This is the weekly Open Thread.
This week I also participated in a podcast with Robert Stark about transhumanism and effective altruism.
HBD/IQ
- Baptiste Dumoulin & Emil O. W. Kirkegaard – The Decline of Brussels: Immigration and social inequality in Belgium
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Via James Thompson who is at the ISIR conference in Montreal:
- Vladimir Shibaev on IQ in the Russian Far East
- Edward Dutton on how atheists are genetic freaks
Russia
* The Navalny vs. Strelkov debate on July 20.
I am going to have a separate post on that. Strelkov performed a lot better than I feared and expected, and handily won the debate. (Even many liberals had to concede that).
- DNR head Alexander Zakharchenko declared the formation of Malorossiya, consisting of all of Ukraine, with its capital in Donetsk.
The idea was put forwards without any consultations with the LNR, and apparently even the Kremlin, and was almost immediately forgotten. Just like Zakharchenko’s bizarre proclamation this March that Ukraine would cease to exist in 60 days.
The idea is total nonsense, of course, even from a Russian nationalist (i.e. historical) perspective. Little Russia is the territory of central Ukraine around Kiev, which was brought into the Tsardom of Russia by the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654. Southern Ukraine, i.e. Novorossiya, was a land directly conquered by the Russian Empire’s force of arms.
I don’t know how this came to be. Maybe some part of the Kremlin “towers” wanted to give things a push to see how Poroshenko/the West would react. Maybe it was the result of a Zakharchenko and Zakhar Prilepin and some other DNR honchos going on a drunken bender. What it is not is anything serious.
- Patrick Armstrong on the “Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s[Canada’s/California’s/Spain’s] trope”.
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Vincent Law: What Is Russia Turning Into?
* China, Russia Sign Media Agreement to Challenge “Dominance of Western Media”
At the present time, most discourse on China itself in Russia happens through a Western prism (as far as I’m aware, the same is true of China). Since Russia only has a few dozen academic China specialists, this could hardly be otherwise. This is a good initiative, but there needs to be more Chinese who know Russian, and many more Russians who know Chinese.
- Former Novorossiya Armed Forces soldier from UK jailed for five years for “preparing terrorism.”
No idea why he plead guilty; nobody apart from the Ukraine considers the NAF/DNR/LNR to be terrorist groups.
* Affirmative action Kremlinology:
World
- I suppose the John McCain brain cancer jokes write themselves – no need for futher commentary on my part.
My favorite McCain story is when he demanded Pravda give him an op-ed like NYT did for Putin – learly the only Russian newspaper he and his idiot staff knew about. Pravda was a bottom-tier tabloid big on alien abduction stories that very few read, and McCain duly got his op-ed there.
- Glenn Greenwald: U.S. Lawmakers Seek to Criminally Outlaw Support for Boycott Campaign Against Israel
It would be hilarious (though oddly appropriate) if Ziocons were to put the First Amendment out of its misery – instead of the SJWs whom we were expecting.
- Israel Shamir: Are Non-Jews Human?
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Ugo Bardi on why asteroid mining is a Muskian pipedream.
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The Economist: Poles apart – Why central and eastern European children lag behind in British schools.
Unexpected result. Though as Philip Owen explains, “It is just Lambeth.”
- Review of Garett Jones’ Hive Mind by Jeremy Cooper.
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Ireland, along with the US, is much richer than its national IQ would suggest. Why? Well, its GDP figures might be ridiculously overvalued.
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Rolf Degen: “The alphabet was originally designed by illiterate miners from the templates of a few Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs”:
The invention of the alphabet was a central event in global cultural/scientific history; all else equal, it allows far more people to be literate than under logographic systems. It would be hilarious if a contingency like this contributed to Europe beating China to the industrial revolution.
- Blank, Meredith et al. – 2017 – Political Regime Type and Warfare: Evidence from 600 Years of European History
Using a novel database of interstate conflict in Europe between 1200 and 1800, we perform the first quantitative analysis of domestic political institutions and warfare across the pre-modern era. We find that early parliamentary regimes — the institutional predecessors of modern democracies — were disproportionately more likely to experience armed conflict than their absolutist counterparts.
- Louisa Lim: How Class in China Became Politically Incorrect
Research by the University of Sydney’s David Goodman has found that around 84% of today’s elite are direct descendants of the elite from pre-1949. This suggests that six decades of Communism may not have a dramatic impact upon the elites, who have the advantage of decades of capital accumulation — including economic, cultural and social capital — which have apparently continued to benefit them under the party-state system.
Culture
- Looks like GabeN is experimenting with movie-making with Oats Studios.
My favorite from Volume 1:
Rakka is what I imagine a Tyranid invasion would be like.
Zygote is insanely horrific.
- ADL: From Alt Right to Alt Lite: Naming the Hate. Cucking hard didn’t save the latter from featuring on antifa’s hitlist.
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Some blackpills:
- Eric Kaufmann: Is tribalism racism?
- Roger Hicks: Political Implications of Evolutionary Psychology
- Vincent Law: The Poz Is A Weapon Of Class Warfare
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FEMEN have fired up the coal furnaces. So predictable.
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Skinner, Allison & Hudac – 2017 – “Yuck, you disgust me!” Affective bias against interracial couples
Study 1 demonstrates that bias against interracial romance is correlated with disgust. Study 2 provides evidence that images of interracial couples evoke a neural disgust response among observers – as indicated by increased insula activation relative to images of same-race couples. Consistent with psychological theory indicating that disgust leads to dehumanization, Study 3 demonstrates that manipulating disgust leads to implicit dehumanization of interracial couples. Overall, the current findings provide evidence that interracial couples elicit disgust and are dehumanized relative to same-race couples. These findings are particularly concerning, given evidence of antisocial reactions (e.g., aggression, perpetration of violence) to dehumanized targets.
People are also more disgusted by faggots than maggots despite a few decades’ worth of homosexualist propaganda.
Social engineering can make people say they approve of race mixing and fag marriage in opinion polls but can’t change base human nature.
- Ananda Coomaraswamy:
Was it really contingent though? iirc it’s often argued that an alphabetic script wouldn’t work well for Chinese languages because of the large number of homophones, but obviously I have no way of judging that.
Just watched the video about atheism being a result of mutational load due to weakened selection in modernity…I suppose this will be very encouraging to religious people and encourage them in their belief that the future will once again belong to them.
I am guessing you might see this in a funny way, but I really think this is a very serious problem. The USA is going to increasingly get these kind of politicians running things, the American transition however from first world to third world will not be a rapid process, in that long transition period these kind of people will become an increasing danger. Their stupidity and the stupidity of their voters can easily escalate things on the international stage, if foreign policy is run by BLM types then Russia being mostly white will become a very big target.
Do you doubt that? Does anybody? I thought this was just taken as a given at this stage.
I would like to ask everybody here to please purchase Milo’s new book. I just did so even though I doubt I will ever read a page of it.
Even if you don’t like Milo you should still buy the book as the best way for you to fight the power. The elites/SJWs tried to destroy Milo because he was seen as a threat. They count on us being divided amongst ourselves so they can pick us off one at a time. Book is only 10 bucks and the SJWs are already triggered by its success.
Pretty fast mutation rate that can spread through the population in a less than century. Looks positively miraculous. ; -)
It would be encouraging if the religious stopped preaching and pushing their faith to the hell-bound mutants.
Sadly, no – the slide show ends with advertising of Christian conversion course to the mutants, activity as blasphemous as it is futile. God made the mutants atheistic for His inscrutable reason, and can any man thwart His will?
Watching the atheist presentation are religious people the bourgeois as such, with atheists either being very high or very low IQ?
Interracial couples and homosexuals cause a physical gag when I see them.
Well, I agree with that, I’m a secular person myself and find the claims to truth of revealed religion irritating (it also doesn’t help that many religious people are strongly in favour of mass immigration which I oppose). But maybe atheism/irreligion is indeed maladaptive and only a passing phase in history until religion reasserts its dominance? I find the idea horrifying, but it looks quite possible to me.
In China several dialects, not mutually intelligible, were nonetheless written with the same Chinese characters. Each group could vocalize differently, but the script’s meaning was retained. Thus we see that it was politically and culturally useful to keep this complex writing system, while a phonetic alphabet would have yielded a mishmash of widely divergent, incommunicable texts
Thank you, very interesting. Something just occurred to me…do we actually have any idea what ancient Chinese languages sounded like, how the words and the language developed? That’s difficult enough to answer for Greek or Latin or any other language preserved in alphabetic script, but must be pretty much impossible for a language written down in logographic script…how does historical linguistics deal with this?
Well pinyin works just fine – much simpler than the characters system, in fact, many “business Chinese” courses rely on it exclusively. 🙂
Homophones aren’t really an issue; there are many of them in Chinese, but it’s almost always clear what you’re talking about from the context, and should be just as clear in writing. (Though it would make redundant the Chinese tradition of homophonic puns).
Thoughts on Bill Browder from a Russian perspective? My take is that anybody who got rich in Russia in the 90s was at least a bit of criminal. He was a crook who got muscled out by bigger better connected crooks. I’m sorry about his lawyer, but if you help foreigners extract vast sums of money from a country, stuff happens. Also how can you renounce your US citizenship and then lobby congress to change US foreign policy?
I read a reasonably wide range of opinion but I’ve never seen anything but unquestioning acceptance of Browder’s side. Is he an actual saint or is this a case of American Pravda
Milo? The in-your-face gay dude? Or my cat? Who is also named Milo but is not gay. If so, I want royalties because that dude is totally lazy and does nothing all day.
Peace.
A decent piece which also gives a good, however short summary, of some of the Soviet realities. As per this:
He misses several key factors which must be considered. I almost forced to quote Parshev seminal work’s tile “Why Russia Is Not America”.
For how much longer?
Russian businessmen have many linkages to Trump and his people. What do you know about Trump connections to Russian underworld oligarchs? Do Russian people talk about Trump and oligarchs or are they afraid of being killed for the questions?
Until the moment Russians raise to the ground Rodina-Mat’ Monument in Volgograd and extinguish Eternal Flame in Alexandrov’s Garden. So, not for some time, I guess.
There’s an interesting discussion here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=25856
With great difficulty. The approach to reconstructing ancient Chinese is through poetry, rhyme dictionaries, and most critically neighboring languages which have absorbed a lot of Chinese vocabulary. Loanwords have the interesting habit of preserving archaic pronunciation that the original language may have lost. Thus to reconstruct older Chinese you would look for commonalities in Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Tibetan and cross reference with Chinese poetry and rhyme books. Middle Chinese, or more precisely the Tang imperial Koine can be more confidently reconstructed in this way. Old Chinese, the language from the Warring States is much more difficult because of the age and because it even lacked tonality.
Why so few China specialists in Russia? A third of the Soviet Army was stationed at the sino-Soviet border for most of the Cold War and the China relations were second only to the US in Soviet military strategic circles. I would have thought the Soviets would have a huge number of China area specialists. Did they all retire and were simply not replaced?
China actually does retain a significant cadre of Russian specialists not influenced by the dominant strands of American strategic paradigm. They tend to follow American scholarship on areas were subject knowledge is lacking in China, like say Ecuador. For important areas like Russia, Japan, South Korea where history, proximity, and general relevance is concerned, there is much more original and divergent thinking than merely aping received wisdom from Western think tanks. I know for a fact that Chinese India area experts have a very different framework for analyzing that country than Western scholarship.
Browder is a class A douche with a hugely inflated ego (‘hurr durr, I am Putins enemy #1’) and a penchant for shamelessly lying (and suing the shit out of anyone who dare object.) There’s actually heaps of legit information on just how shady his “Russian adventure” was out there, and despite his lawyers best attempts to stop it there’s been some revealing information regarding Magnitsky leaking out lately as well.
Very little gets mentioned by the “reputable” press, they mostly stick to Browders story and retell it in verbatim, though last year’s Nekrasov bout and the subsequent frantic globetrotting by Browders attorneys did make it into the news for a little while.
After that, I think they decided to solve the issue by just slapping the “Russian propaganda” label onto everything that might lead one to call into question the truthfulness of Browder’s account. That move typically makes sure nobody pokes in it again.
FOIA data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/08/21/atheists-now-make-up-0-1-of-the-federal-prison-population/
Well, it seems to me the main characteristic of human nature is exactly that it’s malleable, susceptible to social engineering.
Surely much fewer people feel (perceive) disgust (and even if they do – it’s weaker) than 60-70-80 years ago?
(I asked this in the last open thread but I think it got missed so I am reposting it here)
Mr. Karlin,
Beyond “regathering Russian lands”, what do you consider the most important aims of Russia in the sphere of foreign policy specifically?
That aside it is amusing to see Russia being seen as evil for being communist, I thought the new message was that Putin was evil for being a reactionary fascist. I guess old habits die hard.
It doesn’t really. Reading long strings of text in pinyin is horrific.
It always boggled my mind that Anglophones are so quick to complain about Chinese writing when English spelling is as close as you can get to Chinese writing in a western context.
Imagine if everyone wrote English ‘phonetically’, based on their own idiosyncratic dialects, conventions and lack of education. It would be horrible. Writing Chinese in pinyin would be like that.
P.S. The problem with Chinese writing is not the logographic system, it’s the fact that the literate Chinese lexicon contains a veritable boatload of ancient words and phrases of unknown origin and complex etymology. Imagine if English had a whole substrate of Hittite lexicon with its own idiosyncratic spelling norms, alongside the existing Greek and Latin.
Mandarin in general is a very ‘mongrel’ language, much more so than English.
This isn’t really true. Just as one example, the dominant Chinese-Russian dictionary (http://bkrs.info) is much better than anything you’d get in English.
These specialists aren’t exposed in the media, however. If they’re working anything China-related then they’re going to be involved in business, not the media spin machine.
I would like to know more about the under-performance of my fellow central europeans, but unfortunately, there is a paywall and there really is no way I am going to pay for the Economist.
Can someone provide more details? Is there a class breakdown – parent education, income etc?
