The town of Ozery.
This week’s Open Thread.
Open Thread 117
This Post about *default,
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was written by Anatoly Karlin for Russian Reaction on September 4, 2020 .153 Comments
Anatoly Karlin is a transhumanist interested in psychometrics, life extension, UBI, crypto/network states, X risks, and ushering in the Biosingularity.
Inventor of Idiot’s Limbo, the Katechon Hypothesis, and Elite Human Capital.
Apart from writing books, reviews, travel writing, and sundry blogging, I Tweet at @powerfultakes and run a Substack newsletter.
This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Recently read Barry Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative (1960.) Short book, but I do not recommend it.
My main takeaway is that he was a psychopath who would have led us all into a nuclear holocaust, i.e. that LBJ’s infamous daisy spot was essentially correct. And I say that while also thinking LBJ was also some sort of a monster, in his own unique way.
Goldwater apparently wanted to roll tanks into Hungary during the uprising, and threaten to use nukes, if the Soviets didn’t back away. He was against any diplomatic contact with communist countries, and wanted to foment continuous rebellion in all of them.
The basis of his arguments for domestic policy re: de-segregation were also quite bad. To paraphrase a bit: desegregation is the moral course, though I disagree with it on legal grounds. Muh Consitution – look up Congressional record, when blacks passed the 13th during Reconstruction, and read the debates!
Of course, in later life he advocated stacking the military with gays and the legalization of weed.
“Goldwater apparently wanted to roll tanks into Hungary during the uprising, and threaten to use nukes, if the Soviets didn’t back away. He was against any diplomatic contact with communist countries, and wanted to foment continuous rebellion in all of them”. – Not a bad plan. Perhaps Soviet Union could have been pushed back already in 1956. Unfortunately Eisenhower was more concerned pushing back French and Brits from Suez Canal using the thread that Soviet Union may get upset if they don’t do it.
As far as the nuclear Holocaust all what was needed to contact Karlin’s future parents and ask them if they were for it. Past Karlin’s utterances on nuke usage and via back regression in IQsim and HBDism that he subscribes to leads to ineluctable conclusion that his parents would acquiesce to be nuked.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1286761471263768580?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
… but that’s not the reason not to recommend the book. 😉
The book is short. It is revealing. What not to like?
Barry (like many Americans) had a problem with geography. Hungary had no land border with a NATO country. The only way for the tanks to get in was from Germany via neutral Austria. It wouldn’t work, and it would take too long. Threatening to use nukes on the Soviets was pointless: Red Army was in Hungary since 1945 because Hungary was among the defeated Nazi-allied countries who invaded Russia in 1941. What would they nuke, Budapest?
Goldwater was a moron. His combination of dysfunctional libertarianism with aggressive neo-con foreign policy is today represented by the never-Trumpers and by almost all Democrats. It shows that moron memes have a way of surviving when unchallenged. I recall reading that the old-hag Hillary was a Goldwater girl in 1964, as they say: once a b…ch, always a b…ch.
He was basically the first neocon politician, before neoconservatism officially became a thing, and when neocon intellectuals still formally identified with the Democrats.
He was half-Jewish, and his political views were of the libertarian-ish, “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” variety.
Goldwater’s advisor and speechwriter during his presidential campaign was Harry Jaffa, the Jewish Straussian neocon intellectual and founder of “West Coast Straussianism”. Jaffa wrote the famous line from Goldwater’s speech, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is not a virtue”.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DyuE-_kX4AAOEG_.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSm4PxGHJhXGTZO3-MWA0dqO2WWq7f9YCjESA&usqp.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJPwMZ8XkAACE22.jpg
Can’t believe how cucked Australia is. They can’t act in their own interest when their future literally depends on it.
I think Australia will be hurt the most along with the UK in the great bifurcation that is going to happen.
https://twitter.com/onlydharma1/status/1301824166409179136?s=21
https://twitter.com/onlydharma1/status/1301824426795728898?s=21
Bakshi mentioned Sindhis being weird before||
Also:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/730236383536349276/751692408676155482/Guru_Maharaaj.png?width=1086&height=610
Excellent analysis by Andrer Korybko on the India/China conflict. The conflict was inevitable because of the difference of philosophy. Chinese are Confusion and seek harmony while Indians are acolytes of Chanyka who are more Machavilian.
http://thealtworld.com/andrew_korybko/it-was-inevitable-that-india-would-seek-to-actively-contain-china
These students figured out their tests were graded by AI — and the easy way to cheat
Profit Diversity Spain Gaul China India Africa ftw!
Most efficient system of learning (assuming people who actually needed to learn something to pass a test, rather than daycare purposes) would be zero classes but ust providing peopel with learning material and having frequent, marked tests
When will your Great Bifurcation essay be released?
Goldwater’s memory is pretty much all that is left of the man at the smallish memorial park within affluent Paradise Valley, AZ. Since moving to Arizona, I’ve watched this state go from being solidly red to a contested “purple” state. Within 5 years, I predict that Arizona will be solidly in the blue camp. Arizona will certainly be in play in the upcoming November elections. The man very much appealed to my father, because of his staunch anti-Russia/Soviet hawkish views:
https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/bmsc_AohkrUcws9cmRH7lA/o.jpg
Housewives in India own 11% of the world’s gold.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhGYjFCXcAMo1IS.jpg
Hey Anatoly,
At one point, not too long ago, you ran about 53 straight threads about the Coronavirus, and now that the Russkies have beat the good old USA in the race for an effective vaccination you’ve remained silent. What gives? Have you got your immunization yet? No need to run around anymore with the mask, eh? Must feel good…
I increasingly think Brexit is a bad idea because Britain doesn’t have anywhere near as strong a hand economically as most Brexit supporters seem to believe it does.
Also, I think Britain is in a stronger position trading internationally as part of the EU in geo-political and soft power terms than it is attempting to trade as a power in its own right. I feel there is more good will internationally towards Europe (particularly France and Germany) than there is to Britain.
Brexit is very much an emotional decision, despite supporters attempts to portray it as a pragmatic one. A lot of British people just resent playing second fiddle to Germany and France and resent having to comply with trade and economic rules that have largely been written by them, even though it’s probably the most pragmatic decision.
https://static-independent-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/06/06/15/vote-leave-map.png
Very effective.
Utter tosh. Chinese are aggressive simply because their economy is 5X bigger. There has never been as big a difference in total GDP between China and India as there is now. Ever.
The rules of geopolitics are the same for everyone. Pseudoscientific psychobabble like this is no better than amateur “hot takes” trying to intellectualise the fact that the Chinese play Go and Westerners play chess.
Are you sure you are not reflexively taking the side of Israel?
Anyway, the conflict over the Suez Canal doesn’t seem important now. The U.S. gave away the Panama Canal, which was much more difficult and expensive to build, to a much smaller country. You better believe that the Brits would have given away the Suez by now.
As India and China clash, it is time to heed Chanakya
https://m.hindustantimes.com/columns/as-india-and-china-clash-it-is-time-to-heed-chanakya/story-CFTOYQgrO4TqdRtryZN64H_amp.html
Chanakya Niti vs The Art of War: How India can tame the Dragon
https://thedailyguardian.com/chanakya-niti-vs-the-art-of-war-how-india-can-tame-the-dragon/
Chanakya’s View: China – Time to change our usual response
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/amp/opinion/columnists/130817/chanakyas-view-china-time-to-change-our-usual-response.html
India’s ‘Chanakya policy’ will outweigh China’s ‘art of war’, know how
https://news.newstree.co.in/news/indias-chanakya-policy-will-outweigh-chinas-art-of-war-know-how-69724/?amp
Chanakya can trump Confucius, writes Abhishek Manu Singhvi
https://m.hindustantimes.com/analysis/chanakya-can-trump-confucius-writes-abhishek-manu-singhvi/story-EdTsV1TSmooZyzm3IHwLAJ_amp.html
The same reason why Russia is so aggressive towards NATO.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTRC762WN-s00xhqdBFS-uoayJlMrc9Ch5FOQ&usqp.jpg
Been thinking about West Berlin.
