Dog days of summer, not much going on.
Apart from Julian Assange RT’ing my Society 282 article.
As luck would have it, that particular week was the one time this year I was at our dacha, where my mobile Internet doesn’t work, so I missed out on all the fun.
The Eternal Russia. pic.twitter.com/ntthshXtGp
— Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes) August 29, 2017
Featured
- James Thompson: The 99 steps of intelligence hunters
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Alexander Mercouris: Goodbye ‘President’ Trump; hail ‘President’ Mattis
Russia
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Putin: Whoever leads in AI will rule the world. With virtually no presence in AI/machine learning, that probably isn’t going to be Russia.
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US shutters three Russian diplomatic officers, including the Consulate in San Francisco. I am assuming not all of their staff will be transferred to remaining diplomatic compounds, so the number of Russian diplomats in the US will fall below 455, necessitating a further round of diplomatic expulsions from Russia to maintain the reciprocity principle.
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Big new IRI Ukraine poll: Public Opinion Survey of Residents of Ukraine
World
- Matthew Sheffield: Donald Trump is right (about something): There really is an “alt-left,” but it’s even weirder than he thinks
Finally, someone in the media – from Salon, of all places – noticed that the Alt Left isn’t what Trump says it is.
- Audacious Epigone: Only blacks want Confederate statues removed. A shock to people outside the /r/politics and neoliberal Twitter to be sure.
Curiously, more men (38%) support this than women (27%). AE: “I suppose destroying things appeals more to men than it does to women.”
- iSteve commenter roadrunner noticed the USS John McCain was apparently piloted by diversity hires. The symbolism just keeps piling on..
Check out the bios of the CO and XO. The CO is Commander Alfredo Sanchez, native of Puerto Rico. He appears to be a washout from flight school, reassigned to duty as a surface officer.
The XO is named… Commander Jessie Sanchez, also a native of Puerto Rico. He started out as an enlisted sailor, then got a diploma from a diploma mill and was commissioned as a limited duty officer. This is not a typical bio of a XO of a destroyer, at least in my day.
* Steve Sailer’s series of Tweets with quotes illustrating elite hostility to White Americans.
* Glenn Greenwald: In Europe, Hate Speech Laws are Often Used to Suppress and Punish Left-Wing Viewpoints
* Syrian Civil War update: Bridge to Deir ez-Zor almost complete. These are most likely the last months of Islamic State.
Science
All of this pointed to a stunning conclusion: despite being more complex than sponges and placozoans – which lacked nerve cells and muscles and virtually every other specialised cell type – ctenophores were actually the earliest, oldest branch on the animal tree of life. Somehow over the subsequent 550 to 750 million years, the ctenophore had managed to evolve a nervous system and muscles similar in complexity to those of jellyfish, anemones, sea stars and many types of worms and shellfish, cobbled together from an alternative set of genes.
* Dahghan, Mahshid et al. – 2017 – Associations of fats and carbohydrate intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 18 countries
Intake of total fat and each type of fat was associated with lower risk of total mortality (quintile 5 vs quintile 1, total fat: HR 0·77 [95% CI 0·67–0·87], ptrend<0·0001; saturated fat, HR 0·86 [0·76–0·99], ptrend=0·0088; monounsaturated fat: HR 0·81 [0·71–0·92], ptrend<0·0001; and polyunsaturated fat: HR 0·80 [0·71–0·89], ptrend<0·0001). Higher saturated fat intake was associated with lower risk of stroke (quintile 5 vs quintile 1, HR 0·79 [95% CI 0·64–0·98], ptrend=0·0498). Total fat and saturated and unsaturated fats were not significantly associated with risk of myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease mortality.
* Chopan, Mustafa & Littenberg – 2017 – The Association of Hot Red Chili Pepper Consumption and Mortality
Total mortality for participants who consumed hot red chili peppers was 21.6% compared to 33.6% for those who did not (absolute risk reduction of 12%; relative risk of 0.64).
- Emil Kirkegaard: Battle of the sexes: island survival edition. (Relevant in light of the announcement of a female-only Lord of the Flies remake).
