of income, in 1983 GDP per capita PPP in Russia was 53% higher than in Spain. While by 2016, GDP per capita PPP in Spain is 36% higher than in Russia. (Maddison Project).
So the sad difference of income between Spain and Russia, is a result of the low quality of transition and then nowadays incompetent implementation of capitalism in Russia.
American cars have been significantly worse than those of Japan and Western Europe for at least 30 years now. When did they last have a comparative advantage? In the 1970s?
Until 1970s, there was also almost no accountability for car manufacturers in America, and cars like the Ford Pinto was burning alive many of the unfortunate people who had purchased them.
First sentence – I’m surprised anyone can still believe this in 2020, with all the knowledge that has been publicized about air pollution in recent years.
Around 10000 deaths in London each year are caused by air pollution from transport, which is primarily the most “modern Western cars”.
For comparison, 6000 people were killed by coronavirus so far in London, and the whole city was closed for it.
How does monarchy or democracy, make a difference to a city? It is a car problem specifically.
London was designed in a beautiful way, post-Cromwell, while power was with democratic parliament for centuries. On the other hand, just after cars become dominant in the post-war London, they installed toxic barriers like Westway across the centre of city.
Try to cross as a pedestrian for example
https://www.google.ru/maps/@51.520305,-0.1795625,3a,75y,131.86h,77.08t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_qcj51Fb-Ybro1lurbeLNg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
Seriously, you will find yourself here
https://www.google.ru/maps/@51.5199553,-0.1740393,3a,75y,40.12h,80.51t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s2o-JRZfuk6LdGbv2_rpV7A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
London would have been a truly enjoyable city to explore, without the car.
Yes suburb which was developed before the invention of the automobile. This is the civilized kind of suburb which was developed by the English, and which Engels chose in Primrose Hill.
I appreciate that the William Levitt post-car style of American suburb, allow a high standard of living for individual families at a low cost. But it results in too low population density to allow for the creation of city, that can be enjoyed by non-residents of the area.
This is how bourgeois suburbs were constructed before the invention of the car.
https://i.imgur.com/8lffNYd.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/UWl796y.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/eQzQeXa.jpg
Personally, I enjoy driving, in such a leisurely context, of a Sunday afternoon picnic – which is also a small minority of real car journeys (a traffic jam to the office, is not so utopian, but much more common).
There are few things in life as pleasant as smoking a cigarette on the balcony. But I would not view a country’s cigarette consumption index as something positive for its development, anymore than its car ownership index. Cars are a negative on balance choice of transport for a country, just as cigarettes are negative on balance choice of entertainment in a country.
They were prevented by Soviet policy choices for transport and priorities (which in this case were good ones – hundreds of thousands of people would have been killed if cars had been prioritized), rather than lack of income. Subsequent increase in relative car ownership in Russia, has corresponded with a decline in relative per capita GDP.
So there does seem to be some semblance of Germanness allowed to exist by the powers that be at the top of the German power vertical. If the volk don’t find good reason to cultivate what they have, it appears that the loss of national feeling is an organic process, probably pointing to its tenuous hold on the future of other cultures too.
Sure for America race is an everyday obsession – as the caste division between Europeans and Africans has been one of the essential features of the country for centuries, formerly an essential part of the economy for slave owning states, and one of the main reasons even for its civil war.
However, I find amusing that AP wrote to me as if I should be surprised that African Americans can be living at higher material standards than Russians, as if it is some kind of insult of the USSR, or something unusual.
Obviously, African Americans live well in a material sense (it would be far more strange if they did not). Equally, everyone knows the problem for African Americans, is not a lack of consumer products – but rather things like healthcare costs, high rates of crime and imprisonment, recent problems of cultural decline, and high rates of single mothers without husbands, etc, underclass problems.
Mostly agree. It’s definitely true that “leftist” politics have relentlessly driven up housing costs by unnecessarily importing tens of millions of people into our country.
This is basic economics and doesn’t have to with the race, average intelligence, work ethic, religion, etc. of the newcomers. They are so numerous, and continuing to flood in so fast (1-2 million every year) that the increased housing demand outstrips supply. Of course rents and home prices rise — and what’s more frightening, they rise faster than our salaries/wages no matter how hard we work.
And the “solution” of neverending construction is destructive to our physical health and our quality of life. With population increasing so much, rich developer scumbags put up apartment buildings on yet more land that was quiet, clean open parkland, forest, or fertile agricultural fields, which one would think “environmentalists” would abhor. I do.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t oppose “progressive” policies that would actually give us a fair chance at affordable housing, and restore some balance between us and the rapacious top 1/10 of one percent of US households. I’m talking about a universal basic income, a higher federal tax on household income above $1 million per year, and a MUCH higher tax on household income above $25 million per year.
As to rents specifically, our “rent-control” laws are a joke. It’s obvious whose donations guide policy even in “compassionate, progressive” places like Los Angeles. The so-called rent-control laws allow landlords to raise rents faster than general price inflation (and thus often much faster than our salaries).
Landlords can turn a decent profit without raising rent faster than needed to cover the increase in their own costs.
We could limit rent increases to the general level of price inflation, but many people’s wages don’t keep up with inflation in many years. Better yet for tenants, limit rent increases to the average increase (if any) in MEDIAN (not “average”) household income. (That also would give landlords a direct financial incentive to advocate for US, everyone below the elite upper-income tier, to have higher incomes. It could give landlords an incentive to advocate for a universal basic income, as that would tend to raise the median household income.)
So, AP, in this critical respect you’re right to blame “progressives”, at least progressives who support mass immigration. It is the biggest culprit in causing crowding and driving housing prices too high relative to income. Other social-welfare policies, though, could help most people: a universal basic income disproportionately funded by taxes on the highest-income households (and a dividend from public ownership of natural resources), and meaningful rent control.
Well, Montreal has plenty of immigrants and normal housing prices. It does not, of course, have hordes of unskilled ones. What do you think of this article about how Montreal accomplished that?
https://www.city-journal.org/montreal-affordable-housing
LOL infinity- your fantasist lies of ever being to Russia, ignorance…. get a multiplier effect of further lies and stupidity when you falsely promote such garbage
1.your “life” consists of endlessly staring at, then editing Wikipedia….. so you already know that the official average income is about $12000 per capita in Russia…..to waste peoples time with the $6500 and the highly comical, lies and more fake uncles from your BS RFE/RL copies about life in the USSR……. is as low as it gets.
Must assume that minimum number of adults per household in Russia is 1.5 (of course divorce rate is lower than the US)….. so effectively you are claiming average wage in Russia is $4300!!! Lol, ridiculous.
To give further illumination of your derangement ……. a Russian mother with young child gets paid by the government (by my calculations from volatile rouble to dollar exchange rate) about $8000 for the year, $10500 if 2 or more kids. That is without counting her salary for her job and regional maternity payment she gets (also substantial)…. only then do we get to her husbands salary, PPP consideration increasing it by, say, 350% – so $10500 becomes $36750. Against that backdrop of pay just for a single mother from any region in Russia….., for your flea brain to even think putting $6500 down as plausible shows how decrepit you are.
BTW the figures for maternity payment in Russia are basically “Garden of Eden” stuff in Banderastan…. Good job they can always look back on building an underwater city in the Black Sea 1500 years ago, or whatever deranged myth North American idiot Banderetards have tried to impose on them over the last few decades.
Obviously the number for Ukrainian Americans is fake and your own, disturbed Wikipedia edit ( seriously WTF)…. but the numbers for real ethnicity in US are still gross figures, in Russia most of us like to give our wages after tax…… which still doesn’t come close to your nonsense.
Anyone knows what happened to Anatoly? Is he alive?? You would think that with Moscow’s partial lockdown his blogging output would skyrocket…
An interesting titbit from Western journalists on twitter: a minor spike in April mortality in Moscow suggests some number of COVID deaths go unreported. On the other hand their data comes from some broken website, which I found impossible to navigate, and the data also shows a mere 3900 births in Moscow in the month of April, when normal is around 10.000 births.
https://twitter.com/sarahrainsford/status/1259510194553401349
You have many sound points here, Dmitry, and I enjoy insights, info, and photos of Russia and Europe from those with much more knowledge of those places than I have.