I suspect that qualitatively, the Somalis are probably of better stock, relatively to Slovaks or Czechs. Most people that travel to the UK from here are low-ed Gastarbeiters and gipsies, the latter being notoriously non-interested in schooling whatsoever.
There was never a serious brain drain to the UK as far as I am aware, only to Austria and Deutschland, and those are close enough to make them quasi commuters so not really sure they would send their kids to school there.
Try opening in Chrome Incognito, that usually works. Copied the article below.
Relevant image: https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20170715_BRC258.png
MOVING from one country to another is never easy, but Britain offers some unique challenges. “What the hell is black pudding?” asks Anna, a 15-year-old at Thomas Clarkson Academy. “It’s disgusting.” Complaints about food aside, newcomers at the school in Cambridgeshire are happy to be there. Nearly a third of pupils speak a foreign language at home, often Lithuanian or Polish. Their parents work in local factories and fields, but the children hope for better. One plans to study architecture at a good university. Another speaks joyfully of how her peers are open to those of all races and sexualities.
When the European Union absorbed eight countries from central and eastern Europe in 2004, their citizens gained the right to live and work in Britain. Three years later, Bulgarians and Romanians joined the club, although restrictions on their ability to work were lifted only in 2014. Britain is now home to about 1.8m people from these ten countries; in 2015 Poles overtook Indians as the single largest migrant group.
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Brexit is likely to reduce future migration from these countries. Nevertheless, many immigrants have already put down roots—and their children are beginning to finish school. No publicly available data compare results by country of birth, but some divide pupils by their first language. So far, it seems that children from central and eastern Europe have found the transition difficult. Whereas 71% of pupils who chat in Gujarati at home get five good grades at GCSE, the exams taken by 16-year-olds, just 30% of those who talk in Latvian meet the standard. All of those from central and eastern Europe lag behind the average for England (see chart).
Although foreign-language speakers do worse than their Anglophone peers in the early years of school, by the age of 16 the gap has all but disappeared. Since lots of eastern Europeans arrive in Britain midway through their education, they have less time to catch up. And, as many European countries start school at an older age, some younger children have to adjust not only to a new education system, but also simply to being in a classroom, notes Bethan Rees of Cambridgeshire Council.
Poverty makes things harder. Parents who work every available shift have little energy to chase after work-shy children. Some 68% of Lithuanian-speaking children and 63% of Polish-speakers live in poor areas, where schools tend to be worse. They have settled across the country, following work rather than existing communities, so many end up in areas with little experience of immigration. As Elzbieta Kardynal, a Polish educationalist, says: “If schools don’t have the knowledge and capacity, these children are put in the lowest sets…with all the naughty kids.”
When GCSE results are adjusted for factors such as the uptake of free school meals (a proxy for poverty), geography and date of arrival, Polish pupils outperform white Britons, according to Steve Strand of Oxford University. Yet, even accounting for these factors, children from other countries are still behind: Romanians, Lithuanians and Latvians by the equivalent of three GCSE grades; Slovaks by ten.
The difference may be partly cultural. The first wave of Polish pupils had a reputation for being particularly diligent. One head teacher says that, in her experience, Lithuanians are more likely than others to do paid work alongside their studies—partly because they are poorer and partly because their parents tend to place less emphasis on education. The problem is biggest among the Roma population. Having escaped terrible prejudice, many are reluctant to come into contact with local authorities. Some parents are unwilling to send their children—particularly girls—to secondary school to mix with non-Roma.
The rapid increase in the number of migrant children may also have caused difficulties. A report by academics at Middlesex University in 2008 noted that, in some schools, the number of Polish children rose from zero to dozens in a few years. The reaction was often one of “panic”, it says. Since then, schools have got better at testing the abilities of newcomers and hired more language specialists.
Some parents may have been too cautious to demand better. Many were schooled under strict Soviet regimes and are still deferential towards teachers. Even established migrants are sometimes baffled by the British system. Vilma Midvertyo, who arrived from Lithuania over a decade ago, says that although she likes the support that teachers give pupils, their relentless positivity can make it hard to find out how well her son is actually doing.
Other explanations for the poor performance may have escaped measurement. As Mr Strand notes, the data do not reflect the linguistic ability of the pupil beyond the fact that they speak a foreign language at home. A Mandarin-speaker who has been in Britain his whole life will probably have a better grasp of English than a recent Latvian arrival, for example. Similarly, uptake of benefits such as free school meals is thought to be low, meaning the data may not capture the extent of migrants’ poverty.
That suggests that results will improve as the new arrivals get richer and come to speak better English. But it is not yet clear whether central and eastern European children will thrive in British schools, as some other migrant groups have done. Anne Hill, head of Thomas Clarkson Academy, says that at her previous school in Northampton, migrant parents (mostly from Africa) were almost uniformly determined that their children would go on to become professionals such as doctors or lawyers. Parents at her current school are not so ambitious. Much depends on whether that can change.
Could you provide some pointers? I am very interested in this.
Well I suppose the primary challenge of the 21st century for Russia would be coping with the rise of the Chinese hyperpower.
It already dwarfs Russia economically, is steadily overtaking it technologically, and will almost inevitably acquire military predominance in the next few decades.
The US is unrealiable and the neocons (and Russian liberal fifth column) would love nothing better than to use Russia against China, so trying to contain it would be unworkable. Japan is too small, and has its own issues with Russia; India is comparable to China in scale, but much less developed, and will remain so for at least the next few decades.
The neocons are working tirelessly to make Russia an ally (or even Satellite state) of China against the United States.
Is there something in history that can be compared to that?
Also, too close to America.
‘Hyperpower’, really? Soon China will be completely dominating the world, is this what you mean?
Thank you!
It worked in incognito mode, although as I understand, the researchers are baffled as well, even though they hint at the Roma as a potential problem.
So far I was unable to find a demographic breakdown on the Slovak/Czech gov statistics portals and I am afraid that it won’t even be possible to count them. Their self-reporting on ethnicity is not very reliable. To give you a picture, check the wiki page for Romani people – it states a population of 2-20 mil.
Tabloid estimates after Brexit were talking about a return flood of as much as a 100 thousand for Czechoslovakia combined which would put the gypsies at around 50% of our British migrant pop. Also they are predominantly those listed as ”with family”.
Parshev’s theory is interesting, but at the end of the day, the human capital theory of national wealth is much more convincing.
Incidentally, some of Russia’s big economic problems – e.g., the massive overpopulation of its Siberian and far northern territories, relative to what they would have been under market-based development – are themselves a product of the sort of central planning policies that Parshev supports.
China studies in Russia is in a catastrophic state (though so are most social sciences).
An anecdote: In the Maritime Cooperation 2012 military exercises between Russia and China, the Chinese had 200 officers with knowledge of Russian. How many Chinese speakers could the Russian military muster? Three.
Israel Shamir has a good article on Browder – http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-good-fortune-of-mr-browder/
Apart from being a crook, he is also aggressively censorious against his critics.
I’m sure it would be quite easy with practice (aesthetically much worse than characters, but functionally far superior).
Isn’t that sort of how it was before the 18th century? 🙂
It’s GDP (PPP) adjusted is already higher than America’s, and will end up about 3x higher once it converges to ~70% of US GDPcc like Japan/S. Korea did.
Nominal Chinese GDP will overtake American GDP around 2020.
I estimate Chinese naval power will overtake the US around 2040, assuming present trends continue.
I don’t know if it will ever decidedly overtake the US in science/technology, since East Asians seem to be less inventive at similar IQ levels; though the fact of its 4x population should ensure at least a convergence. However, an outright overtake can’t be excluded if dysgenic trends continue or accelerate in the US.
I understand that China is a superpower, it’s just that the expectations of it becoming the hyperpower seem a bit premature. Nitpicking, I suppose, never mind…
Thank you, that was very informative.
The nature can’t be changed (on less than a scale of many generations, anyway), but its manifestation can be suppressed. But the change usually needs constant effort to maintain and is hard to impose widely, with infeasible diminishing returns long before universality is ever achieved.
Inherent disgust responses can obviously be suppressed by familiarity or coercion. Those who work with shit become largely inured to the natural response to it. Those who fear the consequences of admitting to disliking shit are silent about it, and might even convince themselves self-protectively that they don’t dislike it at all.
For instance, so long as elite pressure continues to be maintained to suppress the disapproval of homosexual behaviour and familiarity continues to be imposed through mass media propaganda, we in the societies of the US sphere will have to put up with increased numbers of people engaging in homosexual activity:
‘Born That Way’? Really?
But as soon as societal changes mean that aspect of the current elite agenda is no longer prioritised, we will probably quite quickly return to the human norm.
Similar considerations apply to numbers of “transgender” freaks.
All human beings (excepting few chronically depressed hard core cynical nihilists) have a religion, this means group and cause bigger than themselves that gives purpose and meaning to their pointless lives. Progressives have “social justice”, communists have “world proletariat”, evangelical atheists have “rational reason”, environmentalists have “mother Earth”, you have “German nation”. Feel free to write long passionate reply why one of these things is not like others 🙂
If there is instinctive disgust against “race mixing” why all human races immediately picked it up as soon as they met different races? Why were the most savage punishments unable to stop it, and why they were even necessary?
Mao Cheng Ji’s nitpick seems reasonable, though. The only likely way for China to become the hyperpower would be the same way the US did in the 1990s – by the complete collapse of its only rival, in China’s case the US.
China is, as you note, in the process of overtaking the US and that seems an inexorable process unless something unexpected turns up, but while there are plenty of possible scenarios for a US collapse, none of the latter can really be regarded as predictable yet.
To some extent that’s certainly true, but I feel “religion” should be limited to ideologies centred around some belief in the supernatural/divine powers etc. It’s of course true that secular ideologies (“political religions”) have adapted many elements of religious ideologies (e.g. Marxism-Leninism can be seen as a secularized version of Christian salvation history, Hitler was presented as somewhat of a redeemer figure in Nazism). But to me that’s still different from religion in the narrow sense…at least secular ideologies (which can undoubtedly be highly noxious as well) should be easier to prove wrong than supernatural ideologies with their surprising staying power.
The obvious answer would surely be that the human urges to sex and to reproduction are often stronger than the disgust.
[I’m not particularly supporting the study Karlin quotes above on this – I have no particular prior opinion either way on whether or not there is an innate human disgust response to interracial couples, and I’m happy to accept the findings of the study quoted, or the contrary if subsequent studies disprove them, or to doubt them if good reasons are given for disbelieving them.]
raise to the ground
raze
I haven’t read the study supposedly demonstrating innate disgust about race mixing…but it does make a certain amount of sense if one accepts that much of human behaviour still can be traced back to humans’ long existence as hunter-gatherers. Tribes of hunter-gatherers have been shown to be extremely xenophobic (often using the same words for “humans” and their own group…so all outsiders are basically not regarded as fully human), so evolution of some disgust at sexual relations with phenotypically different outsiders might be expected.
You’re right of course that this can’t be the whole story given the extent of race mixing throughout history (though it should be noted imo that this often happened as the result of unequal power relationships, like in the Spanish conquest of the Americas).
Given the dangers of inbreeding in small groups, there would surely be some pressure the other way, if it’s a genetic effect.
On the other hand, I guess there might be some confusion in operation arising from a genetic mechanism to discourage non-productive sexual activity (with animals or objects), resulting in its application to sufficiently different appearing out groups.
Yes, thank you for correction. That’s what I meant.
You don’t need to inbreed within your small group, the whole of your ethnic group is available. But outside the ethnic group: those are not human. For example, for Bushmen, other Bushmen (whether from your tribe or other tribes) are humans, but members of other ethnic groups (whites, blacks, etc.) are not regarded as fully human.
I don’t know…is there really innate disgust at sexual activity with objects? I can’t see any reason for that apart from the waste of energy.
I’d suppose though that bestiality can be pretty detrimental to the health of people doing it, so disgust at it makes sense.
I doubt though that’s connected to the supposed disgust about race mixing, the latter seems more like a mechanism of keeping group identity stable. But then admittedly that’s all speculation on my part.
Quite horrifying, to be honest. But all this might easily backfire.
Surely if it’s a human universal then it can’t be based specifically upon ethnic differences? Unless it evolved independently within all genetically distinct racial groupings.
The study seems to have been focused on mixing between blacks and whites and not whites and Asians, or whites and Latinos. Intermarriage between whites and blacks is indeed very low (whereas rates of other races mixing are increasing). Historically, such mixing seems to have occurred usually under conditions involving helpless slaves and whites without access to white women but with power over black ones, often rapes.
The explanation might have to do with genetic distance.
The study results, if replicated, might have ramifications in terms of explaining the small Neanderthal mixtures.
The waste of energy would be sufficient in itself to explain a genetic mechanism arising, if it were sufficient to have an effect and were not counterbalanced.
It seems implausible to me that there could have been a sufficiently common need for that kind of mechanism base upon race for it to become widespread. In prehistoric times the vast majority of people would presumably never, or almost never, encounter anyone of a different race. As you say, though, we are just speculating here.
Full study is here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304491556_Yuck_You_Disgust_Me_Affective_Bias_Against_Interracial_Couples
It is about blacks and whites.
Acceptance of such marriages in spite of biological aversion is another indicator of people being able to transcend certain instincts.
I’m not sure that’s necessarily true, e.g. the genetic distance (and phenotypic differences) between European hunter-gatherers and the first farmers coming from the Near East seem to have been pretty extreme if I understand correctly. Depends of course on what one would understand by “race”.
But as I wrote above, it has been shown that hunter-gatherers are extremely xenophobic, and obviously physical characteristics would be a prominent means of distinguishing outsiders…obviously this would be magnified the greater the physical differences.
I don’t think so, not these days anyway. People are bombarded, targeted by well-designed messages. Family is not the major tool for reproducing attitudes anymore, and so radical changes can (and do) happen within (pretty much) the single generation…
Check this out:
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/kb4dvz/teens-these-days-are-queer-af-new-study-says
These GDP per capita comparisons made me curious about one thing. How many people in China (or Russia), actually have a standard of living equivalent to the American average? In other words, high first world standard?
