I got the opportunity to meet up with commenter AP this week. Had a very pleasant conversation with him, if a pretty short one as was necessitated by his busy schedule.
I had been hoping to do a long post on my travels in Portugal, not nuclear war, this week. Will hopefully get that up in a couple of days.
Featured News
- A new neoreactionary blog. Joshua Delamere: Colonization and its Discontents
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Steve Hsu: Evolution of Venture Capital: SV + Asia dominate (original WSJ article)
Even though I’m aware of these trends, even I’m still surprised about just how total the domination of the US and China is.
Japan is pretty prominent, but another infographic there makes it clear that the Japanese are investing into Chinese, American, and other Asian ventures – not into Japan itself, or Europe.
See also my recently articles on Europe Can’t Into Big Tech and Russia’s Technological Backwardness.
- Mike Johnson: Heuristics For Interpreting The Output Of Formal Panpsychist Theories Of Consciousness
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Emil Kirkegaard: Corvus intelligence
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Aubrey de Grey posts a proof of a mathematical theorem. Impressive. Also evidence that longevity research isn’t pseudoscience.
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Russia
- FT: Russian oil groups brave cold of western sanctions to explore Arctic
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Assad has been added to Myrotvorets (Peacekeeper) website of enemies of the Ukraine. Has the Curse been invoked?
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/985576911035387905
*RT: Russia to suspend nuclear, rocket cooperation with America, ban US tobacco & alcohol – draft law
- Russia has banned Telegram, a sort of hybrid of WhatsApp and Twitter. Officials are going to use Viber instead.
Normal countries either (1) permit a free market in this sphere, or (2) ban foreign companies and promote their own, such as China. Russia bans its own and promotes foreign companies.
https://twitter.com/pachkacigaret/status/984801317456662528
- The world that the Bolsheviks destroyed: In 1900, the Czechs wanted to introduce mandatory teaching of Russian in Czech schools (though this was vetoed by Vienna). [in Russian]
World
- Sinotriumph Chronicles:
- China gaining momentum in quantum-computing arms race
- Blink and you’ll miss it: Chinese Navy, from modernization to expansion
- China is deploying metamaterials and railguns using SR-71 like development speed and flexibility
- Larry Kudlow acknowledges China as First World country.
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The Economist: Decades of optimism about China’s rise have been discarded
This is unironically good for China. When The Economist praises you, it’s time to reach for your pistol.
Foreign businesspeople talked of the “promise fatigue” that has set in as Chinese markets are opened only after they have ceased to matter (the recent decision to allow in American credit cards now mobile payment systems have made them irrelevant is an example).
This is just “kicking away the ladder” that most countries (inc. US) have engaged in.
- Why does China have such a low-key approach to Syria?
https://twitter.com/thespandrell/status/985163541660528640
- Jon Hellevig: An Awara Accounting Study on US Economy 2018: Signs that the US Debt-Fueled Economy Might Actually Collapse
I’m skeptical. Collapse of the US has been predicted in “anti-imperialist” sphere as often as the collapse of Russia (or China) in the handshakeworthy quarters. But we’ll see.
- British free media:
MUST WATCH: Former head of British Armed Forces gets cut off by Sky when he goes off-script on Syria! pic.twitter.com/zy7FRWbWQ5
— EL4C (@EL4JC) April 13, 2018
- Bolton on the Muller probe:
Bolton sees Mueller probe as "a not-to-be-missed opportunity" to confront "Russian subversion" by increasing NATO militarism & an "analogous response" in Middle East. "Unexpected events produce opportunities which must be seized before they disappear," he concludes. pic.twitter.com/SzR9D8w0EM
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 13, 2018
- Percentage of population identifying as LGBTQ:
US: 12.1%
EU: 5.6%Germany: 7.4%
Spain: 6.9%
UK: 6.5%
Netherlands: 6.4%
Austria: 6.2%
France: 5.4%
Poland: 4.9%
Italy: 4.8%
Hungary: 1.5%
America is very gay. A huge survey about 5 years ago put the percentage of homosexuals in the US at around 2.5% of the population, which seems plausible. But I suppose it’s since become much more prestigious and “handshakeworthy.”
Also this pattern of Poland being much gayer than the rest of the V4 continues.
**
Science & Culture
- Real Climate: Stronger evidence for a weaker Atlantic overturning circulation. Gulf Stream is shutting down, as predicted.
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Brandon Adamson: People Who Hate Each Other Against the War
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Based Xi:
https://twitter.com/joannachiu/status/985303474647674881
- whyvert/Economist: The decline of socialist parties in Europe, Hungarian edition
Powerful Takes
- Hats off to Thorfinnsson. I don’t think anybody else has so succinctly defined the iFag.
If Thorfinnsson is right, then Russia can simply enforce the current law against homosex propaganda on publicly displaying MacBooks.
— Lauris Kaplinski (💙,🧡) (@LaurisKaplinski) April 10, 2018
- Benefits of nuclear war?
Thought I just had on nuclear war – most will survive, but big cities will be gone – where cognitive elites cluster.
End result will be nations full of rednecks/vatniks. So much less science, tech, etc., about -5 average IQ, but also much less poz.
Silver lining to everything!— Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes) April 13, 2018
**
Did the 2008-2009 financial crisis and recession severely discredit the Hungarian Social Democrats?
What is the full story in regards to this?
Applies to Telegram too.
Don’t see how the Bolsheviks destroyed anything here, after all Russian did get mandatory in Czechoslovakia from 1948 onwards.
I find those numbers about percentages of homos hard to believe (12% in the US??? Even the 7,4% in Germany seems absurdly high to me). Strange how being a homo has apparently become fashionable.
No, they are not in the least comparable.
Khodorkovsky was a thief and a parasite who fully deserved to be expropriated. Taking Yukos from him was not theft, but restoration. Quite apart from the minor fact of him plotting a pro-American coup.
Telegram was a Russian product that was built from the group up without any assistance from the state. It was probably Russia’s strongest tech brand after Yandex and Kaspersky. Its founder was not an American stooge. But he was out of Russia because he gave some siloviks the fingers.
Well, it became mandatory because Czechoslovakia was in the Eastern Bloc, not because they actually wanted to (as in the early 20th century).
There’s a big difference between the two. For instance, in Russian language teaching collapsing there (and the rest of Eastern Europe) after 1990.
Wasn’t the Soviet Union pretty popular in Czechoslovakia in the immediate post-war era? The communists had very strong electoral results there iirc, and I suppose part of this was a view of Russia being the saviour from German occupation.
Later events (1968) probably had a somewhat negative impact on those perceptions though.
Not a stooge, but…
That is not a trivial matter. That is challenging the state.
http://johnhelmer.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/снимок-1.png
LBGTs are minorities increasingly favored by the Western establishments.
It is not surprising that being one of them became fashionable.
Japan’s venture capital is just Softbank.
I’ve never even heard of Japanese VC outside of Softbank.
Japanese programmers are allegedly twice as productive as American programmers, but the Japanese software industry is crippled by its focus on bespoke solutions.
I don’t know, would you claim that you enjoy being anally penetrated by other men, just because our overlords in the media and politics have declared it to be wonderful?
Feels kind of degrading to me.
Anatoly, regarding the banning of Telegram and other such idiocy, I want to float an idea, feel free to run with it… this is mostly due to what I would call the “worst generation” being in power right now… i.e. the last Soviet/first post-Soviet generation. I’m talking about people around the age of Pyotr Tolstoy here, about 45-55. This isn’t to say that the Soviet generation that preceded them was much better, but it is primarily this last Soviet generation that determines what happens in Russia right now. It’s their mental complexes behind all these unnecessary bans and pseudo-conservative nonsense. They remind me of idiots with hammers looking for nails. Obviously I don’t mean every person in that age group, but a very large part of them.
The younger generation of today in my opinion is clearly better than the last Soviet/first post-Soviet generations. They drink less and have much less cockroaches in the brain. They’re much more adapted to the modern world and not as “traumatized” by the post-Soviet transition. Basically, we will have to wait out this “worst generation” and hope they don’t do too much damage in the meantime.
Was it really mandatory?
I recall asking an East German whether he was required to learn Russian. He said no. English or Russian – you had a choice. I don’t know if he was talking about the ’80s or something, but, then again, postwar East Germany had what? Two leaders? So, I don’t imagine it was different in the ’70s, at least. Czechoslovakia probably was less constrained than East Germany, if anything.
Maybe, there were political considerations – pick English and get fracked over careerwise. Or get greater scrutiny, but it was probably only the politicians who needed to know it.
A lot of it has to be girls picking Bi, which is popular and seen as hot.
if they wanted from him what I think they wanted…
if America has the capacity to do that stuff on its population using its companies’ products (_NSAKEY, anyone), Russia should be able to using hers. (a more governable sheeple is good for defense, too.)
(not trolling)
but the guy chose to larp as a civil rights hero.
I don’t think he has any deep objections of a civic/philosophical kind. It’s just that it sucks doing that for P.
In America otoh, it’s (apparently) possible to cooperate with them without one’s self-conception as a fundamentally good person taking a hit, so strong is the cultural confidence. or maybe class loyalty.
The (admittedly few) East Germans I know did Russian at school. I know one family who left East Germany in the late 1980s before the wall came down, and iirc one of their daughters (who had been good at school in the GDR) had some problems in the West German school system because she’d only learned Russian, not English in the GDR.
Wikipedia claims Russian was mandatory in the East German school system from 1949/50 onwards:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schule_mit_erweitertem_Russischunterricht
= Russian was mandatory as first foreign language from the 5th school year onwards.
Seems like English or French could be chosen as a 2nd foreign language later in one’s school career.
China has a lot of power and influence. They might fairly be called a superpower or at least something close to it. For that reason and for all the cities filled with skyscrapers, the obvious economic growth and activity it may be tempting to overlook the low per capita. Or the limits on internal migration and political freedom.
But can you drink the tap water? No – it is obviously not a first world country. Maybe, it will become one, but it sure as heck isn’t one yet. Not even a simulacrum. It’s not Africa, but at best it’s second world, something like the Eastern Bloc combined with NYC.
That’s curious.
The guy I asked was youngish. He’d probably be about 50, at most now and possibly younger. At the time, I was surprised by his answer. He did know some Russian, so evidently he had at least also taken Russian, but he claimed to have forgotten it. Not sure if that is a cultural thing – almost daily contact with English and not with Russian – or if he had not taken as many years of Russian.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there were at least some changes to that policy in the ’80s. The East Germans were doing a lot of business, basically selling Germans to the West Germany, as I’m sure you know, so I can imagine it being a simple concession to grant. I doubt if it makes much of a difference, but he came from Rostock. Wish I knew someone else to ask.
He did give an answer that I thought was much more interesting to another question. (this was all many years ago) He had a pregnant girlfriend, and another American asked if he was going to marry her. He said no because the state would give her more benefits as a single mother. Honestly, we were all shocked. That was probably one of the earlier times, when I realized Western Europe was pretty messed up, but the same is true of the whole West now.
I’d suppose it’s mostly that. Russian as a mandatory language in the East German school system was an artificial imposition anyway, for most East Germans it probably wasn’t all that useful even back then, but one just had to take it. And after 1990 with the change of the political system it of course lost totally out to English.
Yes, that’s pretty decadent. Just googled it, and as I suspected, illegitimacy rates are way higher in East Germany than in West Germany (2014: 59% compared to 29%). Probably a result of the proletarianization of East German society during the GDR. West Germany is quite decadent in its own way though (suicidal xenophilia).
Most definitely. Among the future Warsaw Pact nations, the Red Army had the best end of WW II receptions in Belgrade, Sofia and Prague.
I was thinking something like that: his answer was probably somewhat more typical of an East German than a West German.
It’s supposedly a lagging effect of Communism that you create a culture where a lot of people, seeing that the system is messed up, think it is okay to cheat the system, so you end up having a big differential in Germany, a country that was reunited, even after Communism was abolished.
But, of course, the same thing must happen outside of Communism. I don’t know if I am just imagining it, but I think a lot more people in America are cheating the system now in various ways. And I don’t just mean immigrants – I mean whites. Unscientifically, it seems like less are paying taxes, more are using illegal alien labor, more retiring on phony disability.
