I have been a bit busy the past few days, but for now a new thread, in which you can discuss my 2v6 skirmish victory in Mount & Blade: Bannerlord, as well as other, invariably much less important topics.
Open Thread 109
This Post about *default,
tagged ,
was written by Anatoly Karlin for Russian Reaction on July 10, 2020
This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.
If you are new to my work, start here.
What, no winner’s banquet after such a thorough and tumultuous victory? 🙂
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/01/c2/ec/01c2ec56fd32437f08e22b025326471a.jpg
Clearly hax*
Because of all the quarantine I placed my self under, I went through at least 10 games the last 5 months.
I played the shit out of witcher 3, finally had the time.
Games are a good escape from reality from time to time.
Nice illustration of stable genius strategy by killing your own boomer voters just before the elections, lol:
https://krcrtv.com/news/coronavirus/alabama-man-dies-of-covid-19-family-says-he-refused-to-wear-mask
My 2 year old approved of the horse but not much else. He went back to watching Masha and the Bear. She does wear the NKVD hat, but with good reasons – she is trying to catch the rabbit who is stealing carrots from the Bear. That rabbit is a wrecker and Lubyanka is too good for him.
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1281693813308682240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1281693813308682240%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Fcomments%2Fall%2F%3Fcommenterfilter%3D216
American Conservatism is just consumerism
Macho poseurs jousting at windmills
West Point looks to become the next Lenin Military-Political Academy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_Military-Political_Academy)
Other disturbing trends:
There are other disturbing stories like the Army’s Twitter account claiming MAGA is racism / white supremacy.
This guy was a couple of years too early: https://apnews.com/57a1fd1e2df84cfdb2fc51375815444f/Army-splits-with-West-Point-grad-who-touted-communist-revolt
Clown World News reporting from Vancouver tonight:
https://summit.news/2020/07/09/west-vancouver-police-driver-carried-out-gesture-of-hate-for-skidding-on-pride-crosswalk/
The guy was 78 and diabetic, he kind of had it coming for him anyways, and I imagine the life he was living wasn’t much of a life anyways.
If they do have to represent another country, this seems best:
https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1096172/belarus-would-consider-russian-athletes
The Myth of the 214 IQ :
Since Ron Unz wrote the famous ‘The Myth of Hispanic Crime’ article series, it is time to tackle another myth. It is funny that Ron Unz has the sheer chutzpah to write into his own Wikipedia article that he has an IQ of 214. I never got more uproarious laughter online then when I linked to Ron Unz’s Wikipedia article on a mainstream Republican blog (Instapundit) where others could see that he wrote this claim into it.
The reality is, his IQ is 124, and he once made a typo that came out as ‘214’. RUnzie Baby liked the typo, and decided to propagate the myth. In reality, the highest verifiably tested IQs all top out in the 190-195 range. I guarantee that no one with a verified IQ above 160 thinks RUnzie Baby’s IQ is 214. They will shoot that pretense down with ‘Kung Fu fightin’, fast as lightnin” speed.
Even the fictitious Sheldon Cooper has an IQ of just 187. People of that IQ tend to finish their Bachelor’s Degrees by 17 and their doctorates by 20. RUnzie Baby entered Harvard at 18, and dropped out of the Physics program in his 20s, when a person of an unheard of IQ of 214 ought to have completed his PhD long before the age that RUnzie Baby dropped out.
Plus, a number other decisions are of questionable smarts. For example, if someone runs as a Republican in CA, even back in 1998, that is already a disadvantageous party to run under the banner of in CA. But on top of that, to take far-left positions as a Republican is even more unwise. But it gets worse :
RUnzie Baby campaigned on a high minimum wage (a far-left position) and simultaneously pushes for illegal immigration to not be curbed. Any fool can see that to the extent that a high minimum wage ($12/hr in 1998) can even work at all, you cannot possibly have a large number of illegals willing to work at the market wage, thus moving most labor into a black market that only illegals can partake in. Hence, this combination of polices, if it were to be enacted, is just about the worst obliteration of working-class US citizens one could devise. Hence, one struggles to believe RUnzie Baby has any smarts at all.
But, his IQ is 124. That is high, but unspectacular.
Now, the funny part that you all have been waiting for :
An IQ of 124 can fit into a cranial volume of this size :
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a06ec1776fe47bd8bb0b610f83748ddcbd9799cb3df4f2a9e0a5aa8a9a7cdc72.jpg
A superhuman IQ of 214, however, which is well above any known world record, requires a more powerful hardware system. That hardware takes up more volume, and also generates a lot of heat.
Hence, when RUnzie Baby imagines that his IQ is 214, he imagines that he looks like this :
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/41016101976c9db3d330f7cacfb2e337f42f2b75684d1356b0ff7d8aedc62f3d.jpg?w=800&h=690
Note the higher temperature being generated by the augmented hardware. The normal human brain consumes 100 Watts, but if your IQ is to be 214, the amount of power consumed also has to double. Let’s call it corresponding 214 Watts.
Heh heh heh heh
Implying they are fundamentally different from what you call “reality”.
Regarding West Point (WP), getting a different and valid (stress valid) perspective is good. Related are these Noam Chomsky appearances:
I know a now retired WP instructor dealing with historical issues, who invited me to speak before his class on the matter of some Ukrainian related matters in a non-fee paid situation. In retrospect, part of me regrets not following up. According to Alexandra Chalupa and apparently some others (like The WaPo) Terrell Jermaine Starr is a Ukraine expert.
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2020/07/04/the-dark-age-roots-of-western-modernity/
You should read Razib. Though he stresses a bit too much on family fertility patterns, much like Emmanuel Todd, for my taste. The Western world didn’t really take off properly until the early 1700s in GDPpc, so the roots of the take-off must be found in the immediately preceding centuries. The further back you go, the flimsier your case gets.
The focus on protestantism is a corollary to to the real argument. Protestantism has to be seen as a response to a deeper, underlying trend rather than the spark itself. Luther’s argument was at its core anti-authoritarian and even egalitarian. No longer can a central authority demand subordination in the affairs of men – as the Catholic Church was a far more empowered institution in those days than in ours. We began with religion because that was the most significant force in our lives at the time, but the goal was never limited to religion per se. As secularisation wore on, a greater share of old shibboleths had to come crashing down (landed “gentry”, “nobility”, slavery, disenfranchisement of women etc) and they all did. To me, these are not disconnected events.
In that sense, the NRx are half-right that protestantism in many ways ended the world of the past but they misdiagnose it as the central force, whereas it was just one form of expression of a wider social trend.
Reminded of Max Headroom:
A study shows that Asians are way more vulnerable to CO-19 than other – hu! – races.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.03.186296v1
Might help to explain why Gregory Cochran’s and some other people’s IFR predictions for CO-19 were too high.
Mongolian artist Ganbat Batmanand draws for this game and I like his work
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6epbb5WsAAYneq.jpg:large
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/1a/1b/10/1a1b102a092cb0b92550caa37cab1fde–poland-history-dark-horse.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/4b/78/4f/4b784fd99d2598b298620e5175b5e7e5–amazing-art-genghis-khan.jpg
https://www.1zoom.ru/big2/626/243417-Sepik.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1e/00/ad/1e00ad31a2cd4529541d6b086d56126b.jpg
https://wikiway.com/upload/iblock/5d4/istoria-norvegii.jpg
Ron has mentioned before that the 214 figure was made up.
IQ tests generally top out at 160:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification#Giftedness
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Belgium has 844 deaths per million. India has 16. That is almost two orders of magnitude difference.
So, there are only two rational conclusions. Either
a) The stats are total bunk and asspulled.
b) The coronavirus is not the main cause of death, only a correlated factor.
In either case, mask compliance should be the very last of your worries considering points a) and b).
P.S. Personally, I believe that the COVID is an artifically selected virus, and that it causes autoimmune special effects in the host. The deaths are caused by medical error (Western medicine is absolutely clueless about autoimmune disorders and immunity in general), not the virus per se.
So, did he make it up and then somebody else disclosed his dubious hoax? Seems like an interesting story, no matter how it all went down?…
Why not read Joseph Henrich himself? His book The Secret of Our Success is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read and has many interesting ideas, so I’m looking forward to his next book.
Do you play World of Tanks? It’s the most successful russian game after all and it’s quite fun. And free.
It’s on my to-read list! I just have 20-30 odd books I have to burn through first.
Does the singleplayer component of Bannerlord ever get fun? I tried it, but it seems to be tedious chasing around bandits for hours just like the previous ones.
World of Tanks is Belarusian. It is fun though if you have a lot of time to burn, I played a lot in 2013-2015.
War Thunder is Russian, I haven’t played that, but I heard it is also very good.
Ukrainian population and Coronavirus causes poll:
http://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=952&page=1
*37% of the population believe that the virus was created in a laboratory and deliberately spread
*29% believe it was created in a lab but spread by accident
*19% believe it is a natural phenomenon
The rest weren’t sure/couldn’t say.
Among those who believe it was created in a lab, 70% blame China, 5% blame the USA, and 3% blame Russia.
Among those who believe it was created in a lab and deliberately spread, 26% blame China, 11% blame the USA, 4% blame Russia, 49% aren’t sure/can’t say.
Among political supporters, Oleh Lyashko (populist/nationalist) voters are most likely to believe that it was made in a lab and deliberately spread (57.6%). This is followed by Tymoshenko voters (48.5%). Zelenski and Boyko voters are at 39%. Poroshenko voters are least likely to think this – only 20% do.
What motivated Erdogan’s Hagia Sophia stance:
https://theduran.com/dark-day-for-christianity-dark-day-for-greeks-hagia-sophia-to-become-mosque-video/
In all honesty for the amount dead there are too few of this type of stories. So it seems either we have too little skeptics or the skeptics are doing something right or they are hypocrites.
Proudly homoerotic in the ancient Greco-Roman tradition?
In what way are they the same as reality? Give me a deep dive.
Off-topic, but do you think that Lyashko is secretly gay?
Also, when do you think that Ukraine’s next census is going to be? It hasn’t had one since 2001. Also, what’s your predicted population for Ukraine at the time of its next census, whenever it will be?
I don’t really know. I tried to encourage Karlin to pursue that fine looking lady, who managed the McDonald’s in Moscow about half a year ago, but haven’t heard back. Maybe….? 🙂
The painting could very well depict Alexander the Great. Sounds a bit like “Anatoly the Great”, eh?
Power does as it does.
The only palpable difference that I can see is that Max used the TV screen from which to mesmerize his audience whereas Ron prefers the video screen of the internet blogosphere. 🙂
I am shocked that Muslims don’t believe in religious coexistence but forcibly make churches into mosques. Shocked, I tell you. The Muslims on this site assured me they totally, totally respected the rights of other religions. Especially Wife-Beater Talha 🙂
It may be time for Israel to expel Muslims from the Temple Mount and put up a nice Synagogue there – I’d let the Christians convert the Dome of the Rock to a church, if they wanted to. Hey, if we can’t have religious coexistence then we can’t have it.
True. Return Hagia Sophia to the Orthodox Church.
Then, return all pre-Reformation cathedrals and churches in Protestant countries to Catholic Church.
Then, return all ancient Roman and Greek temples and shrines to neo-pagans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Council_of_Ethnic_Hellenes
Interesting proposition. Perhaps it should be done.
Hagia Sophia should certainly be returned to Orthodox Christians – in fact, it is an outrage that in this day and age the city of Constantinople remains in the hands of the Turk.
The Muslim world is in steep decline, a dying civilization. The Turks are no longer the fierce warriors they once were. They have become a weak people. Russia is a power on the rise. How much longer will the beautiful and ancient city of Constantinople be violated by the Cruel Turk?
A more accurate accounting to what has been rehashed today on Al Jazeera, CNN and the BBC:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/07/11/unwrapping-riddle-srebrenica/
Related:
http://silentcrownews.com/wordpress/?p=4712
All of Anatolia west of Ankara should be given back to the Greeks.
It wouldn’t work; Self-righteousness/’holier than thou’ and ‘faith’/accepting non or ir rationalities are the hallmarks of religions. I suggest religious architectures to time-share as
–Friday Mosque
–Saturday Synagogue
–Sunday Church
–The other week days could be splitted between buddhist… phallic/fertility…mammon…rainbow/Sodom.. worship
And … the great world cancel war that continues to rage just claimed another victim.
https://twitter.com/esoterikwaa/status/1281949096769720320
Yes, it is true.
Yes, it is real.
Yes, it happened.
Our host AK himself is now CANCELLED as RACIST and FASCIST.
He might give some lame excuse about “joke” “humor” “shitpost” “traditional 4chan culture”, but there can be no excuse and there will be no forgiveness.
Because true revolution is no joke.
Including patriotic revolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joke_(novel)
Remember: The revolution have a beginning. The revolution have no end.
No idea but probably it is a rumor meant to harm him. He has a wife and kid, but the society is closeted so that is no guarantee.
32 – 34 million currently.
Maybe Anatoly might move to China. Nick Lsnd did. Anyway, with oil and gas revenue crashing, Russia is quite probably on the brink of serious trouble.
Earlier, when first big hotspot was NYC/NJ which are not known for Trump enthusiasm, indeed it was rare occurence, but lately such stories increasingly are becoming not that hard to find as virus is spreading further inland while killing Trumpian voter base:
https://www.cleveland19.com/2020/07/10/year-old-port-clinton-war-vet-dies-covid-complications-fourth-july/
Curious about your take on what’s been going on within Ukraine’s Central Bank and governor Yakiv Smolii’s recent resignation. Lot’s of “blah, blah, blah” but no real information about who has been putting “systematic political pressure” on him and whether Kolomoisky is behind it all?
http://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/governor-of-ukraines-national-bank-resigns-pointing-to-political-pressure/
Do not forget Egypt.
All Egyptian temples too must be restored to the Kemetic Orthodox Faith and returned to worship of the true Gods.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemetic_Orthodoxy
https://web.archive.org/web/20110111174240/http://www.kemet.org/nisutAUS.html
In the end, power and power alone decide. Good will is unreliable. Once the magnanimity fades, the power takes over.
What did Christians do with pagan temples? Many were smashed or were converted to Christian houses of prayers.
When whites ceded power to Jews, they hoped that Jewish Good Will toward whites would ensure some degree of white pride and prestige. But Jewish Power, Mao-like, has called on antifa thugs and BLM savages to attack whiteness. And whites can’t do anything because they gave up their prestige and pride, the moral authority and power. Jewish Good Will lasted only for so long.
Anyone who gives up power and just relies on good will is bound to end up like the old lord in Kurosawa’s RAN. He handed power over to his sons and relied on their good will.
Good will lasts only as long as the new power is good. But there is no assurance that it will be good. Indeed, most forms of power are either evil or, at best, necessary evil.
Never rely on good will. It’s bad insurance.
I never thought I’d use this phrase unironically, but the outrage over Hagia Sophia seems so fake and gay to me. I grew up second to none when it comes to hating Turks, but they seized that church well over five centuries ago. I wrote it off a long time ago. They can do what they want with it.
https://news4sanantonio.com/news/local/i-thought-this-was-a-hoax-patient-in-their-30s-dies-after-attending-covid-party
Okay, but you’re an atheist Australian – I don’t imagine the issue will have much resonance for you.
To a certain extent I agree with you. The Muslim world is a dying civilization, and Turkey is a fading country that is no longer a significant player, so this feels like a futile gesture to give themselves some morale.
I do understand that perspective.
But at the same time, there is a symbolism here – it’s a signal that what little commitment Muslims had to coexist with other religions and cultures is being thrown out the window.
We should be mindful of that fact.
Obviously I don’t agree with you on the role Jews are playing in this – qua Jews, as in being motivated by Jewish reasons, rather than just being high-IQ liberals – but I do agree with your point that you should never rely on Good Will alone.
It’s the story of King Lear – you give up power, you get abused. Jews learned this the hard way too. Kurosawa’s movie was based on Lear, btw.
India has a way younger population, hot&humid climate but no widely developed air conditioning (unlike now in South US), plus had quite strict lockdown relatively early, also probably quite likely has not very good testing ability and is undercounting at the moment, while Belgium is relatively cold, old and overcounting deaths, when registering the dead even without the testing, so such extreme diffrerencies of the spectrum in these two cases may have at least partly rational explanations.
https://www.centralbanking.com/central-banks/governance/7651851/imf-must-defend-reform-in-ukraine-gontareva
Reminds me of an old joke from Soviet times.
(by way of background, Georgia was one of the most corrupt republics in the USSR, and Georgian men had a reputation of being womanizers).
A Georgian guy is joining the Communist party. The guy leading the ceremony says:
– You know that as a communist you won’t be allowed to take bribes?
– Yes, I know…
– You know that s a communist you won’t be allowed to have sex with any woman except your wife?
– Yes, I know…
– Finally, if the party needs it, you must be prepared to give your life for it.
– This kind of life – no problem!
The end of most slavery in the Post Roman Christian world.
This meant that labour saving devices were advantageous.
Heavy ploughs pulled by horses.
Water mills
Wind mills
Wheel barrows
Barns
With one harvest a year Christian Europe pulled equal with China (often 2) and India (sometimes 3) in peasant output. That was a necessary precursor to later advance. Viable towns and an artisan class were needed for the later steps.
Christians could not enslave other Christians, at least in theory, the Irish kept buying English slaves until 1103. Most peasants were labelled Christians whether they wanted to be or not. It was a top down thing. Christianity expanded by marrying off princesses to pagan Kings. The princesses always arrived with a squad of monks ready to set up a school. The Bible was the price of reading lessons.
Muslims could not enslave other Muslims, at least in theory. However, wheras the Christian incentive was to convert, the Muslim incentive was to keep the conquered paying taxes for not being Muslim and to enslave those who couldn’t keep up payments. Also, Islam expanded by conquest so a lot of slaves were available. The burst of progress from breaking down the obrder between Persia and Rome didn’t last.
There is no practical reason to convert Hagia Sophia to a mosque. There is a huge Blue Mosque across the plaza. There are plenty of mosques in Istanbul, none of which are ever full. Wannabe sultan is doing this just to show who is the boss. Remarkably childish and shortsighted. Typical Erdogan.
Only the British get this level of dry irony.
Who cares about his sexual preferences? He is a clown, currently playing a “patriot”. If some other role pays better, he’d switch. I suspect he’d be always willing to rent his dick/asshole/mouth to the highest bidder. He has a sister serving in the armed forces of Lugansk People’s Republic. She said that he was a clown and an idiot from childhood. Apparently, he did not change much since then.
At some point, Marxism became Marxissism or a form of narcissism of self-celebration.
https://twitter.com/JFGariepy/status/1281561004737003520
The Muslim presence on the Temple Mount is an odd relic of the era when Israel thought it could secure peace by demonstrations of incredible magnanimity and generosity towards its defeated foes.
Those illusions are long gone – and no one really thinks or cares much about peace with the Muslim world these days. It has little to offer.
Also, after World War Two when Arab nations were formed, it was not yet clear that they would fail to modernize and remain dysfunctional backwaters, so it may have seemed important to create good relationships with it.
Nevertheless, or perhaps because of all this, there is a growing process of normalization going on – I quipped on another thread that soon more Arab states and factions will have official or unofficial peace with Israel than each other.
So the Muslim presence on the Temple Mount will definitely not last much longer – it makes zero sense. Certainly the mosques and other architectural gems – priceless masterpieces – should be carefully disassembled and rebuilt in some Muslim land. Syria is an excellent choice.
There is absolutely no reason why Egyptians and other “higher” pagans should not have religious freedom.
I say “higher” to distinguish them from the bloody kinds of paganism that victimized large numbers of people, like the Aztecs or worshippers of Moloch.