Two notes. First, we didn’t have affordable technology to power large numbers of private vehicles without terrible air pollution during soviet times. So their choice in favor of mass transit made sense then. In fact, even now I’d like to see my own country (the USA) build serious urban and inter-city rail systems to give the majority of people a realistic, convenient alternative to driving all the time.
But nowadays we can drastically decrease “tailpipe emissions” from automobiles without giving up suburbs or forcing people entirely onto mass transit. By that I mean the absurd spewing of poisons by automobiles directly into our faces, and our children’s faces, on the streets of our cities and towns. Tax gasoline more heavily, provide big income-tax credits for the purchase of all-electric vehicles (and to a lesser extent for fuel-efficient hybrid gas/electric vehicles), and exempt all-electric vehicles from sales tax.
Of course, the power plants generating the electricity for those vehicles are usually burning air-polluting coal, oil, or natural gas themselves. So the lefties would have to accept a concerted program to build nuclear power plants if we wish to phase out fossil-fuel-burning plants. Then we could go back and forth between city and suburb in private automobiles without either the vehicles or the power plants burning fossil fuels. High rates of private automobile ownership then wouldn’t be a bad sign for a country’s air quality and health.
Thoroughly agree about the simple pleasure of smoking on a balcony (or roof). But a marijuana cigarette might be less harmful than tobacco cigarettes on that score. At least if you’re not needing to drive a car or go to work right afterwards 😉
Is it really idiotic for reasonably healthy, non-elderly people to gather together like that? Where are the “excess” deaths of people who are neither old nor already suffering compromised immune systems or impaired respiration? (“excess” meaning more than the typical number of deaths in a given age group from other years’ flu viruses)
Eastern areas of Austria-Hungary, were some of the fastest economically regions in the world in the end of the 19th century. But then, so was Western parts of the Russian Empire.
As for relevance of the 19th century economy, to the current situation. Well, in the late 19th century, Argentina was one of the world’s best performing economies, and per incomes in Argentina became richer than Western Europe in that time. And yet now… ?
And according to Maddison project in 1973 Russia had a much higher GDP PPP per capita than Czechoslovakia.
There is something strange about Maddison Project and GDP when oil becomes involved. For example, according to Madison project, in 1973 Iraq had a higher per capita GDP PPP than every Western European country. This does not seem realistic. I think the figures for oil-less Ukraine were more representative of Soviet standard of living.
People I know from the USA who have lived there have the impression that it is a rather poor country (not as poor as Sovok was). Portugal is even poorer. But also with a very pleasant way of life.
It is a problem of post-Christian, post-monarchial, non-traditional modernity. Car-free modern Sovok cities are no less ugly or unpleasant than are modern places built for cars. Actually, they are even uglier because they are shabbier and poorer. And, of course, at least in a modern car-full place one has more convenience and privacy.
Older cities are not nicer because they are for pedestrians, they are nicer because they were built at a time when people appreciated and sought to create beauty, rather than focus on functionality or “deconstructing” beauty.
Well, in America the first car suburbs appeared in the 1930s and they are very pleasant because the culture had not yet been ruined by modernism. The GI generation are the ones who treated housing like army barracks and bulldozed a lot of beauty into the ground.
Here are 1930s houses in the suburbs of Detroit made for cars:
https://pi.movoto.com/p/841/2200018478_0_6ifYeu_t.jpeg
https://ssl.cdn-redfin.com/photo/144/mbphoto/189/genMid.219120189_1_1.jpg
Here is Lake Shore Drive in suburban Detroit. The homes are kind of far from the drone but they are very pretty, with wide lawns and planted flowers. It is like living in a garden. Built for cars, in the 1930s and 1940s:
They are no less charming than ones you post, but they are surrounded by private gardens, there may be a private swimming pool in the back, and pleasant drives. This would be impossible without automobiles.
Here is a pretty 1930s highway in the northeastern USA:
There are very pretty bridges and the road is actually covered in trees. It is spectacular driving 80 mph under the golden, red and orange leaf canopy in autumn:
Cars are correlated with modernity of course but as the examples I posted show, in the rare places when cars became commonplace before modernity set in, places built for cars were very pretty also. Modernity, not cars, created ugliness.
Of course, there are places that must be densely populated. Major financial and political centers. Such places should limit cars and should be pedestrianized. But this is unnecessary in small places.
Sure, the solution for reducing the air and noise pollution will be EVs. (It’s too late to save the alienating urban planning created by the automobile.) Self-driving cars will also reduce accidents, and to some extent reduce traffic jams. So a century after the mass introduction of automobiles in America, there might begin the mitigation some of their main curses.
Except in some places like Poland which resist gas imports, coal is dying out – fortunately for our health – because gas became price competitive.
Nuclear power plants are not a good idea, because there are vast hidden costs in long-term waste disposal (which is a large part of cost is going to come from tax payer), and also fat tail risks from nuclear accidents.
Besides, even excluding hidden costs of long-term waste disposal, and fat tail risk problem of accidents – the new nuclear power plants is not especially cost-effective and not nimble (to establish new plant is slow).
Combined cycle power plant with gas is really cost effective and can be a steady baseload.
Here are the cost comparisons from 2018.
https://i.imgur.com/OT1yjUc.jpg
https://www.lazard.com/media/450784/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-120-vfinal.pdf
Yes, especially if you live in one of the few civilized places in relation to cannabis, where this is easily available and legal, and people roll without tobacco.
I was lazy and just posted the first thing that came up on google, in 2 seconds:
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/russia/annual-household-income-per-capita
Russia’s Annual Household Income per Capita reached 6,533.936 USD in Dec 2019, compared with the previous value of 6,353.084 USD in Dec 2018.
It’s from the US census. Because it triggers you, I’ll post it again:
Average annual household income of Ukrainian-Americans, 2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income#By_ancestry
$72,449
Average annual household income of Russians, 2019:
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/russia/annual-household-income-per-capita
$6,533
::::::::::
LOL, enjoy Victory Day.
BTW – I have been checking on the Yandex Index of self-isolation most days in the last 5 weeks :
https://yandex.ru/web-maps/covid19/isolation?ll=42.083741%2C39.979808&z=5.74
It’s quite interesting. Results perfectly going with what my friends there have been telling me in Tbilisi and Batumi and the rest of Gruzia – a complete prison there for 4 weeks, scoring very high at 4.4+ throughout in the index . Now in the last 2 weeks they have been going out of lockdown with practically nobody getting infected there now….. and Tbilisi is still worse than Moscow! That is ridiculous – at least most of the rest of Gruzia has lowered the strictness.
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan were much less strict than Gruzia…. but still stricter than Russia.
As for us, apart from Moscow (by far the strictest throughout, though it is gradually declining in adherence) and some spots in the South and North…. we have been not isolating that much. All the country was well behaved for the first non-working week….. after that(apart from maybe the first 2days of this week) most of the country, including even Saint Petersburg, has been closer to Minsk in score than to Moscow!
Far east, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk Kemerevo, and others have effectively not bothered at all. In Kazan, even with the registration system, plenty of us have been outside regularly.
I know you don’t like it, but I am liking these 1.3 to 2.5 scores throughout the country. I am praying that this increased street and road activity is reflected in some economic output….. and that Putin tommorow does not get out put off by Sobyanin’s understandable but constant negativity….. and removes many covid restrictions throughout the country
Spain definitely is rich compared to a normal city in Russia, nowadays.
Incomes will be significantly lower than in UK. On the other hand, infrastructure often is a lot better and more modern (even massively impressive) in Spain than in Great Britain.
For example, public transport in Spanish cities, can look almost at the Japanese level, and small cities can have modern metro systems. Have you been in AVE trains – highspeed travel between most cities, and not extremely expensive ticket prices that you experience in Japan.
America is surely one of the most Christian countries in the world, apart from perhaps Brazil, Philippines and some African countries. Going to church on Sunday is still mainstream.
The problem in American cities is a low population density, lack of urban planning, lack of a sense of a centre, not that they lack churches. And the main cause is that large parts of the city were constructed after the automobile.
Post-monarchial societies created the world’s most beautiful architecture. In Europe – Republic of Venice, Florence, etc. In America, there is also a history of good architecture, from Jefferson’s designs in Monticello, to the brownstone buildings of Brooklyn.
