Open Thread 136

This week’s Open Thread.

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 booksreviewstravel writing, and sundry blogging, I Tweet at @powerfultakes and run a Substack newsletter.

Comments

  1. This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.

    If you are new to my work, start here.

    Commenting rules. Please note that anonymous comments are not allowed.

  2. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says
  3. Mike Pompeos goes into final China Hysteria

    https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202101/1213071.shtml

    Brazil ditches US drive to strangle Huawei:

    https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202101/1213075.shtml

    Iran Launches Prophet Muhammad 15 drills, ballistic missile fell near US aircraft carrier

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyNxK3Zt3WA

    EU sets plans to reduce US dollar dependency

    https://inversezone.com/2021/01/16/eu-sets-plans-to-reduce-dollar-dependency-in-post-trump-era/

    Merkell’s successor attacked for being Assad fan

    https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/1350626266010021892

  4. Russian agricultural exports increased by 20% in 2020 to almost $30B. A year ago Putin said the plans were $45B by 2024. This looks more than manageable. Russian agricultural equipment is doing increasingly well too.

  5. Thulean Friend says
  6. Thulean Friend says

    The events on Jan 6 were likely instigated by federal agents and undercover agent provocateurs. Max Blumenthal has a overview since he lives in the city and went to the protest. He was even tipped off by knowledgable sources inside the government that something was about to happen. The only question is if it was planned or “allowed to transpire” but it’s clear it was stage-managed. Police even opened the doors to the Capitol for the rightoid rabble.

  7. Thulean Friend says

    Paris continues to show leadership in reclaiming our cities from the clutches of car cucks. The latest plan is a complete transformation of the famous Champs Elysée.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pplyJ-Mc-8U&feature=youtu.be

    The revolution is spreading. Oslo has created a plan to drastically reduce the available space for car cucks and make the city far more livable. They are taking back the city, street by street.

    Stockholm continues to be a sad laggard. This is in part due to the legacy of the car lobby (Volvo and Saab), which advocated for destruction of large parts of central Stockholm to make it much more car friendly in the 1950s. Some of that damage has been ameliorated but not fully reversed. At any rate, France also has a large automotive sector and a powerful lobby which makes the work of the mayor of Paris all the more commendable.

  8. Allowed to transpire if anything. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was some instigation involved.

  9. I can imagine a future where the inner city only has buses and self driving taxis.

  10. Shortsword says

    How much vaccine can Russia produce? It seems like the numbers produced has been very disappointing.

  11. Anatoly, I previously shared this 173-page online book (or article) with you on Twitter comparing about US regions and ex-USSR regions (and jointly written by US and ex-USSR academics in the 1990s):

    https://digitalcommons.spu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=works

    I was wondering–are there are classifications/categorizations and/or any analyses there that you disagree with?

    By the way, have you considered sharing this online book (or article) on your blog so that much more people would be able to see it and read it?

  12. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    Sinovac: Brazil results show Chinese vaccine 50.4% effective

    A better question would be – Is it is good? Two dozen or so elderly people have also died in Norway a few days after taking the Pfizer shot, and the medical experts have said they cannot rule out the deaths being caused by the side effects of the vaccine, rather than natural deaths or deaths due to COVID itself.

    Again, it just has to be emphasised that the foundations of this lock-down and hysteria are based on keeping very old people alive.

  13. Shortsword says

    Those numbers for Sinovac are supposedly that low because of different methodology. The article even mentions it. There doesn’t seem to be any clear numbers on it yet.

    The low numbers of vaccine doses produced by Russia is pretty expected. The competing vaccines are from massive pharmaceutical companies. But other countries are supposedly going to produce the Russian vaccine too. Let’s hope the production ramps up.

  14. anyone with a brain says

    The phrase “Ashkenazi intelligence” is misleading. I propose that the real intelligence is actually Khazar intelligence based on shared intelligence genes that east Asians have. Ashkenazi =/= Khazar. Only a certain subset of Ashkenazi are Khazar, mostly the ones living near the Khazar homeland, another brother ethnic group to the Khazars are the Hungarians who also have high intelligence. The Hazara of Afghanistan are resented and persecuted by the Pashtun because of their academic prowess and success, a similar dynamic to euro-americans and asian-americans.

    Jews are not the race of geniuses they claim to be. It is the Khazars that are, and only because they have diluted Asian admixture. Which makes asians yhe bigger geniuses.

    There are no Jewish i.e. Semitic genes for intelligence, the search and propaganda for one is Jewish conceit who can not admit that their geniuses is a gift from the Khazars.

  15. Of course we say “man” when we are disappointed. In order to be disappointed, you need somebody with agency and responsibility to fail your expectations. Those happen to be men. Women (smartly) try their hardest to dodge both, and so as they try less, they fail less.

    Men are workers and women are more like tourists. It is easy to be disappointed in a worker. But only an idiot would expect enough from a tourist to be disappointed in them.

  16. Demografie says

    So Russia saved Lukashenko only to Belarus … check notes… purchase direct competitor of Superjet with money lend by Russia. With friends like this, you don’t need enemies. Russia need make own Maidan in Belarus. https://www.aex.ru/m/news/2020/12/22/221101/

  17. Imo the “man” thing is an expression of brotherhood and solidarity with another man when things are tough.

    “I’m sorry that this happened, man”.

    But it is not only used as expression of disappointment, for example there is “you know, man?”, or “yeah, man”, “What’s up, man”, etc.

    It is some kind of group solidarity expression, when men bond as a group. When you say that, you signal to the other side that they are like you, or they think like you, ot that you are in this together, or that you feel sympathy and understanding to the other side, etc. It is a positive signal towards another man.

    I think it is similar to the “What’s up, nigga”? expression among blacks.

  18. Russian analysis on Biden’s Win.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJGytH2lZWs

  19. Korenchkin says

    Unrealistic amount of white people in that vid

  20. Bashibuzuk says

    https://youtu.be/9FrnNTyOAes

    The future is here!

  21. Bashibuzuk says

    Well if Lascher can keep it that way it would be based.

  22. If Ben Franklin were still alive, he would not be asking if it was a rising sun or a setting sun. He would be asking whether it will be an Indian elephant or an African elephant in the inauguration parade.

  23. Shortsword says

    Ukrainian electricity production is now below 50% of the Soviet peak in 1990. Over half the electricity produced is from nuclear power. But all their reactors are supposed to be shut down the coming decade and they’ve already had their lifespans increased. Do they have any plan to solve this? Can they keep increasing the lifespan of the reactors? New electricity production sources to cover this would be very expensive for Ukraine.

  24. Comments/questions regarding this Anglo-American establishment leaning commentary:

    https://www.unz.com/article/the-russian-revolution-separating-truth-from-myth/

  25. Gerard1234 says

    Russia generation of electricity from nuclear power exceeded peak of Soviet Union last year . Of course it does not require stating that compared to then in USSR time , this is more electricity supplying in Russia what would be about 55% of then Soviet Union population ,now.

    Lithuania are also f**ked from their dissolution of nuclear power

  26. RadicalCenter says

    Since Ashkenazi Jews are very often substantially Italian — about forty percent in this genetic study — their high average intelligence and academic / intellectual achievement should be presumptively attributed at least in part to their Italian heritage:

    https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/10/08/ashkenazi-jewish-women-descended-mostly-from-italian-converts-new-study-asserts/

    Are there any genetic-test studies that show Jews to have a meaningful amount of East Asian ancestry, or that they “cluster” genetically with East Asians or other Asians?

  27. Where do you park the elephants and camels? Looks like the first step towards a setting up a gypsy bazaar. I heard Europeans loved gypsies…..

  28. Anatolij, what’s your take on mastodon, pleroma and such like?

  29. Thulean Friend says

    Manoids should be capped at 20% of the population, which would ensure enormous global benefits in terms of reduced violence, war and dysfunction. Once such a change has been implemented, we will marvel at why we didn’t think of it sooner.

  30. Thulean Friend says
  31. Shortsword says

    There’s been a good amount of data suggesting that China smooths its official GDP growth numbers. This includes both increasing and lowering the official numbers. You can search for it, there’s plenty of information about it.

  32. These numbers aren’t especially good, and they certainly shouldn’t have been surprising.

    Why? China Q4 rose at above 2019 quartely levels (6,5 vs 6 – 6,3) just as the US stalled and Europe probably entered a double dip recession. Not bad, right in the face of slowing global economy. Money talks – hence the rise of the CNY, FDI and chinese bonds. That is – foreign money likes China.

    https://www.ft.com/content/93ad4482-aa8a-407a-8039-0538457356b3

    Maybe it made a mistake. But fact remains – money likes China.

  33. AltanBakshi says

    There was a quite large gender imbalance in the 50s Soviet Union, Im not sure but I think that women were almost 2/3 of population. So the country that got closest to your dream demographics was the late Stalin Russia.

  34. Bashibuzuk says

    You lower the number of PCR cycles and you get way less COVID-19 and then you up your GDP a notch et voilà ! You have proved that China is the Utopia par excellence. And yeah, don’t forget to erase all these Wuhan P4 gain of function studies otherwise the foreign devils might become suspicious.

    Modern warfare is information warfare…

  35. You just basically described Tinder or liberal arts college campus in the US where men are either invisible or absent. Those places are so dysfunctional they make Taliban village look competent.

    Per supply and demand, those 20% of men get to treat women like disposable trash (they can always get another woman), and women go nuts with antidepressants, wine and cats. This is how you get Hillary Clinton voters, hardly a global benefit. Just ask Libyan slaves.

  36. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    Manoids should be capped at 20% of the population, which would ensure enormous global benefits in terms of reduced violence, war and dysfunction.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9ihKq34Ozc

  37. So the country that got closest to your dream demographics was the late Stalin Russia.

    In modern times, which are perhaps the most interesting, yes, but:

    In 1950, the sex ratio in Russia (broadly the lowest of USSR) was 62:100 in the 25-49 age group.

    In 1648, after the Thirty Years’ War, some estimate that there were only 5 men in Sweden for every 9 women, which would be a slightly lower ratio (roughly 56:100), if correct.

  38. about forty percent in this genetic study — their high average intelligence and academic / intellectual achievement should be presumptively attributed at least in part to their Italian heritage

    Ashkenazi Jews’ high intelligence can probably be attributed neither to their Italian nor their Semitic heritage but to selection factors that occurred after their ethnogenesis in the late Roman period.

  39. Must be hard to compete with the native lads.

  40. Kent Nationalist says

    This is exactly the type of sicko stuff that could only arise in the brain of an Indian nerd

  41. Thulean Friend says

    Smoothing isn’t the only thing our Chinese friends are doing 🙂

  42. Selection doesn’t create variants. The question is, where did they get the variants? If they got them from Europeans (not a wholly unlikely scenario) then that adds another layer of irony to the standard political posture of Jews.

  43. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    You would have to be a homosexual not to find the idea of a 4:1 female:male ratio appealing. Perhaps strategic abortions could be implemented to achieve this end?

  44. I don’t know how easy it would be to make the sets or do the creature effects, but I think it would be an excellent basis for a horror movie, if it started out as people storming the Capital Building and breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s office and slowly discovering worrying signs of Satanism leading to some supernatural conclusion.

    It is not partisanship that makes me thing so, but there is something incredible creepy about her. It’s her advanced age, extensive plastic surgery, the fact that she comes from a political family and was an intern for a senator in the early ’60s, before America’s decline started.

  45. Morton's toes says

    What is the closest thing to an S&P Index fund for the Chinese economy for western investors?

    Does anybody here have any money in it?

  46. The drug epidemic continues to worsen in United States. Up to 90k deaths from overdoses in 2020 from 72k in 2019. When does it stop?

  47. When does it stop?

    https://texasfred.net/albums/tt116/FredWitzell/DCNuked.jpg

    When the swamp undergoes thermal and radioactive sterilization. Probably sooner that we would reasonably believe…

  48. I wonder if the low TFR of SK is somehow reflected in the K-pop (not just the music) that it is exporting to a lot of the Third World. I only have an extremely superficial knowledge of it, but it seems to me that it centers on an inordinate number of love triangles and reverse-harems. (of course, an honest look at Hollywood might be even bleaker, when you add in miscegenation and the trivialization of sex)

    On a cultural tangent, I also wonder if it would be fair to say that the Chinese movie industry is obsessed with swords, and what the proximate reasons might be? (Or perhaps this might be a misunderstanding owing to exports being a filter.)

    Could it be a proxy for nationalism? I.e. Chinese are unafraid to idealize their past, whereas European history has been rewritten to add Africans and Indians.

    Or does it have something to do with China being a more ordered society, so that gun battles there seem more ridiculous? (And so John Woo made them even more surreal – and that was in HK) Or maybe, something to do with gun ownership? Or China being like an America (big market) with ancient history?

  49. It’d certainly be nice to see a film using modern slogans, and touching on modern foreign policy.

  50. That Would Be Telling says

    But other countries are supposedly going to produce the Russian vaccine too.

    See the Wikipedia page as a start, it lists a number of countries that are partnering with Gamaleya to produce the vaccine, and used to have a list that are doing it for export. Some of those partnerships will likely fail, but not all if Gamaleya truly understands how they make it, and some of that ex-Russia production is supposed to go back to Russia.

  51. There was that article a few years ago about dating life on campus where there then were 60% women and just 40% men. However, even though there were too many of them, the women still didn’t want the lower half of the male population so there apparently was half fresh-born chads cleaning up (with an average of three women competing per man) and half semi-incels.

    (NB: Article was mainly a long interview with female students, as I recall.)

  52. How come the Inca, living in a mountainous environment, and, with a lower technological level, were able to consolidate a greater territory under one state than the pre-Macedon Greeks?

    I think this is a really interesting sociological question. Don’t know the answer, but I can think of a few possibilities:
    -the potato (if true, this really makes a joke of the Enlightenment)
    -lack of horses/Med sea made barbarian introgression more difficult (easier to control borders)
    -Amerinds are less individualistic than Europeans

  53. Intelligence seems to be linked to greater preponderance of genes that are common to various populations (but in fewer individuals in populations with lower average intelligence than in those with higher average intelligence), rather than to novel or new mutations arising in specific populations.

    In other words, Ashkenazi Jews are not more intelligent (physiologically) because they have gotten specific genes for intelligence from either Italians or Semites (or developed a novel mutation) but because their particular historical and environmental circumstances led to an increase in the preponderance of genes associated with intelligence in their specific population – genes that were present in proto-Italians and Semites in smaller proportions because they were less necessary.

  54. Or someone who cares about his sisters, daughters, etc. Or for that matter, for males also. Being spoiled is not good for the spoiled.

  55. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    Or someone who cares about his sisters, daughters, etc. Or for that matter, for males also. Being spoiled is not good for the spoiled.

    I do not have sisters or daughters, so perhaps you are right and I lack the insight, but how would such an arrangement be any different. You sisters and daughters are going to get with a male stranger in any case, would it matter if they were getting with male strangers who also had other women? Monogamy is very rare these days anyway, so in this hypothetical society of 80% females and 20% males, it is not like the males would be any less focused on one particular female than they are now.

  56. Thulean Friend says

    BTC drops 25% and all the salty bears who lost out on the rally are out of the woodwork to denounce it, declare it dead.

    Bitcoin, like gold, offers a store of value against currency devaluation. Unlike gold, it’s much easier to store & transfer.
    Bitcoin, like fiat, is only valuable insofar we all agree it is. Unlike fiat, governments and central banks can’t manipulate it.

    Bitcoin isn’t going anywhere.

  57. Yep. And this why BLM is heavy on college age liberal females, and so are other cultural identity causes. They are desperate and fight for status. This is the primary root cause of our modern cultural revolution.

    And to be fair, I understand. Imagine growing up as a young girl where you are constantly told that you are amazing and special and you are going to conquer the world and beat those evil men. And then you go to liberal arts college thinking it will prepare you to do just that. And then the reality sets in, where you are just a pump and dump meatbag for a few local Chads, you have large student debt and uncertain job prospects (labor market is oversaturated with liberal arts grads) and even your OnlyFans account is not bringing enough cash to pay rent. It must be psychologically crushing, so they act out in desperation.

    Feminism hasn’t been about equality for a long time, and its not even a war on men anymore. (While some of that is still going on with 2nd tier female executives gunning for the jobs of 1st tier male executives, it is mostly a top of the food chain fight. Not many feminists advocate for more women in high voltage transmission line technician jobs for example, even though those jobs are 100% male).

    Feminism is literally about ugly women destroying attractive women for social status. Once younger more attractive women are psychologically crushed and disfigured, their very real pain and rage are directed against whoever the ugly women need destroyed to achieve personal status. It is a highly effective strategy because once the younger ones are crushed, they are trapped in this vicious cycle and must work to destroy others in order to elevate their own status as well.

  58. Just week ago lifetime of one reactor was extended by 10 years. There are plans to complete couple of unfinished reactors.

    https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/TagSection?tagid=916

  59. Kent Nationalist says

    I don’t have the fortitude to put up with four wives squabbling with one another.

  60. Thulean Friend says

    That can easily be explained by the fact that this isn’t the 1800s anymore. Women are not limited to manoids on campus. It may be the primary source, but it isn’t the only source for potential mates/hookups. In addition, I don’t think most manoids understand how ugly they are in the eyes of women.

    https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Womenrate.png

    In my experience, the sexes differ in what they look for. Men tend to be much shallower in their criteria, whereas women tend to be more well-rounded.

    Men tolerate women with lower levels of ambition or even unemployment if she is highly attractive. A submissive/dependent woman may even be a plus to an insecure manoid.

    The same is typically not the case for women. Slacker/loser men, even attractive, aren’t given the same benefit of the doubt. Women also to look for traits like assertiveness, social dominance etc. By contrast, a socially dominant woman who is assertive will scare away manoids.

    So, while most women find manoids phyiscally unappealing, I am not sure it matters all that much, since they put a lower premium on looks more generally than men do. Of course, these are just my casual observations/experiences.

  61. Bashibuzuk says

    Feminism is just one of the subtypes of gender dysphoria among the progressives. To understand what’s going on in their heads, one’s better understanding what’s going on in their pants. They don’t think straight and they don’t f☆ck straight. This also makes them unable to build long lasting relationships and happy families. They’re freaks.

  62. Ben Judah blocked me.

  63. Bashibuzuk says

    What is your gender ThuFri?

  64. Actually an alien or a certain animal may find human women to be extremely ugly, so looks are subjective. It is just something, probably genes, telling you in particular “that looks good”, “that does not look good”, etc.

    Someone else gets different signals.

    There are also cross racial differences, for example men from one group may find women from another group ugly. So these things are very subjective.

    For example black women are getting very low ratings on dating apps. Would you call them ugly then? That’s quite subjective.

  65. Men look for genetic fitness (which is what “beauty” is a proxy for) and women look for status (which is the interplay of social dominance, physical attractiveness, and wealth).

    Not sure that one is more shallow than the other. Both sexes try to optimize the offspring with resources available. It does lead to inequality though, because while beauty has engineering solutions (makeup and high heels will do the trick for most women), status is inherently zero sum game and it leaves majority of “manoids” out of the dating game. Women will not date if they perceive their date to have lower status than them. This is a big problem for high status women as they experience “good men” shortage and are potentially eliminated from the gene pool.

  66. Based and harem pilled?

  67. He’s a punk.

  68. The good thing about maintaining a lesbian island (of exiles) is that, as a joke, you could occasionally exile male feminists there.

  69. Bashibuzuk says

    Dating is a recent phenomenon. Arguably, the majority of the human population has never dated prior to twentieth century and probably a lot of third world people do not even date today. This is especially true for the Islamic and other patriarchal cultures. I wonder how the whole dating thing – that we take for granted – does effect selecting for, or against, different socially beneficial aspects of human psychology.

    Also, the online dating is even more recent and I don’t think we will be able to measure its effects before a couple of decades has passed. One thing is sure, dating online is probably no different from dating complete strangers because an internet dating profile is so easy to fake.

    Before, people simply mated with those who were members of their extended community or some other community/tribe/clan nearby, about which a lot of information was available. People probably knew a lot about the family of their spouse, sometimes going back a few generations. And different social classes mostly mated in their own milieu even if there always was some sexually driven social mobility.

    Perhaps the emergence of dating is directly correlated with the decrease in the stability of family structure. A young man or woman who would spend some 10 to perhaps 20 years dating or frolicking around might simply come to some sentimental exhaustion, while you need strong and stable affective patterns developed to form a stable relationship and a family. If we tired up quickly of the imperfections of other people and thought that there are “many fish in the sea” then why would we work to build anything stable with these imperfect people?

    But perhaps I am just being retrograde and more is always better.

  70. silviosilver says

    This is exactly the type of sicko stuff that could only arise in the brain of an Indian nerd

    Yes, it does carry the whiff of a resentment-ridden hindoo, struck down by the awful realization that no matter much material success he achieves he’ll never been considered sexually desirable in western eyes.

    Chinx are confronted by the same issue, though they are able to console themselves that caucasoids are a sufficiently alien racial kind that there’s no need judge themselves by the same set of standards.

    The demiurge was cruel to hindoos though, not only endowing them with just enough caucasity (however transmogrified) to offer a glimmer of hope only to then rudely slam the door in their faces, but also to curse them with a karmic philosophy that relentlessly reminds them of the earlier sins for which they are doing penance in their present incarnation.

  71. That’s a very funny (or poignant) graph, that 80% of men are considered below average in looks. I think I first saw it in Christain Rudder’s Dataclysm or in the associated blog.

    The article I mentioned might have been https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-culture-end-of-dating .

  72. silviosilver says

    If we tired up quickly of the imperfections of other people and thought that there are “many fish in the sea” then why would we work to build anything stable with these imperfect people?

    In English, you semi-literate bashibazouk, people “tire” or “get tired,” they don’t “tire up.”

    Otherwise, it’s long been recognized – no “perhaps” about it – that the sexual revolution led to a decrease in family stability. Conservatives used to (futilely) decry it for this reason, while for leftists it was a positive feature.

  73. The breaking point was probably the modern requirement of going to university. First, the young men disappeared from their homes and parents before getting married, then the young women followed them. This presumably broke old-time dating (along with contraceptivs and on-demand abortion). Also, family formation was delayed by something like ten years in the bargain.

  74. It is easy to talk about genes but it is much harder to find them. Actually it is even worse. It is much harder to correlate 100’s of 1000’s SNP’s with IQ scores. I think the best they got so far was 11-13% variance explained using up to 1,0000,0000 SNPs, which is 10% or all possible variants there are in human genome. Why IQ scores do not correlate well with genes?

    Gene discovery and polygenic prediction from a genome-wide association study of educational attainment in 1.1 million individuals
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3

    For research at the intersection of genetics and neuroscience, the set of 1,271 lead SNPs that we identify is a treasure trove for future analyses. For research in social science and epidemiology, the polygenic scores that we construct—which explain 11–13% and 7–10% of the variance in educational attainment and cognitive per-formance, respectively—will prove useful across at least three types of applications.

    Taken together, these 1,271 SNPs accounted for just 3.9% of the variation across individuals in years of education completed.

    As discussed in FAQ 1.5, we can create an index using the GWAS results from around ~1 million genetic variants. Such an index is called a “polygenic score.”

    The polygenic score we constructed “predicts” (see FAQ 1.4) around 11% of the variation in education across individuals (when tested in independent data that was not included in the GWAS). This ~1 million SNP polygenic score predicts much more of the variation than does the genetic predictor described in FAQ 2.2, which was based on only 1,271 SNPs. Including all ~1 million SNPs tends to add predictive power because the threshold for significance/inclusion that is used to identify the 1,271 SNPs is very conservative (i.e., many of the other ~1 million SNPs are also associated with educational attainment but are not identified by our study, and on net, it turns out empirically that more signal than noise is added by including them).

    BTW, It seems awfully quiet on the IQ GWAS front. Where are the promised breakthroughs that were to materialize once we genotyped millions of people. Where is cocky Setphen Hsu and his lasso method? Did his dick go limp? He got a good start of up 9% educational attainment explained with 10,000 or so SNP’s and then went silent.

    It seem that there is barrier of 10% variance explained that can’t be crossed. It seems that the missing heritability problem is real pointing finger at twin studios that possibly have a hidden flaw, that the true heritability is much lower than what twin studies were telling us. The IQist were fooling themselves and us for last 70 years.

    OR is it possible that DARPA and China classified further genetic IQ studies, and they are in the process of breeding SuperJews and SuperChinese?

  75. silviosilver says

    Slacker/loser men, even attractive, aren’t given the same benefit of the doubt.

    I don’t know if the difference can be quantified, but you are waaaay off if you think good-looking slacker dudes don’t get any action.

    Bitcoin, like gold, offers a store of value against currency devaluation. Unlike gold, it’s much easier to store & transfer.

    Also unlike gold, it lacks any intrinsic feature that can’t be duplicated (as in competing cryptos), so it’s susceptible to being dumped in a way that gold, at least so far, hasn’t been. Why should someone willing to accept payment in crypto care whether its btc or any other?

  76. Good discussion on Ukraine:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17-DD8DSWNM

  77. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    That’s a very funny (or poignant) graph, that 80% of men are considered below average in looks. I think I first saw it in Christain Rudder’s Dataclysm or in the associated blog.

    Here it is.

    Datacylsm: What Our Online Lives Tell Us About Our Offline Selves

    https://i.ibb.co/hW2Xkwn/Dataclysm.png

    Rudder writes:

    And when you consider the supermodels, the porn, the cover girls, the Lara Croft-style fembots, the Bud Light ads, and, most devious of all, the Photoshop jobs that surely these men see every day, the fact that male opinion of female attractiveness is still where it’s supposed to be is, by my lights, a small miracle. It’s practically common sense that men should have unrealistic expectations of women’s looks, and yet here we see it’s just not true. In any event, they’re far more generous than the women, whose votes go like this: (See graph above)

    The red chart is centered barely a quarter of the way up the scale: only one guy in six is “above average” in an absolute sense. Sex appeal isn’t something commonly quantified like this, so let me put it in a more familiar context: translate this plot to IQ, and you have a world where the women think 58 percent of men are brain damaged.

    Now, the men on OkCupid aren’t actually ugly— I tested that by experiment, pitting a random set of our users against a comparable random sample from a social network and got the same scores for both groups—and it turns out you get patterns like the above on every dating site I’ve seen: Tinder, Match.com, DateHookup—sites chat together cover about half the single people in the United States. It just turns out that men and women perform a different sexual calculus. As Harper’s put it perfectly: “Women are inclined to regret the sex they had, and men the sex they didn’t.” You can see exactly how it works in the data. I will add: the men above must be absolutely full of regrets.

  78. Correction: 1,0000,0000 SNPs should be 1,000,000 SNPs

  79. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    Men look for genetic fitness (which is what “beauty” is a proxy for) and women look for status (which is the interplay of social dominance, physical attractiveness, and wealth).

    This poor girl found out the hard way

    https://twitter.com/HarperRoseD/status/1350354304540950535

  80. I wonder how many Americans will realize it, when black history month comes this year. Last year, I swear it was at least two months long. (easy to expand as MLK’s birthday can also be used to promote blacks)

    But since then, we’ve had months already where blacks have been promoted 24/7, at a heightened level. It’s hard for me to anticipate how this level could be increased – at least in America. It’d be interesting to try to quantify the increase in other regions.

  81. I think this the kind of Crusader Kings = True Life question. Basically, Tribal Empires are easy to build, difficult to hold.

    Amerinds had their entire State Capacity vested with the single Big Boss, which was great if Big Boss was good, but not so great if something happened to Big Boss (such as getting captured by the Spanish). Inca conquests boiled down to their Boss going down to the local tribal leaders he wanted to conquer and telling them “I’m Big Boss join me and get this awesome free t shirt or refuse me and die”. This was similar to how Mongol tribes got consolidated. Because this was very personal, from tribal leader to tribal leader, it moved quickly.

    Pre-Macedon Greeks were gimped by democracy. They were great navigators and established many trade colonies from Italy to Turkey but their main ground force was made of voting age farmers standing in a phalanx. Farmers had to pay for their own gear and not many could afford a horse, so cavalry was weak. And without cavalry, phalanx was rather limited offensively, as it was too heavy to move quickly. Hence lack of land conquests.