Nikki Haley, the Clemson accounting and fashion merchandising major, is going to announce tougher sanctions against Russia tomorrow. Karlin, you’re a Cal-Berkeley econ major, what effect will this have on Russia? Is Russia being hurt badly with sanctions so far? Will they turn the population against Putin and the Syria mission? What’s the goal of the West? Will it work?
I suspect you’ll find the figures are mostly inflated by women who want to combine fashion with virtue-signalling.
If the media told women that it was the latest fashion to cut their left arms off lots of American women would be rushing off to the doctor to demand immediate amputation.
@German_reader: Agreed that West Germans are more xenophilic than East Germans are. However, it’s interesting that Angela Merkel is from East Germany and yet was the one who opened Germany’s doors to a million Muslims in 2015-2016.
They managed to get the country into a recession by 2007, the year when countries like Slovakia were still growing fast. In 2005 and early 2006 they were spending so much to win the election in spring 2006 that not only did they have to introduce an austerity package just months after the election (reversing some of the measures taken just months earlier…), but despite the austerity package the budget deficit in 2006 for the year as a whole was still near 10%. The austerity measures mostly consisted of tax increases in an already overtaxed economy, so already anemic growth ground to a standstill. The crisis finished us off.
The obviously horrible mismanagement of the economy in itself might not have been enough to totally discredit them, but the then prime minister made a speech laced with profanities at a closed session of the socialists right after the election, a recording of which was leaked to the press. The speech contained the phrase “we screwed it up,” which became a rallying cry. Riots started, Fidesz became the most popular party, Jobbik started to become big, and people were calling for early elections in light of the fact that the socialists misled the country about the depth of the economic problems (caused by their own mismanagement) before the election. (The accepted budget for 2006 planned for a deficit of 6% of GDP, as mentioned they could only keep it under 10% after a severe austerity package. They kept denying the problems until having won the election, they even delayed the publication of a monthly deficit number right before the election night. If you stop to think about it, it’s pretty incredible how it was possible to conceal the size of the deficit for several months into the year in a civilized country.)
While the socialists were running huge deficits, the free media was not alarmist or anything: the then prime minister had just lengthened their licenses, so obviously they saw no reason to be critical. They often criticized the “populism” of Orbán back then, so fortunately for us they didn’t completely refrain from criticizing politicians. There obviously was a free media in Hungary back then, since no international NGO criticized the situation where the two big private channels were broadly leftist and the state TV channels were also supportive of the government. Quite unlike the controlled media in the present, where the government controls the state TV channels (just like back then, very low ratings) and one of the two big private channels is also pro-government. (The other, RTL, is hostile. Interestingly, it has highest ratings. So the biggest TV channel is actually anti-Orbán. Such dictatorship!)
It was mandatory in Hungary until 1989. Deeply unpopular. Totally useless, too, because it was impossible to visit the place. The occupying Soviet soldiers were also strictly separated from the population. Their living conditions were horrible, though the rumors about it were only confirmed after they left the country and people could see their barracks. So they weren’t looked up to, no one wanted to become anything like the Russians. Soviet was uncool.
Same in Hungary. Soviet soldiers were prohibited from talking to civilians, and there was very little contact with the USSR. Though nominally the USSR was our greatest trading partner, it was highly centralized (so few people were needed to actually speak Russian), and contained a lot of bulk products like oil imports. It was even near impossible to visit the USSR as a tourist.
To top it off, it was decidedly uncool and seen as being a horrible place to be.
Q: What is the second prize of the contest “Who Knows More About The Soviet Union?” (It was an actual contest.)
A: Two weeks in the USSR.
Q: And what is the first prize?
A: One week in the USSR.
Yugoslavia was never in the Warsaw Pact.
Not your typical Ossie. Her father voluntarily went there. Most Ossies wanted to leave.
Thanks very much for the mention, Anatoly. Work keeps me busy so I’m shooting for a once-a-week schedule for now. Anyone interested in a non-Academy rendering of colonization’s history and the current state of former colonies might enjoy my blog; this stuff has been covered by others but hopefully not as in depth.
Recently I had a talk with a Black vet who claims that in 1982 he and couple dozens of Army Rangers were dropped into Yugoslavia where they stayed several months training some kind of militia. I am not in position to press him harder on details but the date does not add up with everything I know of what I knew what was going on in early 1980s. Reagan administration came up with the destabilization plan for Warsaw Pact countries in 1982 that in 1984 also included Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia in 1982 was stable and I can’t imagine US Army Rangers being deployed there w/o some approval of Yugo gov. Official Army Rangers records do not mention of such a deployment.
I think unofficially it was assumed that Yugoslavia would either stay friendly neutral or fight on the side of the Warsaw Pact in WW3. But of course such assumptions have proved wrong before. The Yugoslavs clearly never wanted to be occupied by the Soviets.
Telegram is not Russian. (This is, in fact, the reason why it was banned: it’s not a Russian product nor a Russian company, despite what people think.)
False. VK was originally funded by organized crime, and Durov was their frontman stooge. When various actors (both state and big business) forced VK to clean up and divest from their shady connections, Durov had to go.
Which was a huge win for him, because at the time he was embroiled in financial machinations and embezzling of company funds. The other alternative was him sleeping with the fishes, and the ‘siloviks’, whom he allegedly ‘gave the finger’ actually saved him from that fate.
Correct.
Should’ve been stated that the Red Army had the best end of WW II welcome in Belgrade, Sofia and Prague – the capitals of three post-WW II Communist states.
Those numbers are utterly implausible and well out of line with other surveys.
I’m very skeptical of 12.1%, but if that turned out to be accurate, it would have terrifying implications for the various hypotheses about the causes of sexual abnormality. The “gay germ” is highly contagious? There has been some relatively recent environmental contamination, only now reaching high levels of concentration in humans? Our minds really are so feeble that they can be reprogrammed by mass media to induce Darwinian self-destruction?
Well, that is the cynical take, but in reality, Durov gave the FBI the finger too.
Even so, the US has yet to block Telegram.
I’ve heard good things about Telegram’s user interface, but none of the well known encrypted messaging apps are really credible. Even if they claim to be open source, but require you to use their private servers, how would you know that they are actually running code that they claim to be running? You can’t know them from Eve, and the whole damned point of public key cryptography is to make it unnecessary to trust Eve.
If the Russian government is really telling “officials” to use Viber, then they are stupider than I feared. I hope that’s just for the clowns in the Duma, not the important ministries and administrations of the Russian government.
Well the BBC front page story this morning is:
China’s Sina Weibo backtracks from gay content ban after outrage
That would be ok if it reflected a principled commitment to freedom of speech, but obviously that isn’t the case. In reality it’s a depressing reflection of the power of the homosexual behaviour normalisation lobby, even in China.
If the Chinese can’t see the likely end results of making such concessions even with the horrible example of the US sphere prancing in front of them in a rainbow leotard, what hope is there for them?
Surely the whole point is that an awful lot of elite effort has been expended over the past few decades to propagandise people into not feeling that way about the idea (at least) of homosexuality. Largely, in the US sphere media, it’s systematically depicted as a condition (and as hugely fashionable and attractive, involving as it does status raising victimhood nobility) rather than with any focus on the actual behaviour involved.
The hugely increased numbers willing to claim the title of “homosexual” in its various forms reflects the widespread (but not complete) success of that indoctrination, just as the absurd increase in the number of “transgender” types reflects a similar process in that area. The results will be a lot of tragically messed up people a decade or two down the line, it seems to me.
Perhaps Yasha Levine himself is sincere, but the piece to which you link sounds suspiciously hagiographic. I recommend reading the discussions here to get a more levelheaded take on the issues involved:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14534033
Anyway, all of this talk of who funds what is irrelevant. The whole point is that if the code is really open source and you can compile it yourself, then it’s completely unimportant whether you trust Eve.
For us plebs, of course, there is the problem that the hardware might be corrupted. But governments could build their own. And this really shouldn’t be that hard to do for a dedicated encrypter/decrypter.
By the way, it’s not just Durov who sells himself as some kind of crypto-anarchist saint. Lots of people play that shtick, notably Moxy Marlinspike of Signal fame.
I once met a black guy wearing Orthodox Christian prayer knots as a necklace. He told me that they were given to him as a gift when he visited Serbia, where he had a wonderful time and people were incredibly kind and welcoming to him. That was in the 2000s. But an American black dude in Yugoslavia in 1982 might be just a little out of place, don’t you think?
I am glad NZ bucks the trend of high IQ people being concentrated in urban areas. Marlborough is the sticks. There is no town there of any size.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/better-business/89570838/Chart-of-the-day-Which-region-has-the-most-students-leaving-school-with-NCEA-2-or-above
Northland and Gisborne are mainly Maori. Nelson is a town of about 50,000. Otago (population 224,000) is a huge and very rural province with one city of any size, Dunedin (population 120,000).
If the rest of the world decides to destroy itself, hopefully they’ll forget we even exist and New Zealand will emerge as the world’s dominant power.
Which is as it should be.
Right around the time Force 10 from Navarrone came out, that had a black guy parachuting in to Yugoslaviato meet up with partisans.
Nice slap-down for the execrable Macron:
Syria: Trump still favors timely withdrawal despite Macron assurances of longterm engagement
But noticeable that the White House formulation still ensures the wiggle room to allow indefinite US murderous meddling in Syria:
And today debate again about banning all VPN services, although Roskomnadzor says they avoid supporting this proposal for the present moment (it feel like it is a future stage).
The Gulf Stream is not shutting down. All oceans have a gyre caused by the Coriolis effect. The Gulf Stream is part of the gyre of the North Atlantic. Because the Coriolis effect will never cease neither will the gyres.
Climate alarmist reports also tend to exaggerate the influence of the Gulf Stream on european climate which is something still not clearly understood.
I think Russian counter-sanctions should be more targeted. They should selectively hurt people or companies, even countries. That way it might influence behavior, because some people or companies will try to avoid getting on the list. Even if the targeting is initially more or less random, people will believe there was some basis to it, or there might be some basis to it in the future, and will try to reduce their chances of being added to the list. (At least in case there is some real price to be paid.)
Same thing with diplomatic measures. It should probably focus on the UK as the most hostile state. (Other than the US which is too large for Russia and would be difficult to attack.) It could advise all its citizens to leave the UK as their safety cannot be guaranteed. Then they could greatly reduce (perhaps fully break?) diplomatic relations (for example reducing their London staff to 5 or 3 diplomats, not allowing any more British diplomats in Moscow, explaining that they don’t need any direct contact to American satellites and puppet states). They should pursue relentlessly hurting the UK, while being lenient towards other countries, even hostile ones. That way many countries might fear getting “the UK treatment” if they go too far in Russia bashing. Differential treatment might be helpful.
At least that’s Nassim Taleb’s advice (don’t usually waste energy to react to insults or attacks, but occasionally disproportionately overreact and punish relentlessly – that way people won’t want to attack you, because they will fear getting into your crosshairs with the chance of an “irrational” revenge-campaign by you), and I think that would at least have a chance to work.
Besides, with the UK there’s the chance that a lot of Russian money might return from the UK, and possibly a lot of pro-Western London dwellers might get hurt by it.
We’ll swim over from the Himalaya and rape you again।।
At least that’s Nassim Taleb’s advice (don’t usually waste energy to react to insults or attacks, but occasionally disproportionately overreact and punish relentlessly.
Anyone with a bad temper knows this।।
Conclusions:
Assad is there forever and Russia is there forever.
Yes Putin would have been within his rights to shoot down US/Western aircraft attacking Syria, but the Russian forces in theater would have been decisively crushed by the American response. At that point Putin would either have to admit defeat or launch WWIII.
I get that the Unz commetariat would have preferred WWIII but Putin is a President, not a dictator. His clique has no desire to see the destruction of the earth so Putin did the right thing: take the win and play the long game.
The only reason the US launched this completely useless operation is because Trump had that Twitter meltdown. The strikes did nothing because they were designed to do nothing except for allow Trump’s dumb ass to save some face. The next time Assad uses gas, there will be no US response. Trump has learned his lesson.
Turkey supporting the US strikes cannot be seen as anything other than a huge diplomatic failure for Russia and a demonstration of just how fantastical the Saker/Magnier dream of Turkish/Russian alliance is. Erdogan is a delusional neo-Ottoman and he has no interest in being Putin’s junior partner.