Monarchy might be necessary condition, for certain extremely extravagant projects like Versailles or Jeddah Tower (which only Saudi princes can order), and which the result can vary depending on your monarch’s taste (or often lack of taste).
On the other hand, too much vertical power in monarchies (as in dictatorships) can also be necessary condition for excellent or terrible destruction of cities – if you think about Haussmann’s renovation of Paris, which would only be possible with a monarch – and whether you think this was something beautiful, or a terrible vandalism of the history of the city?
I will believe that Haussmann’s renovation was a sad thing, and has destroyed a lot of historic beauty in Paris.
Modernism is not the problem with the American city. The skyscrapers of Manhattan, or the Art Deco in Miami (actually – more like constructivism), are some of the coolest buildings in all America.
The problem is the sprawling of low density building – i.e. it’s the result of the car, and the dynamics of 20th century industrialization that resulted in the middle class evacuating the city.
In addition, there is a lack of street life, and no centre point to American cities. Then there is a division between sleeping and working areas. There is lack of mixed use buildings. And there is lack of public transport.
Some of this stuff was also in Soviet cities (i.e. too much division of sleeping and working areas), so it’s not fair to blame it all on the car, although the car was certainly a contributing factor.
Pre-automobile houses in London – aside from the architectural beauty – , are high density, and part of a dense city. This creates a beautiful civic space for non-residents, who can walk through. And which was linked to the main city with metro and public transport.
Loss of individual, hand-made, beautiful of houses is also related to changes in the cost of labour, rather than some magical affect of modernism. In all those beautiful prerevolutionary wooden houses, the cost of a skilled craftsman’s hours was less than the cost of the wood they worked with. Whereas nowadays, the idea of having the exterior of your house, handcrafted by skilled artists – it’s something which almost no-one can afford,.
Also notice that square shapes, lack of ornamentation, – it’s all related to what is affordable. Anthills look like this not because of the doctrines of Le Corbusier, but because it is the only way you could build a new apartment and sell it for profit at 3 million rubles.
As you’re probably aware, Spain has many British expats who live there and most I’ve spoken to seem to have the impression that Spain is quite a poor country, certainly significantly poorer than the UK with much lower salaries and much higher unemployment.
It’s true that Spain’s road and public transport infrastructure is very impressive and highly modern, something that British people often remark on, but I think most of that is the result of the large amount of EU funding and loans Spain received in the years after joining the EU and their high levels of spending on infrastructure, etc, is what was responsible for the massive financial crash Spain experienced from 2008 onwards that resulted in over 25% unemployment that it is only just starting to recover from.
For the first trillion posts you have made here, or the first million just on this thread alone, then maybe I could vaguely have believed in this “lazy” theory LOL…… obviously you have just looked through a load of different material saying something else just to find that nonsense
Can’t be bothered with your obvious attempts to draw out the obvious – The maternal payment, pure common sense, assumption of at least 1.5 adults per household and average wage in Russia points are clear
“updated to $72000″….. LOL, Maidan condemns ukrops to a lifetime of poverty but at the same time their non-relative UPA “relatives” get a 250% payrise overnight on the Internet! YES!!
I take it this constant cretinism and dumb propaganda campaign by yourself is obviously exacerbated by the heritage of Sovietism essentially saving 100000+ lives in Warsaw pact/ex ussr from the Coronavirus effects LOL. Mind you, the theory of you being a Thalidomide victim, something your eye gouging sadist relatives must have not expected from the west….. would explain alot if true – it is plausible such is your level of despicable
False. Here is the CIA world factbook that says USSR and Americans ate almost identical number of calories but the USSR ate more protein.
We can give this myth a rest.
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp84b00274r000300150009-5
I’m showing you that in most of the world capitalism fails. By your own logic, it hardly matters where capitalism exists because you claim it is a superior system. I simply have shown you the opposite.
Also, how do you think Europe got more resources than Africans? By plundering them of resources and labor of course. Slave labor helped capitalism mitigate the costs of labor and make the industrialists richer. In fact, slave labor laid the foundation for America’s industralization.
Slave/cheap labor continues to be used by Western Capitalists to make cheap shit in countries with no labor laws (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Phillipines, etc). Note, none of these countries listed are socialist.
Again, go see the CIA worldfactbook that indicates the USSR atae more meat than the Americans and by their own admission ate healthier.
Also, you contradict your own claim by saying the USSR constantly had shortages, now you claim they ate similar caloric intake. So which is it?
How did they get the measurement of USSRs GDP in modern dollars? The Rouble was set to be equal to the USD back then and no objective measure exists. So I call this data into question
Not obvious at all. In fact, 20 million russians live in extreme poverty – this was not the case in the USSR
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/07/30/21m-russians-live-in-poverty-official-data-says-a66618
Again, there is little proof of this.
No, if Americans had war that destroyed their country I would say that it hindered their economic development as much as it did the Soviets.
Stop putting words into my mouth that I never said – that is classic sophism
But i proved you wrong, you have still to demonstrate to me how capitalist countries like india or those in africa are richer than their modern communist counterparts, while also keeping in mind these capitalistic nations have access to world trade – whilst North Korea (which looks quite nice)/USSR/etc where isolated from world trade.
LOL. False, we’ve been through this already. Capitalism killed and continues to kill millions from starvation, wars over resources, etc – WW1 and WW2 can be directly attributed to capitalistic land expansion wars.
Here in Norway, i have not seen any shortages. The stores are full of toilet paper, meat, etc. It seems most people followed the recommendation not to hoard. That said during the first 1-2 days the stores did get raided. Stores also regulated how many each customer could buy of specific items, such as flour.
Wow, a “Thalidomide victim” and being spawned of “eye gouging sadist” relatives?…Incredible, you should consider writing Russian patriotic novels, with such an unrestrained imagination. Certainly, you could make more money doing that than harassing and trolling AP?
https://nobsrussia.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/novorossiyanovel.jpg?w=625
Well, in the US there was also a government appeal not to hoard. Americans treat government appeals pretty much like Russians: if the government tells you something, you do the opposite. In the first week, everything disappeared, not only toilet paper, paper towels, cleaning supplies, meat, eggs, milk, but even pasta, cereals, fruits, veggies, and even frozen veggies. The store looked pretty much like the grocery store in the USSR in 1991. Within a couple of weeks most things reappeared, but many were limited: eggs were sold at max two cartons per customer, milk at one can per customer, meat at one tray per customer (while the cheapest meats, like chicken and pork, were nowhere to be found), etc. Now our grocery store does not look as pathetic: there is meat, eggs, and milk (still limited in per customer allowance), there are fruits and veggies, fresh and frozen. Two weeks ago paper towels reappeared, but there is still no toilet paper. Apparently, it’s too much for the “market” economy.
Race has always been a defining characteristic of America, that is true, but despite the Civil War and abolitionists, I wouldn’t say that it was an obsession for most of the US until at least the 1960s, maybe actually the early 1970s.
Three factors changed things: blacks moving north – but more importantly when paired with this – desegregation – and more importantly than desegregation – immigration from the third world.
If you read old newspapers, and compare them to modern ones, the differences are quite striking. Today, diversity and especially blacks are a never-ending crusade – it is really bizarre to read them – you would think that nonwhites are badly oppressed instead of having fantastically higher lifestyles than they enjoy elsewhere.
But about 100 years ago, race was basically a non-issue in America, except for the South (where it was sensibly an issue). On the odd occasions that newspapers mentioned race, it was actually a form of subtle but I feel intentional entertainment. Once I read a story about blacks digging in someone’s basement with a lantern at night, seeking treasure, after hearing a rumor that there was treasure there.
My grandfather had a yearbook where one of his classmates was nicknamed N-word Jim or something. He was a white guy though, and the school was in one of the most urban and densely populated parts of America. Within a stone’s throw of what is today the base of some of America’s most radical intellectuals.
I guess there is a certain amount of cucking built into the process anytime you try to sell more people a product.
In some ways, Hollywood is the worst example of this because it often strikes at the heart of cultural identity.