For decades, it was such a focus of the popular mind in the West. The subject of political conferences, of famous speeches, of tense standoffs, of unprecedented logistical support during the airlift. People risked their lives to get to it. It entered into the popular culture in countless ways.
What was it then? Half a city, with no economic or military value. And what is it now? You would be hardpressed to find a more pozzed or less free area. In some places it is so trash-strewn as to suggest the worse parts of Africa, and it has plenty of drug dealers from there.
Strange how the West basically abandoned all its cities, including West Berlin – despite the temporary obsession with it.
Heard someone speculate recently that its culture was influenced by the many rootless draft-dodgers who migrated there over the years, and their descendants. That they killed the Berlin accent. It is an interesting theory, though I would guess it has more to do with non-German migrants.
Anti-Communist/anti-Soviet for sure.
Xiangqi is way more popular than Go in China.
Let’s see:
1) the Capital of the Soviet Union was in Moscow, Russia.
2) the leaders of the Soviet Union (definitely during Goldwater’s time) were all Russian.
3) the lingua francua of the Soviet Union was Russian
4) The politburo and other governing organs of the Soviet Union were headquartered in Russia
5) Most of the top universities were to be found in Moscow, Russia.
6) Most of the cultural and entertainment venues were prominently displayed within Russia.
7) Special deference to the Russian people was cultivated, especially after WWII.
8) Russification within the constituent republics was in full display, especially after the 1960’s.
9) Most of the world conflated the discriptors of “Russia” and “Soviet Union” as interchangeable terms, especially within the US.
10) the largest ethnic group (by far) within the Soviet Union was Russian.
11) The modern Russian Federation is officially the successor state of the Soviet Union.
I wasn’t aware that Barry Goldwater considered the two terms as being mutually exclusive?…
You must’ve watched Red Pill Germany’s video on this subject: How did Berlin become so leftist
Not all of the Soviet leaders in G’s time were Russian. Terms like the WW II Soviet military Byeolrussian and Ukrainian fronts contradict another claim of yours. In the US, some were more willing to embrace pro-Russian anti-Communists, unlike the pro-Bandera bigots who were influential within the Captive Nations Committee.
Russia assumed all Soviet debt and was the largest of the former Soviet republics in size and population. As was true with Nazi Germany, Soviet successes couldn’t have been achieved without the help among a substantial number within numerous ethnic groups. That some equate Russia and the USSR as being synonymous, serves to highlight a prevailing ignorance among a good number.
When followed up with him, I doubt that Goldwater would’ve trouble in accepting these points.
A lot of people used to be paid to smuggle gold into India. They would pound off the marks on bars, wear special-tailored vests on flights to India and use fake passports, make calls in code when they got there, and meet – the horror! – in Indian public bathrooms. Used to be a job open to any strong young man.
I think India’s obsession with gold jewelry is fascinating. I know it is meant to be a store of wealth, but I wonder if it has something to do with the caste system.
Surprising about mask wearing – English people are almost all wearing masks now, and behave very politely and civilized in terms of social distancing. Although epidemic is had been at the bottom of the wave in the UK for a long time, probably more because of changes of behaviour during summer weather.
My recommendation from watching this week, is “Playtime” by Jacques Tati. No narrative, but effective satire about modern architecture and alienation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y4g3BT8Z_Y
Until James Bond stopped them
I went out this morning and there were maybe 20% masks and very little social distancing. On what basis do you form your opinions about British behaviour?
By what standards are you judging Berlin? Compared to other cities in Germany, or compared to cities in other countries than Germany?
I’m sure it is a disaster compared to some other cities in Germany, but compared to most of the world it’s still a far above average city.
Many parts are strange and “alienating” city, but as a tourist I did not find anything as strange as I saw in American cities of equivalent size. If you could transport Berlin into America, it would be celebrated as one of the country’s better cities.
Berlin seems to have good and cheap public transport and still large areas of impressive bourgeois residential streets. And then the high level of culture life if you lived there – i.e. one of the world’s best concert hall and orchestra.
Superficially also it seemed like quite a safe city (perhaps in German standards it would be considered very dangerous, but definitely in world standards it seemed to be safe). Also for tourism – I remember residents there seemed very helpful and friendly to us tourists.
Huh. So our dumbass retard president just signed a document in Washington that is so damaging that I don’t know if there ever was a worse one in history, signed willingly at least. It accomplishes the following:
5, Israel and Kosovo mutually recognize eachother
So we managed to alienate the Arabs, China AND Russia. We will unironically be exterminated as a result
Good for them, I guess.
Correct, though by coincidence, Berlin had entered into my thoughts slightly beforehand, as it was mentioned in the last two books I read, or rather one being a book that I am currently reading.
Colonel Sun. A James Bond novel, but not by Fleming. Believe someone may have mentioned it indirectly in a thread a while back. Glanced through a few pages of it years ago – weirdly enough to (possibly) recognize it, though it didn’t interest me at the time. Thought I’d give it a try – and was pleasantly surprised, for the reason that it is wonderfully un-PC. Reminds me a bit of Fu Manchu, but with some swipes at other peoples as well.
Seems in sharp contrast to the movies, which I believe have been pozzed in some measure at least since Grace Jones starred in A View to a Kill (1985.)
Aside from the analysis of Korybko, this 0 sum mentality is something I have observed with Indians and I think it is from their caste system.
Indians care much less about the wealth of their country and much more about their relative position within their caste.
This is why Indians are willing to be subservient to America since in their mind their are advancing above others. But in reality half their population still shits in the street.
Are you talking about inside buildings or outside buildings? I’m talking about inside public buildings, as this is the one which is relevant for the anti-epidemic measure. It’s not necessary for us now to worry about people in the street anymore, as evidence seems to be that risk of transmission increases 15-20 times inside compared to outside.
If everyone wears a mask outside, it would perhaps save lives, but more likely in terms of reducing the damage to populations’ health from air pollution, than from reducing coronavirus transmission.
I guess there is a question if people who don’t wear the mask outside, will be more likely to not wear the mask inside public buildings? But we can see everyone wearing the mask inside. Even there are large shops, where you see almost everyone complying to wearing masks. So people who don’t wear masks in the street, are responsible enough to transition when they go inside – population seems intelligent enough to understand this.
Was that in a Bond movie – which one? Sounds interesting.
Wouldn’t say I’m a particular fan, as first I saw Bond as decadent and then pozzed, but lately I’ve been reevaluating my opinion somewhat. I appreciate how early Bond was both nationalist and unapologetically masculine.
NATO is actually more aggressive towards Russia, which is consistent with my observation about size mattering. You just self-owned.
India has historically had a very high rate of inflation and a continually depreciating currency. The Indian rupee gone from 40 rupees for 1 dollar in 2007 to 76 for 1 dollar just thirteen years later. Gold acts as a wonderful “store of value” in such circumstances.
Additionally, it is deeply ingrained in the culture. It is often viewed as high-status in a way it isn’t in the West.