2020 is a long time away but Trump is headed towards re-election the same way he was last week. Russophiles live in a dream world where anymore than a handful of Americans care about Syria or Assad. “America First” meant anti immigration, anti trade and anti regime change. It never meant anti air strikes or anti police actions because Americans, even Trump voters, simply do not care about those things and nothing will ever change that. The Spencer, Duke, Ramzpaul and Cernovich types can say that they are taking their ball and going home but they said the exact same thing last year and such types account for maybe 10k total votes nationwide, and I’m being extremely generous with that number.
Let me put it this way: if the US had proportional representation, a pro Syria party would not even get 0.5% of the vote.
Nobody cares about Syria! Own your irrelevance.
The devastating Iranian response should be coming shortly.
A. Israel complains every time any of it’s enemies get any weapons. They went crazy when the US sold Saudi Arabia AWACS in the 80s, much more so then they are upset about the s-300s. They screamed bloody murder about Russia replenishing Assad Sr.’s SA-6’s in the late 70’s before the IAF effortless destroyed all of them in the 82 war. Israeli’s just love to complain. Don’t read too much into it.
B. Russia has a history of jerking it’s clients around when it comes to the s-300. They promise to sell it and then they never do. Doesn’t happen always but it happens frequently and it will probably happen here.
C. The IAF is well equipped to handle the s-300 and s-400. They’ve been drilling extensively against both systems for years. If Syria gets the s-300, and it probably wont’, Israel will destroy it with the loss of few, if any, aircraft.
…
So all in all, things are looking pretty good: Trump cruising to reelection, no escalation between Russia and the US, Syria remains permanently divided and all out war between Israel on one side and Syria/Iran/Hezbollah on the other is closer then ever.
I ask again: what’s not to like?
well maybe it was useless given the circumstances, I think the information technology for the full potentiality was not there yet(cableTV, satellite, internet), but I would argue it was not useless for the Hungarians per se….especially for the Huns. I always thought, that a substantial part of your present plight, relative to V4, is your language. You are surrounded by slavic speakers yet nobody understands you. I would say the penalties are huge…think of just all the money wasted on translators. On the other side, here in Slovakia we profit from it, with our substantial Hun minority, everyone knows at least one person with a…easy to identify accent 🙂 Also, the Czechs and Poles access you through us. But we are a special case, you know…all the Greater Hungary maps in your schools:)
Your comment seems to be in reply to Karlin’s description of a recent meeting with ‘AP’ in Moscow? Your biography within your new blog, https://joshuadelamere.wordpress.com/, seems different than the one I’ve been able to piece together for ‘AP’ at Dr. Motyl’s former blog, this one and Karlin’s former solo blog. Are you indeed ‘AP’ the analytical commenter of Ukrainian descent that I’ve been following and corresponding with for the last several years?…
AK: No, they have nothing in common with each other. And please, no attempts to “guess” the identities of people who want to remain anonymous on my blog. Thanks.
Dude, Russian territory is as close to Syria as Boston is to D.C. (currently living in both I can tell you that they are not that far apart). Some of the precision-guided munitions the Russians launched from Caspian Flotilla into Syria in October 2015 went double that distance. And when you’re talking what they can launch from land, their territory, it will be raining hell upon any NATO military assets.
This, along with the whole “Q” (queer category). This allows attention-seeking girls and mentally ill degenerates the fun and “prestige” of sexual degeneracy and perversion without actually having to, you know, do anything.
This allows people to be:
-Genderqueer
-Pansexual
-Demisexual
-Sapiosexual
-Asexual (loser’s retreat)
and God knows what else.
I am certain that the percentage of lesbians is increasing, but male homosexuals probably not as much. There are however propaganda efforts underway to encourage straight men to try great stuff on account of, uh, it not being gay?
Are Christians “hymenosexual” or “matrimoniosexual”?
Dem lead on the Generic ballot down to 6: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-generic-ballot-polls/
There do not exist instruments which can measure how little the American electorate cares about Syria.
I’m curious why you think that safe tap water availability for residential use is such a marker? My family has history with environmental engineering so I’m slightly more familiar with it, but its a pretty huge investment at this moment for China for something that has fairly minimal benefit. Water pollution, as a whole, is a major issue due to agricultural concerns. But residential use in China is mostly bottled or with home systems like this one for the adequately paranoid.
To actually get safe residential tap water requires pure water at the purification plant, something that China is indeed working and does get a lot of money into it – China is trying to upscale this to football sized field from what I heard. Expected completion around 2020(? – something like that, I need to ask my father). But that’s not enough to get residential tap water – you also need to control for pipes into the residences and that’s probably something that’s far too expensive to accomplish at the moment for not really that much gain.
I hope it’s really just due to indoctrination. Bad as that is, the alternative explanation – a real increase in homos and transgenders due to some environmental poison in plastics or something of the sort – is actually much scarier.
And since we’re talking about homos and trannies:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/16/eurovision-winner-conchita-reveals-hiv-diagnosis?CMP=twt_gu
So at least in this case poz has to be understood quite literally.
While it’s whining about the cruel treatment meted out to it by an ex-boyfriend, it forgets to mention that it’s mostly normal people who pay for its treatment. While its illness is solely due to its own lifestyle choices, i.e. having lots of unprotected sex with multiple partners who in turn had lots of unprotected sex with multiple partners. It’s a recipe for contracting STIs.
Also lots of anal sex with its inherent riskiness.
The unhealthiness of at least a certain kind of homo “lifestyle” and the resultant burden on the health care system is actually one of the best arguments against glamorization of homos imo.
But we’re living in societies where something like this Conchita freak is held up as an admirable role model and you’re not supposed to notice this.
That’s interesting – I had never thought of that before – they never even had good opportunity to practice it. I knew there was a lot of horizontal integration in the economies of the Warsaw Pact, but I imagine not many negotiations.
I believe there was a case in East Germany, where two kids were shot on the Soviet barracks, while trying to get scrap metal. That short of outcome makes mores sense with little interaction.
I’ve always been really curious about the schools in the Eastern Bloc. Which ways they may have differed from the West, and which ways were they the same? Sort of thing. Did they have a pledge of allegiance? A flag or someone’s portrait? What sort of politics infiltrated or were in the textbooks? But a lot of that stuff seems to be too humdrum for an English-speaking audience, and I haven’t really come across any references to it, though I have read a lot of books on Communism.
Part of the entire annoying “Queer” conquest to define every single behavior as a form of sexuality. Pretty much its impossible for them to go through any book, for example Anne of Green Gables, and not find proof that every female close friend is therefore evidence of lesbianism and pretty much any example of Mannerbund can probably turn into gay love after a “queer scholar.”
Its retarded.
That is because they have a more feminine 2D:4D. Better looking women is the upside. Danish women are better looking than Finnish ones; the two extremes of prenatal testosteronisation. Simo Häyhä did more shooting than the entire Danish army
Keep it up Akarlin, imagine you are full-time at it, and allowed dinner every single day.
Khodorkovsky and Nevzlin were just businessmen with the acumen native to their race, except for the fact they had people shot, kidnapped never to be heard of again, and blown up. But there is no proof and why should they do anything so stupid and obvious. Must have been a frame up by America and Britain.
If true, 1) why and 2) wouldn’t we see more autism associated with prenatal tetesterone?
There’s something unusual in Russia where gays are living very happily in current times, but are more modest about their lifestyle compared to in the West.
At the same time, heterosexual celebrities like Nikolay Baskov and Kirkorov (well I guess heterosexuality of latter is more questionable) who are using brazenly their identity and fashion trends.
I remember a story told by the retired chief pilot of Lufthansa Airlines, Dieter Uchtdorf. He was from a family of Sudeten Germans who had to flee Czechoslovakia at the end of WW2 when he was just a toddler. The family settled in East Germany for several years where young Dieter learned Russian in school, and then the family moved to West Germany a few years before the Wall went up. Dieter reported how in their new home in West Germany, he had great trouble trying to learn English in contrast to his previously learning Russian, until he learned that English was required to become a pilot which was his childhood dream. Learning of that requirement apparently provided great motivation for him to learn the new, difficult language.
One of the really funny things in America is how many on the Left blame Reagan for AIDs. It is a really almost a mainstream thing – I actually heard him called “cold-hearted” in a documentary about the ’80s on the History Channel, no contrary opinion allowed.
It’s really just amazing. They are blaming him for not curing a a single-stranded RNA virus. I don’t know if it is a type of projection: they hate Reagan, so they blame AIDs on him, or whether he didn’t emote enough, or set enough money aside, and that was what they really wanted.
But, of course, gays should really blame themselves. It wasn’t moderately different behavior that caused AIDs, but extreme Sodom and Gomorrah stuff. It may sound pretty harsh, but I really think it is a mistake to send those drugs to Africa. AIDs is actually something that could really move gene frequencies in the right direction, or at least change the culture.
heheh, I hear you. In Poland they called Maria Konopnicka lesbian because she, when was older, had close female friend. Another scholar argued the same about some famous Polish former boy scouts, fighting the Germans during the occupation (that they were gay, because they were so closed friends). I think also some retard argued Gandalf (from Lord of the Rings) was gay.
Force 10 from Navarrone was filmed in Yugo and with a noticeable pro-Partizan/anti-Chetnik twist that distorts what actually happened.
I’d rather think it’s the culture. Why the sexual orientation can’t be a result of combination of your preference and environment allowing you to express your preference? E.g. some level of preference may result in a guy being gay when raised in one environment, while being hetero in other. So more gay-friendly environment would result in more gays.
The actor who played him is gay. I think that is what the person you were talking to meant.
The USA has around 2000 troops in all of Syria. The Wagner incident involved only around 500 pro-government fighters, who had no SAMs to defend against close air support, and who seem to have been taken by surprise. The liberation of East Ghouta has freed up about 25,000 Syrian troops, while defeat of the remaining rebels in Idlib and elsewhere will free up tens of thousands more. No amount of airstrikes can stop 25,000-50,000 Syrian troops from overrunning the already outnumbered SDF at the al-Omar oilfields in hours.
Because homosexuality in men is biological (and likely caused by a combination of genetic predisposition and some sort of illness or virus during pregnancy) the number of homosexuals (men attracted to men) would not vary based on society. However, in a homophobic society, many gays would simply marry and have family lives, perhaps seeing other men on the side, or maybe never seeing other men and only fantasizing about them due to lack of access. Or live as confirmed bachelors.
It’s expensive, sure, and, probably, not a priority, or something to rush. It involves a lot of engineering and planning, and China probably has extra hurdles that the US didn’t have. The US had a lot of open land near cities, and wealthy people with large estates near lakes and ponds who made bequests. None of its cities were as populous, at the time and arguably they had nowhere near as many.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying China can’t do it, but rather that you have arrived at first world status when you can drink the tap water and not before. It is probably the best single metric, other than per capita. It’s not just surface-level infrastructure, like roads and electricity, which are, of course, really important and can be complicated. It is essentially a ridiculous luxury for the public – something that even with the awesome engineering in ancient cities like Rome – never existed before the US.
IMO, China will have really only arrived – exceeded the US – when you can go to practically any city and drink the water. Even if the per capita is still lower, it won’t matter – it will be meaningless. I’m not talking about the ability to project power, but lifestyle. That is what First World means to me. The USSR powerful as it was, was, of course, never First World.
I agree: lesbians are increasing.
I think women don’t have the same natural disgust for the same sex as most men do. Women have a greater need for companionship and, if the right man doesn’t come along, I think any with a little mustache will turn. The amount of true lesbians – hate all men, even if Fabio is hitting on them – is probably low. Most hate men because they have been rejected by men.
Seems like ‘based Xi’ backtracked. Not surprising, if you’re aware of the underlying trends in China:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/27/chinas-new-multibillion-dollar-target-market-lgbt-youth/
Social conservatism may be common among Xi’s generation, but not really for those under the age of 40, especially in cities. In this sense, China is not an exception.
As it happens, I personally don’t care about gay marriage as an issue. Nevertheless, blatant falsehoods deserve to be answered.
https://i.imgur.com/MHpZfJh.png
Unless my eyes deceive me, gay marriage support is far greater in Czechia than in Poland.
I’m fairly sure you’re aware of this AK, which makes your comment all the more curious. So why would you spread obvious lies?
By the way, welcome back man 🙂 I was wondering if you had just quit or whatever, but it seems you were just busy. You’re one of my favorite commenters here. BTW, I’m thinking about going to Moscow later this summer. Would you be kind to write some few choice words for those of us who are coming for the first time, what to think about (which isn’t obvious and/or is non-standard advice), what parts to see, where to stay cheaply but still in a decent location etc.