But I think the saddest example is when national (or psuedo-national) brands cuck. There is something so heinous about it. We live in a pretty material world, and they don’t even have the constancy to try to sell a popular product under its often superficial national identification.
https://www.geo.tv/latest/287254-can-ultraviolet-lamps-become-a-gamechanger-in-fight-against-coronavirus
Trump vindicated.
Please clarify and elaborate your thought process here. By “they” are you referring to our American cultural Hollywood stewards and what “superficial national identification” do you have in mind?
The speed limit on the Merritt is 55 mph, and while you can travel 70-75 without getting a ticket, 80 is pretty dangerous (unless you’re Dave Letterman commuting to his studio in a Ferrari). The aesthetically pleasing bridges are possible only because commercial traffic is not allowed on that road, they have to travel on the horrendous I95 instead. Still, it’s a pretty regular occurrence for some moronic truck driver to somehow turn onto the Merritt and get stuck under one of them.
Also, lol for posting a 16 minute video of driving along that road. For those of us who’ve spent thousands of hours on it, that’s probably the last thing in the world we want to watch. Well, okay, a 15 minute video of standing in a traffic jam on the MKAD would be considerably worse.
Home ownership is 90% in all post-socialist countries, almost 30 years after the collapse; but 60% in “developed” countries. If home ownership “is for regular people”, then socialism is completely regular, and America is Skid Row defacate.
Same goes with meat. Where are the queues for food on the planet right now? New York or Bucharest? Romania had the queues for 5 years, almost half a century ago, and its enemies keep reminding us about that. But America has had the queues for more than a century.
Well, we had queues for free food last time we allied with the West, in the thirties. Hopefully, (((they))) can help us get those queues back.
Okay, 70 is far more typical but I’ve done 80 on stretches, it isn’t a very rare occurrence, despite the 55 mph speed limit. Cops are fairly lax and humane.
I would imagine people would just skim through rather than sit through 16 minutes. It’s a beautiful road. There were once many such roads in North America, most have been ruined and have become unrecognizable (like the QEW in Ontario).
60% is by definition normal.
Compare 4 weeks at time of plague to daily life for years.
LOL.
As a Sovok, you don’t know how google works.
It was the first result:
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/russia/annual-household-income-per-capita
Russia’s Annual Household Income per Capita reached 6,533.936 USD in Dec 2019, compared with the previous value of 6,353.084 USD in Dec 2018.
US census updates year after year.
I’ll remind you again about how Banderists in America live (obviously most Ukrainian-Americans are not Banderists) vs. Sovok “victors”, to help you celebrate Victory Day:
Average annual household income of Ukrainian-Americans, 2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income#By_ancestry
$72,449
Average annual household income of Russians, 2019:
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/russia/annual-household-income-per-capita
$6,533
Maidan made eastern Ukrainian Sovoks poorer (especially in Donetsk) , western Ukrainians richer.
This must hurt you, too 🙂
At Target, many shelves have precisely one item. Beans shelf? One bag where five kinds were stored. Toilet paper shelf? One roll of tissue paper. The number makes me think it’s an effort to make it seem as if merchandise has returned.
So America never had food pantries and shanty towns, save for the past 4 weeks? Have you ever been to New York?
At least, when we queued in the eighties, we paid for our food.
American homeless (primarily chronic drug abusers and/or unhoused schizophrenics) are a negligible % of the general population, despite being high profile in LA.
Western Ukranians are so inept they had to steal from richer East Ukranians. That’s basically the story of how Ukraine got poor after the fall of the USSR – West Ukrainian traitors stole all the resources.
There’s a reason why “zapadentsiy” in Odessa is a derogatory term.
PS. West Ukranians aren’t even Ukranians (they’re peasant poles) and Ukraine is not a nation – even according to its name it means “Okraina” (outskirts)
I’m no expert, but I believe for wage slaves, in a skilled profession, salaries in Spain in jobs like engineering, seem perhaps around 2/3 of London salaries, or maybe 1/2. And the excellent food, restaurants, beer and coffee in Spain – it’s also a lot lower than UK price. (For international comparison – Russia, doctors’ average “official” salary is 1/8 or 1/9 of the UK doctors’ one. Spanish salaries are high relative to the world comparisons; low relative to the North-Western Europe or American comparison.)
As a side effect of this, corporations there also commonly exploit a lot of young people a lot as unpaid slave workers, in exchange for “experience”.
British live mostly in the poorest Southern regions of Spain, because of that is where hot weather, friendly people, cheap beer, cheap food, and cannabis grows naturally. Although maybe some bourgeois ones in Marbella – but that is an island of wealth, in the poor Andalusia region, which is half-way to Africa.
In other areas of Spain, you can also see a large bourgeoisie with accumulated wealth, that construct long lines of mansions and luxury housing. There seems to be a lot of bourgeoisie outside Madrid, and around many Northern cities.
I think the bourgeoisie there is not so different to in France or Great Britain. Spanish ones might have the habit to build larger and more ostentatious houses.
–
Most people who visit the UK, they will usually only go to the London, or a few bourgeois university cities with the hi-tech development and jobs there.
While in visiting Spain people don’t just go to Madrid/Barcelona, but it’s also common to explore its poor romantic Southern outback.
I’m not sure about the dates.
For most European/American culture, there was a short time when there was a kind of puzzled but inescapable racial superiority, at least by the late 19th century to early 20th century. This was a natural result, because conquering the world was so easy for Europeans (and Europeans settlers), and there was surprise among educated people about how weak and feeble the world outside Europe and their settlers was.
Imagine that such a small, internally still undeveloped country like the UK (Dostoevsky in his diary writes about how 1860s London, is just streets and streets of begging child prostitutes) – can conquer 1/4 of the world, – the conclusion of racial superiority of at least the North-Western European man, is quite difficult to escape.
(At the same time that England is mastering the world, the people who actually visit it – and not just Marx and Engels – are generally shocked by the poverty and poor standards of most of the English population, which only makes the situation more surreal. Similarly, England has great difficulty in fighting against other Europeans, in e.g. Crimea)
Similarly, even in the Russian Empire – with only a small part of the country being developed – there are almost effortless conquests of the non-European races.
Now in retrospect this is quite strange historical period, when domination of the world was so easy. And it seems more like a very lost time – especially when America could not even defeat Vietnam by the 1960s. Until the 20th century, rest of the world was so weak and feeble, when they encountered a technologically more advanced nationalities, and a large number did not even try to resist. Even people like Zulus who resisted domination, were far more exception than rule. Only Japan really – when they defeat the most ascending great power in Europe in Russo-Japanese war – has been surprising, at that time, and it was a result of their conscious emulation of Europe.
–
How surreal it seems already, here in 2020, and there are Lukashenko – leader of the world’s most Northern European populations – scared to insult the unreliable virus testing products imported from China, which was historically always viewed as one of the most racially inferior, chaotic, stagnant and feeble countries in Asia.
This myth was popular among Sovoks. However a natural experiment process it was false. Donbas has left Ukraine. And western Ukraine is richer than it had been before. It looks like eastern Ukraine was just holding western Ukraine back.
Poles, Ukrainians and southern Russians are almost identical genetically. However research results show that ethnic Ukrainians even from the Russian border region near Kharkiv or closer to Ukrainians from Lviv than they are to their ethnic Russian neighbors.
The Ukrainians most mixed with Poles are probably central Ukrainians, from places like Kiev or Zhytomir oblasts. This region got a lot of peasant immigrants from Mazovia in the 17th-18th centuries; when the region came under Russian rule it was about 10% Polish. These Poles were almost all assimilated by their Ukrainian neighbors.
The Polish community in the West, on the other hand, was much larger (18% to 23% of the population) and stayed intact, until the Poles were either murdered or deported in the 20th century.
Numerous sources with some follow-up, indicating shortcomings as do some of your comments on the matter:
https://brilliantmaps.com/the-genetic-map-of-europe/
https://brilliantmaps.com/europe-dna-borders/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Russians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainians#Genetics
Somewhat akin to determining the extent of Covid-19, when not everyone has been tested. It’s reasonable to believe that in regional terms, Poland might very well some noticeable enough DNA differences.
PSA: Mikhail already admitted that he doesn’t believe in DNA evidence to determine ancestry of people.