    Macedonian Kings had no democracy problem, so they made their phalanx poorer, bigger, lighter, with bigger spears, and used the savings to create Companions aka Horse Tanks. This combined arms warfare innovation of faster phalanx to anchor the battle line and then smash the enemy from the rear with indestructible Horse Tanks was unbeatable until Romans invented manipular unit structure which was a more flexible arrangement that was able to disrupt the phalanx.

    And going back to the Incas, I think guns and horse are overrated as a factor in Native American defeats at the hands of the Europeans. I mean sure, they were not nothing, but in the 16th century, the most powerful military units were Spanish trecios and Swiss pike, which were basically reinvented Greek phalanxes with some firearm support.

    Now, pointy sticks do not sound high tech or glamorous. BUT – it was the level of organization and unit cohesion, and the drills required to achieve this phalanx performance, that was the most important factor that made European armies superior on the battlefield. With firearms, you shot, you missed, you were out of action for several minutes to reload. Rather marginal. With pike, you had hundreds of men striking as one, again and again, crushing anyone in front of them. It was this organizational ability to maintain unit cohesion that was the most decisive factor that non-European armies lacked.

  82. I feel like it’s been Black History Month for the last year.

  83. I agree with your general point that it was European drill and discipline, more than technology, that made Europeans superior fighters. However, the Spanish did not have pike formations in the New World in Cortes and Pizarro’s time. They were mostly equipped with swords and shields. Muskets and crossbows were very useful for picking off native captains and cavalry relieved the infantry by disrupting charges with flank attacks. Bernal Dias has a great description of how this went early in The Conquest of New Spain.

    English settlers also did not really use pike formations. They fought with muskets and cutlasses. Writings from colonists show that the muskets were considered quite superior to the native’s bows and arrows. John Smith remarked “Our God as much exceeded theirs, as our muskets did their bows and arrows”. Samuel Champlain overcame three indian captains with one shot from his musket, which he had loaded with four bullets at once.

  84. RadicalCenter says

    Not a total-Chinese-market stock fund by any means, but you may want to check out the Oberweis China mutual funds, such as the China Opportunities Fund, which usually holds shares in 50 to 80 Chinese companies:

    https://oberweisfunds.com/solutions/china-opportunities-fund/

  85. silviosilver says

    Je vous en supplie, arretez d’excuser vos fautes grammaticales, ça ne me interesse pas, c’est simplement inacceptable!

    English is obviously not my first language

    I’m not sure if this is just false modesty, but actually it wasn’t that obvious to me. I had to think about it and review your post before I could feel confident in my assessment that you’re not a native speaker.

    Your English is of a high standard, but I am always willing to provide a few pointers to help people really sharpen it up. 🙂

    (In case you’re interested, besides “tired up,” the other giveaway phrases were “the online dating is” and “many fish in the sea.” A native speaker would have simply said “online dating is” and the idiomatic phrase is “plenty of fish in the sea.”)

  86. Yep. Specifically them evolving to have a higher average IQ (by 10+ IQ points) between 800 and 1800 AD.

    By the way, off-topic, but I want to ask you: Do you believe that it was a blessing in disguise for the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) to lose Ukraine? After all, with Ukraine, this union could not be genuinely Eurasian since its European element would overwhelm its Asian element and thus create a feeling of Slavic domination just like in the Soviet Union. In contrast, the loss of Ukraine combined with the population decline in Russia and the population growth in Central Asia allows Slavs and Muslims to be in this union on a more equal footing and to have a relationship that it more akin to that of genuine equals. That, and by the end of the 21st century, the number of European peoples and Asian peoples (in terms of their total population) in this union is likely to be roughly equal to each other, thus making this union genuinely Eurasian.

    Also, for what it’s worth, I really do hope that Belarus will eventually exit the Eurasian Economic Union. It is a European/Intermarium state just like Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic countries are, after all. It has nothing in common with Central Asia–well, not right now, that is! Their common history is gradually fading into the background, after all.

  87. RadicalCenter says

    These women are pretty presumptuous and lacking in self-awareness, given what fat tubs they are at a young age these days.

    “Women who weigh more than their men — it’s not just for Mexicans anymore!”

  88. RadicalCenter says

    I’d be delighted if I could engage in debate and discussion in a foreign language as well as you do in English.

  89. Europe Europa says

    It’s weird how many seem to call the Czech Republic “Czechia” in English these days, which sounds awkward and strange to me as a British person.

    In British English it is always the “Czech Republic”, or just “Czech” for short even though that’s technically grammatically incorrect. Personally I think I would find it very difficult to convert to saying “Czechia”, even though that’s what they officially call the country now, it just sounds odd to me.

    It seems odd to me why they insisted on “Czechia” when “Czech Republic” is a very established term in English. Do they not realise that the “-ia” suffix in English has connotations of third world shithole?

  90. California?

    Right.

  91. silviosilver says

    I’m not so sure about the “3rd world shithole” connotation, but it does take some getting used to. That’s only because people got used to calling it Czech Republic first. If they’d gone with Czechia right out of the gates, it would have been much easier to swallow.

  92. Thats fair.

  93. Europe Europa says

    I’ve noticed that Americans seem to have taken to “Czechia” somewhat easier than the British have.

    I wonder if that’s because Americans were less familiar with the country to begin with, obviously being geographically much more distant, so perhaps the term “Czech Republic” wasn’t so ingrained in American English and less resistant to change?

  94. Bashibuzuk says

    Thanks, but I’ve no merit really. English is overwhelming nowadays, it has become what Latin was in the Middle Ages and Silviosilver is right -people who have not mastered English are clearly disadvantaged. I learned English on my own in my mid twenties, but my teenage kids are already quite fluent and my adult daughter is bilingual in French and English on top of speaking some decent Spanish. The ability to speak more than one language is among the (few ?) good sides of the globalization. I wish I knew Mandarin though, it’s probably the language of the future. But it sounds absolutely alien…

  95. I wonder how much of an advantage it would have been to control a source of obsidian. Perhaps, that might might explain part of it – limited availability paired with a shorter lifespan than metal.

  96. RadicalCenter says

    Agreed. Most of our children are learning Mandarin from an early age, at my insistence, but it’s not exactly euphonic to my ears.

  97. An insane number of helicopters flying into DC:

    https://rumble.com/vd04q5-troops-into-dc.html

  98. People also say “oh man” when excited.

  99. Women’s standards tend to lower as they get older. Comparing male and female peers is highly misleading. A much older man can still be desirable to women. The reverse is usually not the case.

  100. Thulean Friend says

    A much older man can still be desirable to women. The reverse is usually not the case.

    Yes, but this just reinforces my point about how different the two sexes view each other. Women look at more non-physical attributes. Men generally get richer and more socially dominant (compared to their youth) when they age.

    Since women view men as pretty ugly from the outset, age is much less of an issue. Ugly when young, ugly when old. By contrast, men are much more shallow in their selection for mates. If manoids could, most of them would have a dating pattern similar to DiCaprio:

    https://i.imgur.com/xc2RAOX.jpg

    Among beautiful and high-status women in their 40s, you rarely see such behaviour. But it is commong among high-status men in that age group.

    Curiously, this even extends to gays. Gay men are notoriously shallow in their physical criteria. It’s not a coincidence that gays tend to be very fit and well-dressed. Lesbians are far less discerning in these matters. The exact same underlying patterns play out in heterosexual or homosexual relationships, just directed at different people.

  101. Yes, but this just reinforces my point about how different the two sexes view each other. Women look at more non-physical attributes. Men generally get richer and more socially dominant (compared to their youth) when they age.

    Since women view men as pretty ugly from the outset, age is much less of an issue. Ugly when young, ugly when old. By contrast, men are much more shallow in their selection for mates. If manoids could, most of them would have a dating pattern similar to DiCaprio:

    There’s nothing shallow about preferring youth. Marrying an older, richer woman is a poor reproductive strategy. George Washington did that, and he got 0 children out of it. Serves him right.

    Men are on average horny bastards and have lower overall standards because of this. But women certainly care very much about physical features. Your post on height is an example.

  102. silviosilver says

    Australian, actually. I took French at university in my 20s, but I feel like most of what I have learnt has been self-taught. I don’t think I’ll ever succeed in thinking in French – I find French sentence construction too non-intuitive. (The amount of times I’ve thought “why the fuck would they say that like that”…) I wish I had focused on German instead. German sentence construction differs considerably from English too, yet even though my German is minimal, everything I’ve encountered so far “feels right” in a way that French never has.

    (I’ve referred to “sentence construction” rather than grammar, because your grammar can be correct but your sentences can still sound very “off” to a native speaker. Indian English-speakers often demonstrate this failing.)

  103. I am afraid Johnny Cabs are as far away today as they were when Total Recall was made.

  104. By contrast, men are much more shallow in their selection for mates.

    Women only find a minority of men physically attractive, but the ones they do find attractive they are prepared to invest a lot purely on that basis. If you have a muscular physique as well as height that makes a difference, I remember that when I was in my 20s and started weight lifting. That led me think that women are pretty superficial as well.

  105. An example of a soft sugar coated imperialism against pro-Russian sentiment:

    https://nationalinterest.org/feature/pivot-west-problem-why-belarus-needs-balanced-relationship-russia-176527

  106. Bashibuzuk says

    French is basically a Latin-Celtic creole tainted by a homeopathic amount of German. It is an artificial language with an arbitrary grammar and orthography standardized in the sixteenth century and completely normalized for the whole of the territory of France in the nineteenth century. If a modern day Frenchman tries to read the original of Rabelais “Gargantua”, there is a strong probability he will not understand that much and will need a translation.

    Until the second half of the nineteenth century, there were several distinct dialects in France (Normand, Picard…) and a few regional languages (Occitan, Basque and Breton), which do not even belong to the same language family. French is a construct, but it has a rich cultural and historical record leading to an extensive vocabulary.

    English is also a creole but it’s a simpler one and given the important impact that the Normand French dialect and Latin both had on English, it is not that difficult to learn for a French speaking person. Although English pronunciation is quite unique and to have the right British, American or Aussie accent, one probably would need to live among native speakers for some time. Interestingly enough, when I travel to English speaking countries people have no difficulty finding out that I am Russian, which French people usually don’t find out if I don’t tell them.

    I have studied German for one year in the secondary school and have found its sentence structure a little bit odd. I don’t really recall that much about it, but it probably had a more natural grammar than French. Its orthography was strange though, with the w pronounced as v and v pronounced as f, while f is also pronounced as f, and the ß versus s thing, it seemed a little eccentric. I didn’t really like it back then, but I wish I would have persevered at studying it because of the rich intellectual heritage it gives access to.

  107. Europe Europa says

    Is French any more Celtic than English? It seems to me that neither French or English have many words of Celtic origin.

    I’ve seen some linguists make the argument that some features of English grammar are Celtic in origin.

  108. Bashibuzuk says

    As I mentioned, there were many dialects in French, which did not disappear until the end of the nineteenth century or even the beginning of the twentieth century. Some of these patois were probably more Celtic-loaded, while others were more Vasconic-loaded (the Gascon dialect certainly was). These dialects probably allowed for survival and transmission of the ancestral linguistic substrate(s) to the Francilien dialect, which became the standard French.

    I am not a linguist by any means, but I would believe that French is indeed more impacted by the Celtic than British English. I think this might be simply explained through historical developments: Gaul being conquered by Rome did not lead to population replacement and neither did Frankish conquest. Franks were few in numbers compared to the Gallo-Roman native population and rapidly adopted the local culture and language. The only place where the Germanic invaders had somewhat of a lasting impact was la Bourgogne, but even there it only led to forming of a local dialect which disappeared by the end of the Middle Ages. The Normandy Norse also rapidly adopted local culture of the northern Gaul, which might have been somewhat more Celtic.

    Basically, France largely kept the same mix of Western European Mediterranean and Nordic populations that it had since the Bronze Age. On the opposite, the Anglo- Saxon invasion led to a significant population replacement in Britain, pushing the Celtic people to Wales, Cornwall and even leading some British Celts to flee to French Brittany. Saxons and other German settlers did not feel the slightest need to learn the local language and most probably completely erased it in the areas they colonized. The Norse also added to the Germanic influence (Scandinavian languages being of German origin). And then the Normands conquered Britain, replaced the Saxon elites and imposed their French dialect as the language of the elite for some four to five hundred years. That is why the Celtic languages of England probably have not impacted the British English as much as they did impact French.

    But again, this is just the impression that I have and I might be wrong about it.

  109. Kent Nationalist says

    This is the opposite of my experience. German feels much more unnatural because of the strange word order, which is completely different from English. It gets worse when you add in additional clauses. By contrast, French word order is very similar to English. ‘Ich will das sagen’ vs. ‘Je veux dire ça’.

    French also has the advantage that the vocabulary is more similar to English (outside of a few basic words).

  110. On the opposite, the Anglo- Saxon invasion led to a significant population replacement in Britain, pushing the Celtic people to Wales, Cornwall and even leading some British Celts to flee to French Brittany. Saxons and other German settlers did not feel the slightest need to learn the local language and most probably completely erased it in the areas they colonized.

    It seems that it has been established that the Welsh are not Celts but a Brythonic people, they used to trade a lot with the Celts and finding Celtic artifacts in graves led to the misattribution.

    There are also a lot of questions about how many Anglo-Saxons arrived in England, I remember some more recent genetic studies being discussed that showed a maximum of 50% Germanic DNA in the core areas of Anglo-Saxon settlement in places like East Anglia, and 10-20% in the other areas of England, apart from Yorkshire where this German influence was replaced by Danish. If this is true it would mean that the English would still be a significantly Brythonic people as well.

    You do have a high level of English Bashibuzuk, equal to or above a lot of the graduates of the Linguistic University in Minsk, at least in terms of writing. I used to help my wife correct students’ work sometimes so saw a fair amount of material written by Russian speaking students of English.

  111. Random commenter says

    One of the big reasons that Chinese movies/tv shows seem to be focused on “swords” is that the directors have much more creative freedom when setting plots in this time period.

    To make a really compelling plot (especially for action flicks) set in the present you usually need a few grey-zone type characters and in China you can’t portray the police, the military or other organs of the current state leadership as corrupt or evil or even just plain incompetant. If you do so, even if your good guy is also part of the CCP and cleaning up the corruption of the bad guys, you can never be certain a censor on some level won’t take issue with it and shut your entire production down.

    There are plenty shows set in or just before the second world war, especially centered around the Sanghai of the time because in that period you can have underdogs fighting against oppressive state structures (Japan, KMT) without attracting the attention of the censors (and even get subsidies/praise for telling patriotic stories).

    I think it’s just basic risk avoidance that has so many Chinese (action/drama) movies and shows set in the past. There are btw lots of romance/comedy shows/movies set in the present, if that’s your thing.

    The really disappointing thing about the Chinese entertainment industry is that they seem unable to make good fantasy movies. Officially 5000 years of history, folklore, traditions and stories and all they come up with is the 500th variation of Sun Wukong/the monkey king.

  112. Bashibuzuk says

    Brythonic people

    My understanding was that the Brythonic was just a subset of the Insular Celtic which was closely related to Breton due to population exchanges during the migration period. I read that with the probable exception of Picts, all the populations of British Isles were speaking some Celtic languages by the time of Roman conquest.

    Also, my understanding is that Celtic was already quite fragmented at the times of the Roman conquest of the Western Europe. And Latin and Celtic belong to the same branch of the Indo-European languages. Therefore it is quite possible that the integration of fragmented Celtic languages with Latin in Gaul and British Isles might have lead to some regional differences in Vulgar Latin.

    It would make sense if the impact of Latin on native languages would have been modulated not only by the importance of Roman settler presence, but perhaps also by the differentiation of the language spoken by this particular conquered population from the ancestral Italo-Celtic. That is, perhaps Latin might have impacted some Celtic languages more than others simply because they were more compatible.

    I agree that the whole Anglo-Saxon invasion is perhaps a little overrated. That is, both the Celts and the Germans being largely Bell Beaker derived on their male side, the invasion did not alter much the genetics of the British populations.

    Again it’s just me making (uneducated) guesses about all this complex and very interesting topic. Perhaps someone with more knowledge about it could add a more informed response to this discussion.

    And thank you for your kind appreciation of my level of udertanding of English language.

  113. AltanBakshi says

    Franks were few in numbers compared to the Gallo-Roman native population and rapidly adopted the local culture and language.

    I wouldnt say that they rapidly adopted local language, Charlemagne was still a native Germanic speaker, three or four centuries after the Franks came to Gallia. In comparison Manchus and Mughals lost their original languages in a much shorter time period.

  114. It seem that there is barrier of 10% variance explained that can’t be crossed

    Well, 10% is not nothing…

    This study shows a higher percentage of variance when it comes to specific components of IQ. Thirty percent of the variance in Working Memory and 19% in Processing Speed was accounted for by genetic variants:

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mbe.12198

    Individual differences in executive functions (EF) are heritable and predictive of academic attainment (AA). However, little is known about genetic contributions to EFs or their genetic relationship with AA and intelligence. We conducted genome‐wide association analyses for processing speed (PS) and the latent EF measures of working memory (WM) and inhibitory control (IC) in 4,611 adolescents from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. While no loci reached genome‐wide significance, common genetic variants explained 30% of the variance in WM and 19% in PS. In contrast, we failed to find common genetic contributions to IC. Finally, we examined shared genetic effects between EFs and general intelligence, AA and ADHD. We identified significant genetic correlations between WM, intelligence, and AA. A more specific pattern was observed for PS, with modest genetic overlap with intelligence. Together these findings highlight diversity in the genetic contributions to specific cognitive functions and their genetic relationship with educational and psychiatric outcomes.

  115. Bashibuzuk says

    I agree. Frankish aristocracy still spoke their native German dialect at the times of Charlemagne. Although one should keep in mind that more than half of the Carolingian empire was outside modern day France and Roman era Gaul, mostly in German speaking areas. Aachen, the Capital of Charlemagne was in North Rhine-Westphalia. It makes sense to be bilingual if your loyal subjects speak two languages.

    OTOH by the time of the Crusades, the French aristocracy was only speaking French and Latin even though Arabs still called all the Western Europeans Frendj or Firendji (that is Frank and Frankish) even if these Crusaders were English or German.

  116. Shortsword says

    Is there any real translation of Dugin’s meme book? There is a comically bad and mostly completely incoherent translation sold in e-book format on Amazon, almost assuredly a machine translation. It has one review. Has anyone who fear mongers about it actually read it?

  117. Marrying an older, richer woman is a poor reproductive strategy. George Washington did that, and he got 0 children out of it. Serves him right.

    Martha was, what? 28 (fairly typical age in England, I might add) when she married George, and she had already had children before.

    I’m afraid that leaves George as the most likely explanation. Probably mumps. Used to sterilize a sizable portion of men before the vaccine. Though, you were safe, if you got it as a prepubescent.

  118. Thanks. N=4,611 is rather small so there might be overfitting problem. Is the heritability (explained variance) a fraction of sample variance or was it corrected for the full range variance? If so, what correction scheme was used?

  119. And then the Normands conquered Britain, replaced the Saxon elites and imposed their French dialect as the language of the elite for some four to five hundred years

    Interestingly, a form of this French dialect remained in wide written use in the English legal system until Cromwell’s time, long after it had ceased being a commonly spoken language:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_French

  120. AltanBakshi says

    Form of French spoken in Channel Islands is a direct descendant of Norman French.

  121. I’ve referred to “sentence construction” rather than grammar, because your grammar can be correct but your sentences can still sound very “off” to a native speaker. Indian English-speakers often demonstrate this failing.

    You have a point. I remember editing a paper written by German collaborators in English. To their surprise, I had to change a lot. The grammar was impeccable, but it was Queen Victoria English, rather than contemporary English. Same with educated Indian “English-speakers”: their language is so nineteenth century.

  122. There are in fact a couple of dialects in the Channel islands. Nomand French has also influenced the pronunciation of French spoken in Canada because the majority of the French colonists were from the Atlantic coast of Normandy and Brittany.

    Even today, Northern French, spoken in rural areas, is somewhat different from common literary (Parisian) French and of course is very different from southern (Marseillais) French. The patois from Marseilles (derived from Provensal parlance and Occitan substrate) and Chti patois from Pas de Calais and Lille (derived from Picard parlance) are as distinct as Russian and Ukrainian.

  123. AltanBakshi says

    are as distinct as Russian and Ukrainian.

    Yes I know, I have repeatedly mentioned the fact to AP in our endless Ukraine debates. Italians, Germans, Spanish and French are all civilized people, who dont let small linguistic differences to stand in their way, unlike the Slavs who like to have a country for each tribal division, just like Bantus and Arabs. Wait a minute? Arabs and Bantus were colonised by different European great powers, which is the primary reason why they have so many different nations. Heh, truly Slavs are the POC of Europe!

  124. Dacian Julien Soros says

    Truth be told, the Western countries are famous for their strict sexual hierarchies. Where else would a strong beautiful stud like Weinstein or Boris Johnson get sexual favors from hundreds of twentysomething young women, despite any money changing hands at the time of the act? The Western woman doesn’t give boob and vagene to passers-by, unless he happen to be as tall as Strauss-Kahn.

    I am pretty sure men trying to get laid in India have it so much easier. Nothing like the Western standards, I tell you. You can have all the money in the world, you never have a woman like Stormy if you are not True Western Blood.

  125. Kent Nationalist says

    Boris’ women are quite plain. He is whipped by the below. Go to any upper-middle class party in London and you will meet ten women of exactly the same type but prettier and younger. Tory activist women do tend to be relatively less attractive for their type though.

    https://1v1d1e1lmiki1lgcvx32p49h8fe-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/1563945416-Whaling-protest.jpg

  126. The patois from Marseilles (derived from Provensal parlance and Occitan substrate) and Chti patois from Pas de Calais and Lille (derived from Picard parlance) are as distinct as Russian and Ukrainian.

    In that case standard French and Marseilles patois are more distinct than Danish and Swedish (which are closer to each other than are Russian and Ukrainian) and about as distinct as Dutch and German (which are roughly about as distinct from one another as Russian and Ukrainian). Is that really so?

  127. Slavs who like to have a country for each tribal division, just like Bantus and Arabs

    And Scandinavians. And Balts. And Iberians (Portugal was never integrated into Spain).

    Germany hasn’t integrated Austria, parts of Switzerland, Netherlands, and parts of Belgium (latter two speak languages about as distinct from German as Ukrainian is from Russian).

    Latin-Americans all speak the same language (other than Brazilians and some minor exceptions like Guyana) and yet they have numerous countries.

    Anglo world is divided into multiple countries.

    France and Italy are exceptions. Slavs fall into the norms for European culture.

  128. Even today, Northern French, spoken in rural areas, is somewhat different from common literary (Parisian) French and of course is very different from southern (Marseillais) French. The patois from Marseilles (derived from Provensal parlance and Occitan substrate) and Chti patois from Pas de Calais and Lille (derived from Picard parlance) are as distinct as Russian and Ukrainian.

    I believe that the point that Bashibuzuk is trying to make is that the Marselles patoit is quite a bit different than the Chti patois spoken in Pas de Calais and Lille, not that they’re real similar.

    How you try and make some kind of analogy between Ukraine/Russia and Italy/Germany/Spain/France is really nonsensical and shows somebody who’s really grasping at some kind of imaginary straws to make a strange point? All of the countries in Western Europe that you’ve mentioned use mostly one language at the national level, that is all that Ukraine aspires for itself. Also, all of these countries have been at each others throats since long, long ago. So to hold them up as some kind of paragon of virtue for Ukraine and Russia to follow is quite an amusing idea. Perhaps, you’re trying to indicate that Ukrainians don’t deserve to have a country of their own? Whatever it is you’re trying to impress us with here, you need to keep on trying, because it just doesn’t make much sense? What are you really getting at?

  129. Shortsword says

    What’s new with “Putin’s palace” this time?

  130. Not sure. This might not have been mentioned.

  131. AltanBakshi says

    And people believe that there is no magic? Just look what kind of agitated spirits I conjured here by writing down the word of mysterious and occult power.

    The Ukraine

    Crowleys Thelema does not have anything comparable in power to such magic incantantions as The Ukraine. But yes I should stop playing with such unholy and dark crafts, who knows what kind of madness we will descend if I once again utter the word.

  132. AnonFromTN says

    What’s new with “Putin’s palace” this time?

    Same old, same old. Yet another “comrade Ogilvy” story. Just ask the Ministry of Truth.

  133. AltanBakshi says

    And Scandinavians. And Balts. And Iberians (Portugal was never integrated into Spain).

    Norway, Denmark and Sweden have each over one thousand years of history as separate countries.

    Spain is a nation of nations, as they call themselves. An union of Galicia, Navarre, Leon, Castile, Aragon and Catalonia, each with their own literary traditions and languages.

    Latin-Americans all speak the same language (other than Brazilians and some minor exceptions like Guyana) and yet they have numerous countries.

    Just like Arabs and Bantus!

    Anglo world is divided into multiple countries.

    United Kingdom is an union of different, but closely related nations, with other Anglo nations there is a good reason for divisions, you know that thing called the ocean. There are transcontinental nations, but is there even one truly trans-oceanic nation existent nowadays? Small dependencies like French Polynesia or American Guam dont count, oh well maybe France is the best example, substantial part of their population lives outside of the metropolitan France, maybe something like 10-5%? Do you know Bashibuzuk?

  134. AltanBakshi says

    somebody who’s really grasping at some kind of imaginary straws

    Arent we all Mr. Hack, arent we all? Such is life…

  135. Daniel Chieh says

    I dunno, this powerful take is one of my favorite “stances” of Thulean

  136. Dacian Julien Soros says

    For a British woman, Carrie is very beautiful. Most of them looked like Emma Nicholson or Joan Sims. I am not sure if the new blood is going to create something better.

    The point was few women care about height when a Boris Johnson approaches them. I am pretty sure Johnson or Trump could marry an 18-year old Thai this week, but they set their own limits. Every once in a while, even Trump talks to his wives.

  137. Norway, Denmark and Sweden have each over one thousand years of history as separate countries.

    No they do not. They have been united with one another at various times, as you well know. Denmark and Norway were united from 1537 to 1814. Norway then entered a union with Sweden until 1905.

    And even if they had not been united in 1000 years, this would only proved how powerful of a trait tribalism is for Europeans – that nations whose languages and cultures are more similar than Ukraine and Russia have been separate countries for so long.

    Spain is a nation of nations, as they call themselves

    Which doesn’t include Portugal.

    United Kingdom is an union of different, but closely related nations, with other Anglo nations there is a good reason for divisions, you know that thing called the ocean

    There is no ocean between USA and Canada, and in the modern world oceanic distances are krgely irrelevant. It is quicker to travel between Canada and England now, than between London and Scotland a few centuries ago, not to mention instant communication.

    Other than France and Italy, Europeans (including Slavs) divide. We are not the Chinese. Or people with a Tatar-Mongolian political instinct. 🙂

  138. Hyperborean says

    By the way, off-topic, but I want to ask you: Do you believe that it was a blessing in disguise for the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) to lose Ukraine? After all, with Ukraine, this union could not be genuinely Eurasian since its European element would overwhelm its Asian element and thus create a feeling of Slavic domination just like in the Soviet Union.

    The Glorious Leader has recently (November 2019) made known his opinion on this subject:

    “Pragmatic cooperation between the Eurasian Economic Union, the European Union, the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the Belt and Road Initiative will give a powerful impetus to the formation of Greater Eurasia, stabilising the entire political space of the largest continent in the world. I consider this an unacceptable situation, when a full-fledged dialogue between the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union is still not achieved,” Nazarbayev said during his speech to open the plenary meeting.

    In the reality of increased interdependence, countries should stop pursuing “narrow regionalism and bloc thinking, but reveal new cooperation opportunities in the Greater Eurasia. Only in this way will we be able to realise the huge potential that the Eurasian supercontinent possesses and I am pleased to note that it is our club that acts today as the ideological platform of a new geopolitical construction called Greater Eurasia,” he added.