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Heartiste was right again. Tinder Experiments II: Guys, unless you are really hot you are probably better off not wasting your time on Tinder — a quantitative socio-economic study
Misc
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Steve Sailer: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Having Gotten James Damore Fired, Now Soft-Censoring Social Science Videos
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Chinese joke about baizuo (SJWs) making the rounds on their social networks.
* The Guardian view on censoring the internet: necessary, but not easy
- TIL via Wrath of Gnon: Syphilis had 8% prevalence amongst British men a century ago; in France, 15% of deaths attributed to it. “One of the reasons the Victorians were so severe on morals.”
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Frame Game Radio: Princeton’s admissions committee shows a push by #DiversityIndustry to only count minorities if they signal as SJWs.
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As a technological prognosticator, I think VVP should definitely not give up his day job.
Nice to see that Salon has picked up on the existence of the “alt left”. I would vaguely claim some leanings in that direction (sympathetic to ethnic nationalism, strongly sympathetic to maintaining indigenous ethnic majorities in European countries, far left on economics), although I’d strongly reject any politics based on positing the existence of a ‘white’ race, and would also reject any attempts to make America an ethnic homeland for any group. I think you might be surprised how many people there are out there that are sympathetic to alt-left ideas at least in some measure.
i think a lot of women dislike things that cause conflict whatever they are
alt-left
i think the alt-left is currently three and a half semi-things
1) an attempt by people who dislike SJWs (anti-Israel) and alt-right (anti-Jewish, larpy or otherwise) to link antifa violence to the alt-right in the public’s mind in the hope of getting them both banned
2) Trump’s gut level counter meming under pressure (only half a thing)
3) young white debils who were loosely on the Left for mostly high school signaling reasons and who are being pushed out of the Left cos white and in the process of turning alt-right but not yet fully there
4) people with a fixed left-liberal world view who come to realize that if genetics is true then none of the social problems they want fixed can be fixed without reference to the genetic component of the problem
the first three are ephemeral imo but the 4th might turn into an actual thing
That declaration from Putin about AI is the most shocking thing I heard so far. Does Russia has any plan to compete in this domain?
If not, why bother with publicly declaring this? It’s the equivalent of Gorbachev announcing publicly that: “Whoever deployed Star War first will control the world and that we know that we will lose this race so we will start surrendering immediately and beg the West to be our friends.” It’s very embarrassing.
Why don’t you ask roadrunner to bring up who were fired from piloting the Fitzgerald (it’s not hard, their pictures are in the front page of many news reports). If his selective memory didn’t bring this up you can infer why.
Why all 4 stupid incidents with the Navy this year? Is it the food? The water? And why only around China’s string of pearl? Does the Navy only do diversity hire with the 7th Fleet and keep it pure on all others?
Does China have some new technology that the Navy don’t want to admit publicly? Or is Russia or someone else behind this? An inside job? I hope someone better look into this and come up with a believable explanation. So far, nothing makes sense.
With all the consulate closing now and in the future, how does this impact your travel plan? Anything?
did he mean AI or more generally electronics/ecm?
the later could make sense (cos reasons) but yeah mentioning AI specifically seems odd (it might be true but seems strange to mention it without an announcement of some new research institute or something)
The alt-left are just national socialists who like social liberalism. It’s basically irrelevant since you can’t have the kind of socialist or dirigiste economics they want with the decadence they want as well over the long term.
The alt left are just national socialists who like social liberalism. It’s basically irrelevant since you can’t have the kind of socialist or dirigiste economics they want with the decadence they want as well over the long term.
The Ukrainian poll places Ukrainians’ perceived economic low-point in February 2016.
“(it might be true but seems strange to mention it without an announcement of some new research institute or something”
It wasn’t tweet. It was talk with students about sciensy things.
/During the 45-minute open lesson (the standard academic hour in Russia), Putin also discussed space, medicine, and the capabilities of the human brain, pointing out the importance of cognitive science./
The guy is getting full of himself. If wants to be a guru, he should get out of politics.