Hey, stop trying to talk sense into a Ukie. At least if you don’t want them to survive. When you see your enemy committing suicide, do not interfere. With their illusions intact, they would keep heading for the cliff, like lemmings. That’s the behavior normal people should encourage.
“Normal” like in Russia, right Tovarishch? 🙂
https://alfinnextlevel.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/hitler-stalin-pact-620×427.jpeg
Man, you are 30 years behind the times with your “tovarishch”. Don’t they supply you a fresher script?
My good friend Mr Hack, all this victory day buildup had me re-reading stories of the courageous and miraculous feats achieved during the war by that beautiful organisation with beautiful people………. the NKVD.
The NKVD were humble,ultra-intelligent, strong, kind, generous, dedicated… the type of people that mothers want to mother.
I wanted to know, which NKVD officer inspired you the most, and why this is?
You should reward yourself by changing your name, or middle names into one of your favourite heroes in the NKVD…. you deserve it after all the Coronavirus upheaval
You lie as I never said such.
Another one of those inveterate truth-seekers. Leave Ukies alone. Let them commit suicide in peace.
Donbass is still part of Ukraine considering that the uka army keeps shelling it (just recently a few days ago if i recall correctly). Also, uki gov still won’t recognize independent donetsk. So no, they haven’t left
Also, maidan was a wealth transfer from east ukraine to west ukraine, so as any east ukranian knows the ‘zapadentsii’ are thieves, which makes sense given how they protest for bandera all the time.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-officials-honor-nazi-collaborators-in-ukraine-angering-jewish-groups
https://imgur.com/a/HLP46MO
**note the praviyui sektor black and red flags
https://imgur.com/a/pTlUJ76
For Poles to assimilate into ukranians, implies that a “ukranian” nationality had to exist. But it doesn’t because East Ukraine was part of the Okrainskaya Sloboda which consisted of Russian peasants settling newly conquered regions and West Ukraine (as you admit) was polish peasants.
Kiev was one of the many Russian city states like Novgorod or Muscovy.
So since you are from Galicia, you are a thieving zapodenets and that implies you are polish.
I was thinking the exact same since last week about Karlin! I don’t have a clue about what his job is, if he has a high-skilled job or is a rubbish collector- he is an awful person for his shocking banning people, but he is not a freak – so I don’t want to know, or think it necessary to find out his job or personal situation.
Actual listed Covid deaths in April for Moscow and Moscow region was 700 people, not 611
There was a death toll of 10800 for the April that was 2 years before. This is all idiotic western scumbag “journalist” nonsense… but 10800 +700 confirmed covid deaths – 100 deaths that I am (very debatably) assuming didn’t occur in road accidents because of reduced road traffic = 11400 deaths……. which makes 446 excess deaths….. or a nothing figure of 5%!
Deaths are registered on the day they occurred, confirmed deaths with coronavirus can take several days to be registered as such,.. and of course aren’t then backdated. This is the same for all countries. You can say that plenty of the deaths from start of May to May 10th could have occurred in April, registered as a death in April…..but only got confirmed as death with coronavirus in May.
There have been month’s like March 2018 of 11752 deaths and other non January months with 10800….. in other words there is no story here….. only these idiots trying to invent a story
Stalin is still quite a popular figure back in Russia. In Ukraine, not so much. Looks like the Ukies got that part figured out better than the Russkies.
Central Moscow today:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/81A6/production/_106509133_stalinrtr5mar19.jpg
Actually, not a single one. For trans-fags like you, I’m sure that your choice would be much broader, as I hear that many of the NKVD officers were actual gays, guys looking for somewhere to place it in somebody of your sexual persuasion.
https://cdn-prod.opendemocracy.net/media/images/Archives_Roldugina_2_UlJJB61.width-800.jpg
Was it snowing in Moscow today, Mr Hack? Sunny, warm weather I thought?
Why would they even be doing it today?
Wouldn’t Sobyanin have banned the event from taking place because of the virus?
Maybe you were maybe a joke…… Stalin/Michael Buble deserves respect and feelings of joy and warmth in ukraine for what he did to them – creating the nation and being a standout guy – he was the Russian version of someone fulfilling the “American dream”…… only much better.
I don’t know that disgusting photo Mr Hack. Who was it… Lyashko?
The other guy in your pictures, parteigenosse Hitler, is quite popular among Ukies. Among Russians – not do much. Looks like Russkies figured that out better than Ukies.
Ukies had already felt the brotherly love of the Russkies (famines, purges, wars etc) and thought that nothing could be worse than their close relationship with their “brothers” of the north. You can’t really blame them for looking elsewhere for a better deal. I know that it seems incredible that Nazi Germany looked attractive to so many Ukies, just goes to show what a disaster the Soviet Union was for them.
I suppose you want me to provide you with their addresses and phone numbers too, so that you can try and make a score?
Funny, it does seem as I was being pretty obtuse, now that you ask me to explain it, and I have to read it again.
Both quotes work on different levels. “They” means firstly company execs who cuck on ads, but it also applies to national elites who cuck, as I think they are similar classes of people and have similar mindsets.
“Superficial national identification” refers to the association of a consumer product with a country.
The most superficial type of this would be a product like Irish Spring soap. It is greenish and often marketed with Irish scenery or Irish actors but has nothing to do with Ireland, but people – and not just Irish people – buy it because of this association. Last year, I saw a commercial where a black man was soaping up in Ireland after hiking with his Irish friend. It was a bit ambiguous on whether the black guy was supposed to be Irish, but I think only because they could not find a black man that age with an Irish accent.
There’s quite a lot of commercials like this, and some of them are for genuine national products, produced in a country. Others might be associated with a country through a historical legacy, or because the product has a legacy of engineering in a certain country. Though, even in cases like these, there is a level of superficiality because of materialism. Even an object which is well-designed or well-engineered is still an object. Probably there is another country that can make a similar quality product.
As consumers, I think we enjoy these associations of products with countries because they are emblematic of our association of peoples and cultures with countries. When execs are willing to damage this national branding, this association of a popular product with a people, it seems like the purest cowardice. It does not fill me with confidence about political elites defending their countries and people.
They have left de facto. So yes, they have left. Ukrainian government hasn’t recognized Crimea’s exit either, but it has left. With Donbas gone, Galicia prospers. So much for the myth that Donbas was feeding Galicia. As I said, Donbas was holding Galicia back.
Maidan was 6 years ago. Galicia continues to get wealthier.
You are a great believer in fairytales.
You can call it Little Russian if you wish. Either way, Poles assimilated into them, in central Ukraine.
It was settled by Rusnaks from central Ukraine, not Moskali from Russia.
And the ethnic Ukrainians of Sloboda Ukraine are genetically more similar to ethnic Ukrainians from Lviv than they are to their ethnic Russian neighbors:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3103/S0095452715040106
Gene pool similarities and differences between Ukrainians and Russians of Slobozhanshchina based on Y-chromosome data
” a detailed analysis of highly informative Y-chromosome markers showed that both nations retain the ethnic specificity of their gene pools after 3.5 centuries of coexistence in the same historical territory: the Ukrainian populations are similar to the rest of Ukraine, and Russian populations gravitate towards the south of European Russia. The persistent genetic differences may be due to the spatial characteristics of marriage migration and the predominant ethnic environment.”
https://i.imgur.com/ETnKYkI.jpg
So your idea of Galicians being Poles is just an untermench Sovok fairytale. Unless Ukrainians from Kharkiv are also Poles.
Karlin didn’t read my comment, but he stumbled over this conspiracy group on facebook and totally fell for their shit!
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1259809260441088005
The reason I say “conspiracy group” is because their charts do not match available statistical data – just a small group of pro-Navalny activists manufacturing fakes, but apparently it’s good enough for our poor Anatoly.
Your link says Americans ate about 3 times more meat and fish than Sovoks. But Sovoks ate more grains, so total caloric intake was about the same.
So you’ve failed again, as Sovoks always do.
But thanks for providing a link supporting what I wrote.
You mean in Africa, among Africans?
Are you suggesting that Russians are like Africans?
We can compare many examples.
Which is wealthier, North Korea or South Korea?
Which was wealthier, Austria or Czechoslovakia and Hungary?
BRD or DDR?