“Playtime” looks quite interesting – “A Hallucinatory Comcome back fl’f a sly switcheroo and assumes the false identity of her close friend who’s succumbed to an illness, that catapults her into a ritzy lifestyle of 1950’s era San Francisco. You might enjoy this film for no other reason than it offers some interesting glimpses into the architecture of this era, including some very interesting and hilly San Francisco mansions and street scenes (a very decent scene including a runaway car that has lost its abilities to brake).
I watched “Lurid” basically because it includes two actors that I enjoy watching, George Sanders and Lucille Ball. The plot reveals some interesting psychological twists as Scotland Yard tries to track down the true identity of a London serial killer whose motus operandi and signature letters are reminiscent of the 19th century 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire. The slight roller coaster ride that ensues makes for some watchable faire.
I’d say that neither film is absolutely indispensable viewing (which is part of the charm of film noir, isn’t it?), but you could certainly do much worse elsewhere. I have to go and make breakfast, as my roommate is ransacking the fridge, but I’ll come back and review two surprise Ukrainian comedies that were really quite funny! 🙂
Steve Sailer talks about “The Plan”, basically a conspiracy theory to remove blacks from Washington D.C. and other major cities like Chicago and New York. It seems something similar is afoot in Stockholm. Though the targets here are more amorphous.
There are multiple steps to buying a newly built apartment. The first step is the land acquisition process. In Stockholm, this process has continually dwindled under our center-right municipal government in recent years. Most of the high building rate is done on older acquisitions, which are not being replenished in sufficient capacity. This will push up prices, as demand outstrips supply.
Lest you think it is just rank incompetence, they have also actively pushed the outer areas, especially immigrant-heavy neighbourhoods like Rinkeby, to sell their rented apartments (many owned by the municipal government) and convert them into properties to buy.
Several thousands of these apartments have been given these offers and the rules to make it happen are quite liberal. This would force many who live there to pack their bags and leave as they wouldn’t afford buying it, especially after the rules for taking a loan has been sharply adjusted higher. Now if your loan exceeds >50% of the property’s value, you have to pay off the principal, not just the interest. Getting a loan to begin with has become far harder for lower-income groups, as a result.
On top of that, the current center-left government (nationally), with crucial support from the neoliberal ‘centrist’ parties, have begun deregulating rent prices. Until recently, it was all set by the state. Two new developments: first, all newly built apartments for rent have to be priced according to market prices. Secondly, even older apartments now have to take geographic location into consideration. The government is now exploring fully phasing in market prices, which would increase rent by 40-50% in many areas in Stockholm, where the increases would be the sharpest.
Stockholm is thus slowly becoming an island in of itself, with high and growing economic barriers surrounding it.
While constantly claiming the inverse. Reminds me of another!
Nehru’s Forward Policy.
Before the 1962 Sino-Indian War, the Forward Policy had Nehru identify a set of tactical strategies theories designed with the ultimate goal of effectively forcing the Chinese from territory that the Indian government had claimed. The doctrine was based on a theory that China would not likely attack if India began to occupy territory that China considered its own. Part of Its thinking was based on the fact that China had many external problems in the early months of 1962, especially with the Taiwan Strait Crisis. Also, the Chinese leaders had insisted they did not wish for war.
Nehru began acting out a policy of establishing new outposts further to the north of the line of control. In June 1962, local Indian commanders had established Dhola Post, in Tawang. The issue was that Dhola Post was one mile north of the McMahon line and was clearly regarded as being in Chinese territory, even by Indian standards.
General Niranjan Prasad, commander of the Fourth Division, would write, “We at the front knew that since Nehru had said he was going to attack, the Chinese were certainly not going to wait to be attacked”.
Many parallels between Modi 2020 and Nehru 1962. Not owned just counterproductive.
The outcome of Nehru’s forward policy was not what he had wanted.
It generally happens to everyone. They still don’t have a crystallized internal structure yet, but they’re getting there. As long as you don’t have such a coherent structure, you get the rootless or semi-rootless elite problem.
Funnily enough, their caste system can be easily modified and repurposed for such a thing.
Hindu religious literature holds gold in very high esteem, for it protects, and it has same qualities as gods and our souls.
Christianity and Buddhism do not give same prestige to gold.
I don’t disagree: Berlin is probably better than most major American cities. Though, it is sadder for me to perceive a European city in decline than an American one. In America, major cities have have always been thought of more abstractly, as places of business and change – many left them, even before blacks showed up. And, of course, being generally dominated by skyscrapers, they don’t have the same homey feel.
In the context of Germany, I wonder if Hamburg might be more pozzed, though more respectable. Of course, Berlin was very seedy in the Weimer era, so maybe the explanation is not as simple as it appears.
When world gold prices go up, fewer baby girls in India survive the first month of life. This is linked to gold often being part of bridal dowries in India so when gold prices go up, the cost of raising girls rises and families tend to neglect or abort them.
https://qz.com/india/1399816/in-india-gold-prices-affect-dowries-and-girls-survival/
For AP:
https://twitter.com/EduardHabsburg/status/1302232790289788928
I’m sympathetic to anyone trying to fight inflation, but what I find so puzzling about it is, how come they don’t fear being robbed and killed for it? Does it have something with the extended family living together? Maybe, with the wider social strata?
Like, don’t they wear it at weddings? I’m surprised they are not robbed at gunpoint. Maybe, there would be retribution, and that’s what stops it?
I know people who buy precious metals and store them in their safes. Personally, if the economy collapsed, I think they would be robbed quite quickly. Probably their names and addresses are on special lists already.
Sorry, but comment #45 came out garbled. I couldn’t self edit the comment for some reason, as it went into Alice’s “Never, never land”. Anyway, the first film that I “reviewed” was “The House on Telegraph Hill”. Not a bad film noir effort that includes some nice photographic exemplars of 1950’s San Francisco.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5e/The_House_on_Telegraph_Hill_Poster.jpg/220px-The_House_on_Telegraph_Hill_Poster.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d0/LuredPoster.jpg/220px-LuredPoster.jpg
The second film “Lurid”
1) Someone is cherry picking the numbers here. For example, Inmarsat, a UK firm, dominates the world market for Marine and Civil Aviation location and communications. It also has a large business tracking trucks. That’s an extra 13 satellites for the UK right there.
The UK Met Office works through EUMETSAT, an EU wide programme. Not counting a share of these is specious. The same for the entire European Space Agency fleet. This also applies to the French count. This analysis has an agenda. It doesn’t include accuracy. Breaking down the EU into component countries in matters of trade is a complete distortion. Lunatic right wingers at work! (So will please most readers of this site – I am here for the debatem mostly about Russia not agreement).
2) Those bar charts area a demonstration of the Gravity Model of Trade. Without adjusting for it, they mean nothing.
Of course, propaganda and lies are part of geopolitics. Were you born yesterday?
Ben Aris has published two important pieces on Belarus in the last few days.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin arrives in Minsk to close on a “Rublezone” Union State deal – And that was it.
I have maintained from the get-go that the only acceptable outcome for Russia would be integration. Anything else would be a loss and a huge embarrassment. They are also pushing for a military base, which Lukashenko long held out on as a bargaining chip, but given his weak position this now also seems to be within reach.
The only outstanding issue remaining to be resolved is the utter shambles of Belarus’ economy. One of the very few brightspots in Belarus has been the IT sector, much like in Ukraine. But there’s now a significant exodus occuring. That can only be stemmed long-term if Russia managed to level its wages with the mainland and/or give its most talented an easy/preferential path to a residence in Moscow. Otherwise, there will be more emigration.