But Greek paganism was certainly on a very high level, especially in late Hellenistic times, and Egyptian paganism was very colorful and impressive in its own way. It lasted almost 5,000 years! Few systems have satisfied people for that long. There must have been something very well-rounded about it, that spoke to the whole human being.
However, I just don’t think there are too many people left who practice these religions.
This is the classical Marxist take.
Medieval feudalism as progress over ancient slaveholding society, just like capitalism is progress over feudalism and socialism will be progress over capitalism.
Unfortunately, it is complete BS.
The traditional take that fall of Rome was nuclear war grade catastrophe and the medievals were pathetic survivors in post-apocalyptic landscape scavenging in the ruins seems to be correct.
Roman agriculture
https://www.academia.edu/436589/Roman_Agriculture
Roman transport
http://www.humanist.de/rome/ironwheel/index.html
Roman standards of living
https://www.academia.edu/391517/Standards_of_Living_Wealth
https://historum.com/threads/the-dark-ages.95437/page-11#post-2343068
Nah, Russian forex reserves dipped a little in March but then resumed growing. People seriously underestimate Russian economy because Russia doesn’t rely on debt to grow nominal GDP. But this also makes it a lot more resilient.
So, then what was it?
If you ask me, that “missing time” hypothesis seems to solve a lot of problems…
XYZ asked about Lyashko being a closeted gay, I answered. Probably XYZ cares, if he asked about it. I agree that Lyashko is an absolute clown. For me he’s comparable to Jirik, although Jirik is older and more experienced as a (political) whore.
I don’t know who to believe, some internal sources are writing about a deepening economic crisis, others on the opposite about an improving situation. I guess we’ll see in the coming months.
The Coast Guard Academy has been under attack recently for having insufficient minority diversity. I cannot imagine what a workable, sensible solution would be to this.
‘…To a certain extent I agree with you. The Muslim world is a dying civilization, and Turkey is a fading country that is no longer a significant player, so this feels like a futile gesture to give themselves some morale.
I do understand that perspective.
But at the same time, there is a symbolism here – it’s a signal that what little commitment Muslims had to coexist with other religions and cultures is being thrown out the window.
We should be mindful of that fact.’
Once again, Aaron, you manage to get off a zinger without even trying.
So the Turks reestablishing Hagia Sophia as a mosque — which it had been since 1453 — says something about Muslims (somewhat astonishingly, apparently all Muslims) and their commitment to coexist with other religions, etc — in a nation that is virtually entirely Muslim.
What then would you say Israel’s games with al Aqsa and the Ibrahimi Mosque say about Judaism?
…about all Jews, of course. We can pin these acts on Jews in general, if I have it right.
Is that so, Aaron?
‘The Muslim presence on the Temple Mount is an odd relic of the era when Israel thought it could secure peace by demonstrations of incredible magnanimity and generosity towards its defeated foes.
I don’t suppose it had anything to do with Israel calculating what it could and could not get away with?
Nor with the peace treaty it signed with Jordan?
But treaty, shmeaty, right, Aaron? Since when has Israel been obliged to keep its word?
You keep riding high, wide, and handsome. I’m right behind you.
In fact, I hope to give you a helpful shove one of these days.
‘All of Anatolia west of Ankara should be given back to the Greeks.
• Agree: AaronB’
You would agree.
What an unbelievably vicious swine you are, Aaron. Think of the futile and morally indefensible misery such a measure would cause. You might as well agree the Ukraine should have been given ‘back’ to the Nazis.
That’s the degree of immorality you naturally wallow in. It’s not even your land — but you would willingly see that much evil perpetrated — if it would just somehow get Israel a few points.
That’s it. That’s the whole extent of your morality. Whatever you see as helping Israel.
The problem with this stuff is that on such a level everyone may be lying or everyone may be telling the truth. Poroshenko’s people accuse Zelensky’s people of being corrupt puppets of Kolomoyski (they very well may be). Zelensky’s/Kolomysky’s people highlight the corruption by Poroshenko’s people. This may also very well be true.
One of Ukraine’s former ministers is a family friend. This non-corrupt person privately talked about how Poroshenko’s people were applying pressure (which included mafia-like threats) to get what they wanted, ultimately resulting in resignation and replacement with a compliant Poroshenko tool – the exact same thing that Zelensky is being accused of doing. So Poroshenko and Zelensky/Kolomoyski are not dramatically different from each other. The important thing is that prior to COVID the country has been improving significantly under both presidents (though I suppose Poroshenko probably deserves credit for most of the first 6 months’ improvement during Zelensky’s presidency) so each ruler’s corruption and consolidation was not as nihilistic in nature as what had been occurring earlier.
How many Ukrainians think that the entire thing is overblown, out of curiosity?
What I did not understand until now, is that the problem with Muslims is much larger than just Israel.
Most of what is now western Turkey is the site of an ancient non-Muslim civilization – ditto for Egypt, and other parts of the Middle East and North Africa. These proud ancient civilizations were viciously conquered by Muslims, taken advantage of in moments of weakness. But nothing lasts forever.
The boundaries of the Muslim world today rest on conquest and bloodshed – they are neither natural nor just. With the Muslim world in terminal decline, this is the perfect time to redress this.
Imagine if large parts of the Muslim world are liberated for civilization once again!
I can no longer see Israel as an isolated example of Muslim imperialism – it is just one victim, and the liberation of Israel cannot stand alone, but must be part of a broader liberation of lands and peoples sadly lost to the Islamic darknesss.
By shrinking its borders and rolling back its imperialism, the Muslim world will be demonstrating an appropriate humility and willingness to peacefully coexist with others.
So this must be our new goal – the general rolling back of Muslim borders and the shrinking of the Muslim world to its natural place in Arabia.
Although some actors are certainly putting it on wrt outrage, whatever honest outrage there is is entirely justified. This is a Christian Church.
Hollywood commits suicide. Sinosphere vs. Anglosphere is shaping up to be a total route — perhaps forfeit is the proper term. Hollywood is only casting POC now. White men at all levels need not apply, including writers and directors; studios are taking casting away from directors. Say goodnight Hollywood. There are only so many racist Jordan Peele movies non-white Americans will tolerate.
I guess this is what happens when you let the fox into the hen house. Honestly, I don’t see how Hollywood maintains its previous global dominance over the next 20 years. Language barrier and budget will increasingly become less relevant as deep fake technologies replace CGI. At that point, creative freedom will matter even more than it does now … and those countries that don’t have it don’t have a future in the industry.
The American comic book industry went the same way due to this phenomenon of locking out creatives (white men, race and gender swapping white characters en masse). It’s still around, but it’s not nearly as influential as it used to be and probably never will be again. The people who do still buy physical books want Japanese and European products for the most part. The residual American market consists of a declining number of older collectors and inflated library sales; crowd-funded is the only real area of growth (by white men who’ve been locked out of the industry). I expect the same model for the rump American movie industry once deepfake makes it feasible to produce high-quality movies with limited teams and shoestring budgets.
After the 67 war, it would have been a simple matter to expel the hostile Arab population – to take up comfortable lives in neighboring Arab countries – and to take over the Temple Mount. The Arabs were expecting a massacre, because that’s what they were planning for the Jews. They were terrified.
Instead, in perhaps one of history’s most remarkable instances of well meaning but misguided liberal naivete, Israel immediately offered to return most land in exchange for peace, to leave Muslims in control of the Temple Mount, to ban Jews from settling in the newly liberated lands and to leave the hostile Arab population in place.
I do not blame the Israelis of that time – I too until very recently was quite naive about Muslims. Wife-Beater Talha helped me overcome that to a considerable extent – maybe he beats his wife and kids, but I owe him a word of gratitude for educating me on just how extremist decent, respectable, middle class Muslims are today.
‘It’s the story of King Lear – you give up power, you get abused. Jews learned this the hard way too. ‘
When did Jews give up power?
There was an E Census carried out last year ( dec 19 ) which estimated the resident population of Ukraine excluding the peoples republics of Donetsk and Luhansk at 37.3 Million.
‘So this must be our new goal – the general rolling back of Muslim borders and the shrinking of the Muslim world to its natural place in Arabia.’
As a recipe for genocide and human misery on a scale never before seen in mankind’s history, this takes the cake.
It ranks with the most lurid schemes of the Nazis. The sheer evil is almost breathtaking.
Worse, you only advocate this in the hope of seducing the Islamophobes around here so that they will support Israel. Your position lacks even the dubious virtue of sincerity.
‘After the 67 war, it would have been a simple matter to expel the hostile Arab population – to take up comfortable lives in neighboring Arab countries – and to take over the Temple Mount. The Arabs were expecting a massacre, because that’s what they were planning for the Jews. They were terrified…
Bullshit. Actually, you did surreptitiously carry out quite a few massacres and some expulsions as well.
You didn’t do more for the same reason you don’t do it now.
It would cost you the support of the West, and absent the support of the West, you’d be dead.
Yank Israel off that tit, and it’ll be gone in five years. If you doubt me, try your plan out and see what happens.
‘… but I owe him a word of gratitude for educating me on just how extremist decent, respectable, middle class Muslims are today.’
Should we take your posts as indicative of the rabid bigotry and lurid genocidal fantasies lurking within the average Jew?
But there. I think we know you’re special. Aren’t you, Aaron?
One could make the same observation about the US, or probably pretty much any place else right now.
With the exception of about five years in the 00s, Russia has been in a state of perpetual economic crisis for over three decades. Russia is not the US, however, its citizens don’t buckle at the knees because of the line. They grumble something about how at least people aren’t being shot and go plant potatoes at their dachas.
Just curious — have you spent much time in Israel?
.
Some would say that Ukraine was also improving under Yanukovich.
I feel that, the way in which, Islam, seperates creation from its concept of God, is a recipe for genocide and human misery far in excess of anything else.
To live in the harsh Arabian desert and not see God in everything, is an understandable defence, even if mistaken, but it also justifies all manner of crimes against your fellow man.
Worse, to live on the banks of the beautiful Nile, and be raised to see God as something outside of this world, is terrible.
Russians have been through a lot in the last hundred years. They certainly have shown a great deal of grittiness. Although at least some of these hardships were entirely of Russian elites’ own making.
I suppose today is no different. The outcome of this semi-permanent crisis that you mention, might depend mainly on the Russian elites realism and insight. Perhaps some of this insight would simply amount to not overly rely on the common folks’ ability to survive due to their datcha agricultural skills.
http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e2466
Learn your basics first…
“reverse racism” is a fake meme. there’s only racism, nothing else.
Israel would be fine without Western support. Anything else is your wishful thinking.
The reason that Israel doesn’t do everything you feel they want to do, is because the status quo is easier, and is only ever more favourable to them.
Though they may be unaware of it, the Palestinians lost a long time ago. They don’t negotiate from reality, even while they are constantly getting lost in the thought of their ever-twisting abstract “good” that they forlornly hope to impose on the Israelis and the rest of the world.
At some point, “Colin”, you’ll need to move on and live, no matter how much the Israelis have come to represent the demonic in your mind.
If the status quo became less favourable to Israel then maybe the Israelis would take the option that you dread. Given a choice between your concept of morality and everything else, I am pretty sure they’d choose everything else.
That is not the mainstream of Islam at all…that man was an infidel to many Muslims.
My (entirely speculative) theory is that both Sweden & Belgium are letting COVID run amok in a little eugenics experiment to cull their crimey/rapey/welfare-loving underclass of immigrants. The Swedes, as you probably know, have form in this area.
11 July 1943 is considered the start to the Volhynian Massacres. These tragic events were a truly horrible display of inhumane behavior, pure hatred and sadistic pathological cruelty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia
I am posting a link below to a Russian site showing some very graphic content about the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian nationalists against the Polish civilians.
https://cdn.fishki.net/upload/post/2017/08/22/2362827/6e38e098a79e7d6b349352206b69156a.jpg
Even by the 1940-ies Eastern European killing fields the cruelty is truly mind boggling. I am left to wonder how anyone in his right mind can find any justification to the sadism displayed by OUN UPA troops and their allies among the surrounding Ukrainian population.
How can anyone forgive (let alone glorify) these people is beyond my understanding. And yet OUN UPA militants and their henchmen are seen as heroes by a significant number of today Ukrainian nationalists. Their descendants in the Ukrainian postwar diaspora acted as their forebears have done nothing wrong. The official flag of OUN UPA is used as a patriotic symbol in modern Ukraine.
I just can’t understand how it is possible to consider all this normal…
https://fishki.net/anti/2362827-volynskaja-reznja-1943-god-fotografii-kotorye-shokirovali-vesy-mir.html
I find it unbelievable that white Americans and Western Europeans usually side with Israeli Jews, considering their position is increasingly much more like that of Palestinians than of Israeli Jews.
White Americans and White British are seen as untermensch in their own nations, by both their governments and the invaders, their only role is to submit to and ultimately be replaced by the invaders. If any dare oppose this they are labelled racists, right wing extremists/terrorists. The rhetoric is very similar to how Palestinians are labelled for opposing Zionist oppression.
“Mainstream Islam ” is a relatively recent phenomenon invented by the Wahhabis.
“This man” you are referring to, is one of the greatest Islamic thinkers.
You clearly don’t know what you are writing about.
God in classical Islamic thought is:
1) Absolute and irreducible.
2) The only objective Reality.
3) Simultaneously Immanent and Transcendent.
4) Impossible to describe or define in subjective terms with any description being a metaphor.
God in Wahhabism is a caricature.
Educate yourself.
Only in Sufism, of which he was one. The rest of Islam holds God as seperate from the us.
https://m.facebook.com/GoofiSufis/&ved=2ahUKEwiS5sGkzMfqAhXuRRUIHTNTDwcQFjAOegQIBhAB&usg=AOvVaw1aReM9B0R_3Mpx-2S3fmHz
Your act here is like saying that because Matt Taibbi is a progressive, progressivism is about being as liberal minded as Matt Taibbi.
But progressivism is very obviously about being the opposite of liberal minded.
I am not at all defending the actions of the OUN-UPA in Volhynia, and have a grandfather of Polish extraction, that sadly I never met (he was liquidated as a kulak during collectivization just slightly East of these areas, another black page in Ukrainian history).
The OUN-UPA was a very nationalistic movement that tried to cover a large swath of Ukrainian territory. At its very height this movement included upwards of 100,000 volunteers. It was not very highly organized nor did it show any strong centralized cohesion. It split up into several factions that often fought as fiercely amongst itself as it did amongst its outside enemies. What was going on in Volhynia had absolutely no bearing in say Bukovina, Podilia, Zakarpattya and elsewhere. Even within neighboring Galicia, where some of the barbarism took place, few members of this movement were totally aware of the atrocities that were taking place. Communications between the different factions, regions, and personalities were tenuous at best – this was an era where even phone communications were almost non-existent.
Many of those members (perhaps the wide majority) did not take part in, or were totally unaware of the madhouse that had become Volhynia. These were for the most part young volunteers that felt a patriotic need to help free their homeland from foreign occupation, and OUN-UPA was one of the few games in town where they could give vent to their passions and aspirations for a free and independent country. The notes of party meetings of any of the factions was not commonly distributed to the rank and file, where patriotic and colorful leaflets were handed out designed to help enlist more volunteers. It was a chaotic and very violent period in European history, as I’m sure that you’ve read about within Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands”.
Having said all of this, do I think that the atrocities committed by a savage wing of this movement needs to be swept under the rug? Of course not. These things need to be adequately studied and analyzed as is currently being done. Remember, things are rarely black and white, and human history is fraught with tragedy and regret.
The only significant group of Britons who identify with the Palestinians are SJW style progressives; like the ten or so odd 65+ aged all white SWP party members I saw doing a selfie holding #BLM signs and Palestinians flags. You could see the disdain on the faces of the many black people who walked past, “oh, those weird pale people are trying to inflate their egos again…”
How about we try it and find out?
White people in Britain don’t usually side with Israel
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/03/11/israel-and-palestine-whose-side-britain
Using a metric invented in the 1930s to support a divergence in 1700 seems fatuous, almost like something Afrocentrists would do. Late divergence, early convergence – that seems to be the idea.
Of course, it is sweeping a lot of accomplishments under the rug, like the Renaissance. The circumnavigation of the globe, astronomy,calculus, fully mechanical clocks. Seems obviously false, even if we reduce it to the semi-pozzed level of Jared Diamond: doubtlessly Europe exceeded the rest of the world when it had better guns. That was a long time before 1700.
The Americans are sending their money over there for a reason. I very much doubt it is the same one that you assume simply because it flatters your world view.
Were I American, however, I would certainly vote for the aid to stop, but then I’d also have far bigger priorities, centered around stationing the US military on the US borders and so on.
I agree with you that “reverse-racism” is a dumb term, similar to “affirmative-action” or even “positive discrimination.” But let’s not kid ourselves by saying that there is only one kind of racism.
There are at least two, very different kinds. One aimed at preventing invasion and social parasitism, and one aimed at facilitating it.
Normal people don’t much care either way about a very minor conflict far abroad. For the few who do though, especially those without personal links, the two sides usually serve as blank screens onto which they project their internal struggle. This makes reasoned discussion with them almost impossible.
Racism is self-defeating. It is unrealised passions, unobserved and misdirected; different in each person.
Securing your borders, because it is a practical way to allow you the positive freedom that enables you to truly live, is not.
https://www.takimag.com/article/truth-or-trope/
Again, you don’t know what you are writing about.
You do not have the knowledge needed to discuss these matters.
Stop it.
During Yanukovich’s first year Ukraine made a partial recovery from the 2009 crash (continuing a trend that began before he was elected) but was then stagnant during the next two years, with around .1% per capita GDP growth. In contrast, post-Maidan Ukraine had been having 3% or so growth per year, such that by 2019 it had surpassed what it had been under Yanukovich:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locations=UA
The post-Maidan performance is more impressive when you consider that it was without the two richest oblasts that had 10% of the population but produced 20% of GDP (that is, for an apples-to-apples comparison of parts of Ukraine in the current borders now vs,. pre-2013, subtract about 10% from GDP in 2013 or before).When this is taken into account, the areas under the current borders have the highest GDP PPP they have had since the 1990s crash.
I think that what they did there is worse than what Red Khmer did in Cambodia. Compared to the Ukrainian nationalists the Waffen SS were exemplary humanists. This is sadism pure and simple.
Secure borders require racism. Show me the non-racist country with secure borders. You can’t construct a winning argument for secure borders without racism. Your loss of freedom and wealth is inconsequential to the blackamoors’ gain.
Besides, borders shouldn’t be treated as a simple binary. Singapore needs immigration to function. African immigration would not help it. There are many overseas Chinese. China might welcome these without radically changing itself or embarking on a suicidal course.
Correct.
The Russian site is a propaganda site not to be trusted. The first large series of images were of the pogroms against Jewish civilians done right after the city was taken from the Soviets. The victims were not Poles. The context was that the Germans had opened the NKVD prisons to the public. The prisoners inside were massacred in brutal ways (i.e., pregnant women had their bellies torn open before being killed, etc.), and relatives of the victims took out their aggression on the Jewish population (Jews for obvious and understandable reasons had preferred Soviets to Nazis, many of them moved to Lviv from Poland during the Soviet occupation of that city, and thus were linked to the Soviet regime by the locals).
It also includes an infamous image of children murdered and tied to a tree with barbed wire, attributing this to UPA. This was fake. The kids were gypsy kids killed by their mentally ill mother in the 1920s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianna_Doli%C5%84ska
Given the clear BS I wouldn’t trust anything on that site.