Mao’s China or Taiwan?
Answer the question please.
Of course you do. Reality is hard for you.
In USSR almost all of most of the population lived non-extreme poverty. Now the average wealth is higher than in Soviet times, but there is more extreme poverty. Typical Russians nowadays are much wealthier than they used to be. But certain groups (elderly pensioners without children or with alcoholic children, alcoholics) are poorer.
Africa, India and China have all gotten richer after abandoning Socialist economics.
LOL. You fool. Donbass is not administered by Russia or by anyone else so it is still de facto ukranian. Crimea in contrast is administered by Russia, so it is de facto Russian.
The only reason Galicia “prospers” (debatable), is because of all of the resources and money it stole and continues to steal from donbass. So it “prospers” off of donbass, as I’ve explained before – because its too inept to do anything on its own.
“It was first colonised by the Russians in the first half of the 16th century and became part of a defense line used against Tatar raiding”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloboda_Ukraine
Everybody else who came there was from Poland/Lithuania. So you have ethnic Russians and ethnic Poles mixing. There is no Ukranian nation, further proving my point. Galicians are just poles.
And your link doesn’t disprove that Western ukranians are just poles with a new name.
But ethnography places east ukraine as Russian, not polish.
Donbass is administered by local Donbassers with Russian military advisors.
You believe these guys are sending money to Galicia? LOL.
Where and how? I am curious how you propose that the local Donbas rebels and their Russian helpers are sending money to Galicia.
It was sparsely settled until the Ukrainians/Little Russians arrived in large numbers.
So for example by 1897 Kharkiv governate was 80% Ukrainian-speaking and 18% Russian-speaking:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkov_Governorate
In that case, so are ethnic Ukrainians from Kharkiv because they are genetically closer to western Ukrainians than they are to Russians, as demonstrated.
I wonder if it could be said that when Marx, Engels, and Dostoevsky all made their observations about London that was before dysgenics took hold. That would sound about right to me, as I’ve heard it began in the late Victorian period. Perhaps, they were observing the lower classes being pressed into the gutter.
Some advance the idea of India becoming a counterweight to Chinese influence, but perhaps that is the wrong way to look at it. Perhaps, they will both have increasing influence over the West.
I think that it might be difficult to discern when the use of a national image used to promote a product is genuine and complimentary and when it might be “damaging” as you put it. Everybody views things a little bit differently. I remember during one of my earlier trips to Ukraine, when I got out of the Berispol airport near Kyiv, and the first commercial billboard that caught my eye was one that showed the Klitshcko brothers standing toe to toe next to one another promoting a Ukrainian beer. The billboard showed two modern day Ukrainian cossacks in absolutely prime condition with a bottle of the beer in the foreground stating “Genuine Ukrainian Quality.” I thought it was an effective billboard and for a moment I felt proud to be a descendant of this noble race. I subsequently bought the beer too, and it tasted quite good! 🙂
Here’s a similar TV add that I found for the same beer:
https://youtu.be/mw4wvc7k8pc
Glad to hear you made it over the hump. A couple of my acquaintances were less fortunate.
Surely genetic similarity is all relative in terms of geographical distance? I would suspect that Ukrainians in Kharkiv are genetically closer to Russians in the bordering part of Russia than they are to Western Ukrainians, but closer to Western Ukrainians than they are to say Northern Russians.
Russians are not any more a monolithic group than Ukrainians are. Southern Russians are typically closer to Ukrainians and Northern Russians are closer to Finnic/Northern European types.
It gets better from all these freaks :
Oligarchs supposedly buying up all the country’s 42000 ventilators ( BS….. but anyway I thought these guys have been warning all the time about the state seizing what they want from businessmen anyway….. or that they can get a very high rate of return to then reinvest if there is a rich individual buyer instead of the bulk hospital buyer)
Chelyabinsk “coverup” of deaths–instead of 3 people out of 3 million it’s a massive 10 people out of 3 million!
Putin is lazy and stopped running the country (LOL)
Russia faces “economic catastrophe” – issue here is that every major country is going to suffer, including us.. we won’t suffer above average though, even with the oil price collapse….. plus the actual coverup in reporting that before virus struck, Russia’s Jan-March economic performance was actually very good.
Now I don’t like 100 dying each day in my country for the past few days from Coronavirus, or the multi-1000 daily infections or the all too typical of us fire that has killed 5 patients in Saint Petersburg….. but the fact remains these retards are just that desperate to wish away the low number deaths, that outside Moscow the regions are coping, very high rate of testing and high asymptomatics…… that they are too incompetent to critique sensibly all these other things including the economy.
Karlin you BSTRD pig…. do you see want your immoral and unjust ban of me has done?
It has made Mr Hack develop some wit. I can’t blame him for exploiting it…… in fact I am delighted for the guy.
I was forced to take this username- my old ones deserve to be reinstated, with extra insulting privileges
Actually the interesting conclusion of that study is that they are not. That is, the ethnic Ukrainians from this region (including in bordering Belgorod oblast in Russia itself) are closer genetically to ethnic Ukrainians in Lviv than they are to ethnic Russians in neighboring areas populated by Russians.
Of course, they looked at villages in these regions and not in large cities where people are more likely to mix with one another. So people from a Ukrainian village on the Russian-Ukrainian border near Kharkiv are more like Galicians genetically than they are like Russian villagers from the same region.
To be sure, all of these groups are extremely similar to each other, but the differences are measurable.
From the study:
…A detailed analysis of highly informative Y chromosome markers showed that both nations retain the ethnic specificity of their gene pools after 3.5 centuries of coexistence in the same historical territory: the Ukrainian populations are similar to the rest of Ukraine, and Russian populations gravitate towards the south of European Russia.
Here is the tree showing genetic distance:
https://i.imgur.com/ETnKYkI.jpg
Interestingly, Lviv villagers are closer to ethnic Ukrainian Belgorod villagers (within in the modern Russian border) than they are to ethnic Ukrainian Kharkiv and Sumy villagers (who are further west, and within Ukraine). Although all of these Ukrainians are closer to each other than they are to any of the Russians.
Here is a map of this region:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Ukraine-Slobozhanshchyna.png
Sure thing. Ukraine in the USSR suffered so much that its population kept growing, exceeding 50 million by 1991. Independence brought so much glorious successes and prosperity that if Ukraine exists 30 more years there won’t be a single person left on its territory. All the more reason to keep going in the same direction: rapefugees need territories to settle.
It’s easy to criticize anything. So, what new direction would you suggest Ukraine go to markedly improve it situation? Become a new full member and satellite within a reconstituted Soviet Union 2, (CIS or whatever) joining with Moscow?
Ukraine had that chance and blew it. The majority in Russia is now against accepting Ukraine in any capacity. Polls show that Russian people would accept Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, but nothing else. Now the US and EU will have to abide by a simple store rule: you break it, you own it. Enjoy.
Just to note – the places in Ukraine with the steepest post-Soviet population decline were the northeast and Donbas.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Ukraine_natural_population_growth_rates.png
But your actions seem to beltray your words. If you really felt that Ukraine was a non-entity as far as Russia is concerned, I don’t think that you would waste so much of your time writing about it? Unless you have washed and dried all of your test tubes, why even bother?
Having no connection with Ukraine except in your sick dreams, you won’t understand. Unlike you, AP, and many other “patriots”, I was born in Ukraine and grew up there. Therefore, I hate and despise Ukies who turned what could have been a country into a hopeless cesspool. This has nothing to do with Russia, even though I am grateful to it (or, to be exact, to the USSR) for giving me for free an excellent education, better than what my daughter got at Yale for >$160,000.
Yes, but despite that it remains part and parcel of ukraine, as it has not been incoprorated into Russia.
It’s not the donbass rebels, it was wealth transfer that has been happening since the fall of the USSR but accelerated in 2014 via selling off of industry and property rights to west ukranians. This is evident by how zapodentsyu have dominated ukranian politics and have sought different ways to legitamize their own rule by increasing ukraninization – when such an ethnicity doesn’t exist.
Again, it couldn’t have been settled by Ukranians/Little Russians because no such people’s have ever existed. It was settled by Russian farmers, escaped polish peasants and some tatars.