This isn’t true. ‘Machine learning’ is just the new hipster name for ‘computational statistics’, and Russia has always been (and continues to be) very good with statistics/probability theory.
(That said, “AI” is overhyped, whoever has the biggest Internet spying and data collection network will rule the world, not the guy with the clever “AI”.)
I agree that the left-right dimension in the US (and possibly in the West in general) is meaningless.
I think it’s a consequence of the escalation of its imperial/neoliberal nature. The elite is overwhelmingly imperial/neoliberal; they bribe the professional and the lumpen segments to go along with it. The blue-collar segment, losing ground due to de-industrialization, is the opposition. Neither is left or right.
Uh no, there’s no reason you can’t have both. Mass immigration, in fact, undermines welfare states and socialism.
The alt left, to my mind, would include some so-called “far right” parties like the Danish People’s Party, as well as the Czech and Slovak Social Democrats, the Russian Communists, and so forth. And then of course people like (to some extent) me and a lot of the people I talk politics with.
In Eastern Europe, as I’ve pointed out before, leftism is anticorrelated with cultural liberalism.
My impression of Putin is he’s not a very smart guy. There was a rumor awhile ago that internal KGB fitness reports by his superiors, back in the late Soviet days, considered him kind of a dumb jock and gave him easy posting in East Germany.
And then the KGB was dissolved not much later.
Who were truly the dumb ones?
And their fondness and affinities for Russia and its CIS political union continuing to plummet!
Just how in the world does Karlin still cling so tenaciously to his worn out fantasies of a reconstituted Russian Empire? He can’t defend his ideas logically based on information as presented within these polls, so he ducks his head in the sand and remains silent. Sad. 🙁
No, you can’t have both over the long term. Socially liberal, decadent societies can’t generate enough wealth and have discipline to defend themselves over the long term.
It’s precisely because they’re decadent and still want to maintain the welfare and pensions in the short term that they turn to mass immigration to lower labor costs.
These Russian LARPers are their equivalent of extreme civic nationalists.
The idea of the ‘Russian’ Orthodox empire was invented by their semi-Asian rapist Tsars (Yuri Dolgoruky, Ivan IV).
It has always been an anti-Slav idea, propagated by their foreign elites (converted Tartars, Germans, Jews) against the native population.
C-ville: I think it is pretty undeniable that the whole thing was precipitated by changing demographics, but, as true as that it, it is still somewhat startling to see all the white antifa faces. What the exact properties of this group are I think is by far the most interesting demographic question one could ask.
Years of college education/major/gpa/iq, job/jobless rate, fertility, zip code, political self-label (some who favor teardown call themselves Libertarians). How many own a house? What books do they like? What TV shows? Zuckerberg probably knows all this.
I don’t quite follow? Are you inferring that Karlin is somehow ideological progeny of these ‘LARPers’?
To me, he looks quite literally like a holdover from 19th century black shirts who were both Ukrainophobic and anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) too. He doesn’t seem to offer anything new or interesting to the Ukrainian/Russian historical dynamic.
Chinese joke: hatred often masquerades as satire, and in the West, the Left controls the narrative. Political humor here tends to be pretty poor outside of the occasional comic illustration. Anticommunist jokes are so funny because they are so genuine and anti-establishment, plus only the good ones get repeated.
Female Lord of the Flies: sex-swapping seems so insipid. I always thought a great female against female movie would be based on Suleiman the Magnificent’s harem. One reason is that sewing or cloth-making (which they did) is such a great visual analogy to plotting. Another reason is because it places feminism and Islam at odds and so is an anti-establishment narrative. Not PC at all, especially because a lot of it would be White Slavery. Obviously, for these reasons it is a film they’d never make. And the Turks are too nationalistic and soap opera-loving to tell a good story on their own, imo.
ty
white antifa are mostly anglo or jewish and mostly the children of the public sector upper middle class, particularly education (teachers, college professors etc) who grew up in all-white areas and think they’re Atticus Finch in “To Kill A Mocking Bird.”
of the 13 arrested in Berkeley
– 2 were hispanic
– 2 were Misohink and Pankau (ethnicity?)