In both cases they would belong to the top tier in the local distribution of income. It’s difficult because inequality measures aren’t accurate, but I surmise in Russia we may have some 30 million people, in China perhaps 140 million. Of course in PPP terms, much less nominally. Functionally it would correspond to being “well-off” in their respective societies, with the assorted behavior of consuming less, saving more as a percentage of their income than US middle class etc…
Still I think the figures are becoming large. At some point the huge first world consumer market that is the US could be rivalled in economic weight by the higher income quintile in China. First world products, or Chinese production of first world quality, would tend to accrue to this one huge market. I suppose this has an economic effect somewhere (having the biggest market for high end consumption in the world, even as the country as a whole will keep middling living standards on aggregate)
Consumer patterns matter a great deal here. F.e. very many (and I mean in tens of millions) Russian families have dachas, which range from shacks to mansions–this thing (bar some vacation homes of well-off people in US) is non-existent in US. Dachas are also a huge factor in supplemental nutrition for Russians since they grow there a lot of staff, from potatoes to cabbage and carrots. Americans, on the other hand have access to better healthcare, in the same time, Russians have vast network of free healthcare, which in US is afforded mostly to medicaid patients. A number of adjustments required for getting more or less objective picture for comparison and is huge, which is usually beyond the capability of most Western “economic” analytical institutions. In the end, there is no “pure” economics–it is always a combination of historic, cultural, economic and other factors. Without considering them all those numbers and “markets” mambo-jumbo is just that–BS. Just to give a more honed example–in Russia you go to any pharmacy and ask for antibiotic by the title–they will sell it to you, as long as you know the name of the medicine. Try the same in US–not happening without visit to a doctor (often expensive one) and getting prescription–money, time, energy are spent, very often needlessly.
That sounds pretty questionable though tbh given the severe problem of antibiotics resistant bacteria strains; at least some control over the use of antibiotics is certainly needed.
It’s pretty worthless then regarding interracial relationships in general. That disgust could even be explained as just the legacy of American racism against blacks, not as something innate.
Yeah, just like it would be “quite easy” to migrate English to a more sane phonetic writing system.
No. It would be no more ‘functionally superior’ than a phonetic English. It will never happen for the same reasons why phonetic English won’t.
It is a valid point as far as serious infections and post-surgery antibiotics courses are concerned–most of them require hospitalization anyway. But to treat my sinus infection, as an example, I don’t need a doctor to know that Zitromax (Azithromicin) is needed. Same goes for antibiotics of a general action.
Will never happen in Russia for the same reason why gun control won’t happen in the USA.
You might as well add the EU, Canada and Australia’s GDP to that of the US, as, for all intents and purposes, they’re not independent countries and their collective foreign policies pretty much come straight from Washington. This means that China has much further to go.
OT, but this is worth a link
https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2017/jul/24/bof-why-emmanuel-macron-is-already-tanking-in-the-polls
Not that we should gloat given Trump’s poll numbers
The difference between mainstream Western strategic scholarship on India and China’s own analysis stems from very different manners of thinking. For the West, India and its role in the Western worldview cannot be separated from its own telos of universal liberalism and human perfectibility. China’s views of India are both less systemic (they have less of a pre-ordained position of what India should be) and more reductionist, falling back on Soviet methodologies such as assessing the correlation of force. My theory for why this is so being that China has truly very little historic interplay with India and is operating from basically a blank slate whereas Western (more specifically Anglo-American) interaction with India is rich in history and is further colored by the recent immigration of millions of Anglophone Indian elites to the West.
To give you a more solid example of what I am talking about, refer to this conference video.
Skip to the 26:00 minute mark for when the woman in the ugly necklace starts speaking. She is Georgetown / Council on Foreign Relations, so basically the ideal embodiment of conventional wisdom as far as the West is concerned. Her speech ends at the 38:00 so it is not too long and I encourage you to watch it in its entirety. To summarize, the speaker is a China military/security specialist who is giving a rundown of Chinese reaction to Indian strategic balancing. To her and her colleague’s surprise, there hasn’t been any and the Chinese reaction has been to basically ignore India and Indian provocations. Her interactions with her Chinese counterparts have led her to believe that they have a dismissive view and tend to “underestimate” India. However, and this is the kicker, according to her the reason for this is because of Chinese domestic politics and regime legitimacy. That is China, as an authoritarian one party state, must delegitimize Indian capabilities in order to justify to its own people it’s repressive domestic policies.
Since we are at Unz, and Mr. Karlin’s blog in particular, I suspect most readers and commenters are potentially rolling their eyes at this interpretation. The speaker accurately summarizes the Chinese strategic perceptions of India, and is inadvertently projecting Western strategic perceptions of India, but is completely off the mark on why the Chinese think as they do because she comes from an entirely different ideological base. The Western liberal interpretation is that India is a rising status-quo power who is rapidly catching up and will eventually eclipse China due to its demographic and socio-political advantages, but they are so beguiled by the beauty of their ideological creation that no other competing interpretations are entertained. The speaker believes the Chinese hold a contradictory opinion of India in that they are dismissive of the threat posed by India while simultaneously being distrustful of Indian intentions. She fails to understand that these are actually not contradictory at all since the former is an assessment of capabilities while the latter is an assessment of intent. She also states that her Chinese counterparts “acted” confused when she brought up rising Indian capabilities because they didn’t consider India to be rising at all.
The Chinese view, is as I mentioned much more reductionist in nature and their perception is that the comprehensive national power gap between China and India has not narrowed, but rather is expanding and they do not see this being closed anytime soon. Rather than liberal theology, their perception is based on empirical measurements of power. China’s economy was 2.5x the size of India’s in 2000, 2.8x in 2005, 3.5x in 2010, and more than 5x by 2015. In more concrete military terms, India had a fairly equivalent Navy compared to China in 2000. Not only has this changed from China’s perception, but it has changed dramatically. In principal surface combatants alone since the beginning of the 21st century, the Indian Navy has added 9 frigates (6 of which were built at Russian shipyards) of 4000+ tonne displacement and just 3 destroyers of 7000+ tonne displacement. the PLAN in the same time added 27 frigates and 19 destroyers and just last month launched their first 12000+ tonne cruiser. More than just the raw fleet numbers, the Chinese vs Western assessment diverges even further when it comes to assessments of proficiency. For most Western observers, this basically amounts platitudes about British heritage and Naval “tradition” and public media releases by senior naval US officers extolling Indian professionalism (off the record assessments by those with direct knowledge are another thing entirely). The Chinese analysts focus more on ordinance expenditures in training, fuel expenditures, time at sea, time spent in repairs. Ultimately the Chinese assess Indian naval operational readiness at a much lower level than public Western sources because of the lopsided spending priorities of the Indian Navy. An unbalanced budget that prioritizes new acquisitions at the expense of training and operations. 67% of Indian naval expenditure is going towards capital expenses i.e. shipbuilding, leaving massive shortfalls in personnel (10% underfunded) and more critically operations (gaping 30% underfunded for existing requirements). This has historically been unsustainable. The British were aware of such issues even a century ago when they realized that even 50% of the naval budget going to ship building during peacetime was cutting into readiness levels as they eventually discovered at Jutland. This has resulted in a string of accidents both lethal and embarrassing ranging from dozens killed when a submarine exploded at port due to mishandling ordinance to broad daylight collisions and most recently a frigate damaged while in a dry-dock due to faulty handling.
The differences between Chinese and Western perceptions here ultimately stem from what they chose to prioritize. The West basically considers India by it’s potential role in a Western liberal system while China evaluates India by concrete indications of power and state capacity.
A quick and dirty way of assessing consumer purchasing power are automobile purchases which outside of housing are generally the most expensive consumer good that households usually make.
2016 passenger vehicles in the US was around 17.5 million, 28 million for China, and a little more than 1.4 million for Russia. The Russian figures are of course depressed by Western sanctions and the ruble devaluation. I think peak auto sales in Russia was in 2012 with around 2.8 million or so vehicles with slight declines in 2013-2014 and a huge near 40% decline in sales in 2015 and a more modest 11% fall last year.
That’s questionable. According to World Bank figures, in 2014 China’s nominal GDP was $10.5 trillion, which rose slightly to $11.1 trillion in 2015, and remained flat at $11.2 trillion in 2016. Over the same period the USA’s nominal GDP rose from $17.4 trillion to $18.6 trillion.
China is arguably already a superpower (although a counter-argument is the relatively small and technologically primitive state of its strategic nuclear forces). However, it’s far from certain that China will ever be a true “hyperpower.” In 1999, when the USA was at the peak of its brief hyperpower period, it reached 30% of world nominal GDP, with Japan a distant second at 14%, and Germany third at 7%. And of course the military gap between the USA and its closest competitors was even larger. It seems unlikely to me that China will ever enjoy that level of global dominance.
Not necessarily true. Especially when one considers a level of development of public transportation and preferred mode of transportation–they do matter. I know many Russians who are totally capable of buying a car (or two even) but don’t, they use public transportation. Considering issues with car traffic in Moscow, St. Petersburg or Volgograd, as an example, one kinda gets the reasoning. I wouldn’t drive in Moscow.
It’s not that straightforward to avoid inbreeding depression with interethnic marriages. Neighboring tribes trying to avoid inbreeding by trading spouses would only work automatically for one generation and then after that it would bring the risk of marrying a cousin that you don’t know about.
There is also such a thing as outbreeding depression and it might well be relevant to race mixing, however it’s not a simple matter to calculate the risks like it is for inbreeding depression and, not surprisingly, there is a severe lack of studies on the matter on humans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreeding_depression
Every animal is programmed to avoid outbreeding to some extent – we’re averse to attempting to breed with chimpanzees, for example. It is perfectly plausible that we may be averse to some interracial couplings out of biological programming. That doesn’t mean someone won’t do it anyway – after all, we’re biologically adapted to avoid high places but some people still climb mountains for fun.
The reason you only ever hear about the risks of inbreeding but never hear about the risks of outbreeding is, of course, that it doesn’t fit the narrative.
Possible. It would be interesting if someone attempted to replicate it elsewhere. Or, say, to make a study in India showing inter-caste couples in which both people appear similar in terms of physical features, to see if results are the same as in this study. If so, we can say social problems and ugly historical traditions have created these biological responses.
On the other hand, people of African descent are further from those of European descent than are those of Asian descent both in terms of temporal separation (I don’t have time research the numbers but AFAIK people left Africa about 100,000 years ago, whereas the Asian-European divergence is only about 40,000 years or so) and in terms of mixtures with non-homo sapiens (non-Africans have 2%-4% Neanderthal mix; Africans are mixed with some unknown humans from west Africa). So, there may be an innate rather than social explanation for such preferences.
They’re measuring 5 A*-C grades at GCSE. Not sure what they’re comparable to internationally, but it’s not that hard to get a C. You’d have to be very dull or have very poor language skills to be intellectually incapable of it. Though it would only take a small proportion of uk central Europeans to jump off the wizzair jet at 15 speaking no English to tank the stats for the population at large, which i think is what’s happened here. Most UK Somalis have been here a while, with comparatively few new arrivals, and are secondary immigrants from the Netherlands for some strange reason. Having taught briefly in the the UK, central European children blend in very quickly and after a few years, you’d need to see their surnames to tell them apart from the English. They do seem to be missing in that top tail end of the ability range though.
Ak’s four types of Russian American need to have a Baltic Russian category for the UK, without them the UK Russians would be way up there.
That’s interesting and useful stuff, thanks.
Doesn’t look like there is.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/01/19/stone-penis-28000-years-old_n_6499780.html
I agree for the most part. China’s nominal GDP has indeed stagnated for a few years, due to yuan’s devaluation and dollar’s strength. However, the Chinese currency has been strengthening this year, and it seems likely that China’s nominal GDP is going to grow by 10% this year, or more.
Of course, yuan used to strengthen by something like 10% per year for a while on average, so the Chinese nominal GDP actually grew by 15-20% a year, not 7-10%. Is that going to continue? I don’t know, but it seems unlikely.
Now, nominal GDP is all (well, largely) about exchange rate, and I don’t think it’s that “accurate”, when measuring non-Western economies or national power as a whole, but China achieving the number 1 position in that as well is pretty much inevitable. It just seems that it’s going to happen closer to 2030.
It’s just that long-term exchange rates are very difficult to predict. So Anatoly, do you really think that it’s going to happen by 2020, if you look at current statistics? Not estimates from 10, or even 5 years ago?
I do agree with you and other posters on the hyperpower part. Not because of nominal GDP calculations but because it would require other competitors to somehow “collapse”, more or less like the USSR. Which I feel is probably quite unlikely, but I’m not sure that matters too much as China is already a superpower, or very close, I agree with you on that. And that’s probably enough for China.
However, with a population is 1.4 billion and very high human capital it’s very likely they’ll end up being by far the strongest nation on earth overall, but still not as strong as the US vis-a-vis all other competitors during the 90s and early 2000s… Probably a good thing.
Oh and I almost forgot: It’s likely that the size of the Chinese economy is underestimated, so they’re going to make upwards adjustments at some point, maybe increasing the GDP (nominal included, of course) by 20%.
What is natural about “will and providence” “zeitgeist” “arc of moral universe” “right side of history” “spirit of nation” “human rights” etc…?
Better way to divide beliefs would be between belief in personal and impersonal supernatural forces. Personal gods like Jesus, Allah or Krishna on one side and various “forces of history” on the other.
Personal religion have the advantage it can promise personal reward and punishment.
If I asked a believer: Assuming I can avoid earthly punishment at your hands, why shall I care about “will of God” or “social justice”?
Clearly the answer “You will burn in Hell forever and ever” is more persuasive than “You will ..ehm… be on the wrong side of history, and be, ehm… very bad person.”
You, I presume, believe that German nation exists, and shall continue to exist. What empirical facts would disprove your belief?
That’s certainly possible. Tbh I have a problem though with the idea that this feeling of disgust is gender-neutral; imo what really triggers and irritates many white men (and to some extent I’d include myself here) are black man-white woman couples (and such couples are heavily promoted in modern Western media, at least that’s my impression). I can’t imagine that white man-black woman couples really would cause the same level of irritation and hostility among white men at least.