Moreover, it is rather odd for Russian nationalists and Communists to find so much compassion for the Polish victims of UPA, given that the Soviet government killed about twice as many Poles as did UPA and that the same people lionize Bohdan Khmelnytsky whose forces were no less brutal towards Polish people. This was actually the last of similar events that had been occurring for hundreds of years in Ukraine (Taras Shevchenko wrote of the Haidamaky which was the same thing; the protagonist killed his own sons as they begged their father not to kill them, because they had a Polish mother). Russians bringing it up is just bad faith attempts to place a wedge between Ukrainian and Poles.
And for Poles who think this is a uniquely an East Slavic thing, Polish peasants did the same sort of thing only 100 years earlier, well into the 19th century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_slaughter
They were sawing people in half, beheading them, etc.
There is no justification for those crimes. The explanation is that the locals were primitive (atrocities were much worse and larger in scale in Volhynia than in Galicia) and there was a both a national and religious component to the bloody uprising. Prior to the massacres, Polish colonists had been sent to the region, 180 or so Orthodox Churches had been burned, there were attempts at forced conversion to Catholicism, peasants were being routinely humiliated and treated like blacks in the American South (beaten, sometimes even lynched, though number of victims was probably in the dozens). From wiki, a Polish report about the popular mood in Volhynia recorded a comment of a young Ukrainian from October 1938 as “we will decorate our pillars with you and our trees with your wives.”
None of this justifies the extreme and brutal reaction but I’ll bet if the killers adopted a Black Hundreds sort of ideology against Catholics and Jews rather than Ukrainian nationalism there would be no Russian website complaining about the massacres just as Russians do not condemn Khmelytsky or the Haidamaks.
I find it amusing how literally the “cause celebre” of Boris Johnson supporters was keeping the railway system privatised, one of their main arguments was always that the country would end up like Venezuela if Corbyn wins and nationalises the railways. So what has Boris done? He’s nationalised the railways. I just find it absolutely incredible.
English media is negatively obsessed about Israel mainly just because of the postcolonial orientation is the way that English media report almost everything in the third world.
English believe Israeli Jews are a white people who are colonialists and that Arabs are an oppressed, native brown people. And those are the glasses, about which such a story is reported.
Until the 1960s-1970s, English reports were friendly about Israel. Watching 1960s English media about Israel, is like Russian media is now. But at that time England has not adjusted into postcolonialism of today – and they are in a view of “sportsman justice” with Rhodesia, rather than some passion-play that they had about South Africa by 1980s.
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Israelis think the negative bias of Scandinavia and England to them, is something to do with antisemitism and because they are persecuted Jews. But of course they cannot imagine the reason is often more the opposite, and it is because postcolonialism and antiracism is a dominant trend in Great Britain and Scandinavian view of the third world, and that Israelis (which we view as brown rednecks) are viewed in the English media as white and European colonizers.
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For anyone who thinks that my description is completely bizarre.
This is what political activism in London looks like, and perhaps some of the journalists. Even in a normal life, a large number of people look like this in English places.
https://twitter.com/Jane13460742/status/1246402043989897216
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Aside from postcolonialism – there is also LGBT religion and millennial fears of climate and revenge of the earth goddess upon man.
Here is something which looks like for me, a perfect tourist postcard, almost as English as tea at Buckingham Palace. Protesters attack grass of a university, which is investing in some startups related to non-renewable energy industry.
This is attack is grass around a descendant of the tree where Isaac Newton perceived gravity. So protesters are attacking the grass, but they politely avoid attacking the Isaac Newton tree.
In the background, Newton’s old university which protesters attacks has a large rainbow flag, as the institutional religion of the university is LGBTQ. So anywhere in the university will be rainbow flags. Also students commonly decorate themselves with rainbow flags, or have rainbow flag badges on their rucksack, etc.
https://twitter.com/cambfoodtour/status/1229365853461852160
The problem with discussing the ideas behind ordinary Islam is that there’s not a lot of profundity to engage with. Regardless, this makes clear, and there are loads of Quran quotes in the text, that Islam considers Allah to be far away from hateful creation and living on some other planet or wherever.
https://sunnahonline.com/library/beliefs-and-methodology/180-where-is-allah#h2-where-is-allah
Of course, it is phrased as the below:
Where is Allah?
Allah, the Exalted, has described Himself in His Book, and by the tongue of His Messenger sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam as Sublime, Supreme, and Lofty. The Qur’an is full of proofs relevant to the Loftiness of Allah.
Ahlus-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah believe in and confirm all of the attributes of Allah without distorting their meaning, and that Allah is above His seven heavens, above His ‘Arsh, and separated from His creatures, and His creatures are separated from Him.
This discourse will provide the Scriptural proofs of the Loftiness of Allah is an indivisible part of the inherent faculty of knowing Allah with which Allah has created mankind. Although the ‘aqidah of Loftiness of Allah is part of man’s innate knowledge and cannot be subjected to hypothetical of philosophical argumentation, there are some deviated sects who follow their whims and deny this intuitive and self-evident fact. For this reason, they have twisted Scriptural proofs and distorted them, and manipulated the texts to conform with their deviant argument.
All of the divine attributes are intrinsically related to the attribute of divine Loftiness. Therefore, accepting or rejecting them must be based on accepting or rejecting the Loftiness of Allah. Whoever believes that Allah is above His ‘Arsh [The Throne of Allah] and separated from His creatures, also believes in the rest of the attributes of Allah, and believes as well that the heaves and the earth submit to His will, and that He is the Great Rabb of the worlds. Allah does whatever He wills and rules according to His Own wishes. Glory be to Him.
Denial of the divine Loftiness is one of the basic doctrinal heresy promoted by the Jahmiyyah[2] and their off-shoots of today in order to confuse the Muslims’ minds. Denying this divine attribute also leads by necessity to the denial of the attribute of the istiwa of Allah above His ‘Arsh. There is no doubt that the denial of the attributes of Allah clashes with the clear Qur’anic verses in which the unique essential attributes and beautiful names of Allah confirmed. These attributes must be affirmed as identical with Allah.
The essential divine attributes of Allah constitute an integral part of His essence and are not superadded to it. They are accepted literally by Ahlus-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah without questioning the ‘how’ of these attributes. To deny them is clear unbelief and heresy. It is for this reason this discourse has been prepared to deal with the creed of Loftiness of Allah, or the question, ‘Where is Allah?’ with the Scriptural evidences from the Qur’an and the authentic prophetic traditions, as well as the traditions of those early Muslims, the pious predecessors.
I agree that there is much bias and propaganda from both sides.
How can we be sure that the atrocities on these prisoners were exacted by the NKVD?
NKVD usually simply shot prisoners, why would they indulge in a sadistic spree in Lemberg and not anywhere else?
Yes I am aware of this. But even if we take away this specific situation the rest of the stories about the Volhynian Massacres are just incredibly horrific.
Could you be more specific about it?
When did Soviet government mass murder Polish civilians in an atrocious and sadistic manner?
I know that this is the way Orthodox Rusyns were treated for many centuries. BTW this is how Greco-Catholic Church was enforced upon these populations leading to their subsequent Ukrainization.
I strongly disagree: Black Hundreds have never behaved in such an atrocious manner. It would have been absolutely impossible for these Russian nationalists to act in such an ungodly way. They were first and foremost deeply Orthodox Christian people and acted accordingly. Although strongly opposed to Jews and Catholics they would have never tortured and raped children and women.
On the other hand, Petliura’s Ukrainian nationalists did commit such atrocities during the Civil War. Perhaps you are right and this is the Haydamak’s heritage of utter cruelty tainting Ukrainian nationalism.
You think that the US government can be bought for half of $297 million?
I was surprised a lot of railway trains in England are owned by Japanese companies. Yet – travelling in the trains in Japan is enjoyable, while in England these Japanese companies provide quite bad service.
Passengers try to behave politely in the trains. But generally it is just a bad service. Trains are late, people have to run for them, there is often no seat, and the train is often travelling very slowly. While prices are something at the Japanese level.
A funny thing is in England train service buy Japanese diesel trains, and were boasting in the advertising about how these are Japanese trains. They try to promote to customers in England that this will result in a Japanese travelling experience.
But in Japan everything is electrified and I don’t think they even have a diesel train.
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And Japanese regional trains add polite young women to welcome passengers. But when they buy the English train companies, they don’t export this idea to England for English commuters.
Nobody voted for the Conservatives because of their policy on the railways. It was not any sort of cause celebre. What planet do you live on?
Corbynites are so weird! It is like they always have their own long chain, untethered, obtuse discussions in their head. That is the real reason he lost twice.
Also, events have taken place. Boris didn’t run on locking down the country, but (perhaps sadly) failing to do so, would have been immensely unpopular.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/650/747/aaf.png
You are the lease competent defender of Jews to ever grace the comments section of this blog.
There is not such thing as “ordinary ” Islam.
Again, you use Wahhabi, Salafi sources.
Wahhabism is basically an extreme outlier ideology which is forced down the throat of the Muslim multitudes with the help of Saudi $ billions.
It is basically a heretical sect currently attempting to overtake the Islamic Oumma, but they will fail.
I will not accept any discussion based on Wahhabi sources and neither would any person knowledgeable in the slightest of the Islamic theology.
Do not try this bullshit on me.
Keep your hasbara for the ignorant Goyim. I am not of the ignorant ones. I know what is needed to know about Judaism, Islam and Christianity. You cannot either fool me or pass over my knowledge and post your twisted lies when engaging me in a conversation.
Stop it.
It’s not. The Tory press spends most of the time attacking anyone who mentions Zionism as anti-semitic. They are currently going wild about the small, benign Chinese influence on the British establishment while random Tory MPs and ministers frequently pledge their subservience to Israel (never complained about). The Labour leader (married to an Israeli) recently made one shadow cabinet member apologise for making obviously true statements about Israel which would be supported if made about a white country. You are correct that politicised English people often try to fit Israel into the anti-racist paradigm, however the establishment (left and right) is constantly acting to suppress this natural logical step.
The issues you discuss (especially being slow) mostly come from poor track maintenance, which limits the speed that the trains can travel at. This can’t be blamed on the operators (Japanese or not) because maintenance of the track is handled by Network Rail.
All of the worst journeys I have ever had were because of people killing themselves or threatening to by jumping on to the track. I believe Japanese people usually kill themselves in more polite and pro-social ways.
A rather wild eyed, extreme overreaction. No one is talking about genocide here.
And there are no Islamophobes here. Only well meaning people who are understandably concerned about a religion that creates conflict with literally every single other group it has borders with, anywhere in the world, even with such innocuous and pacific cultures as those in the Philippines and Thailand.
In the first half century of Israel’s existence, Israel did not have a close alliance with America and had limited and intermittent support from some countries in Western Europe, notably France. This was the period of Israel’s greatest successes. After 67, it is unfortunately true that Western Europe tried everything in its power to prevent a swift and just resolution to this conflict, and give the Palestinians enough support and hope that they did not feel pressured to negotiate or make concessions.
One of the more mischievous and odd chapters in the history of Western Europe’s foreign policy, that has made this absurd conflict last far longer than it had to.
Unfortunately, it is only now that Western Europe is becoming less involved in the region that things are calming down and a genuine end to the conflict is on the horizon. Moreover, one extremely positive development is the new crop of nationalist European parties are extremely pro-Israel, having had experience of Muslims in their own borders.
Runoff election today in Poland. We have, to quote the KPN leader Bosak, the fake friend Duda running vs the open enemy Trzaskowski, Duda winning will at least irritate lots of people who hate Europeans and Whites in general.
‘…At some point, “Colin”, you’ll need to move on and live, no matter how much the Israelis have come to represent the demonic in your mind…’
At some point, Aaron, you’re going to have to get a little better at disguising your sock puppets. This is classic Aaron — you don’t have much of a range.
I doubt you will have any success in having this character listen to logic or evidence, and he is getting increasingly agitated at having his beliefs challenged.
Ano4 is one of the stranger characters who haunts these parts – and everyone is pretty strange here.
He is some kind of Polish Slavic Supremacist, who makes weird “spiritual” posts about how Polish Slavs have reached a high spiritual level well beyond “lesser races”, like Jews – especially Jews – and the Germanic-derived peoples of Western Europe. (I kid you not). So he is a pretty basic anti-Semite.
I have several times tried to engage him in polite discussion because he is one of the few here who wrote about spirituality, and I made the mistake of thinking he’s sincere – he ignored me because I’m a Jew.
He seems to be another Talha-like character, who cloaks an ordinary concern with power-politics and ordinary bigotry and prejudice under a fake veneer of spirituality.
The guy hates Jews and will not accept that mainstream Islam is what it’s history and it’s adherents have shown it to be.
You know, if Sufism really was “characteristic” of Islam, and Muslims could be convinced of that, that would be an incredible development! We should all rejoice. Perhaps then Islam would develop its good side. And it does have a good side, its just that its primitive elements have been in the forefront for hundreds of years. It needs an update.
Unfortunately, there are many Muslim schools that claim to be Sufi but actually just adopt the title while practicing a lamentably mainstream version of Islam, with all that leads us to expect in violence and aggression. So I’m not sure that would work. Talha claims to be a Sufi.
Anyways, Islam will eventually get on the right track and develop its nobler aspects – but first it must shrink and contract, and the aggressive imperialistic stage its now stuck in has to be rolled back.
Everything evolves and develops.
‘… Worse, to live on the banks of the beautiful Nile, and be raised to see God as something outside of this world, is terrible.’
Definitely Aaron. The classic is another post, where Aaron congratulates Aaron on his brilliant insight.
God, you’re clever, Aaron. You can run rings around us dumb goys.
If Allah is everything because all existence is one, then do you believe that Allah is as much two transgendered people having sex, while eating pork and drunk, and burning the Quran, as he is the god of your ideals?
Or will you just say Islam is anything at all to protect something that you have chosen as an avatar of your false identity?
If you answer “yes” to the first question, then good on you, but please stop trying to claim that I’m an Israeli spy because I point out that the vast majority of Muslims would say “no”, and many, many would try to murder me for saying “yes”.
America has also partly “fetishistic” (if this is a right word) relation to Israel, also because they are a very religious population, and the social life of the country is built around religion. Israel is perceived through religious texts, perhaps more than in terms of colonialism.
Aside from Jews – who have both religious and ethnic ties – and Evangelical Christians (which romanticize Israel like Harry Potter fans does England), there is also some mutual agreements to the native American religions like Mormons.
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Israel is one of the only countries Mormons refuse to proselytize, in some agreement with the Israeli authorities.
For example, American Mormons has a university in Jerusalem, and they send American Mormon youth to live in Jerusalem . And then from Jerusalem, American Mormons are assigned to proselytize in other countries (but can’t proselytize in Israel itself).
3:25 Mormons are “assigned to labour” from their university in Israel – but they do not proselytize in Israel. Mormons learn all these different languages, and then work to proselytize for a year in a random country.
The present situation is not a crisis. It’s a soft landing into reality. The transition from communism was a hard landing. Poorly joined up laws, non existent tax collection and a low oil price. This descent from oil riches sees Russia with reasonable commercial law, huge reserves of taxation and currency and a world leading tax collection system. What Russia does lack is an economy that encourages competition. There is an unhealthy trend to import substitution on the government rouble. Most industries have too few players to spark competition. Without exposure to imports, Russian productivity which is not great will decline further. Fix this and Russia can find a place at the top end of middle income countries without oil. It won’t overtake Portugal (Putn’d gosl) and Greece in a hurry though.
GWR has Hitachi electric trains for its long distance expresses. They are cheap plastic tubes. I used to travel 1st Class Off Peak but the new seats are uncomfortable, worse than standard class. So now I travel standard. I am told that in Japan the model of train is actually used for commuter journeys not long distance expresses. Only one train a day out of Wales has a restaurant service – 06:30 am from my station.
‘Just curious — have you spent much time in Israel?”
Just curious, are you?
Oh.
No, I haven’t spent any time in Israel — and I never spent any time in Nazi Germany either. Presumably, neither did you. Would you be hesitant to condemn Nazi Germany on that account?
…or would perhaps the record of its crimes suffice for you to reach conclusions?
This lends credence to the biowar theory.
Overtake at what, exactly, you dumb boomer?
Thats because the English are a shit people full of proles. Of course being on their train would be miserable.
Were NKVD milder than Cheka?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_prisoner_massacres
FWIW: “”It was not only the numbers of the executed”, the historian Yury Boshyk, who was quoted by Orest Subtelny, wrote of the murders, “but also the manner in which they died that shocked the populace. When the families of the arrested rushed to the prisons after the Soviet evacuation, they were aghast to find bodies so badly mutilated that many could not be identified. It was evident that many of the prisoners had also been tortured before death; others were killed en masse”
Communists are particularly triggered by Ukrainian nationalists so this may explain special violence directed towards Ukrainian prisoners.
Correct, there were a lot of horrors.
Before World War II:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD
According to archives of the NKVD, 111,091 Poles and people accused of ties with Poland, were sentenced to death, and 28,744 were sentenced to labor camps; 139,835 victims in total…Almost all victims of the NKVD shootings were men, wrote Michał Jasiński, most with families. Their wives and children were dealt with by the NKVD Order № 00486. The women were generally sentenced to deportation to Kazakhstan for an average of 5 to 10 years. Orphaned children without relatives willing to take them were put in orphanages to be brought up as Soviet, with no knowledge of their origins. All possessions of the accused were confiscated. The parents of the executed men – as well as their in-laws – were left with nothing to live on, which usually sealed their fate as well. Statistical extrapolation, wrote Jasiński, increases the number of Polish victims in 1937–1938 to around 200–250,000 depending on size of their families
1939-1941:
The number of Poles who died due to Soviet repressions in the period 1939-1941 is estimated as at least 150,000
UPA killed a total of up to 100,000 Polish civilians. So I was wrong – Soviets did not kill twice was many Poles as did UPA, but 3-4 times more.
Yes, peasants with pitchforks and axes were much more cruel in their killings than were Soviet executioners with rifles and pistols. Or those who allowed women and children to die of cold or starvation on cattle-cars to Kazakhstan.
In Volhynia and during Haydamaks Orthodox priests blessed weapons used to slaughter Poles (and in the Haydamak era, Uniates).
Actual Black Hundreds operating in Tsarist-era Ukraine did not do such things. I’m just saying that if the Volhynian peasants did not have a Ukrainian nationalist ideology but instead did what their ancestors did, or what Khmelnytsky did, as anti-Catholics or pro-Rus people rather than as nationalists, I doubt any Russian nationalists would be complaining or writing about those massacres.
Haydamaks and Khmelmytsky did those same kinds of things to Poles/Catholics, Uniates and Jews as Volhynians did in the 1940s to Poles. The Haydamaks called on the Tsar for help and wanted Russia to annex their lands. They were Orthodox “Rus nationalists.” It is not difficult to imagine Volhynians doing the same things for the same reasons, rather than for Ukrainian nationalism.
Excerpt from Shevchenko’s classic poem Haydamaki, in which Gonta kills his own half-Polish sons after they beg for their lives. It is much like an UPA raid in Volhynia 1943, except the killings are primarily sectarian rather than nationalistic in nature:
(btw Haidamaky is the name of a popular Ukrainian punk/metal/ska band who perform large concerts in Poland)
The Haidamaki on Uman
Like heavy clouds converge
At midnight. Ere the night is done
The whole town is submerged.
The Haidamaki take the town
With shouts: “The Poles shall pay!”
Dragoons are downed, their bodies roll
Around the market-place;
The ill, the cripples, children too,
All die, no one is spared.
Wild cries and screams. ‘Mid streams of blood
Stands Gonta on the square
With Zaliznyak together, they
Urge on the rebel band:
“Good work, stout lads! There, that’s the way
To punish them, the damned!”
And then the rebels brought to him
A Jesuit, a monk,
With two young boys. “Look, Gonta, look!