What’s with the pissing match between Jennifer Griffin and Trump???
Lol. anti-immigration wignats being pro race/caste mixing is fully expected of christcuckery.
Gold is passed down to daughters, land to sons||
End of.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B6sNldol8TH/
I think you’re starting to get my point.
Hinduphobic english media blood libel against Dharmics continue||
No country has even ratio at birth, the sex selective abortion died out in the 90s after they banned it||
Was brought over by whites (ford foundation)
Rural India has higher female mortality in puberty likely due to malnutrition||
That you quote some bitch talking about education & feminism as positive, shows why the Gods have decided to rid existence of the white race||
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
Baby PWRs. Rolls Royce has plans to make them too.
All the forgings have to come from Hitachi’s Japan Steel on Hokkaido so far as I know. Sheffield Forgemasters in the UK can do full size PWR pressure vessels but capacity is limited. The same applies in Pittsburgh. I guess that will change if it works.
Waterloo, Dino De Laurentis/Mosfilm, 1970.
Filmed using actual actors. 15,000 Russian infantry, 2,000 Russian cavlary. (Conscripts need something to do). The biggest battle scenes with real actors at anytime, anywhere. It shows too. Far better than CGI. Magnificent aerial photography taken from a hot air ballon.
Apparently the local government, soemwhere in Ukraine, bulldozed away 2 small hills to get the topography right.
It takes the line that Napoleon was having an off day (he was suffering from piles for example) and that he had Wellington beaten at least 3 times (two of which happened during Ney’s charge) but for bungling – not spiking the British guns, no infantry support. It’s not laid on thick. You need to know the story of the battle to see it.
The now notorious Picton, former governor of Trinidad and cruel slave owner, features. He died at Waterloo. Picton revolutionized the British supply chain by using bottled food. French and Russian quartermasters did the same independently.
As I have said on another thread, a day after Putin’s support became clear, Lukashenko signed an agreement to move tractor production for light and medium tractors to Russia. He’s punishing bolshy workers not mending his bridges. No doubt there have been other deals involving the Belarus deep sea trawler fleet (sanctions busting). Lukashenko has chosen Putin over the Belarus people as his source of power. Belarus is now in the position of Ukraine in 2004 when the Orange protests were suppressed. The population is going to become firm supporters of EU Association.
https://twitter.com/JasminMuj/status/1302281204805201922?s=20
White race is a colonial term, it has no place in the Old World. I prefer European, after all I know many so called Yellows who definitely are fairer than most Mediterraneans or French. Members of civilized nations should not appropriate such Anglicisms.
Even Marco Polo called Northern Chinese and Mongolians White…
After losing Montenegro, Serbia lost all its capability to be an independent country or to have an independent foreign policy.
Now for your own and even for Russias good, you should try to integrate in EU as quickly as possible, then at least you could get some desperately needed funding(reparations for bombing you!), and you could be Russias best friend and supporter in the EU. As a small nation you need to be pragmatic, good luck!
Soviet Union was dying of a thousand cuts, but it should be very clearly stated that the final blow to it was inflicted by the Russian, so called, “small nationalism”, which obviously did not feel Soviet Union and Russia were synonyms.
As for the other questions like succession, debt, diplomatic property, nuclear weapons etc. these were all technicalities.
The main deal was simple: recognition of Soviet Union’s internal borders as international in exchange for all of the above. I believe the deal was agreed with the West before the dissolution of the Soviet Union started.
The jury is still out there, though, about the wisdom of this development.
Guess that first one is the obvious answer. The real world political background of Bretton Woods is actually a pretty interesting basis for a spy movie. I know I’ve seen the end of it, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the beginning, or at least I don’t remember it well.
Even when I was in elementary school, I understood what the second one meant – we all did. I mean, I can actually remember someone mentioning it in school, during lunchtime – and it seemed redundant to say. Reminds me of something funny: at around the same time, someone told me there was a topless scene in National Lampoon’s European Vacation, and I didn’t believe him because I had seen the TV cut of the movie. Those were the days of innocence.
WTF is wrong with you? Everybody with an IQ over 8 knows that the Soviet leadership, the Soviet people as a mass deserved the Nobel Peace Prizes in 1956 and 1968 for their beautiful, honourable, proportionate, diplomatic, quick, moral actions against US controlled student/thug subhumans in Hungary and Czechoslovakia….. that also greatly benefited the societies of those two states for a long time after.
Don’t forget drugged German Nazi cockroaches cheating their “win” in the football World Cup against the Hungarians – a team viewed as possibly the greatest in history.
The same vermin who orchestrated these student losers are the same powerful Western vermin who could not and would not allow a Communist team to win the World Cup, particularly in Europe…. so they cheated in every possible way.
You notice how sh*t Hungarian football team is now there is no Communist system?
Plus the ban on Hezbollah and pledging to push for international LGBT decriminalisation.
They just couldn’t resist squeezing everything on the present American bucket list in the agreement.
Edit: forgot the Jewish property theft.
You have been very silent on the disastrous performance of ukropia on coronavirus, Mr Hack / Elephant man…. particularly the trend in the last 2 weeks.
Of course that is because you don’t value Ukrainian life, like all demented North America diaspora…. and only interest is in this “anti-russia” project in the fictional land of “Ukraine” – that’s why you know how Russia is doing on coronavirus but zero idea on Ukraine.
You said it before – ” I am not a Galician”.. and if you are not a Galician, then you are a Russian – although a dopey, endearing, crazy Russian.
I must say that is a relief because when you were displaying your “Ukrainian” disorder on here, I thought there was a very serious chance that you were the actual Boston strangler. Now that facts are established you are a culture-loving ( crazy) Russian…. it raises your profile.
Of course corrupt western media won’t report Ukrainian coronavirus (and compare health system to Russia’s) but no doubt for afew in Western apparatus the navalny issue is very helpful for their position in Ukraine – ukrop see Putin position becoming even stronger and more successful, excellent work on the virus, Krim, Krasnodar and Stavropol very busy with people on holiday, extremely successful constitutional vote, beautiful day on 24th July, economy much less hit badly from the virus than other countries … placebo effect for Zelensky eroded as his rating goes further down and ukrop from one social & economic disaster to the next….. no doubt this must make Ukrainians think….. so manufactured Navalny issue is helpful to west in making ukrops not see the obvious in Russia
Ouch. Does that mean that you need to go back now?
Now compare it to this, the delegation in Rambouillet
https://www.masina.rs/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Pregovori-u-Rambujeu-Milan-Milutinovic.jpg
the problem is, we can’t – our previous resistance angered the west, and now they want to completely humiliate us, make us beg and grovel. We literally won’t be allowed in the EU
I was talking about outside. But inside people frequently had them attached at the ears but were pulling them down to talk to the shop assistatns or each other and not making any effort to avoid each other (much less than a few weeks ago). In the pub, no guests and maybe half of staff were wearing them and there were many large groups.
Obviously, your reply belongs to Altan Bakshi #70.
Still, if I may intrude, your assessment of EU’s intentions towards Serbia looks quite erroneous to me.
Huh. The page must have chopped down while loading. Happens often, very annoying.
I’m not sure. We’re an unhealthily distrustful and cynical people. Practically everything is a conspiracy to exterminate us in some way in our eyes. I don’t know.