The danger of creating antibiotic resistant bacteria comes from factory farming, where are masses of animals fed antibiotics in industrial quantities. Everything else pales in comparison.
I don’t think that’s strictly comparable…I know I have described myself as a “nationalist” at times, but I’m well aware that nations to some extent are indeed imagined communities (even though the more extreme forms of that view are really exaggerated imo) and also change over time. And I know there was a time when “Germany” didn’t exist (that is roughly before the 10/11th centuries) and there will be a time when it won’t exist anymore, just like ancient Sumer or the Hittites don’t exist anymore (and unfortunately it looks like this “end” of Germany might happen sooner rather than later).
You’re right of course though that notions like “progress”, “right side of history” etc. are ultimately secularized versions of theological concepts…that’s one of the reasons why I’m suspicious of them (and I guess a religious person could with justification regard them as blasphemous…”Don’t immanentize the eschaton” or how that slogan goes).
By far the most important from Colonel was not the piece on Pompeo–by now it is very predictable what and how things happen in US “power” elites, a lot of butt-hurt there. But it was his comment, which I quote:
What an excellent encapsulation of the nature of Russian “studies” in the West. As well as of the reasons for this field’s complete academic and moral bankruptcy which is still having far reaching policy (or lack thereof) implications. But then again, if to study Russian “history” through Solzhenitsyn or Soviet “intelligentsia” one is bound to have a sequence of major cognitive dissonances. I, come to think about it, never met any contemporary Western “Russian scholar” who ever finished and had insights on War And Peace book. I think Julia Ioffe types would have an acute case of unforced exorcism when reading Tolstoy or Tvardovsky.
The Kerch Strait Bridge should have been completed within a year of the takeover of Crimea. It’s obviously a significant infrastructure project. But not that difficult.
Russia is a major cognitive dissonance. Zapadnichestvo and slavophilia, they’re both there, in dialectical coexistence. In symbiosis and in constant conflict.
True to a certain degree only. In reality and in the foundation–it is pochvenichestvo against radical city-based modernism. As professor from Vasily Shukshin’s “Pechki-Lavochki” (the novel is from 1960s, movie is from early 1970s) notes:” Our Russian people (narod) exited the village but still didn’t arrive to the city”(c). In one phrase–the essence of Russia’s 20th Century history and genius of Shukshin as a writer. But then again, Wests’s Russian “scholars” can not figure out that (apart from stealing from Shalamov) Solzhenitsyn’s much touted Ivan Denisovich is a 20th Century version of Tolstoy’s Platon Karataev from War And Peace, and not a very good one at that. This problem of pochvennichestvo appears already in Goncharov’s Oblomov with Stoltz being an embodiment of industrial capitalism. I remember reading Paul Pillar’s (a CIA operative) reminiscence about Western “tourists” in 1960s throwing Russian-language printed in the West copies of Doctor Zhivago through their rail cars windows, thinking that this single novel by Pasternak meant much against a massive background of Russian (and Soviet) literature.
From Wiki.
Again, talk about any lack of the sense of measure and proportion in those proverbial “Russian studies”.
Ugo Bardi, a very good chemist, but I’m afraid not so good as a geologist. From his article:
Most asteroids are differentiated, although in most cases that differentiation has stopped (radioactive decay from the isotope Aluminum 26, which was produced in the supernova before the solar system existed, meant that the early bodies were very hot, so even smaller bodies could differentiate. However, this process does not continue today, because all of the Aluminum 26 has decayed away).
The asteroid 16 Psyche is probably the remnant of the core of a planet, which has since broken up. The remnant of a differentiated planetary body. it’s ridiculous to call it ‘undifferentiated crust’; it is neither undifferentiated nor crust. 16 psyche contains a massive amount of iron and nickel; the potential is truly amazing.
The city-village contrast, traditionalism vs modernity, that’s universal, not specifically Russian.
Russian zapadnichestvo-slavophilia is a different kind of duality; it’s more like European rationalism vs Asian meditative fatalism.
You have a point, but adding everything would be misleading.
That should be helpful: https://www.adamtooze.com/2017/03/30/notes-global-condition-americanization-global-capital/
What is outbreeding in terms of humans? French/German? Finn/Lebanese? Korean/Bushman? I also wonder what the largest genetic distance their is between two races.
If it had not been difficult, the Soviets would have constructed the bridge.
Estimates of the Migrant Average Group IQ (MAGIQ) for UK calculated from the national IQ data from Lynn, fractions of graduate of the source populations and that of the respective immigrant groups from the OECD 2010 data,
Migrant Average Group IQ, Host=UK
Rank MAGIQ IQLynn PopGrad ImmGrad ENIGMA Country
1 122.2 100 0.24 0.78 110.8 LUX
2 121.1 97 0.27 0.84 106.2 RUS
3 120.6 98 0.18 0.72 112.0 FRA
4 118.3 99 0.16 0.62 113.6 BEL
5 117.7 96 0.12 0.6 113.9 SVN
6 117.3 101 0.22 0.62 112.6 CHE
7 116.2 100 0.12 0.46 117.6 AUT
8 115.5 92 0.18 0.74 105.8 GRC
9 115.4 98 0.18 0.6 111.6 CZE
10 113.8 100 0.29 0.64 108.3 NLD
11 113.5 99 0.15 0.47 114.5 DEU
12 113.4 102 0.14 0.38 118.0 ITA
13 112.4 98 0.22 0.57 109.8 ESP
14 110.0 98 0.2 0.48 110.6 HUN
15 109.9 99 0.24 0.51 109.7 POL
16 102.0 95 0.15 0.29 110.4 PRT
17 100.8 90 0.14 0.36 106.2 TUR
Thank you. Indeed, it looks like a C, should not be a problem. From what I gather, and I am probably wrong, the English comprehension is roughly a half of the grade, with the other half being math+sciences. So if you are average in those and don’t know English very well, it should not be a problem to tank the test. Still, this tanking is quit remarkable.
So I was more interested in background of the parents – their ed, income, etc. As I explained earlier, I have a suspicion that the main driver of the fall was the disproportionate gypsy population from CZ/SK in the UK. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but it looks like it could be as much as 50% of the central Europe migrant pop. – around 100.000. My suspicion is enforced also by the fact, that they constitute most of the category of with children/family, in the datasets.
Really? Nicholas II, Stalin and Hitler all attempted to build this bridge and all failed. There’s lots of issues with difficult terrain and weather.
Good point, though we’re not running out of [economically cost-effective to extract] iron basically ever, and nickel probably won’t become a major limiting factor either.
I suspect the main use of asteroid mining could be if they have dense concentrations of some genuinely rare Rare Earth Metals? (Would be especially important if the world economy transitions from oil/gas to renewables).
that explains Echo (“Yehu”) of Moscow…
ever since I saw a visualization of all the gold that ever was,
I wondered what would happen to the world economy in case of such a massive asteroid hauling metal inflation. The cube isn’t that big, easily could fit into a small asteroid. Rare earths wouldn’t be so rare anymore. What new industries, products, valuables could there arise? Even to get to the stage for it to be profitable to haul and mine them, there would have to be significant paradigm shifts, I suppose.
Also, a bit off topic, but not really, for asteroid mining at least, if you don’t already know it, I highly recommend the syfy tv series and Hugo award winning book series THE EXPANSE. I have just finished the 2 seasons (10 part/50min each – on a 4 day binge, never happens to me) and ordered the books. It has fantastic world building and touches on many hbd themes (interplanetary mostly) among others.
True, but in Russia, considering her scale, this contrast had global implications.
Only partially true and, again, a derivative of city-village contrast. Russia’s history since circa 16-17th centuries is driven by the fate of Russia’s peasantry and the way modernity was resisted by village obshina (mir). Classic Russian literature is based on that, as an example. Zapadnichestvo was merely ONE OF the ways to modernity. Zapadniki-Slavophiles contrast, while important, was secondary (and derivative) of much larger economic and geopolitical conflicts in Russia. Peasant question was a pivotal question of Russian history from circa 16th century through the first half of 20th century.
The greatest distance there is could be found between Bushmen and everybody else. Maybe out of Africa northern peoples (like Chinese or Europeans) are farther from them than blacks (if for no other reason then because blacks have interbred with them).
According to the testimony of Mark Aldanov at the news of the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty (1918), the peasants were saying, “we do not care. We are from Vyatka”.
“Russian people ” it is exclusively urban phenomenon. The peasants were not Russian people
Stalin not failed
http://imgur.com/a/6J6pl
So, the opinion of one writer now trumps the whole of huge body of Russian culture? Ghee-whiz, where did I encounter that before, wink-wink?
LOL.
I think a bridge that lasts less than a year due to inadequate construction counts as a failure in any reasonable book.
“the first bridge across the Kerch Strait survived only a few months: it was erected in late 1944 – early 1945 by the Soviet construction workers using construction materials brought here earlier by the Nazi troops. In February 1945, 15 spans of the bridge were destroyed overnight and as many as one third of the slant legs were destroyed by the end of the month after a strong gale and ice drift in the strait from the Sea of Azov.
The Kerch bridge will be a high profile test of the basic competence of the Russian regime and Russian business elites, and their ability to actually get things done competently, which is far more important in reality than all the fluff about corruption, cronyism and authoritarianism.
It’s vitally important that it is seen to at least not fail embarrassingly, because such a failure would be exploited by some of the worst elements among the modern global elites.
Logically, based upon the definition given, for outbreeding depression to occur it would require the offspring to be at a significant reproductive fitness disadvantage by virtue of having genes from the outgroup that are disadvantageous in their new environment, or biochemically or physiologically incompatible.
It’s difficult to see that being a possibility with relatively closely related groups such as different nations within one overall racial grouping, but surely much more plausible with interracial (black/white/Asian etc) pairings.
There are many such testimonies . The peasants were profoundly indifferent to the fate of Russia:
http://sirjones.livejournal.com/1217031.html
“Many have no consciousness of the disgrace of captivity…rarely there is a desire to escape (from captivity). The most passive element are the older soldiers, who openly say: “Thank God that we have captured (by the Germans), now stay alive.” Offer escape from hundreds accepts one, and after much persuasion and proof that there is no difference — to die whether from starvation or from enemy bullets. The Germans and Austrians are widely used lack of patriotism and sense of duty of Russian soldiers…. Many who had escaped from captivity have shown that saw convoys of 200 to 300 wagons, where he worked exclusively our prisoners. To care for them, were appointed for one of the Germans for 10-15 people… All the stages, bakery, cuisines — field and local — are served by our prisoners. Comes to the fact that the Germans disguised our prisoners, riding in field kitchens and carts, in a German form, to which they meekly agree.” The chief of staff of III army (WWI)
And what is the relationship to memories of Aldanov has “culture”?
Oh well, this sounds like a fine rationalistic analysis. I, however, tend to turn to metaphysics, on this subject. But only (for some reason) on this subject.
I am not saying that there were not–in the end, Russia de facto lost WW I and October Revolution (and preceding it February Coup) were the results of utter exhaustion both of Russian state and people from the war–the fact which nominal Russian “nationalists” can not accept–the fact of Russia remaining largely a backward country. My issue is with the fact that there are many testimonies to the contrary. In the end, even Novikov-Priboy’s seminal Tsushima or Stepanov’s Port-Arthur, among many, give a different picture of Russian people at war. I, of course, not going to go into War And Peace here. So, in this case–those testimonies should be taken with a grain of salt in terms, and I underscore that, of overall and very complex picture.
Precisely what I just described above, for each Aldanov there will be somebody else with somewhat different, and often first hand, experience. Fyodor Glinka, as an example, was an active participant of events of 1812-1814 and his views of those very Russian peasants differ. Yet, Glinka left wonderful memoirs after himself.
as a neutral i thought it was sad what happened to all those young conscripts but the Zhukoving of the Ukraine army by Strelkov (if it was him) was an amazing sight to see unfold in real time on internet conflict map sites. either way the man is definitely something.
I think you may be in for a surprise. The banking mafia are moving to China and at some point they are simply going to pull the plug – that’s what the current migration invasion of the West is about – scorched earth.
although your main point stands that the transition period, whether fast or slow, will be a crisis point liable to lead to WW3
UK schools in the cities have been pretty much destroyed by 50 years of cultural marxism and too much immigration – because of this the only groups who do well in those schools are those who come from cultures where it’s normal to hire private tutors.
The last time i read up on this iirc it was something like 40% of parents hired private tutors in London but the proportions vary dramatically based on ethnicity – people who come from countries where the public schools are good (at least on all the basic stuff) don’t tend to hire tutors because they don’t know it’s necessary (and neither do most native Brits because the schools used to be good and they haven’t realized it’s changed). On the other hand people from South and East Asia have always done it.
I think xenophobia and xenophilia will be found to be in balanced selection with the mid-point varying from population to population and always some outliers on either side.
However it seems to me more or less certain that the current forced attempt at diversity is running well ahead of any evolved mid-point even among the least xenophobic populations – which is why it will end in tears.