These youngsters are your sons!
They’re Catholics: since you kill all,
Can you leave them alone?
Why are you waiting? Kill them now,
Before your sons are grown,
For if you don’t, when they grow up
They’ll find you and they’ll kill….”
“Cut the cur’s throat! As for the pups,
I’ll finish them myself.
Let the assembly be convened.
Confess — you’re Catholics!”
“We’re Catholics…. Our mother made….”
“Be silent! Close your lips!
Oh God! I know!” The Cossacks stood
Assembled in the square.
“My sons are Catholics…. I vowed
No Catholic to spare.
Esteemed assembly!… That there should
Be no doubt anywhere,
No talk that I don’t keep my word,
Or that I spare my own….
My sons, my sons! Why are you small?
My sons, why aren’t you grown?
Why aren’t you with us killing Poles?”
“We will, we’ll kill them, dad!”
“You never will! You never will!
Your mother’s soul be damned,
That thrice-accursed Catholic,
The bitch that gave you birth!
She should have drowned you ere you saw
The light of day on earth!
As Catholics you’d not have died —
The sin would smaller be;
Such woe, my sons, today is mine
As cannot be conceived!
My children, kiss me, for not I
Am killing you today —
It is my oath!”
He flashed his knife
And the two lads were slain.
They fell to earth, still bubbling words:
“O dad! We are not Poles!
We … we….” And then they spoke no more,
Their bodies growing cold.
“Perhaps they should be buried, what?”
“No need! They’re Catholic.
My sons! Why did you not grow up?
My sons, why weren’t you big?
Why did you not war ‘gainst the foes
With me as Cossacks brave?
Your mother. Catholic accursed,
Oh why did you not slay?…
Let’s go, my brother!”
With Maxim
Across the square he treads;
They cry together: “Punish them
Till every Pole is dead!”
And awesome was their punishment….
Uman went up in flames.
No house, no church, but had been searched,
And not a Pole remained —
They all were dead. Such carnage cruel
As at Uman that day
Had ne’er been seen. St. Basil’s school,
Where Gotna’s sons had stayed,
Was razed down to the very ground
By Gonta, raging wild.
” ‘Twas you that ruined my little sons'”
With every blow he cried,
“You swallowed them when they were small
You taught them evil lore
And not the good!… Tear down the walls!”
The Haidamaki tore
The walls to pieces. ‘Gainst the stones
They bashed the heads of priests,
And the young pupils still alive
They threw in cisterns deep.
Until late at night they slaughtered the Poles;
Not one was let live. Yet Gonta still raved —
Oh monsters, come out! Crawl out from your holes!
My sons you’ve destroyed-oh, cruel’s my fate!
I’ve nobody now! For nothing to wait!
My sons, whom I loved, so handsome and good,
You’re gone from me now. I’m thirsty for blood!
I want in the blood of the gentry to wade,
To drink it, and watch how it flows and turns black…
Oh winds, as ye blow, why waft ye not back
Some Poles for our blades?… Oh cruel’s my fate!
And yet I can’t weep! Ye stars in the sky,
Please leave me alone and hide behind clouds.
I murdered my sons!… My heart is wrung dry!
Where will I find peace?…” So Gonta cried loud;
And then in the square big tables were laid
Amid the debris, ‘mid corpses and blood,
And loaded with looted liqueurs and fine food-
The rebels sat down. It was their last raid,
Their last supper too!” Make merry, my brood!
We’ll drink while we may, and fight while we may!”
Ukrainian:
Як та хмара, гайдамаки
Умань обступили
Опівночі; до схід сонця
Умань затопили;
Затопили, закричали:
«Карай ляха знову!»
Покотились по базару
Кінні narodowi;
Покотились малі діти
І каліки хворі.
Ґвалт і галас. На базарі,
Як посеред моря
Кровавого, стоїть Гонта
З Максимом завзятим.
Кричать удвох: «Добре, діти!
Отак їх, проклятих!»
Аж ось ведуть гайдамаки
Ксьондза єзуїта
І двох хлопців: «Гонто, Гонто!
Оце твої діти.
Ти нас ріжеш — заріж і їх:
Вони католики.
Чого ж ти став? Чом не ріжеш?
Поки невеликі,
Заріж і їх, бо виростуть,
То тебе заріжуть…»
«Убийте пса! А собачат
Своєю заріжу.
Клич громаду. Признавайтесь:
Що, ви католики?» /182/
«Католики… бо нас мати…»
«Боже мій великий!
Мовчіть, мовчіть! Знаю, знаю!»
Зібралась громада.
«Мої діти — католики…
Щоб не було зради,
Щоб не було поговору,
Панове громадо!
Я присягав, брав свячений
Різать католика.
Сини мої, сини мої!
Чом ви не великі?
Чом ви ляха не ріжете?..»
«Будем різать, тату!»
«Не будете! не будете!
Будь проклята мати,
Та проклята католичка,
Що вас породила!
Чом вона вас до схід сонця
Була не втопила?
Менше б гріха: ви б умерли
Не католиками;
А сьогодні, сини мої,
Горе мені з вами!
Поцілуйте мене, діти,
Бо не я вбиваю,
А присяга». Махнув ножем —
І дітей немає!
Попадали зарізані.
«Тату! — белькотали. —
Тату, тату… ми не ляхи!
Ми…» — та й замовчали.
«Поховать хіба?»
«Не треба!
Вони католики.
Сини мої, сини мої!
Чом ви не великі?
Чом ворога не різали?
Чом матір не вбили,
Ту прокляту католичку,
Що вас породила?..
Ходім, брате!»
Взяв Максима,
Пішли вздовж базару,
І обидва закричали:
«Кари ляхам, кари!»
І карали: страшно, страшно
Умань запалала.
Ні в будинку, ні в костьолі,
Нігде не осталось,
Всі полягли. Того лиха
Не було ніколи,
Що в Умані робилося.
Базиліан школу,
Де учились Гонти діти,
Сам Гонта руйнує:
«Ти поїла моїх діток! —
Гукає, лютує, —
Ти поїла невеликих,
Добру не навчила!..
Валіть стіни!»
Гайдамаки
Стіни розвалили —
Розвалили, об каміння
Ксьондзів розбивали,
А школярів у криниці
Живих поховали.
До самої ночі ляхів мордували;
Душі не осталось. А Гонта кричить:
«Де ви, людоїди? Де ви поховались?
З’їли моїх діток — тяжко мені жить!
Тяжко мені плакать! ні з ким говорить!
Сини мої любі, мої чорноброві!
Де ви поховались? Крові мені, крові!
Шляхетської крові, бо хочеться пить,
Хочеться дивитись, як вона чорніє,
Хочеться напитись… Чом вітер не віє,
Ляхів не навіє?.. Тяжко мені жить!
Тяжко мені плакать! Праведнії зорі!
Сховайтесь за хмару; я вас не займав,
Я дітей зарізав!.. Горе мені, горе!
Де я прихилюся?»
Так Гонта кричав,
По Умані бігав. А серед базару,
В крові, гайдамаки ставили столи:
Де що запопали, страви нанесли
І сіли вечерять. Остатняя кара,
Остатня вечеря!
«Гуляйте, сини!
Пийте, поки п’ється, бийте, поки б’ється! —
Last time I was in a train in England – our train stopped and waited for 1 hour, because they said the train further along tracks than us has used all its fuel. So we had to wait for an hour, so they could fill more fuel into the train and then we could follow it.
This train we were waiting behind, apparently didn’t check it has enough fuel before it begins a journey. Imagine if this happens in the aviation industry. Or with taxis. You would not expect taxi driver would have to stop in the middle of the journey, and wait for people to rescue him and refill the petrol.
I’m an unusually lazy person, and wasn’t angry – it was nice to read a book for an extra hour and procrastinate. But average workers could have serious trouble with this, and could miss an important meeting or a connection to another train.
There’s something that doesn’t make sense with the trains in England. Considering the ticket prices in England, you would expect something like Japan.
Prices of the trains in England are similar to Japanese ones, rather than Russian ones. Yet in Russia trains are more competent, relatively more reliable, and far cheaper, and people still complain.
I guess they have quite a lot of suicides in the metro, considering they have mirrors on the walls in Tokyo metro, because they propose that people will kill themselves less if they look in the mirror.
Maybe they use such elite cleaning teams to the remove the parts of bodies before the next train.
The people in the West who oppose Israel – the SJW progressives – are the primary drivers of anti-white attitudes in the West also.
Adding a religious dimension to conflict does not mitigate brutality.
An eyewitness account from Volhynia (the source is one-sidedly Polish so I’m just quoting what the eyewitness says she saw, rather than claims or conclusions by the source):
https://volhyniamassacre.eu/zw2/the-witnesses/180,The-Witnesses.html
Despite her father’s prohibition, Anna Szumska went with her first cousin to the neighboring village of Horodno to see why Ukrainians were meeting there. We arrive. There’s plenty of people. An altar’s been erected by the lake. The Orthodox priest’s already there. Many wagons have already arrived from afar. We stand next to a Ukrainian woman and we listen on. The priest is praying. And the people, mostly men, are all holding various objects: axes, knives, scythes, and pitchforks. What for? The Orthodox priest is praying. He turns to the people [and says]: ‘The time has come to seize your own’ He told them so and at last he says: ‘Swing your sickle, swing your knife, at the ‘Lakh’ to take his life.’ That is, he told them to slaughter the Poles And we stand there. A Ukrainian boy approaches us — he was friends with my bother once. His name was Andrey. He says, ‘Girls, what are you doing here? Run away. If somebody says that you’re Polish, you won’t go home alive.’
Structurally it fits.
Other than that: Aren’t their findings of the COVID-susceptibility differences along the race-divides water on the mill of Lance Welton, whom people laughed about, and – who was ridiculed even by Anatoly Karlin (amongst others)?****
**** I’m not saying, that those who laughed about Lance Welton’s COVID-theory were completely wrong, I’m just saying that now it might look like he was – maybe for the wrong reasons then – onto something nonetheless
‘A rather wild eyed, extreme overreaction. No one is talking about genocide here.’
So you’re not going to kill them or just drive them all into the desert. You’re going to convert them, then.
And how exactly were you planning to wean off Islam two billion people spread from Morocco to the southern Philippines? What if they don’t want to be weaned?
I suppose you could take a leaf from Spain. Forcible conversion? It’s worth noting that’s bound to involve a few hundred million dead right there. After all, Moroccans, for example, are pretty stuck on being Muslim. You’ll have to kill quite a few before they see the light.
…but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Why should any of us want to participate in your vile project? I’m not at all convinced Orthodox Christian Romanians are noticeably happier — or better behaved — than Muslim Turks.
This is all about what’s good for Israel, isn’t it? The agenda of two tenths of one percent of humanity is to determine the behavior of the remaining 99.8%.
AaronB says:
July 12, 2020 at 3:56 pm GMT • 300 Words
@Not Only Wrathful
‘I doubt you will have any success in having this character listen to logic or evidence, and he is getting increasingly agitated at having his beliefs challenged…’
Aaron…you’re making me spill my coffee.
I suppose we can think of your ploy as just another rhetorical device. After all, ‘Aaron’ was congenitally dishonest to begin with. What difference does it make if he pretends to be several other frauds as well?
Hell, maybe Ron will decide that’s a bridge too far and ban you. Go for it.
I am pretty certain that the priest this witness described as Orthodox Christian was in fact Greco-Catholic. Catholic Poles do not differentiate between these Eastern Church traditions.
If you’re truly not involved, why take sides, against Jews and for Muslims?
Neutrality is a respectable position – if hard to maintain. But if you take sides, as you did, you become part of the fray. Now suddenly it’s a pox on both houses, when you’re called out.
Using language like “Zionist hasbara” – intrinsically prejudiced language – is to take sides. Promoting a whitewashed image of Islam while being on record here saying negative things about Jews is to take sides.
So you are obviously emotionally invested in this. I don’t get involved in Polish/Ukrainian fights because it genuinely isn’t my business.
But for some reason, as Not Only Wrathful says, the whole world sees Israel/Palestine as a blank canvas on which to project their private fantasies onto. You’re the ones getting involved.
I wouldn’t say stronger. They are about equal strength. I used to be very ambivalent about Judaism until I discovered Kabbalah and certain writings of Jewish saints and sages, and discovered that at its highest levels Judaism is extremely similar to – and compatible with – my favorite strands of Mahayana Buddhism, Zen, and Taoism.
I will admit though that mine is an idiosyncratic and eccentric form of Judaism, and not mainstream – but as long as you follow the practices of the community, in terms of beliefs, Judaism I found was a surprisingly large tent.
Islam has something similar in Sufism – however, mainstream Judaism has done a much better job integrating these mystical, pantheistic, and broad-minded elements into the religion, while this is a development Islam has not yet undergone, remaining stuck on a primitive level. What is often called Sufism today in Islam has nothing to do with true Sufis.
My being Jewish is more a matter of karma than blood – I ignored it for much of my life, but you begin to realize it probably isn’t an accident. And that is true for whatever situation anyone is born into.
But unlike Muslims, I don’t think non-Jews go to hell, or that Judaism is the One True Religion that the whole world must convert to. And no Jew thinks that.
I do not know about comfortability, but trains in the UK are quite fast, you can travel from London to major cities faster than it takes to drive a car to those places.
Well considering that those with blood type O are partially immune from coronavirus, and Asians are overepresented in type O blood, and whites are overepresented in type A blood, and those with type A blood are vulnerable to coronavirus, it does lend some credence to the theory that the coronavirus may have been a half baked Chinese bioweapon against white people.
Well, Gilad Atzmon banned me from commenting on his blog. Giraldi limits my commenting and my responses to others. And Ron doesn’t publish my comments on the Open Thread, so it’s entirely possible that Ron will ban me at some point.
Very few people today enjoy spirited debate and the churn of ideas, the no holds barred, vigorous give and take of a good intellectual fray – we are settling into an era where people want the comfort and safety of those who think like them and are genuinely disturbed by opposing viewpoints, especially if they are well and vigorously argued. Everyone wants dull conformity these days.
And this trend is affecting everyone. We are becoming a humorless, grim, and over-serious people who have lost the sense of adventure and the exuberant, playful, self-confidence that makes possible intellectual debate. Look at a figure like G.K Chesterton – or almost any Victorian – and you will see what I mean by exuberant self confidence leading to intellectual sparks flying. We take ourselves too seriously – actually, Chesterton warned about this trend, which was beginning already in his time.
This intellectual attitude had something to do with Knight-errantry – and with the good side of Christianity, not the solemn, anxious, hell-fire side, but the Christian feeling – at its best – of being laughingly “above the world”, which led to taking things lightly and delighting in adventure.
But that is all over now. And we are all humorless, self-important conspiracy theorists.
In a case this might be news to you, but glorious NKVD, which cap animated Masha is wearing now in cartoons, was absolutely doing such sadistic sprees everywhere else too, Ukraine was not exception anyhow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainiai_massacre
The coronavirus as a bioweapon against Asians must be working really well considering that Asians have by far the lowest death rate among all races in the US right?
The NKVD were more organized and systematic in their killings than the Cheka and yes the Cheka tended to be much more brutal with a tendency to sadism. A lot of CheKa low level operatives were recruited from the Jewish criminal circles and used the same methods against the White Guard and the other “Enemies of the people” that they would use against the competing mobsters. By the end of the Great Purges the vast majority of these early of the CheKa operatives have been themselves purged from the NKVD and shot.
Regarding the persecution of the Poles in the USSR, this is not in any manner worse than the persecution of the ethnic Russian Cossacks, Khakassians or Volga Germans, in fact any ethnic group that was declared a target by the Communists for whatever reason.
The people who triggered the most Soviet CheKa and NKVD were not Ukrainian nationalists, but Russian nationalists and Orthodox Christian irredentists. Among these people who have been massacred nearly into extinction, were those Black Hundreds survivors and they offspring. Remember, antisemitism was a crime punished by death in early Soviet times. I am sure that you are aware of that.
Nevertheless, it is correct to describe the NKVD killings as inhumane and barbaric. But the sadism was mostly absent from the GPU and NKVD political oppression after the end of the Great Purges. They were professional killers, and they did it professionally, not in a psychotic manner that was the fashion of the Volhynian UPA.
OTOH one must also decry the cruelty of the Poles against the Red Army prisoners and the Communist militants during the Civil War. There is a lot of blood on the Pilsudsky’s Polish nationalists’ hands too. Including civilians’ blood.
So we are to trust Nazi sources more than we trust Soviet ones?
What if the Nazis and their Baltic henchmen simply fabricated all these informations to put the Baltic peoples in a nationalistic frenzy and direct their anger against the Soviet Regime?
What if that was once again a “Reichstag is burning” type of situation, but this time in the Baltic or Western Ukraine?
Remember that Germans accused Poles of atrocities against German civilians to justify the start of the WWII, these atrocities were staged by the Germans themselves.
In Western Ukraine, the Nightingall Battalion was parachuted behind the Red Army lines before the onslaught of the German forces and entered Lemberg first. These people were later engaged in mass brutality and were more than capable of using these Black Ops tactics to direct local population anger against the Red Army and Red Partisans after the occupation. Do we know if something similar might have happened in the Baltics?
Again I do not deny that GPU and NKVD were mass murderers, but I would not rely on Nazi sources to describe their atrocities.
Just like I would not rely on the SMERSH operatives to objectively describe the activities of the post-war Baltic Forest Brothers activities.
E-census is about as reliable as Nostradamus. That’s why normal countries conduct real census when the governments want to know the truth. When they don’t, E-census is the way to go.
No worries. Thank you for revealing who you truly are.
The Germans often enough helped fan the flames of enmity between Poles and Ukrainians, and were behind the scenes helping to coordinate attacks and atrocities. Don’t forget that technically the Waffen SS that you characterize here as “exemplary humanists” also included the The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS that was almost exclusively made up of Ukrainians, and also had some input (if not directly, than by ex-members) in these monstrous activities too.
Yep, even Nazis were appalled by the atrocities committed by OUN-UPA.
btw, the same two NKVD guys from Rainiai massacre – Pyotr Raslan and Nachman Dushanski were organizing tortures of their captured forest brother prisoners even under Kruschev, so it is more than likely they were doing the same sadistic serial killer type shit during Stalin times too:
https://www.arvydasanusauskas.lt/naujienos/627-adolfas-ramanauskas-codenamed-vanagas
In case you didn’t notice I was being sarcastic.
I am aware that the Nazi used Ukrainian nationalists against Poles and Jews. In fact German occupation officials made no secret about it. The dirty work was to be preferably done by the Slav Untermenshen.
I don’t know if rhe Nazi also used Armia Krajowa partisans against Ukrainians and Jews. Given that unlike UPA OUN, the Polish Armia Krajowa really fought against German occupation, I doubt this collaboration between the Germans and the Polish nationalist partisans was possible.
I am well aware of the Grendier Wafflen SS division Halychina and its glorification in the present day Western Ukraine.
So Ron Unz would have gotten this one the wrong way around?
While using Latvian sources (you link ends “.lt”), it is useful to remember that tiny Latvia produced two (!) Waffen SS divisions: the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Latvian), and the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Latvian).
For comparison, Estonia produced only one (20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian)), whereas much more populous Lithuania and Poland produced none. Goes to source credibility.
not that it matters that much, but it is not a Latvian site at all, Latvian internet ending is “.lv”, not “.lt”, which is Lithuanian, the one producing none Waffen SS dvisions 😉
Doubtful. In Volhynia it was Orthodox priests and the local Ukrainians were Orthodox not Greek Catholics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wo%C5%82y%C5%84_Voivodeship_(1921%E2%80%931939)#Demographics
Thanks.