– 9 were dougan, moore, phillips, gillespie, moorman, hines, wyrick, dominic and smith
http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/29/berkeley-police-arrest-13-protesters-in-connection-to-antifa-violence/
First off, the group you are referring to were known as the Black Hundreds or the Yellow Shirts, although it was in reality a coalition of dozens of like-minded groups with no central leadership. They were not fascists, they were ultra-Monarchists. They did not hate Ukrainians per say, they hated the idea of Ukrainian separatism, of a Ukrainian state apart from the Russian Empire. In fact, one of the major families behind the movement were the Trishatny clan, which was of Malorussian origin. Purishkevich, another big leader of the movement seemed to be descended from Ukrainian gentry who settled in what is now Moldava. And that is only two examples: Pavel Bulatsel, Vasily Pakhal’chak, Fr. Vasily Podolsky, Ivan Balakleyev, Boris Pelikan, Tit Klimenko, Stanislav Glinka-Yanchevsky, and Yakov Nikityuk were all prominent members of the movement and all were from the Ukraine. There were representatives of many ethnic groups and social strata in their ranks, but they were all believers in an All-Russian nation united under the throne of the Russian Emperor. If it seems trite to us in the 21st century that these men were trying to forge a coherent national identity out of a medieval tradition, have some pity for them. Hindsight is 20/20 and they thought after putting down the revolutionaries in 1905 that they held the initiative. In the end they were simply defending a way of life their families had known for centuries.
The Black Hundreds were indeed extremely anti-Semetic, but since this was almost forty years before the Holocaust it has to be put into perspective. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Russian government has tried to integrate Jews in the way they had other groups before them, a variety of carrots and sticks that had worked very well in handling many other groups across the territory of the Empire. Jews, processing a tribal and religious identity far more cohesive than anything the Tsars had ever encountered*, resorted to increasingly desperate and repressive measures to try keep them under control. Jews were heavily overrepresented in the Revolutionary movement, and many Russians took it as a matter of fact that all Jews inherently hated Russia, Orthodox Chritianity, and wanted to overthrow the government. Russian anti-Semitism was and often remains heavily rooted in a feeling that Jews look down on them and their way of life, the religious component (the belief Jews killed Jesus) having mostly withered away under Communism.
As this relates to Karlin… I do not really understand why you keep trying to link him to the Black Hundreds. Sure, he makes jokes about a restored Russian Empire, but I think his political views are closer to realpolitik then any sort of reflexive love for the old Empire. As in the context of the Ukraine being a strategically and economically important piece of territory in Russia’s natural sphere of influence, so therefore the Russian government must gain control over it to remain viable.
You criticize a lot, but do not seem to provide a lot of possible solutions. Tell me, what would be your long term vision for both the Ukraine and Russia in the next few decades? Do you think the Ukrainian government is any more viable in its current form than what the Russians have under Putin? Do you think it wise that the Ukrainians are often so condescending to Russians despite being so closely linked to them (and outnumbered)? I am interested in your opinion on these problems, since you clearly have a lot of passion about it.
*In the early 18th century, during the Great Northern War, Poland had apparently offered Peter the Great some border territories in order to get him off their backs. Peter refused because the districts had a very high proportion of Jews living there and he wrote that these people could never be compatible with the Russian way of life and would only cause conflict in his domains. Catherine the Great was far more confident during the Partitions of Poland that Jews could be integrated using educational principles popularized during the then-ongoing Enlightenment.
I will leave it to your discretion on which ruler was more far-sighted.