That’s a cute link given that “Ukranian” was not recognized as a language in Imperial Russia, but rather a ‘dialect’ of the common tongue (after Soviet reforms of the Russian language it became more distinct from “Ukrainian”), kind of how there is a difference in those who speak Russian between Moscow and Vladivostok. However, since “Ukranian” was not considered an actual language nobody bothered to reform it like they did for Russian.
Actually no. A more accurate measure would be mtDNA which is directly transferred from mother to offspring, and is far more helpful in determining lineage (because it is present in both males and females) than Y chromosomes. Also, the study indicates these are villagers, but the cities are far more mixed and have a far greater influence of Russian genes considering that it was ethnic Russians who went to cities during industrilization. So if we talk about Kharkov proper, it will be more similar to Southern Russia than Galicia.
PS. You aren’t even Ukrainian as you were born in the US and went there once. Stop making judgements on things you have no idea about.
He props suspect (as in incomplete and debatable) data as fact, for the purpose of conforming with his biases.
I like the way how you disarm stubborn brainwashed pinheads
You spent five years in Lviv and then moved to Luhansk by the Russian border, populated by largely Russians. Moreover you are half (or more?) Russian yourself. Your parents weren’t natives of Lviv but some kind of Soviet carpetbaggers. Am I right?
You are like a half-Mexican guy who spent five years on the North, then grew up in some barrio in LA, moved to Mexico City at age eighteen and never came back to the USA, who wishes more Mexican immigration and integration with Latin America upon the USA, and whines about actual Americans who disagree with such plans.
This is why it is so easy for you to despise your American neighbors and their culture in Tennessee, despite living off US taxpayer money (who funds those grants and your salary?).
In truth, I enjoy these national and pseudonational brands (like Swiss Miss), as well as brands that just have old symbols like the Morton Salt girl. They are something of a guilty pleasure. My main problem with them is when they try to drop these identities (even though I realize they are often superficial) in favor of diversity-branding.
Donbas left Ukraine 6 years ago. Explain how it is transferring its wealth to Galicia now. Galicia is more prosperous now than it was 6 years ago. Do you think that the anti-Ukrainian Donbas Republics are sending even more money to Galicia now than these regions allegedly did 6 years ago? LOL.
The fact that Galicia does better without Donbas than it did with Donbas proves that Donbas did not help, but rather hindered, Galicia.
Which ones and where? Provide some examples.
You are wrong as usual. It was officially called Little Russian but classified as a language alongside Great Russian, not as a dialect.
No, it was a standardized language (the work was done in the 1860s). The Ukrainian nationalists just renamed it from Little Russian to Ukrainian.
You are quite the believer in fairytales. It was standardized in the 1860s-1870s and used widely in textbooks in Galician schools at the end of the 19th century. The Galician kids were learning a language standardized by central and Eastern Ukrainians that was based on the Poltava dialect.
Rather than fill your young semi-developed brain with nonsense written Marx (LOL) you should learn some basic history.
LOL, you think that Y-chromosomes don’t determine lineage.
I’ve been there multiple times. I have been there more often than you have been to Russia.
Interesting diatribe coming from a US-born descendant of Nazi collaborators. I guess the irony of this escapes you.
A lie, but that is the least of your sins.
Good to see you couldn’t deny what I wrote.
No you sophist. Galicia’s “growth” right now is based off the assets that were stolen by Galicians in Donbass and the East/southeast (there is a huge problem in Odessa with galicians stealing our shit) that where then transferred over to galicia. So Galicia’s growth is because it sucked Donbass.
Metinvest, DTEK, Donetsk Steelworks, etc. These companies are now suffering because of the numerous amount of assets that where siezed by Galicians and the interm government.
It can be officially classified as whatever, but fact remains that it is a dialect. This is fact, based on linguistics.
Plus you are American and have never been to Ukraine, why do you even care.
Galicia was not and is not Ukraine, as I’ve mentioned before. It is a Polish province. We can safely ignore it therefore. The rest of Ukraine is Russian settlers, so my point stands.
LOL poast bookshelf. Until you do, you are in no position to critique Marx or anyone else. You do not read yourself because you are American and follow American memes.
LOL you idiot. Y chromosome determines patrimonial lineagae but mtDNA is far more accurate as a measure as it is in ALL offspring and can be used to better determine genetic spread and mixing.
Of course since you don’t read, you don’t know that and try to give sophisitic arguments about the efficacy of using the Y chromosome as an accurate measure of lineage. LOL
You went there once in 1990 LOL.
Also, you wouldn’t know how often I’ve been to Russia (probably more than you).
So, dindu nofins are not all black, some are Ukies. To be expected.
What exactly is a lie: that you were born in the US or that you are a descendant of Nazi collaborators?
The only way I know how “Ukrainians” got to the US in late 1940-s and 1950-s is that they ran away with Nazis first. The only reason for that I know of is that they collaborated with Nazi occupiers and were afraid to face the music. Practically all “patriots” of Nulandistan/Sorosistan are Nazi collaborators and their progeny living in the US and Canada. There are also Nazi collaborators and their progeny living in Nulandistan/Sorosistan.
There were also forced laborers who refused to go back to the Sovok “workers paradise” and (my grandparents were not these).
You are claiming that every single person who preferred to take their chances in the West rather then return to Stalin’s rule was a “Nazi collaborator.” This is as stupid as your various other random claims (no US state has declared English to be an official language – you live in a state that did this; no US auto factory exists, etc.).
Or that the taste they had of Sovok misrule in 1939-1941 was enough to show them it would be better to live in the West.
You know who was an actual descendant of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators though? A pro-Russian from Ukraine like you, Medvedchuk. Putin is his kids’ godfather and he is the most pro-Russian political figure in Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Medvedchuk
Medvedchuk’s father, Volodymyr Medvedchuk, avoided being drafted into the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War due to his suffering from Pott disease. During Nazi Germany’s occupation of Ukraine, he worked for the German administration in a labor camp from April 1942 to November 1943. The section provided enforced deportation of the local able-bodied Ukrainian youth to work in Nazi Germany. After the retreat of German forces Volodymyr Medvedchuk was arrested by SMERSH on 7 August 1954 and sentenced to eight years of imprisonment and four of exile in Siberia “for participation in Ukrainian nationalistic activities.” Viktor was born in Pochet, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russian SFSR.
Currently Medvedchuk is chairman of the pro-Russian political organization Ukrainian Choice.[5] In 2013 he began publicly attacking the European Union, at one point comparing it to the Nazi Third Reich.[33] On 30 November he condemned a series of protests, known as Euromaidan that supported closer ties between Ukraine and the EU.[34
::::::::::::
The ones complaining most loudly of Nazis are themselves descendants of collaborators. You know, most of the Nazi concentration camp guards were Soviet soldiers-POWs. I wonder how many collaborators you had in your family tree? We already know you have a family history of carpetbagging and that you would betray your American neighbors in a heartbeat, just as you betrayed Russia for money when you took your talents to its rival. Living off American government money does make you a collaborator, doesn’t it?
This is a “big” word that you don’t understand.
Explain how and which “assets.”
In the real world, rather than the fantasy of a semi-literate teenager, Galicia’s growth comes from massive expansion of IT industry there, and building of factories by Western companies.
Donetsk is no longer under Kiev’s control. Explain how and why companies under the control of anti-Ukrainian rebels are sending their money to Galicia. Metinvest and DTEK are still owned by Akhmetov. Did you know that he is not a Galician?
You are not very literate.
You should read less Marx and more linguistics, in that case. Clearly you don’t understand that big word, “linguistics.”
Ukrainian is about as far from Russian as Dutch is from German. I guess in your mind the “Netherlands” is just a part of Germany and the speech there a dialect of German. Ukrainian is more distant from Russian than Swedish from Norwegian. It is actually about as close to Polish as it is to Russian.
Better yet, I’ll give you pointers. Dostoyevsky’s Demons and Bulgakov’s Dog’s Heart will teach you more about Bolshevism and Revolutionary activities and their consequences than all of the nonsense by Marx, Foucault or Evola that you have filled your silly little head with put together.
I visited the USSR once in 1990 and independent Ukraine multiple times after that, most recently in 2017.
I visit Russia much more often and lived there in the early 200os, before you were born.