Right, obviously you ban someone you think is a threat. That I’ve been banned by so many of the anti-Semites here is obviously a reflection of my ability to present the pro-Israel case and pro-Jewish case well.
However, it is still sad that this is what today’s world is coming to. I don’t know if you were here in the early days of Unz, but it really was a site that was excited by unconventional ideas. There was true intellectual ferment, with no clear editorial line other than freedom of thought. Back then Ron was mostly in the background – but around 2018 he has taken a much more active role, and under his humorless and self-important conspiracy-theory guidance this site has “solidified” into a one-track “yellow press” propaganda site no different than the worst of the MSM – except that here it is pro-China, anti-Semitic, and pro-Muslim. Deviate too much from this, and you will be shut down.
On another thread, after establishing that Talha most likely beats his wife and children (with a goat strap), Muslim commentator AnonStarter began threatening me with doxing me and suing me – not that I care lol. I tried telling him I’d meet him at dawn with pistols at ten paces, but of course the grim Gilad didn’t publish that 🙂 And then of course Talha launches into this humorless and self-important monologue about the sacredness of marriage…everyone so humorless and self-important! A sad reflection of our times. This kind of “heaviness” is exactly what’s wrong with our times.
Of course, its richly ironic that AS and CW are some of the most vociferous protesters of the curtailment of their free speech, but then I was never under the illusion it was anything other than a tactic.
Karlin, perhaps because he is not American, ironically seems most committed to the free flow of ideas.
I actually wish Ron would ban me – I post on this site mostly out of old habit, and it’s a bit of an addiction.
As for CW, of course he shouldn’t be banned! Number one, he is zero threat to Zionism or Jews. He is easily outargued, and his points often serve as perfect launching pads for scoring points. His nasty personality and lack of any redeeming festures is great propaganda points for Jews. He is instrumental in revealing the true personalities of our Muslim commenters, who try SO hard to portray themselves as benign, but can’t help loling or agreeing with some particularly nasty or egregious thing CW has said against Jews.
CW is an invaluable treasure on Unz.
And beyond all that, NO ONE should be banned for their points of view, however egregious.
Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Scandinavian countries do digital censuses. Estonia only does e-census.
Didn’t know that. Interesting. Were they part of the Russian Orthodox Church?
Poles (often survivors form Volhjynia) often avenged themselves upon the relatively helpless Ukrainians in Lemko territory, which is not Volhynia and where the Ukrainians had not engaged in mass murder before the Poles starting doing so to them after which there were reprisals and counter-reprisals until the whole Ukrainian population was deported.
And you think you can construct a winning argument for secure borders with racism?
‘Well, Gilad Atzmon banned me from commenting on his blog. Giraldi limits my commenting and my responses to others. And Ron doesn’t publish my comments on the Open Thread, so it’s entirely possible that Ron will ban me at some point.’
I was wondering. Ron does carry his commitment to free speech to an extreme. Generally, I’m all for it — but you’re definitely a special case. I’ve never encountered anyone so relentlessly dishonest, malicious, and crudely manipulative.
‘Very few people today enjoy spirited debate and the churn of ideas, the no holds barred, vigorous give and take of a good intellectual fray – we are settling into an era where people want the comfort and safety of those who think like them and are genuinely disturbed by opposing viewpoints, especially if they are well and vigorously argued…’
I have conversations such as you describe all the time — but not with you. A certain minima of intellectual honesty and good will is a sin qua non for such things. You’re just a viper.
You don’t actually debate at all. You merely lie, and lie repetitively. When the lie is rebutted, you simply don’t reply — then repeat the same damned lie a month later. That’s not ‘the give and take of a good intellectual fray’ — it’s just irritating horseshit.
‘And you think you can construct a winning argument for secure borders with racism?’
Of course you can. If you hate Varangians, and don’t want any around, securing your borders is an excellent idea.
Aren’t you American? The comparison may be influencing your perception.
UK railway infrastructure suffers from neglect and tickets are highly priced for a service that frequently is delayed as well as annoying habits lile deliberately overselling tickets.
Well, other nations like Sweden and Germany neglect their rail system as well so it is not merely a British problem. At least the French have the excuse of their nation having been paralysed by strikes and revolts ever since 1789.
Everything is “evil” to you, and “evil” means anything but as rigid and inflexible as stone, for you.
I wonder if you ever feel stuck? Do you have any wildness other than mouthing off at people on the internet?
UK trains are good. They are remarkably punctual for most countries. The stock is much improved in comfort and quality. Tickets are expensive but mostly only if you don’t book in advance and/or use a railcard. Though weekend maintenance can be deeply frustrating as rail replacement with buses is the worst…
Brits just like to whinge a lot and often don’t have a great appreciation for how well many thing in Britain actually work, compared it other places.
Ok, so how are you going to win the argument for securing America’s borders? By telling everyone they need to hate Mexicans?
(And please, no using the endlessly extended definition of racism that progressives use e.g it is racist to not say you’re racist.)
I once met an Ukrainian immigrant to a Western country whose family was deported during operation Visla. He hated and despised both Russians and Poles.
An eye for an eye and the whole world becomes blind…
“He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me.” Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred.
Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.01.budd.html
It’s much better motivation than gay civic nationalism
You got that right. Whingeing Poms have always been a thing in Australia. They just never stop. The weather’s too warm. There’s too much sunshine. The beer’s too cold.
Seems like AK was right on Poland too: as he’s said multiple times before, Poland is almost entirely won over by GloboHomo.
At best, Duda will get a very narrow win, with ensuing disputable legitimacy.
It seems that the data shows than any US-friendly country will become pozzed. Conservative Poles are absolutely crazy to continue with their anti-Russian trope.
GDP/head. Rudeness is not a virtue.
The long distance expresses travel reasonably fast. 150 mph on my route and they keep to time. They get priority at the signals. The commuter trains into London are under more pressure. The lines are full to capacity, so one error and the system jams up. In Japan, trains on the Shinkansen are designed to keep moving at all costs. A single train stopped by breakdown can jam the system for hundreds of miles.
Umm, I don’t think you actually are capable of understanding the principle of free speech.
I also find that entirely unsurprising 🙂
Considering the extremely low level of comments that are generally approved by Ron and the anti-Semites across this site – many barely coherent or literate, many just sputtering with rage and hate and personal I suits – I think it’s fairly obvious I’m banned because I’m over-dominant.
Look at you – the extent to which I trigger you is through the roof. For my part, I don’t even find you irritating, and I welcome your parttcipation on this board. You give me an opportunity to develop my ideas. I sometimes wish I could help you get past your intense negativity, but I don’t think that’s possible. I have zero desire to see you banned, or anyone.
While you “present” here as a nasty, malicious character who wishes to destroy Judaism and Israel, I don’t even think you’re “evil” – because I don’t believe in evil. You are merely unenlightened in the Buddhist sense, and in your inner being you are perfect, like all of existence.
In his inmost being, Colin Wright is just a lovable teddy bear who loves to fish 🙂 Life trauama is what turned you onto the regrettable path you now follow.
The reason I trigger you, Ron, and the anti-Semites so much is because I’m actually a nice guy who doesn’t really hate anyone, and tries to understand all points of view, while at the same time effectively advocating for Israel and Jews, and Unz is headquarters for people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, who have extremist views where entire cultures and races are evil and responsible for everything bad in the world.
In real life, I notice people with NPD find me utterly infuriating.
This whole thing is a game – life is a game. That you have “evil” Jews to slay, and I have “unenlightened” anti-Semites to educate, is the fun. By making this website into an echo chamber of like minded people, the fun is over.
But it is also true that for the game to remain fun, the players have to be somewhat evenly matched – playing against a too dominant opponent also isn’t fun. So I do understand why I had to be banned. The anti-Semites are playing the intrinsically weaker hand, so their opponents must be handicapped, or if necessary, removed from the board.
And, if anyone cares, the great twitter drama continues – Mr. Karlin still cannot understand why his fellow patriots do not understand his humor.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1282404451345727489
Joke! It was a joke!
If you read all 12 years of my tweets in context, you would understand that this tweet was nothing than harmless JOKE!
https://1gr.cz/fotky/lidovky/14/083/lnorg/MPR557e9a_17140_PD_47X34CM_2243301.jpg
I remember when 2-3 years ago, AaronB was moderately an anti-Israel user, as he viewed Israel as a symbol of Western decadence (although he didn’t know much about Israel country, e.g. he thought Ashdod was a wealthy city, when it’s famous as a working class city).
I remember arguing with him then, including during my vacation in Israel of that year.
Aaronb also used to be fan of an Islamist user Talha and they were spamming a lot of idealized and romantized views about Islamic countries.
Most Muslim people are a lot more normal than their countries’ of origin. However, Talha was an American Islamist, and his views were brainwashed and inflexible, like speaking to people abducted by religious cults. Although at least he wrote politely and he bought a Nintendo Switch for his daughter, so he couldn’t be completely bad person.
In those years, AaronB was idealizing about the East and excited about his vacation there, as he saw it as the alternative to the decadent West. He even likes Russia, because he thought it was “East” somehow. His romanticized views of the East, sounded as how Northern people such as Goethe had dreaming about revitalization of spirits in Southern lands like Italy in the 19th century. (Well, Goethe had sex for first time in his 30s when he was on holiday in Italy, so it was probably a healthy romanticization).
Then there was some kind of bad holiday in the Asian lands, he returned apparently disenchanted, and his views have reversed now.
It’s probably Unz website has made him so pro-Israel. Too much time with the most radical and unknowledgeable anti-Israel people, has converted him. It’s something like that Iranian people are supposedly the most pro-American population in the Middle East. Too much of an ignorant low quality anti-American propaganda feed to Iranians, has converted them.
–
By the way, I am a fan of AaronB. I sometimes skip his posts, but he is pleasant to write to. Also I wonder where are Utu and German Reader these days? I feel like we are missing pieces without them.
I agree on both counts.
Well, if “good” is re-defined as “expensive”, “often late”, and – with my most recent English train voyage – “not using adequate fuel for its journey, so the train ahead of your train stops for 1 hour, with the other trains have to wait behind”. Also there can often be “too many people crowding into the same train so there is no seat for you”.
Sure, England is a great country, even with its current problems – and everyone can thank the English genius who has invented trains. But despite inventing trains, they are somehow failing at using them well in their home country. I had better experience with trains in any other country, even infamous ones of Italy I doubt will not carry enough fuel for their journey and need to be rescued.
‘Ok, so how are you going to win the argument for securing America’s borders? By telling everyone they need to hate Mexicans?’
Now, Aaron. I didn’t say that one had to hate the interlopers in order to wish to deny them entry — merely that it would provide an excellent argument.
For example, I wouldn’t let you move into my house — for obvious reasons. It doesn’t follow that therefore I would let Talha move in.
‘(And please, no using the endlessly extended definition of racism that progressives use e.g it is racist to not say you’re racist.)’
? Why would I employ arguments used by ‘progressives’?
Do try to pay attention, Aaron. You don’t even seem to be aware of who you’re talking to. I merely object to evil — whatever its ideological complexion.
As I’ve said, Aaron, if you seriously think it’s new, put it in bold.
I was curious, because you seem to have very strong opinions about Israel, and I wondered whether those had been formed by time spent there.
I certainly don’t think that has any bearing on the validity of your opinions one way or the other. I don’t personally agree with what you seem to be saying here, but that’s OK.
Israel is an interesting place, to say the least. As a wise man once told me, “Anyone who tells you they know what’s going on here” (by which he meant Israel and surroundings) “is either lying or ignorant.”
I have my own views on things, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t entirely correct. At any rate, nobody should pass up a chance to visit.
I had better experience with trains in any other country, even infamous ones of Italy I doubt will not carry enough fuel for their journey and need to be rescued.
I’ve been on quite a few in recent years and, other than the day there was a surprise snowfall in Rome, my experiences with Italian trains – whether Trenitalia or the private Italo trains – have been fantastic. I’m surprised to learn that they are “infamous”.
Russia is now ranked #28 in Ease of Doing Business which is not bad at all. Anybody who doesn’t like something is free to start their own business and compete.
Relying on imports is foolish because US will continue to sanction Russia harder and harder under invented reasons. Imports will be cut off. There is nothing Russia can do about it. Hopefully trade with China will continue, but trade with the West will slow down a lot. Domestic production is better under these circumstances.
Productivity is a garbage metric that boils down to GDP/hours worked. It spikes in US with every recession because everybody gets fired and government is forced to print a ton of debt to maintain consumption aka GDP. Hardly a healthy indicator. Productivity made sense in an industrial economy, but today, it only measures how much debt you generate while consuming stuff made by robots and Bangladeshi peasants.
Russia’s greatest economic accomplishment has been dealing with inflation. Low inflation means credit rates can come down, which in turn will allow Russia to print a ton of debt and develop credit markets on par with the West. This means Russian productivity and GDP have nowhere to go but up.
Why should any sane conservative (not only Polish) look for salvation at such “fighters” with GloboHomo like these, lol?
https://wiwibloggs.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/philipp-kikorov-vladimir-putin-honour.jpg
https://wiwibloggs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Filipp-Kirkorov-mood-color-black-egor-kreed.jpg
‘… I have my own views on things, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t entirely correct. At any rate, nobody should pass up a chance to visit.’
Aside from everything else, there’s the distinct possibility that the Zionist occupiers might not let me in.
Then too, it would be a hassle making sure I only gave money to Palestinians.
Finally, I couldn’t take my computer or anything, of course.
Alleged witnesses are Latvian, though. Are you saying it’s safe to take their word at face value?
Once again ,you seem to confuse jews with Israel, when the commentators you are referring to may well be talking about one of those things specifically , but not the other.
Having said that , I agree that most people commenting vociferously on Israel seem to do so despite the fact that how Israel was formed, it’s foreign policy or Egypt and it’s enemies over the years or whatever , are pretty much things they are non interested in anyway – just like with Iraq and Iran. Just like I don’t have much interest in what has or hasn’t happened in Sierra Leone in the last 20 years.
I think they are reduced to this and abstract concepts like “the Rothschilds” (though I think something sick and unmeritocratic is happening for centuries over there, just not with the frequency that is claimed)….because interpersonal contact with Jews or jewish community are practically zero in the west, despite Jews very much being in the public consciousness. It was different in America at turn of previous century when you had jews and many other ethnic groups living on top of each other. Post-Soviet space is more interpersonal connection with Jews so more genuine and relevant commentary.
Something that does deserve genuine anti-semitic comments is the disproportionate number of jews involved in all this high-profile perversion ( Weinstein,Maxwell,Dershowitz, Woody Allen, some guy called Matt Lauer who also looks to be a Jew) – but commentary on this seems to be quite muted.
This is literally true (and I am not Aaron.)
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”
Matthe 22:13
You were extremely unlucky with the fuel thing. I have taken hundreds of trains and that has never happened to me, nor anything like it.
The seat thing happens but really only if you travel in and out of London on the most crowded train at commuter time without being bothered to book a seat (for free, and which saves you money on the ticket), or if there is a music festival or major sporting event and, even then, it is quite rare.
Lol, pretty decent summary of my “evolution”, although with some minor errors and ommisions (well, no biographer is completely comprehensive :)) It could be a Goethe novel “AaronB Meister’s Apprenticeship”, showing I develop from a naive idiot into a crusty old fool 🙂
I would only add that I grew up in Israel as a child, and have visited around 6 times since then.
By temperament I am a naive idealistic German Romantic of the 19th century lol. But I am no longer so “down” on the West, and I like Russia at least partly because it seems like a West-East hybrid – the Old East.
Good summary of Talha – basically a Pakistani-American Islamist, with veneer of politeness and gentle sounding spiritual quotes that are strikingly at odds with his power politics (similar to ano4 in this regard – this is a new “type” I must file away into my mental cabinets. The power-politics bigot quoting the Saints. I guess that’s a “type”). But as you say – Talha surely has his good side. This helped teach me – although obvious in retrospect to the non naive – that politeness and even friendliness does NOT = kindness, goodness, virtue, and quoting Saints does not mean you behave like one.
You are correct in that the extreme – and exasperatingly unintelligent – anti-Semitism on this site played a role on pushing me back into a pro-Israel stance, although obviously there are other factors. But then when you see what kind of enemies a man has, it changes your opinion of him. Israel may not be perfect – but compared to what? The West may disappoint my Romantic sensibilities – but is the “new” East perhaps worse?
Ah, well, thank you very much for the kind words – I’m blushing. You probably know that I have for a while been a big fan of your comments here – always interesting and idiosyncratic. I too miss utu (although he no longer talks to me), and German Reader freaked out that he would be doxxed and asked Ron Unz to delete all his comments. A sad loss.
Why?
LOL those first 8 countries you list have the motive to not do the proper census because
1. They have the well-managed registration systems , accurate tax records, land records etc
2 . A population boosted by mass immigration in recent decade that the authorities want to conceal the true extent of – and using digital census’s is the best way to conceal , because natives and steady income people are likely to be in it. Immigrants from third-world countries doing plenty of unofficial work are not.
Ukraine is in the exact opposite position on all these things you cretin. You would think that even a worthless bum as yourself with no knowledge of Ukraine would not even think about claiming Ukraine has an accurate and reliable registrar of tax records or competent tax system….or that it’s state apparatus is anywhere near competent to be trusted or expected to carry out a census close to accurate.
None of those things are e-census’s though in the mentioned North European countries. Estonia is a nothing country so AnonFromTN’s statement is correct.
BTW “Ukraine” managed to do the so-called census in their usually hapless and retard manner……..Russians as a percentage of the population actually INCREASED from about 22, to 25%!!! This is despite ,for a population alleged to be 37 million in this BS census,- at least 8% of those 22% in 2001 should have gone after Crimea and DNR/LNR! This bastard fake state can’t get it right even when they are trying to lie over the original lie
‘Israeli customs shoots computer.’
It’d have to be a Chrome Book.
The hottest ceramics scientist in the world has created the most heat resistant ceramic in existence. And yes, she is Russian. The melting point is above 4,000C, which is good for reusable spaceplanes and orbital reentry, as well as hypersonic aircraft and nuclear reactors.
https://phys.org/news/2020-05-scientists-heat-resistant-material.html
I’m of course only interested in halfnium carbonitride chemistry, but here is the primary investigator.
https://www.picburn.net/p/2113136795851328316
She probably melted the alloy with a smile.
That’s what Russian scientists look like? Russia is truly an awesome country.
The UK went further than most in privatising trains, and even train infrastructure. The fact that their trains are a disaster is not coincidental to this. Government should do basic public services, whether it is public transport or public health.
UK health service is better than US health service for precisely the same reason. Of course, greedy grifters like AP will contest this, because he profits off the dysfunction. But the results speak for themselves. The US spends more on healthcare as a share of GDP than any other country yet health outcomes (life expectancy) are mediocre and in fact falling.
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/81/27/f3/8127f3fbac6dbf3c369511baec22e5bd–hatfields-and-mccoys-family-history.jpg
What witnesses as there is not a single word about Latvia or Latvians in that link? Also the extent and scope of the injuries done to that particular prisoner (ripped out testicles and perforated eye) are known not from some witness account, but were documented by KGB itself at prison hospital the same day he was detained, right after interrogation, just was described as “self-injury”:
Page 20 from pdf book here:
https://www3.lrs.lt/pls/inter/w5_show?p_r=6567&p_d=83903&p_k=1
Very interesting. It also seems possible to use Hf for energy storage and release/transfer. I was absolutely not aware of the fascinating characteristics of this metal.
Veronika Buinevich is indeed a very fine lady. In a lab where I’ve done some of my postgraduate studies one of the young researchers was also simultaneously outstandingly beautiful and overachieving. It was a pleasure to work around such a beautiful and smart person. So it also happens in the West.