If by “Zhukoving” (I would prefer Rokossovskying or Chernyahovskiing) you mean bold strategic operations–rest assured, Girkin had nothing to do with it in Donbass. He may have some combat merits behind his belt fighting for Russia in Chechnya or PMR, but good military leader he is not even on a tactical level as his timid (or, in the words of people who observed him there and almost executed him later–demoralized) so called “tactics” in Slavyansk (with eventual retreat) proved beyond any shade of a doubt, this is not to say about his fairly fast departure from any military leadership of LDNR. His politico-ideological delirium and fight with “Surkov’s conspiracy” further expose him as a political opportunist and illiterate strategist with praporshik’s mentality. Girkin’s competencies have been put into doubt by me and other former and present cadre military professionals early 2014 on then extremely popular and high profile Sevastopol’s Political Forum (frequented by Mr. Rozhin, aka Colonel Cassad). After Vlad Shurigin published his famous interview with Northern Wind people, any views, military or political, of Girkin and his huge fan Cassad (especially Putinvseslil conspiracy) lost any serious value. So, for Girkin it is only proper to occupy today a tiny fringe niche of followers of his cult and of so called “nationalists”.
if xenophobia and xenophilia were in balanced selection then the mid-point would depend on group circumstances.
xenophobia might be optimal for a small rural group whereas people trying to get by in a large city surrounded by non-relatives might be better off if less xenophobic
(where “xeno” here doesn’t mean race – it starts at “self” and goes up through distance from self i.e. family, clan, tribe, nation, race, species)
if correct then ethnic groups comprised of people who were mostly from small rural or otherwise inbred groups until recently would be much more xenophobic (on average) than a population who had been urbanized for a long time – which is pretty much what you find irl
(hence you can find individuals from otherwise ultra clannish populations who seem “normal” to a westerner because they come from some long urbanized sub-group within the main population)
I think the idea that xenophobia starts at the level of race is a product of the mid-point of the xenophobia bell curve in the West having moved dramatically in the xenophile direction over the last 1000 years.
My experience with various close cousin marrying cultures is their empathy border starts around 1st cousin – 2nd cousins are outsiders and anyone beyond that are food.
there’s no neoliberal solution to France’s problems so he was always doomed – only question imo is if the eventual reaction will be far left or far right. in the UK it’s currently looking like the anti-neoliberal reaction will be far left, with France it seems more of a 50-50 chance.
What should have Strelkov done at Slavyansk – stayed put, get in kotel, and be destroyed?
Yeah I am not sure that Russian attitudes in 1918 after a year of liberals telling them they were fighting for the Polish right to self-determination (Prosivional Government declaration in March 1917: “The aim of the free Russia is not the domination of other peoples and the theft of their territories but the creation of a new world based on the self-determation of peoples”) and Reds undermining the war effort and the Russian state’s very legitimacy can be considered to be exactly representative of base Russian attitudes towards the Russian state.
One can cite any number of anecdotes of nationalist enthusiasm on the outbreak of war in 1914, as in other European states (including in the villages).
Of course you can find a memoir for every taste. But in addition to memoirs, there is statistical data (e.g. number of prisoners), and they speak in favor of Mark Aldanov, and not in favor of the “Fyodor Glinka” .
The fact that the peasants were made the object of worship is the greatest example of idiocy, the idiocy for which Russia has paid a terrible price
For starters, a real raid at Karachun could have been attempted. Not just mortar shelling. To defend a location and not to try to at least mitigate an issue of the domineering hill (Gospodstvuyshaya Vysota) thus allowing oneself to be constantly exposed. Really? You call this a basic tactical literacy–a common knowledge of any first year cadet of the Combined Arms Warfare Officer College. Also, a Draconian (no profanity, really?) measures Girkin instituted in his units didn’t win him many followers. As Borodai later pointed out–Girkin was completely demoralized and depressed (obviously he was, his idea was the Russian Army would follow his light skirmishes and he will emerge as a victor) and not capable of making good decisions when recognized that he actually must fight and no Russian Army is coming. If that would have been tried, at least then it could have been legitimately stated that means have been exhausted and it was necessary to withdraw.
Sir, you are preaching to a choir to some extent–I undescore it–to some extent. But your statement which you made prior:
Is preposterous (nothing personal) since Russians as a nation formed well before WW I. Guess what, it was a nation of peasants as were most nations defined as Westphalian states.
i don’t recall the details and like i say all i know comes from watching the updated maps online but…
when i was watching the maps the retreats looked like a deliberate trap to me but maybe i was just imagining it (and even if it was deliberate maybe it wasn’t his plan, dunno on that part)
i still like his face though
As a testimony to a nation in existence, these anecdotes certainly work.
Nobody undermined it more than Russia’s very own government.
Anecdotes are informative, but in the WWI front, Russian peasants in the mass surrendered to the Germans. And support the Bolsheviks (the party of national minorities openly professing hatred to Russia) by the peasants speaks for itself.
If we assume that the Russian people are those who appreciate the state, culture, history – the Russian peasants (of those times) it’s not the Russian people.
What is known for sure is the fact that Girkin upon his retreat to Donetsk was stripped of all his regalia and naked placed in the prison for three days with intent to execute him. It was this same Borodai who saved Girkin’s ass (obviously people didn’t find retreat from Slavyansk to be that great of a decision) . By then, Russian General Staff has been already involved big time in the events and Russia’s reactions increasingly became more rational. Girkin became increasingly irrelevant to any outcome.
Usually historians believe that the “nations” appears only with the introduction of mass education (respectively in 1648 “nations” did not exist, and in 1914 the Russian peasants was not a part of the Russian nation)
The problem was that the likely outcome of fighting was dying and losing.
More tactical success would not have changed that.
They needed the Russian army to get involved one way or another.
Fake-history
The German nation existed long before 1648 which was reflected by the name of their realm Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation since the late 15th century.
This, I can not judge since I wasn’t there–I merely pointed out what HASN’T BEEN done, before any other conclusions on “likeliness” (these are Staffs which give probabilistic assessments on that) of dying or otherwise could have been made. That is why I can not say if tactical success “would not have changed that”, since operational, and, eventually, strategic successes start on the tactical level. As per Russian Army “getting involved”, unlike Girkin, President Putin, no matter what one have to say about him, had and has the access to humint, signint, analytical and military resources of which Girkin simply has no not only understanding (should he had a clue he wouldn’t be running like a clown with his “Surkov” allegations) but of many doesn’t know about their existence. Today, the decision of not letting Russian Army get directly involved in Donbass in 2014 is completely vindicated from any point of view–especially against the background of current events and possibly catastrophe that direct involvement could have unleashed. It is difficult, however, to explain to people without serious professional military background.
Yes, but the question is how widespread such national feeling was…was it limited to literate elites or did it affect the mass of the population as well? There’s no question that a concept of “Germany” existed among the political elites since the 10th/11th centuries, but did it mean anything at all to the average peasant who spent all of his life in the village where he was born? That’s very hard to know (even though the people like Hobsbawm etc. who claim nationalism was an “invention” of the 19th century seem rather misguided to me).
Of course the word “nation” has existed for a long time (but this word was meaning different from the modern). But the modern nation, according to historians, emerged in the 19-20 centuries.
Only the ethnic minorities and urban proletariat supported the Bolsheviks. The peasants supported the Social Revolutionaries, of whom the greater part (the Right SRs) supported continuing the war. The bourgeoisie supported the Kadets and Mensheviks.
And this was in late 1917, after the demoralization of two revolutions and incessant Bolshevik subversion of the army and the home front.
Warfare on the Eastern Front was far more mobile, and naturally resulted in far more POWs than in the static trench warfare of the Western Front – especially for the side that lost its battles.
Russia was mostly losing to Germany, though not critically so; the Germans never did manage to advance deep into core Russian territories until the end.
OTOH, the POW rate as a percentage of total military casualties was considerably higher for Austria-Hungary than for Russia (since the Austrians, conversely, were mostly losing to Russia).
True, but that was a dynamic picture. Remarkably, SRs refused to take power in 1905 (and they could) since according to them Russia still didn’t enter the phase of developed capitalism and revolution would have been premature. One of the good indicators of Russian peasantry being (however backward) true Russian nation are the facts of namely peasants greeting disgraced Zinovy Rozhesvensky and other participants of Tsushima debacle while them riding the train back to St. Petersburg–whole towns and villages were greeting them as heroes, many of them truly were. Yet, paradoxically, Anatoly, there is NO rational explanation how Stessel, who literally sold (for cash) Port Arthur to Japanese was… pardoned by Nicholas II. How? Then again the question, how come that Russia’s Pacific Fleet was paralyzed by Japanese in 1904 (bar immortal heroism of Varyag and Koreetz) while Baltic Squadron was annihilated in one of the most one-sided victory in history? Sure as hell, nobody in munitions department never seriously answered for substandard powder or for lousy (meta-centric height issues?) stability of newest Russian battleships which tend to capsize? Questions, questions.
In the civil war, the peasants supported the Reds against the Whites (which decided the outcome of the war).
It’s ridiculous, but German peasants (who lived Russia) is in large part supported the Whites. German peasants in Russia, in 1919, could with more reason be considered the “Russian people” than the Russian peasants
Not surprising, considering that from the Czechs prisoners was created an army that fought against Austria
If third cousins are ideal ( https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207140855.htm ) then even neighbouring nations must be outbreeding.
Gypsies are NOT genetically or culturally Slovak or Czech, so their performance cannot be attributed to “Slovaks” and “Czechs.”
Nobody undermined it more than Russia’s very own government.
I am about half-way through Lenin by D. Volkogonov. I get the impression from his book that Lenin (and others) wanted to end the war on almost any terms in order to get the civil war under way and finished, thereby buying time to turn the Red Army into military support for German and other European communist led revolutions.
It’s news to me that governments in the US haven’t greatly restricted gun / self-defense rights.
Nice point. But can’t we expect the emerging Arab/African/Turkish Muslim majority in the UK and Europe to be hostile to the USA and other nominally / erstwhile white and Christian countries? Surely such a “Europe” and “UK” won’t be allies to the USA for long.
Why? Who will be anywhere near China in share of world GDP — a half-Mexican, linguistically and culturally balkanized, ignorant, unintelligent, uneducated, bankrupt, high-tax, low-trust, racially warring “America” full of fat, lazy, overmedicated / “high” people?
Or will the emerging Arab/African/Muslim “Europe” with the same terrible characteristics be able to stay close to China in share of world GDP? Doubt it.
Japan, with its population expected to shrink drastically?
Have the kids learn Mandarin — we are 😉
Mr. Martyanov, I’m guessing that you have been to Los Angeles, New York City, and/or Washington DC? How would you anecdotally compare traffic congestion in Moscow or Saint Petersburg to the most congested US cities?
The train system in your biggest cities sounds wonderful, and of course I’d love to see the artistic and architectural beauty of the subway system in Moscow. (I was sad to read, in Russian Life magazine I think, that the Moscow subway system has gotten rid of the old ladies who used to berate people for not being civilized and following the rules.) — RC
Cogent. Your comment got me thinking, AP. Curious to know about the Neanderthal and African genetic contributions of commenters on here. My recent genetic tests showed some Neanderthal genes but zero subSaharan genes and almost zero (<1% speculative) North African genes.
I generally support your point in this discussion, but here you are wrong. Peasants may have preferred Reds as a lesser evil to Whites but they were often indifferent or supported SRs-linked forces.
At some point the Reds were using poison gas against Russian peasants:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambov_Rebellion
All, but NYC. Moscow, certainly, will give L.A. and adjacent areas (including but not limited to I-10 at San Bernardino Valley) run for its money, to put it mildly. Moscow, especially Friday nights in Summer, with this massive humanity moving out to dachas could be terrifying traffic wise. I know of people standing in traffic jams for 6 hours, my longest in L.A. on I-10 (due to Phoenix) was around 4 and that was a humongous traffic jam due to crush and it was already dark. If not for “electrichkas” (local trains which run from every many Moscow’s rail road station) the whole situation would have been one unmitigated disaster. Electrichkas also run packed on such days. For inter-city commute, of course, buses and Metro which can also be nightmarish in rush hour–consider moving about 9-10 million people a day. Per moving in electrichkas in less crowded hours–prepare to see ( and hear) all those annoying sons (and daughters) of bitches trying to sell their crap–which is tolerable, or, in the worst case scenario listen to some creep performing on all kinds of musical instruments expecting to be rewarded. Often it is so cringe-worthy, it is good to pay him (or her) to just shut up and leave your car and go make live miserable to people in the next car. Russia, certainly, needs no solicitation laws.
You can still see them once in a while sitting in the escalator booths. Police, however, is more noticeable–for obvious reasons. Yes, Moscow’s underground, especially either central stations (Mayakovskay, Belorusskaya) or newer ones (such as Park Pobedy) are stunning. And the scale, of course, and cleanness. Worth the trip, not to mention world-class arts scene and other things, plus you can jump on Sapsan and be in St.Pete in 3 hours. Prepare, however, to be taken aback by Moscow’s scale–until you are on the ground yourself it is difficult to appreciate the humongousness of the place. Off the scale.
Lol wut? When they were surrounded and cut off maybe, but sometimes not even then and they otherwise fought to the death. The Western Allies were in awe of the tenacity (and incompetence) of the Russian soldiers.
It is much more logical to think the alphabet was invented in Egypt itself by skilled Phoenician scribes.
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/inscriptions/raineys-response/
From wiki:
You are correct. Within Russia, support for the Whites (nationalists) was highest among more literate people (among Cossacks such as in the Don region, and among literate groups including ethnic Germans throughout the country). Russians were not unique in this historically.
Here is an example from Poland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_slaughter
A “national” uprising by Polish nationalists, who were basically literate nobles. They were slaughtered by Polish peasants, illiterates who had not yet been taught to become nationalists and who didn’t care about this idea of a free Poland. The lesson was learned: mass education of Polish peasants. And it worked.
Same story in Ukraine. Universal literacy was achieved in Galicia for young people by the start of World War I. The place was very nationalist. In the Russian empire, Ukrainian nationalism was popular among literate Ukrainians but the masses while deferring to an extent to their educated brothers were generally indifferent. In 1918 Galicia (Western People’s Republic) mobilized 100,000 troops; the rest of Ukraine perhaps twice that amount total (scattered among dozens of warlords) despite having about 10 times more people.
because they were caught in pockets. The Russian Army’s ineptitude caused them to repeatedly get encircled by the Germans. In modern warfare, when you are surrounded you give up if you can’t break out of the encirclement.
Quitting when encircled isn’t cowardice/apathy, it’s common sense. What should they have done, committed suicide like Japanese soldiers did when surrounded?
I don’t consider late Volkogonov a serious historian. Political general? Sure. Historian? No.
I agree. And I misread your post, I see now that you had excluded those who were surrounded from your comments. Were you thinking of World War I or II? In World War I a lot of peasant soldiers in the Russian army, such as my great-grandfather, just walked home when given the opportunity.