    Nazarbayev stressed the importance of building the mechanism to support dialogue between the EU and EAEU in addressing the key risks to Eurasian geopolitics and world as a whole.

    […]

    Nazarbayev proposed combining the potentials of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

    The new arrangement, known as Greater Eurasia, could “form a single community of Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security” as stated in the OSCE’s Astana Declaration adopted nine years ago, he said .

    “There is a need to critically rethink the approaches to the formation of continental security architecture… There is a need to create a full-fledged Eurasian security model that will combine the European, Asian and regional systems,” he added.

    The majority of experts think unifying the institutions will resolve key Eurasian issues, said Nazarbayev, who proposed using the Astana Club as a preliminary stage to prepare higher-level negotiations. As Honorary Chair of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, he stressed his readiness to provide comprehensive support in building the European Union (EU) – Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) partnership dialogue mechanism.

    https://astanatimes.com/2019/11/nazarbayev-proposes-way-to-create-greater-eurasia/

    (Though from a more cynical perspective it is likely that he calls for more EU engagement in Eurasia as a form of geopolitical hedging)

  139. Don’t seem to be a lot of safe villains in Chinese movies. Can’t offend other countries, except WW2-era Japan. I’m not sure that they can really make up a country either, since they don’t want to be seen as pursuing an aggressive foreign policy. Certain supernatural beings seem off the table. What’s left? Druglords/international mercenaries/period villains.

    Only saw one Chinese WW2 film. Thought it was interesting how comedic it was. Probably such a tone would be forbidden in a mainstream movie in the West, by now.

    I wonder how much perceived Chinese problems about originality might be symptomatic of the presses being controlled, and thus leading to a lack of feeder material. More the bureaucracy and atmosphere of it, than anything about pushing boundaries.

  140. Bashibuzuk says

    That’s possible. Although I don’t know much about the level of linguistic relatedness between German and Dutch or Danish and Swedish. An interesting aspect of the comparatively different Picard and Provensal dialects, which existed until the end of the nineteenth century is that they might be seen as the surviving remnants of the Langue d’Oïl and Langue d’Oc (Occitan) the two Northern and Southern regional French languages’ ensembles which existed in the Middle Ages.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitan_language

    The Occitan was probably most closely related to Vulgar Latin and more evolved and refined. Southern France was also wealthier than the northern part.

    Until the North unleashed the Albigean Crusade against the Cathars.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

    After more than a 100 years of Inquisition, the weakened Occitan region was completely submitted to King of France. This was the beginning of a truly unified French state.

  141. Bashibuzuk says

    France Départements d’outre-mer and Territoires d’outre-mer (DOMs & TOMs) are the remnants of the French colonial empire. There was a time when the whole of Algeria was a French département:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Algeria

    It had a population of around 10 million people.

    Today the DOM TOM population is around 2 million people, close to 3% of the total French population.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_France

  142. So, once again, what really was the point of your comment #136? If you elaborate and make it clearer, maybe I’ll even agree with some of it (all of it would be asking too much, eh?)?

    I like your laisses faire attitude this time, though. 🙂

    Bashibuzuk found something of value with it, and I often value his opinions…

  143. Denmark and Norway were united from 1537 to 1814. Norway then entered a union with Sweden until 1905.

    So to make a rough analogy:

    Denmark = Poland
    Sweden = Russia
    Norway (minus oil) = Ukraine

    I suspect that if Russia had left the other Slavic countries alone after 1917, they would enjoy friendly relations with one another as the Scandinavian countries do.

  144. Hyperborean says

    Only saw one Chinese WW2 film. Thought it was interesting how comedic it was. Probably such a tone would be forbidden in a mainstream movie in the West, by now.

    There is a Sixth Tone article discussing the changing depiction of Japanese soldiers, ranging from comedic and buffoonish to mindless killers to sophisticated villains to primitive spiritualists. Since my only exposure to Chinese WW2 films and series is passive I don’t know how accurate the portrayal is, but the writer provides various examples of films.

    https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006166/devils-on-the-silver-screen

    I would recommend Sixth Tone as an overall guide to Chinese cultural and ideological events, although since most of the writers are Liberals or, to a lesser extent, New Leftists it doesn’t give a full perspective of all cultural-ideological factions in China. However, because they are usually academics the articles are often written in a more intellectual tone.

    I wonder how much perceived Chinese problems about originality might be symptomatic of the presses being controlled, and thus leading to a lack of feeder material. More the bureaucracy and atmosphere of it, than anything about pushing boundaries.

    I have come to the conclusion that China’s lack of soft power suffers significantly compared to Japan and South Korea due to censorship (both in modification of the source material and in blacklisting).

    It doesn’t help that the censors’ powers are rather arbitrary in their treatment of producers ex. for cinema the censors can intervene at any time leading to delays or even outright cancellation of finished films. I would guess that in addition to the known censored products there is also hidden creativity that never gets expressed due to caution over avoiding lost sunk production costs.

    For one example for a show that got popular outside China:

    https://mothership.sg/2019/02/why-china-censor-yanxi-palace/

    https://mothership.sg/2019/02/yanxi-palace-cancelled-china-censorship/

  145. Bashibuzuk says

    Navalny just went full kinetic against Putin’s inner circle and family.

    https://youtu.be/ipAnwilMncI

    I watched about 45 minutes after it was posted on YouTube and there were 2,5 million views, two and half hours later there were 8,5 million views.

    English subtitles are available.

    Even if Putin did not want Navalny dead before, he would want him dead now.

  146. My understanding was that the Brythonic was just a subset of the Insular Celtic which was closely related to Breton due to population exchanges during the migration period. I read that with the probable exception of Picts, all the populations of British Isles were speaking some Celtic languages by the time of Roman conquest.

    Yes, you are right. I listened to a Youtube discussion on Wales the other week and they were talking about this point, they were trying to emphasise the difference between the Irish and Scottish groups of Celts and the ones in England and Wales and I misunderstood.

    The idea that the local Celtic languages in France and Iberia were already more similar to Latin before Roman settlement is definitely interesting.

  147. I suspect that if Russia had left the other Slavic countries alone after 1917, they would enjoy friendly relations with one another as the Scandinavian countries do.

    Agreed. But what’s Belarus?

    Also, could you please respond to my post #96 here? Thank you.

  148. Who is that hot bitch?

  149. For that matter, Romanians and Moldovans are one people (ein volk) that’s split into two separate countries. So are Albanians and Kosovars. So are Bulgarians and Macedonians. So are Thais and Laotians. So are Serbs and Montenegrins.

  150. Astuteobservor II says

    Judging by the known zionist anons on unz, they are pretty stupid. There is no intelligence, just an annoying and retarded persistence.

    And the west got taken over by them. I have no hopes for the west.

    If they were as smart as Sam Harris, I would gladly let them run the country.

  151. Astuteobservor II says

    Utter bs.

    Looks is almost everything.

  152. Astuteobservor II says

    If 27 is too old, fuck Matt indeed.

  153. The volume of WW2 dramas seems simply incredible, to have its own fashions and cycles. IMO, the fixation on Japan just seems like wasted opportunity to create more relevant, future-orientated propaganda. They would be better off trying to court the Japanese, by producing propaganda of the two countries working together.

    Quite interesting. Hadn’t realized they cancelled Yanxi Palace. Chinese censorship seems pretty capricious – doesn’t seem to have a strong, consistent moral tone. They already push a lot of boundaries past what would have been acceptable on US TV back in the early ’70s. Showing a lot of blood, contemplation of suicide, mention of out of wedlock pregnancy. Some of the humor I find so unsophisticated (to play it safe, no doubt) that it seems inconsistent with Chinese IQ – perhaps, like something one would see on Mexican TV. I used to blame it on people coming off the farms – but now I think it might have more to do with the CCP.

    Though, lately trying to look at Chinese stuff, I’ve been wondering if their cultural output is a sort of mirror to the West’s, meaning that government policy affects Western art in a similarly profound way. It is easy to see Hollywood pushing boundaries, but, at the same time, maybe, the mass of it is only a support chorus to the prevailing ideology of the state.

  154. RFE/RL BS:

    https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-olympics-doping-ban-anthem-katyusha-soviet-war-ballad/31052062.html

    But other teams might not love it as an anthem for a country that is not supposed to have one played at the ceremonies, and an effort to win approval might spark further disputes.

    Screw those who selectively oppose some forms of intolerance, while hypocritically supporting a collective punishment against an entire national grouping.

    If the Russians are so guilty (which they of course aren’t), they’d not be allowed to compete en masse at major sporting events.

  155. Of your examples (at least he European ones), the Macedonian-Bulgarian divide is greatest.

  156. On this great date, 20.1.2021

    Congratulations to all americanoids from Northern Americanistan.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP7uZeVsTBE

  157. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    What’s up with the insane number of comments?

  158. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says
  159. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    If 27 is too old, fuck Matt indeed.

    Quite interesting the number of people (mostly women) calling “Matt” a paedophile in the replies, how many of these women do you bet dated an older guy in their youth?

    Why Are Some Men Obsessed With Barely Legal Girls?

    When I was younger, I thought it was a status symbol to be with an older man. Now that I’m the age of some of the men I dated in my teens, I feel very differently.

  160. Once I was interested in the Celtic expansion into Ukrainian lands, and found some interesting articles on the subject. You don’t read too much if anything about this in Western written history books, for some odd reason? These Celtic settlements within Ukraine extended all the way into Central Ukraine, but most of them were located in Western Ukraine. There’s even a Ukrainian ethnic sub-group, the Boikos, that to this day maintain that they are the direct descendants of Celtic peoples that stayed in the Carpathin mouintains, or Zakarpattya. I don’t recall if any such settlements were ever found within Russia?

    https://archaeology.com.ua/?p=1455

    https://shron1.chtyvo.org.ua/Kazakevych_Hennadii/Keltskyi_komponent_v_etnichnykh_protsesakh_na_terytorii_Ukrainy_u_druhii_polovyni_I_tys_do_ne.pdf?PHPSESSID=jkvekkvfufr4biufju8ucbmp46

    There is actually a larger body of work now available through the internet than I remember. A lot of new finds included too.

  161. Bashibuzuk says

    I think most people are kind of amazed by some of the details. Like the insane price of a toilet brush, costing the equivalent of an average Russian monthly salary. As one viewer commented: “TIL that my appartment costs 50 Putin’s toilet brushes “. The excess of it all triggers a lot of people.

  162. Bashibuzuk says

    I was aware of that and the fact that Galicia/Halychina is named that way exactly for this reason. The Celts originated as a Central European tribal ensemble before expanding through Europe. Some of them migrated East. I don’t think they moved further east beyond the Carpathian mountains. On the eastern side was the Scythian land and Scythians were excellent warriors. I am not aware of Celts moving to modern day Russian territory. OTOH they probably reached Baltic shores and interacted with (proto) Balto-Slavic tribes living there.

  163. Cool crib! I really like Dance Dance Revolution setup. What’s Putins’ top score?

  164. I suspect that if Russia had left the other Slavic countries alone after 1917, they would enjoy friendly relations with one another as the Scandinavian countries do.

    RFE/RL svido preferred BS. Poland didn’t leave Russia alone after 1917.

    https://www.eurasiareview.com/08042016-fuzzy-history-how-poland-saved-the-world-from-russia-analysis/

    After 1917, Russia/Russians weren’t seen negatively in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and the Serb and Montenegrin components of Yugoslavia.

    Shortly after WW II, the USSR legacy (not exclusively Russian and at times anti-Russian) was to noticeably sour Russian-Czech relations:

    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/12/14/czech-russian-relations-and-the-roa-conflicting-historical-narratives/

    Regarding Ukraine:

    https://nationalinterest.org/feature/joe-biden-and-challenge-ukraine-176086

  165. Bashibuzuk says

    I wish I could sample some of the wine they produce there. Especially the one for which they play the classic music as it ages. I would like to compare it with some 6 € Beaujolais nouveau.

    Also the hookah lounge with the pole-dancer podium look like a nice place to discuss business. I imagine sitting there with some Arab Sheikhs and discussing OPEC matters, while Kabayeva makes a little presentation.

    All in all, grandpa Volodya had to build his own Peterhof, but instead of the orange trees at the Oranienbaum greenhouse, he opted for vineyards and instead of fountains he invested in a jacuzzi disco and a hookah lounge.

    It’s a shame though that the HVAC system screwed up and the whole palace became mouldy. Probably happens in the richest mansions…

  166. Avi Loeb is a national treasure and an example of why fiesty Jews win every time. And even if you don’t care about my space program obsession, he is worthwhile listening to on the subject of cowardly science.

    https://youtu.be/D24E4F90HTo

  167. Ano4/ Mr Alefantis/Bashibuzuk / Avi Chongstein / J’aime l’enfants / rat

    You cretinous imbecile, these are just irrelevant, fake views, fraudulently counted by the American company and further inflated by Americans, ukrops and Liberasts in Belarus and through all ex USSR repeat clicking. None of them have actually watched it and extracted anything to discredit Putin with.

    You know this is just a repeat “report” you cretin of some already discredited nonsense.

    You know this “poisoning” has been a massive ridicule for Navalny for the last few months

    You know that after many years he is totally NOT popular in Russia or his “investigations” treated seriously, which makes it the very definition of insanity to keep on repeating the idea that this one will “remove Putin”

    …… but you STILL write demented garbage as this:

    Even if Putin did not want Navalny dead before, he would want him dead now

    LOL. The idiotic creep Navalny who can’t even be more popular on social media than Medvedev and is a total irrelevance is important to VVP?

    Putin not holding an umbrella has 10million+ views on YouTube alone you idiot!

    Putin epiphany baptism with that ice crucifix is much more popular and rated thing today you dummy. Wow what a nice ice-sculpted crucifix.

    Clown

  168. And when I’m not obsessing over space program, I enjoy KAMAZ super truck racing. KAMAZ is awesome.

    https://youtu.be/IOykIUSrmdo

  169. You are just bitter and jealous because Navalny has larger breasts than you do.

  170. Agreed. But what’s Belarus?

    Scania?

    Also, could you please respond to my post #96 here? Thank you.

    Do you believe that it was a blessing in disguise for the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) to lose Ukraine? After all, with Ukraine, this union could not be genuinely Eurasian since its European element would overwhelm its Asian element and thus create a feeling of Slavic domination just like in the Soviet Union. In contrast, the loss of Ukraine combined with the population decline in Russia and the population growth in Central Asia allows Slavs and Muslims to be in this union on a more equal footing and to have a relationship that it more akin to that of genuine equals.

    This is certainly not something I would want if I were a Russian. But I suppose it’s good for Central Asians.

  171. Blinky Bill says

    I just consumed 25 lamb Buuz, all home made. I should be ashamed but I’m not!

  172. silviosilver says

    I know what you mean and I thought somebody might bring that up. But to me that is a mechanical rule that, although it’s an oddity at first, is fairly easy to learn. I had two things in mind with my statement, both of them personal to me rather than some objective claim about the languages themselves.

    Perhaps it’s a vestige of having been introduced to German at a younger age (12), but German words have always seemed easier to me, both to read and to pronounce, and the sound of a completed sentence (as a native speaker might say it) easier to reproduce – easier in the sense of requiring less effort, ie coming more “naturally” to me.

    Secondly, expressing more complex thoughts in French than the example you gave (“je veux dire ça”), and in a way that sounds authentically French, has been a real struggle. For example, if I read a French translation of a book originally in English, I’m often surprised at how it’s rendered in French. That could simply mean I need more practice, but for now it’s hard. Of course, I can’t really compare this aspect in German because I don’t know nearly enough German yet, but if I was going to bet, I would go with German proving easier (for me).

  173. silviosilver says

    Same with educated Indian “English-speakers”: their language is so nineteenth century.

    I don’t know if I’d describe it as 19th century, but it can be funny the way they sometime come up with saying things. Eg “wanna dance?” –> “would you like to be going for a dance?” That’s not a literal example, but an example of the sort of degree to which they often differ from standard expressions, despite remaining grammatically inbounds.

  174. silviosilver says

    I never said wealth and status couldn’t get you pussy, just that these women aren’t spreading their legs for these guys cos they find them hawt.

    And when it’s a hindoo with the dollaz, they have to hold their noses, and grin and bear it.

  175. Blinky Bill says

    https://ecfr.eu/wp-content/uploads/europeans-america-10_US_cannot_trusted-1.png

    https://ecfr.eu/wp-content/uploads/europeans-america-13_US_Russia_conflict-1.png

    https://ecfr.eu/wp-content/uploads/europeans-america-12_US_China_conflict-1.png

    https://ecfr.eu/wp-content/uploads/europeans-america-1_China_stronger_power.png

    METHODOLOGY
    This paper is based on a public opinion poll in eleven EU countries carried out for ECFR by Datapraxis and YouGov in late November and early December 2020.

    This was an online survey conducted in Denmark (n = 1,037), France (n = 2,013), Germany (n = 2,060), Hungary (n=1,001), Italy (n=2,017), Netherlands (n = 1,005), Poland (n = 1,002), Portugal (n=1,004), Spain (n=1,017), Sweden (n = 1,010), and the GB (n=2,031). The results are politically and nationally representative samples.

    The general margin of error is ±3% for 1,000 sample, and ±2% for 2,000. YouGov used purposive active sampling for this poll.

    The exact dates of polling were: Denmark (20-25 November), France (25-26 November), Germany (25-27 November), Hungary (24 November – 2 December), Italy (24 November – 3 December), Netherlands (24 November – 2 December), Poland (24 November – 7 December), Portugal (24 November – 7 December), Spain (20-25 November), Sweden (24-27 November), and the GB (24-25 November).

  176. I’m not trying to make light of Geraldine’s phobias/jealousies etc. But I think that you’ve uncovered something here, and that is that Geraldine has had a long unresolved case of “breast envy” whenever any male that has large boobs is anywhere in her vicinity. It seems that this malady has been going on for a long time. Notice, on the cover of one of Geraldine’s fan magazines of the 1950’s, he/she is involved in some sort of an altercation with “The Wizard, the Man with the Super-Bra”? 🙂

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_tjHs5PjaiNs/TPU0sqC6SDI/AAAAAAAAL3U/s-l3F6lVtw8/s1600/00000000000000000000000000liberace%2Bcomx.jpg

  177. But does Navalny have bigger trucks?

  178. Well I guess this is it.

    https://youtu.be/D5PF8y1VaC8

  179. silviosilver says

    Arabs and Bantus were colonised by different European great powers, which is the primary reason why they have so many different nations.

    They probably would have ended up with different countries anyway. When I read histories of the Reconquista (try to anyway – I never finish them), I get lost in all the Arab dynasties just in Spain and the Maghreb.

  180. Kent Nationalist says

    Something similar happened in depictions of Nazis. In earlier post-war films they are depicted sometimes as honourable opponents in dramas or as comical buffoonish figures in comedies. But recently they are presented as being literally demonic and the audience is encouraged to take sadistic pleasure in seeing them killed.

    I was astonished watching a film last week called ‘It Happened Here’ made in the 1960s about a Britain occupied by Nazis. The Nazi occupation was depicted as unpleasant and there was one scene in which they euthanised incurable TB patients and took away a rebel and the family harbouring him. But more atrocities were committed by the British resistance who were shown attacking a convoy and killing civilians and murdering surrendering SS soldiers. There are also several incredible scenes of British Fascists playing themselves discussing their opinions.The film was made by two English teenagers (outside of the Jewish studio system) and Jews have complained about it a lot and tried to undermine it.

  181. I’ve seen this briefly discussed in books about the Celts, the ones in the Eastern area of Europe and the Middle East used to be called Galatians in Anglo books.

    I am guessing that because not that many Western Westerners (i.e. Westerners other than Germans) visited these areas until recently these topics remained more abstract. I remember being surprised when I arrived in Moldova, this was one of those places that used to be perceived as mysterious in Britain, and found out that Romanian sounds like Portuguese. And that if you already know, say French or Portuguese you can read Moldovan newspapers and books and start speaking it with small amounts of additional study. The relationship in terms of phonology between Portuguese and Romanian might indicate some common Celtic element in the history of these two peoples, and Ukraine is just beside Romanian/Moldova so from this angle some Celtic presence in Ukraine also doesn’t sound implausible.

  182. Bashibuzuk says

    You are correct. Some place the original place of birth of all the Italo-Celtic languages in the south-eastern Europe. Possibly in the lower Danube region among the so-called eastern Bell Beaker folks. That is, proto- Italo-Celtic would have appeared during the late bronze age somewhere around modern day south-wester Ukraine and/or Romania and Moldova.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo-Celtic

    https://en.google-info.org/2112509/1/italo-celtic.html

    This ancestral linguistic continuum would later separate during Iron Age into Celtic in Hallstatt / La Tene culture and Latin in the Italic peninsula.

    We know that typical Celts were later present in Romania proper:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts_in_Transylvania

    https://balkancelts.wordpress.com/tag/celts-in-romania/

    It appears that Celts intermarried with other local populations. I would think that Dacians would have later on formed through the co-existence and intermixing of Celts with Thracians.

    Also, traditionally Slavs have called both the Moldovan and Romanian people Vlakhs, which is a Slavic cognate to Welsh in Germanic languages. Therefore they identified Moldovan and Romanian people as Romanised Celts.

  183. Shortsword says

    People spam comments to get the video trending. I have no idea if it works. But people are urging each other to post as many comments as possible to get it trend higher.

  184. Celtic presence in Ukraine is well attested, and one can find many articles about it through internet resources. Here’s one of the better ones that I’ve located, in English:
    https://balkancelts.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/gallo-scythians.pdf

    The article mainly discusses the Celtic influences in the Zakarpattya region and Western Ukraine and also the North Pontic Black Sea area. Celtic history in the Black Sea area is somewhat complicated and includes close interactions between Celts, Scythians and the Bosporan kingdom too. There’s also some information about Celtic finds in Central Ukraine too, including an interesting map. Throughout the article is weaved a description of the relations between the “Ukrainian Celts” with their Romanian and Bulgarian cousins too. Enjoy!

    Romania and Ukraine also share a common historical civilizational pull within the large Trypillian-Cuceteni culture.

  185. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says
  186. Bashibuzuk says

    The video has already accumulated 24 million views.

  187. Most of them have read short quotes from the Wikipedia summary.

  188. RadicalCenter says

    The clear majority of the most commonly used words in English are Germanic, not French / Latinate. Here is a helpful presentation by linguistics professor Paul Jensen a few years ago:

    https://youtu.be/2OynrY8JCDM

    And for linguistics buffs or German fans, here is Mr. Jensen’s attempt to speak “Anglish” using only Germanic words (making up a few as necessary):

    https://youtu.be/IIo-17SIkws

  189. I already said you traitorous cretin that 3 million ukrops (most popular person search on ukrop Internet lady year, lol) and North American Banderetards clicking on the video 8 times is sufficient to get this result.

    There is no tangible outcome for any of this idiot’s videos because its garbage and nobody actually watches them.

    Also, as I said before – Putin not holding an umbrella for 10 seconds has 10 million + views on YouTube.

    The fake American YouTube counter also has very early morning in far east region as busy time for watching Navalny LOL.

    How dumb are you?

  190. Europe Europa says

    Almost every German word has a direct English cognate, the meanings are often different or archaic in modern English and many have been replaced in common speech by Latin words, but English is definitely a Germanic language structurally and lexically.

    It would be a relatively easy task to linguistically purify English if there was the desire to do so, because a complete set of Germanic cognates already exists natively in the language. However the reality is there is no political or social desire to linguistically purify English, if anything quite the opposite, academia and English-speaking elites tend to favour words of Latin and Greek origin and like to give English an artificially Latin flavour.

  191. Were you able to handle “the Wizard, the Man with the Super Bra “? 🙂

    Consider getting a ‘Bro” yet?

    https://youtu.be/wfONNfAjyrc

  192. Due to its nasty screeching, I have put Gerard.Gerard and all its sockpuppet profiles at ignore.

    This thing rarely contributes anything valuable and its constant flow of insults and incoherent Sovok ramblings are annoying.

    Each time I try to find anything rational in its comments, I end up thinking of Charles Stross’ experimental Soviet era lobster-derived neural network based IA trying to communicate by using Fidonet.

    https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.html#Lobsters

    Perhaps Gerard.Gerard is one such pseudosentient data-mining algorithm? Hormonal imbalances alone cannot explain its commenting patterns.

    Just saying…

  193. Europe Europa says

    It used to be a common belief that the English are of Jewish/Israelite origin. Apparently “British Israelism” was almost mainstream in Britain in the late 1800s – early 1900s.

    I’m convinced that the “Eternal Anglo” meme is partially based on that line of thought.

  194. Interesting. The Slavic languages are closer to Latin languages than they are to Germanic ones.

  195. I think that British Israelism does not explain everything. We must probably go back further in time to understand what exactly went wrong with British nation-building.

    My personal belief is that the English are to be divided into normal British people and their predatorial Anglo – Normand aristocratic elites. I have the feeling that British aristocracy has rarely, if ever self-identified with the British commoners. The commoners were exploited and used as tools and weapons in an Empire-building process.

    Something similar occurred in Russia starting from the seventeenth century onwards. Peter the Great derived great inspiration from the Dutch and the British. Russian elites became more cosmopolitan (in fact increasingly Germanic), while the Russian populace was used as serfs and cannon fodder in Empire-building.

    The Russian project was of course less refined and more brutal, while the British was more manipulative in its essence. When the two projects collided in the nineteenth century Great Game, the perfidious British aristocracy won by manipulating the less evolved Russian society towards self-destruction.

  196. Dacian Julien Soros says

    After age 40, everybody has sex for nonsexual reasons (intimacy, power trips, iconoclasm as in swingers or Rochdale / Outreau, monetary reasons). People who “live more intensely” actually get there sooner. I don’t think Indians are particularly worse in that field.

  197. Kent Nationalist says

    That may be, but the difficulty in learning a language comes from learning all the other words not the most commonly used ones, and of those very few come from German.

  198. Kent Nationalist says

    What are the direct English cognates for Bewussenheit, gemein or Wissenschaft.

  199. Agree with your posts in this topic but:

    Something similar occurred in Russia starting from the seventeenth century onwards. Peter the Great derived great inspiration from the Dutch and the British. Russian elites became more cosmopolitan (in fact increasingly Germanic

    Peter exacerbated the divide greatly, by making the elite Westernized in habits and appearances and thus visibly alien in comparison to those whom he ruled. They often didn’t even speak the same language anymore. But a divide – the colonial relationship between rulers and ruled in Russia – was ancient and long preceded Peter.

    The Scandinavian/Wendish Rus invaded, took over, and ran the East Slavic lands in an analogous way to the how the British East India Company ran India, forcing the locals to give them furs, honey and even slaves to sell to the Arabs (sure the Rus were based locally rather than across the ocean but their ties to the East Slavic lands were light enough that Sviatoslav had no problems wanting to transfer the capital to Bulgaria). During the era of the Mongol yoke, the Rus lords were motivated to compete with each other to better exploit the locals, to gain advantage over other lords vis a vis the Asian masters. The ones who delivered the most goods did better, and the thereby accumulated the most power. The Rus-era “colonial” relationship was retained, there was just a new boss taking his cut of the action.

    Did this relationship with the ruled change much after the Tsars gained full independence?

  200. Europe Europa says

    Wisthood/bewisthood, mean and witship I guess. Obviously these cognates have a completely different meaning in English, or are meaningless practically speaking. I’m just saying that most German words do exist as hypothetical cognates in English.

  201. The idea would be that they all evolved from the languages spoken in the Bronze Age Unetice culture and that they have acquired their specific divergent aspects due to the non Indo-European linguistic substrates upon which they spread and evolved.

    Unetice culture was located mainly on the lands where later Lusatian culture would evolve towards the proto Balto-Slavic. The Western part of Unetice would evolve towards Tumulus culture, then Urnfield culture and then La Tene – Hallstatt Celts.

    If you remember, I have previously commented about the Wendish “Tree Seer” priests of the Rethra temple in Arkona on Rugen Island being called Drevvids (from Древо Видеть) in the chronicles of the Wendish Crusade. The analogy to Druids is self-evident.