Likewise. I am back in the states, having left Paradise.
Overall impression has been very positive. Moscow continues to improve. Sobyanin has done an excellent job, and no Muscovite I talked to had complaints about him, despite some having been suspicious at first because he was not a native. City is very clean, very safe, full of life. Decorations for Easter were very pretty.
Theater was excellent, as always.
Food was very good, though I tended to eat at home with family and friends.
Nobody I met liked Putin very much other than my 2nd cousin who arrived from Ukraine in the early 90s, works in what I’ll vaguely describe as law enforcement, got into a management position, and now with his meager official government salary owns 2 Moscow flats, a dacha, and a summer home on the Black Sea. A very inspiring rags to riches story of the Putin era. He is a huge fan of VV.
My closest friends voted for Titov. Not because they liked him, but they disliked everyone else more.
I saw very few Caucasians in the city center, and outside the center on the north side. But, many more Central Asians. This is an improvement. No skinheads or expressions of Nazism, also an improvement. My aunt (totally different branch of the family), daughter of a very well-known Soviet actor whom I won’t name, recently took the Metro for the first time in 30 years. She went very early, in order to avoid crowds and noticed that she and her friend were the only Russians on the car – everyone else was a Tadjik. Her comment – “where was I, Paris or something?”
Minor complaint: more Muscovites are casually dressed and informal than they used to be. Many more jeans and sneakers. Previously Moscow had defied this Western trend and its people looked proudly Mad Men well-dressed and formal. They aren’t wearing pajamas in public yet, but it is a decline.
Yes, I suspect that while poz will be impeded in China, it won’t actually be stopped. Nonetheless, so as long as the government system works to essentially exclude gays, it’ll at least be hesitant from a poz-centric agenda.
Gays(and women) remain a potent force for bioleninism in any state, and the better the living standard, the more that they will agitate.
Ah, I see what you mean. Thank you for explaining.
What makes you think that? The first waterworks in Stockholm, built in 1861, provided eminently drinkable tap water, and most of its building materials were sourced from Great Britain.
The black guy (Carl Weathers) was really funny. Of course, he has some racially charged scenes with the non-Communists. Hollywood writers!
This is a common argument, but I’m yet to hear a good explanation of how this explains buggery among sailors and prison inmates. Are they all secretly attracted to their own sex? Or does the lack of women make their libido “think outside the box,” so to speak? My gay friends obviously support the former explanation, but I find it a little facile.
Say what you want about Africans, but they don’t have ridiculous public debates about stuff like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjTG28W4jKw
They know when to call it out (2:30 – LOOOL!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFikhFtMvpc
They definitely don’t want “eatin’ da poo poo” to be normalized:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjnrLt3VuSM
My experience is that true butch lesbians — easily recognized by their lack of sexual dimorphism, think Rachel Maddow — are very obviously uninterested in men. Lipsticks are another matter, of course.
Thank you for the kind words!
Moscow is simply wonderful to walk around in, to appreciate the streetscapes and the beautiful women. Much of the central core has been pedestrianized. I would get off at the Mayakovska metro (most beautiful station in the world, perhaps) and walk down Tverskaya Ave to Red Square, then left on the first street. The area east of Tverskaya avenue and south of the boulevards has a lot of old Moscow streets. Tretyakov Gallery has traditional Russian art and is an absolute must. Moscow’s theater scene is easily on the level of London’s or New York’s so if you speak Russian it is also a must. Seeing the metro stations would be fun. Outside the center, the region around MGU (and the campus itself) are nice. AK can provide many more recommendations.
Perhaps because of sanctions, accommodations have become cheap. I imagine Moscow will not be cheap during the world cup, however. I would recommend staying anywhere within the Brown Line of the metro (which forms a loop around the central core), but not near a railway station. Moscow sprawls and you wouldn’t want to be in a place where you have to spend 40 minutes or more on the subway to get anywhere.
I’m in my 40s so I can’t help you with nightlife tips – my nightlife consists of spending hours talking (political discussions on unz are kind of an attempt to get some of that magic), eating and drinking with old friends in their flats. And going out to a theater No more all-night rave parties as in the early 90s.
Europe and Britain in particular had some really amazing engineering, but I’m talking about something different – the scale and treatment. Chlorine and fluoridation. Sewage treatment. Water traveling a hundred miles in underground pipes by gravity. Something that happens in many locations across massive distances, not just in one or two cities.
Something on the individual level like Boston. The Quabbin Reservoir is like a 100 miles from Boston. That was built starting in the 1930s. Not with channels or streams but underground pipes. The Deer Island treatment plant – treats sewage, then sends it 10 miles out to sea in a pipe under the ocean. of course, that was built much later. There were certainly may earlier systems with long distances like NYC, and I’m sure you could drink the water in Boston and other locations (lead pipes, of course) along time before the Quabbin was built.
I don’t how comparable any of that is – I’d guess you can certainly drink the water in Western Europe, and I’d definitely consider it first world now and decades in the past. In some cases, I think they have superior technology – ozone instead of chlorine. Maybe, the evolution of it was concurrent in some places, but the precedent isn’t really that important to my argument. I’m talking about what makes the first world different, not necessarily the US, though obviously the US is a better comparison point for China because of scale.
Those guys only do this because women are not available and they want a hole. I suspect they think of women while doing it. It’s why gays in traditional societies often get married and have sex with their wives.
I’ve come to the conclusion that leftists in academia are actually overrated as social change agents and that liberal capitalism is a far greater acid on social bonds. China has tried to straddle both those, by on the one hand pragmatically embracing capitalism but at the same time understanding that social liberalism is corrosive.
I was very impressed when I read a survey a few months ago about the greatest public worries, ranked in order for different countries. Most countries had entries that you’d expect: health care, employment, environment etc. China was the single one which had “moral decline” as a top worry among the public. That in of itself makes me hopeful that it will resist the decline that has now completely submerged the West and which looks inevitable in the Eastern part of Europe, as well.
I used to have high hopes about India, too, but feminism seems even more advanced there among the elite echelons than in China from what I gather reading their elite media. If I would hazard a guess, it could probably be a result of the fact that the elite Indian class is far more likely to be either emigrating to the West or has many close relatives. The wealthy class in India is smaller than in China. There’s also a regional aspect to it. The richest Indian states tend to be Southern, where Hindi fluency is either poor or non-existing and where the de facto lingua franca among the business and media elites is English. Language is central to identity and it also smooths the way for Western cultural norms into India the way it doesn’t for a homogeneous country like China where the main language is not Indo-European.
Then there’s the fact that Indian elite industries often tend to be based on servicing English-speaking markets (IT, pharma etc) whereas Chinese industries tend to be hardware/manufacturing based where integration into another economy is much more limited and most contact happens only with the senior management, whereas India often likes to export even grunt labour (H1B being a classic example). All this leads to greater cultural integration of India among its elites. The masses are still oblivious to this in India, but elites lead the way. So far it seems China has much more sensible elites. Let’s hope it stays that way.
That makes two large scale strikes inside Syria after just months ago the Russophiles had promised that Israeli air superiority was no more.
I wish I could bring up those comments. I just can’t quite remember ….
And more and more of the world population is African.
Well, there are some advantages to low living standards(and the mentalities that create them), but on the other hand, low living standards.
Some whitepill news for me. 70% of youth support the right-wing parties, with a greater percentage supporting the more radical ones compared to the general public:
http://www.rp.pl/Polityka/180419488-Sondaz-W-grupie-18-29-lat-Kaczynski-Korwin-i-Kukiz-maja-70-procent-poparcia.html
For anyone wanting to read the story in more detail, Deepl.com has decent translation of Polish to English, I find it better than Google Translate. German engineering is impressive, indeed.
This gels with my general observation that Poles are more left-leaning the higher up you go in the age brackets. The exception would only be those at 65 or older. But certainly the most liberal generation tend to be those in the 40-65 range and those are the people essentially in power. It’s quite telling that Kaczynski is over 65 and most of his deputies are either technocrats who were lured from the liberals (Morawiecki) or people long lost in the political wilderness.
What surprised me was how well Wolność(“freedom”) fared, which is a libertarian party though one with a hard-right leader. Even among the general population, they get 4%(!). This is higher than even a supposedly libertarian society like the US ever managed to do. On feminism he goes much further than PiS ever dares to. On immigration he’s surprisingly non-crap for a libertarian. Wolność is good, because they disproportionate support from educated young men. Better have the smart young men be right-wing libertarians than bugmen. Also easier to convert at a later date.
Korwin, the leader of Wolność, is also the most pro-Russian one, to the point of being accused of being a ‘Russian agent’. This also gels with my observation that pro-Russian sentiments rise substantially among the youth. According to the latest eurobarometer poll, while around 25-27% of Poles had favourable views of Russia, this rises to over 50% for those under 29.
We basically have to hold out for maybe 15 years or so before we can have a real right-wing consolidation in Poland and not the bland nonsense PiS is offering at the moment.
In Poland:
Russian was mandatory starting in fifth grade. If you were a gymnasium
(college prep) graduate, it meant 7 years of Russian. However, at the four-year
gymnasium (where the admission was extremely competitive, based on grades
and entrance exams) you studied a second language, typically German, French,
Latin or later English. Americans are often surprised to learn that English
wasn’t all that popular in Poland (or France or Italy) in the 1950s. English only
became cool with the advent of rock ‘n’ roll in the late ’50s. Elvis (and later the
Beatles) did more for the popularity of English among teenagers than anyone else;
Russian was typically taught poorly by hastily trained teachers. The study focused
on grammar, reading comprehension, vocabulary, etc. Colloquialisms and everyday
expressions were almost completely absent. For example, I never even learned simple
words like ‘privet.’ But then Russian is so easy if you are Polish that after 7 years I
could read Russian texts without much difficulty. Speaking was a different matter.
Most kids resented having to study Russian rather than one of the western languages
(Russia has very little soft power, i.e., power to attract). In my case I didn’t mind it
since I’m multilingual and fascinated by foreign languages. Many people, for
example, don’t know that 500 years ago Polish and Russian were so close they were
mutually comprehensible;
History textbooks were not taken seriously by students. Everyone knew much of
their contents was fake, and to learn what really happened you talked to your
parents. On the other hand, math and science instruction was excellent;
There was no Pledge of Allegiance or anything of that sort. Every Pole is a born rebel
so that wouldn’t be tolerated. We pretended to learn Marxism-Leninism, but in
private we ridiculed Marx, and Lenin, and ‘stupid godless Communism’ (which
was always called ‘socialism’). The Catholic Church was the opposition party,
and because of its strength the private sector was quite strong, and, unlike in
the Soviet Union, the agriculture was left mostly in private hands.
Well, I guess “da poo poo” will be off the menu in an ever-increasing arc. We can’t really help that homosexuals have prioritized the right to “eat da poo poo” rather than procreate – a right that they have right now.
Kind of self-defeating – oh well…
Peace.
According to stereotype, there is a stark clinal change somewhere along the line of the old Orient – I’m talking about the Middle East and possibly Greece. Maybe, it is more early farmer than hunter gather. Not just pederasty but animal abuse.
When the US got involved in Afghanistan in the ’80s, they found that the mules they supplied were being abused at a high rate. A Greek CIA guy (prob the only one at the time) said, being Greek, he understood the culture. As long as you are the doer – it is considered normal, or not very abhorrent. Of course, US allies abused many boys there.
I don’t know whether to trust him as a source, but Lawrence of Arabia wrote a lot about that sort of thing, not just among Arabs but also Turks. Jews are also stereotyped as having a high predilection elsewhere. See Berlin, before the Nazis came to power.
Their sexual morality is pretty rotten though, AIDS is widespread in African countries for a reason after all.
Thanks for those insights!
And some astoundingly bad ideas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_cleansing_myth
Yup – low living standards. I was discussing this with a brother recently. It’s not necessarily that Africans have low living standards (well, they do in our age), rather certain other countries have living standards that are historically unheard of. For instance, an upper-middle class guy like me was put up in a normal hotel room by my company and I could adjust the temperature to within half a degree. When I go to the store to buy orange juice, I have not only multiple choices of brands but also which combo I want; orange with mango, strawberry, banana, etc. included – I just recently tasted some fruit I had never heard of before in my life. I can talk with my Mom right now if I want.