Either way, they’re globohomo dispensers anyway and I want to stay as far away from that as possible. I seriously don’t know if I could be held accountable for my actions if it becomes mainstream here
Why all of this sudden interest in my pedigree? You should have been able to figure out by now that I’m a natural born American of Ukrainian descent. Seriously, why do you seem to have this more than life sized hatred of all things Ukrainian anyway? Is it really so hard for you to understand that what is today Ukraine and Russia have taken decidedly different historical turns starting somewhere around the 14th century, and even before that there really wasn’t any well developed feeling of being a part of one nationality either? No matter how blue in the face you get trying to convince me of the opposite, it wont work. Try going to the UN and banging your shoe on a table to convince the world that Ukrainians and Russians are really one nationality. It hasn’t worked for Putler and it certainly wont work for you either:
http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2008/un_moments/un_moments_khrushchev.jpg 🙂
I don’t think that joining the European Union would be helpful or profitable for Serbia.
I don’t know whether you might have seen it, or if you are willing to watch a silent movie, but I recommend the film Safety Last! (1923) It is a comedy, which I think is the only silent genre that holds up. In a way, it touches upon the same urban theme.
It stars Harold LLoyd. He actually used to be more famous than Chaplin, but when TV came around he refused the rights for his movies to be aired, so Chaplin became more famous. If you do give it a watch – don’t read up on him beforehand, but as a test of your observation skills, see if you notice anything strange about him in the movie.
The movie has a really famous scene in it, which people were still referencing about 60 years later.
White means caucasoid christian I’m using the term in a post Islamic context।।
Liberalism is cultural Christianity।।
99% of whites believe in basic arms regulation & women’s rights।।
Cow slaughter & caste mixing are ingrained in the Euro cuck DNA & as hbd would tell you, these are not the same people we share blood ties with or who burst forth from the ancestors।।
These are Melechas & Maharaj Parikshit has shown the path of managing them।।
https://vedicfeed-409c.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/tumblr_oo3myc6CTp1qmevdjo1_1280.jpg
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
Unlike their current position where all the young emigrate to richer EU countries, like Romanians, Poles etc, but without getting any EUbux? Also EU/Nato would see it as a victory against Russia and its values. So there is some motivation driving them to integrate the Serbia.
But maybe being a whore is too much to ask from your nation? Unlike most of the Slavs, or even Europeans, they have at least kept their dignity.
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Matthew 16:26
Still I believe in pragmatism….
Even worse the terms like White subtly influences and Americanizes our thinking and is one step towards American led globalization, where people lose their ethnic identities and start to identify as White, Black, Asian etc…. Anyone who is an European or Asian patriot should resist such mental colonization by that evil and degenerate power. The term White has no place outside colonial societies! Or possibly even outside of (cursed)Anglo societies, but I dont know if a Criollo or Espanol are more popular terms in Latin America than Blanco?
Okay Negro is quite good term and has its uses, after all many Arabs and Berbers are definitely African, but not negroes, so African would be a bad choice.
You are Sikh? But why you then have a problem with a caste mixing? Your religion is definitely against the caste system, at least among the Sikhs, for you all are one Khalsa?
In Kalachakra Tantra its written that during the end times of Kali Yuga, all Dharmic people will be united into one Vajra caste against the Mleccha invaders. It seems that your Gurus tried something similar….
Strangely sometime ago I studied Kalachakra and found there that King of Shambhala taught Hindus to not eat beef so that they would not lose their identity when being under the rule of the Mlecchas.
But it makes sense, maybe Medieval Sufis could have converted the Hindus easily with their devotional attitude towards the God, which had strong similarities with Bhakti cults, but because of not eating cows Hindus kept their identity. After all a Medieval Muslim Fakir or Pir singing songs of love and Krishnaite Sadhu are not so far from each other, at least if judging their external behaviour. Of at least it is one of the reasons.
Still its clear that the manifestation of Mlecchas of our time is America and its masters, not the poor and divided Muslims.
Fix’t it for you.
P.S. Even worse when the ((())) are playing on the Nazi collaborator side. Judenrat is just yuck all around any way you look at it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMVtJGITNsE
If you are using the term “white”, and aren’t East Asian (yellow) or Amerind (red), you are ipso facto categorizing yourself into an undifferentiated (non-racial) brown mass, which might include nearly everything but the Nilotics. Unless you are using the term “black”, which some Indians might be dark enough to claim.
At the very least, doing so makes it seem like Europeans are living rent-free in your head.
Where I live, there are many people with ancestry from Quebec. Sometimes, they are dark-skinned and you hear older heritage Americans speculating that it is Indian blood showing. Of course, it is not impossible, but mostly I think it is Med blood showing – just look at the Boers, many of them are quite pale despite some obvious but small admixture.
Of course, some other Quebecois are quite Nordic-looking, since France is a variegated country. And anyway, blond people can often become quite dark, in summer.
https://twitter.com/DaanBarnard/status/1302250012630450177
Doubly true with Northern Asians, who tan much better than most Europeans, but without sunlight are almost milk white.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhOt-J3WAAA3e5l.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhJV4TdWkAEKaAO.jpg
Pub is already self-selecting for people who want to take their masks off in public buildings – as you can’t drink beer without doing that. So the clients of pubs are not representative of how people are behaving in the other public spaces.
I’m more worried about a second wave fuelled from re-opening schools and universities.
At least, university students should be careful enough to wear masks at their lecture. But if much of these students are living close together in the same small rooms, in college buildings and sharing public spaces. I don’t see how they return of the university students could avoid spreading the virus.
Which is your favourite film noir? Of ones I have seen so far, I think the most interesting and complex story is “Sunset Boulevard (1950)” – it is a strange dream.
Thanks – I didn’t see it and I didn’t watch many silent films yet.
A lot of silent films seem to involve climbing on tall modern buildings, and industrialized machines.
In 1920s, there is still perhaps a sense of miracle and horror of modern city life in buildings above about 10 floors.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRtACfR36iNWh_rc76fjdZqxwZ-TeaYhU_Fcw&usqp=CAU
First of all, as you pointed out, keeping independence is a worthy goal of its own.
But even from a purely pragmatic and economic standpoint EU membership would probably be bad for Serbia.
“All the young emigrate” is both hyperbolic and misleading. Inasmuch as there is mass emigration, it is not clear how removing barriers to it would somehow cause it to decrease. One can conclude from the experience of prior EU entrants that it would not decrease, but rather continue apace or even accelerate. With this in mind, a much better and more feasible solution to the demographic decline would be natalist policies, and it’s unclear whether the EU would provide any support for those, given that most western European govs’ policies to correct their own demographic declines have been to import massive amounts of people from Africa and Asia.
EU benefits come at a steep cost, the complete opening of the national economy to the EU’s richest economies. All precedent suggests that for Serbia, this would result in the (further) de-industrialization of the country and ownership and control of the remains by the richer countries within the EU (Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, etc.). If Serbia were to join the EU, it would likely develop a hamstrung, underdeveloped economy for the foreseeable future. The only circumstance in which joining the EU would be beneficial would be if Serbia already had a relatively healthy economy to make the most of membership but this is a long way off.
This is all without getting into the cultural syndromes that seem synonymous with membership.
One Khalsa still don’t do inter caste marriage.
Written into Rehit।।
We differentiate by religion।।
Universities seem like the perfect setting to develop herd immunity. Many young people isolated from the broader community, probably no contact with old people.
Persian lookism
https://twitter.com/narangestan/status/1301589480034512902
https://twitter.com/Julius_S_Malema/status/1302579516712407040
Yes, behold the faces of the losers.
As a rule, the more fancy uniforms and the better looking army, the worse it performs on the actual battlefield.
My willingness to like the Shah is tempered somewhat by the fact that he gave women the vote.