    This is twelfth century AD some 3000 years after Unetice culture’s demise. Imagine how close these cultures might have been back then in Unetice itself. It was probably a cultural/religious ensemble stretching across most of Eastern and Central Europe.

    https://indo-european.eu/2018/07/when-bell-beakers-mixed-with-eneolithic-europeans-pommelte-and-the-europe-wide-concept-of-sanctuary/

    Basically Unetice = the synthesis of earlier Bell Beaker and Corded Ware cultures and their respective religious traditions: the first pan-European cultural phenomenon.

  202. During the era of the Mongol yoke, the Rus lords were motivated to compete with each other to better exploit the locals, to gain advantage over other lords vis a vis the Asian masters. The ones who delivered the most goods did better, and the thereby accumulated the most power.

    This drive to outcompete ones peers amongst the Rus princely class and please their Mongol overlords was most pronounced in the rising princedom of Vladimir, wouldn’t you agree? Historians often portray Vladimir/Suzdal (and later Muscovy) as areas that were most keen in deriving the benefits of using the yarlik to enhance their own abilities to fatten their own coffers, and in general having the most highly developed relations with the Golden Horde.

  203. Did this relationship with the ruled change much after the Tsars gained full independence?

    Arguably yes, we might even say that it softened up considerably starting from Dmitry Donskoi. Probably under Ivan IV (Grozny) was the best period Russian peasants had under the Rurikid rule. Ivan Grozny was later vilified by the Aristocratic propaganda partly because he strongly curtailed the Boyar privileges.

    Also the Time of Troubles might be seen as a Civil War (including the Bolotnikov rebellion) coupled with a foreign intervention. Later it was mythologized as mainly a Polish invasion. After the Time of Troubles the peasantry also had it easier under Tzar Mikhail and early Tzar Alexis rule until the Raskol. The Raskol violence and Razin’s rebellion were partly due to the Russian peasantry allying with the Cossacks to preserve some of their freedoms.

    Streltsy rebellions (Khovansshina) might also be seen in that vein. Only when Tzar Peter crushed the Old Believers and quelled the Streltsy rebellion did the Russian elites regain sufficient power to enserf completely the peasants.

    One might say that the Russian elites got closer to the Russian masses from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries only to become separated again under Peter the Great with the Russian peasantry losing the fight for their freedom because the elites adopted a more efficient West European social organization.

  204. Vladimir/Suzdal rose to prominence before the Mongol invasion. Also, Lithuanian overlords were not necessarily nicer than the Mongol ones.

  205. I’d like to see Sid Meier come up with a Rhodesia simulator.

  206. Bashibuzuk says

    The Cabin of Uncle Pu video by Navalny and Co has reached 28 million views in 24 hours.

    Looks like it’ll be a blockbuster. OTOH it was well advertised by Putin’s regime when they made all this fuss with Navalny’s arrest. Even people who never cared about Navalny before are getting curious.

  207. Its interesting to hear people talk about “what went wrong” with English nation building, or at “what point” Russian elites became exploitative.

    I’m currently reading Against The Grain by James C Scott – basically a deep history of state formation.

    Apparently, the first states were formed not from environmental necessity, but by coercion. The shift to agrarian societies happened so that elites could live off the surplus of the laboring commoners.

    Elites exploiting commoners is the entire raisin detre of complex agricultural societies. Free societies are possible only among hunter gatherers- and even they had slaves often.

    Apparently the early Mesopotamian delta saw the emergence of hundreds of kingdoms that were constantly warring on each other to acquire slaves. The modern notion of war to acquire more land was unknown. What was wanted was labor – slaves. And all ancient societies were massive slave owning societies, especially Greece and Rome.

    The notion of a “benevolent elite” is fundamentally a fantasy. It cannot exist, because elitism arises in order to exploit. Where the desire to exploit is absent, hierarchies dont get established and men live free, as equals, as in hunter gatherer societies.

    It is by now well known that hunter gatherers had much more leisure and significantly better nutrition than agrarian states – their lives were better in every way. So called “barbarians” resisted being incorporated into states as long as possible. Historians puzzle over why mankind formed states, which saw the introduction of drudgery. The traditional narrative claimed it was necessary – we now know it was simple compulsion. Some men wanted to live off the surplus of other men.

    The quaint notion that the Btitish elite became predatory because it was Norman and thus foreign, and the Russian because it was German, is to basically misundertand what a state is for. As if elites exploiting needs an explanation.

    A group of homogenous people, if they formed an elite – this elite would quickly see itself as almost a distinct people from the commoners and probably develop myths about its different origin (descended from Gods, etc. It seems Hindu society crafted the myth of the Aryan conquest). Because the only reason an elite would get formed to begin with is for the purpose of exploitation.

    Unfortunately, mankind is infinitely naive. Instead of seeing that the very concept of an elite is problematic, they bloviate about this or that “foreign” elite (all elites are functionally foreigners), which of course plays into the hands of the elites very nicely by channeling attention sway from the structure of society, which remains unquestioned. But common folk are common folk because they are dumb and easily manipulated. Instead of focusing on the unjust structure of hierarchy itself, they are led to focus on “foreign devils”.

    Barring some catastrophe that massively reduces population, exploiting elites are here to stay and we are not going back to the relative freedom and lack of hierarchy of hunter gatherer society. The rule of nature is energy transfer – everything feeds off everything else, everything exploits everything else. To complain against the nature of the world is useless.

    To truly understand the nature of the world, as one vast natural system of exploitation, is to see the silliness of political solutions. Religions are much more intelligent and profound. What is remarkable is that the culture which formulated this most clearly as Darwinism (although any religion in its denunciation of the “world” say it more eloquently), is also the culture that believes most fervently on political solutions. But perhaps clarity of vision in one area has to be compensated for by illusions in other areas – mankind can only stand so much reality.

    All politics should be pragmatic and palliative only – the idea of having a “benevolent elite” is a retarded fairy tale. Restraining an elite that has grown too overweening, is pragmatic and achievable. All “revolutions” end up in a worse tyranny than the one they overthrew, because they are ideological and not pragmatic.

    Focusing on the “foreign devil” may be satisfying to the emotionally incontinent and an excellent way to distract from the unjust structure of society by the elite, but it prevents a genuinely pragmatic politics from emerging.

    Someone who thinks Russia’s problem was that its elites were Germanic, and that a purely Russian elite would be kindly and benevolent, is someone who will do nothing to try and structure society more equally- he will be entirely invested in kicking out the “foreign devils”, after which every maiden will be beautiful and demure and every man brave and chivalrous, of course.

  208. However this gradual increase in prominence was often mitigated by the constant warring between the different cities within its huge parameters (most notably but not exclusively Moscow, Tver and Nizhni Novgorod) for prominence and the ability to house the Grand Prince in their respective cities. It wasn’t until Moscow gained this coveted leadership position, with the help of the Golden Horde khans, that Northeastern Rus climbed to even greater heights of prominence in that violent part of the world.

  209. Hyperborean says

    Is Anarcho-primitivism your new incarnation? If so, if you haven’t already done so maybe you would like to read Ted Kaczynski.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm

  210. Bashibuzuk says

    Nizhni Novgorod was only built in the thirteenth century and never was important from political point of view. It is probably Novgorod Velikyi that you refer to.

    Tver and Moscow emerged as powerful cities much later after the Mongol conquest. By the time of their emergence, Vladimir and Suzdal had lost their preeminence, while Kiev was largely destroyed and depopulated during the Mongol conquest and only came back as an important Rus town under Lithuanian protection.

    When Moscow and Tver competed for power, the Lithuanians have already submitted the main part of Ruthenian lands and IIRC they did that largely unopposed. Probably AP knows more about it.

  211. Scania?

    Interesting.

    This is certainly not something I would want if I were a Russian.

    Why not? There likely won’t ever be full political integration, after all. Plus, the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union doesn’t actually appear to have resulted in large-scale permanent resettlement of Central Asians and Muslims in Russia; they do come as gasterbeiters, sure, but generally not to permanently stay in Russia.

    Think of it this way–being both an independent state and being in the Eurasian Economic Union allows Putin and Russia to sit on two stools at once. On the one hand, Putin can claim “Russia for Russians!” and declare himself the head of a 85+% Slavic state. On the other hand, though, Putin can please the left and the Wokes by being in an economic union (albeit not a political union) that is likely to be half Slav and half Muslim–as well as half European and half Asian–by the end of this century (by claiming “See, we’re beating the US and the West at the diversity game!”).

    By the way, if I were a Russian, I wouldn’t actually ever want to annex any additional territory other than the Donbass. Not Belarus, not the rest of Ukraine, not Transnistria, not northern Kazakhstan, not anything else! Russia for Great Russians, after all! 😉

    But I suppose it’s good for Central Asians.

    Yep, just like US minorities would presumably benefit more if they are 50% of the total US population rather than if they are only 30% of the total US population.

  212. Hyperborean says

    On the other hand, though, Putin can please the left and the Wokes by being in an economic union (albeit *not* a political union) that is likely to be half Slav and half Muslim–as well as half European and half Asian–by the end of this century (by claiming “See, we’re beating the US and the West at the diversity game!”).

    Russian liberals don’t think like this. The older-style thinking ones will be appalled at this Asiatic Autocratic Association that goes against idealised European Republicanism and Democracy and the newer-style ones that would be receptive to fetishising Central Asians would not accept a political situation where Russia isn’t imitating American Red Guardism (and if Russia ends up in such a dire situation then the EEU loses all significance, it would likely also lead to the alienation of the Sovok dictators in Central Asia).

    Yep, just like US minorities would presumably benefit more if they are 50% of the total US population rather than if they are only 30% of the total US population.

    40% now (see the 2020 census estimates), but for some groups like blacks it may not be an unqualified good in terms of QoL, though in raw political power it would aid them.

  213. Russian liberals don’t think like this. The older-style thinking ones will be appalled at this Asiatic Autocratic Association that goes against idealised European Republicanism and Democracy and the newer-style ones that would be receptive to fetishising Central Asians would not accept a political situation where Russia isn’t imitating American Red Guardism (and if Russia ends up in such a dire situation then the EEU loses all significance, it would likely also lead to the alienation of the Sovok dictators in Central Asia).

    For old-school Russian liberals, why not both support the Eurasian Economic Union and support efforts to bring freedom, democracy, and liberalism to Central Asia?

    40% now (see the 2020 census estimates), but for some groups like blacks it may not be an unqualified good in terms of QoL, though in raw political power it would aid them.

    The 30% was supposed to represent the Eurasian Economic Union’s Muslim percentage with Ukraine inside of this economic union. As for quality of life, having more criminal minorities certainly hurts one’s quality of life (especially when these criminal minorities are nearby), but not peaceful or at least relatively peaceful minorities. California is doing alright in spite of it being almost half Hispanic/Latino, after all. Ditto for Texas. California does have frequent wildfires, but I’m unsure just how exactly this is associated with a high minority percentage other than for the greater population (overpopulation) that it can result in.

  214. Hyperborean says

    For old-school Russian liberals, why not both support the Eurasian Economic Union *and* support efforts to bring freedom, democracy, and liberalism to Central Asia?

    They could (though it loses relevance in a world where Russia is integrated into Atlanticist structures) but the political changes wouldn’t be appreciated by the Sovok Central Asian leadership cadre.

    The 30% was supposed to represent the Eurasian Economic Union’s Muslim percentage with Ukraine inside of this economic union.

    Okay, I misunderstood.

    As for quality of life, having more *criminal* minorities certainly hurts one’s quality of life (especially when these criminal minorities are nearby), but not peaceful or at least relatively peaceful minorities.

    I would argue it does (just one effect is that everything becomes run more incompetent). But what I meant is that for less-productive ethnicities that have managed to establish political and social patronage networks (effectively parasitism) their quality of life would decrease if the more competent ethnicities were reduced in number.

    A major effect is that the amount of surplus wealth generated from tax revenue, corporate and government sinecures etc. to be distributed decreases meaning an immediate reduction in living standards (as well as the knock-on effects of that).

    This applies more to the USA’s ethnicities than the Central Asians in Russia (though Russia definitely serves as a release valve for Central Asia’s social problems).

  215. They could (though it loses relevance in a world where Russia is integrated into Atlanticist structures)

    An Atlanticist Russia wouldn’t be strong enough to withstand Western power within the Atlanticist alliance structure, would it? After all, its population simply won’t be large enough.

    but the political changes wouldn’t be appreciated by the Sovok Central Asian leadership cadre.

    So? Remove them through color revolutions!

    I would argue it does (just one effect is that everything becomes run more incompetent). But what I meant is that for less-productive ethnicities that have managed to establish political and social patronage networks (effectively parasitism) their quality of life would decrease if the more competent ethnicities were reduced in number.

    A major effect is that the amount of surplus wealth generated from tax revenue, corporate and government sinecures etc. to be distributed decreases meaning an immediate reduction in living standards (as well as the knock-on effects of that).

    Yeah, that makes sense–though to some extent this could be ameliorated if, in spite of the average IQ decrease, the smart fraction percentage will still be larger than expected due to group and social class assortative mating. And of course there is also large-scale voluntary eugenics, which might not close gaps for a while but could uplift everyone.

    This applies more to the USA’s ethnicities than the Central Asians in Russia (though Russia definitely serves as a release valve for Central Asia’s social problems).

    Well, Central Asians could make the Eurasian Economic Union governed less well than it would have otherwise been in certain respects (due to their lower average IQ)–though the positive is that they would be less likely to be susceptible to Russian domination within such a union without Ukraine actually being in this union. Hence your point about greater numbers resulting in greater political power for minorities in spite of this also hurting and reducing their quality of life. Which suggests that the right balance in regards to this needs to be found. As in, where minorities have sufficient political power (from their own perspective) but not where they also live in shitholes (or at least in significantly greater/larger shitholes than they already live in). Of course, as I said, this choice could to a large extent be eliminated through the adoption of a large-scale voluntary eugenics program for everyone.

  216. Brilliant tactic, enabling that part of Rus to gradually gain the strength to eventually win its freedom and clout as the strongest of Rus areas.

  217. The Southwest had its own able leadership and mounted lasting assaults on Mongol suzerainty even sooner, as at Blue Waters, 18 years sooner than the Battle Kulikova.

  218. Hyperborean says

    An Atlanticist Russia wouldn’t be strong enough to withstand Western power within the Atlanticist alliance structure, would it? After all, its population simply won’t be large enough.

    I am not sure I understand completely the meaning here, could you please clarify? But the reason the EEU is merely an economic association and not a political one is significantly due to long-lasting weariness and geopolitical hedging (“multipolarity”) from Central Asian leaders (even ones that, like Nazarbayev, rhetorically promote Eurasianism). Everyone with power in that part of the world wants to remain king, not be demoted to a mere governor.

    So? Remove them through color revolutions!

    Central Asians are not quite Middle Easterners, but they are also not quite Europeans either. Any colour revolution is likely to prove rather chaotic and even in the case that a semi-stable government is formed there is high risk it will be composed of Nationalists and/or Islamists who are likely to be hostile to Russia irrespective of her present political incarnation.

    And that’s from a successful colour revolution, a failed one would be even worse.

  219. I am not sure I understand completely the meaning here, could you please clarify? But the reason the EEU is merely an economic association and not a political one is significantly due to long-lasting weariness and geopolitical hedging (“multipolarity”) from Central Asian leaders (even ones that, like Nazarbayev, rhetorically promote Eurasianism). Everyone with power in that part of the world wants to remain king, not be demoted to a mere governor.

    I mean that Russia would benefit more from being its own pole than integrating into Atlanticist institutions.

    Central Asians are not quite Middle Easterners, but they are also not quite Europeans either. Any colour revolution is likely to prove rather chaotic and even in the case that a semi-stable government is formed there is high risk it will be composed of Nationalists and/or Islamists who are likely to be hostile to Russia irrespective of her present political incarnation.

    And that’s from a successful colour revolution, a failed one would be even worse.

    Makes sense.

  220. Bashibuzuk says

    The Southwest had its own able leadership

    The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was not ancient Rus. It was as foreign as the Golden Horde.

  221. Hyperborean says

    I mean that Russia would benefit more from being its own pole than integrating into Atlanticist institutions.

    I see. Then, Yes, I agree, but I think it makes the debate about the EEU meaningless – since a Liberal Russia would not be independent and an independent Russia would have no need to care about the idiosyncrasies of “woke” ethno-racial opinions.

  222. I would disagree with your assessment. The Lithuanian presence in Ukraine was actually quite a bit different than the Golden Horde’s. Firstly they were Christian, and any of the Lithuanians that remained on Ukrainian territories converted to Orthodoxy and were quite open to Rus cultural traditions, language etc; In fact, the old Ruthenian language was the official language at the court for quite a few years, and the written language lingered on even longer. The cultural traditions of the Rus was held in high esteem, and the progeny of the original “Lithuanians” quickly underwent Ruthenianism. It was a marriage of convenience for both parties, that actually had a lot of benefits in preserving the Ruthenian way of life. It wasn’t until the Poles became “partners” in the union that things started to get ugly for the Ruthenians within the Commonwealth, especially those that didn’t go along with the strong current of Polonization.

  223. Europe Europa says

    Are East Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea likely to remain ethnically homogenous long into the future, or will they eventually come under similar pressure to admit third world immigrants like Western countries have been for decades?

  224. Bashibuzuk says

    The Lithuanians conquered Ruthenian lands by defeating the Kievan prince and his allies at the Irpen’ River. After the conquest they imposed a tribute on Rus and subjugated Rus populations. When they captured Rus lands they were still mostly pagans. Therefore I don’t see that much difference between them invading Rus and Mongols invading Rus. Why do you think it was better for Ruthenian populations to be conquered by pagan Lithuanians than to be ruled by Orthodox Russian princes under Tatar patronage?

  225. The Russian project was of course less refined and more brutal, while the British was more manipulative in its essence. When the two projects collided in the nineteenth century Great Game, the perfidious British aristocracy won by manipulating the less evolved Russian society towards self-destruction.

    I’ve tended to think that European elites in general miscalculated badly in 1914, because few had a clear idea of what a major war between all of the European powers might lead to. The British ruling class seems to have considered itself in danger in the 1918-mid 1920s era and was saved by sea power sustaining its connections with the US and other parts of the world only indirectly affected by the war (India, the white dominions etc.). This connection to the US and to the Commonwealth again became important in the decades after WW2, and was one of the things that stopped its power being gradually worn away by mass participation in politics.

    I’ve also wondered if in the medium/long term they have some kind of plan to intermarry with the emerging ruling class of India or something like that.

  226. Is a Liberal United States independent?

    As for an independent Russia, it could use some Wokes as its useful idiots and agents. I mean, if people believe that Donald Trump is a Russian agent, why not have Russia get some Woke agents as well? But it has to actually throw them some kind of bone beforehand!

  227. In spite of my instinctive Libertarian tendencies, I disagree with your theory about the origins of the state. I think that state formation was a spontaneous phenomenon that supplanted tribal structures with bigger and more complex organizations in all agrarian societies across the world. You see the same evolution take place in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. The voluntary component of the transition from hunting/gathering to agriculture and from tribes to states cannot be ignored. Both provided more security for most people.

    In any case, did you get to visit the West again? If so, would you be so kind and provide a summary of your adventures?

    The other day I saw a video of this guy’s fascinating self-made mobile home and it reminded me of previous discussions with you:

    https://youtu.be/ENZ2KjlN71A

  228. Bash answers you well with your follow-up having some merit. Because of their experience with Poland, Lithuania/Lithuanians were to see themselves as being separate from the Rus legacy, much unlike modern day Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Simultaneously, Lithuanians also developed issues with Poland.

  229. In Russia, the political spectrum is a little reversed and time-delayed from the USA (although not in any interesting ways). Liberals in Russia are often, still ideologically similar to 1980s-1990s Republicans in the USA .

    For example, Republicans in the USA usually support more immigration restriction, than Democrats. Putin has created the world’s largest (geographically) open borders labour system, and one of the common criticisms of Putin in liberal media, is against the open borders labour system, and in support of selective immigration. So here is convergence in the liberal discourse on this topic more with Western politicians like John Howard or Trump, while a reality of Putin’s immigration policy is more similar to Merkel or Obama. (Lack of interest in selective immigration, is one of the main areas where I would criticize Putin).

    However, with Putin himself, is a centrist in sense that he incorporates different powerful groups inside the government, and neoliberals are influential part of the government’s economic policies.

    • A most memorable Navalny video, a few years ago at least, was where he debates against Chubais, as a representative of the government. Chubais is representative of a kind of convergence of pseudo-neoliberalism and kleptocracy.

    This debate wasn’t very interesting, but here were different streams of Russian liberalism: Ksenia Sobchak, representing pseudoopposition liberalism (her father created current Kremlin clique), Chubais, representing neoliberalism (that managed parts of the privatization of Soviet industries in the 1990s), and Navalny representing what sounds like “American middle class Republican Party 1990s” liberalism.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsoIcQYlPxg

    In the media space in Russia, there are other kinds of more fanatical Reagan/Thatcher liberals, like in the “Echo of Moscow” outlet.

    Liberals like Yulia Latynina from “Echo of Moscow”, which idealize America under Ronald Reagan – however, in reality, a significant part of her salary is paid from Gazprom.

    the newer-style ones that would be receptive to fetishising Central Asians would

    This “Eurasianist” ideology, is not normally associated with liberals. Perhaps in the future this could change though, as it is similar to recent views of antiracist liberals in the USA, and the discourse in Russia is mainly derivative of American trends, with a delay of a few decades.

    In the 20th century, eurasianism was popular with a number of writers. However, more recently, with Dugin the ideology converges with antiracism.

    Conclusion of his book, after the parts which are mainly copy-paste of some other textbooks, argues about how Russians need to learn to be less racist and reject a European identity, and learn to intermix with Asians. This is similar to fashionable Western antiracism liberalism, although it alternatively can be just as a mentally ill, intensification on mainstream Soviet times support of multinationalism.

  230. Japan is already starting to accept an increase in third world immigrants (mainly from China I believe, but also many from South East Asia, Africa, and Middle East – especially Iran) .

    The increase is coming from an originally low base. But Japan’s native population will be rapidly falling in the next decades, so surely we can assume there is likely to be economic pressure to increase immigration from certain industries like construction or elderly care.

    • If anyone else likes setting up walking videos on their TV with a treadmill. In the Japan videos, I assume most of the foreigners we see are usually tourists.

    With coronavirus times, if you watch something like “Walking in Kyoto” – there is still looking like almost all Japanese in the streets (perhaps some Chinese or Korean immigrants mix there as well, but I can’t distinguish them; Chinese tourists were presumably not arriving this year).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoe7nI29e8U

  231. Autists Anonymous Rehab Camp Fugitive says

    Coca leaves for heightened productivity and advanced communication infrastructure can get you far.

  232. From a realpolitik point of view, there was no reason for the Ruthenian princes in Byelorus and Ukraine to seek any sort of Muscovite/Golden Horde intrusions into their local political situation. All of the Rus princes were mostly interested in tearing away from Tatar overlordship, as were the Lithuanians, so a weakened Ukrainian polity found common cause with the Lithuanians in this respect. The original Rus magnates and higher classes were simply absorbed into GDL’s social structure, enjoying support for their local language and the Orthodox church. As the principalities of Rus were always just a loose amalgamation of competing principalities united only by a very antagonistic dynastic clan, there was no real reason for these magnates to look any further to fulfill their needs. It wasn’t until Poland entered into the equation that the proverbial apple cart was severely toppled.

    I’m not certain how exactly the ability to collect taxes changed from the Horde’s overlordship to Lithuanian, but I strongly suspect that the local Ruthenian lords had more direct involvement over their own patrimony and were able to dispense with the vying for the yarlik and all of the internecine warfare that went along with its control.

  233. silviosilver says

    After age 40, everybody has sex for nonsexual reasons (intimacy, power trips, iconoclasm as in swingers or Rochdale / Outreau, monetary reasons).

    Bullshit. I don’t know at what point sexual desire per se withers away, but it’s sure as shit not at 40.

    As an anecdote, I have a very attractive family friend who’s in her early 50’s, recently divorced. She’s been doing the Tinder thing and asking me for reply suggestions to texts. I asked her what she looks for in the profiles. Her answer: “Looks!” She went out on a date with some rich doctor, worth multi-millions, according to the big “development plans” he’d bragged about to her. Financially, she herself is doing it tough, so I was surprised that she didn’t want to pursue it. He was ordinary looking, maybe “ugly” to some women, but not to all. He must have been more of a conversational dud than she let on, considering the money in play.

  234. silviosilver says

    The difficulty in learning a language isn’t in learning the vocabulary. That may look intimidating, but it’s probably the easiest thing to learn.

  235. silviosilver says

    The notion of a “benevolent elite” is fundamentally a fantasy. It cannot exist, because elitism arises in order to exploit

    Rubbish. That is like saying a gun cannot be used to do good because it was invented to do bad.

    It is by now well known that hunter gatherers had much more leisure and significantly better nutrition than agrarian states – their lives were better in every way.

    Not surprising that you turned out to be a nole savage mythist. If there is any creature on this planet I loath with the same intensity as I loath leftists, it’s noble savage mythers (often one and the same people, of course). You should all be tracked down and clubbed to death (a fitting end for your ilk) before you can spread any more of your mind-poison.

  236. Jewish anxiety about angry peasants rising against foreign elite

  237. Hyperborean says

    Is a Liberal United States independent?

    Yes, in fact it is the indisputable hegemon of the Liberal sphere, but a Liberal Russia couldn’t be independent because contemporary Russian Liberals base their domestic and foreign policy on acquiescence to America and the denial of the idea of Russian national interests.

  238. This is generally true, but there are signs of change afoot due to the crisis of democracy in the West. I’ve noticed a lot of younger Russian liberals mock America now just as much as their own government. A patriotic and non-Western oriented liberal opposition in Russia would actually be a positive development.

  239. Indian English can be oddly old-fashioned in sound and somewhat like 19th century British English.
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/do_the_needful

  240. Learning the more common words is quite do-able – that is perhaps 2,000 words which is roughly speaking all that most people use in day-to-day conversation. Full mastery may require knowing 10,000 or more words.
    Grammar is probably more difficult to master than vocabulary.
    In language-learning I tend to stress vocabulary, reasoning that lots of words with bad grammar might make communication and comprehension possible, whereas fantastic grammar with few words is not much use to anyone. You could be able to decline the Latin word “mensa”, but what good is that?

  241. Kent Nationalist says

    That’s interesting. I had always incorrectly assumed that it reflected a feature of Indian languages (in the same way that Russians often drop articles or use them in odd places or Chinese say ‘those’ and ‘that’ too much).

  242. Typical Anglo.

    You see the west wrecked by mass third world immigration so you hope that Asia gets wrecked in the same way.

    Schadenfreude plus you hope to practice your divide and conquer which comes naturally to your kind.

    East Asia will see more immigration but not like the dumb Anglo countries did. With robotics and automation, you don’t need as many poor low wage immigrants to come in.

    If they do have immigration, it’s likely to be from other Asian countries like the Phillipines, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

  243. Bashibuzuk says

    There were no Ukraine or Belarus then, only different Rus principalities. In the case of the Golden Horde conquest they remained ruled by Rus princes, in the case of Lithuanian conquest the Russian princes were replaced by the Great Lithuanian noblemen.

    The Golden Horde never directly ruled the Rus lands, the Lithuanians did. Under Golden Horde Rus princes retained some room for action, not under GD of L. In fact, the most developed part of the early GD of L was Cherna Rus, a Rus territory with Rus built towns and temples on which Ruthenians has lost all control. Novyi Gorodok became Novahrudak = the capital of the GD of L monarchs. This is outright territorial annexation that has never occurred under the GH.

    And one last detail: when needed Lithuanians also allied with Tatars, they were not on some Holy Crusade against them. They have also received a Yarlyk from the Tatar Khans when it suited their plans.

  244. in the case of Lithuanian conquest the Russian princes were replaced by the Great Lithuanian noblemen.

    Not all – the Vyshnevetski magnates were Rurikids.