None of the kings of Persia had anything close to this level of opulence. I would say it is unnatural. Part of being a human being are the historic struggles of being a human being. If you remove those, what happens…systemic failure? I don’t know, but I know we are undergoing a massive unprecedented experiment.
Peace.
Yup – simply stopping “da poo poo” is not a catch-all remedy. Gotta get other stuff in control as well. If you don’t stop that, then you will also take yourself out of the gene-pool.
Peace.
I suspect, as someone had already pointed out, that the high percentage
of the LGBTs in the U.S. is mostly due to the women declaring themselves
bisexual. It’s a standard joke, at least in the United States, that every
female college student will experiment with lesbianism at some point.
Many admit to being bi-curious. I have personally known at least 3
students who went through a lesbian phase. It’s a splendid way to
avoid pregnancy while getting your jollies and emotional support as well.
One now lives in a liberal whitopia where you get a lot of brownie points
for declaring solidarity with the LGBTs. I know for a fact she loves to
have sex with men … because she told me so. She is one of those young
women who will bend your ear talking about their orgasms, why they take
so long, why they are sometimes painful, and why women should tell
their boyfriends exactly what they want in bed, and how it’s all political.
can you guys please never cite or talk about that “poo poo” thing again? I had forgotten about it until you brought it back up.
kthnxbye
That is like blaming Putin everything in Russia.
https://twitter.com/sam_siruomu/status/985754839895310337
AK’s puzzlement about items such as Putin just now crushing a Russian-founded IT platform company, Telegram (WhatsApp rival), and instead is sponsoring Israel’s Viber as the official Russia gov choice for ‘safe’ communication –
Is much more easily explained, along with many other AK ‘riddles’, if one considers that Vladimir Putin is playing a role in an NWO New World Order game right alongside of Trump’s neo-cons
Western stooge Yeltsin appointed Putin … It was perhaps Putin’s mission to build Russia up so it could be the ‘enemy’ again
Russia once again the ‘Best Enemy Money Can Buy’ as Antony Sutton showed was true of the old Soviet Union, getting US tech transferred to it thru Israel and other conduits, in the 1950s-60s-70s
This explaining all the pulling of the punches by Putin, all the half-baked smoldering conflicts in so many broken up countries
Moldova – Transnistria
Georgia – Abkhazia – South Ossetia
Armenia – Azerbaijan – Nagorno-Karabakh
Ukraine – Donbass
Not to mention Russia letting the UN destroy Libya, Russia approving ‘Iran sanctions’ over bullshite, no official Russian truthing about 9-11, or fake USA ‘moon landings’ of 50 years ago etc
This also explains why Russian media such as RT are still quite wimpy about things, even despite ‘threats of WW3’ etc and what just happened in Syria
About 20% of those Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinian children and protestors, are essentially Russians, many of them Christian Orthodox with an alleged ‘Jewish ancestor’
Photo of Vladimir Putin and Jordan’s King Abdullah enjoying satanic freemason hand signals
https://www.henrymakow.com/upload_images/abdullah_satan_sign.jpg
It’s not just leftists in academia. It’s also leftists in the bureaucracy, primary schools, NGOs, etc. The left is now the priestly class, having displaced Christianity.
Liberal capitalism can’t be ignored of course in that it is the logic of capitalism to dissolve all social bonds and reduce people solely to their production and consumption. Certainly on a matter like immigration the impact of capitalism is tremendous, but even here it doesn’t specifically explain the import of unemployable rapefugees. Capitalists would instead prefer to import bonded coolies from India (as they did in the 19th century in British colonies).
And then there’s the “liberal” part. E.g. the antebellum South had a free market, capitalist economy. It also had racially based slavery and “guardianship” laws for women.
India is proceeding down a negative path despite the current political success of the Hindu Nationalists.
India is chock full of the sort of subversive Western liberast NGOs which China banned and Russia severely restricted (and now Hungary is as well). It’s quite telling that normal Indians often refer to pozzed progressives as “NGO-types”.
The sexual revolution is still in a fairly embryonic stage in India, but cohabitation is now common enough that everyone is aware of it. Newspapers denounce cohabitation and “inter-community” romances still, but we’ll see how long that last. More advanced is the mobilization of women into education and the workforce. You see very few Indian women in business so far, but half of new medical school graduates are women. Divorce is legal and ticking up, and I’ve even seen women who get married but do not take the name of their husbands.
The real problem is the that the Indian elite is largely fluent in English and comfortable interacting with America and Great Britain. They therefore maintain closer links with the large Indian diaspora abroad than is the case with the Chinese, and this allows the continuous transmission of degenerate Western values into India.
The Hindu Nationalists aren’t addressing the problem. They’re not even willing to repeal discriminatory laws against Hindu schools, let alone expel foreign NGOs.
And if the growing influence of Western progressivism weren’t bad enough, India suffers from an ever-increasing Mohammedan population. Mohammedans were 7% of the population in 1947, but today they are 17%. Indian law also permits polygamy for Mohammedans but not other religions.
That said India is inherently the world’s most reactionary civilization, and while most Brahmins are Congress supporters a fraction of them consider themselves the bearers of Indian culture and thus support Hindutva.
Indian television and cinema mostly promote pride in Indian civilization as well, though there have been some pieces which mock religion. Indians tend to riot whenever this occurs.
Hell no man – open thread…meaning…
You get to talk about who you would or would not bang.
We get to talk about “da poo poo” as needs be.
Mr. Karlin can intervene as he wishes.
Peace.
That said, the Chinese government really dislikes gay content so its not a jump to think that its coming from somewhere high.
http://www.newsweek.com/revealed-worlds-most-unwelcoming-city-gay-people-probably-not-where-you-629597
http://www.ibtimes.com/chinese-media-says-supreme-court-gay-marriage-ruling-hype-will-induce-potential-1988087
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/world/asia/china-same-sex-marriage-ruling.html
Its fairly evident that there’s Party policy that considers the expansion of gays to be social damage, and damage must be mitigated however it is possible, within reason. From a completely practical perspective, they want to increase the population and this is not going to happen with same-sex couples.
It is sad to hear that libertarians are succeeding in Poland in turning brains of young males (girls usually have more common sense) into the scrambled eggs w/o ability to think straight. The “Libertarian Project” was quite successful in America in giving virtually all power to oligarchy making any grass root communitarian movements impossible. Though in the US this operation was much simpler because of the presence of Blacks. Any social program can be compromised and ridiculed as serving lazy Black only. The slavery is the gift that keeps on giving (to the slave owners). I am surprised that in the monoethnic and monocultural society of Poland people can fall for this blatant psyop that is against their own interest. Probably the Polish libertarians (young males who think they will be young and healthy forever and probably rich) are also against retirement pensions and universal medical care. They will get what they wish because that is what TPTB want just with a little help of useful idiots.
This is what Eric Voegelin thought. That liberalism isn’t really something completely alien, but that it is an older heresy within the Christian tradition – a Gnostic heresy:
“Democracy as Gnosticism?
Voegelin saw gnosticism all over the modern age. He even considered liberalism, constitutionalism, and “democratism” to be gnostic ideologies, and some of his students were extremely hard on John Locke, who had a sizeable influence on the American Founding….Voegelin never provided a complete catalogue, but one may say that among the gnostic ideologies with which we are faced every day are: progressivism, positivism, egalitarianism, Freudianism, Marxist and non-Marxist socialism, scientism, that civil libertarianism which follows in the footsteps of John Stuart Mill’s progressivism, that conservatism which seeks to “freeze” history at a particular point in time, feminism, pacifism, and idealism (as opposed to realism) in international politics. Some of these ideologies emphasize movement toward a goal rather than the nature of the goal pursued, progressivism being the best example, but they are still gnostic.
There has, moreover, been a development in the last 25 years about which Voegelin remained silent even though it began already during his lifetime, namely, the emergence of gnosticism on a grand scale in the Christian Churches in the form of liberation theology and much of the peace-and-justice and liturgical-reform movements. ”
https://www.crisismagazine.com/1990/the-new-gnosticism-the-philosopher-eric-voegelin-finds-an-old-christian-heresy-to-be-very-much-alive
Peace.
Nah, dude, NZ’ers will be speaking Mandarin like most of the rest of Asia.
That “Western stooge” single handedly turned Russia from a smoldering wreck into one of the most powerful countries in the world and set the stage for the highest living standards that the Russian people have ever experienced.
Show some respect.
Jewish men are twice as likely to be homosexual.
http://lukeford.net/blog/?p=88701
Just invest in artificial womb.
With enough advanced tech, even gays should be able to have biological children.
Its not even legal in China to have surrogates. Consider the difficulties of this baby:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/world/asia/china-baby-dead-parents.html
It’ll never be an inexpensive proposition, not to mention, it’ll wreck havoc with Confucianism being promoted by the Party atm.
Being ruled by Yeltsin is what I would wish on my enemies.
Another ray of light:
https://twitter.com/BrittonTallar42/status/985886257887809536
It is not fair that only Russia gets to be ruled by him, Israel must also have a chance to share in his greatness.
Greasy: Campaign for Yelsin for next Israeli President now! Sobriety in office is overrated!
Greasy William is basically correct–voters don’t care much about foreign policy until the body bags pile up.
This is a classic special interest problem. The benefits of peace and good relations are diffuse and not obvious, so no one is highly motivated to pursue them. Meanwhile there are several highly motivated special interests who benefit from the war machine.
Not sure at this point in time whether or not I favor a GOP wipeout in the mid-terms. They absolutely deserve it, but it could simply make things worse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-a-reluctant-hawk-has-battled-his-top-aides-on-russia-and-lost/2018/04/15/a91e850a-3f1b-11e8-974f-aacd97698cef_story.html?noredirect=on
This article, if true, is quite damning. It shows that Trump is unable to control the government–thanks of course to his own appalling selection of personnel. This problem could get worse now that the Dweeb State has managed to find war ghouls with personalities amenable to Trump.
Reminds me of this (when the last Russian troops left Germany in 1994):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7BJUsxNtlI
Was really embarrassing since he was so obviously drunk.
Very backward.
If the party does not manage to increase the Chinese birth rate to an acceptable level, they have to become more flexible.
I wish the Jewish people had a leader as great as Yeltsin.
If Yeltsin resurrected and wanted to convert, I would definitely support him being Israel’s PM.
…
If it wasn’t for Yeltsin this blog wouldn’t even exist because Russia would be a backward shithole with a 5k per capita GDP and nobody would care about it.
It’s a joke, calm down.
Also I don’t care overly much about it either. But the big gap between Poland or Hungary is strange, no?
I guess the complete gutting of the word “mother” is a small price to pay for churning out more and more descendants of homosexuals:
“We have enjoined upon man kindness to his parents: In pain did his mother bear him, and in pain did she give him birth…” (46:15)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjrRVDO6MMQ&t=9s
LOL – maybe this new society will call us Muslims even more backwards for still having mothers…
“To say one was a mother – that was a past joke: it was an obscenity” – Brave New World
Peace.
What the hell???!!! You mean these guys are NOT drunk – are you kidding me??!!
Peace.
Agreed with Greasy, nobody wants these mental images, let’s move on.
Let’s first see what they can do with current incentives and social credit, yes?
Will do – it’s your sandbox.
Peace.
Robots Ride to the Rescue Where Workers Can’t Be Found
Fast-growing economies in Eastern Europe have led to severe labor shortages, so companies are calling in the machines.
Interesting overview of broader macro trends. Though the excessive focus on machines, while understandably given the preponderance of manufacturing in CEE, is somewhat misleading in the medium to long run. A great deal of clerical, semi-skilled service jobs will be wiped out through smarter algorithms. When people think automation, they still too often trap themselves in thinking about only physical robots.
P.S. Today ZTE was banned by the USG to dealing with any US company. This means ZTE phones can now no longer use Snapdragon processors, for instance. Huawei has been in the crosshairs for a long time, but are they now too big to ban?
Either way, Trump really has ratcheted up the economic warfare vs China and Russia. The end of the petrodollar can’t come soon enough.
If Americans don’t care about Syria, then it doesn’t make any sense for Americans to risk WW3 (and the demographic swamping of Europe, and the extermination of Middle Eastern Christians, and the revival of Al-Qaeda/ISIS) to ensure Israel’s preferred outcome in Syria.
Difficult to be unstintingly happy about the prospect of a second Trump term now, though.