Unfortunately these exceptional women are a minority everywhere. We really should encourage smart beautiful girls to do more hard science studies. It’s good for everyone to work with and around such fine examples of female nature.
I’ve concluded that Britain is not a “real” country. It’s hard to explain, but this country just seems different to all the other European and other major nations.
Britain, especially England, is not an ancient, coherent nation-state in the way countries like France, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Russia, China, Japan etc are. Those countries all trace their histories back to more or less a single origin, their origin is largely coherent and linear.
Britain/England has no coherent origin and identity, but layer upon layer of different, and usually competing identities as the result of different waves of invasion. Celtic, Roman, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Jewish, etc. The British Empire in many ways was a big Jewish enterprise, as is the financial district the “City of London”.
Britain is frankly the original “melting pot”, a proto-USA or proto-Brazil in many ways.
I think that your comment is very insightful.
Great Britain is in many aspects the prototype to postmodern economic globalization. And the Anglosphere elites are main drivers behind, and the main beneficiaries of the global economy.
Perhaps you have already seen this Ted talk:
https://youtu.be/NgbqXsA62Qs
If not you might find it interesting.
Every day you surprise me with new heights of stupidity
An article about the India-Chinese standoff that I have shared on the previous open thread was seen by some as biased against India.
As a balancing act I share a pro-India biased article below:
https://www.newsintervention.com/conscripted-chinese-soldiers-no-match-to-battle-ready-indian-military/
Unfortunately, I am still to find a well informed and neutral stance on this topic.
No offense, but this is so crazy as to scarcely need refutation.
All European countries are heavily multi-ethnic and multi-cultural (obviously within the European phenotype). Italy and France for instance significantly more so than Britain.
England achieved political unity and a strong centralized state much earlier than any European country, and Italy and Germany achieved it quite late.
This allowed for a stronger and more focused foreign policy, as well as greater politic stability and wealth – Englishmen were notorious on the Continent for having an unusually strong sense of national identity – even destiny – and being arrogant.
National identity needs to be “forged” around a unifying idea – it is not a biological “given”. Even siblings fight – often quite viciously – and need an institution – the “family” – constantly reinforced by admonition and precept, to remain united. Blood siblings frequently hate each other.
But I know better than to get in between a European and his modern “existential despair” – this despair just has to play itself out. It is some sort of deep instinct speaking, the wisdom of the race – certainly I have found one cannot be argued out of it.
So carry on. Yes, yes, Britain terrible etc, etc – you will have many gleeful enablers on this site, as you already see.
Like this? 🙂
https://www.famous-smoke.com/cigaradvisor/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RyJCapulet80thToro.jpg
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/colin-clive-as-dr-frankenstein-and-dwight-frye-as-his-news-photo/517324292
The greedy “Dr. Grifter” taking advantage of the dysfunctional plebes that visit his office:
https://wegotthiscovered.com/wp-content/uploads/frankenstein-1931-01-g.jpg 🙂
Non-racism has been the policy of the West for the past 60 years or so. We’ve seen its one and only possible result – increasingly open borders.
Racism is quite effective at controlling borders. It has a history of doing so. It can answer every eventuality because it has a coherent core, that it is not desirable to be replaced or parasitized by other groups. It acknowledges inequality, at its core.
Non-racism cannot even acknowledge that there are different groups, so it is totally incoherent and cannot articulate a single logical objection to invasion.
England is best seen as the prototypical nation state.
All immigration to Britain between 1066 and 1945 is, when added together, still smaller than any given year since Blair.
You’ll convince yourself of anything if it flatters you.
Much better international transportation, global communications links and the increased value of labour relative to land, have substantial effects far in excess of any magical racism difference.
To buy your fare in 1700 might require 7 years indentured labour on the other side. Now it might be a few months. You can also easily talk with your family back home, send them money and you don’t need an empty plot of land to pioneer in order to survive.
Besides, whatever ideological structure existed before clearly didn’t work.
Race as a mere “biological given” – as a mere dumb fact – does not lead to spontaneous self-organising into a group. History is sufficiently clear on this point.
There is a tendency among racists to believe that humans spontaneously self-organize around biological race – that it is an automatic process, and only artificially suppressing it can stop it.
But even blood siblings do not spontaneously self-organize into a group – blood siblings frequently despise each other and intra-familial strife is as common as any other kind. The “institution” of the family had to be heavily promoted and defended – the idea of the family as a cohesive unit – in order for antagonistic impulses among children, and between parents and children, to be subdued. The family is a cultural fact – not a biological fact.
History shows that there is no automatic and spontaneous biological process by which humans coalesce around race.
Now, the idea of race can serve as a unifying factor – but it needs an intellectual – indeed a “spiritual” – superstructure. Indeed, we see that in different historical eras, racial boundaries shift according to ideology. What is white today was not yesterday.
Some while ago, there was a comment here quoting the American anthropologist Lothrop Stoddard, who said Europeans believe in 3 different races inhabiting Europe, with often no discernible phenotypic difference, which they were passionately willing to fight for. Their beliefs about race – not the biological facts – was what they were willing to fight for. An idea.
Now, can race be used as a basis for closing borders? Certainly, if people can be convinced of the idea that race should define identity – but this requires developing a complex philosophical – mythical and spiritual – intellectual superstructure. And this has never been done successfully for so broad – and at the same time so thin, so stripped of specific cultural and historical features – a category as “race”.
Is today’s climate favorable for this?
Besides, today’s racists, people like Steve Sailer and Jared Taylor and Audacious Epigone are not doing this – the intellectual superstructure – the mythic idea – they are providing white people with neither inspires not provides a sense of exaltation.
Basically, their narrative is – white people are a sort of “middle race”. Jews and Asians are smarter, and blacks stronger. Whites are the mediocre race. We should keep Asians out and limit Jews because whites are no match for them intellectually. We should separate from blacks because whites are no match for them physically. The best thing that can be said about whites today is they produce societies that are comfortable and pleasant to live in. It is all eminently practical, and about moderate, reasonable, enlightened selfishness.
The End.
Now you tell me – do you think a single red-blooded white person will find this inspiring? Will be willing to die for such s vision? Will be passionate about such a vision?
I puked a little in my mouth writing it.
Now contrast that with the grand moral vision of anti-racism the Left provides. People will die for that. People will be passionate about that.
Or contrast that with what Jews tells their people about their purpose and destiny – or even what Muslims tell themselves.
So what your saying is that Japan is as multicult as Germany? That Singapore has lost its Chinese majority because of cheap airline tickets? And why bother fighting it, at all?
I used to average about 3-4 per year, always something milder and naturally sweeter, like a Macanudo or a Fuente. I liked the longer varieties best, because more of the smoke was cooler and it lasted longer too. Part of the interest was that it always entailed a trip down to my local tobacconist (two different ones actually). This would entail a trip to the lounge room, where there was a large TV set and a sports game on or Fox TV. Seems like most of the guys in there were conservative types, and it was an opportunity to discuss most any topic and get some good conversation going. I haven’t had a smoke in close to 8 months now, we’ll see how long this will go on…
It occurs to me – if humans spontaneously self-organize around biological race, absent propaganda that suppresses this natural urge, the Nazis would never have had to develop their elaborate mythology around the Aryan.
All they would have to do is remove the so-called Jewish influence in German life, and then presto – Germans would have spontaneously organized around race.
But even Nazis only mythologized one section of the Caucasian race.
I think there are only two solutions to the “human predicament” – the problem of death, of human finitude, of human limitation.
One – by far the most common – is to “reach for the stars”. Human limitation and finitude is overcome through a process of “growth” and self-aggrandizement in physical space. This often takes an aggressive and expansionist form. Most mainstream Western religions – and secular ideologies based on religion – take this form. Imperialism and world conquest are inspired by the need to overcome personal finitude through expansion in physical space. Technological development is inspired by this vision. Schemes of moral perfection – whether societal or personal – are also attempts to overcome human finitude. Attempts to overcome the ego are similarly attempts at self-aggrandizement – at growth through spiritual space.
The second vision – the basis of Zen, original Taoism (as distinct from later religious Taoism), some forms of Buddhism, and the esoteric teachings of the Western religions – as well as the occasional unusual Western writer like Montaigne – believe that the individual is already coterminous with all of existence, therefore finitude, death, and limitation are illusions, and expansion in physical or spiritual space is not only unnecessary – but a misunderstanding. Everything is perfect just as it is.
But this is why the racism of today’s white nationalists does not resonate – it fundamentally fails to address the question of mans sense of finitude and limitation, the central fact of the human predicament.
White nationalism based on the idea that whites are a mediocre race that create physically pleasant societies does not address the acute sense of human finitude and limitation, and the certainty of death, that is the core of our experience as humans.
It is a scheme of enlightened selfishness – but no one dies for that, sacrifices for that, or feel a passionate about that.
This doesn’t sound like the Ano4 that I’ve gotten to know here? I’d characterize you more as a “fallen away Orthodox Christian” that has a great interest in other world religions. I don’t understand what more anybody could want out of any religion than what’s revealed in this pamphlet. Did you read it? What do you find lacking, that you find doesn’t fulfill one of your needs?
http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/theosis.aspx
Orthodox Faith is an incredibly powerful spiritual system. When one reads on the Desert Fathers and Hesychasm, when one contemplates the promess of Theosis, one cannot but be strongly impressed by the spiritual force of the people who contributed to this tradition.
Anyone reading Dionysios the Areopagite would understand that Eastern Orthodox Christianity is the true heir of the best spiritual inclinations of the Greek and Latin Civilizations. Nothing is lacking there, in fact there is an excess of spiritual knowledge.
When I was 16, I was once reading the only journal that published on religious and/or spiritual matters in Soviet Union. Its name was Science and Religion (Наука и Религия), among the many articles I was intrigued by a partial translation of a Buddhist Sutra. It seemed incredibly attractive and in a way familiar, as if it made sense to me despite its exotic aspects.
I asked my mom, who was used to often go to the big Bookstore Дом Книги in downtown Moscow to buy me something about Buddhism. Given that it was already Perestroika times, she had no problem to find a quite large book about Zen by Daisetz T. Suzuki. I started reading, then tried to sit zazen and never stopped since.
The more I learn about it the more Zen/Ch’an makes sense in a quite peculiar and somewhat irrational manner. Zen sometimes feels absurd,
but something in its paradoxical take on human relationship with the Absolute Reality and its humorous take on our existential struggles just fits my mentality.
And Zen and Agnosticism fit just perfectly, Zen doesn’t expect anyone to believe anything not directly proven by that person’s experience. So I am an Orthodox Christian by birth, an Agnostic by my personal inclinations and a Zen “enthusiast” by choice.
The video was fascinating. Thanks.
I’d like to know what are the handful of firms that control 40% of the World economy.
England has been a centralized state for a thousand years. It’s odd for someone to say that it isn’t a real country, while calling Germany and Italy, both unified less than two centuries ago, real countries.
Granted, people could quibble about whether the UK is a real nation state, considering that Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have distinctive cultures; but England has a vast majority of the population of the UK, and most people there have an Anglo-Saxon Christian heritage.
One could criticize the neoliberalism of the UK during the last 40 years; but neoliberalism has had a strong effect on most other European countries, especially since the 1990s, as well.
I’ve been meaning to read something by D. T. Suzuki.
If you’re interested in Oriental Philosophy, Sawyer’s translation of the Art of War is quite good, and the Tao Te Ching is fantastic.
You are welcome! I think that it is more than 40% by now. Anyway they only worked with publicly available information, so there is probably a lot of ownership aspects that they were not able to assess. And the processus of ownership consolidation is ongoing. QE in US and EU increased the purchasing power of the proverbial 1%.
I’ve read a bit about the Eastern religions, and especially things written by converts to Orthodoxy from these faiths, and one thing seems to link all of their thoughts together: the extreme nihilism within the outer limits of Zen and the pervading emptiness they feel. One Buddhist monk just came out and flatly admited that he missed the pressence of God in his life. It does seem a bit like the “high” that a lot of opioid drug addicts crave, in their relentless pursuit of numbing their senses to escape the dreariness and pain that one often experiences going through life. If you don’t believe in a God, and seek to become one with nothingness, it seems like the purpose is just to become a living vacuum cleaner. I once read an interesting article by an Orthodox priest who in his youth was an adept of Buddhism and zen meditation. Some of what he said made sense, when he compared the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path with Christian virtues. He said (as many others have) that they felt uncomfortable when they reached the stage of “Right Concentration” where the goal was “reaching the state of awareness without any object or subject, and ultimately unto nothingness and emptiness.”
It was at this point that many did not find the peace that they were seeking, but yearned for something to help fill the void. In Orthodox Christianity we know that this feeling can only be filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit (God himself). Reaching a state of emptiness (stillness) is also required within Theosis, only it doesn’t end there, indeed it’s only a beginning to the further voyage that leads to a uniting with the “Energies of God”. Take some time (an hour to start with to read it all, hopefully a lifetime to digest the knowledge). Please don’t put it off, it’s simplicity reveals a lot of deep thought.
His comments are not deleted, just his profile.
He did ask for that because a new German law known as “Act on Combating Right-Wing Extremism and Hate Crime” which was passed last month would force Unz to provide user data such as IP addresses and and passwords to the German authorities.
Another reason for Polish people to be skeptical of Russia: Russia and Israel are ganging up on Poland, trying to blame Poland for the holocaust. Bibi got away with blaming Palestine for the holocaust, so he probably figured that he’d get away with doing the same thing to Poland.
A lot of people don’t realize that Putin & Bibi are close allies. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t blame Putin for playing nice with Bibi. Given Bibi’s influence in the USA, and the West more generally, getting on his bad side would be risky. It would be nice to see more solidarity among Christian Slavs; but Polish-Russian relations have always been rocky, and Poland has allowed itself to be used by the USA as a pawn against Russia.
Bosak, and the National Movement more generally, have become more anti-Russian in recent years. This has created some friction between the National Movement and Janusz Korwin-Mikke, who is a Putin fanboy.
I wouldn’t give up on Poland. They might still avoid complete cuckdom. Duda required Bosak’s voters to win the second round, so perhaps Bosak might keep him (relatively) honest.
I read Sun Tzu and Tao te Ching in French translation. If one is interested in Ch’an/ Zen I would strongly recommend reading Zen Teaching
of Bodhidhama by Red Pine and the Biography of Master Xu Yun by Charles Luk. The former for the theory and the latter for an example of the real life application of the theory by a Ch’an Master.
We’re letting Germany take away our freedom.
It’s as if Germany had won the war.
Shunyata is a difficult concept to grasp. A lot of people feel bewildered and produce wrong notions about it. I understand that many people would feel uncomfortable.
What can they do to him if he refuses?
And so, you’ve been able to master this step and feel no trepidation, where others who like yourself that have spent years of their lives trying to conquer these feelings of “bewilderment” and “uncomfort” haven’t?
Also, I really don’t understand how you’re able to come to the conclusion that:
“Nothing is lacking there, in fact there is an excess of spiritual knowledge”
and yet devote so much of your attention to these other paths?
Remember, the God of Orthodoxy clearly teaches:
“No man can serve two masters: for either he. will hate the one, and love the other; or else. he will hold to the one, and despise the other, Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
I pray that you make the right choice.
Aaron. Gilad banned you ? Seriously? I never knew him to ban anyone.
And yet, when speaking about Orthodoxy you state:
You realize that you’re elevating pantheism to a higher plane, with your perfected “mental inclinations” ? You may not, however, see me attend your next “Self Realizaton” conference stateside (but who knows, I did once attend a B’hai convention). 🙂
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Paramahansa-Yogananda-meditating.jpg/170px-Paramahansa-Yogananda-meditating.jpg
Everything in the West is now an extension of Black Lives Matter – even so called white nationalism and the Unz Review.
Above, commentator Europa Europa lets loose on how his native country is pathetic and bad.
There is an article on the main page of Unz by this guy Romanoff – in a response to a commenter, Romanoff says that it would seem that the popular perceptions of what “the other side” did bad are myths, while the popular perception of the West being good are myths as well. The white nationalists on that thread remain silent or approve. The line could have been lifted from a BLM pamphlet.
So called white nationalists like Sailer, Derb, Epigone, develop and propagate a vision of whites as the quintessential “mediocre race” – stupider than Asians and Jews, weaker than blacks.
And people wonder why Unz isn’t shut down – Unz Review is essentially an extension of Black Lives Matter. A huge number of articles are dedicated to extolling the Chinese Communist Party and contrasting its authoritarianism favorably with the West.
Hundreds of articles here portray Jews as superhumanly clever and unstoppably dominant in an unbroken chain since ancient times, in a so-called effort to “call Jews out”, but who are you kidding?
Every other group is allowed some special distinction of excellence – even Jews are considered uniquely evil and drivers of every calamity in world history, and superhuman clever and resourceful, driven and dominant. But whites are bland and mediocre.
The Unz Review holds up foreign Islamist extremists as star commenters for the masses to emulate, yet awards no such distinction to any one who promotes the quality of European culture or civilization.
People wonder why Unz Review isn’t shut down – Unz Review is a Black Lives Matter site targeted at the stupidest and most morally reprobate of the white underclass, to demoralize them while pretending to be on their side.
But then – the entire West, even those that formally oppose it, are Black Lives Matter.
No, actually I meant “self realization” that was a school of meditation that was started by Paramahansa Yogananda in the 1920’s throughout the Western world. He was very popular back in the day and his meditation centers are still visible in many cities in the US. I included his photo in my reply #256 – he had a very colorful career. 🙂 For a while, my Ex was an adept of his philosophy.
https://www.yogananda-srf.org/Paramahansa_Yogananda.aspx
Yup. He just stopped publishing my comments. About 7 of them.
Why are you surprised? Why do you expect honesty and fair play from Jew haters? Why expect a principled stand from them? Because they mouth some nice platitudes while every second word out of their mouth is a lie? Because they use fancy moral words to hide under? Haven’t we learned from Talha what hides beneath high sounding words?
You’re aware of what Gilad writes about Jews – everything he says is shockingly dishonest or distorted to anyone in the know. Expect honesty and fair play from such a person?
Ron Unz wrote an “objective” and “balanced” series of hit pieces on Judaism without – astonishingly! – consulting a single pro-Jewish source or soliciting rebuttals and different perspectives from mainstream pro-Jewish authorities. What exactly are you expecting from these people?
I would advise you not to be surprised at anything from people on this site. This is the demi-monde, the dark seedy underworld of dodgy bars. Hanging out here is slumming, but there are men with daggers hiding in the shadows, pools of vomit to sidestep, and drunken whores leering at you. It can be fun if approached correctly, but never take the Unz Review seriously. Its for letting off steam.
Have fun, enjoy yourself, but don’t expect fair play 🙂
Brilliant, Mohammed never visited Jerusalem until is final journey on the horse. The furtherest mosque Al Aqsa was never located in Jerusalem in the Koran. Never. It was made Al Aqsa to claim squatting rights. The third holiest site in Islam. Judaism has one. Jerusalem and the temple mount.
Listen man I like reading your posts like many others here (not that I agree with anything you say)….
However don’t fool yourself into thinking you are any different than the islamo-fascist Pakistani “engineer” (or so he claimed) 6-7 years ago spamming literal essays everywhere. Though I think he got a full ban on commenting altogether.
You may be more chill, definately more articulate but the same logic. Same rational.
And no that pak-“engineer” was not dominating either (autistically repeating something is the furthest you can get to domination)…..
And yes I disagree with his ban as I disagree with any ban you may be enduring.