I used to be more sympathetic with this sort of thing, but every day it seems more and more gay
Meanwhile Qanon is spreading world wide, and unlike any other failed right or alt-right movement, women are in the forefront.
Yes, there is finally right wing movement that is attractive to women. It seems that fight against worldwide satanic pedophile conspiracy is what women always wanted.
Is the future that awaits us eternal fight between anti-racist SJW’s and anti-pedophile Qanonists? It may not be future we wanted, but it is future so dumb that we deserve it.
https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1302254209094615041
https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1301980786653114369
I especially like two films that include superstar Humphrey Bogart, “The Maltese Falcon” and “Casablanca”, although the latter is not technically film noir, it’s certainly close enough to fool most people into thinking that it is. If you haven’t viewed either film, please do, they’re really great films.
“Sunset boulevard” is a good film too, a little bit strange with the old aging spinstress actress withering away in her mansion, waiting to croak…I’ve seen it several times too, and it’s worth viewing.
Actually, I saw a good one this morning, “Black Angel” that was pretty good (a new one for me). It included perennial film noir specialist Dan Duryea and the always great Peter Lorre. The plot has some nice twists and turns and great photography effects too. I suggest that you watch anything that crosses your path including Peter Lorre, the greatest “creepiest guy” of all time! 🙂
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4c/Black_Angel_Poster.jpg/150px-Black_Angel_Poster.jpg
Out of the Past* (1947) is the greatest film noir, directed by Frenchman Jacques Tourneur – who made many other great ‘little’ films, some of them ‘noir’. (Casablanca is a decent B-movie, though not really a noir, and generally not considered a classic until American cultural hegemony somehow convinced us that it was).
US troops deployed in Lithuania for war games.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election-us-lithuania-idUSKBN25U1W6
I believe a provocation is possible before the US elections.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhXM4p6XsAAZq8s.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQjyiZilOFAQWrKFV4q0cbSNQhtIPvIdsD5lg&usqp.jpg
https://topcor.ru/uploads/posts/2020-09/thumbs/1599289992_pr4v4lin9w0.jpg
https://cdn.dvidshub.net/media/thumbs/frames/video/2009/766210/486x274_q75.jpg
early Medieval Hindus said the act of shaving amounted to self immolation.
The Muslims and thus Mughal emperors also looked at kesadhari Hindus with contempt. At least three firmans or royal promulgations of the empire are available in original where it is commanded that all Hindus have their hair cut.
ln Jaipur and Jodhpur archives these firmans are preserved in the form of Akhbarat e Durbar e Mualla i,e the news of Royal Court where in it is recorded that ‘His Highness’ has bestowed ‘khillat’ or the robe of honour to such Hindu nobles who had their hair cuts.
Al Biruni (1000ad) says Hindus do not cut their hair.
The situation is still tense at the border between China and India. Both countries accuse each other of provocations. Shots have been fired, probably by both sides.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/analysis-shots-fired-at-lac-dim-hopes-of-breakthrough-in-jaishankar-wang-talks/article32555206.ece
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1200226.shtml
https://twitter.com/licht_alberich/status/1303450664161415168
BOOM! (Kirk)
Casablanca is interesting because its narrative and style feels more like spoken version of opera libretto, than theatre (whereas most films and television series seem closer to substituting for theatre, with more character development, etc).
So I would say Casablanca differentiated itself by partly substituting a different genre of art (spoken version of opera libretto’s story), and that there has such a demand in our culture for opera libretto kind of narrative structure that cinema didn’t really substitute successfully.
For Casablanca, you would just need to composer to write the songs, and there is for example a goodbye song. This staging and appearance of characters just like end of Tchaikovsky’s opera version of Eugene Onegin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEWaqUVac3M
Casablanca’s popularity perhaps related to it having some of the effects on the audience of a night in the opera.
Thanks this is the recommendation I will follow, as it seems to have high rating on all the websites, etc.
High score in websites like Rotten tomatoes are, of course, not an indication that film will be good. But low rating is usually a sign that the film will be bad. I was a bit cautious and didn’t order Philip Owen’s recommendation, just because it had 27% rating https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/waterloo#contentReviews
Sure, many bad films receive high ratings by Rotten tomatoes. But how many good films have bad ratings? (I assume the latter is far smaller than the former).
Here in Evgeny Onegin – style in which Casablanca is presented not too far from watching in the opera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u3rum8k7pg
Would you happen to know any up-to-date demographic projections incorporating IQ estimates (thus indirectly also the approx. smart fraction size & future “science/eng/innovation capacity”) for the entire world? Basically, something providing more detailed numbers to quantify the trends described in your Apollo’s Ascent and AOMI posts. I think that would give a hint at the speed of decline, and whether one even has to worry at all about potential dysgenics making progress harder & harder before e.g. the biotech necessary for reversal can be made available.
I’ve seen some country-specific forecasts by the usual suspects (Lynn, Rindermann…) and would even be interested in putting something together myself – but if someone else has already reinvented the wheel for me, the less spreadsheeting & need to study demographics equations the better!
Russia plays chess, China plays Go, and the United States plays football.
https://www.dw.com/en/georgia-launches-joint-military-drills-with-nato-countries/a-54846498
Seen this?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhYFOQlXcAIaWkt.jpg
https://www.unz.com/isteve/olympic-war-games-past-when-putin-and-bush-negotiated-war-or-peace-in-beijing/
As I said, Qanon is the future. You know it when you see that Germans, who are always in the forefront of all new ideas, embrace it en masse.
Name what you want – nationalism, communism, militarism, pacifism, monoculturalism, multiculturalism, racism, anti-racism, environmentalism, LGBTism, Qanonism – you can trust Germans to take it seriously and put it up to eleven.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UpToEleven
Good times coming for everyone, and especially for anime loving alt-right.
Going to be fun when Qanon mom commissar checks your browsing history and your anime folders.
“Interesting pictures you have there, comrade. Are you now or have you ever been a PEDOPHILE?”
Trust the plan.
https://twitter.com/DittrichMiro/status/1303064161883222018
https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1303485296533700611
Women believing something retarded? I’m shocked
There is a very good English film called ‘It Always Rains on Sunday’, about a working class housewife just after the war (1947) who helps her lover who is a criminal just escaped from prison. Not usually considered as part of film noir, but I think it certainly fits the genre. Also very interesting depiction of working-class life in Britain without being sentimental.
But he’s such a genial man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5LNpP18DNg
In 2008 US special forces lost some interesting communication equipment there.
Although I am no fan of his, Dugin is certainly an interesting and original thinker.
Especially when compared to Bernard Henry Lévy.
https://youtu.be/x70z5QWC9qs
These two are an example of something sad and broken that has occurred both Russian and French non-technical university departments, that the universities were gullible and broken enough to give academic qualifications and positions to them, whereas despite all the problems and mediocrities of American universities’s non-technical departments, at least they didn’t yet assign Alex Jones as the professor of philosophy in Harvard.
Dugin’s biography is like an indication of something sad and broken in non-technical university departments, that it could be victim of fraud by an obvious and semi-educated kind of imposter or trickster.
There’s a funny video somewhere where Dugin is lecturing in the narcissistic way university students about how he attained true fluency of the English language, and his lecture in the university is explaining and boasting to students about how to become a master of learning languages.
Then you can see him on English television and he is promoting the world’s stupidest kind of cultural relativism (that the Ancient Greeks would have mocked as only the most primitive formulation of relativism), with a grammatical mistake in every sentence.
Thanks, from what I saw, the old English (maybe before 1960s) cinema is often good.