The disaster of a Democrat President averted, sure, and another brutal slap in the face for at least one of the two groups who most require such treatment (how will they top the present hysterical nonsense?)
On the other hand, the reelection of a warmongering pro-Israeli tool of the second group of people who most need a good slap in the face – the neocon warmongering Israeli firsters.
And of course another confirmation of the disastrous irrelevance of anti-interventionist sentiment in US politics.
There was some small band (not a good one) called Yeltsin’s Liver. There was also a guy close to him for a while. Instead of Yeltsin’s right-hand man, Russians called him Yeltsin’s right-hand glass.
It is really surprising he ever came to power, and easy to believe the argument that he was placed into power.
Just the logical outcome of historical developments.
The government is the mother, the technology is the father.
But by whom? Ideas that he was a CIA agent or something of the sort seem rather bizarre to me.
Certainly an appalling person though.
Missiles fired in Syria!
I would suggest it’s more about the perception of winning than the body bags per se. Admittedly, you tend to get more body bags when you aren’t winning.
And there is clearly some constituency for non-intervention that could have an impact at the margins. Some people who supported Trump first time around likely won’t do so this time. The problem is that they have nowhere else to go, and they might be outnumbered by those coming to support him for other reasons. Mostly, though, Americans are just suckers for jingoist militarist aggression because it fits so well with the exceptionalist, messianic core of American culture. Not sure what my own country’s excuse is, mind you.
how was he appalling?
Russian’s have the highest living standards that they ever have in history thanks to Yeltsin’s reforms, yes or no?
You seem to take it as an important indicator of general poz, though. One of my arguments on homosexuality is that I don’t see much of a correlation between it and attitudes on diversity and immigration. Russia itself is a great example of that. Czech Republic is the polar opposite. By far the most-pro gay country in EE, yet also one of the best on immigration.
The same argument extends to religiosity. One could take the US, which certainly in the 60s and 70s was arguably the most religious Western country, aside from perhaps Italy, by far. Yet all that religion didn’t help them in resisting and/or overturning the 1965 immigration act.
One could look at Turkey vs China for another comparison. Erdogan is pushing Islamism in an already very religious(by Western standards) country but has relatively open borders policies. China is an atheist country*, but its immigration policies make the Japanese look meek. When it comes to religion and homosexuality, both bête noires for many on the dissident right, I find both to have weak to nonexistent predictive value.
*ancestry worship is quite popular in China and certainly constitutes a form of religion, but the question remains exactly how one should draw the threshold of when it becomes an organised religion, if ever.
I’m dubious, we would see a lot more IVF fertilization but its still pretty minimal. Technology’s great but its usually pretty expensive.
Maybe it’ll be an elite thing, at most. And yes, for same sex couples. But you’ll be working with an extremely minimal set of people(same sex people who also want children, who also have the money for this).
The real divide in American politics isn’t between the Republicans on the one hand and the Democrats on the other.
The real divide is between the conservative Republicans (Freedom Caucus and their fellow travelers) on the one hand, and the Democrats and neocons on the other.
It doesn’t matter one way or the other if establishment figures with a “D” next to their name replace establishment figures with an “R” next to their name.
The important thing is to increase the clout of the conservative Republicans, which I define as people who have an “A” rating from immigration restriction group NumbersUSA and who also voted against arming the “moderate rebels” in Syria in 2014 (or would have if they’d been in congress).
In Poland tap water was perfectly drinkable, generally starting in the late
1950s, once the country largely rebuilt itself after the war
Homocides recorded in Russia in 1994:
47,870
Homocides recorded in Russia in 2017:
8,844
I recall how in the 1990s there were newsstories about elderly pensioners in Russia being forced out of their apartments by criminal gangs…or just murdered (can Russian readers confirm such things happened?)…sounded like a nightmare for normal people. And of course living standards declined for millions of Russians during the 1990s, which you know as well when you’re not in trolling mode.
Besides, just think how humiliating something like Yeltsin’s performance in Berlin in 1994 must have been…in the city where the Red Army won its final victory in the greatest war ever, and when Russian troops leave their “leader” is this pathetic drunkard…
So I don’t think you have any reasons for envy, even allowing for Israeli politicians’ predilection for corruption and sex crimes.
I have a growing folder of “powerful takes” from /r/politics. This recent one is one of the more powerful ones.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/985963137781268480
So the chaos that happened in the aftermath of the collapse of the Communist system was Yeltsin’s fault?
What about all the work Yeltsin did to rebuild state institutions? What about his economic reforms?
Basically Yeltsin did all the work and Putin got all the credit.
Anti-missile technology companies now having surging shares.
Just so you know, this is not how most American’s think.
I know you’ve been gone for a while so I’m giving you a reminder. Actually the Russia stuff has really died down here, the media barely talks about it now.
That seems like a highly dubious interpretation to me, given that the privatization process under Yeltsin was a massive looting of state assets by organized criminals.
Maybe AK or some of the Russian commenters can answer in more detail.
Correct. They were called “black realtors.”
Yeltsin was a complete scumbag at a personal level. Boorish, vain, not very bright, and increasingly, an alcoholic.
Very much unlike Gorbachev – very intelligent, conscientious, treated his underlings well (everybody seems to agree on the latter). Tragically naive, though.
PS. Funny video from the 1990s. Chad Chechen Warlord forces the Virgin Yeltsin to give up his seat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX3-vIFw81k
(Putin had him assassinated in 2004).
so you oppose Yeltsin’s economic reforms?
I would be careful with using ‘leftist’ in all those instances since there is now hyperinflation of the term. A lot of ‘leftists’ are really just socially liberal types, even if I agree that genuine leftists are overrepresented in all those places. But in the bureaucracy, in particular, I’d say neoliberals have dominance. But their social values are more or less identical with leftists. This is also why Antifa are protected by the media and the state in a way that right-wing nationalists, especially white nationalists, are not.
Which is why it is a harder foe to fight. Partly because the profit motive is stronger than any ideological conviction. Ideologies change; greed doesn’t. Most people overestimate their own resistance to corruption. A high enough price will buy over the vast majority of people. You see it even on the right. Why do so many not engage in activism? Because they have a lot of material welfare to lose, in other words, it’s a clever way of the system to keep you in check by having you invested in it and to rationalise your passivity by adopting incrementalist positions. In some ways this cowardice is rational. It’s a high-risk with low outcome certainty to be a radical, but in my view, it is also the only way to ensure a change at this point. The system we live in is not negotiating, that should be clear by now. Trump was simply the latest confirmation of that, but this pattern is visible everywhere. FN threw their own founder under the bus, but when Marine wanted to march for Jews, they rejected her. Cucking never helps!
You’re assuming they don’t drink their own poison. What makes you think they unironically don’t believe their own bullshit about Tabula Rasa and the like? Why do you think libertarians in the US have drifted further and further to the left? The latter is a key part of why so many on the Alt-Right are former libertarians.
Even beyond rapefugees, even if not a single one had come to Europe, it would not change my argument one iota, nor the underlying logic of capitalism of hunting for profit at every cost. This is the true dilemma, because it is a far more efficient system than its competitors, it has proved that over and over again.
Yet capitalism without restraints – considerations such as keeping a country homogeneous is one – ensures perpetual tension between a genuinely radical right-wing and the economic system. What passes for ‘right wing’ in the West today is mostly just moderate liberals.
I think I have talked at length before, but…
Many reforms were necessary. Others weren’t – most notably, privatization of the large state-owned corporations, which was driven by political factors and should have waited for the establishment of a functioning legal regime.
It was all handled very, very poorly (even adjusting for the admittedly very tough situation that the reformers found themselves in).
This is not by any means a radical or even unpopular view even amongst Western transitionologists.
Interesting. Under the old terminology that would place Communist Poland in the Second World. Basically, a place with societal order, but not the same standard of living. Perhaps, it is not as good a metric as I supposed.
It is funny how many in the West drink bottled water. IMO, Germany has an especial phobia of tap. Maybe, because of the war.
England I’ve heard has separate taps for hot and cold by law, because hot was considered not potable as rats and things would sometimes fall into the open-top hotwater tanks. I think that reflects back on the formerly lower standard of living Brits had compared to the US.
That’s a curious way to spell organised theft and legalised plunder.
Some people still drink bottled water here because our tap water was not very safe at all times, especially in the post-1990 collapse of any and all standards in the name of privatisation and ‘innovation’. However, there has been significant strides in the last 10 years alone as the state has re-established itself as a serious force and passed a large number of new laws. But perceptions change slow for some. The EU has been beneficial here, it needs to be said. The neoliberal elite in Poland are very submissive towards the EU, so when regulations are passed by the EU, many of the people who own private media and conglomerates are muted at best with their criticism. The EU itself didn’t do much arm-twisting, but it was the imprimatur that helped.
In general, bottled water is a tremendous waste of resources. Some countries, especially the Nordic ones, have such clean tap water that it is even better than most bottled water. I remember reading a story some years ago about Swedish tap water essentially falling into that category. It is also much cheaper to consume per liter.
How is it in the states? Do people have tap water? I saw a clip of Louis Black, the clip itself must be 15 years now, where he was lamenting that he had clean tap water as a kid growing up but this was now apparently impossible. He’s a guy prone to exaggerations, so I’m not sure how much of it was based in fact. Is it?
Internal power-brokers. Bankers and early oligarchs. People who saw him as easy to control and profit from.
He doesn’t seem like a charismatic figure that people just naturally get behind. I mean, he tried to commit suicide, and when he was younger lost a few of his fingers from playing with a grenade. Definitely, not a guy that inspires confidence in his ability to lead.
I’d generally consider the tap water pretty good in the US.
There are caveats, of course. Some old streets may still have lead pipes. Very rarely, there was some sort of outbreak in a particular small city, among the immunocompromised, probably as the result of human error.
Flint, Michigan made it into the news recently, like a year or two ago for lead seepage. I’m pretty sure that was caused by human error. I’m theorizing here, but probably affirmative action people at the treatment plant. The demographics of Flint have certainly changed dramatically.
There was some controversy a few years back under Bush, where he reduced regulations (pretty high standard) in some remote areas with with wells and naturally occurring minerals, but I think that was much ado about nothing.
California recently had a very big drought where its reservoirs were getting very low. It didn’t have any recent build up of water infrastructure, even as its population has increased dramatically. Some see this as a sign that it is slowly turning Third World, as its population now is predominantly non-white. I’m not sure what to think though, as it was probably a rare drought.
Gorbachev has no understanding of economics or how free market economy works.
The Americans have some funny stories about this, from when he first visited America, and was asking the American politicians famously stupid questions about how they could co-ordinate so many different kinds of restaurants in the same country, and things like that.
Relationship to the tap water in the US is different than in Europe. The US has higher standards and expectations. In the US people drink tap water straight while in Europe they boil it first. In the US nobody ever think of boiling it. In the US they get free glass of iced tap water in every restaurant. In Europe you pay for it and usually it is bottled water not tap water because it would have to be boiled first. It used to be mineral water with natural or artificial carbonation. The bottled non carbonated straight water with a guarantee that it is clean (bacteria free) is a more recent development which later also came to the US. Unfortunately this trend of bottled water is pushing out the tradition that you have a right to free glass of iced water. The right to ice water might be explained by the fact that America is much hotter and more humid in summer than Europe. Dehydration and heat stroke are more real here.
Yeltsin had charizma and was a bright personality in the 1980s. In fact he was famous all his earlier life for a strong, rebellious and bipolar personality, which probably was contributor in his early mental illness and early, drunken collapse (he was only 60 years old when first became president, and yet soon started to lose himself).
Certainly I grew up in England drinking tap water routinely and with more or less complete faith in it. I still do.
I think it is still regarded as generally biologically clean, and the increase in people drinking bottled water is to do with concerns (real or hyped) about chlorine, fluoride and the like other contaminants used to clean it. And it’s fashionable.
Ironically, they probably get as bad or worse from the plastics in their water bottles.
I can confirm that this was the case. I grew up in a house with an open overhead tank in the attic for water supplied to a heating cylinder used for washing and heating. They’ve mostly been replaced now by boilers that heat the water as it comes through under mains pressure, so that there’s no concern about possible contamination of a tank, although I think quite a lot of older properties still have the open tank system (my mother, who died last year, lived in one right up to the end).