There were earlier nation-states in Europe such as Byzantium. It was strongly centred around one language, one ethnicity (Greek-speaking Romans), one religion, centralised bureaucracy, stable currency (for much of its history), taxation system and a standing army. There was no feudalism, nobles (lords) and manors. There were dynatoi but definitely did not have the same status as nobles.
https://www.amazon.com/Byzantine-Republic-People-Power-Rome/dp/0674365402
Thanks.
Who was this Islamo-Fascist Pakistani, and in what way am I like him? I have an Islamo-fascist Pakistani soul brother!?
Stop making excuses for the anti-Semites. Standards for posting are extremely low on those threads. Standards in general are extremely low across this site. Based on what I’ve seen, its hard to imagine how incoherent, unintelligible, or nasty an anti-Jewish post must be before it doesn’t get published. In fact, based on what I regularly see, I don’t think there exists a threshold for anti-Jewish posts. Its obvious why they banned me.
Now, tell more about my Islamo-fascist Pakistani soul brother…
The Byzantine Republic
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674365407
Russia hating Poles (not to mean all Poles) and their Western allies (including some Jews) have been “ganging up on Russia”.
Related:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/24012020-another-look-at-the-ww-ii-spat-involving-russia-poland-and-israel-oped/
Any idea why Ron Unz would write in this manner and support this popular site that must antagonize so many Jews, if not around the world, then certainly in the US? BTW, I’ve always enjoyed reading your comments here.
Thank you, I’ve always enjoyed my pleasant exchanges with you as well.
I think this site is not what it appears.
If you read Ron’s older, lengthy articles you see a level of nuance and complexity – examining a topic from all its angles – not found in his hit pieces on Judaism, which are simple and shallow, and based entirely on a very limited number of anti-Jewish sources.
Absent from his complex older articles, and notably present in his American Pravda series, are all sorts of “gimmicks” – or primitive rhetorical devices – that are fairly transparent and create a distinctly lower intellectual level. It is like he is talking down to children.
(Like the whole well, I was so busy with my work…I was astonished to discover…etc, etc)
It is possible he is undergoing dramatic intellectual decline, but I’m not convinced.
The thing to consider is – what is the cumulative effect of reading this site on the state of mind and morale of an average – let’s not say white nationalist – but promoter of Western civilization?
Let’s consider – and remember, there is a way of insulting something that is really praise, and praising something that is really an insult.
Well, what does such a person learn. That Jews are superhumanly clever and dominant – and have literally been so since ancient times in every single society. They have seemingly limitless foresight and ingenuity – and craft extremely complicated long term plans of domination which they implement across generations with a cold, calculating perseverance, utilizing a terrifying understanding of human psychology and manipulation available only to them. Jews are also supreme in physical crime, lest you think they are merely nerds – muchh tougher and more deadly than the vaunted Italian and Russian mafias, which they effortlessly dominate and use as fronts.
I don’t know about you, but this is not a foe I would ever, ever expect to win against..especially considering the way European civilization is portrayed by contrast, which we shall turn to next…
On Unz, whites are portrayed as the “mediocre race”. Less intelligent than Jews and Asians, and less physically tough than blacks. Moreover, they are extremely naive and trusting, and handicapped by a universal altruism that makes them privilege the interests of others over themselves. Their chief characteristic is building inoffensive and pleasant societies.
In other words, whites and Europeans are portrayed as the quintessential “beta race”, with codependent people pleasing tendencies. Almost feminine.
Then we turn to China – on Unz, we learn that the Chinese are much more intelligent and efficient than Europeans, and it is a completely inevitable and predetermined outcome that China will “return” – because it is the predetermined natural state of affairs – to its globally dominant position (which it only ever held in Asia, and was largely symbolic).
Finally, there is the rampant historical revisionism on Unz – here we learn that in any conflict between the West and the non-West, the West is actually always the evil party. America was infinitely more racist against the Japanese and infinitely more cruel to them than vice versa. Western elites are acting with insane and provocative belligerence to China, which is a humble and non-aggressive country just innocently building its economy.
And finally finally – two foreign Islamist Extremists are given gold stars to elevate them above the mass of commenters, whereas no promoter of European culture or civilization is similarly distinguished.
Now – what will the state of mind be of a young white man after reading Unz Review for any lengthy period of time? He will imagine he is being catered to, but…is he?
Ate you surprised that Unz Review is not getting shut down when much more seemingly innocuous sites are? Are you REALLY surprised?
There are lots of non-racist arguments against immigration. There are very sound economic arguments against it. There are environmental arguments. There’s the socially disruptive effects of sheer numbers.
But if you’re determined to lose then keep on making racist arguments against immigration. Of course you’ll be permanently discrediting the whole idea of immigration restrictionism. I assume that doesn’t bother you?
Yes, I am rather surprised (disgusted?) that at the UNZ Review it is almost always that the Western world is taken to task for being the most evil, sinister and belligerent civilization, with skant a similar treatment of the other world players that are still involved around the planet. It seems just too one sided and hypocritical. I mean, really, one can’t find similar malfeasences within the Chinese, Russian or Arabic world that are continuously being hurled here against the “Atlantisists”.
Whether or not Ron Unz is going senile, “dramatic intellectual decline” as you put it, you didn’t answer the main thrust of my question as to why it appears that Unz is going way out of his way to portray his own people in such negative tones?
So why do people think this site is substantially different than the MSM? Then BLM? Because Ron says so? Its anti-Western slant is a tiny bit more subtle, but not by much.
As I said, everything is BLM now.
I’m sorry if I was not clear. Is it really negative? I must admit, I sometimes smile to my self at how omniscient Jews are portrayed here. I’m morally opposed to it, but its hard not to be flattered at just how powerful we are portrayed here.
It’s possible Ron is establishing credibility with the anti-Semites by seeming to confirm their prejudices – while at the same time, creating in the back of their minds a sense of utter impotence and defeat, of despair. By granting Jews such tremendous significance, you are granting them tremendous power.
It’s the same with Sailer and the supposed white nationalists – they seemingly support the interests of white civilization, but in actuality portray an image of whites as impotent and feckless. I think they’re quite sincere – but Ron may be using them in order to create even more despair and sense of defeat among his white readers.
(Half the reason I fled back to my Jewish roots was my disgust at the image of Europeans promoted by such people – I did not want to see myself that way.)
So you have to look at Ron’s portrayal of Jews as connected to the all the various themes that are heavily promoted in this site – they all share a common thread. Seeming to promote European civilization while undermining it in a backhanded manner.
You have to admit – on the surface, its astonishing this site has not been cancelled. That’s indisputable. But look at it clearly – and it’s obvious why this site hasn’t been cancelled. Its BLM.
But everything is BLM these days (anti-European civilization). If it isn’t, it gets cancelled.
‘… I would advise you not to be surprised at anything from people on this site. This is the demi-monde, the dark seedy underworld of dodgy bars. Hanging out here is slumming, but there are men with daggers hiding in the shadows, pools of vomit to sidestep, and drunken whores leering at you…
You certainly fit the ‘men with daggers'(if rather ineptly wielded), and the ‘pools of vomit’, but ‘drunken whores’?
Seriously, Aaron? Don’t quit your day job.
If I’m not totally mistaken, the Temple Mount (or parts thereof) are sacred for Muslims because dead Muhammad or Allah himself (or some other supernatural being, I always forget details of this kind) made some sort of apparition there after it was conquered. Kind of like the Lourdes or Fatima sanctuaries are sacred for Catholics after the Virgin Mary decided to pay a quick visit to those sites.
Not that I care much for religious fables, but if a group believes that a place is sacred for them based on religious beliefs, that site is indeed sacred for them, by definition.
I have quite a lot of respect for Jews in general. They have given the world a very disproportionate amount of scientists, thinkers, artists and innovative businessmen.
It is obvious that modern media, entertainment, finance and politics in the West are to a big extent dominated by Jews but I have never been able to feel much indignation about it. What do you expect when a group is ~1 SD above the general population in IQ?
Whining about the power of Jews reminds me a lot about the constant whining about “racism” that I witnessed while living in Latin America because Whites there, being also a minority, tend to occupy all resorts of power in business, media and politics.
Besides, my personal interactions with Jews have for the most part been positive. Some Jewish doctors did a lot of good to my family.
Are you really not a Jew?
I agree with all that you have said. But the entire site is still a mystery. The power imposed on the Jews is cartoon like. Like you need to point out the obvious that no two Jews think a like. It’s something you understand if you are Jewish. Among Jews there exist the same range of opinions and politics as non Jews. You have right of right Zionist nationalist identical to WN. Moderates who want to get along with everyone and left secular globalist all incorporated amongst Jews as non Jews. So when people say that Jews control the media the answer is unequivocally no. The NYT is not really Jewish owned. Jared Kushner as Trumps right hand. Very conservative. I have pointed this out many times but to no avail. Any intelligent person can understand that the Rothschilds are no longer Jewish or a banking dynasty. That is why I have come to the conclusion that Jew hatred is irrational.
Just look at all the Jew Jew haters on this site and in the world. Muslims don’t disagree like that. Yet we are all suppose to think a like. Most pro Palestinians outside of the Muslims are Jewish. I guess Gilad doesn’t see the irony in how Jewish he really is.
What do you think of Haigja Sophia turning into a mosque?
I don’t understand why you were kicked off and the anonymous cunt Jew bitcoin Jew gets thru?
Gay or not gay, Lyashko is a criminal character perfectly characteristic of the most sordid post-Soviet gangster times.
During the first stages of the Donbass insurrection he sent a death squad from his personal army to some small town in Northern Lugansk where they killed one or two youngsters for the crime or being inside some administrative building that had been occupied by the separatists.
He also used his henchmen to chase and “arrest” Donbass civilians who had taken part in the separatist/autonomist referendum.
To this day the most bizarre thing of the Maidan revolution to me is not that a country where mainstream politicians have private armies whose killings go totally unpunished is trying to become a member of the EU. It is that the EU itself is promoting that association without imposing any kind of conditions on this kind of activities.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/07/83-la-teachers-vote-stay-closed-fall-will-not-open-schools-unless-charter-schools-closed-police-defunded/
How about shutting down all schools and permanently moving to instructions by internet or some such? I would have preferred that as a kid. I HATED going to school.
And it would save so much money.
If this is the future of Chinese elites, then China is finished.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8515719/How-Chinas-red-aristocracy-sneaked-way-heart-Britains-financial-powerhouses.html
Talk about super wonky name dropping:
https://www.e-ir.info/2020/07/14/the-political-use-of-soviet-nostalgia-to-develop-a-russian-national-identity/
Well white people are more ornery and contrarian than East Asians, which makes them more capable of lateral thinking and innovative leaps of the imagination, but also makes them respond worse in an epidemic where everyone needs to be on the same page, and herd-like behavior is necessary, like how everybody in South Korea and China seems to have the same hair style, you really can not have things both ways.
I don’t believe that the average UNZ reader feels the despair and impotence that you keep bringing up. Also, aside from the obvious referring to high Jewish IQ (that is an established fact), I don’t see the common thread of Jewish omniscience that you also bring up being propagated here among the various bloggers and writers that Unz employs. On the contrary, I’m still quite impressed with the variety of views and subject matters that one can find at this blogsite. Here you can find the views of everybody from a wingtip wearing establishment type like Pat Buchanan to the left wing conspiratorial type of writer harping back to the radical 60’s of a Max Parry. The anti Jewish slant of a Philip Giraldi is obviously something much different than that of Linh Dinh. Our hoste here for instance is quite soft on any Jewish conspiracy theories and indeed is thought by many (because of his Jewish sounding surname) to be of Jewish background himself.
It may be true that BLM is everywhere, but what you don’t note is that the views overwhelmingly presented here are critical of this movement, in direct contrast to that of the mainstream establishment press.
Besides the many different views and styles of writing found at this website, unless you can establish that Ron Unz is involved in censoring the views of his writers to conform to his own political slant, I think that you’ll have a hard time of convincing many of your overly conspiratorial theories.
It never ceases to amaze me how much most of the American and European civ nat right frankly idolise Jews. You can give these people numerous examples of Jews and Jewish orgs acting in a blatantly anti-white and far-left manner and they’ll still go out of their way to deny it, or claim that any Jewish aspect is purely incidental, every time.
I honestly think a lot of these people are so enthrall of the Jews that they would be prepared to see whites sacrificed through mass immigration out of the Middle East if it meant the survival of their beloved Jews and Israel. Obviously they wouldn’t openly admit that but that’s how many seem to think on a subconscious level in my opinion. Many of them value the Jews so highly that if it was whites or Jews/Israel, they would be prepared to take the hit.
I hear. You may be right.
I don’t really think its a conspiracy – more like an unconscious tendency. Just that this site is quite compatible with BLM, so isn’t shut down.
I have to be honest, I don’t find the viewpoints here that diverse. About 70% of the articles are anti-Jewish, pro-China, anti-Western revisionist – this is the editorial line – with 30% maybe wildly diverse.
I also think the dispiriting effect of reading this site on the average white male is quite pronounced – without them being aware of it.
I also think it doesn’t matter – all of it is more an unconscious tendency towards suicide.
Anyways, thanks for the discussion.
Interesting how well this commenter illustrates what I said earlier – the same people who are abni-Jewish, are anti-white.
You have conflated Ano4 with Anon 2.
One wonders what other truths you will discover as everyone else melds together into singular concepts for your fantasies.
But that’s exactly why I was kicked off and he is allowed through. I’m too effective at advocating for Jews/Israel – this is a propaganda site, not an “exploration of viewpoints excluded by the MSM” or any such nonsense lol.
Its actually an extension of the MSM on a subtle level – “an exploration of viewpoints that fundamentally advance the agenda of BLM but are excluded from the MSM” would be more accurate.
I actually think in your own different way you’re quite effective, but they think you’re “crazy” – so they let you stay. They’re stupid – they don’t understand how effective advocacy can take different forms. So great.
And the truth is should have appeared “vulnerable” my self – but really, I don’t do manipulation. I lost here for fun, not seriousness.
The cartoonist picture of Jews is there because this isn’t a site interested in a nuanced discussion – it is propaganda. Jews are terrible just like you thought, so you can totally trust me – but they are so crazy powerful and smart that you have no chance, so sit back down. Plus your own people are genetic “nice guys”, so you really have no chance.
A fully IQist argument argument is something of a straw man. IQ is only about opening the door to HBD, and HBD is not an end in and of itself. The biological reality of differences encourages identity, and finally the desire for continuance, present in the spirit of all life.
Space is not a bad ideal. It gets Europeans excited, and opens the possibility of expansion, of competition, of increasing one’s footprint, without the moral objection of displacing others. However, it is a hard thing to harness and pursue in the legal atmosphere generated in a multicultural society, where whites must pay a ruinous tribute to other people and don’t have the ability to exclude them.
I wonder how many realize that the Sojourner Rover landed on Mars in 1997, tiny though it was, was named after a radical black lady who had radical ideas about not only race but also gender. Taking it in mind, it does not seem as though US will accomplish great things for whites in space, as it once did. Its main motivation going forward seems to be to get blacks on the moon. Hardly something to get excited about.
Sure they are, Daniel.
But I’ve meaning to ask you something for a while – why does it always seem like you’re depressed? Like you have no joie de vivre? And why does it seem like so many Asian people are depressed these days?
You always seem so grim, humorless, authoritarian. What gives? Don’t you think life is supposed to be fun? Don’t you have any spark? Are you really always preoccupied with the fear of death and failure, and so think fun is “for children”? Have you heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – why do you always seem stuck on the fear and survival and control rung?
The darkness of the CCP does not hold sway yet, Daniel – there are areas of light remaining.
Cone join the People of the Light, Daniel.
I feel like deep down you are a good guy – and I like Asians and Asian culture, but you guys have gotten lost lately. Cone back to the Light. Read some Lin Yutang.
The number of arguments does not make them effective. We are not talking about rational debate. We are talking about what gets to the core of emotion. And ultimately there is only space for one argument there.
Environmentalism is very secondary to immigration, as a priority of the Left. We’ve already seen its natural sorting out process. Greta, the ultimate doomsayer and autist, gives not a single concern about stopping immigration. Nor do any mainstream environmental organisations care.
Mainstream economists are all globalists. Any economic argument will be but a slight noise in their endless propaganda.
The only workable argument is one that stands up to the charge of racism without people turning cowardly, because it gets to the core of the issue – demographics. Sure, it won’t get the blacks and Mexicans on board, but the U.S. is screwed anyway. I care about saving Europe, and American methods are obviously worthless.
You cannot answer a question like, what are you going to do in a situation with differential fertility? I can – stop subsidizing the alien population and deport them. People want their legacy to survive. None want to become minorities, or become totally dispossessed. They were never asked – and that is the problem. Not that they want to be dispossessed. Of course, it is racist not to want to be dispossessed, so the only functional argument is racism.
That is funny that they think I am crazy, but I must not be effective if they let me stay. There are some really really crazy types on this site. So craziness works.
Popularity of celebrities like Kirkorov with federal television, government and old grandmothers, is nothing inconsistent.
Sexual minorities are tolerated in Russia, as in all the rest of the civilized world. There are not interferences in what people are doing in the privacy of the bedroom – to see that, you need to go to the Middle East and Africa.
There is just a cultural difference, that in Russia there is not a promotion of “LGBT liberation ideology”, while in the Western Europe rainbow flags become semi-official part of the state ideology in the last few years.
Because of the geopolitical conflict with Europe and America on one side, and Russia on the other – then this small cultural difference on a minor topic, was selected to be a site of ideology conflict. The controversy inflated wildly beyond what is a small cultural difference in reality; but the exaggerations were useful to the authorities in both sides, and so there have been few efforts to deflate it
You should speculate less in my mood and more on your inability to discern completely different people from each other before rendering your “analysis.”
The blind are not in a position to speak of colors.
The abbot of a monastery in Russia has publicly accused Putin of being a puppet to Berl Lazar, a Chabad member and the Grand Rabbi of the Russian Federation.
Sergyi asked Putin to relinquish control.
Schema-Hegumen Sergyi has also accused the ROC Patriarch Kirill of being a traitor.
https://youtu.be/_eydP556eu4
To be clear, I don’t think you’re crazy. I think in your own way you’re an effective advocate for Zionism. But your presentation is very left-brained/artistic, so they think you’re less of a threat – they’re dumb 🙂
A main difference England, to other countries of Europe, East Asia and America, is that Great Britain is almost a “caste society”, while in other countries of Europe and also East Asia, there has for more than a century at most just a moderate “class society” .
In most European, East Asian and American countries, there is stratification into classes, but in Great Britain this is significantly stronger, almost closer to a caste stratification, with different cultures within each class.
England was also most powerful, when the strength of the stratification was higher than today – from the 18th to early 20th century.
There are a few different reasons. But one of the main reason is extremely high internal complexity and stratification of the society.
An example of a benefit, is that the language complexity is constantly increased, as different groups were using even things like vastly different orders of words.
Ok, I think they’re the same person. I mean, really, ano2 and ano4? What if an AaronC and AaronD showed up on this board with views strangely resembling my own…what of a grim unhappy authoritarian Asian called Daniel Bieh showed up here? 🙂
With that out of the way, let us talk about your mental state, which has been concerning me for some time, Daniel.
You seem to have gotten stuck somewhere very low on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Somewhere on the primitive survival stage, with no room for the higher pleasures or delights of life.
I feel we have to rescue you from this Slough of Despond. Talk to me. Does life seem like a grim struggle for survival with no end in sight? Does everything seem grim and bleak?
I think there Asian-derived philosophies that can, without denying your perceptions of the grimness of life, nevertheless put them in a perspective which will allow you move up to the higher rungs of Maslow’s Ladder.
My aim is to get you at least to the middle rungs of Maslow’s Ladder.