Spotlighting ethnic Ukrainians who took part in the black Hundreds movement elicits absolutely no sympathy within me, nor endears me closer to their boorish acts of vandalism and violence against such benign things as Ukrainian libraries and attempts to censor the works of the celebrated Ukrainian literary genius, Taras Shevchenko. Real Ukrainians did not take a part in these sorts of slovenly acts, that could only result from the erosion of any spiritual values (jannisarian). And it’s false to say that they ‘did not hate Ukrainians’ or imply that they did not disdain the Ukrainian language either:
It’s not I that has linked Karlin as a modern day adept of this outmoded political philopsophy, but Karlin himself:
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/who-are-you-in-1917-russia/?highlight=black+hundreds
As for my own feelings about how the Russian/Ukrainian relationship should evolve, let me state unequivocally that it’s always been my fervent wish that it be something like the one that’s evolved in Scandinavia. A relationship of trust and friendship based on many related factors. But once this nasty business of the Russian war in Ukraine has become institutionalized, I guess I can wait and see. Just take a look at the polling results that Karlin has opened up within this thread to see just how awful things have become.
There is no such thing as a ‘Ukrainian/Russian historical dynamic’. So-called “Ukraine” is a Soviet creation, and like all Soviet creations it is dysfunctional and needs to slowly disappear off the face of the world. There won’t be a “Ukraine” (at least in any form resembling today’s “Ukraine”) in another 25 years. (50 years being roughly what it takes for a shoddy Soviet creation to finally completely disintegrate.)
Putin charm approach to West will continue if he can show rational approach in Syria to avoid war for American troops.
Putin actions to expose hypocrisy of American neo-conservative war people will help Trump.
Russia does not want war.
They seek peace and stable borders.
Ukraine and Crimea need stability from Kagan actors.
Russia needs America peace to balance China threat in Asia.
China will swallow Russian far east economically if Russia is diverted to western wars.
What does it mean, exactly? Sincere question (because I hear it a lot).
It seems to me that you’re saying that China will invest a lot in the Russian far east. Fine. The US direct investment in China amounts to over $100 billion/year for many years. Does it mean the US is about to swallow China?
My own result, probably unsurprisingly, was Black Hundreds.
Based on (a) an online quiz (b) where the BH’s were close to the Kadets.
Yes, as MCJ says, cajoling Russia into helping the US “contain” China – that ship sailed by the early 2000s.
Best bet now would be trying to stymie the drift towards a Russian-Chinese alliance.
Russian Far East is already pretty much economically swallowed by China (as is, say, Australia). Not yet clear how that’s a catastrophic outcome.
Yeah, and hearing words ‘Nimech-china’ or ‘Pol’shcha’ makes them feel warm all over.
I wouldn’t trust the Kiev branch of that ‘consumer research’ company too much…
I agree AI is overhyped.
Developing a working quantum computer is more useful than AI. If there is a working quantum computer, we can use it to decipher the ‘molecular languages’ of the cell…then we can decipher ‘life’ itself.
We are only baby steps trying to understand the human brain/mind and human intelligence(or lack of it) and some scientists want to do AI?
The people in group 4) are sometimes called the “hereditarian left”. There is also overlap with “grey tribe”. For those who are interested in this kind of thing, I recommend http://slatestarcodex.com/.
So? Relevance?…Why do you seem so hesitant to spell out more of your current ideas relating to the imperial designs of a new ‘reconstituted ‘Greater Russia’ vis a vis Ukraine, and your own feelings?
One would have to look into this, but my guess is that Russian machine learning is above average for a country with a medium sized economy. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anything comparable to Yandex in another medium sized economy. They run a night school on “data science” (https://yandexdataschool.ru/about) which seems to be pretty serious. But for sure Russia is not living up to its potential in this direction.
Either your ideas aren’t very well developed here, or there seems to be a contradiction of emotions?……
My guess:
Best bet now… for the US.
Not clear how that’s catastrophic… for Russia.
OT
The Hungarian national basketball team just won a game in a European Championship for the first time in almost five decades. The star of the Hungarian team happens to be a half-African. I guess it’s a coincidence that Sub-Saharans are a majority in the NBA, and when a great talent appears in a country where maybe 99% of the population is European (OK, I awarded Gypsies the title of honorary Europeans), then it will be someone from the tiny 0.01% half-African minority. Another happenstance is that the father left the “family” (the mother who he never married and the son) when he was only 3 years old. It must have nothing to do with typical African male behavior.