Most recent old English film I’ve seen is the comedy “Kind Hearts and Coronets”. Have you seen this one?
It’s a bit slow and its humour is quite a strange one, and more in the literary style of speech. I didn’t laugh, but admire its cynicism of comedy – even for satire, it has one of the most cold cynical styles of any film narrative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTOeAGSV5Ro
Most of these faculties don’t even have a single registered Republican on them, let alone far-right academics.
It’s reasonable that for social fields, there should be a quota for partisan appointments so that conservatives are represented.
LOL. There are many people as unhinged and delusional as Alex Jones in the academia.
More precisely, as unhinged as the persona AJ is playing – AJ admitted he is only “performance artist” who does not believe any of BS he is peddling 😉
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/infowars-alex-jones-performance-artist-playing-character-lawyer-conspiracy-theory-donald-trump-a7687571.html
I think the closest “confidence fraud” like Dugin in Russia, in the American university is – Cornell West.
That said, if you listen to Cornell, he is clearly has read some real books, whereas Dugin seems like he has never actually read books, and was educated from reading summaries in the encyclopedia, and copies half of his book from an encyclopedia.
His book has no coherence of arguments. It’s just like copy pasted paragraphs from Wikipedia (although he wrote it before the internet – so the best we can say is that he was at least copying texts from the encyclopedia in a real library).
Then in the final part of the book Dugin just writing his views, without any historical arguments or understanding.
If I remember Dugin’s views – basically: “Russians are imperial, spiritual, magical people. Russia must reject materialism. Russia needs to lose its fantasy as European country. Russia needs to stop pretending to have slavic identity. Russia must reject small nationalism, and embrace “big nationalism”, that transcends ethnic differences. Russia needs to integrate with Asian races and central Asia, to dominate the world.”
It’s like some text written by a semi-educated idiot, that you would ignore in YouTube comments section, or laugh at if someone posted those views here – except that we cannot actually call him an idiot as he has been successful with defrauding people with this, including somehow receiving academic qualifications and positions.
So in a way Dugin is a very intelligent person, but more in the sense of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Steven Spielberg’s film “Catch me if you can”.
IMO, QAnon is the other side of the “refugees welcome!” coin. Women on each end of the political spectrum have formed a partisan quasi-religion revolving around children, and it was facilitated by the internet, and probably by declining TFR. As well as the decline in masculinity, and the general feminine character of society in the current year.
Women on the Right don’t like being called racists. They are conflict-avoidant, so their trump card is to talk about pedophilia, because who isn’t against it? But here is the secret, which some haven’t grocked: they are primarily thinking about white children being abused.
Crazy as it is, I think QAnon is interesting because it might presage the formation of a real religion. A new one for women on the Right. One, which is still about children, but in a serious way – a based, pro-natalist ethno-religion. And if that should happen, then the Left is seriously fucked. The Right will have that metaphysical edge which Aaron_B likes to talk about (supplied by the irrationality of women), and they will also have, over the generations, exploding numbers.
These people are not even interesting in sense of looking at strange animals in the zoo – as they are mostly narcissists who are talented in self-promotion, who (unlike animals in a zoo) unpleasantly feed from our attention, and are untalented intellectually, and perhaps not even very educated.
There are certain professions where untalented intellectually, but talented at fraud people, can rise at the top – unfortunately, when standards in non-technical subjects in universities have collapsed, then it seems some of such frauds were able to become professors, and to promote wildly themselves in the media.
In technical subjects, there is the discipline of the subject, which helps to reduce this. While in some creative professions, – like with creative writers – there is at least a market of customers itself which checks the persons’ ability to fulfill their professional duty. If a creative writer produces a truly incompetent novel, then (in general) people will not enjoy the story, and it will not sell. Whereas if the fraudulent non-technical university professor creates illogical text, then he might gain his salary regardless.
Well, seems I was wrong and GPT-3 already qualifies quite well as an Artificial Intelligence when it comes to writing editorials to the Guardian.
Maybe we will live long enough to see Dugin and BHL debating GPT-3 together.
https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/09/08/the-guardians-gpt-3-generated-article-is-everything-wrong-with-ai-media-hype/
Funnily enough, it’s by the same director as the film I reccomended. I watched it several times as a child, but not recently (although maybe I will rewatch it this weekend, now that you’ve reminded me). I find it funny how large a part of British culture murder was at that time.
There was an interview in the Sunday Times with BHL a few weeks ago in the Sunday Times. My mother (who has no interest in philosophy etc) read it and asked me about him. I talked for several minutes about how he was a Zionist warmonger and a narcissist and so on. I’m glad you think so, she said, he seemed rather too full of himself.
BHL is an epitome of a narcissist. And he’s a liar. The fact that he is somehow seen as a philosopher only shows how damaged our Zeitgeist has become in the last 30 years or so.
Dugin started his career as an anti-Soviet dissident, while being the son of a highly ranked GRU officer (or was it KGB?). He helped create the first alliance of Russian nationalists, which contributed to bringing the Soviets down, but didn’t do anything praiseworthy afterwards.
Dugin and Limonov then re-created Russian National Bolshevism, only to split acrimoniously a couple of years later. Then Dugin became a Eurasianist, advocating for the union of all native cultures of Eurasia against the Atlanticist globalization. He also converted to the strict form of Orthodox christianity known as Old Believers, although in his youth he dabbled in some murky esoteric stuff quite opposite to what Christendom stands for.
From Eurasianism Dugin transited to Traditionalism through a very metaphysical interpretation of geopolitics. Dugin’s Traditionalism is as contradictory as the National Bolshevism he helped to revive. It is probably just as genuine as Dugin’s Old Believer convictions.
Of course, Dugin has never been an inspiration to Kremlin’s politics., although he sometimes has been presented as such in the West. All in all, Dugin is a surfer on different intellectual waves: moving fast on the surface, without really diving into the depths. In this regard, despite his lengthy and contradictory evolution, Dugin stayed the typical Soviet dissident he was in his twenties: eclectic, radical and rather destructive.
But unlike BHL, AGD is still interesting and amusing. BHL is just full of sh*t, predictable and boring.
It is hard to take anyone seriously as a thinker, after they once used the word “racism” to describe the problems of the West. Why would I ever care about anything else he has to say, after he’s uttered such a transparently naive and superficial answer?
Perhaps, that is a reductive approach, but it surely works for politics or philosophy. History might be a little different – it depends on the degree.
History is not even a science in my opinion. An historical event is amenable to so many different subjective interpretations that its objective reality becomes impossible to determine. Hence historical revisionism, which is quite enjoyable as a hobby.
An interesting and creative metaphor to get your thoughts about the man understood!
In many cases, the sources are rather limited, so the average historian is forced to stick to them, whatever their merits. This results in a great deal of repetition of narrative over the generations, which probably encourages the standard mainstream historian these days to offer one or two woke departures, to mix things up a bit. Though, I consider these not to be too noisome, but entertaining for their unintended humor.
Like for instance, years ago I was reading a book about the sinking of the whaling ship Essex, and the author theorized that the black crew member was shot and then cannibalized because he was black, even though there is no evidence to suggest he was shot.
Such things makes me laugh (depending on their originality) though I suppose they may be harmful to certain people.
Wokism is an epiphenomenon, although an annoying and pernicious one. But historical reinterpretation is something that goes back millenia.
I see history as a Soviet-born Russian who now lives in the West. I know from personal experience that history is not only subjective and relative, but is also terribly frail and impermanent. The history of the last hundred years is proof of that. Just imagine what we may think of the history of the last 1000 years, not to mention more ancient times.