This is one thing that I disagree on. The city probably has 15 million people (not the official number) but it seems cozy, rather than overwhelming. It doesn’t have the canyons of New York with its skyscrapers, one can find plenty of peaceful places even in the very center.
Are there people who prefer to marry their relatives rather than with members of another ethnic group? I imagine there are some, but in general it seems that cousin marriages have to be imposed by force and social pressure through arranged marriages and the like as in Pakistan, and interethnic marriages have to be prohibited by force and social pressure. Otherwise, people will avoid marrying their cousins and will marry members of other ethnic groups.
Most men don’t get sexually aroused by chimpanzees, while few men are going to turn down a sexual invitation from a woman from another ethnic group. The biological programming doesn’t seem to be analogous here.
The West has been producing mulattoes, mestizos, and others for 500 years now. It would have been apparent if the risks were as high as with inbreeding.
On my elektrichka line, the musicians are only rarely bad (drunk old man singing nostalgic songs) and occasionally quite good (young, healthy people playing classical or original music). I usually take off my headphones and listen. But I don’t understand the economy behind selling ball point pens and pantyhose on the elektrichka. Is there some kind of elektrichka mafia that employs the sellers, or are they in business for themselves? In either case, the sellers sometimes seem healthier and more well-dressed than you would expect of someone in such a line of work, and I’m puzzled by this. Depending on your destination, you can also take express elektrichkas, which are cleaner and more orderly.
On this I wrote – the peasants supported the Reds against the Whites. “Genuine” leaders of the peasants (Makhno, Antonov) were also ultra-left, and many many worse even than the Bolsheviks. In case of a victory of the peasants, Russia would have a Pol Pot style dictatorship
Here are the testimonies of Russian officers of WWI http://sirjones.livejournal.com/1217031.html :
“I climbed out of the trench, and I saw an incredible picture of a company on the right and to the left of me, holding up white flags, surrender to the Germans. Incredible! From another regiment, also captured 8 company“.
“We have a huge loss. 14 Sib. division of 16 000 people got involved in the battle in November 2, 1914, Almost one-third surrendered…. The Germans began shooting from machine guns, there were many killed. Suddenly some scoundrel shouted: “well, guys, why do we die? Surrender to the Germans!” And instantly almost a whole battalion planted on the bayonets the white handkerchiefs and put them up over the parapet“.
“The most passive element are the older soldiers, who openly say: “Thank God that we have captured (by the Germans), now stay alive.” Offer escape from hundreds accepts one, and after much persuasion and proof that there is no difference — to die whether from starvation or from enemy bullets. The Germans and Austrians are widely used lack of patriotism and sense of duty of Russian soldiers…. ”
And so on.
There were individual examples of heroism, but they do not change the overall picture. The peasants surrendered en masse, in order not to fight. To the fate of Russia, they were deeply indifferent
I imagine this varies by gender and race. Men in general are going to be disgusted by depictions of women of their race with men of another, as those men represent a competitive threat for their women. But how many, say, black men are going to be disgusted by depictions of black men with attractive blonde women, whatever the level of social engineering?
And there you have the basis of a case for abolishing from English the variant spellings of “there (their, they’re)” along with the sacred “apostrophe”.
I think he means geographically speaking. Manhattan is limited, being an island, so it grows vertically, hence the canyons of skyscrapers. Moscow, on the other hand, just gobbles up surrounding territories as it grows larger. For example, my house used to be about 40 kilometers from the city border, now it’s only ten. And, no, my house didn’t stand up on Babayaga-style chicken legs and move closer to Moscow, the city came to us.
Just think about the distance between metro stations once you move out beyond the Garden Ring. Amusingly, one of the better illustrations of this phenomenon that I’ve read was by Mark Ames back in the Exile days. He described being on a multi day meth bender, and getting off at a far flung metro station, then trying to walk to some call girl’s flat which was supposedly near that metro. I, of course, cannot relate much of what he wrote, but it was something to the effect that no matter how long one lives in Moscow, the geographical scale always has a way of surprising in its effect.
Another way to think about it is how difficult it is to be a pedestrian in Moscow. I’ve lived in NYC, the walk from, say, the UWS to Battery Park, especially if you travel along the parks on the West Side Highway/12th Ave., is eminently doable and rather enjoyable. Compare that to trying to go from one side of the Garden Ring to the opposite side. And then imagine trying to get from one side of the MKAD to the other!
Forgive them, it is not their fault. If the peasant dumbasses were smarter and better educated, they would understand that there is no better purpose of human life than to serve as pawn in a friendly game of thrones between two German imperian cousins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II,_German_Emperor#Ancestry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia#Ancestors
This is worn-out manipulation. All european monarhies are relatives, for obvious reason – kings must get married on kings and every country has only one king family. But it is not the obstacle for european wars. And how you define who is german? Was german royal family prussians? Is prussian royal famaly are russians? Or every one is german?
Its their fault.
“From the autumn of 1917 to the beginning of 1922 the population of Russia decreased by 12 741,3 thousand (12.74 million) people” http://www.politpros.com/journal/read/?ID=783
Village scum coming out of obedience – it is an evil much worse than any German cousins
I don’t consider late Volkogonov a serious historian.
That said, which part of my opinion is incorrect?
I think that the above is largely correct.
Neither Makhno nor Antonov were as cruel as the Bolsheviks.
Dubious at best (in bold)–at issue was survival of the “revolution” itself and Brest-Litovsk Treaty was a tactical measure. Bolsheviks didn’t “start” Civil War–it had several major impetuses behind it. Major of them was incompetence of Provisional Government and its eventual de facto abdication. As none other than Solzhenitsyn (in rare lucid moment) wrote:”Bolsheviks merely picked the power from the ground where it was laying” since nobody wanted it. Obviously, without discussing realities of WW I on the ground and without understanding a major difference between slogans and policy this discussion is useless, not to mention the fact that Volkogonov’s star hour came about the time (end 1980s) when Korotich and his Ogonyok (euphemism for falsification) reigned supreme. Again, Volkogonov was a political officer, not a historian, despite the fact that most graduates of Soviet political military academies, apart from the main VUS (Military Record Specialty–Voenno-Uchyotnaya Specialnost) of political officer had second specialty of.. history teachers. Similarly, my VUS is Command-Engineering, with my SECOND specially upon graduation from academy–a commanding officer of a tactical (starts at platoon) Naval Infantry units. Volkogonov was a political opportunist who sensed very well the zeitgeist and capitalized on it. Later, most of his “research” was blown out of the water with Soviet archives being increasingly accessible to public. E.g. Volkogonov’s views on Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact are views of hysterical liberals (or “nationalists”) which he articulated not for once (including on TV) , including his perpetuation of a debunked myth of “secret protocol”. I repeat, he was NO historian, he was to the very last days a political officer-opportunist.
I once bought one of those ballpoint pens (I happened to need one just as the guy was there). It lasted a day.
Very good points. Most foreigners I know, as an example, when they get to the isle of Triumphal Arc at Kutuzovsky, are simply overwhelmed with the width of the avenue, then with the opening to Poklonnay and with Moscow-city skyscrapers towering behind Kutuzovsky Prospect buildings–the 3D space is simply astonishing. Not to mention many Moscow’s intersections which are immensely, sometimes impossibly, wide. One will not be able to cross (just for fun) Prospect Mira without light–simply too wide.
What do you mean by that? There really was a secret protocol attached to the nonaggression pact.
memories Arshinov (a close friend of Makhno):
“the basis of Makhno warfare was based on the principle that every landlord who persecuted the peasants,every policeman, every officer of the Russian or German service, are the worst enemies of the peasantry and peasans freedom, and such enemies should be only killed. In addition, according to the principle of partisanship, were murdered everyone involved in the oppression of the poor peasantry and workers for violation of their rights or the robbing of their labor and property… Fast, like a whirlwind, not knowing fear and pity to the enemies, they flew (Makhno and his partisans) on the manor house, cut down all…enemies of the peasantry and quickly disappeared. And the next day Makhno did the RAID already in a distance of a hundred versts from the manor house to any large village, there cut down all policeman, officers, landowners and disappeared“.
It is the ideals of Pol Pot
I am not arguing with you over the competence of DV.
1) Bolsheviks ended the war in order to facilitate the consolidation of their political power, and that necessarily included shooting opponents.
2) Bolsheviks were committed to world-wide communist revolutions and intended, after consolidation of power, to assist those communist revolutions.
Is 1 or 2, or both, incorrect?
It certainly shouldn’t, but it is, because they are citizens, they have passports and it’s their first spoken language….mostly
You are playing a very funny game here:
In bold–YES. Not in bold–a separate issue of which I mention in above posts: inability to separate slogans and actual policies. Red Terror was unleashed after Kaplan’s attempt on Lenin.
YES. With one huge caveat, already then Bolsheviks had a doctrinal clash within the party which would lead to Stalin and his people getting the upper hand and purging party from Trotzkytes who were main proponents of global revolution.
I reiterate my point from above: Volkogonov is not a good source on Soviet history, nor on personalities of it.
Please, present this protocol here.
Good point. Moscow endless sprawl with its apartment buildings is much more impressive than American cities’ endless sprawl with single-family houses.
My impression is admittedly skewed because I lived either at a place within the Garden Ring, or a place in Taganka on the brown circle line, and visits outside (i..e, friends who lived near MGU, or elsewhere) were usually to see people or places within walking distance of metro stations, or the dacha which was right off an electrichka and a 10 minute walk through a pine forest. I can count on one hand the number of times I used buses or streetcars. So I haven’t experienced the sprawl, nor the traffic. The center is full of quiet spots and human-scale buildings. Taganka has serene monasteries and the walk down to the Kremlin is pleasant, certainly not overwhelming. Busy and loud squares or streets give way to courtyards rather easily, unlike in large American cities. Some streets have many more lanes than American ones, but these have underground walkways.
There is much less shade in Moscow so such a walk would not be as nice on a hot July day. OTOH, the subway system is on another level than New York’s. Not only are the stations infinitely more pleasant, but the trains arrive every 1 minute thirty seconds or so – there is essentially no wait for a train. Getting around the center without a car is far easier in Moscow than in New York.
Incompetence greatly helped the Bolsheviks who controlled the “Sovets” and by them deliberately destroyed the country (the infamous Order No. 1 in March 1, 1917 – the order of the Petrograd Soviet of workers ‘and soldiers’ deputies, not order of of Provisional Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrograd_Soviet_Order_No._1 ). The main failure of the provisional government – that they are not sent all the revolutionaries to the gallows.
Those are anecdotes but the death toll in Makhnovshchyna wasn’t as bad as in places subjected to the Cheka. Robbing German colonists and noble estates wasn’t on the same scale of violence.
I’ll second that. Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson. The classic.
Whether Russian peasants did or did not seriously consider themselves part of the ‘Russian nation’ at the turn of the 20th century (and what’s that? There was Russian empire, that included e.g. Poland in it) is hard to judge, but they certainly were aware of the Russian Tsar, the emperor…
As for WWI, I think it’s quite clear that the war was extremely unpopular among the ordinary folks – which doesn’t really tell us anything about their attitude towards the ‘Russian nation’.
I believe the main reason the bolsheviks won (and the provisional government, agitating for ‘war to the glorious end’, lost) was their firm promise (that they fulfilled) to get out of WWI, the ‘imperialist war’. Simple as that.
I agree. It’s a major civil engineering project, but the rest of the developed world has been building large bridges for a long time. China has recently gone on a binge and Turkey has some large ones.
One problem seems to have been the decision regarding the location of the span. The previous attempt was designed to fulfill its wartime role. There were discussions regarding the construction of temporary crossings while the permanent structure was built, but they seem to have been abandoned.
I think it is less likely to fail than to simply incur large time overages. That is, instead of 3+ years — a lot longer.
Viewing the site on Google Maps shows construction activity. But virtually nothing has been done regarding the land approaches — something that could have already been close to accomplished.
LOL, they couldn’t. Precisely because were incompetent–a simple fact which somehow evades all past and present Russia’s “intelligentsia” across whole political spectrum. Recall, I believe this was in April These by Lenin, what was the main objective of Bolsheviks? Right, getting political power. Under the conditions of a mayhem unleashed by Russia’s “liberal democrats” in February 1917 Coup (not that Nicholas II was any better–a weak and incompetent man), getting power meant doing it also by means of force.
Exactly so, but don’t emphasize this simple and self-evident fact to many Russia’s faux-patriots who from their comfy arm chairs and book-reading life experiences are ready to sacrifice numerous Russian lives, just because they think they know better. Obviously the scale of this great “advancing” and “developing” Russia’s losses in WW I (which surpassed by almost the order of magnitude any of warring side) is not important for them–one million more, one million less, who cares. Yet, they still seem to be unable to appreciate the impact of that war on this very Russian peasantry who was the main supplier of personnel to the army and whose millions of families have been decimated. Nor, do those “patriots” want to consider a fact of utter Russian humiliation in Russo-Japanese War just 10 years before WW I.
Why is that even controversial?
He made the mutants atheistic in order to provide “the religious” with an incitement and a challenge to use their goodness. One successful conversion means that “the religious” has saved another soul for God.
If he fails in his task of conversion, he will still go to Heaven for his goodness, even if he has been good for nothing.
If the mutant is not saved and goes to Hell, he has at least fulfilled his purpose in what was intended to be a mutually productive relationship.
For One who moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform, God was, in this instance, more transparent than “inscrutable”?
Because it doesn’t exist and never did. I didn’t ask for you to provide me with the alleged copy (nobody ever saw “originals”) from some microfilm. The reason “secret” protocol never existed and is most likely a falsification is extremely simple: it was all in the open, including a map of the partition of Poland next day in both Pravda and Izvestya.
http://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/thank-you-for-warsaw-mr-president-and-especially-for-mentioning-katyn-massacre/#comment-1928155
I repeat my post in Derb’s thread on Katyn:
The controversy is NOT in the Pact itself, the controversy is in the number of falsifications, among which those alleged “secret protocols” are in the West and its continuous attempts to rewrite WW II history for an average Western Joe whose brainwashing continues constantly and who is not capable to correlate political and military realities of WW II and is ready to believe any crap even against overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary. Want more current examples? Recall Iraq’s WMDs and current Russia “hacking” thing. That where real controversy is. In “bodyguards of lies” (c) Churchill. (and Antony Cave Brown’s seminal work with the same title).