    The Lithuanians such as the Olshanski family who ruled Kiev were Orthodox and Rus-speaking. How was this different from Rurikids who became Slavicized?

    Under Golden Horde Rus princes retained some room for action, not under GD of L.

    Within PLC, Rus princes guided the eastern policy of the entire state. The war against Muscovy was a Rus magnate-initiated project aimed at uniting Rus lands:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Muscovite_War_(1605%E2%80%931618)

    For most of the 17th century, Sigismund III was occupied with internal problems of his own, like the Nobles’ Rebellion in the Commonwealth and the wars with Sweden and in Moldavia. However, the impostor False Dmitry I appeared in Poland in 1603 and soon found enough support among powerful magnates such as Michał Wiśniowiecki, Lew, and Jan Piotr Sapieha, who provided him with funds for a campaign against Godunov. Commonwealth magnates looked forward to material gains from the campaign and control over Russia through False Dmitriy. In addition, both Polish magnates and Russian boyars advanced plans for a union between the Commonwealth and Russia, similar to the one Lew Sapieha had discussed in 1600

    :::::::::::

    The Magnates were Polish in the old pre-nationalist sense – they Rus by nationality. Michał Wiśniowiecki was an Orthodox Rurikid and Sapiehas were Catholic Rurikids (Lew had converted from Orthodoxy to Calvinism and then to Catholicism).

  245. Astuteobservor II says

    Does it really make a difference before the younger ones take over the Russian liberal movement? Which I don’t see happening.

  246. Bashibuzuk says

    I am writing about the GD of L at the moment of its inception, not what it became 200 years later under the Commonwealth. Early GD of L was a Lithuanian state, with its most developed core established on annexed Slav lands conquered from the Rus.

    OTOH the Golden Horde did not in fact annex any Russian lands at all, it was established on Volga Bulgarian lands. All they wanted from the Rus was yasak. They were racketeering, not claiming ownership. The Lithuanians claimed ownership.

    Also the Golden Horde didn’t interfere in religious matters, it even protected the Orthodox Church from depredations by its troops. The Lithuanians were pagans and then converted to Catholicism, even if some of them became Orthodox, the GD of L state itself regarded Orthodox Church as inferior.

    Bottom line: chosing between GD of L and GH would be like choosing between Alien and Predator. None of them was good for Rus people.

  247. Daniel Chieh says

    Well, elites are usually exploitative but it’s all relative how exploitative they are: roving bandits are more destructive than stationary ones, etc.

  248. Bashibuzuk says

    Less than 48 hours after if was posted on YouTube, the video by Navalny and friends now has 43 million views.

    https://m.dw.com/image/37043837_403.jpg

  249. Its his fault, trying to get close to Europe, without understanding that Europe is rotten (Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, 2012 speech). First of all, he should have achieved economic and IT sovereignty for Russia, instead of having near 50 % dependency on EU trade, and dependencies on US social networks, and second, he should have moved the country towards Asia and the rest of the world much more aggressively.

    Not to mention not having public anti-corruption PR campaigns ala China with billionaires getting the death penalty in very public way.

    Russian strategists hoped to the end on the EU, to somehow wrestle it away from the US, to somehow make a deal, without understanding that it is rotten and it is culturally incompatible with Russia.

    They always hoped to make a deal with the West. But you can’t make a deal with fanatics who want to have it all.

    Give up on the West already and move away from it. That means economically, culturally, technologically. Asia is waiting.

  250. Hey Mikel! Haven’t heard from you in a while.

    So interestingly, early states offered much less security than a hunter gathering lifestyle. First, the Mesopotamian delta region was an incredibly rich biodiverse habitat in ancient times. People had an incredibly varied and rich diet – the shift to a single crop typical of agrarian societies, was much more vulnerable to crop failure, insects and rodents, bandits and thieves, etc. Not to mention the drastic decrease in nutrition and health.

    Moreover, the crowded conditions and living with animals and rodents led to chronic disease epidemics, made worse by the poor nutrition.

    In fact, early states were incredibly fragile and short lived. Hundreds of states would arise and almost none lasted more than 2 or 3 kingship before being destroyed or succumbing to disease and collapse.

    What is astonishing is that, being so fragile and with so much stacked against it, states eventually became the dominant form of organization. It took thousands of years for this to happen – for centuries a region would see the emergence of states briefly, then total collapse and reversion to a freer, healthier life.

    Another interesting fact is, that states emerged some 2,000 years after the invention of agriculture and sedentism. Why did it take so long?

    Alas, I was supposed to go on my trip 3 weeks ago but I had to stay and supervise an emergency project that came up. Finishing next Wed, and I hope to stay out 5 or 6 weeks to compensate for lost time. We shall see.

    I will most certainly write about it when I go – thanks for expressing interest.

    That looks like an awesome mobile home indeed 🙂 Its wonderful that we are seeing in America once again people imagining alternative and creative lifestyles not bound by consumerism and politics, just as the centralized state is beginning to weaken, incidentally 🙂

    As Scott suggests, retreat of centralized power does not mean worse lifestyles – it could also mean greater freedom and healthier lifestyles. A “dark ages” may mean an improvement in life and health.

  251. I dobt know how noble the savage was, but its a documented fact that pre civilized life was healthier and had more leisure – I think under 5 hours a day of sports-like labor to secure food. Which is not to underestimate the ingenuity and sophisticated cooperation involved in herding large game into kill spots and trapping and capturing them, etc.

    People like you are why I don’t support revolutions incidentally. At any given moment, the “opressed” section of a population are people who merely wish they could be the oppressors. Thats why every revolution ends up installing a worse tyranny than the one it overthrew. Almost no one wants genuine justice and egalitarianism. Slaves adopt the values of the masters, and hope to become masters in turn – and feel justified being good slaves. Its well known that the cruel and unjust American economic system enjoys widespread support among ordinary Americans, on the faint hope that they too can one day become millionaires.

    Its not your fault – its the corrupted human nature that is the consequence of growing up in an artificial state 🙂 The corruption of civilization, if you will.

    It is pretty much inevitable that, as happened numberless times before, large regions of the world, if not all of it, will be loosened from the grip of centralized power and revert to a freer and healthier, more local, lifestyle. It will be known as a “dark ages”, of course, because there will be no strong centralized power to keep records, so future historians will know little of it.

  252. It has to do with geopolitcs too.

    One must fix his own house (country) before playing geopolitical games against the biggest players in the world. And that includes fixing corruption too.

  253. Will Trump’s new “Patriot Party” support the return of the Sinai to Israel, and, more importantly, will BB agree to lead it?

  254. Agree with that. But you can’t fix corruption if you are yourself corrupt to the core. Arguably, this is why they placed him at helm of RusFed in the first place: because they knew that he was corrupt. Possibly they knew it since his time in DDR.

    Then they have used this average level kleptocrate to portray some kind of mega- villain from a James Bond movie. They used Russia as a scarecrow, while this idiotic kleptocrate was having an increasing megalomania. Now they gonna push him towards the exit by menacing his children and grandchildren and he will move out of harm’s way.

    I have already commented that Putin will most probably leave his office in the next two years. Now I am 95% sure of that. Navalny is not working alone, there is most probably a part of Russian elites pushing VVP to the dustbin.

    Here if you read Russian or care enough to use Google Translate:

    https://liecha.livejournal.com/71283.html

    This guy’s right.

    Anyway what a moronic way of ending one’s reign…

  255. Other than Grand Duke placing his son on the Kyivan throne after the Battle of Blue Waters (1362) and perhaps a very few other Lithuanian replacements throughout Ukrainian territories, the vast majority of Ruthenian nobility remained the same. There never was a mass replacement of Ruthenian nobility in neither the lands of later Belarus or Ukraine with Lithuanian ethnic candidates.

    However you portray the Mongol suzerains vis-a-vis their Lithuanian latecomers, you cannot argue with the fact that all the inhabitants of these lands (both nobility and commoners) were joyous at the prospect of getting rid of the Horde’s presence on their lands, in fact everywhere in the expanded Rus entity, even in the Northeast lands too.

    I’ve never read about any great outcry against the Lithuanian “usurpers”, and in fact there was never any large scale revolt against GDL by the numerous and powerful Ruthenian noble families. Indeed, why would there be?

    After incorporation of the Baltic nobility of Lithuania Propria actively adopted Ruthenian culture, language and traditions. The Lithuanian higher nobility largely embraced Slavic customs and Orthodox Christianity. Much of the upper class of the Grand Duchy called themselves Lithuanians (Litviny), yet spoke the Ruthenian language (also referred to as Old Ruthenian language)[19][20][21] In the effect of the processes, Lithuanian higher nobility became largely Ruthenian,[22] while the lesser nobility in the ethnic Baltic lands of what is now Republic of Lithuania continued to use native spoken Lithuanian language. The adapted Old Church Slavonic and later the Ruthenian language, acquired a status of a main chancery language in the local matters and relations with other Orthodox principalities as lingua franca, and Latin was used in relations with Western Europe.[23]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthenian_nobility

  256. OTOH the Golden Horde did not in fact annex any Russian lands at all, it was established on Volga Bulgarian lands. All they wanted from the Rus was yasak. They were racketeering, not claiming ownership. The Lithuanians claimed ownership.

    Correct. However Lithuanians adopted Orthodoxy and the Rus language rather quickly after grabbing Rus lands in the 14th century (within 1-2 generations), going local much more quickly than did had the Rurikids centuries earlier, whom the Lithuanians largely but not completely replaced. For example the Lithuanian ruler of Kiev after the battle of Blue Waters in 1362, son of Algirdas and Algirdas’ Rus princess wife, was Volodimir Olgerdovich. He was baptized Orthodox (as were all of Algirdas’ children) and Rus speaking.

    Also, GH racketeering was rather bad. Rus princes competed amongst themselves in a struggle to better exploit the people whom they ruled; those who could provide the most tribute to the GH got the more power. Thus there was a selection process rewarding the worst exploiters, those best able to squeeze the Rus people.

    The Lithuanians were pagans and then converted to Catholicism, even if some of them became Orthodox

    The ones ruling over Rus lands generally quickly became Orthodox and spoke the Rus language. Those in the West and in the non-Slavic homeland held onto paganism longer and became Catholic. Later on, many of the Orthodox became Catholic.

  257. Daniel Chieh says

    So interestingly, early states offered much less security than a hunter gathering lifestyle.

    Wrong as usual.

    The ability to support a dedicated soldier and priestly castes is direct evidence of increased stability(and thus the ability to project power). Reliance on crops did lead to greater black swans but was overall associated with greater caloric intake – and thus, greater populations. There’s a strong argument that micronutrients weren’t well served and that hunter gatherers were healthier overall with a high protein/animal fat and generally low carb plant diet(we do know that they get about half of their calories from animal foods), but in terms of pure caloric output and the methods to make food more paltable(such as improved cooking), organized civilizations prevailed.

    Nor is it true that tribal societies that relied on hunting and gathering did not control land – an idyllic view, but conflicts over hunting grounds and other reasons were constant:

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/beating-ploughshares-back-into-swords-warfare-in-the-linearbandkeramik/5DE6BD29674BF7BC12B211A4D41AC8C2

    Archaeological evidence confirms the prominent role of warfare in indigenous societies well before the arrival of permanent European settlers. As early as the year 1000, for example, Huron, Neutral, Petun and Iroquois villages were increasingly fortified by a timber palisade that could be nearly 10 metres in height, sometimes villages built a second or even third ring to protect them against attacks by enemy nations. Craig Keener has described how these structures became larger and more elaborate through to the 1500s, with logs as large as 24 inches in diameter being used to construct the multi-layered defences, an enormous investment in communal labour that the villagers would not have made had it not been deemed necessary. Sieges and assaults on such fortified villages therefore must have occurred before Europeans arrived, and were certainly evident in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

    And this should be self-evident ultimately by the fact that the common chimpanzee, which is an extremely natural existence, regularly engages in brutal and murderous warfare between troops.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

    After Godi fell, De was taken out next, and then Hugh. Later on came the elderly Goliath. Throughout the war, Goliath had been relatively friendly with the Kasakela neighbors when encounters occurred. However, his kindness was not reciprocated and he was killed. Only three Kahama males remained: Charlie, Sniff, and Willy Wally, who was crippled from polio. Without a chance to strike back, Charlie was killed next. After his death, Willy Wally disappeared and was never found. The last remaining Kahama male, the young Sniff, survived for over a year. For some time it seemed as if he may escape into a new community or be welcomed back to the Kasakelas, but there was no such luck. Sniff, too, fell to the Kasakela war band. Of the females from Kahama, one was killed, two went missing, and three were beaten and kidnapped by the Kasakela males. The Kasakela then succeeded in taking over the Kahama’s former territory.

    Philosophy, as I often note, suffers from introspection bias. Nature is an excellent guide, if one sees it for what it actually shows, not for imaginations of what it is.

  258. Honestly i always thought that it will be better for Putin to give up his place by 2024, as he is getting too old. Why would one need a russian Biden by 2030? Plus a system must learn not to be dependent on a single person if that is going to be a viable system.

    On a positive note, US mRNA vaccines are facing increased issues while Hungary and Germany want to authorise Sputnik V in Europe, while Bolsonaro is begging for a chinese vaccine. Huaiwei 5G deployment in Brazil was probably the price.

  259. The ability to support a dedicated soldier and priestly castes is direct evidence of increased stability(and thus the ability to project power). Reliance on crops did lead to greater black swans but was overall associated with greater caloric intake – and thus, greater populations

    1) sedentism and agriculture and state formation are two separate issues. States appeared 2,000 years after agriculture was invented, and pre state peoples practiced agriculture in a variety of ways.

    2) state formation is associated with greater population- as well as slave raids – because for the first time people were a form of wealth. The elites surplus was in direct proportion to the number of people producing that surplus. The more people, the richer the state. Interestingly, a correlation that is reversing today. Hunter gatherers limited reproduction in a variety of ways.

    Nutrition was better in terms of food security, food variety, and calories, outside the state.

    3) a dedicated soldier and priestly class is evidence of an exploitative elite and the need to defend an accumulated surplus from other exploitative elites.

  260. I agree that life must have been quite miserable in early agrarian societies. Those weren’t the highly evolved crops that we now use and there must have been some back and forth between the early and the new lifestyles. In fact, even today hunting and fishing are very popular in all rural environments. I think that there is some ancestral instinct that continues to drive us to hunt for food.

    Probably during a large period of the Neolithic animal husbandry was more important and reliable than agriculture. But the fact of the matter is that eventually agriculture prevailed over hunting/gathering everywhere except for the most primitive human groups.

    Imagine that you were today forced to live a self-sufficient life. What would you prefer to rely on for your family and yourself: agriculture and animal raising or hunting/gathering (even in an animal rich environment like Alaska or the tropical jungle)? This question must have been a very practical, not hypothetical, one for countless humans over millennia and we know what the vast majority chose.

    Its wonderful that we are seeing in America once again people imagining alternative and creative lifestyles not bound by consumerism and politics

    Yes, but it’s not a very widespread phenomenon. It’s very different from the countercultural movements of the sixties/seventies. What is becoming widespread is the tremendously uninspiring woke culture and it’s not even accompanied by the high quality musical innovations of those decades.

    Anyway, I was planning to explore Northern New Mexico this weekend myself but there is a winter storm coming so I won’t be able to see the landscapes properly and will have to postpone it.

  261. Europe Europa says

    I was wondering why there seems to be little interest in ghosts/paranormal these days. In the UK at least the peak of ghosts/paranormal as a serious field of interest was probably the 1920s and has been more or less declining ever since. When ghosts/paranormal topics are mentioned today it tends to be in an ironic sense as a silly archaic belief that people had “way back then”, not as a topic taken seriously.

    Could it be argued that sincere interest/belief in ghosts necessitates a sense of being connected to the past and history, and increasingly rootless Westerners simply do not have this connection to the past any more? Chinese culture still has a strong belief in ghosts/spirits, and that stems from a very culturally ingrained tradition of ancestor worship so that supports this idea I think.

    UFOs/aliens seems to be a much more mainstream topic these days in Western countries and is generally treated as a much more serious and credible topic.

    Perhaps ghosts/paranormal was simply largely supplanted by UFOs/aliens because of the onset of space research and space travel and people just found that a lot more exciting and fascinating?

  262. Thulean Friend says

    Watching it, several stray thoughts slowly crystalised in my mind:

    1. Navalny is a guy who scores high on +int but low on the charisma stat
    2. His documentary, while amazingly well-done, is nevertheless mostly consisting of him sitting in an empty bar frantically waving his hands as the viewer is bombarded with graphs, stats and cartoons of putlet’s henchmen and co-conspirators.
    3. Navalny comes across as an obsessive prosecutor rather than a national leader.

    Whether putlet is as corrupt as he says – I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised. But whoever will replace putlet, it won’t be him. I still think he is a brave man.

  263. YouTube have delisted Navalny’s video since yesterday from being accessible to its search engine.

    But this is an old story, we all know about this palace for years . And you can read all the same people in Putin’s clique from articles written 20 years ago.

    All this has been an open secret since the 1990s, so I’m not sure how netizens can pretend to be surprised now.

    discredited himself with this idiotic palace.

    A story of this palace was known about for years. And I’m not sure it’s such an important story, except that it can be representative of a larger system that is exemplified not just in Russia, but also many other postsoviet countries.

    demi-God for some naive Russians

    Well if your formative profession was working in the KGB. An emphasis of many of these professionals was management of perceptions.

    For example, the use of pseudoopposition liberals by the government, is something like an open secret in Russia.

    Instead of having an opposition funded from outside, it’s preferred to have investment in your own opposition, and especially if you can more promote intrinsically dislikeable personalities like Venediktov, which in turn promotes attractive but hysterical young women to present a living strawman of opposition views.

    People also seem to think it should be black and white, but its best if a situation is grey – e.g. that you have people who partial-pseudo opposition and partially expressing their real opinions, and who not exactly a Lubyanka project.

    Opposition like Ksenia Sobchak can represent their own opinions, which are authentically liberal and critical of Putin, while they are also eating dinner in the apartment of their close friend who is the President’s spokesman.

    Moscow’s office by Chubais and Berezovsky and has been put in charge of Russia by Yeltsin’s family was enough for me to never respect

    Putin has the ability to compromise between different power blocs, and this is one of the reasons for a political stability he creates, which genuinely has benefit for Russia, and contributed to an increase in living standards of ordinary citizens. Some extent of corruption is partly how the elite is stabilizing itself, as it creates a system of clients and favours among themselves.

    • For example, on the internet, nobody hides that Putin’s youngest daughter’s scientific fund’s sponsors – there are couple of moneybags from one oligarch group, who is associated around her (she was even married to a son of an owner of a company whose board member listed there).
      https://innopraktika.ru/company/popechitelskiy-sovet/

    And oldest daughter is director of a charity which is doing medical work. But from the name you can see the funding for charity comes from an opposing oligarch group.
    http://cafrussia.ru/about.html

    It’s not difficult to notice how Putin is often trying to be a personal nexus for stabilizing between these different business groups.

    In turn, the wealthy businessmen, become an informal part of state capacity.

    Because the economy is controlled by a small number of people that government officials know on a personal level, then you can have a quite strongly organized country for the government- it’s only a few hundred people that you need to manage, to have some informal control over much of the economy.

    he’s just a corrupt old man sitting on a 10 000 € toilet seat

    Putin’s main advantage has been to create political stability. This is the most important thing.
    Corruption is not something simply hedonistic, but also part of how the elite is functioning and stabilizing between each other in the last 30 years

    • Sailer and Karlin were reporting last year positively about the project for a main cathedral for the armed forces in Odintsovo.

    This was an unnecessary project, with unusually ugly architecture. Of course, the purpose is something “dual use” to politicians.

    Politicians feel like it is an institution which might help to disseminate religious values (i.e. pro-authorities values) into society, and more importantly because it moves money around – e.g. contracts for its construction go through companies owned by friends of the government, one of which was Rotenbergs’ company.

    I would guess it is the same with things like Rio Olympics. On other hand, the elites of Rio de Janeiro will feel like Olympics might be good for promoting their city, or to increase sports values in society, reduce obesity, etc. But what probably elevates the heart rate of Rio’s elites, is that projects like the Olympics will also provide a number of opportunities to move money around.

    A negative side is that corruption is like a value added tax on ordinary citizens, where part of many transactions goes to the top.

    But some of the money on these projects like Rio Olympics also goes down from elite to ordinary workers, through paying the wages, or increasing tourism.

    Renaissance Italy was often a pure corruption for the elite, but their favours systems created investment in public buildings, that many of which has value still today.

    Corruption elites might not be ideal, but neither is not necessary apocalyptic for a country’s development. Also in theory, there are cases where e.g. corrupt stable elite could be more beneficial than uncorrupt unstable elite.

  264. If they do have immigration, it’s likely to be from other Asian countries like the Phillipines, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

    I have seen some short Cambodians with tattoos on their fingers. At first, I genuinely thought they were Guatemalan gang members.

  265. Europe Europa says

    Haha, your indignation strongly suggests you do fear they’re going to end up the same way.

  266. Bashibuzuk says

    But whoever will replace putlet, it won’t be him.

    It’s also my opinion. I am pretty sure that it will be some elite insider. I think that Navalny is just a tool. But yes, he and his friends are courageous even though they are tools.

    Perhaps they will be allowed some official opposition status after the change of leadership, perhaps not, they will end up dead with Putin being accused of the killing.

  267. Bashibuzuk says

    YouTube have delisted Navalny’s video since yesterday from being accessible to its search engine.

    I have had no problems finding it today. Just type in Навальный and it’s the first one at the top.

  268. We have to distinguish between state formation and agriculture- states appeared 2,000 years after agriculture.

    Pre-state peoples employed agriculture widely as a strategy that made sense in certain situations, as one arrow in their quiver, which included hunting and gathering and did not involve reliance on any one single crop.

    The traditional narrative is that agriculture provided more security and mankind turned to it out of necessity as older forms of providing food failed or became too vulnerable. Evidence emerging in the past 20 years has completely overturned this.

    Under states, agriculture and sedentism ceased to be one strategy among many but the reliance on one (vulnerable) crop in crowded and unhygienic conditions – and it became ideological (all “good” men live like this. Everyone else is a “barbarian”). When you are in the presence of an ideology you are in the presence of bullshit – usually an elite trying to convince you to be exploited. Self evidently pragmatic strategies don’t need an ideology.

    We have to realize how much our narrative is shaped by the prejudices of civilization, which after all crafted the narrative.

    This question must have been a very practical, not hypothetical, one for countless humans over millennia and we know what the vast majority chose

    But did they choose it, or were they coerced? If it was an obviously superior choice, why did states only emerge 2,000 years after agriculture and sedentism? Why did it take thousands of years for states to “take”? Why were they extremely fragile and constantly collapsing? Why were people outside states so resistant to joining them? Why did rulers have such a hard time preventing people from leaving- why was defection a constant menace? It sounds like states were created against the odds. Far from being the obviously superior choice, favored by the odds, they seem to have bern created in the teeth of fate.

    Evidence today is that states formed out of coercion. Hobbes “social contract” seems less correct than Nietzsche’s insight that states were formed by some people wanting to dominate and live off the surplus of others.

    Northern NM is a beautiful and hauting region, especially in winter! After the storm with snow on the ground would be a great time to visit. The road from Gallup to Farmington, through Shiprock, is one of my favorites in winter – wild and desolate and haunting, through very poor Indian country, with the occasional stray horse roaming.

    Gallup itself is a nothing town on the I40, but there is something about the surrounding region I like, exploring the back roads. Its Indian country, also.

    Of course the Taos area and the Sangre de Crosto mountains are also great. Enjoy!

  269. Thulean Friend says

    The only thing that chimp story reveals is that, once again, manoids are the cause of most violence and war. By your own exhortation, look at nature for what it is. This is what it shows. Cap manoids at 20% of the population across earth. That is the fastest way to radically improve our planet.

  270. Daniel Chieh says

    Violence is just a facilitator of change and you like change, my Hindoo friend.

  271. I checked now and it has come back onto the search list. My guess it was delisted automatically, rather than manually, today. Perhaps if lots of people are reporting against a video they delist it automatically.

  272. Bashibuzuk says

    manoids are the cause of most violence and war

    Do not underestimate the female will to power.

    Don’t be such a misogynist.

    An Arab lady I was acquainted with once told me: “The men play themselves tough, but we’re the ones that make them dance”.

  273. Thulean Friend says

    First off, good set of comments from you as usual. Ignore the haters, you’re one of the best posters here.

    Hobbes “social contract” seems less correct than Nietzsche’s insight that states were formed by some people wanting to dominate and live off the surplus of others.

    This may not need to be as orthogonal as you suggest. If you think about social relations in most organisations – such as corporations – they are deeply authoritarian and even “fascist” though the term has been watered down to be rendered nearly meaningless by now.

    The vast majority of people are evidently perfectly content being in a position of permanent servitude. As civilisations have evolved, this process has formalised and become more sophisticated. At its root, however, it is still based on the same primitive principles. But let us not only give agency to those who wish to dominate. I’ve become less romantic in my view on humanity and have come to accept that a very large share of people are truly akin to the NPC meme. They want to be followers and feel uncomfortable thinking or acting for themselves. Domination can be done in more ways than just the physical sense.

  274. Thulean Friend says

    The world is improving!

    https://twitter.com/nihart1024/status/1349952780744617985

    Moscow, however, didn’t get the memo.

    https://i.imgur.com/rONYgXA.jpg

    It’s almost as if building more roads is not going to improve congestion, something researchers have shown repeatedly, yet the gopniks are unable to learn such a basic lesson.

    https://twitter.com/BrentToderian/status/1351406669536718852

  275. Perhaps not only accused, but guilty of it?…

  276. Occasionally, there is an arcane debate in the US about whether Southerners ever armed any slaves to fight against the North.

    The whole thing seems silly and immaterial, since nobody is arguing a return to slavery. What does seem very relevant, however, is that Rhodesians employed armed black troops, and that they were highly useful for the purposes of infiltration and intelligence gathering.

  277. Have you ever tried to commute on a bicycle in the middle of a Russian winter?

  278. Daniel Chieh says

    Its nice how you don’t bother to actually observe any anthropology in any of your rambles.

    1) sedentism and agriculture and state formation are two separate issues. States appeared 2,000 years after agriculture was invented, and pre state peoples practiced agriculture in a variety of ways.

    Conflict over territory can happen even without agriculture, as the chimpanzee example shows(and conflicts between tribes). Stable agriculture just vastly accelerates it by increasing the amount of excess calories and creating the notion of wealth via the existence of storable calories(Neoevolutionism strongly shows that existence of granaries promptly promote increased societal complexity and hierarchy). As the article I linked noted, increasing political complexity rises almost simultaneous with increasing defensive fortifications as means of conflict resolution and organization.

    2) state formation is associated with greater population- as well as slave raids – because for the first time people were a form of wealth.

    People are always a “form of wealth” in a fashion; note again how even chimpanzees kidnap females and chimpanzee wars tend to favor those with more healthy and larger males. This is also true of hunter-gatherers; however, this was limited by the amount of calories distributed by territory. Slavery becomes much more viable when there’s excess calories to feed slaves and convert their labor into other goods.

    Calories are not better outside state, by the simple evidence of existence of larger state populations.And food variety shouldn’t be overestimated, the Hadza get much of their diet from a few animals and the staple baobab plant without practice of food mixing; simple chieftan agriculturalist tribes like the Yanomani are extremely dependent on a few crops as well.

    3) a dedicated soldier and priestly class is evidence of an exploitative elite and the need to defend an accumulated surplus from other exploitative elites.

    Specialization is a form of projection of power which ultimately triumphs against hunter-gathering bands. You see this also in cellular organization and eusocial insect differentiation, with ants being the standout in creating multiple genetic variations specialized for their “societal roles.”

    As usual: you’re wrong. Thanks for serving as a bad example again.

  279. For me, the Navalny video is still showing up on top, for example when i open Yakov Kedmi stuff.

    https://imgur.com/a/0de9QQS

  280. Shortsword says

    The INRIX ranking puts several other cities as worse than Moscow in terms traffic congestion. Including Paris. The most interesting thing to know is what cities have improved. Is there any city that used to have massive congestion but doesn’t anymore?