If cultural appropriation is wrong, what about trannies sexually appropriating the ‘gender’ of women?
Ano4, I believe, is a moniker for “Another 4” indicating the number of children that he has. He’s pretty obviously Russian: he has strong opinions of specific aspects of Russian history and individuals.
Anon 2 is a moniker for “Anonymous 2” and is pretty obviously Polish. He can only see Russians as a monolithic entity, a norm for most foreigners.
If there was an Anon 3, incidentally, presuming association would be quite silly – as much as assuming that “another anon” is the same as “anonymous coward.” For self-evident reasons, anonymous as a moniker often involves randomly tagging numbers to it.
I would be more concerned with your own spiraling lack of sanity and logic. You can hardly provide any guidance when you cannot even make non-conspiratorial deductions of individuals.
I don’t know if you’re left-brained or right-brained, but one thing is sure – you’re surely pea-brained.
What’s going on between Armenia and Azerbaijan? Now that the rioting and coronavirus are boring maybe we’ll get an interesting war to get us through the summer.
If both sides have any brains, we won’t. But if one side is brainless, expect fireworks. We’ll see.
Quitting is easy, I’ve done it 1000 times!
When I decided to stop it took me about 3 years to stop smoking cigarettes on a daily basis. I kept smoking cigars from time to time for some 15 years, while having an occasional cigarette and even occasionally buying a pack of smokes when traveling. But now I finally believe I am over it. It is a lengthy process, but it is doable.
The Ukrainian Cossacks enjoyed smoking their short clay pipes filled with tobacco and other herbs of the steppe (sorry, no hashish or opium). 🙂 Here’s a famous Ukrainian folk song about the Zaporozhians going out on a patrol, where the unrepentant Hetman Sahaidachny does not lament that he “sold his wife for a pipe and some tobacco.”
https://youtu.be/PEUzUK5vRzY
A dead squirrel tested positive for bubonic plague in Colorado.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/07/14/squirrel-in-colorado-tests-positive-for-bubonic-plague/
Bubonic plague has also been reported in Inner Mongolia around a week ago:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53303457
I think you’re making the mistake of thinking that because solutions like that appeal to you (and garner widespread support in places like UR) then therefore such proposals would attract widespread support in the real world. I really don’t think that’s the case any more. Most people in the real world are more likely to see such proposals as unworkable, unjust, tyrannical, likely to lead to bloodbaths and generally unhinged.
Sixty years ago such proposals might have gained widespread support. Maybe even thirty years ago (although I doubt it). But today they’re just wildly unrealistic wishful thinking.
And whose fault is it that white people have low fertility? I’ll tell you but you won’t like the answer. It’s white people who have chosen (and freely chosen) to have fewer kids.
The problem is that HDBists overemphasize IQ, I mean IQ is an ingredient to success, but having IQ does not lead to success.
So why don’t Sailer and other authors here name a particular group of people? Because they are afraid of getting banned from Twitter?
IQ test was designed to detect mental retardation, not to measure intelligence. But even intelligence per se does not necessarily mean success. In my experience, the success in science (real science, not BS “studies”) equals intelligence multiplied by the drive to the power of three. So, with low drive no level of intelligence leads to success, whereas with a strong drive even modest intelligence does.
I am skeptical of your claims, but I would like you to be right. The destruction of Hollywood would be a positive for humanity.
What policies reign today aren’t ones with popular white support. They are regime policies. Do you think the Germany of today is a natural state, with organic policies based on consent-seeking by taking the ballots of Germans? It isn’t. It is a regime that attacks black-slatist parties like AfD who merely want to halt immigration. Their intelligence services monitor the party, and news media libel it. You can be pulled into a police station, if someone asserts you said something bad about certain people. There is no free speech
You think you’re going to convince the regime to change? If you do, you do not understand its nature. It is invested in its ideas, changing them, would show that it was wrong all along, it would destroy it.
There’s nothing unhinged about recognizing the morality of survival. It is the most truthful and moral course. Of course, as a non-racist, you cannot publicly acknowledge that whites having low fertility is a problem, or take any organized steps to change it. Not unless you want to get cancelled. Saying that it is their choice seems somewhat naive, to me.
Blood siblings are born into a group. They do not spontaneously choose to live in the same households because the arrangement is made for them. Similarly, people do not choose which country they are born into, what their first language is, or what ethnic group they belong to. Choice is quite besides the point.
Quite in contrast to your post, this point about the irrelevance of choice often applies to “spiritual” and “intellectual” matters to use your terms. In Northern Ireland sectarian conflict, the people committing some atrocity didn’t stop to ask whether their opponent actually believed in Protestant/Catholic doctrine, whether they actually went to church, or even if they wanted to be on any particular side of the conflict. This identity was chosen for them. Any student of sectarian conflicts will find this is frequently the case. Many people would rather there be no conflict at all, but it’s not their choice to decide that.
Instances of individuals conflicting are not evidence that groups cannot “spontaneously self-organize.”
Bullshit. Immigration could be easily reduced with different government policies.
A group can have different factions and still collectively have a negative impact on some other group’s society.
Of course they could, I didn’t say they couldn’t.
When you’re triggered, you might just pause and breathe, and realise that your feeling of outrage is just a first glance inwards, and not a complete picture.
The Chinese Exclusion Act for one example was a policy change clearly motivated by racist ideas. None of the economic or technological changes you cited contradict the claim that racism can be used to construct an argument for secure borders. We know it can because it’s been done before.
Your point about technology and economics is particularly hollow considering the two largest immigrant groups, Chinese and Mexicans have had large scale immigration to the U.S. well over a century ago. This was before “international transportation, global communications links and the increased value of labour relative to land” were at present levels.
I wonder what universe you are living in where you think genuinely racist arguments are a winner?
By genuinely racist arguments, I don’t mean what progressives typify as racist either.
The difference with the past is that it was previously quite possible for rational people to see different races as almost different species. There was no media nor mass numbers, which could allow greater familiarity. What one doesn’t know, one doesn’t know.
Technology changed that. The old arguments, that were barely tested before they failed anyway, wouldn’t work.
Success seems to depend on intelligence, personality and behaviour. And I suspect that human intelligence, human personality and human behaviour are so complex that they will never be fully understood.
There’s also the question of how exactly do we measure success? We can measure monetary success, we can perhaps measure success in the hard sciences by the number of papers a person publishes, but success in life is much more complicated. A person might have published numerous scientific papers but if he’s an anti-social incel subject to fits of depression is he a success? Maybe a truck driver with a happy marriage and a couple of great kids is more of a success in life. Maybe social success is just as important as financial success. Maybe sexual success makes people happier than publishing scientific papers.
Isn’t a happy person obviously more successful than an unhappy person?
Or maybe a healthy society needs a mix of people who are successful in different ways?
IQ fetishism is as sad in its own way as fetishing financial success.
As for HBD, it’s just another attempt to give racism a scientific (or scientific-sounding) veneer.
Of course it’s their choice. If Bob and Kathy Lilywhite decide that they’re not going to have any kids then that is a decision that they have made. Or do you believe that white people are so dumb that they are incapable of making such a decision themselves?
If low white fertility is a problem then the first step towards solving it is for white people to stop blaming others for their own problems.
If we’re so dumb that we do whatever Hollywood, or the TV, or social media (or some shadowy conspiratorial group) tells us to do then we have bigger problems than low fertility. If that’s the case we don’t deserve to survive.
What people of the far right seem absolutely unwilling to understand, or to accept, is that white people are having fewer children because they want fewer children. Just as the Japanese and the South Koreans are having fewer children because they want fewer children. The way to solve that would be by forcing people to have children, which would require a totalitarian level of social control. Do you really want that?
The only other way to solve the problem would be by destroying modern civilisation and going back to being a pre-industrial culture. Because the unpleasant truth is that modern civilisation offers people options that they find a lot more attractive than having large families. I don’t think that destroying modern civilisation is a very attractive alternative.
This universe. The one where people have been observed to change their public views on a particular subject in a matter of a few years or less. Most people are mindless drones(on most subjects) who believe what they’re told to. This is why racial views have changed so much in the last century.
People in the past had more realistic views about race than people do today. This is despite the fact that there is more evidence now. British colonialists didn’t have access to psychometric, genetic, or even as much anthropological or sociological data. Nevertheless, they made quite correct observations about for example sub-Saharan Africans. Compared to academics, a random hick has more sensible views about race. It would appear the mass media has mostly misinformed people on these subjects.
“Almost a different species,” is kind of vague, but it’s a defensible idea. FST between Europeans and Africans is the same as the difference between north American wolves and coyotes. Admixture from different archaic species varies by race. There exist geographically separated mammalian species who are fertile if brought together.
Also, since it needs to be said: It’s not a question of good or bad with regard to promoting “racist” views. In some cases, attempting to raise racial awareness among people is a useful approach. In other cases, people are hopeless and other arguments should be constructed. Most people with a modicum of social skills understand this intuitively. You don’t talk to your grandma the same way you talk to random peers.
You and dfordoom both seem to be making arguments on the premise that other people here have impractical or unrealistic views. But I view what you’re doing differently: You’re trying to convince people that something can’t possibly be done so they won’t even try. I have seen arguments of the same form from many people regarding the COVID-19 epidemic. We have enough of that garbage in our culture already. Not enough doers, many excuse makers. This post by Greg Cochran seems appropriate: https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2020/05/08/the-stars-in-their-courses/
In most cases, individual agency is not zero, but I think it is wrong to suppose diversity has no effect. In the West, it has increased rents significantly, reduced income through transference schemes, sent biological clocks ticking past expiration due to credentialism, and it has created a hostile social environment that precludes any social response to the problem. In the past, reproduction was very much a community and family effort, not an individual effort – it was social – and it could be that that element is necessary to have good TFR.
It is not a matter of simple individual choices. We need to adjust ourselves to the challenges of modern living. That requires a new culture, and culture takes time to develop. And it needs space to develop as well. Korea and Japan do have their own problems, but they have the space and perhaps the time, if they don’t open the borders.
Korea was basically a third world country into the 1970s. Grade school teachers were considered an elite and parents often deferred to them, sometimes buying them sticks in order to beat their children with, when they misbehaved, or got an answer wrong. Sometimes even the top student was wacked once symbolically in order to improve his performance, while the second student was hit twice, and so on. The beatings have stopped, but not the misplaced importance on education.
They effectively have a cargo cult culture, in a way similar to our own, when it comes to education and put far too much time into it. Japan is somewhat similar. In the race to develop, both have embraced the new and created massive, soulless urban areas. Some apartment blocks evoke Eastern Europe.
But I have faith that both can turn it around – if their elite don’t betray them by welcoming other peoples.
That’s the closest to the truth. I agree that a happy person is more successful than an unhappy one. Different things make people happy. Good-for-nothing people go for the artificial drug-induced happiness, those who are good for anything achieve real one. Some (mostly Americans) cannot be happy w/o tons of money. As there are lots of women who consider a rich guy sexy, it results in a certain level of sexual success. Published scientific papers make others feel happy (what matters is not just the number, but how much attention the field pays to those papers, which is roughly expressed in the number of times your papers are cited by others). Some women feel that a productive scientist is sexier than an unproductive one, so scientific success also translates into sexual success. Not to mention that productivity and ingenuity gives you a chance to grow through the ranks and achieve greater financial success (of course, you are never paid for research as much as you get in law, medicine, or finance – a big chunk of our pay is the enjoyment of what you do). But I always tell students that we spend too much of our time working, so you want to do only things you enjoy. Some people feel happy when they can do a good plumbing job or fix a garden tractor. They are also rewarded for this financially, among other things.
So, a healthy society needs all of these people. Besides, people who can do something real don’t become drug addicts or politicians, which is another boon for the society: politicians tend to be more destructive than even murderers.
You’re not a “doer”, but a fantasist.
Confusing nastiness with realism is an understandable reaction to the overwhelming moral narcissism in politics today. But that’s all it is: a reaction. What does your core tell you?
No, I’m trying to persuade people not to try to do something really dumb and counter-productive and destructive, like trying to use racist arguments against immigration. Because all you’re going to do is to discredit sane immigration restrictionists who might otherwise have had a chance of succeeding.
I’m not in favour of open borders. And I think South Korea and Japan are sensible not to throw their borders open.
But having kids is a matter of decisions by individual couples. It would require an incredibly radical cultural change, a true cultural revolution, to change a modern society so much that those individual couples would decide that having more kids is desirable. And the required cultural revolution might be very very unpleasant in many ways. Cultural revolutions are unpredictable things.
What we first need to decide is this – does it actually matter if the population declines? Is it possible to adapt to being a society with slowly declining population? Is it possible that such a society might actually be a lot more pleasant than a society that pressures people into having children they don’t really want? Will technology allow us to maintain our living standards even with declining populations?
Maybe we don’t need to obsess so much over fertility.
That’s one of the things our society is in denial about. We’re also in denial about the fact that the things that make a woman happy or successful are not the same things that make a man happy or successful.
Are you not reading, 1 in 10 young people in Tokyo are foreign born, and basically Japan and South Korea are OK now with mass foreign workers staying for years, or even the equivalent of H-1Bs bringing their families to live with them, basically the equivalent of the Middle East, although I think that unlike Arabs, Japanese and Koreans will too soft and squishy to mass expel them once their contract ends.
How do you make robots pay taxes to pay for pensions?
The really important topic today:
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/lancetchart.png?itok=oeftdAtZ
Projected population decline:
Japan: from around 128 million people in 2017 to 60 million in 2100
Thailand: 71 million to 35 million
Spain: 46 million to 23 million
Italy: 61 million to 31 million
Portugal: 11 million to 5 million
South Korea: 53 million to 27 million
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/global-fertility-decline-will-see-population-over-20-countries-halved-2100-study
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext#figures
And that’s before they figure out that ACE-2 receptor is also expressed on the sperm cells. I guess that the countries hid harder will see a stronger population decline.
A key finding of Murray and colleagues that warrants further consideration is the projected decrease in the working-age population for several countries such as Spain and Japan. The consequent human capital shortage and probable concurrent burgeoning of the older population might lead to declining life expectancy and quality of life and worsening inequality. To address the potential catastrophic impact of a shrinking working-age population, countries have several options.
First, countries could consider incentives to increase TFR before a population decline. To date, attempts to reverse decreases in fertility rates achieved through huge gains in female education and access to contraception have not worked, with pronatalist policies often having limited and temporary effects.4 Second, countries could consider the explosion of new technologies, including artificial intelligence and robotics, as a path towards self-sufficiency in the context of declining human capital. Automation, such as in car manufacturing, shows that further robotisation of parts of the economy is inevitable and arguing against this is Malthusian. However, the promise of artificial intelligence and robotics providing the social, economic, and psychological underpinning for human societies in the face of a collapse of the working-age population is largely speculative. Available evidence suggests that these changes would have a disproportionate impact on lower paid workers.5 Third, to maintain cohesion, countries might choose to establish long-term bilateral strategic links with culturally similar nations.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31523-3/fulltext
Given that Wogs start in Calais, I project an increasing Islamization of Western Europe by 2060.
There’s nothing fantastical about suggesting people’s views can change. We’ve seen it happen before.
If all you’re interested in is short-term, practical politics, I would suggest you’re wasting your time posting on unz.com.
I doubt that is all you’re interested in. What you fail to see is that by removing the possibility of racist arguments at all, you’re merely giving ground. There is no reason to consider racism off-limits. You are also failing also to see how views on race have changed. They have changed because the other side hammered their position into other people’s heads, step by step. By failing to even attempt to do the same, but from the other side, you are ceding ground.
When “sane immigration restrictionists” are making non-racist arguments that are effective, then there is no reason for people to alter them from that course. When they are not so effective, there is no reason to suggest other approaches are never worth pursuing.
If we did not have mass immigration and dysgenic breeding patterns, it might be reasonable to decide that population decline is ok. If we were seriously working now to solve economic and other problems associated with population decline, population decline could even be a positive in some countries. But since none of those things are the case, low fertility is going to be a problem.
People 1000 years from now will be telling their kids horribly scary stories about those savages of the “Second Dark Ages” of the 21st century.
I have no idea, but it’s a challenge we may have to face. Robots are going to make lots of money for some people so maybe those people could pay the taxes?
The alternatives are to accept mass immigration, or to put our faith in wishful thinking by relying on pro-natalist policies that will almost certainly fail. If those pro-natalist policies do fail, then unless we can find a way to adapt to declining populations we’ll have to accept mass immigration.
Finding ways to adapt to declining populations is a way of giving ourselves more options. Of course it would be awful to live in a world with low housing prices and no traffic congestion and no problems with inadequate infrastructure and no problems with energy shortages and no pollution problems but we’ll just have to be brave.
I would suggest that if we don’t solve the economic and other problems associated with population decline then low fertility is going to be a problem unless we find a magical solution to the problem of people stubbornly insisting that they have the right to choose whether to have kids or not.
And solving the economic and other problems associated with population decline might just help to solve a whole raft of other problems.
Even for those people who think immigration is the answer, it isn’t. Demographic collapse is going to happen everywhere. Immigration can only be a short-term answer (and I think that even in the short term it’s a bad answer).
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/08/ideal-size-of-the-american-family/ft_15-05-05_children/
Plus taking into account that this is in a libertine society where children are frequently depicted as nuisances and shackles.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/08/ideal-size-of-the-american-family/
Yes, the American society denies that different things make different people happy, and those differences are, among other things, determined by gender. In fact, globohomo ideology denies gender flat out: biologically there are two genders (this applies to all animals and even plants), so those who claim that there are more are actually denying the gender as such.
Besides, the propaganda in American society is obsessed with money, pushing wealth as the only valid sign of success. Using this criterion, some nonentities like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates are a lot more successful than Newton, Einstein, Shakespeare, Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, and many other greats who would be remembered long after people forget the names of those nonentities.
Easy, just tax it 🙂 What we are discussing now is akin to wondering whether trains/cars or washing machines need to be taxed in order to save horseshoe makers/servants in 19th century – it is certainly a big problem, but short term one on historical scale. In the end, ownerhip of commercial and personal cars is in fact taxed today without much problems, so robots, including self driving cars, can be taxed too as well.
tbf, robotics and automatics developments are too slow at the moment and need to speed up, e.g. creation of personal elderly care capable doing robots are sorely needed, but are nowhere to be seen yet.
What is required, above all, is demographic realism.
To that end, China just became my favorite foreign country.
http://archive.is/vEGTx#selection-1367.275-1387.116
I think it is fundamentally unhealthy for society to embrace declining population. It is nihilistic, and I think somewhat analogous to why homosexuality seems to be such a destructive force today. And why it has often been viewed as a spiritual corruption.
Anyway, embracing decline doesn’t work in theory because there will always be intergroup competition. Groups that shrink will be overwhelmed by those that grow. Speaking personally, I don’t want to be on the other side of an African population explosion. And the money behind political parties is all for growth – there’s no way antinatalists will cause a revolution there. The Shakers never affected politics, so far as I know, and none exist today.
BTW, I doubt if any cultural change that increased fertility would be viewed as destructive and not broadly positive, provided it was not compulsory.
That’s a very funny post. I imagine Ron also has a sense of humour, and may enjoy the pictures.
An interesting and related aside, it is quite eccentric to repeatedly compare yourself to Lord Voldemort when the character’s fictional conception has remarkable parallels to your own.
Nevermind that Lord V is both a Nazi and the designated bad guy. He is everything the world wants to ignore the existence of.
It is a funny self-comparison, but one I don’t feel very comfortable laughing at. It feels like when someone is in real pain and mocking themelves. It leaves me awkward, but possibly I am being sensitive and that awkwardness is my issue. I’ll contemplate it.