Neither do I, as Moscow has never really been able to develop the Far East lands, and shouldn’t be surprised that the Chinese are. I recently finished reading John Stephan’s ‘The Russian Far East: A History’ and can see that things haven’t changed there much, in the way of regional autonomy issues in the last 100 years. Instead of making huge needed investments in developing the country, Russian oligarchs are more interested in salting away funds in offshore accounts for themselves.
Oh, there is still hope left for Eurobasket – just look at Lithuania and Latvia – 100% white and doing pretty well for themselves (including winning over black British players). Congrats to Hungary, winning Yugos is no small feat.
Map of AI companies by country in Europe.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*zPBwqnqr7Wi5LaL4.png
I see now: he said it to children. It’s fine, then. Yutes need motivation.
http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-09-05
USA loses its first proxy war with Russia since Vietnam.
Is there a single person who predicted when it began, that Russia’s Syria intervention would be this successful?
Nope. In this poll the % of Ukrainians with a “cold” attitude towards Russia, has fallen significantly, from a peak of 66% in September 2014, to 51% in June 2017 when the latest survey was taken (while “warm” attitude has risen slightly).
Support for joining the EU over the Eurasian Economic Union remains stable at a little over 2-1 (there is no “CIS political union”), but this is a completely meaningless false choice, since EU membership is not actually an option for Ukraine any time in the foreseeable future.
66% was an outlier. It has been stable in the mid-50s “cold” for a long time before dipping 4% to 51% cold, between April and June 2017. Prior to Crimea/Donbas war it had been 50s “warm”.
Correct about full membership, but increased economic and political integration with the western neighbors (and concomitant isolation from Russia) continues to be on the table and, actually, continues to occur. As links to Russia atrophy, those with the West grow, and the population overwhelmingly supports this process, even as dislike of Russia declines modestly (probably as a result of the war becoming more quiet).
I’m going to have to disagree with you somewhat here.
Trishatny clan had been living in Ukraine for centuries; their origins may have been in Ukraine but even this is not 100% clear.
Purishkevich’s father may have been of Ukrainian descent but his mother was of Russian descent. He was generations removed from Ukraine.
Of the ones from Ukraine – Pelikan was an ethnic Russian from Odessa, no more a Ukrainian than was Trotsky; Bulatzel, from a Russian noble family of Moldovan origin (not Ukrainian); and Stanislav Kazimirovich Glinka-Yanchevsky seems to have been of Polish origin.
That leaves Pakhalchak, Podolsky, Nikityuk and probably Balaklayev as people who could be considered ethnic Ukrainians (though they would call themselves Little Russians). If the sample you provided is representative of Black Hundreds members within Ukraine, this would seem to be a movement that consisted heavily of Russian colonists.
4) people with a fixed left-liberal world view who come to realize that if genetics is true then none of the social problems they want fixed can be fixed without reference to the genetic component of the problem
And here we are.
As relating to the propositon that you’re an adept of the Black Hundred’s movement:
Your citing of the results of this online quiz:
(a) adds credence to the results &
(b) is given even more veracity by your own qualifier ‘unsurprisingly’.
Did I miss something here? 🙂
Oops. It should have said, had been living in Russia for centuries.
Russia is not a ‘medium-sized economy’. Any reliable metric of real-world production (without financial derivatives and stuff like that) places Russia behind USA and China in economy size. (And roughly equal to India.)
E.g., eletricity consumption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption
And before ‘muh GDP’ — GDP is a metric that measures the volume of nominal finances flowing though your economy. It’s an interesting metric, but far removed from reality. (For example, a country without banks will necessarily have a GDP of zero, even though obviously that doesn’t mean they don’t have an economy.)
The US direct investment in China amounts to over $100 billion/year for many years. Does it mean the US is about to swallow China?
China will swallow Russian far east. And you now exactly why this will happen. Just like US swallowed California and later Alaska. Yes, Alaska, perhaps this is the idea Russia should revisit. Sell it while you still can.
Factually false, there are orders of magnitude more Central Asians in the Russian Far East then there are Chinese.