  281. Thulean Friend says

    https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/

    Look at Moscow in the list on the page and select 2019 (to ignore COVID-related distortions). You can only look at the spring and summer months if you want to. Spoiler: it’s still a horrendous mess.

    Nice try at a save, though.

  282. Morton's toes says

    With google search I cannot interpret your meaning of “Dugin’s meme book”. He has approximately ten books translated into English. I have read a couple of them. Scattered remarks:

    1. he supported Trump apparently in the exact same spirit as Zizek. He hates globalism, neoliberalism, whatever term you care to use and anything that gets them all in a twist he is in favor of. Stir up the pot!
    2. the consensus view of Dugin I read is erroneous. He is described as an intellectual descendant of Julius Evola. If you read what he wrote, he says unambiguously and succinctly that Evola was for him a gateway to freer thought because these were the first intelligent books he could find in the Soviet libraries that were interesting and too sophisticated for the Soviet censors to understand and suppress. Nothing more than that.

    3. to really understand what Dugin is arguing for you have to first have an understanding of Heidegger. This is a big demand which is on my list and I might never get to it.

    4. the most interesting point of debate to me is the various chaos magick arguments. I am pretty sure Dugin is not any sort of chaos magician but (a.) he likes the chaos magic 8 point star and (b.) he wants to ally with a variety of non-global, non-neoliberal partisans (notably central Asian Muslims) whose only similarity seems to be anti-global, anti-neoliberal; i. e. it isn’t any real similarity and of dubious logic and improbable pragmatism. Presumably the chaos magicians (a microscopically tiny minority) would be one such set of anti-global anti-neoliberal people he could ally with if he could even find them. In a previous phase I was a chaos magician.

    Millerman has the best material in English although I have not read/heard all of it.

  283. Nice try at a save, though.

    You misunderstand me – the traffic conditions of the moment is not my point.

    My point is that Russians cannot rely on bicycles in winter, so that makes bicycles rather less practical in Russia than in warmer climes, whatever the season. They can hardly stop going to work in winter. Are they to pay the costs of a car and use it only for one season? Are they to create dedicated bicycle lanes, so that their streets will be even more narrow when it snows?

    One solution does not fit all.

  284. Bashibuzuk says

    I am pretty sure Dugin is not any sort of chaos magician

    I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Dugin started his intellectual evolution as a member of an Occult circle in the 80ies Moscow. Some claimed that the circle was a Left Hand Path one mainly focused on esoteric Nazism and Ahnenerbe. Dugin supposedly had access to related Nazi files in the KGB archives because his father was a General in the Military Intelligence. Therefore, Dugin being aware of Chaos Magick (as presented in the Illuminatus Trilogy, Principia Discordia and Book of Eris) might well be quite possible.

    BTW Prosvirnin (of Sputnik and Pogrom fame) is also into Chaos Magick.

  285. Kent Nationalist says

    Googling this, I stumbled upon the below fascinating site.

    Tagline: Exposing the Judeo-masonic Bolshevist conspiracy

    https://fitzinfo.net/

    Seems to be anti-Semitic, anti-Communist but also anti-Russian, a very unique and powerful combination. The first article I stumbled upon was accusing E Michael Jones of being a KGB agent, the second advances the interesting thesis that Global Jewry are preparing an invasion of the West by their puppets Putin and Xi Jinping.

    Just when I thought I had seen all the fascinating ideological combinations the world has to offer

  286. Shortsword says

    With google search I cannot interpret your meaning of “Dugin’s meme book”.

    The Foundations of Geopolitics. It’s mentioned a lot on Reddit. You’ll find when reading comments on Russia related news on /r/worldnews/ and /r/politics. It’s typically brought up as a “red pill” to prove that Russia has spent the last two decades working on a grand master plan to destabilize the world.

  287. Shortsword says
  288. Morton's toes says

    Good food for thought there Mr. B!

    Have you seen the Professor Luhrmann take on chaos magicians from her anthropology PhD research? She said (as best as I can recall) they are uneducated trash. More or less drunks, wife-beaters. She is now an apex predator at Stanford University.

  289. A lot of the photos are worth the price of admission alone, never mind the unbelievable bedtime stories. I’ve always maintained that “truth is stranger than fiction” or in this case is it the other way around? It’s become really difficult these days to know what’s what? 🙂

  290. https://fitzinfo.net/soviet-nazism/

    This section is also quite spicy.

    I am thinking the powerful takes here are rooted in trad Catholic political commentary, there was more in this vein before the 1960s and it was relatively mainstream in Spain and Portugal.

  291. Shortsword says

    Soviet Union dissolution was faked to secretly work towards world communism

    Soviet Union is behind cocaine

    “Sino-Soviet-Israeli”

    Russia did 9/11

    Putin is a JOOOOOO

    Powerful stuff. The sources given are all over the place. Mainstream news, obscure books and small blogs. A good number of Ukrainian sources. Contradictions everywhere.

    One of the most interesting sources is the insane short documentary “America Under Siege: Soviet Islam” created by Capital Research Center, a conservative Washington D.C. think tank. It’s basically 26 minutes of people talking about ties between Russia, Islam, Islamic terrorism and communism. It also tries to paint Russia as anti-Israel. This think tank is really weird, they have made videos fear mongering about Chapo Trap House, BLM, Antifa, Venezuela and everything “socialism” and “the left”. It’s very conspiratorial, especially for a think tank with ties to a lot of people in high up governmental positions.

  292. Just looking at the groups identified as problematic:

    Protestants (Judaisers, Anglos, heretics)
    Free Masons
    Russia due to its close involvement with Orthodoxy (another branch of heretic) and Soviet Communism.
    Jews
    Nazis (pagans and/or atheists, many were Protestants)
    Soviets (obvious).
    Links between all of these groups and black magic, Satanism.

  293. Bashibuzuk says

    It’s an ultratraditonalist Roman Catholic website, probably of a Sedevacantist persuasion.

  294. Fairly mainstream right-wing Polish thought in the 1930s was that Nazism was a form of Judaism:

    https://dzienniknarodowy.pl/nazijewish/

    Hitler murders Jews, but he thinks and feels in a Jewish way.

    Neither the Jews wish to exterminate all nations to the uttermost, nor the Nazi (name from the first two sylons of the word “national-sozialismus”, Jewish fashion). Both of them need… slaves.

    In Germany, Jews are exterminated and their ideology is adopted. The foundations of Hitlerism are taken from the Jewish civilization. The first one (as far as I know) was aware of this by KL Koniński, who wrote in 1933 about the chosen people and the chosen race: “How similar to the mortally hated Jews are these anti-Semites!” [1664]. The civilization activity of both societies, Russian and German, is connected in the fight against Christianity. The broken cross (for that is what the hackenkreuz is) is a clearer sign of anti-Christian tendencies than the hammer and the sickle. In Russia, however, Jews suppress all religion basically, they want no religion, while the Germans decided to create their own religion. Hitler was not the first to think of this; this is Josephism mutatis mutandis. Joseph II cultivated his Catholicism in his own way, because he believed that that religion can be very useful to the state; he wanted to make the Church a first-class politicum for his use. Hitler too. Dreams about own religion in Germany date back to the times of Fichte, and for almost a hundred years they have been thinking about creating their entire civilization. The attempts so far have been lost, because civilization cannot be “done”; by no means will it be created artificially, a priori.

    Let us suppose for a moment that Hitlerism (German National Socialism) persists and develops into a separate German civilization. Its place in the hierarchy of civilization can be determined in advance: it would have to be lower than the Jewish one…

    In nine years the mask was completely removed. Once in 1925 Hitler wrote that “political parties should not deal with religious issues, and political leaders should respect the doctrine and religious institutions of their nation” [1675], and then explained that he must respect Catholicism until finally all Nazism turned out to be anti-Christian. In the statehood of the Third Reich, the point was that, according to Dr. Hompfl’s expression, “the culture we have is not Christian, and what is Christian is not a culture for us” [1676]. Hompfl, however, likes to talk about God, Providence and Germany’s best relationship with God. But with the German God, therefore it is not God, but only a god, an idol. Their lord and god, der deutsche Gott, is by no means the god of other peoples; it is a separate tribal god. So we have a specimen of monolatry. The old one is a Jewish invention. Der deutsche Gott, this is Jehovah, translated into German; you could say: Jehovah is Germanized.

    The thought arises, is it not too late in our time and in the middle of Europe to organize such an experiment? I guess he could do it. If Jews live in monolatry, it is possible to live with it in Europe and despite Europe. If the Jews could, why couldn’t the Germans? Faith in the new Wodan can take hold and flourish even in the event of a war defeat. If the Jews believe in their god despite everything that happens to them, the Germans can also believe in their god regardless of any defeats. Everyone can, however, believe in him, and in that case it would be a religious division among the Germans that would make the history of Protestantism seem like a trivial matter. The greater would be the civilization split. Believers in God would have to convert to Latin civilization, and the followers of the German god go downhill anyway, towards savagery.

    Imagine that other nations are imitating the Germans and that they invent tribal gods everywhere. The competition of the gods? It was so in primitives in Asia! Monolatria is a bridge to polytheism. Wouldn’t that be wild for 20th century Europe? But there is nowhere the slightest sign that such “religiosity” is likely to be spreading.

    The Jews brought monolatry to Europe, and we know it from them, and the general public considers it to be something specifically Jewish. It is not so; monolatry is a phenomenon repeated in universal history here and there in various parts of the world, so it can be varied and the Germans could (in principle) devise a new, specifically German, monolith. But they do not do that. The Nazi monolithic is a faithful copy of the Jewish one, because it takes over without reservation the Jewish concept of its god’s relationship to people. Just like Jehovah, he is der deutsche Gott the enemy of all mankind except the Jews, or the Germans, the Jews are the chosen people, and the German word Herrenvolk means the same; Jewish election is to lead to rule over the whole world, and the Germans strive for the same, under the authority of des deutschen Gottes and under his care. The goal will undoubtedly be achieved because the German god is invincible. When the First General War failed by coincidence (for the Germans), a second war ensued; if this also fails, a third will be called, etc. Until it succeeds. Likewise, the Jews believe that world domination cannot pass them by.

    It may happen that a nation will have to be exterminated, for example, the Amalekites in old Palestine, Poles in the “new Europe”. In general, neither Jews nor Germans intend to exterminate “nations” completely, but to turn them into slaves, into their “footstool”. Hitler promises them in the name of the German god that Germany will become the lords of “our planet” [1677]. For over a thousand years the Jews have called all strangers simply cattle (goy); and from German scholars we learn that only Germans are real people, and the rest comes from some monkey mixture…

    Israel had different levels of friendship and hostility to “nations.” Cities that voluntarily submitted to them received certain privileges and were treated less favorably, at least for some time, when contracts were usually not kept. The Germans, like the ancient Romans, distinguished between dedititii and socii, i.e. subjects under Latin law (Czechs-Slovaks, volksdeutsehe). The German government will mark how numerous each nation is allowed to be so that it can provide the necessary slave contingent, what kind of social system is to be, and even what level of education and controlled “prosperity”. Foreign nations are to be pushed as low as possible, and even today, while the war is still going on, it is by no means cotton.

    It was said quite officially about the Poles that they should be recognized even from a distance, because they are supposed to shock them with poor clothes against the wealthy and well-dressed Germans. We are not allowed to print anything “höchstens ein Kochbuch” and we were told twice, as a Polish scholar, “jede wissenschaftliche Arbet ist strengstenst verboten”.

    In matters of the property of “nations”, the German position is quite in line with the Talmud. Quite Jewish, the Germans consider any property of the conquered to be a “desert” or a “free lake” on which a German is allowed to act as he pleases. Whether for a Jew or a German, the property of “strangers” is alike res nullius and primi occupantis of a Jew or a German.

    They took over strictly and accurately from the Jews the commandment of a two-fold ethics, one for fellow believers and one for Gentiles, one being exempt from all ethics. This is clearly commanded by both Jehovah and the German god. The whole of Europe knows from experience how a German is not only allowed to do all that is wrong, so that a German has not only a conscience towards strangers, but not even honor, but is expressly recommended to them to act unscrupulously and dishonorably. If a German does not commit wickedness to a stranger, he must not be a Nazi in spirit; like a Jew, by not devising anything bad for a goy, he becomes a revitalized Jew. A German is severely punished if he calls himself a foreigner anywhere in the occupied country, it is sometimes considered not only a crime, but also a shame.

    They learned their contempt for strangers from the Jews as if they were reciting a lesson from the Talmud; they also equated with the Jews in maximum hatred. They are like Jews in that pride without measure is the most characteristic feature of both. For a Jew, only a Jew is a real human being, only a German for a German. The simple consequence of being chosen! Just as the Jews once drew all teachings from the Torah, Aristotle from Moses, etc., so likewise they see their race in everything and everything that has happened in universal history as the best; and in particular, all the major artists and scholars were of German origin, not only Copernicus, but Leonardo, Buonarotti, Corneille, etc., etc. (cf. the chapter “Possessive Science” in Volume II of “Byzantine Civilization”). The Germans assimilated the Bible verse as fully as possible with the promise of Jehovah that he would give Israel “great and good cities that you have not built; at the same time houses full of all good which you did not clean, and wells dug which you did not dig; vineyards and olive trees which you have not planted, and you will eat and be full ”[1678]. It is exactly the same with Germany. The feeling of someone else’s property has become an essential feature of their character and the axis of their story. They work to have something to wage a war of annexation and a robbery invasion, and then to live at someone else’s expense, fruges consumere nati. Looking at the development of this talent, it is appropriate to add only one remark: what was told to Israel, “You will eat and be full”, apply to Germans only in the first half of the sentence, but not in the second, because Germany is never saturated; it is almost impossible,

    The whole “planet” belongs to Germany; this is the dogma of their worldview. They are her masters by birth, by “race” – and hence the delusional arguments of raciality. The dogma of domination over the entire globe has inevitably produced a second dogma: invincibility. The chief in Jewish Palestine frees the soldiers with his entire troops, because the number was indifferent; after all, the Lord fights for them. The German gathers as much military force as possible, decides to be as powerful as possible, but having accumulated this power, he is dogmatically sure of victory, even if the enemy had at his disposal even greater forces. He will win simply because he is German, because he is a congenital victory. It will definitely win, even in the third general war, but always trying to have the largest army possible, and this is how it differs from the United States, for example.

    However, they have one thing in common, and an extremely characteristic one: in former Palestine, newlyweds were free from the army for a whole year after their wedding. Similarly, in Germany, at the beginning, several months’ leaves were granted from any public, military or civil service. Concern for reproduction was at the heart of Israel’s thoughts and endeavors; the same thing comes to the fore in the efforts of German statehood. Immediately at the beginning of the war, a thorough vacation plan for officers and married soldiers was drawn up, for stays at home. It’s taken under military control, and that’s the case! On the other hand, it was announced that the patriotic German girl would not be disgusted with becoming a mother, albeit illegitimate; she will be proud to give birth to a new German defender, a new soldier in the future. There was also a project before that to allow two sons to do the same. The idea of ​​bigamy also linked them to Jewish civilization; and they are the only nation in Europe that could do so.

    They are the only ones who have “rational farming” of… human in their program. This area includes the Nazi principle that “there are no sick, there are only the healthy and the dead.” You may be sick only briefly, casually, but not chronically. So what to do with the chronically ill, with the sick? The mentally ill are murdered in large numbers. This human breeding often uses castration; the authority decides when and on whom to undertake this operation. Since they are inclined to recognize polygamy, they can, in the event of “development”, recreate their eunuch layer. For Europe, there are many views of wildness.

    They rushed far beyond the issue of human breeding from the Jews. They contented themselves with the prohibition of intercourse with “nations” and the prohibition of mixed marriages. This also applies to the Germans, but not in the name of cult, but solely of race.

    It is connected with the belief in a group of predestination common to Jews and Germans. The community is an essential Jewish feature. The Germans fell into it through the Byzantine civilization and took on this stigma more and more as the Byzantine-German culture advanced. The Nazis, on the other hand, ruled out personalism ruthlessly from all the systems of clustering known so far in history.

    The mechanism always flows from the cluster. The Third Reich is truly an archmechanism! It is also based on a priori thinking, on endless “planning”. There was no such a priori state and society from the time of Moses. In this they surpassed even “Nazi” Marxism. And they were equal to Bolshevism with which they have so much in common! The statehood of the Third Reich consists in the incarnation of previously imagined “laws”. And here they are similar to the Jews, that their entire collective life, in large part also private, consists of hundreds of commands and prohibitions imposed in every and every area of ​​life.

    The civilization now carried by the Germans is to be based on slavery. The Jews also dream of it that when the Messiah comes, he will turn the “nations” into slaves of Israel. The Germans made this dream come true, they turned it into a reality. They are more radical than the Jews. It is hardly possible to consider this system of “new Europe” as progress.

    Having summarized the manifestations of the newest German culture, we see that it is supposed to be strictly utilitarian. Generally, this feature stands out also among Jews, but to a higher degree among Germans. Jews cease to be utilitarians when it comes to worshiping Jehovah and studying the sacred books. The Jew is then even ready to make great sacrifices. There is nothing sacred about Hitlerism. The Jews and the Chinese passed over to utilitarianism.

    They differ from the Jews in the concept of the homeland. The concept of the nation is narrowed down to the association of “nazi”, to “their own”, to the Nazis; whoever does not belong to them will find themselves in one of the concentration camps set up for the purpose that all opposition will disappear there. The Nazis are a German nation of themselves and dream that there will be no other Germans at all. Therefore, their concept of homeland takes on a certain self-sufficiency, even incomprehensible to other Europeans. If they continued consistently along this line, they would become some kind of sect, not properly recognizing their homeland, because their homeland would be only sectarianism.

    But there may be a retreat. The notion of homeland and nation broke through the centuries-old glaciers of German-Byzantine culture from Latin civilization and spread to the surface of German history in the early 19th century. Their adoption by Nazism proves the strength of these concepts; if they do not lose their importance, if the German intellect does not retreat in this respect, if the moment comes that they are accorded supremacy over the “deutsch-nationale Arbeiter Partei”, then they can also be called “sanabiles fecit Deus nationes”.

    Hitler’s anti-Semitism is purely external, formalistic, based on the slogan “beat the Jew”. This was known from pre-Christian times, it is repeated over and over again at various times, in various countries, and always to no avail (this chapter was written in June 1942).

    fragment of Fr. “Jewish Civilization”

  295. Bashibuzuk says

    Tanya Luhrmann PhD, Stanford:

    https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614/

    What a wonderful specimen!

    I will certainly look into her writing.

    Many thanks for the recommendation M’s toes!

  296. Europe Europa says

    Seems to be some sort of Irish nationalist judging by the three leaf clover logo and the green theme.

  297. Morton's toes says

    If you read the literature from pagan / wiccan London she is an utterly duplicitous backstabbing snake and the older ones never forgave her and the younger ones still haven’t. Her research was over 30 years ago. It takes a special talent to seed a grudge that can still ripple after 30 years. That is Serbs Croats level shit.

  298. sher singh says

    https://twitter.com/Khalsa_Ak47/status/1352403296733057024?s=20

    Agree if you think Karlin will hit his deadline.
    Disagree if don’t

  299. sher singh says

    Persian, Afghan & NW (Punjab, Sindh, Kashmir) do fine, Tamils as well.

    Hindus are just short, I think you guys are coping that sexual liberation isn’t somehow bad.

  300. When I was looking at that website I was thinking of Charles Maurras’ perspective on the similarity in spirit between the Germans and the Jews, by the early 1920s (I imagine before) he was putting forward a number of the same points that are made in the Polish article. He just dates it back even further, to the time of the Reformation.

  301. It’s the first time I’ve seen analysis from this perspective coming from an Irish source, most of the time the hardcore trad Catholics and Pixies writing in English seem to be from the US or using translations of French material, but it is not surprising they exist. In terms of the Anglo speaking world the Irish used to have some relatively unusual political stances due to the influence of Catholicism; visceral anti-Communism, even among very poor unemployed people, because Communism is atheistic and a kind of sacrilege, linked to rejection of Communism, Nazi style nationalism and Anglo-Liberalism at the same time.

    My parents taught me some of this stuff but apart from G. K. Chesterton didn’t say where it was coming from.

  302. Philip Owen says

    Russia, Australia

  303. When it is cold enough and not a snowfall, it is the most enjoyable time to bicycle (e.g. below -10°C) – snow or ice becomes dense and it forms a reliable surface. Fresh snow can be loose under your back wheel, but that is enjoyable as well. When I was a child I used to love cycling in the snow as just an entertainment, .

    Difficult conditions for bicycle is when snow is loose (i.e. it seems around -5°C and above) , or when ice is melting and converts to brown ice mud around 0°C, or when it is raining.

    The problem for using the bicycle in cities in Russia for something serious like commuting, is the lack of adequate bicycle roads, which would separate you from cars. Also there is a lack of bicycle parking. It’s more common to use bicycles for entertainment.

    Although I don’t know about transport in Moscow, but they have a relatively warm weather, and the city has enormous money to spend. In theory they could probably get a proportion of the commuters on to a bicycle if they invested in it.

    If someone wanted to build elevated bicycle paths like they do in China. I would have loved to reach top speed on that as a teenager:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iae_T6r9Vuw

  304. Philip Owen says

    Ukrainian Galicians turn up at Celtic music festivals claiming to be Celts.

    I’ve only just come across this thread. Too late to write now. I’ll contribute tomorrow. “Celt” has become a controversial term and what was a closed book is now being rewritten.

  305. Philip Owen says

    Wissenschaft is pretty straightforward. Wisdom / Wise-knowledge.

  306. On the other hand, Moscow leads Europe with electric buses.

    Considering there is so much hypebeasting London and Sadiq Khan does about electric buses – it is surprising to see that London still have so few of them.

    Moscow becomes Europe’s top city by number of electric buses

    As of the end of 2020, Moscow’s electric bus fleet has reached 500 vehicles, which is more than in any other European city: London currently has 300 electric buses, Paris 259 and Berlin 200..

    A further 400 electric buses will be supplied to Moscow next year, and by 2023 the government plans to expand the fleet to 2,300 units, constituting one third of the city’s surface transport fleet.

    https://www.traveldailynews.com/post/moscow-becomes-europes-top-city-by-number-of-electric-buses

    It might not be completely to blame upon Sadiq Khan. I wonder if Boris Johnson (previous Mayor of London) was still buying many new diesel buses until 2015. So, London is full of relatively new diesel buses from Johnson, and the amount of old buses they can now replace with electric buses is limited.

    For perspective, the city of Shenzhen in China already has 16000 electric buses; London hypes about having 300.

  307. Bashibuzuk says

    52 million for the Navalny vid.

    Who says more?

  308. Daniel Chieh says

    Couldn’t cut it as a magus, went full grifter instead

  309. Ukrainian Galicians turn up at Celtic music festivals claiming to be Celts.

    Aren’t you confusing Ukrainian Galicians with Spanish Galicians?

    Wikipedia doesn’t show any Celtic music festival in Ukraine so it’s difficult to imagine Ukrainian Celtic groups only going to festivals abroad:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Celtic_festivals

    It also looks like the name of the Ukrainian city Halych, that was Latinized to Galicia by a Hungarian king, has Slavic roots:


    Max Vasmer and modern Slavists generally agree that “Halych” is an adjective derived from the East Slavic word for “jackdaw,” “halka.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halych

    This doesn’t mean that the Celtic expansion in pre-Roman times didn’t reach the Carpathian area but modern Ukrainians claiming to be Celts and maintaining Celtic musical traditions sounds a bit weird to me.

    The Spanish Galicians themselves did receive a big influence from the Celts that moved to that territory and left their typical hill forts and bagpipe music tradition. But ethnically speaking, they are a mishmash of the different peoples that settled the area: Iberian/Mediterraneans, Celts, Romans, Germanic barbarians,… Strangely, they also have one of the highest percentages of North African admixture in Spain, at about 10%, even though the Moors never reached that area. Some genetic researchers defend that this North African presence in Galicia is in fact much more ancient than the Muslim invasion but I’ve also read that during the Reconquista there were some reverse population movements from areas liberated from the Moors towards Northwestern Spain.

  310. https://www.npr.org/2012/11/16/165270844/when-god-talks-back-to-the-evangelical-community

    “My father’s father was a Christian Scientist. My father became a doctor. My mother’s father was a Baptist minister. She drifted away from the church. She still goes to church, it’s still really important to her, but this belief commitment is a struggle for her. But she still goes to church. All three of my cousins are theologically very conservative Christians. I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. I was a Shabbos goy, which means that on Friday nights I would go over to people’s houses and turn on and off the electrical switch so that they would have lights. So the perspective that I brought to this book was that I grew up knowing all these wise, good people who had different understandings of what was real. And that has always fascinated me ever since.”

  311. https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1352280501764108289?s=21

    List of essays that I commit to doing:
    The long-promised Great Bifurcation (by January 25).

  312. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305168682_THE_PROBLEM_OF_SLAVIC_VLACH_AND_MEDIEVAL_LATIN_BLACHUS_WHICH_ETHNIC_GROUPS_DO_THESE_FORMS_REFER_TO

    Before being settled by the Slavs and conquered by the Rus the Western Ukraine was partly populated by Celts, please see discussion with Mr Hack about it above.

    These Celts were mostly Romanized and became known as Vlakhs, a cognate to English Welsh. Also, it is well known that Celts originated in Central Europe before migrating to both West and East.

    Arguably, the most Western part of Ukraine is closer to the Celtic Urheimat than any West European country that has an attested historical Celtic identity.

    Hence Galichyna as it was called in Rus language.

  313. Bagpipes are a native instrument in parts of western Ukraine and mountains of southeastern Poland, where they are called a koza.

    Here is a battle between a western Ukrainian and a Scottish bagpiper:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUo3Mdk4Zkc

  314. Thulean Friend says

    I look at percentage shares rather than absolute numbers when comparing countries.

    https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/Zero-emission-buses%282%29.png

    I don’t know what Russia’s percentage is, let alone Moscow’s, but I would wager it is very low. Shenzhen has a very high share of new acquisitions, probably close to 100%. Sweden’s “gas” is a bit of a misnomer, since it is mainly biogas and not natural gas. So I would put it at renewable.

  315. Thulean Friend says

    My point is that Russians cannot rely on bicycles in winter

    Of course they can, bicycling in the winter is entirely possible if adequate infrastructure is provided. This is a big discussion here in Stockholm at the moment. The city is investing much more to make sure it’s possible to bicycle in all weathers and we have a lot left to do. As I’ve mentioned previously, Stockholm is a laggard in these areas.

    Most people are not aware that you need to change your tires in winter just as you do on a car. Folks take for granted that car roads have to be salted and cleaned of snow on a regular basis yet somehow this remains a mystery for bicycle paths. The list goes on. You’re revealing your car-centric bias. It’s also possible to cycle in cold weather. An old saying I heard a lot growing up was det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder (there is no bad weather, only bad clothes).

    If someone is lazy and scared of winter weather then they could take buses or the metro. But there is no a priori reason why cycling during winter is off the table.

    Are they to pay the costs of a car and use it only for one season?

    Cars should be banned in all seasons inside a major city.

  316. Thulean Friend says

    Violence is just a facilitator of change

    Is it?

    Elite violence and elite numeracy in Europe from 500 to 1900 CE: A co-evolution

    This column explores the relationship of economic development with human capital – specifically, elite numeracy – and violence. It concludes that the absence of violence played a significant role in economic development through elite numeracy formation.

    Rightoid fantasies about violence being the ultimate arbiter of success is an extention of their own primitive mentality, not supported in the literature.

    https://twitter.com/MilanV/status/1214190895484026880

    Even geopolitically, the most peaceful rise of any superpower has been that of contemporary China’s unfolding right before our eyes. It is enormously less prone to violence than the US currently is, which is a major reason why I dismiss collapse narratives for China. I still think the US will have an edge due to their alliance structure, but in a pound-for-pound context, China will surely come out on top.