Anyways, it’s not very nice to make fun of teenagers (if you were some sort of dumb semi-literate boomer it would be another matter) so I’ll stop. I’ll be kind to you and say you might have some potential after you grow up and out of your silliness.
In contrast to some people who feel so guilty that they throw out ridiculous accusations, my father fought Nazis at the front, got two wounds (one pretty bad, he was decommissioned after it) and several decorations. So did his brother, and the husbands of both his sisters (one was killed by the Nazis and she never remarried, raised her son by herself). My mother and her sisters were on the occupied territory for a while, during which time they hid from the Nazis on the far away “hutor” to avoid being sent to Germany as slave labor. The husband of my grandfather’s sister was one of the sailors who rebelled in tsarist times on battleship “Potemkin”. He was arrested by Stalin’s goons, so he was in jail when the Nazis came. They offered him to become a mayor of the town. When he sent them where they belong, they shot him. She also never remarried, raised her daughter herself. Only one of my second cousins was forcefully sent to Germany, where at the end of the war she met a young guy, who turned out to be a Nazi collaborator from Western Ukraine. She ran with him West and ended up in the US (like most Nazi collaborators who managed to run far enough West to surrender to Americans; quite a few of those also ended up in American bootlicker Canada).
I moved to the US in 1991 to continue doing science, as it became clear that the USSR dropped that ball. I could have made a lot more money in 1990s in Russia, like some of my University classmates, but I am too interested in my research and not interested enough in money. Never, in the USSR or in the US, I did anything I cannot publish, so all science I do belongs to the humanity. Scientists in China, Germany, the US, and other countries use my results, also to do publishable things, not to help murderous military.
So, some people had the dignity and courage to avoid serving foreign occupiers. But there is scum in any nation, ready to serve whoever is in charge at the moment. That scum ran away with the Nazis. The lucky ones survived and ended up in countries that did not see their Nazi past as a negative. That’s how far off “patriots” like you appeared.
I have nothing to feel guilty about. Even though one of my relatives collaborated with a foreign occupier – the Soviet regime, and even flew to Moscow to personally meet Stalin. It was not done for personal gain, though, at least. None of my grandparents were soldiers during the war. My Galician grandparents had brothers who were officers in the Polish army. My central Ukrainian grandparent (a medical student in Lviv during the war) had a brother who was a Soviet officer, who was killed in action in Crimea.
You admitted that your parents came to Lviv as occupiers, your father was a Sovok soldier in that city. As I wrote before, about 1939 but also true later:
The locals viewed the Soviets as some half-fed poor ape-like creatures who were also scary because they were often drunk and committed crimes such as rape. Soviet officers were looting everywhere. Their wives wore stolen nightgowns around town because they thought they were fancy dresses.
Many of the Soviets did not know how to use toilets. They were a source of embarrassment for Galician Ukrainian nationalists in front of their Polish rivals – many of those Soviets were of their own ethnicity and it was painful to hear these “apes” speak the same language. Local writing by both Poles and Ukrainians when encountering Soviets for the first time reveals their impressions – Ukrainian theologian Havril Kostelnyk – “unintelligent, uncultured faces and simple-minded movements.” Lviv mathemetician Hugo Steinhaus was told by Sovoks that mathematics was a “class science.” Stanislaw Lem, who was 17 in Lwow when the Soviets invaded, stated “the Germans evoked only fear, at the Soviets you could also laugh.” He described them as “a terrible, gigantic ape.”
Soviet filmmaker Dovzhenko had similar impressions, expressed in private of course, worrying about “our boorishness, our tactlessness, our lack of culture” and hoping that one day the Easterners would stop despising the Galicians for being “better and more cultivated.”
Well, as the proud son of one of those “apes” you still despise the Galicians for being better and more cultivated than you are. Even though you listen to Brahms.
So, a traitor who may have murdered one of the Russian officers on board during the mutiny.
Being a steadfast Old Bolshevik is not something to be proud of.
And what was the nature of his alleged collaboration, I am curious.
I know academics from Russia (in-laws) who refused lucrative opportunities to pursue research in the USA but stayed in Russia in the 1990s.
Not in academia doing basic research. By doing something like working in management in a pharma company (I know someone who did this, too).
You wanted to do research, America paid researchers, Russia didn’t. Rather than do research for little money under poor conditions in Russia, or make money in Russia by leaving academia, you chose to abandon your country that trained you well, to come to the USA, a rival country, to get paid by the same government that bombs Iraqis etc. in order to do what you like to do. While doing so you naturally also pay taxes to the US government.
I don’t blame you. Not everyone can be a saint.
But you should at least have the decency not to despise the American people with whom you live.
And from this perspective you aren’t better than, say, Ukrainian academics or teachers who continued to do their work under German occupation.
“Dignity” and serving the Sovoks does not go together.
For Western Ukrainians (as for Balts, Poles etc.), the Soviets were foreign occupiers. Moreover, they were worse foreign occupiers than were the Germans. The Soviet occupiers killed more local Galician Ukrainians and their rule was more repressive for local Ukrainians than was German rule. Of course, the opposite was the case in the rest of Ukraine where Germans were worse.
There seems to be some good Corona-related news coming out of Slovenia, where they’ve declared the outbreak in the country to be over. If what’s going on again in Wuhan at the moment is any indication, they shouldn’t be celebrating too soon. Masks and social distancing still seem to be required at the moment, though.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/slovenia-calls-an-official-end-to-its-coronavirus-epidemic/
It’s amazing how clueless those who never did research can be. FYI, research is not gazing into your navel. Biomedical research involves experiments that require reagents and equipment. Without that nothing useful can be done, regardless of the size of the salary. When it became clear that no new reagents will be coming and no equipment repairs will be possible, the choice was simple: either do something else, or move to the place where you can actually do research.
In my book, making money in Russia in the 1990s was criminal activity. Basically, all business people were robbing state assets (i.e., appropriating for themselves what used to belong to all), directly or indirectly. I did not (and still do not) want to participate in criminal activities, and I am not interested in money. Both of these would make me a bad businessman in Russian 1990s, the darkest period of Russian history.
BTW, the husband of my grandfather’s sister never was a Bolshevik. In fact, he never belonged to any political party. Maybe that’s why Stalin’s goons arrested him. Also, sailors who rebelled on Potemkin did not kill anyone. They only arrested the officers who refused to join. Nazis thought that his arrest made him a good material for a collaborator. However, even half-decent person never uses his spat with the state as a pretext to collaborate with foreign occupiers. Because doing that you betray not the state, but your people occupied by a foreign power.
Anyway, I am writing all this for possible honest readers, because explaining anything to a Ukie is a futile task.
You are claiming zero research in Russia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_battleship_Potemkin#Mutiny
The mutineers killed seven of the Potemkin’s eighteen officers, including Captain Evgeny Golikov (ru), and captured the torpedo boat Ismail (No. 627). They organised a ship’s committee of 25 sailors, led by Afanasi Matushenko, to run the battleship.[16]
These mutineers were traitors and murderers.
A reasonable assumption, that a traitor and murderer would betray the Soviets too.
However your uncle betrayed the Tsar, but not the Soviets who murdered millions of Russians. He sounds like a real scumbag.
Sorry, dude, scumbags ran West with the Nazis and ended up in various places where their crimes won’t be punished. Proud and honest people fight Nazis at the front and as guerilla fighters, or are shot by Nazis for saying what they think of them, like the husband of my granddad’s sister.
The lie that Bolsheviks murdered millions won’t become any truer because of endless repeating by scumbags.
Most who ran West did not do so “with Nazis” and were not scumbags. However plenty of scumbags remained in Ukraine.
Depending on circumstances, some who did so were proud and honest people. Just as, depending on circumstances, some who fought against Soviets were proud and honest people. Of course, one could be proud and honest, and also bad.
But you admitted that your family member mutineed against the Russian government and was involved in the murder of Russian officers at time of war. He was literally a traitor, who betrayed his country. Yet he did not betray Stalin. He may have been proud and honest, but he was also incredibly disgusting.
So you follow in your family’s footsteps as a traitor to Russia and the Russian people. You are like a Jewish relative of Kapos who denies the Holocaust occurred. You are a good Sovok.