If we’re talking about investors, then Russians invest far more into the Chinese hinterlands than vice-versa. (E.g., Chinese cities like Suifenhe are geared towards Russian money, meanwhile there are no Russian cities with a sizeable Chinese presence.)
True to a point. However electricity consumption is not a good measure either. Unless you believe that in reality Canada has an economy about the same size as that of Germany (the two countries consume about the same amount of electricity) or that of all large countries Canada has the largest economy in the world per capita due to being the largest per capita consumer of electricity.
In terms of total number of motor vehicles (another very imperfect measure) Russia is below Germany but above France, with China, USA and Japan surpassing Germany. Russia is nearly tied with Italy. This measure is probably more realistic than either nominal GDP or electricity consumption (Russia’s nominal GDP places it in 12th place, behind Canada and South Korea).
How?
It’s not a bad measure, but for example the quality of cars is for sure much better in Germany than in Russia.
Correct. Taking this into account, Russia would probably dip below Italy and France. But it’s also an imperfect measure, dependent in part on car production and currency value. If the ruble slips in value, consumption of foreign cars slips accordingly, but this doesn’t mean the real economy has actually collapsed. But overall, number of vehicles may be more realistic than electricity consumption or nominal GDP.
I’m too lazy to look it up, but I got the impression that California (as well as Texas) was pretty much an independent entity with no real government. So, naturally it got swallowed. Alaska was sold, as we all know. Russian far east is part of Russian Federation; to swallow it, China would have to do something about the Russian state: to defeat it in a war, or to offer compensation or something.
The claim was made that “China will swallow Russian far east economically“. I asked to explain what it means, what it would look like, to swallow it economically. As opposed to, for example: ‘Russian far east will attract a whole bunch of Chinese investment, which will allow it to develop and prosper’. Just like China has managed to attract a whole bunch of western investment.
Much of the Far Eastern lands were once a part of Greater China (Primoreye), and were appropriated by the greedy Russian state at a time when China was in a weaker military condition:
The Chinese have long memories and compared to some disputed mountain pass ranges between itself and India (f0r which the Chinese are showing much military posturing), the Primoreye is a rich large area already filled with many Chinese ‘immigrants’ legal and illegal. Since 1991 and the falling apart of the Soviet Union, ethnic Russians and Ukrainains have been steadily leaving these areas for more viable economic ones to the West. I think that China is just biding its time for the moment and is content with just allowing its much larger neighboring population to flood this area.
California and Texas were too far from the central government of Mexico and not heavily populated. And the American settlers started coming in and filling the void and nothing could stop them. It was similar in Alaska. Russia had no means of stopping American settlers and I presume it was recognized in St. Petersburg and that’s why Alaska was sold. It was in time that Russia was still trying to be very cozy with America looking for an ally outside of Europe as it was betrayed by all of them during the Crimean war and was afraid for the safety of its fleet so it sent the fleet to America during the anti-Russian uprising in Poland which happened during American civil war. They remembered when the Baltic fleet was almost destroyed by British during the Crimean War and only a cease fire saved it.
I imagine that there will be Chinese traders and workers coming to Siberia also to take jobs in industrial investments that China will be making there. How Russia will play it if on the one hand it will want the investments but at the same time will have no manpower to man them. When time comes that Chinese population become dominant many things may happen. On the long time scale it just does not look good for Russia.
You seem to be implying that a (hypothetical) large number of ethnic Chinese moving to Siberia would somehow amount to China swallowing Siberia. I just don’t see it. Your hypothetical scenario would require many stages: massive numbers of ethnic Chinese acquiring legal residence in Siberia, becoming Russian citizens while not assimilating, organizing some sort of separatist movement, and eventually seceding and joining China. But each stage can be easily prevented; they may not be granted citizenship, for example by being required to rotate (refused extended residency) after several years. Even if they do become a majority as citizens (they will not be “Chinese population” at that point, but Russian population, albeit with Chinese background), it’s far from certain that a separatist sentiment should arise, let alone prevail. Think of Wallonia or Swiss Romande.