    The more violent, the less successful. History is abundantly clear. That is why we need to reduce violence even further by reducing manoids.

  317. Morton's toes says

    Yes the Mark Sedgwick article on Dugin’s philosophy and metaphysics is quite good. He is a professional academic and he does not make claims he can’t point at a citation for. On the other hand he is a professional western academic and he is not really going to see anything like popular support or impact of the ideas that is not reported on the mainstream channels. For example the remark about how his peers are free to cite Eliade but not Guenon. Professor Sedgwick is such an edge lord!

    I have the Sedgwick book on Against the Modern World–it is quite good.

    The best part in that article was he got a Dugin course reading list and it did have four of Evola’s books on it. I am very fond of Julius Evola’s books and any man that can maintain that Mussolini didn’t go nearly far enough because he hooked up with the hopelessly corrupt Catholic church is OK with me. Not that I don’t have issues with J. E. but that is kind of a tangent here.

    Also his explanation on how all these weird ingredients got into the stew because they were working with whatever they could get their hands was pretty good.

    The subject that interests me that people mention but gloss over is the Dugin as Old Believer thing. In my limits of understanding I see V. Putin as 100% aligned with the Russian Orthodox Church and the Old Believers are not at all. They think every man is rightly his own priest or something close to that? That is a pretty huge difference and if V. Putin and A. Dugin ever do confer I don’t see how they could discuss religion.

  318. It would be a misnomer to think that Celtic settlements or burial grounds were strictly limited to Western and Southern Ukraine, as can be seen from this map. Several such sites have been found in Central and Northern Ukraine too.

    https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0qh6Y249Ztw/WIBbselZ7rI/AAAAAAAADWw/WKWorF4XFjoa126CjePOZcYJyog-Y94tQCLcB/s1600/1.jpg
    https://balkancelts.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/gallo-scythians1.pdf

  319. sher singh says

    https://twitter.com/Singh23670/status/1346899475315482627

    Hmm Hindu hatred of Jats makes sense, they’re an anomaly along with the NW & Brahmins.
    NW is closer to Slavs than to S Indian, makes sense given the geography.

    Culturally or religiously no, but those can be changed.

  320. Meanwhile children’s rebellion against Putin trends more on TikTok than on YouTube. TikTok videos tagged #свободунавальному received 108 million views.

    There is the brotherly Chinese social media, which less helpful for the authorities in Russia (as well as more idiotizing, if that was possible) than the American social media. But the important story from the children’s social media rebellion is not related to Navalny, but the question why during a pandemic, are children are currently returned to school.

    A pandemic is continuing at the same level as early November, if slightly below December peaks. Excess deaths indicated until November that thousands are dying each day. Meanwhile there is a potential entry of the British mutation of coronavirus into Russia. And TikTok trends show that some children are sitting in classes without masks, in classrooms where air is unfiltered.
    https://www.tiktok.com/@almorozova/video/6919376127253417218
    https://www.tiktok.com/@po1ives/video/6920096223957503234
    https://www.tiktok.com/@devilfish_/video/6919415065749867777

  321. Here an example where there can be too much liberalism.

    A conscript soldier Ramil Shamsutdinov, murdered 8 fellow conscripts in 2019, reportedly due to bullying. He received this week 24 and a half years in prison. (https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-55464187)

    In America, I would assume a more strict punishment for murdering 8 of your colleagues. There are in America, people with significantly longer times in prison for carrying cannabis across the border.

  322. The only feature of English grammar that has been (debatably) attributed to Brythonic Celtic is the essentially useless usage of the auxiliary verb ‘do’, as in ‘I don’t like Indians’, ‘do u liek sex?’ etc.

    Can’t speak for French grammar, although I remember being curious about this topic earlier and by looking at etymological wordlists, French has a very marginally larger inventory of Gaulish-origin words, nearly all which relate to agriculture.

  323. I will give you even odds that Putin does not leave within the next two years for any sum up to $1,000.

    If you truly assess the probability of that as 95%, it should be a no brainer for you to accept.

  324. According to Andrei Shkolnikov, Biden’s win means that Putin can not leave in 2024, due to the escalation in the hybrid war attack on Russia that is expected. So i have seen various analyses on that issue. But Putin will get very old by 2030, not sure it is a good idea to stay after 2024. A viable system should not be very dependent on a single person, i even heard that the constitutional changes were with this in mind.

  325. Bashibuzuk says

    Dugin as Old Believer thing

    I am not sure about Dugin being seriously an Old Believer. I have thought about it before and I have not seen a manner in which Dugin might align his eclecticism with the very serious and strict approach that the Old Believers have towards all spiritual aspects of existence.

    When Dugin first started to advocate Old Believer spiritual praxis he was still married with a woman who was among the founding members of the first Russian LGBTQ association. He met her in the Esoteric / Occult circle where he started his spiritual evolution. She is mentioned in the articles. He had a son with her. This doesn’t square with Dugin being an OB. Although my understanding is that he divorced her.

    The Old Believers’ topic is very interesting, I have often written in my comments that the Holy Rus ended with the Schism between Moscow Patriarch Nikon and the Old Believers. It took a couple of generations for the official Church to prevail against the Old Believers in the central Russian regions, it took centuries to have them under control elsewhere and they have proven impossible to defeat.

    An amount of violence, similar to the one that has been displayed during the European Religious Wars, has been directed against them by the Russian Empire (which arguably after Peter the Great was very cosmopolitan and more Germanophile than it was Russophile). The great Solovki Monastery has sustained an eight year (!) siege to remain firmly Old Believer and was only captured because one of the monks betrayed and opened its doors. Entire villages have chosen to lock themselves up into their traditional wooden churches and perish in flames to remain faithful to the Traditional Church and avoid accepting Nikonian popes and reformed rites in their community. There were hundreds of thousands of deaths. Around a dozen insurrections, with perhaps at least 3 of them qualifying as outright peasant wars.
    And yet they survived some 350 years of persecution, until in 1905 after the first Russian revolution, the Tsar Nicholas announced religious freedoms as a law. They survived in the deepest forests, but also in the large towns as clandestine home churches in the merchant class (Russian Empire was divided into Sosloviya / e (s) = something between a class and a caste). Anong the peasants they managed to dodge serfdom and among the merchants they became some of the richest dynasties.

    They did this despite their official status as second tier citizens (or even third tier citizens if you think about the cosmopolitan aristocracy being the first tier and the Moscow Patriarchy commoner being the second tier). This proves beyond doubt that they are exceptional people. Savva Mamontov was one of them, Tretyakov family also were Old Believer, although both the Manontov and Tretyakov families were very well integrated into the Tsarist elites and belonged to less extreme Old Believer sects.

    Because Old Believers are actually an ensemble of different sects and not a unified Church. This is due to the Traditional Old Believer clergy having been targeted by the Nikonian Russian Orthodox Church for extermination. The higher the rank of the clergy and the more certain they were of being executed if they refused to accept the reforms. After a couple of generations of this policy of eradication, in some regions no Old Believer priests were left alive.

    As I mentioned above Tsardom of Russia was nearly a caste system society and clergy was a caste with low and middle rank parish church priests (the so-called popes) being married men whose children became the next generation of the priestly sosloviye. Once these families eradicated or forcibly converted to the new rites, the Okd Believers had to do without priests in their Church. They learned all to read and write old Church Slavonic (a 100% literacy rate) and started to elect their own pastors/teachers.

    These sects that had no priest were called bezpopovtsy (those without priests). Some groups, mainly outside Russia (in Ruthenian lands) managed to keep an Old Believer Church hierarchy intact, they were called the popovtsy (those with priests). And the most extreme, who considered that all Church was lost and desecrated were the netovsshina sect (from Niet = No in Russian, those with no Church). The Netovsshina considered that they were living in Apocalyptic times, the Tsar being an Antichrist and Russian Empire being the kingdom of the Devil. The official Church was the Whore of Babylon and its priests were devil minions. All reformed Russian Orthodox commoners were already damned and going to hell, they were tainted and impure. Even letting them inside one’s house, eating at the same table or drinking from the same cup as a Nikonian Orthodox did produced a spiritual impurity that might lead to damnation.

    Netovsshina rejected the State, the society, the whole world as conquered by Satan and ruled by him. These Old Believers ran to the remotest areas of Siberia, to Central Asia, to China. They lived as extended family units and small villages. And every father was the priest for his family.

    Starting from the nineteenth century Netovsshina were also active in revolutionary movements against the Tzar. Dugin’s family might have been from among those people.

  326. Bashibuzuk says

    Sure. No problem. I am convinced that a major part (probably the most important part) of the Russian elite are pushing Pynia to the exit and I believe that they will get rid of him before 2024. Just like they got rid of the Tzar in 1917 or Yeltsin in 1999.

    I think people like Shoigu and Sobyanin, even Medvedev and his circle, will let go of a sigh of relief when VVP retires. I am convinced that as soon as he can reasonably be certain that they will not send him to La Hague and that his loved ones are safe, he will accept some honorary position and keep it quiet until he dies. Otherwise he would die earlier and his daughters and sons and grandchildren would lose everything.

    A man must sacrifice himself for his family. I am pretty certain Putin loves his offspring…

  327. Bashibuzuk says

    Those were the Bastarnae, the (bastardized) Celts mixed up with the local Scythian and (proto) Balto – Slavic Anty (Wends). Large cities of sedentary “Scythian ” agriculturalists are described by Greek historians in the interior regions beyond Don river. These people were not ethically Scythian (Indo-Iranian), but the Greeks didn’t really get into these details.

  328. No one will get rid of Putin before 2024 in an unofficial way, because the country is under strong attack by the West, that is bound to escalate further. It will only cause a weakening and further division of the country and will vindicate all the Putin bashers in the West, it will become a big show for the West and will lead to crack down on “putin understanders” in the West too. This isn’t how it is done.

    Stability is the most important thing for a country under attack.

    In the 2024 elections – it is highly possible. Then he will simply not be among the candidates.

  329. Gerard1234 says

    LOL – You and I know, or probably can guess ,that this delinquant Ano4/Mr Alefantis/Avi Chongstein/ Elephant Man Jr/J’aimes L’enfants is the type of creep who almost certainly has claimed that Furgal and Khabarovsk was the end of the “regime” (LOL), he 1million % would have claimed that the Medvedev duck protests was the end for Putin, or Coronavirus, or the sanctions from reunifing Krim, or the Constitutional vote ( hamster retards protesting that he can continue), or holding the June 24th Victory parade, or Nemtsov, or the “failure” that Russian nation would show to the world during the World Cup.

    He’s a cretin. Do you want to bet $1000 that for 1 or more of those things he has claimed it was the “end for Putin?” I am sure he did for Khabarovsk. Surely such a series of cretinous statements should permanantly disqualify him from having opinions. They are all only 5th column projection – not actual opinions.

    BTW – many thanks for supporting on Twitter my comments that Google are inflating numbers of this POS Navalny’s non-event video. I always thought we are like brothers.

  330. Daniel Chieh says

    Any mild understanding of game theory dismisses your rather confused thesis. I mean if you define success as lack of violence, then you are completely true in a circular fashion.

    It’s evident that an entity survives only by being a credible force for violence and often that credible force is what prevents more violence by smaller actors. Thus the fundamental dynamic of legitimate state use of violence and it’s prevention of violence by “illegitimate” sources. Or from a natural perspective, the very blatant, sometimes overactive eradication of foreign entities in the body in the bloodstream.

    China’s existence was formed by violence, China’s modern state was formed by violence and China’s present day totalitarianism is enforced by violence. And her ultimate rise will most likely be an exclamation point marked by a violent war, to which she is procuring weapons for now. Ironically, she bans depictions of violence in media, but that doesn’t make the central state’s means of operation any less true.

    Violence is always with us. It may not be the form you see romanticized or vilified in fiction, but it is always with us. It is as central to the universe as the laws of force and energy.

  331. The author of the article identifies the map’s contents as:

    “Main La Têne sites and finds east of the Carpathians”

    Something that I would associate more with the main center of Celtic presence in Central Europe, as in Switzerland. The more that I study ancient cultures and geographical settlements, it seems that “bastardization” is a common trend, not the exception. This is why the fate of the Western world will ultimately be brown or beige and not white or black, not withstanding all of the discomfort with this thought for so many readers of UNZ website. 🙂

  332. Well, if by “brown” you mean brownshirts, I believe, to the contrary, that a lot of the readers at Unz will be very comforted with this thought.

  333. Daniel Chieh says

    BTC?

  334. OK, but bear in mind that Celtic languages and cultural traditions disappeared even in their original core areas around Hallstat. The only places where these remain is in the westernmost parts of Europe, where later invasions were not strong enough to erase them.

    I will stand corrected if someone shows me “Ukrainian Galicians turn up at Celtic music festivals claiming to be Celts”, which is the only thing I was skeptical about.

    Spanish Galicians’ only folk music is clearly of Celtic origin and their landscape is everywhere dotted by Castros (ancient Celtic hill forts) so many Galicians like to call themselves Celts (when they don’t claim to be descendants of Swavians, for the short Germanic kingdom that was established in their lands). But they speak a Latin language and have a very mixed ancestry so perhaps it is a bit of a stretch to consider them Celts. The same could possibly be said of those Celtic Ukrainians.

  335. Thank you.

    You make an excellent point. Most people do indeed eagerly participate in their servitude and want to be servants. States may have begun as coercion by a few, and developed consent as time went on. Its well known that tyrannies rule with the consent of those they oppress – the actual force they can bring to bear being wholly inadequate without general consent. Its also why states invest so heavily in ideology. I think it was Alexander Herzen who mocked Rousseau’s remark “man yearns to be free, yet everywhere he is in chains”, by saying thats as silly as saying “fish yearn to fly, yet everywhere they live in water”. And I think the Brothers Karamazov also dealt poetically with mans positive desire to be unfree in the powerful Grand Inquistor chapter.

    Man also craves war and death – it is no use turning a blind eye to the dark side of humanity. Bertrand Russel thought ordinary people hated war and had to be manipulated into it by an elite. He changed his mind when he saw British soldiers positively gleeful about going to the front.

    I would only say – and this is my personal romanticism and perhaps my personal foolishness – that man is corrupted by civilization. We all grow up bent, twisted, and corrupted, our natures suppressed, and disciplines like Taoism and Chan Buddhism try and “undo” that damage – so maybe the adult human as he or she appears in civilization should not be taken as the template for “human nature”. But I may well be wrong in this.

  336. Meanwhile children’s rebellion against Putin trends more on TikTok than on YouTube. TikTok videos tagged #свободунавальному received 108 million views.

    There are maybe 35 million under-18 in Russia, go upto normal University age and it is 40 million+. Include Belarus and Ukraine in that and it’s maybe 50 million people. Forget about age and we are talking 190 million.

    The idea that 108 million people,

    or 50 million,

    or 25 million

    or even 5 million people have viewed this is retarded in the extreme !

    Putin’s most popular age-demographic is with kids/young adults anyway.

  337. As there are numerous Celtic settlements/graveyards to be found in Western Ukraine, it’s easy to understand how some of the folks from the region feel a special fondness for this sort of identification. As I’ve already pointed out, there’s a whole (but small) ethnic enclave of Ukrainian mountain folk, the Boikos, who stubbornly adhere to the notion that their original uniting spirit was Celtic inspired:

    Not many facts have been definitively established, but there is plenty of evidence that the Boykos are the remains of assimilated Croat Boii-Celts. There are the so-called “long rectangular houses” – large residential and farm buildings, built without a single nail, housed under one thatched roof. There are the heroic hairstyles of the Ancestors, which were in evidence until the beginning of the twentieth century. Boykos braided the front side strands of hair over their temples, as the Boii-Celts once did. There are oatmeal dishes prepared according to ancient recipes. Oats were a component of bread and snacks and cookies. In addition, the Boykos genuinely believed that oatmeal gives strength and health, and prevents disease. It is known that the Celtic peoples also revered oats.

    https://forgottengalicia.com/boykos-the-silent-inhabitants-of-the-carpathians/

    blob:https://www.youtube.com/bc2bdae5-543e-41b0-99a4-20ae22b2fc8b
    With German subtitles

  338. Not sure how it would fare around late 2023. I mean Lagarde has spoken against and others also did so perhaps they will simply outlaw it.

    Also:

    https://www.goldbroker.com/media/image/cms/media/images/couverture-the-economist-monnaie-mondiale-2018.jpg

    But that’s probably more around 2030 – 2040 if we ever get there without nukes flying around and blowing the human anthills across the world.

  339. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    It’s Time to Stop Counting Jews in the Cabinet

    Pride in members of the tribe in the new administration is understandable, even if many disdained the Jews in the Trump White House. But what matters is what they will do, not their religion.

  340. I knew there would be some discomfort with my theory. In my lifetime alone, I can remember Black Americans who still had really negroid features, kinky hair (almost exclusively), black skin, wide noses, large lips. Not much of this remains today, in a 50 year period. We’ve gone from “dark chocolate” to ‘milk chocolate” very quickly. Black types like Barrack Obama and Kamala Harris are the norm today. In another 50 years, they’ll look even more beige, and their hair will be even straighter. They already resist interacting with the Somalis. 🙂

  341. Of course, slavery pre-dates the state. As does violence and war.

    However, it was much more limited in scope. Primitive peoples practice a form of warfare that is more ritualistic than serious and in which very few people actually die. And primitive peoples were much more egalitarian and less hierarchical than states.

    Your thesis seems to be that people formed states because it offered more military security – you prsuppose an environment of constant insecurity and violence. But it was not so. Violence and slavery massively intensified with the emergence of states. Slavery and violence undoubtedly predate the state, but in much milder forms.

    Again, early states were extremely fragile and constantly collapsing. Any advantage in defense was offset by providing a fixed base for attackers and an added rationale for attack in the form of booty – stored surplus and slaves. Much worse nutrition and health, disease, and reliance on single crops prone to failure made early states even more fragile. It seems defection was a constant worry of rulers- why, if states offered such wonderful security?

    The story is one of early states offering less security and worse life in every way, and constantly collapsing. Yet they persisted.

    At a certain point, states became more militarily successful against hunter gathering – but this happened much later. For hundreds of years early states offered no greater security. Once most of the world was organized into states this advantage canceled itself out, and the limited, sporadic violence of hunter gatherer life was replaced by incessant warfare and desire for booty and slaves.

    But the real point is that having a military advantage over hunter gatherers only really matters if you want to acquire slaves or booty (early states did not crave territory) – which is the preoccupation of an elite that wants to live off the labor of others.

    The hunter gathering environment was not violent enough to justify trading drastically worse nutrition, epidemic disease, food insecurity in reliance on single crop, drudgery, and slavery to a King, in exchange for a dubious military advantage whose true potential only emerged in the distant future (and thus was not an immediate reason) that was bound to be temporary in any case as it compelled everyone else to similarly organize and create new reasons for a much deadlier kind of warfare.

    As usual: you’re wrong. Thanks for serving as a bad example again.

    The dread of being “wrong” is the hobgoblin of little minds. You will never foster creativity and originality in an atmosphere where everyone us terrified of being “wrong” and “stupid”.

    Don’t be afraid to be wrong, and don’t be afraid to say “stupid” things – you may say 10 stupid things and one brilliantly creative thing that advances human knowledge.

    Small, fearful men want primarily be “right” – geniuses want to see something new.

  342. One man – one vote does not exist anywhere.

    Most societies are oligarhic, unless you believe that a billionare and a homeless man have the same influence in society somewhere in the world.

    I continue to think that you are wrong and Putin will not go away before 2024.

    I doubt that Russian elite is interested in instability.

    It isn’t Navalny that is the threat. It is those behind him – the combined West, representing half the global economy and some of the smartest people in the world.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQUFmPEdv2I&t=61s

  343. Felix Keverich says
  344. Morton's toes says

    I have searched in my American libraries for information in this exact channel and found nothing so far (though I have not searched that hard–this isn’t the type of data I can turn to profit). And here it is surpassed in an internet comment. I will miss this place if the thought police shut it down. : (

    You would get a gold star from me if I used emojis but my Old User status forbids it.

  345. It likely has the most amount of comment spam on any Youtube video ever made. All videos that has more comments (about 10 of them) has at least close to a billion views or as much several billion views. There is one exception, a PewDiePie music video that only has 270B views and about the same number of comments.

  346. Daniel Chieh says

    Everything in your ramble was already refuted earlier, notwithstanding your inability to read anthropology(even when linked) and talk in concrete and specific terms. What is true in Malkuth is true in Kether, and what is false is equally false.

    Thanks for being an excellent example of wrongness(and its extended phenotypes, like poor theory of mind, poor reading comprehension, overall innumeracy, and limited creative awareness, etc).

  347. Russia has at most produced what, like 3 million doses by now? How is the foreign production working out? Has it started yet?

  348. So you think Navalny will be killed?

    Because otherwise everyone would understand that Putin is now a lame duck.

    I doubt that Russian elite is interested in instability.

    If they want stability they should ensure the nomination of a successor ASAP. Then they should offer Pynia a dignified exit. Navalny is just a tool, but an efficient and courageous one. He will make a good chief of an anticorruption taskforce. BTW the video has been filmed last summer before the poisoning.

  349. Putin is a very democratic politician, although it is commitment to being a centrist ruler of one-party democracy.

    Putin is a centrist in a way which was common in the West in the 19th century style, that tries to balance the opinion of different clans of elites, and offset with policies that are popular with the ordinary people.

    To the extent he is conservative, it is in the sense of Metternich. This is conservativism in support of the existing order, which is particularly in need of stabilization due to its recency in postsoviet countries.

    If you can find the television interview, where he talks about Black Lives Matters protests in America; there was a representative response of someone who identifies with the ruling class on even a multinational level.

    He said something like if I remember that is a pure Metternich conservatism – “I sympathetic for the African American cause against the police violence and discrimination in America, but the people are making a mess now; they shouldn’t riot and protest. The important thing is that there is order and respect for established democratic processes.”

    West as the recent nomination of Chubais suggested already a couple

    Chubais is important because he has a economic textbook rhetorical cover, for moving money around. He seems like he really believes in the economics textbooks and is not completely cynical about them.

    At the same time, he heads import substitution policies, which shouldn’t be supported by the economic textbooks he claims to be his bible – but which are useful for moving money between friends.

    In Rosnano, there was the perfect job for bureaucrats to move around public money, in a way which is intrinsically opaque.

    Normal people cannot say understand venture capital style investments in sectors like nanotechnology, or whether there is accurate accounting in these investments. Moreover, the fund diversified to all kinds of different industries.

    So Chubais can be intermediary between a public originated fund and many different businessmen and industries across the Russian Federation, while at the same time there is an intrinsic opacity about these activities from the ordinary people. He was a node between

  350. I suspect that Navalny is being advised by prominent intelligence services, who have lots of money and some of the best minds working on it. That is – to create something out of nothing (him, as well as the situation around him – poisonings, etc,). He is just a part of that something. Probably there are supercomputers being involved too. It is true that he is courageous, but is is also true that he is backed by the biggest force on the planet, and its media technologies, brains, and money.

    Now, whether he will be killed, i don’t know. I suspect not, as this will create too much bad rap.

    What i think will happen is that he will go to jail for several years while Putin will retire in 2024. Russian elite then will concentrate on marginalising his movement, with Putin being out of the picture.

  351. For domestic production we are 7 million doses by the end of this month

    11 million in February

    15 million in March

    Plan is for a minimum of 60 million by June. That is just on SputnikV.

    Our delays are from second dose production , and I see that UK have decided to do as many as possible with the first dose to possibly compensate for the same problem with second dose production – because they are now telling people to wait 3 months for the second dose. Interesting to see which approach will be optimal.

  352. Daniel Chieh says

    Incidentally for those curious- one of the most succinct and best descriptions of this:

    https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1212.htm

  353. I’m too lazy to check now, but from my memory

    If I remember accurately domestic production was something like:
    1 million doses per month produced in December
    3 million doses per month produced in January
    18 million doses per month rate by April
    30 million doses per month produced rate in June (or by July)

    But domestic production ramp was described always in ambiguous and confusing language by officials.

    Therefore, there should be 4 million doses produced by the end of this month domestically. Some hundreds of thousands of these doses were sent to Argentina. And the second dose has more production bottleneck than the first dose.

    There need to be around 32 million doses to vaccinate the over 60 population in the Russian Federation. So the domestic production will be sufficient to cover domestic vulnerable groups sometime in April or May.

    Foreign production of “Sputnik V” (e.g. from India, South Korea) is having quality control testing of samples in Russia this month. From the perspective of ending the pandemic in Russia as early as possible, it would be better if countries like Argentina was supplied from the foreign production of “Sputnik V”, and the domestic production was prioritized for domestic use.

  354. Daniel Chieh says

    There’s always gold, and I believe that our kind host can always use more bling;)

  355. I suppose this is your face-saving version of a concession. I graciously accept 🙂

    Anyways, I urge anyone interested to read the wonderful James C Scott. Along with David Graeber, who sadly passed away last year, he is one of the finest anthropologists of our generation.

    The world is a far more interesting and unexpected place than the “standard narrative” of the humorless authoritarians would have you believe – narratives of an elite trying to convince you your servitude is the best deal out there, and really, quite inevitable, old boy. But there are more ways to live than one.

    Mainstream elites are hostile to imagination – they want to convince you things as they are now are simply the way things always were and always must be. They don’t want you to question what has been called the “inherited stupidities”.

    So they try and make you afraid of appearing “stupid” or “wrong” and thereby create a chilling atmosphere hostile to novelty.

    But we can respond with – laughter, and a smile 🙂


    On a side note, Mikel, your remark that only a tiny minority of Americans are imagining new ways of living and the mainstream is devolving further into the stupidity of Woke ideology, there is some truth to that but I think its overstated.

    Woke ideology is a game played by the elite that has surprisingly little impact on the lives of ordinary people, horror stories aside. The project I’m involved in has put me in a multicultural environment brimming with tensions, conflict, and feuds involving multiple races. Not once have the Blacks involved played the race card and they have been given zero special treatment or privileges. Nor ar the Whites in the least bashful about aggressively pressing their claims. The whole thing is playing out as if race didn’t exist and the Blacks are not asking for nor getting any special concessions (everyone involved is an educated liberal type).

    I’m actually quite impressed by the whole thing. I dont want to underplay the hideousness of Woke ideology, but I increasingly view it as a pastime for a bored and spoiled elite. I’m sure some lives have been destroyed by it but for most people it simply passes them by – but who knows? Future events may make me eat my words.

    On the flip side, the new and eccentric living arrangements increasingly being imagined by Americans like hashtag#vanlife that are alternatives to consumerism and politics, while certainly a minority, it’s much larger and more prominent than just 15 years ago. This kind of thing will always appeal to a minority- the bourgeois are always dull and “respectable”. But a healthy culture nurtures a significant minority of “counter-culture” types that the mainstream is simultaneously influenced by and ambivalent about, fascinated by and doubtful of – like the Taoists in ancient China, or the Romantics in Europe.

  356. Bashibuzuk says

    I suspect that Navalny is being advised by prominent intelligence services,

    Absolutely. I’ve been the first to write on AK blog about Pevchikh being most probably an MI6 asset.

    But is doesn’t change anything to the whole picture. People who’ve overthrown the Tsar were aligned with foreign interests and those who managed the Perestroika towards USSR implosion were also most probably working with Western intelligence agencies (Yakovlev comes to mind, but there were others).

    Pynia himself might well have been recruited by the intelligence agency of Federal German Republic by the end of his stay in Dresden. That might explain his exponential career in the early 90ies. Of course he later on decided to go solo as a big boy should, but nevermind.

    What is important is whether Pynia is still useful to the other kleptocrates and whether they value their foreign assets more than the value Pynia.

  357. Daniel Chieh says

    The fact that’s your so bound up with winning that you’ll lie about others rather than admit to failing doesn’t make you any less wrong. It does, however, demonstrate the usual reasons why your tribe is so disliked.

    Since I’ve adequately used you as a bad example already for others, wasting any more time on this is superfluous to purpose.