We basically live in an historical mythology that can be reinterpreted by those who define the narrative. Something right today becomes wrong tomorrow, the hero becomes the villain, freedom becomes slavery, the whole “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia” type of thing. As a species we really have no firm grasp on our past, let alone our future. We stumble along the historical path as a drunk, having no idea where to find our rest and cure our drunkenness.
This is a problem of epistemic access, not of reality.
There is a real objective history – physical reality of what has happened, as well the set of human psychological states that accompanied it at the time (and which would have had physical correlates at the time even in terms of neurological states – even peoples’ undocumented emotions have objective correlates).
The problem for subsequent people to access knowledge about that is a different topic, and the task of the historian is to try to remove the obscurantism through which that reality is distorted by interests of by mythology/nationalism/religion/business and just problems of human psychology.
Since Thucydides, the professional duty of a historian is to try to clarify about what has actually happened, and to remove some of the layers of mythologization and lies which accumulated onto our past.
Of course, a professional historian has such a Sisyphean and never fully achievable task – but even though impossible, it is not less noble as an ideal for them to aspire to.
Similarly, every detective knows that, when they find murder victim – there is a true answer “Who killed them and how did it happen?” Whether they will ever find answer or not, does not mean that there does not exist a more or less objectively accurate description of the murder. This is a problem of epistemology, not ontology. There is an objective world in which we live, and when someone is murdered, the answer to the case detectives seek is not a matter of “interpretation and mythology”.
Although there are plenty of narcissists in a history of ideas, and for some of them this character flaw probably helped to magnify their reputation, and help them to form “schools” of followers: for a recent example – Sartre. Sartre was a narcissistic, self-promoter, with a strange concept of morality, and nonsensible political views.
But at least Sartre was also educated, talented, hardworking, literary person, with original perspectives about the world.
With Sartre – there was such a “thinker who was unfortunately an annoying narcissist”. Whereas nowadays the problem seems more often to be “non-thinker narcissist who (aided with some charisma) pretends to be thinker”.
I wish there were more Sartres today, as even with his all bad personality and political idiocies, he was still unarguably at a much higher standard of education and originality, than most people who promote themselves as part of the intelligensia today.
Dugin we are just at a level of an ordinary fraudster, who grows a beard and pretends to be a thinker. Some frauds can cheat at the bank, by emulating real peoples’ signatures. Dugin has managed to cheat the university to give him an academic qualification, despite that his dissertation was full of misunderstood nonsense about “Dirac equation”, “chaos theory” and “Planck’s constant” .
His books are like some mix of copy-paste from encyclopedia (this part of the text seems more competent and logical), and then parts which he actually wrote as “original ideas” (which are unargued rhetoric and nonsense).
I don’t pretend that there’s no objective historical reality, I just happen to have a nearly absolute conviction that there’s nothing objective about historical science.
BTW, now that I think about it, maybe the whole BHL vs AGD debate was an elaborate joke? If that’s indeed the case, then someone should congratulate the organizers for their excellent sense of humor.
Some questions seem very objective. For instance, why is there no blue staining on the building allegedly used as a gas chamber, while there is on the building known to be used as a delousing chamber?
Sure.
But regardless of the objective quantifiable data and falsifiable hypotheses (amenable to a purely scientific analysis), the mainstream historians will toe the line and historical revisionists will continue contesting whatever makes them unhappy.
Both of these groups take history hostage and make it a propaganda tool. As the Russian saying goes: “Both are worse”.
In the ideal world, we would want a history as dispassionate as astronomy is. That would help us learning from our past and avoiding tragedies generation after generation. But we are still quite immature as a species (less than 10 000 years of historical record of a dubious quality), so we value historical Truth only if it represents some competitive advantage. We value historical myths more because they increase our self-aggrandizing in-group and are supposed to lower the self-esteem of the competing outsider populations.
Sometimes it works and sometimes it backfires (as per your example above). This would be laughable if it was not so tragic.
Modern marketing in Russia should be centered around the ability to spend oodles of money in order to impress the Almighty??………………”Just do it”? Help?
The video is taken from a movie based on Generation P by Victor Pelevin, a satirical novel with metaphysical and psychedelic elements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_%22%D0%9F%22
The main character finds himself working in the post-Perestroika Russian advertising industry. The bearded personage in the video is a caricature of a Eurasisianist influenced by Dugin’s ideas.
If you are curious to know more, you can watch the complete movie with English subtitles for free on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/CpAdOi1Vo5s
I personally enjoyed it a lot, first time I watched it my kids came checking out on me because I was laughing like crazy.
A large part of the concepts of historians write about are psychologically mutual illusions (i.e. countries, leaders, kings, armies), which do not causally connect in the lawlike way that real things in the real world do. These concepts are in a sense just mutual phantasms, which no bridge laws could reduce to actually existing objects of biology -> chemistry -> physics.
However, these psychological objects which historian write about (armies, battles, countries, empires), are supervenient on reality – from the interaction of the human brain with real objects in the world, and many claims about these mutual fantasy objects, can be verified or disproved backwards from reality.
For a simple example, with the historical theory “Ancient Russians built the Pyramids of Egypt”.
In terms of reality, the referents of the words in this historical sentence are psychologically mutual illusions: “Ancient”, “Russians”, “built”, “Pyramids”, “Egypt”.
But the nouns referred to in these mutual illusions partially have conventionally agreed upon supervenience on real objects, and many of such theories can be verified, at least or disproved, by working backwards from the real objects which they are (in conventional agreement) supervening on.
“Egypt” – (type in geographic co-ordinates conventionally agreed upon in reference to this word)
“Ancient” – (type in certain time)
“Russians – (type in most frequent DNA patterns which are in current time prevalent in population existing in geographic co-ordinates conventionally associated with word “Russia”)
So such a historical claim doesn’t directly refer to real objects, but much of those concepts are at least supervenient on reality, and we could in theory disprove or verify a large part of historians’ claims if we had access to information about what was happening in reality at that time.
If “science” requires that concepts of the discipline refer to real objects, then “Historical Science” is a contradiction of terms.
But even with Computer Science, a large part of the concepts do not exist except as an mutual illusion, but they do require exploiting the regular or lawlike behaviour of real objects, and you can verify them backwards from physical record.
Perhaps is a positive side, to the promotion of clowns and untalented frauds.
In the past, there were often “public intellectuals” like Sartre, who were interesting and talented (in their field), but who had idiotic, violent and crazy political views. The fact that Sartre was interesting and talented in the literary field, resulted that a lot of people probably read his idiotic political views as if they were serious and important ones.
When Sartre said that Africans should kill white people to the extent latter did not run away from Africa, then half of world were probably accepting Sartre’s violent views as if they were not just from a politically eccentric idiot.
Whereas in the 21st century, we have promoted quite a high proportion of uninteresting and untalented frauds to be the “public intellectuals” – and it seems almost nobody feels any need to read their views seriously.
The promotion of untalented clowns to be “public intellectual” status, has removed the prestige of “public intellectuals”, and perhaps is not necessarily a bad thing, considering their influence in the past.
This concept of debate, seems to be some kind of narcissistic, almost medieval, kind of street entertainment. You would expect a kind of clowns to be talking there to entertain the crowd before they move to the next amusement.
Or nowadays to the next YouTube video or Facebook post. I believe you are right, we have become less sensitive to information in general and the clowns are cheaper by the dozen now on the web There’s a danger to this though: we might fail to notice a truly unique thinker simply because his message is lost amidst all the noise.
Not that I’m aware of. It would be a useful project.