Obviously entering World War I was a colossal blunder for Russia. It was, perhaps, 10 years too early for such an adventure. But Russophobic and Bolshevik myths converge in disparaging the performance of Russia’s military in the first world war.
This is a myth. In World War I, Germany lost about 2 million military deaths. The Russian Empire lost in a range of 1.7 to 2.2 military deaths. France lost about 1.4 million and Austria-Hungary between 1.2 and 1.5 million. Of the these Great Powers, Russia lost the fewest number of people as a % of its total population (it was about tied with Britain).
The war casualties, massacres, executions, and famine during the Bolshevik takeover of Russia resulted in more deaths than did World War I.
As for performance – Russia pretty much single-handedly crushed 2 of the Great Powers – Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. While defeating those two powers, Russia lost territory to the Germans but was holding them off. Bolsheviks and their supporters, as well as traditional Russophobes, were invested in the idea of portraying Russia in terms that made it look as incompetent as possible but the reality was not that way.
Well, the war was a mistake to get into, but once in – pulling out meant nothing gained, the lives were lost for nothing.
http://ww1facts.net/quick-reference/ww1-casualties/
Russian military was plenty competent, while Russian General Staff officers would give any Prussian General Staffer run for their money, not to speak about British or French. It was political structure and economy which were rotten to the core and no “portrayal” by Bolsheviks or anyone can change the fact of Russia sustaining highest (and by far) level of casualties, this is against the background of freshest memories of military humiliation in Russo-Japanese War just 10 years prior–a humiliation which started First Revolution of 1905. It is beaten to death debate perpetuated mostly by all kinds of self-proclaimed “nationalist” (of all stripes) and whoever else–a precise cohort of people who have very little understanding of how resources (from human to materiel) are formed and expended in the war. The fact of the exhaustion of the Russian Empire’s resources, be they human or economic, can not be explained merely by some bolsheviks’ activity, this is not to mention the irrefutable fact that mayhem was born inside Russia’s “liberal democrats” soirees and it was they, not bolsheviks, who unleashed it upon people. Their incompetence coupled with incompetence of the Czar (not to mention his all-consuming family tragedy with Alexi’s hemophilia) created a devastating synergy. I will repeat this for the last time–without discussing what Russian peasant obshina (mir) was and what was its impact on Russia–all this is the waste of time.
That was expected. The real issue, however, was with Germany as further historic events proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. Germany was in a different league.
The question in a completely different
“In April and may of 1917, in spite of our victory on the river Aisne and in champagne, we (Germany) was only saved by the Russian revolution”
Erich von Ludendorff
Russia’s entry into WWI was a mistake, but “anti-war” activities of the Bolsheviks (and other revolutionaries) was a monstrous crime.
That’s what they ( revolutionaries) deliberately sought: “From the autumn of 1917 to the beginning of 1922 the population of Russia decreased by 12 741,3 thousand (12.74 million) people” http://www.politpros.com/journal/read/?ID=783
Its surpassed by almost the order of magnitude Russia’s losses in WW I
Which, as a % of population, place Russia below Germany, France and Austria-Hungary.
Also, your link indicates that Russia tied Germany for military casualties.
In the post that I replied to, you claimed that Russia’s losses “surpassed by almost the order of magnitude any of warring side”
Clearly, that was wrong. But that’s a common mis-perception given the mountains of Soviet propaganda that went largely unchallenged by a Russophobic West.
Russia about tied Germany for military casualties. As % of population its total casualties were lower than Germany, France, and Austria-Hungary. It was about tied with Britain.
Russia was in the process of rapid industrialization and modernization. As I wrote, it was extreme stupidity to get into such a war so early.
In 1905 Russia lost to Japan. In 1914 Russia simultaneously defeated both Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, while maintaining itself against Germany (which of course, was devoting most resources to the West). Clearly it had improved significantly in those 9 years since 1905, but not enough to engage in a war against three great powers at the same time.
Correct. Eclipsing Germany would have taken another 20 years, probably. The Germans were aware of this, and so were not as opposed to a war with Russia, before Russia surpassed it (something widely viewed at the time as likely, if not inevitable).
I don’t think competent or incompetent has anything to do with it. It was an imperialist war. People didn’t want to crush Austria-Hungary or the Ottoman Empire; they wanted to stay alive, at peace, with their families. Even in the US, with its greatest, most advanced propaganda technology, there was still significant resistance – even armed resistance at times – to the Vietnam war in the 1960s-70s.
Are you people for real? OK, another source.
http://www.centre-robert-schuman.org/userfiles/files/REPERES%20%E2%80%93%20module%201-1-1%20-%20explanatory%20notes%20%E2%80%93%20World%20War%20I%20casualties%20%E2%80%93%20EN.pdf
Here is Russia’s dead are put at almost 5 million.
They, certainly, did–UKs losses, as an example, are in hundreds of thousands, Russian are in millions–that is the difference in the order of magnitude. Germany fought two-front war and her vis-a-vis Russia casualties on Eastern Front were much, in fact on the order of magnitude, smaller than that of Russia. But again:
I see you have nothing of value to add to this discussion, obviously.
In this case, people have had the Lynching the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries, instead of supporting them. Because the revolutionaries instead of the imperialist war, wanted to start another war far more terrible.
It did, it is called Civil War. Although in the link you provided on Zemskov’s conclusions which blow out of the water all those ever-whining “repression” people here, same Zemskov specifically mentions people like you, read the whole thing in context:
So, what’s your point? I understand svidomites or Moscow’s Parnassus going apoplectic on Russia’s 20th Century history but what are you trying to tell me, that Russian Civil War was bloody? It was not bloody–it was the bloodiest civil conflict among European people in history (it makes American Civil War tame in comparison). But so were underlying contradictions of Russian history which accumulated in previous centuries–it took WW I to finally blow it in the open. But I already noticed that for some public here the issue of causality (cause and effect) is a very difficult subject to tackle.
???
That is the you do not want answer on the subject . Instead, the lengthy argue on extraneous issues (Russo-Japanese war, Alexei Tolstoy, exaggerating of the number of red terror victims by opponents of Zemskov, and so on )
Sure, everything is extraneous when it doesn’t fit your primitive narrative. So, I surrender.
Um..the link you provided shows “total deaths” as 3.3 million people.
This is the second time in a row you have made such a basic but significant mistake. You are an intelligent, well-informed person, unlike some others here. When an intelligent, informed person makes such simple mistakes it suggests that emotions rather than reason are guiding the argument. You are emotionally invested in the false idea of pre-Commie Russian incompetence.
The link provided shows Russian casualties as % of overall population. Russian total casualties were 1.89% of Russia’s population.
For UK it was 2.19%.
For France it was 4.29%. More than twice that of Russia.
For Germany it was 3.82%
For Austria-Hungary it was 3.05%.
Russia had the smallest number of casualties as % of overall population, of any of the European Great Powers. During World War I, Russians lost a small percentage more of their population than did the people of New Zealand. This, according to your own source.
You claimed more than anyone else. And, of course, Rusia’s overall population is also an order of magnitude greater than the UK’s. Indeed, UK lost a higher % of its population during that war than did Russia. And unlike in the case of Russia, parts of the UK were never occupied by the enemy.
And it was never occupied. And Russia fought Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Emipre.
It blew open not because of underlying contradictions but because of bad timing. The population had not yet been sufficiently “brainwashed” into becoming nationalists on a mass scale, as had been the French for example (Celine wrote a very amusing passage about this), the country was in rapid transition, etc. Ten years or better twenty years later it would probably have been a different story.
You are simply asserting that a document, whose existence has never really been doubted by anyone but Soviet propagandists (and by the late 1980s, not even by them), and whose photocopy I linked above, is a forgery, based on… basically nothing.
The map in the Soviet papers simply reproduces the Curzon Line, which actually diverges significantly from the line in the secret protocols (though not much from the later actual border), which was not really top secret, nor was the fact that the Soviets would’ve preferred the Curzon Line for a border already in 1920.
Again, the fact that the Soviet papers contained quite open irredentist propaganda doesn’t undermine the existence of the secret protocols, it actually reinforces them. How much more believable it is that the Soviets signed the secret protocols with the fourth (or fifth, if we count the Congress of Vienna) partition of Poland, if they were simultaneously openly engaging in irredentist propaganda?
I don’t quite understand why people are trying to relitigate history that way. Stalin is long dead, and wherever he is, whether simply rotting underground, or awaiting eternal judgment by God, he certainly doesn’t need to be defended or attacked in anonymous forums. What matters here is for the participants to learn or discuss the available evidence. I’m happy to learn, so if you have any evidence to the effect that the secret protocol is a forgery, then come forward with it. But if you have none (as I suspect, since you’d already have provided your evidence, had you had any), then this debate makes very little sense.
In any event, even if the protocols were fake, and instead the Soviets openly demanded the eastern part of the internationally recognized territory of Poland, nobody would see them in any more favorable light because of that.
In Hungary it was often asserted that Hungarian soldiers fought well, whereas other ethnicities surrendered more easily, but recently I read somewhere that with the possible exception of Czech and German soldiers (the former more, the latter less likely than the rest), most ethnicities had similar rates of surrender. Austria-Hungary was not a very bad “country” (or whatever it was) in peacetime, certainly better than many formations that came after it, but it certainly didn’t elicit much loyalty from its subjects. It tried hard, but it proved an impossible job. When it became weak by 1918, even its nominally dominant ethnicities (Hungarians and Germans) immediately started thinking about leaving it.
It contradicts somewhat the usual “nations were only invented in the 19th century” trope, because apparently nations could only be invented from some pre-existing ethnicities, and while it proved possible for the French to assimilate mostly Romance speaking non-French populations, it was impossible to create new ethnicities out of nothing (Yugoslav, Czechoslovak, Soviet, Greater Austrian, etc.), and even assimilation into an already existing nation proved very difficult or impossible where the languages or religions (and especially where both) were dissimilar (like Hungarians couldn’t easily assimilate Slovaks or especially Romanians, however hard they tried). (Assimilation works better now that both religious identities and borders have dissolved into nothing, and so basically Hungarians in Slovakia find it advantageous to either leave the country for Hungary, or stay and learn Slovakian so that their children will become Slovaks.)
Savage punishments would indicate disgust.
If publishing openly an official document of international diplomacy (however controversial) with the addition of a map of partition of Poland in two leading Soviet newspapers next day after signing this document is a propaganda, then we really have to admit a huge discrepancy in our understanding of definitions. This is not to speak of obvious lack of any logic and causality with this whole “secret protocol” affair, which facts (and scans) presented blow completely out of the water. Western “historiography” (much of it anyway) gleefully bought into own ideologically expedient Cold War BS when fabricating this falsification and now is really upset when it is pointed out. I will omit for now military-political considerations.
Again, where is the beef? Some microfilm of alleged, but burned, original “uncovered” by some British intelligence dude?
Oh no! You are completely missing the point. For starters, there are people of a huge international repute as world-class historians (and real thinkers) who would challenge this assertion of yours and quite energetically at that. This is for starters. Now, you do not have to convince me on the combined West’s “track record” of falsifications throughout 20th and, I am sure on your memory, 21st centuries. Latest geopolitical catastrophe of the last 17 years is a good example of criminal falsification which threatens still to grow into global confrontation. The fact that USSR hid or falsified some controversial parts of WW II in NO WAY absolve combined West from the same, not to mention often massive war crimes. West has a huge share of it. Just to illustrate some points which “West” doesn’t like to advertise.
http://www.rense.com/general4/gends.htm
You, of course, never heard of Congresswomen Elizabeth Holtzman’s group which established the fact of Gehlen and his ORG (later BND) feeding tons of BS (total falsifications) completely perverting and misrepresenting Soviet Intentions after WW II for their own purposes. In other words–they blew Soviet “threat” out of proportion. It is remarkable, that even History Channel ran for a week or two in late 1990s an excellent documentary on this issue where many intelligence professionals and historians made rather startling conclusions of Nazi Germany, even from her grave, through Gehlen ORG being able to fan the flames of Cold War.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Gehlen_Org.html
So, you are now (and I am a Cold Warrior with some pedigree and a unique insight and experience into Soviet military system) trying to convince me that–nah, not big deal, Soviets are evil so the West, by default, is good? Really? Forgive me, but I don’t buy this and today it is West’s combined (with some minor exceptions) propaganda machine (from media to court “historians” and other “experts”) which continues to hide, pervert, lie non-stop across the whole spectrum of hugely important international (and domestic) issues and it matters, especially at this particular historic juncture. To expose them for what they are. Never ending BS about “secret protocols” has nothing to do with Stalin personally–it has everything to do with the history of WW II and emergence of the United States (due to the configuration and dynamics of that war) as self-proclaimed “victor of Nazism” and “global power for good”(c). We all know where it all lead to. So debunking one lie at a time, while tedious, is what is being done today utilizing the power of internet included. Wait for more interesting revelation on Soviet and World’s history.
Is your raison d’être trying to convince people like us that the US created the Cold War out of thin air?
Is your raison d’etre trying to make a point giving a deliberately mis-configured question for which there is no simple answer? You see, I also can play this game of black and white answers. So, are you denying the facts found out by Elizabeth Holtzman’s group about Gehlen and BND being one of the crucial impetuses behind Cold War by providing a deliberately falsified intel?
behind Cold War
behind the Cold War
are you denying the facts found out by Elizabeth Holtzman’s group about Gehlen and BND being one of the crucial impetuses behind Cold War
No, propaganda by both sides was crucial.