    Mind you, I do like Graeber and have quoted him before. He has an interesting perspective but ultimately, he wouldn’t agree with you either. In his writings, his entire point was that there were various solutions for the real problems of distribution. As a Communist, he disapproved of capitalism but he never claimed it wasn’t a solution.

  358. bicycling in the winter is entirely possible if adequate infrastructure is provided.

    I have floated the idea of building small tunnels in Russia, partly for the purposes of using bicycles in winter. I’m not sure how much it would cost, or if you would need some system to segregate out people who would possibly abuse them.

    You’re revealing your car-centric bias…Cars should be banned in all seasons inside a major city.

    Honestly, I am quite sympathetic to your vision of allowing progressive urbanites to self-segregate into a congenital caste of bug-eating cyclists, who can only live among Africans or MENA people.

    Though, on the other hand, think of what space for pubic parks and bicycle paths would be opened up, if the migrants were deported.

  359. The problem for using the bicycle in cities in Russia for something serious like commuting, is the lack of adequate bicycle roads, which would separate you from cars. Also there is a lack of bicycle parking.

    I consider these to be built-in problems, which are hard to bypass.

    If I were designing a city, I would definitely build in capacity for dedicated paths. On the most minimal level, I think it is positive for kids. That it helps give them more agency than if they must rely on their parents’ cars.

    or when it is raining

    I’m not sure that I ever tried to ride a bike in a downpour, but I have used a bike in a wet place, with lots of light rain. I found it difficult to keep me feet on the pedals, but as an American, I was not a very skilled rider.

    When I was young, I used to be the last one to go inside after it snowed. I guess it is not too bad, if you are right outside your door. Now, I am very afraid of frostbite and of being away from shelter. There are some parts of the skin which are very difficult to protect.

    If someone wanted to build elevated bicycle paths like they do in China. I would have loved to reach top speed on that as a teenager:

    I wonder if there is some way that one could construct an elevated mass transit system that would be quiet enough that one could somehow incorporate bicycle paths on the same modular system. That is, like a hanging monorail, with a bike path on the top.

  360. Daniel Chieh says

    Evola was pretty insane and would be so even under occult measures, as Greer noted, due to his dedication to the Jupiterian Sun and total lack of reserve. His conclusions on women, the secret Earth, etc are all hilarious nuts. “Every woman most longs to be in a harem to become a being of only giving,” ignores the brutal real harem polics once they had children.

    But darn if he ain’t loveable.

  361. There must have been setbacks at the beginning of the transition to agriculture, exploitative elites, malnutrition, famines and of course, superstitious adherence to established dogmas, even when they went against the interests of the plebes. But it seems to me that it is extraordinarily late now to have this debate.

    We have already witnessed how modern agriculture and animal husbandry has enabled the population of our species to grow so much that there’s no returning to hunting/gathering. The planet is too small for that, given our numbers. And we’re doing just fine. In most countries of the world nowadays we have too much food and obesity is a much bigger problem than food scarcity at a global level. So, in the end, it looks obvious that agriculture was a successful strategy from the food security point of view. In spite of the initial setbacks, our ancestor’s choice proved to be correct.

    Woke ideology is a game played by the elite that has surprisingly little impact on the lives of ordinary people, horror stories aside.

    There’s some truth to that. Most of us just ignore or laugh at wokeism and carry on with our lives. The problem is that wokeists, who are very powerful, do not ignore us. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t dare to say certain things in my work environment. They would try to destroy my life. This wasn’t so a coupe of decades ago. I remember, for example, how we used to address each other with mild ethnic slurs in a corporate environment and everybody accepted it in a good humor. That would be unthinkable now. We were freer and, frankly, happier.

    Also, I am not a conservative person (I was born and raised in Western Europe after all) but I am glad that I live in a small conservative community here in the US so my young son can be relatively free of wokeism at school. For the time being, he’s free of critical race theory and gender fluidity indoctrination. In other parts of the country (or of my own state) we would have to worry that he’s surrounded by schoolmates with gender dysphoria and similar novel tendencies.

  362. I mean, if you’re serious about it, do feel free to contact me (see Contact/Follow on the sidebar) and we can hammer out the details.

    Somebody impartial and trustworthy (e.g. Daniel Chieh? AP?) can referee.

  363. reiner Tor says

    An old saying I heard a lot growing up was det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder (there is no bad weather, only bad clothes).

    It’s probably true in a flatland. Though one big attraction of bicycles is that they are easy to use, compared to motorbikes or cars: you don’t need to change clothes (like for a motorbike), nor find a parking lot, you just go where you need to go. It’s no longer true if you have to change clothes when arriving at your destination, like getting out of your ski suit.

    But it’s definitely trickier in a hilly country: the clothes that are good uphill will not be adequate downhill, and I don’t know how to get around that fact. You will probably feel pretty cold downhill in the same clothes which make you sweat uphill. (Personal experience.) Sweating is bad if you then have to spend a lot of time at your destination, unless you can take shower. But then it’s lost time and makes the whole experience pretty cumbersome.

  364. Bashibuzuk says

    Sure.

    1) Putin leaving office in the next 24 month period

    2) Putin officialy announcing that he will leave office in the next 24 month period.

    3) Putin naming his successor in the next 24 month period and announcing that he will not go to the next elections.

    4) Putin dying in the next 24 month period.

    Is that okay?

  365. Hyperborean says

    The more revealing fact will be what race halfies marry into. East Asian and Latin American halfies seem to merge into the broader (white) American ethnicity while, as Barry showed, the combination of the black one-drop rule and the many, many grifting opportunities and agitation in the past and even more in the years to come will ensure a strong, separate and antagonistic black American identity.


    It is ironic that the American vassal state of Great Britain is undergoing a process of blanqueamiento…

    Appendix: Top 3 inter-ethnic relationships within each ethnic group; England and Wales, 2011

    Mixed/multiple
    White and Black Caribbean
    -White British 44,000k 68%
    -Black Caribbean 4,000k 7%
    -Other White 3,000k 4%

    White and Black African
    -White British 13,000k 44%
    -Black African 3,100k 11%
    -Other White 3,000k 10%

    White and Asian
    -White British 42,000k 62%
    -Other White 5,000k 8%
    -Indian 2,000k 3%

    Other Mixed
    -White British 33,000k 50%
    -White 10,000k 15%
    -Asian Other 2,000k 3%

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-118/#comment-4159630

    …at the same time as Americans have spent a great deal of effort since the presidency of Bush the Lesser on sparking an anti-indigenous Racial Holy War (RaHoWa) in Europe.

    https://unherd.com/thepost/america-exports-its-racial-politics-to-france/

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/europe/france-racism-universalism.html

    https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2012/1/26/are-europes-muslims-americas-problem?espv=1

  366. Philip Owen says

    There is (was) a festival about 10 miles from my house. I know about the Galicians (Ukrainian version) performing because I heard them playing. Spanish Galicians turn up too. The cook in my lunchtime Sandwich bar is a Spanish Galician. I had no time for my magnum opus today.

  367. Philip Owen says

    The EU is also a rising superpower. Done with even less violence than post Mao China.

  368. 3) Putin naming his successor in the next 24 month period and announcing that he will not go to the next elections.

    LOL, come on. This is what you wrote:

    I have already commented that Putin will most probably leave his office in the next two years. Now I am 95% sure of that.

    Leave office within next two years =/ announce successor and decline to participate in next election. Not even close!

    I will not take that bet at even odds. My best guess is he’ll leave in 2030, but many analysts consider 2024 quite realistic too – personally I’d currently give it 30%. Still, not confident enough to bet money on it, considering especially that I would also have to adjust for actuarial risks (low but not entirely negligible), the possibility of a Constitutional redefinition of the Presidency (which might count as “leaving office”), and I also have to adjust for the risk of you not paying up if you lose (no offense – but that is a reasonable consideration, considering your anonymous status and that I don’t know you personally).

    That said, it is instructive how the challenge of a bet has enticed you to radically clarify what you actually mean by “leave office.” This often happens when money is on the line. A salutary demonstration of the importance of having “skin in the game.”

  369. What do you think of this crazy Ukrainian far right chick?

    https://www.illiberalism.org/olena-semenyaka-the-first-lady-of-ukrainian-nationalism/

    https://64.media.tumblr.com/7d2d85633caa53b1dccda09415134e88/tumblr_pk8w98agpu1vvu9xyo3_1280.jpg

    She hilariously managed to get a fellowship at a Viennese academic institute before she was ratted out and canceled.

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7a5jy/austrian-academic-institute-revokes-fellowship-given-to-far-right-figurehead

    An Austrian academic institute has revoked a fellowship to a Ukrainian postgraduate after the embarrassing discovery that she was a key figurehead in the global far-right.

    The Vienna-based Institute for Human Sciences (Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, or IWM) said Monday that the fellowship awarded to Olena Semenyaka, the head of international outreach for Ukraine’s far-right Azov movement, had been “revoked with immediate effect” after her political affiliations and accusations she has promoted her country as a hub for right-wing extremists became known.

  370. Daniel Chieh says

    Would bang.

    She doesn’t seem to have written any entertaining books on the Kali Yuga, unlike Evola.

  371. On the right side of the bearded dude there is a projected picture of Baron Von Ungern that I have already posted here once. They look like nice people. Perhaps the chick is a member of the Ukrainian O9A. She has the looks. Probably fine young intellectuals the three of them. I would be pleased to drink some Absinthe at Zelda’s in such refined company. Although I’m probably too old…

  372. Semenyaka analyzes Black Metal heretical philosophy through the concept of “Aryan Luciferianism,”[33] inspired by references to Ariosophy, Ernst Jünger’s nihilism, and the “aristocratic spirit” from Julius Evola. She sees this “Aryan Luciferianism” as a call for an extreme form of romanticism, power, and violence marked by neo-pagan principles and symbolism—even if she prefers to refer to gnosticism as a philosophical principle for this metaphysical interpretation of Black Metal.[34] Taking Satanism as an elitist norm, the concept of “Aryan Luciferianism” in Black Metal can be detected in Semenyaka’s philosophy as a metaphysical sentiment of the unity of freedom and need presupposed in detail and precision by the concept of European ethnic voluntarism

    I was right she is with the O9A. She’s probably into some lurid stuff. Biletsky and her must probably have lots of fun.

    And her geopolitical ideas are entirely compatible with the theses of the late Brzezinski. So she might also be an asset of some Western Intelligence Agencies. She knows all these Atomwaffen, Fuerkrieg and other Misanthropic Division networks connected to Azov Battalion and can always inform about them if and when needed.

    Cute little witch.

    It’s good to be young…

  373. I agree with you that barring some catastrophe, we’re not going back to hunter gathering any time soon.

    But its useful to understand that sedentary agricultural societies exist for the purpose of sustaining an exploitative elite – that recalibrates expectations (which was my original point)- and to lose one’s fear of a “dark ages”. While we’re probably not going back to hunting and gathering any time soon (in the deep long term quite possible), weakening of centralized power and a return to localism, and the retreat of complex civilization, are almost certain.

    The prejudice of civilization is to see any retreat of centralized power and reduction of complexity as a terrifying “dark ages” – but they are more likely periods of greater health and freedom.

    We have too much adopted the “perspective of civilization” – but that is merely the perspective of exploitative elites. On this site you see much panic and hand wringing over the supposed retreat of civilization. That goes back to the slave adopting the values of the master.

    Plus, it is pleasant and refreshing to imagine a better life than that available in civilization – freer and more expansive and less restricted and healthier – even if one cannot escape one’s shackles. One can at least try abd live a little better along those lines – like work less and wander the West more 🙂 And laugh more at the silly hierarchies we are all enmeshed in and take them less seriously. In fact, insights from understanding the costs of civilization and its purpose can be used to improve how one lives in a host of ways.

    But that means rejecting the false narrative of the elites- that civilization is an unalloyed good. That all “goid men” live this way and only “barbarians” live beyond the pale.

    The “barbarians” may well have the last laugh 🙂

    As for how successful agriculture was, again a matter of perspective. More people, or a much better life for fewer people? If people mean wealth, you may well prefer more people. If not….

    As for speech restrictions, you make a good point and I can’t disagree with you. But I have come to have a different understanding of the role “speech codes” play in a society, and in fact the general role of “official narratives” that paints the current situation in a very different light. I’m developing a theory of the relationship of “official ideology” to actual practice and behavior that paintsca much more ambivalent picture.

    It may be hard to appreciate now, but Christianity was as horrifying and shocking to respectable Pagan sensibilities as Woke ideology is today – turn the other cheek?! Be meek and mild?! Love your enemies?! Don’t plan for the future?! Give up the world?! Celibacy good?!

    It was a sustained attack on everything good and respectable pagans thought was valuable in the world, easily comparable in scope and sheer radicalism as Woke ideology is today to common sense notions of value.

    The Sermom on the Mount cannot have been any less shocking and radical to a respectable pagan than any Woke screed today. Indeed Christians were well aware of their radicalism- “to the Greeks foolishness, and the Jews a stumbling block”.

    And yet…has any Christian society ever actually lived up to Jesus’s message? Has the attempt even been made? It turned out, Christian societies were every bit as warlike, hated their enemies just as much, and loved marriage and children just as much, as any pagan ever did.

    So, in a sense, an “official ideology” is not to be taken quite seriously – it does not have the widespread impact one might think, and I would suggest, that isn’t even its role. An official ideology is nearly always “otherworldly” – has little relation to the exigencies of real life, and functions as a sort of “parallel universe”. Its role is also to provide a unifying factor people can collectively unite around – one sometimes feels, its content is almost irrelevant, and the more detached from reality, the better.

    Just as generations of little Christian children were taught to turn the other cheek and love their enemies even as they were educated for war, conquest, and business, your kids will be taught about tranagenderism, gender fluidity, and racial injustice, with a similar level of impact on their lives.

    Perhaps I am wrong and will end up eating my words?

  374. The fact that’s your so bound up with winning that you’ll lie about others rather than admit to failing doesn’t make you any less wrong. It does, however, demonstrate the usual reasons why your tribe is so disliked.

    Always the last arrow in the quiver of the authoritarian- first they try and shame you by calling you “stupid” and “wrong”, when that fails, they try and convince you you are “morally bad” for questioning the official narratives that justify oppression. You should be ashamed of vigorously defending your case! You are concerned with winning and people don’t like you (only the official narrative is allowed to win)!

    It reminds me when Ano4 tried so hard to stop me from defending my understanding of Zen by telling/shaming me I was using too many words – only to write extremely long explanations of his understanding of Zen immediately after! 🙂

    An old tactic. You authoritarians are all the same lol.

    Mind you, I do like Graeber and have quoted him before. He has an interesting perspective but ultimately, he wouldn’t agree with you either. In his writings, his entire point was that there were various solutions for the real problems of distribution. As a Communist, he disapproved of capitalism but he never claimed it wasn’t a solution.

    I am glad to hear it, perhaps you’re not entirely hopeless. But I doubt it.

    There is no problem of distribution unless there is an exploiting elite and a surplus. Thats the issue with the shift to agriculture. Once you’ve made that shift, all sorts of solutions may work, and capitalism in a limited form may be one of them.

    The discussion here is about the shift yo agriculture, what was its purpose, and what way of life is best – and what mythical narratives stand in the way of understanding what is best for us, and how might one integrate these insights into our current lives even without returning to a pre-state situation.

    Actually that last wasn’t so much part of the discussion, but it should have been.

  375. Daniel Chieh says

    Once again, your theory of mind has failed you. Hypocritical self-delusion is your solution to the problems of distribution.

    Keep spinning, hamster.

  376. She at least is not a Nazi (she seems to have grown out of any youthful flirtation with that ruinous ideology), but the Satanism would be a deal-breaker for me. She is already in her thirties so this may no longer be a youthful experiment for her. Although one of her heroes Ernst Junger converted to Roman Catholicism in his old age…

  377. Thanks for the offer, but no, I will have to refuse because of the loaded premises – a power transition need not happen because Putin gets shown up as a “bitch” on account of not “whacking” Navalny and the like, etc., nor do I quite get why it was wrong for me to “shill” Pynia – I “shill” him only to the extent he advances Russian national interests, he has been much better at that in the past 2 years than during 2016-18, when I was quasi-oppositionist.

  378. I don’t think she has ever been Nazi, more of a Duginist with Ukrainian characteristics. BTW, IMHO Azov Battalion are not really National Socialist, more of O9A type nihilist Left Hand Path racialists like Atomwaffen, Feuerkrig and Misanthropic Divisions. O9A is of course a sham most probably controlled and manipulated by Western intelligence agencies.

    And yeah she’s not aging well:

    https://sarastuslehti.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/olena-3.jpg

    She looks like some тётя Сара, not exciting at all.

    As Satanist chicks go, the Detroit Satanic Temple lady looked way better :

    https://utahoutcasts.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wE_EtVjeU7U.jpg

    But she too is getting older.

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRBsNKxYwy98RR3YDTqF9gzHRHm98ACpix-0w&usqp=CAU

    At least she had some fun while young:

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAirsndXUAEXVEn.jpg

    Satanist or not time goes by and nothing lasts forever…

  379. I don’t think she has ever been Nazi, more of a Duginist with Ukrainian characteristics.

    She lost her fellowship when old pictures of her with a swastika flag were dug up, but she claims that was an ironic joke picture.

    As Satanist chicks go, the Detroit Satanic Temple lady looked way better

    I think young Semenyaka was cuter. And I have seen much nicer looking goth chicks in Detroit clubs than those two Satanists. There used to be quite a scene in that epically decayed city back in the day.

    I am impressed by your knowledge of those Ukrainian right-wing radical groups.

  380. Sorry, but you are quite wrong here.

    Of course, slavery pre-dates the state. As does violence and war.

    However, it was much more limited in scope. Primitive peoples practice a form of warfare that is more ritualistic

    In pre-contact North America, warfare was a central aspect of life. Open battles were indeed ritualistic and produced few casualties (in contrast to Europeans shooting at each other in the open field with muskets) but most of their warfare consisted of deadly ambushes that were brutal and meant to kill. They also routinely tortured and cannibalized prisoners.

    https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/military-history/history-heritage/popular-books/aboriginal-people-canadian-military/warfare-pre-columbian-north-america.html

    Archaeological evidence confirms the prominent role of warfare in indigenous societies well before the arrival of permanent European settlers. As early as the year 1000, for example, Huron, Neutral, Petun and Iroquois villages were increasingly fortified by a timber palisade that could be nearly 10 metres in height, sometimes villages built a second or even third ring to protect them against attacks by enemy nations. Craig Keener has described how these structures became larger and more elaborate through to the 1500s, with logs as large as 24 inches in diameter being used to construct the multi-layered defences, an enormous investment in communal labour that the villagers would not have made had it not been deemed necessary. Sieges and assaults on such fortified villages therefore must have occurred before Europeans arrived..

    than serious and in which very few people actually die.

    Primitive peoples don’t have huge death counts in their wars because populations are small, but the death rate from their “wars” (more like ambushes, vendettas, raids) per capita is on the scale of mid 20th century Europe. Except the primitive warfare was never-ending, part of life, not a limited spasm just lasting a few years.

    https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-evidence-on-violent-deaths

    The levels of violence in prehistoric times (archeological evidence) and in non-state societies (ethnographic evidence) was much higher than in modern state societies and in the world today…

    Charts show that death rates from violence in archeological sites varied widely by tribe, from 60% among 14th century Crow Indians in South Dakota to less than 5% among pre-contact natives in California and ancient tribals in Algeria. But the average was around 22% of people dying through violence.

    Modern tribes show similar rates, ranging from 56% dying through violence among Waorani natives in the Amazon to 4% in northern Australia. Average is probably around 25%.

    So essentially if you are a primitive person in a hunter-gatherer society you have between a 1 in 5 and 1 in 4 chance of being killed by another person.

    In contrast, death rate from violence in 17th century Western Europe was 2%, despite the 30 Years War in the beginning part of that century (by far most of Germany’s largescale population loss occurred due to famine, disease and migration rather than killings).

  381. Bashibuzuk says

    Ukrainian right-wing radical groups

    They are part of a “Nationalist ” or “Identitarian” White International. That’s why I took some time to try reading about them. But in my opinion they don’t really care for ethnicity or culture, they are deep down inside ultraviolent nihilists. Hence why they are attracted by destructive Cults. That’s why they are easy to infiltrate and manipulate by people like O9A.

    (I agree that some Goth gals were attractive, the ones that didn’t exaggerate Goth appearance. They mostly were neurotical BDSM freaks in my experience.)

  382. First of all, there is a general paucity of evidence for violence from before 10,000 years ago, when complex societies first arose. Secondly, non state violence was generally personal in nature – jealousy, insult, etc, and not collective warfare, as practiced by states, for the most part. Thirdly, there is a dispute even about rates of violence – many archeologists believe the evidence is misinterpreted about hunter gatherers.

    But everyone agrees that violence rates rose after the rise of complex societies across the board.

    However, I’d rather look at the big picture and make some general points – the question is, did states offer a better life than non-state arrangements, a more secure life, so that it was obviously preferable for the majority and no coercion was needed- as Hobbes thought, it was a “cohtract”?

    When people first formed states, they 1) began to rely on one crop, which made the food supply much less secure 2) they traded a rich and varied diet for getting most or all of their nutrition from one crop, making them much less healthy and strong 3) they started experiencing devastating disease epidemics periodically wiping out populations 4) they became the focus of attack as they had a surplus of food 5) they were physically less able to fight attackers because of worse nutrition and weaker muscles (to some extent offset by fortifications and the like) 6) they began to work much harder and much longer, at less enjoyable tasks in worse conditions- drudgery was invented 7) they were no longer free and equal, but were servants and slaves who had to work for the benefit of others and surrender a large part of the fruit of their labor 8) they no longer fought only to defend their families and hunting grounds, but were used as cannon fodder in the kings wars to seize the surplus of other states rom which they scarcely benefited

    So, the total situation is one of life being very precarious and fragile in early states, and in every way more insecure and less worth living for the majority.

    That is why, records show that one of the chief preoccupations of early states was simply preventing people from abandoning them – this alone makes clear the massive coercive element. Moreover, non-state peoples living on the edges of states were never eager to join or create states themselves unless under immense pressure. Rather, state armies would have to raid free peoples living in the mountains or wilderness to acquire slaves, to make up for the endless stream of deaths from defection, disease, malnutrition, and overwork. The early state system could barely sustain itself – it needed constant slaves to replenish itself.

    Finally, early states did not present a picture of stability and security – they rarely lasted for more than two or three rulers before collapsing and non-state lifestyles were constantly re-emrging, This is not consistent with a more effective “technology” replacing a less effective one and being enthusiastically adopted by the majority.

    Also, early states did not offer a less violent lifestyle than non-state lifestyles- first, military and defensive technology was primitive, and second, early states had a pressing and compelling need to acquire slaves and booty – early states immediately set about warring with each other and with surrounding non state peoples. The early state period is hardly a picture of a violent lifestyle being replaced by relative peace – but of violence taking different forms and for different rationales.

    Whereas non state peoples might fight and kill if under food stress to gain access to more resource rich lands, in areas and periods of abundance fighting was highly limited. By contrast, states had a near constant need of slaves to replenish their populations, and a constant incentive to seize the surplus of neighboring states in order to further enrich the elite. A life of sporadic fighting for the rational purpose of securing food and life was replaced by a life of constant fighting to secure slaves and booty – steal the surplus resources of others to enrich a minority.

    While much later in the future, states did offer lower “rates” of violence per population than non-state peoples, this paints a highly misleading picture in a variety of ways which I shall try to explain.

    “Rates” of violent death, while not without value, are not as revealing as one might think. That is because there is a certain minimum level of violence in warfare that cannot be avoided. I’ll show you what I mean.

    Let’s say two groups of 10 people choose a champion to fight to the death. The group that lost its champion lost 10% of its population. Lets say two groups of 100 people choose 5 champions each to fight to the death. The group that lost its 5 champions lost only 5% of its population.

    While technically the first group lost a higher percentage of its population, I think a case can be made that they chose the minimum level of violence whereas the other group did not. If there is a “minimum”, then rates per population may paint a misleading picture. I highly doubt the 10 member group who lost 1 person would psychologically feel more insecure and beset by violence than the 100 member group who lost 5.

    Another factor to consider was that states created specialization of tasks. You typically had a huge population of slaves and a much smaller group of soldiers specializing in warfare. So obviously “rates” of violent death will be lower compared to population. But becoming a slave might well be considered a fate barely above death, if at all, and a condemnation to an early death after a miserable life that can scarcely be called living, especially in the early state period (our records indicate very harsh treatment).

    So living free and healthy and periodically a few of you die to defend land or gain access to better land, versus becoming a slave and living as one almost dead – it is not clear the majority would voluntarily make this decision without coercion to put it mildly. And the constant slave raids and defections make clear it was not a choice the majority made without coercion.

    This should be extended to less obvious but just as crushing forms of slavery practiced in modern civilizations. For instance enormous swathes of the population of Victorian London lived in the most appalling penury and misery, with short life expectancies after a brief life of degradation and suffering, as a direct consequence of having an extractive elite. Would you have been willing to tell these people that their lives are better than the free and healthy life of non-state peoples because after all “rates of violent death” were slightly higher? As an anthropologist studying these people, would you have concluded it was in their obvious best interest to form hierarchical states, that their lives were obviously more secure and improved?

    The point is, there are conditions of life as bad or worse, or barely better, than “violent deaths”, and its mere propaganda to analyze the situation this way alone. People repeatedly risk violent death of the most horrific kind (often following brutal torture) to avoid the kinds of lives frequently imposed on them by states – revolutions were non-stop in the medieval period, despite savage repression. Hundreds of them. “Violence” itself takes many hidden forms – the impoverishment and degradation of entire families in modern states under the “law” (mere coercive violence), is not in principle different than a hunter gathere perhaps killing one or two people from another group and chasing the rest away to gain access to their lands.

    Non-state people might kill to gain access to resource rich lands if their lands become exhausted, but a state might impoverish or starve entire districts, towns, cities,or countries by denying them the resources needed to sustain life and seizing those resources for oneself. You don’t classify this as “violent deaths”, but they are clearly the exact same thing.

    So again, if warfare in Europe led to deaths from famine, disease, and violence, you cannot disaggregate deaths by violence from the total picture and compare that to the violent deaths among non-state peoples who did not experience human-caused famine or disease. If warfare creates famine or disease conditions than those are equivalent to violent deaths when assessing lifestyles. It was no consolation to the person dying from warfare-caused starvation that his was technically not a “violent death”. Given a choice, I doubt such a person would feel lucky having been born in a state because after all he merely starved to death.

    None of this is to advocate for revolution – rather the contrary. There is a general sense that social arrangements within a state, if we just get them right, can make us happy. But the truth is what we need is really less state. The (old) Asians are much wiser than us in this – they know the solution is to create “exits” from state life, so to speak, and to cultivate mental freedom from social bonds, not reify them as done in the West.

    The point is to use insights from this for ones life and philosophy. Work less, get out into nature more. Spend more times talking in cafes. How many of us are invested in work? But work is an ideology, and understanding where it comes from helps demythologjze it. Be mentally free. The saddest thing is to see all these people, especially right wingers but increasingly Woke left as well- invested in social structure and hierarchies as if they had ultimate importance. They are just devices.

    As for the Indians, I’ve agreed that once you form an embryo state and accumulate a surplus and an elite, fortifications naturally appear. They don’t appear before that because the non-state lifestyle has nothing to defend – at best, resource rich lands, but you can’t put a wall around that. Fortifications are not a solution to problems in hunting gathering life, as you suggest, but represent a whole new lifestyle with new defensive requirements.

    Indians lived in a period that saw the emergence and disintegration of states. You are trying to suggest that the Indians were inventing the superior technology of the state as time went on, inevitably, in the typically Whiggish narrative of “progress”. But in fact there seems to have been a large and sophisticated Indian state in the southeastern USA that had even begun to build pyramids, that simply disappeared. And of course the Anasazi – the Old Ones – who built the Pueblos of the Southewest and then mysteriously abandoned them and vanished, leaving behind a puzzle that has mystified anthropologists who can find no reason for this.

    Indians also lived on the fringes of sophisticated states in Mexico and even California and Spanish New Mexico.