In general (imo), you, like 95% of the people in this collective here, tend to grotesquely exaggerate the significance of ethnic background. True, during troubled times it can be used to agitate and make troubles, but normally a vast majority of people – normal people – won’t give a it a second thought.
…oh, and incidentally (a nitpick): I know a guy from Khabarovsk, and he often emphasizes: I’m from the Far East – not from Siberia. So, apparently these days the Russian Far East is not part of Siberia.
It’s a moot point because large numbers of ethnic Chinese have no desire to live in Siberia or the Far East. If you look at population density maps, they don’t seem to want to live in those areas even on their side of the border. But you are arguing with someone who thinks Putin will be out of power in the next couple of weeks, i.e. not much of an expert on the region.
Does anyone have any thoughts on Putin’s proposal to put UN Peacekeepers in the Donbass? This isn’t getting much coverage anywhere, though it seems, at least to me, to be a pretty monumental departure from the status quo. The German FM even said the plan’s success would allow the EU to gradually remove sanctions.
It is. Indeed, it is also a departure from the status quo in similar circumstances such as Transnistria or Georgia, where peacekeepers have been Russian troops (unless I am mistaken?).
The most likely for Russia wanting the UN to step in suggests that Russia itself no longer has the will to prevent Ukraine from retaking the territories (which would be bad for Ukraine) and does not have confidence that the statelets could hold out on their own against the improved Ukrainian military. UN peacekeepers would prevent a Ukrainian assault. It also means that Russia has no plans for expanding its area of control on Ukrainian territory from Donbas; the New Russia project has gone no further than 1/3 of the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. This could mean actual peace and stability in the region in a way that would be more substantial than than in the other post-Soviet frozen conflicts. It would become like Cyprus rather than Transnistira, Georgia or Nagorno-Karabakh.
Also, like other similar proposals during the past two years, it won’t be accepted by the Ukraine (the armed nationalists won’t let them).
EDIT: Zhuchkovsky on point as usual: “After 3.5 years its well past time to get used to the fact that 90% of all statements on the Donbass, whether from the RF or the LDNR, are meaningless, without any practical consequences.” E.g., recall the retarded Malorossiya idea from a few months ago, forgotten as soon as it was voiced.
Probably 10th or 11th place now. The World Bank’s 2016 GDP estimates (Russia: $1.28 trillion, South Korea: $1.41 trillion, and Canada: $1.53 trillion) are based on a ruble value of 67 to the dollar, and the ruble is currently trading at 57.
I think it’s unlikely Putin would allow Ukraine to retake the territories, although he’s been so weak and inept on Donbas that I wouldn’t completely rule it out.
Assuming Putin realizes that Ukraine would never agree to UN peacekeepers, it could be this was a pre-emptive PR move aimed at the EU, in anticipation that Trump may soon approve the sending of “defensive” weapons to Ukraine, to which he will have to respond in some way (a few days before his peacekeeper proposal, Putin warned against the transfer of such weapons).
It’s a PR thing, on all sides. Also, I suppose he’s giving an excuse to Germany to jump off the US bandwagon, in case Germany is ready to do it and needs an excuse.
Peacekeepers don’t help anything; you may want to watch No Man’s Land (2001).
I wasn’t clear. I doubt Putin would let Ukraine conquer those territories. However, it seems Russia no longer has the will to defend them herself, nor the confidence that the statelets can hold out on their own. Therefore, the call for UN peacekeepers. UN peacekeepers mean the statelets are safe, but also preclude any further expansion by them.
Poroshenko has asked for UN peacekeepers, although he also wants them on the Donbas-Russia line, not just the Donbas-Ukraine line.
On the Donbas-Russia line, they wouldn’t be “peacekeepers,” since there’s no conflict happening there.
Anyway, I’m not sure that what Poroshenko wants is what matters. I don’t think he wanted the Donbas blockade.
Lol why would a Chinese move to hell cold foreign Siberia while he could move to a warm affluent coastal city. This is self evident since the population density for the cities bordering Siberia is almost negligible by Chinese standards.
Also I can see the Russian state already trying to balance out Chinese weight by trying to approach Japan.