I suppose that was a reflection of the undoubted difference in living standards from the US, meaning it took longer to replace the old open tanks. Presumably Americans must have used them to pressurise their hot water as well, in the early days.
I forgot to mention public water fountains in the US in schools, hospitals and basically everywhere. In the South separate water fountains for Whites and Colored people still in 1960s In Europe otoh I often saw signs at public faucets like at railway stations that water was Not Potable, i.e., not safe to drink. I have never seen a sign like that in the US.
Sanitations of the cities was pretty horrible in Europe particularly during summers. The custom of summer vacation and spending it in the country to escape the diseases and heat was dictated by the fear of epidemics in the cities. Obviously for those who could afford it. Epidemics of cholera were a pretty common occurrence near Naples still in 1960s. Jews kept practicing it (zumer vakatsye) in the US. That’s how the Borscht Belt in Catskills developed. Still Hassidim and Orthodox Jew practice it. Even in Switzerland where all Orthodox communities move to resorts like Davos or Arosa for a month or two in summer.
In the 1980s (where he was in his 50s), he was still adequate, very direct and popular with audiences, even a stand up comedian and anedotist. Strange how he would become such a vegetable from ten years after this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BydDpUCTelU
More strikes at Syria
There is some serious craziness going on between Israel and Syria right now. Syria is getting blasted but it sounds like there may have been some kind of attack against Israeli positions on the Golan.
Hopefully this leads to a regional war.
Well Americans cannot vote in Israel elections (and only few vote in Russian elections). Which is probably good news for both countries in this case 🙂
Yeltsin was just a vegetable by the end.
Not really possible – the economy mainly grew in a turbo-charged way simply because of the commodity super-cycle – above all around ten times increase in the price of oil from 1998-2007.
There are few scenarios in which the country could not get rich under such circumstances, although to the positive credit of Putin’s first two terms, he has managed government budget with austerity despite this.
Homocides recorded in Russia in 1994: 47,870
Well, that’s one way to deal with the homo problem.
I wouldn’t call China an atheist country. 31% of the population has some kind of religious belief, with 21 million Muslims, 61 million Christians, 245 million Buddhists, and millions of others. Go to any Taoist temple in China and you would see hordes of people burn incense and pray sincerely.
Muslim in Shanghai, China. Took over the streets to pray.
https://youtu.be/JBe7x66WhG8?t=75
In the US people drink tap water straight while in Europe they boil it first.</i
That's odd. I've lived in Switzerland, UK, Ireland, France and Portugal and have yet to meet anyone who boils his water. And you can easily get tap water in restaurants, although in some more refined places this is looked down upon (but not for sanitary reasons).
England I’ve heard has separate taps for hot and cold by law, because hot was considered not potable as rats and things would sometimes fall into the open-top hotwater tanks
That explanation may have been true at one time, but separate taps are still quite common even in public places (e.g., Gatwick Airport).
In the 1990s I worked with UK architects and engineers on various refurbishment projects (in former Soviet Union) and had to continually overrule them when they proposed separate taps, their argument being that mixing taps were unreliable (perhaps UK ones were).
As AK says, I am not the same person…I was just replying to AK kindly linking my blog, that’s all. I’ll probably spill biographical info as I go along, but yes, I remain anonymous because I can’t quit my day job yet.
I imagine a lot of them are non-practising lesbians. In fact the majority of lesbians are probably non-practising lesbians. Lesbians aren’t into sex. They prefer other leisure activities, like emotional game-playing.
Horrible corruption under unpopular dictator Putin + hordes of Central Asians <– that's 2, no, 3 Ukrainian nationalist myths about Russia in one post!
I don't get why Karlin would like this post. But then, I don't get his idea of chatting up with Ukrainian nationalists either.
This must have been common to Soviet leaders, Egor Ligachev asked analogous questions on visiting New York.
Few Russians do. Consider it a part of Russian national character or something.
I’ve been reading Admiral Martyanov’s blog for fun, and it’s hillarious how he thinks that missiles is what really makes a country a superpower. The dude is not stupid, but he has been living in the US for decades, never even bothered to understand how US economy works – the subject doesn’t seem to interest him. He just “knows” it’s going to collapse though – this is so Russian!
Because she’s an ugly old, childless hag who hates German nationalism and probably has some subconscious desire for revenge against Western Germany.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_8kc19DL70
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoliy_Serdyukov
How many Serdyukovs have been imprisoned as occurs to such types in China? I can think of Ulyukaev, who happened to cross Putin. Compare to China:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under_Xi_Jinping
Upon taking office, Xi vowed to crack down on “tigers and flies”, that is, high-level officials and local civil servants alike. Most of the officials investigated were removed from office and faced accusations of bribery and abuse of power, although the range of alleged abuses varied widely. As of 2016, the campaign has ‘netted’ over 120 high-ranking officials, including about a dozen high-ranking military officers, several senior executives of state-owned companies, and five national leaders
You think that Putin’s elite is a lot cleaner than the Chinese one?
:::::::::::::::
That having been said, stuff like police shakedowns of regular people and businesses seems to quite rare.
2 You whine about needing safe spaces rather often.
Yes, because “not a nationalist” is exactly the kind of person to travel all over the city, looking for signs of brown people.
Also, were you just asking random Russians about their opinion on Putin? How else would you know that he is not particularly liked?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/us/politics/trump-rejects-sanctions-russia-syria.amp.html
“Russia did not respond militarily to the Friday strike, but American officials noted a sharp spike in Russian online activity around the time it was launched.
A snapshot on Friday night recorded a 2,000 percent increase in Russian troll activity overall, according to Tyler Q. Houlton, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. One known Russian bot, #SyriaStrikes, had a 4,443 percent increase in activity while another, #Damsucs, saw a 2,800 percent jump, Mr. Houlton said.”
It didn’t occur to them that Russians would be naturally turning to online forums and Twitter etc. right after the news (and the missiles) struck. I mean, that’s what normal humans who are interested in such news stories do.
The tinfoil hat is strong with The New York Times and the American officials.
(The article again shows how it’s very difficult for Trump to even slow down the pace of the anti-Russian policy. I can’t understand how people could be arguing that Trump would be politically able to make a grand bargain with Russia.)
Let’s not forget that this anti-Russian policy is coming from Trump’s own staff. Nobody forced him to bring in Bolton (For the love of God, Bolton?! Why??) as his NSA. Nikki Haley used to be waste management company CFO, before becoming affirmative-action GOP governor. Suddenly, she is in charge of the administration’s Russia policy. Nikki Haley announces her new anti-Russian sanctions, and the president is forced to disavow her.
Trump admin is a remarkable combination of incompetence and outright crazy, but it was Trump himself, who appointed these people. That makes him the dumbest and craziest of them all.
Yes, but those criticizing him for collusion aren’t in his staff. He couldn’t pull it off even if he weren’t himself crazy, and if he didn’t appoint crazies. It matters very little because anyway he’s among the craziest.
Even my opulent American childhood looks poor compared to that of kids these days. Sometimes I waited a month until I got new shoes or a new coat. And I had to wait until Saturday morning to get my fill of cartoons. Now you point and click. Shoes and a coat are delivered in a box the next day, and any cartoon you want starts streaming.
In my family, right now, I see only three checks on ego and appetite: 1) Orthodox Christian periods of fasting (similar to vegan diet, two days most weeks, and between two weeks and a month a few times a year), 2) living together as a family (to me, this is a big check on ego and appetite, since I have to constantly consider what my family needs rather than what I want), and 3) grit (we each have things that we want to accomplish and which require us to abstain from other things). So far, this keeps us from going completely off the rails. But I’m uncertain that it is enough, and I’m concerned about future generations. Already I am a grumpy old man, it seems…
I keep trying to answer the question about Trump and the mechanism explaining how things unfold with him:
The meme among democrats is “comprehensive strategy” which means that Trump should get even tougher on Syria and Russia:
http://www.unz.com/video/ramzpaul_the-comprehensive-strategy-dance/
Lindsay Graham also wants more:
It is bi-partisan. Trump probably does not know what and how everything is happening to him but he is being guided and pushed according to strategy designed still when he was running when some serious people created his profile and identified all leverages that can be used on him. It is possible that it was mostly done in Israel which was behind Trump candidacy. So, they created Trump Operations Manual (TOM) and they use it since with a great help of Democrats and media. It is possible that once they realized that using the Trump Operation Manual would be simple and almost full proof the Deep Sate opted for him and dumped Hillary and helped counting votes in November 2016. The realization that he would win dawned on some about 14-10 days before election. Comey’s reopening of investigation on Hillary was the signal that Trump would win, but Hillary obsessed media did not decipher it.
I’d be interested to hear their reasons for not liking Putin.
Nobody I know actually likes Putin, but the reasons vary from the totally absurd to the completely reasonable.
I don’t know much about Titov, and probably wouldn’t like that type in another country, but I do think that Russia in particular really does need more and better business.
I beg to differ. Trump could simply ignore the Resistance the way Obama ignored opposition to his Iran deal. Of course, he would still need the minimum amount of support from Republicans in Congress to get anything done. But this would require the minimum amount of people skills.
Perhaps. But he’s in a much weaker position than Obama. There was zero chance the First Black President would be impeached for anything. With Trump, it’s an actual possibility.
You’re overthinking it. Israel could not have anticipated that “Build the Wall” will become a rallying cry for racially anxious whites in GOP primaries. And this strategy of stirring white racial anxieties is dangerous for Jews in general – there is a reason why neoconservative (Jewish) elements of the GOP opposed Trump’s candidacy every step of the way.
Trump is only in a weaker position because of his managerial ineptitude. I don’t know if Trump was always like this, or perhaps he is already going senile, but he doesn’t seem to grasp what the job of the president entails.
Okay, Trump needs stronger managerial skills than Obama ever needed, because he’s hated by the elites. I don’t understand how that could be denied.
Anyway, Trump is also personally crazy, so it doesn’t matter much.
Well, I like AP’s post because it offers an honest independent viewpoint on Moscow, which are always interesting.
I also don’t quite see why you think it consists of Ukrainian nationalist myths.
I can’t judge the Caucasian/Central Asian ratio relative to what it was 5 years ago because I wasn’t in Moscow five years ago.
However, his observations are plausible. Staff at airports, etc. are indeed overwhelmingly Central Asian, you’d have to be blind not to notice that. Though people I talk to say there were considerably more of them prior to 2014 than today, and these observations make sense in light of the 2014 devaluation. This is probably the one issue here that I would quibble with AP on.
His aunt’s impressions are tilted by the fact that she went on the Metro very early. Who goes on the Metro very early? 1. People with utilities type jobs; 2. People who have an early flight. So, that’s overwhelmingly (1). What are their demographics? Heavily Gastarbeiter, i.e. Central Asian.
Incidentally, I am always amazed that there are people in Moscow who don’t use the Metro (like AP’s aunt). I don’t know how you’d survive without it unless you’re just permanently hunkered up in your apartment. But I actually know at least two people with similar profiles (i.e. who haven’t used the Metro in years).
As for the person with a managerial position in law enforcement who is living well beyond his apparent means… well, these people are a dime a dozen in Russia. Is this supposed to be incredible, or something? This is typical throughout the ex-USSR (except the Baltics and perhaps now Georgia), including the Ukraine.
the USSR did suffer total ideological subversion of its elites, CIA or not.
I blame cargo cultism.
I have a different take. Fence on Hungary-Serbia border:
http://www.unz.com/article/what-the-alt-right-gets-wrong-about-jews/#comment-2257933
Obama could afford it because it was toward the end of his 2nd term and he was really pissed with the lobby and Netanyahu. And he was surrounded by people who shared his ideas. While Trump is on the level that even he is not sure what are his ideas.
Anyway, good that you brought up the Iran deal because it certainly was major accomplishment by Obama going against the most powerful lobby. No president succeed in doing anything like that since Eisenhower. We know what happens to Kennedy. Carter ended up one term president. And Bush Senior tried but lost his nerve and gave up and ended up being one term president.
Agree.
Besides, the matter of “like” and “dislike” can be noticeably relative. It’s possible to dislike an athlete, actor or whoever, while acknowledging their excellent professional talent. That observation goes for politicians as well.
A good number of folks voted for Trump, not liking his manner, while believing he was worth a shot on account of what the Dems offered. Unfortunately, events now have some in that group of Trump supporters wondering if they made a wise choice?
As for Putin, numerous polls indicate that he’s quite “popular” in Russia, which reasonably means popular in his role as president.