Intelligence is not propaganda since it influences crucial (by state) policy decisions among which is perpetuation of propaganda. Kinda chicken and egg thing with a very clear answer who is first. Albeit, I have to say that US elites (some major parts of them) did end up drinking their own Kool Aid and that is clear and present danger not only to the US itself but to the whole world . I kinda have a background to make me worry. You grammar corrections are duly noted and appreciated.
P.S. I would suggest you reread Colonel Pat Lang’s (decades of service in DIA and CIA), I posted it above in this thread, on how US “intel” people were and are taught at Garmisch. No surprise they talk about genetic inferiority of Russians, such as Mr. Clapper is doing. It sure as hell reminds of some OTHER, removed by decades from us, events. I guess old habits die hard.
I do not trust the US government’s propaganda (nor the Russian’s), nor the CIA’s, nor the FBI’s, nor the NSA’s, nor the military’s, nor any of the other alphabet’s, regardless of whether you call it intel or propaganda, and I am pretty sure that they don’t trust each other.
It sure as hell reminds of some OTHER
Perhaps you don’t waste enough time here reading the comments and articles. If you did you would no doubt see that a clear majority prefer the Nazis to the commies.
I usually don’t pay attention to the crap from people like Clapper. The idea that Russians are racially inferior is a bizarre notion and is not shared by any measurable percentage of Americans.
I doubt the validity of your statement on “clear majority” greatly. Some crypto-nazis who post here surely provide for the stink but I doubt they are majority. Their “Nazism” is easily explainable by lack of any serious systemic education and real life experiences (a lot of frustrated young people who blame Jews for not having any serious sex-life) since most of them would shit their pants when experiencing even one hundredth of realities which real Nazism offers. Moreover, overall excellent combination of authors who publish here on UNZ hardly qualifies this place as some kind of Nazi majority Mecca. Racial realism and clear and more-or-less objective understanding of the role of international Jewry hardly qualifies one as a Nazi. Am I a Nazi? Sure as hell not, am I a “commie”? Not even close but people fail to separate very different things.
Now about “commies”–it is becoming a well-established (supported by overwhelming factual evidence) fact that far from knowing Russia/Soviet history of the 20th Century in US, much of it was influenced and shaped by offsprings of the Third Reich. E.g. Glantz and House repeatedly stated in their seminal-works that US view of WW II was shaped by Wehrmacht’s generals, while Soviet history was shaped by hacks and falsifiers such as Solzhenitsyn and other Vlasovyte “dissidents” and other types of “nationalists” etc. Realities of the Soviet Union were and are largely beyond the grasp of most even in the top US political echelon, let alone average Joe. But while during the Cold War some balance has been preserved due to many people on American top political side still remembering and experiencing real WW II (as GIs and officers) and what it brought, today situation is drastically different–we are talking about wholesale delusion and incompetence on any issue related to Russia. Be it unprecedented anti-Russian hysteria in media which makes McCarthyism look tame in comparison, to such people as former Obama’s (Affirmative Action) National Security Adviser Susan Rice stating in her interview to major US TV network that Russia desperately collected 90% of her functioning Air Force for the war in Syria. Just one example. So,
I don’t write it to your benefit only, other people read this too. Your quote above encapsulates perfectly the present mental state of the US more or less (trying to) thinking people–an epistemic closure and symptoms of informational over saturation against the lack of necessary filtering mechanisms, an illness which results in growing frustration with outside world since it really begins to go to hell. And it is going to hell and there are reasons for that and those reasons are very rational and they even can be helped somewhat, but not by a category of public which you described as a “majority” here since it is very illiterate in virtually any military, economic, geopolitical and historic senses. But yes, American mythology and narrative is being blown out of the water as I type this and it has nothing to do with “propaganda” or “hacking” or even RT. As I already (and not me alone) stated not for once–the worst thing which could have happened to Solzhenitsyn was opening of Soviet archives and facts being brought into the light. The same applies to the US, whose mythology began to be scrutinized in the global opinion arena (Internet) against the facts of history and empirical evidence and it doesn’t stand this scrutiny. What is sad, however, that with it everything that was good and remarkable (truly exceptional) and what I personally love about American Republic is being dragged to the sewer by those who are supposed to be this Republic’s guardians. Huge part of this tragedy is in the fact of a complete corruption of US “elites” who failed to learn both history and from it.
I doubt the validity of your statement
What? Everybody gets to do hyperbole except me?
we are talking about wholesale delusion and incompetence on any issue related to Russia.
If only this was restricted to relations with Russia.
What is sad, however, that with it everything that was good and remarkable (truly exceptional) and what I personally love about American Republic is being dragged to the sewer by those who are supposed to be this Republic’s guardians. Huge part of this tragedy is in the fact of a complete corruption of US “elites” who failed to learn both history and from it.
How do you think I feel?
I don’t have a back-up country like Jews and Russian citizens.
So, then it is balls to the wall to the very end.
Remarkably, you can ask me the same question. I lived long enough in the country to stop recognizing it, with first signs being US reaction to the first Chechen War, which at first I dismissed as US media being badly informed, and then becoming alarmed to the utmost by NATO Aggression against Serbia. But it was when US media started openly siding with terrorism, even with Beslan slaughter of innocents–that is when the alarms started to really scream and all lights went on. US elites problem is with Russia as such. This is also US undoing but discussing mechanisms of this undoing are better left for my next piece here.
better left for my next piece here.
Looking forward to reading it.
What is the state of transgender entry in the Russian military? Are the Russians suffering a major lack of power for not employing a larger percentage of mutilated freaks?
Mr. A. Karlin,
Has India inflicted a defeat on China?
OT to all discussions here, but an interactive website of each Ukrainian oblast’s births, deaths, and natural growth 1990-2016:
http://datatowel.in.ua/natural/birth-death-regions-historical
u
Oops, this was a throwaway. The “edit” function seems to have disappeared, by the way. (I’m using Firefox on OS X)
Oh dear. If we’re having discussion on this level (of a preschool agitprop), then it would probably be also correct to say that all the revolutionaries wanted was to create workers’ paradise on earth, whereas the Tsar and then the provisional goverment wanted to add new regions to the empire with more people for the elites to exploit. That was the choice. And unsurprisingly the former idea turned out to be far more popular.
…as for the non-aggression pact, I don’t think defining what exactly would constitute an ‘aggression’ (in terms similar to the Monroe doctrine) is a sinister act. The US, for example, didn’t want Soviet missiles on Cuba, and similarly the USSR (in the aftermath of the 1938 Munich agreement) didn’t want the German army east of a certain point; so they set the limit. This could be viewed as unremarkable specifics of the agreement, but instead it was framed in the west as a super-sinister secret protocol.
Well, that’s actually what the Bolsheviks did, so there’s that. By this I meant we know what actually happened which sometimes gives one (some of us) a clue as to what may have been intended by the actors involved.
Of course revolutionaries wanted create workers’ paradise . But it so happened that the actions of the revolutionaries killed millions of people, but the attempt to build a Paradise for the workers, completely failed
Nonsense. Historical processess lead to revolutions, deaths, and all that – and, sometimes, new social models emerge. Blaming deaths on revolutionaries is only an out-of-context propagandistic ‘narrative’, created by the elites, with the purpose to justify the status quo.
That’s right. When the Cheka drag a man out of his house and murder him on the orders of his superiors, it is because of “historical processes.” Revolutionaries aren’t responsible, not at all. ISIS sadists beheading or crucifying people? Historical processes are to blame. To say otherwise is to ignore historical context. When will you start to bring ideas of privilege and such into your argument?
When slave rebels and ‘murders’ his master, there’s certainly a more meaningful narative than ‘some guy murdered another’, or ‘slaves are murdering savages’.
The way you’re construncting your ‘naratives’ reflects mostly on you. For example: the CIA tortures and murders people, the CIA is an agency of the US government, blah-blah-blah, etc. this is the exact equivalent of your Cheka narrative. Absolutely meaningless, because all the context is removed.
Your particular manner of constructing bullshit naratives is especially unpleasant in that it’s emotional, moralistic, and one-sided. Feminine, if I could say so. Why don’t you forget the cheka and cry for Hiroshima. Describe the Hurishima bombing (real event) the way you described that imagined Cheka execution. 200,000 times…
Sure. There is the fact that the slave was personally oppressed and probably mistreated, most likely brutally. No “historical process” necessary to explain such violence.
Most Cheka people weren’t serfs but people from higher classes than that. They killed because they were sadists. You, their defender, as acting like those women who justify and write letter to serial killers.
You are the one with the BLM-like narrative about “historical processes” excusing evil behavior, and the excuses for simply cold-blooded killers.
People’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with how well they can parse alphabetic script!
I can be with anyone I want. The point is, ‘evil’ belongs to a prayer, and historical events are explained by historical processess. And incidentally, I’m pretty sure that most often it’s people who sound exactly like you, talking about good and evil and projecting certainty of their moral superiority, who will also kill, under the right circumstances – for ‘good’ to prevail over ‘evil’, obviously. But still, that’s psychology, not history.
Because labeling sadistic killers such as members of the Cheka or Gestapo or whoever as “evil” is not taking into account historical processes. Morality is relative, right?
Naturally someone like you struggles to figure out the moral differences between killings depending on circumstances.
Russia’s economy may, or may not be, smaller, but if Canada’s is bigger the reason is it uses US fracking tech that Russia wants. America is the number one gas and oil producer because it has home grown technology. Russia cannot produce a car that any affluent Russian really wants.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-exxon-treasury-fight-and-the-roots-of-russiagate_us_597de928e4b0c69ef70528ff
Exxon was given access to exploit Russia reserves because the corporation promised to teach Russia how to frack. BTW the New York Post head line ” Trump Was ‘The Best Sex I’ve Ever Had’ — Marla Maples” was one he did not take libel action over, and so it was clearly true.
Hm, counterintuitive. I mean, sure, everyone has seen “local” women paired with “foreign” men being ostracized (with beautiful terms like чернильницы and whatnot), but can’t say I’ve ever encountered or heard of the opposite pairing, “local” men with “foreign” women, getting any heat.
I have a question for German Reader and anybody here who is from Europe (Russia not included):
How intense is the hatred for Trump in your countries? Is it true hate or is it more just contempt? How widespread is it?
In America we have something that we call Trump Derangement Syndrome which is when otherwise sane and balanced left wingers completely lose their minds about Trump and develop an unhealthy obsession about the man to the point where they literally start to lose touch with reality. Does anybody in your countries suffer from that?
Very.
There is a systematic information campaign against him.
Note even NeverTrump media in America are hostile as the ARD, the oldest public service broadcaster.
https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-donald-trumps-first-100-days/
In Slovakia, I estimate Trump would get ~70% in a hypothetical election against Hillary, easily. Maybe somewhat less now.
Only the liberal coffee house in the capital, as we call it, truly hate-hate him – they top out at 10-15%. I am often amused these days, because we get news from America, that would normally not make news – most of the liberal clique publish and circle jerk in 2, maybe 3 national news outlets.
In Czech rep., the situation would be much more interesting. There was one very decisive poll for Hillary that I know of (45-15), but hey…so was in America. On the other hand, there is a good case to be made, he would win easily-as he’s basically targeting the same demo as the incumbent president Zeman (Putin’s waterboy in the liberal press).
The situation has to be viewed in greater historical context and related issues – most notably, the ratio of our allegiance to our slavic brothers to the east and money to the west. For me personally, HBDChick’s Hajnal line series of blogs was very informative and helpful in understanding the dynamics. I think Czechoslovakia is an excellent case study, because we are right on the line – we are truly a nation divided – the Czechs much more so then the Slovaks.
You have to look at the Czech rep. as the land of the Czechs – the northwest and Moravians to the southeast – they are more like Slovaks in their attitudes. Some northwesterners even consider themselves to be more German. I suppose their historic kingdom and their role of shaping the Holy Roman empire, gives them some legitimacy to a feeling of grandeur. Prague lies in the northwest and most of the intelligentsia (coffee house) have nothing but hate for both Trump and Putin and Russia in general – partly because of 1968. Many of them were truly heartbroken and disillusioned after the tanks came. So Czech are 50/50 really.
As for the above contex, the Trump Derangement Syndrome here translates more to Russia Derangement Syndrome. The media really try to make you hate Russia, it’s been going on for years, at least since 2006. As far as I can tell, most people are not buying, certainly not in Slovakia. A lot of pro-Russian content and pages were created in the last years. So adequately, for the last year, the big issue in MSM is Russian propaganda and how they try to influence opinions! They are becoming a CNN-like joke really fast. Which is a shame, because a lot of their content outside geopolitics is good and a lot of the pro-Russian (most) is rubbish, often mixed into chemtrail, antivac, etc content
I can’t really answer that tbh. German mainstream media is totally freaking out about Trump and pushing absurdities like “Merkel is now the leader of the free world”…but I don’t read or watch them much anymore. Some “alternative” media I read are neutral or somewhat positive about aspects of Trump’s programme (obviously there’s some hope that if Trump gets serious about immigration restriction it might be a model for Europe). His missile strike on Syria was also lauded, both in mainstream media and by some fringe publications (which seemed rather misguided to me).
The few people I talk to about politics beyond the net are sceptical about Trump (as am I), but more concerned with what’s going on in Germany and Europe.
“Trump derangement syndrome” certainly exists among mainstream journalists, probably not much difference here from how it’s in the US. How widespread it is in the general population…I can’t really tell (though perceptions of Trump are probably generally negative).
The new round of sanctions the Congress passed looks quite serious, especially if the EU decided to bend the knee ( regardless of their current bluff ). Wondering how putlet will be responding to these measures by his “Western Partners” effectively without shooting himself and the Russian economy in the foot. Or rather how will he protect the Russian economy from these measures and possible future measures that are this powerful?
The long overdue process of diversifying the Russian exports is coming to hunt him down. I can only see him having three choices, rapid development of exportable russian industries, waiting for a miracle that brings the West back to reality or begging for mercy. I really doubt that he can do the first one which leaves us the the second and third option. He probably will go with the second for now.
This was excellent. One of the best takes on China-India relations I’ve read. Please send an email to [email protected] I believe I can help you get this published in India in a prominent publication.