His “aunt” is apparently too poor to hire taxi, but is very familiar with Paris. And she is very race-consious despite her elite background. She uses Metro once and ends up in a car full of DARK PEOPLE.
Come on, AP made this up! Moscow overrun by dark people is a consistent theme of his posts; trying to dampen the enthusiasm for Russia among the readers of unz.com
An intelligent and well-travelled svidomy troll is still svidomy troll, and I’m surprised that you fall for his crap.
his posts; trying to dampen the enthusiasm for Russia among the readers of unz.com
I think you are completely wrong there. I am a total “neutral” and found that his comment significantly enhanced my enthusiasm for revisiting Moscow after a lapse of 20 years. I wouldn’t expect any review of a city to be 100% positive, and his” negative” points (corruption, presence of Asians) have been frequently confirmed by many Russians (on this site and elsewhere). What came through to me from his comment was an overall very positive view of the city.
That is your opinion, but as you say, you were never particularly enamoured with Russia to begin with. For those here, who see Putin’s Russia as a “Great White Hope”, AP‘s comments are intended to leave a shitty taste in their mouths.
I don’t care if AP made you curious about visiting Moscow, I take offence at his description of my country’s capital as being overrun by Tadjiks. That’s a load of crap.
You love to bash Magnier, but what is Trump who already wants US troops out going to do when IEDs start going off on roads near US FOBs?
Individuals such as yourself or to take a more extreme example, Michael Daeshbag Weiss, who imagine the US can stay forever behave as if the Euphrates River is some kind of magical force field against any Iraq insurgent style attack, or all the Arab tribes in the SDF with the Kurds will stay bought.
Magnier never wrote that Damascus and Hezbollah would get the Americans much less the more casualty tolerant Turks out via conventional warfare. He has implied Hezbollah in S Lebanon vs Israelis and Iraq insurgency as the model.
are foolish and probably irrelevant to actual Russia which is a nice place.
Overrun? He said Tajiks in Moscow are like Mexicans in NYC (I think). Nobody but a Bircher would consider that “overrun”. Also that they are preferable to Caucasians, which you don’t mention. If you want to portray Moscow as some sort of reinrassig white utopia that is at least equally mistaken.
Bro, I have got the same concerns as you. I had a very similar upbringing as well. Since we were immigrants to the US, we did without a lot; just one present at birthdays, buying a bike on layaway, etc.
I am looking forward to Ramadan this year probably more than any other. I cannot help but feel that this is not going to end well. I want to watch this documentary by Werner Herzog – I got to see the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc1tZ8JsZvg
When I saw the last scene with the monks, I started crying – literally bawling, I couldn’t hold it back – a massive wave of horror and regret hit me all at once for what humanity has to lose as we cross the threshold…if we haven’t already.
Peace.
And this strategy of stirring white racial anxieties is dangerous for Jews in general – there is a reason why neoconservative (Jewish) elements of the GOP opposed Trump’s candidacy every step of the way.
SJWs, Dems (but I repeat myself) and the MSM (again) are the ones stirring the racial stew, not Trump.
Oh, and BTW, Trump is an archetype “great” nationalist leader. He demands total loyalty to himself while at the same time has no qualms about throwing absolutely anyone (loyal or not) overboard whom he considers a danger to his objectives. The only fly in the ointment is that sometimes what is best for the “leader” diverges from what is best for the nation.
That is your opinion, but as you say, you were never particularly enamoured with Russia
Please do not misquote me. I never said that I didn’t like Russia, on the contrary, and I know far more about it than most Westerners, indeed I think I probably hold the record for Westerners flying on Soviet aircraft (more than 300,000 km when I stopped counting).
I am simply “neutral” in that I seek to keep on good terms with both Russians and Ukrainians.
I notice what I see. What does this have to do with nationalism? Is everyone who notices a number of Arabs in Paris some sort of nationalist?
You are projecting, Nationalist.
Do you think my observations are mistaken, or even dishonest? If you are in Moscow, see who drives the Taxis. Who cleans the hotel rooms, works at construction sites, serves fast food. Doing the sorts of things Mexicans do. My estimate of 10% of the city being Central Asian is probably pretty close to the actual number. Portland OR is about 10% Mexican, so Moscow is about as Mexican as is Portland. It’s no LA. This is btw, much preferable to the situation in any western European big city.
I simply relayed what my family and friends thought of the man. Obviously this is not representative of the country as a whole. As my Titov-voting friend observed – the less one knows about what’s happening in the country, the more one likes Putin. With the exception of those who milk the country within the Putinist system, and are accordingly and understandably loyal to it and to the man who keeps it going..
My circles are not representative of the country. All Moscow-based, mostly graduates of MGU or MGMO, all kids of Soviet-era elite with the exception of my cousin. Not involved in government but close enough to those who are to have a good clue. My friends who voted for Titov said something like, “if Putin shot or even at least arrested a lot of people at the top like they do in China I would have voted for him.” None of them like Sobchak either. Or Zhrinovsky, or the Communists. They really like Navalny’s exposes but dismiss him as someone who either lives off Western grants or who is a CIA asset, would never vote for him. All like getting Crimea back, none give a damn about Donbas.
Who said she was too poor to hire a taxi? Actually she mostly gets around by taxi (though her flat is on Tverskaya boulevard, not far from my brother-inlaw’s place). She was one person who had some complaints about Sobyanin. As a resident of the city center, she has a pass enabling her to park anywhere. But Sobyanin has pedestrianized much of the center and there are very few parking places. So she ends up taking a taxi everywhere despite owning a nice car.
LOL. You think Russian elites are like American ones when it comes to this?
It’s not hard to notice what is going on in Paris and to make a funny joke when found in similar (though not common) situation in Moscow. Someone I know went to Paris once and never again because of what they saw.
I’ve commented that Russia as a whole is more Muslim than any European country but I’ve stated that Moscow is about 80% Slavic, so hardly overrun. I might increase the Slavic estimate a little after this visit.
My comments are intended to provide a reality-check for wishful thinkers who live in a fantasy world. The reality is that the least Muslim, most European places in the world are Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, and the Czech Republic (Hungary and Slovakia have a lot of gypsies).
You have a habit of misquoting people. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is because you have gotten emotional, due to your nationalism. I stated that my aunt once got on the metro early in the morning and found herself on a train full of Tadjiks. I did not say Moscow was overrun by them. I estimated that about 10% of the city was Central Asians. This does not qualify as “overrun.”
I would also say that the Central Asians are mostly hardworking people who stay out of the way. One won’t walk among them on the streets very much. In my week there I ran into one aggressive panhandling Central Asian, outside the metro station near the Andrei Rublev museum/monastery (a weird place for him to be), but overall they cause no trouble and Moscow is much more stress-free than any Western city I can think of.
I know similar people complaining about similar measures in Budapest, but to be honest, I can hardly sympathize with them. Downtowns are much nicer pedestrianized.
Oh, I agree. But I am a tourist without a car, not a long-time resident used to a certain way of moving around and having it taken away. For me, it’s a big improvement. The Arbat used to stand out as a pedestrian street with nice architecture and shops (there were snips elsewhere, such as Kamergskiy Pereulok), now much of the center is like that.
In Hungary and, to my knowledge, most (all?) of Western and Central Europe people drink tap water regularly. I personally drink tap water all the time, and drank it as a child already, in Hungary and in any first world country. I think in Romania you can run into problems. I wouldn’t expect any problems in Slovakia (in fact, I did drink tap water in that country), Czechia, Poland, or similar countries.
Though it’s sometimes difficult for older people who have spent much of their lives there, the solution would be to sell the apartment (whose value probably appreciated considerably after pedestrianization), and move out somewhere. But yeah, people usually take their own situation as more important.
It must be noted that a nice downtown increases life quality to all inhabitants of the city (not just tourists – and tourists bring money, so additional improvements), so the equation for the city as a whole is definitely positive in such cases.
I wasn’t trying to undress your true identity, anymore than I was AP’s. I use a moniker myself and respect the privacy of all who choose to write under such an arrangement. What Karlin doesn’t understand, is that I’ve been communicating with AP for several years, at this blog and at others, where AP has used different monikers. AP is one of the better commentators at this blog, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising that he’d possibly want to start his own blog. There were several ‘false flags’ that he possibly could be you (I explain this in comment #53). After I found your blog, however, although impressed with what you have to say, your writing style is different than AP’s, thus my confusion.
Anyway, I’m glad that I found your blog and indeed will read it with interest (I have an undergraduate degree in European history). I hope that you write something about Ukraine’s role as a colony (or something very similar to one) within the Russian empire and the Soviet Union, a place for which I hold a special interest!
Replace “elite” with “dissident academic” and you have my friends.
Despite the popular approval it would generate, I’m not sure the time is yet ripe for a large number of arrests. Unlike in China, the center is weak. It will be interested to see what happens in the next few years.
Maybe you ought to do what Greg Cochran did and tell them to read up on WW2:
westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/educating-ginny/
Hispanics are on the verge of overtaking whites as a share of NYC population. To suggest that there is any similarity between NYC and Moscow is to deliberately misrepresent the situation. This is what AP does: he is misrepresenting Moscow.
I’m getting retorts from people, who haven’t been to the city recently, and therefore have no idea what they are talking about. Trust me when I say that AP is full of shit.
Because he likes to make up news. If Magnier didn’t exist we would have to invent him. He is a caricature of a Russophile psuedo journalist. He writes fan fiction disguised as reporting and has thousands of people who continue to take his writings as accurate no matter how many times he is proven wrong (which lately has been about 2 times a week).
Tell him to apologize for everything he has ever written and then to kill himself and I promise I will stop attacking him in Unz comment threads.
Until then: learn to live with it.
It’s not gonna happen. Kurdistan isn’t 00’s Iraq. Any attempt by Hezbollah to make mischief in US controlled regions will earn a heavy price.
Some US servicemen may get killed in the coming years. It’s tragic but they will be richly rewarded in the World to Come for their holy work of killing Iranians and Syrians and, even more importantly, trolling Russophiles. Trump will be pissed but no matter how much he blusters the US Deep State will not allow him to leave. As for the US public, they don’t give a shit. If the fatalities are in the hundreds they might but that isn’t going to happen.
Hey, now you’re starting to get it!
That’s exactly how it’s going to play out. Now in 20 years when the US is gone, your faggot Assad can have the Kurdish regions back, assuming us Jews haven’t killed him and his family by then (probably not a safe assumption). But until then, Syrian Kurdistan is property of Uncle Sam. And thus it shall remain.
He hasn’t “implied” it, he’s explicitly stated it about 5 times a week for the past 6 months. He does this either to gin up his donations from his delusional fans for his next book about how gay he is (or whatever it’s about) or because he is trying to convince himself or some combination of both. But let’s address this particular delusion:
The Iraq comparison is more wrong than delusional, although it is still the latter. But that’s Russophiles for you. The US troops are only 2000 and they are not responsible for security, that having been contracted out entirely to the Kurds and SDF. Their presence is overwhelmingly supported by the people where they (the US troops) are based. Basically it’s the exact opposite of 00’s Iraq.
…
But since we’re on the subject, let’s look at Magnier’s recent track record:
He said that it was Israel that de escalated after the jet shoot down which was an amazingly brazen lie, even for him. So according to him, after Israel lost the jet they started promising murderous retaliation and then launched 2 of their heaviest strikes ever on Syria at which point they just chickened out and called Putin. If they wanted to de-escalte, why the Hell were they saying they wanted war? Why the fuck did they immediately launch their largest attacks ever on Syria? How is that de-escalating?
What really happened: Israel was at the beginning stages of an operation to eliminate the entirety of Syria’s air defenses at with point Putin called Israel, not the reverse, and ordered Israel to stand down. This was reported in all world media, including Russian. And yet Magnier sticks to his story even though it makes no fucking sense.
He said that nuclear war between Russia and the US was a virtual certainty and that Russia would launch WWIII in response to ANY US attack on Syria. There was no wiggle room about coordination with Russia or avoiding Russian bases. He said flat out: WWIII if the US attacks Syria. When Russia stood down, which he previously had promised that Russia would not do, he said that it was actually a victory for Russia (it technically was, but not by the ridiculous standards he himself had set before the strikes).
Last night was yet another new low for him: He said that the Israeli attack last night was a sign of how scared Israel was and that every single Israeli missile had been intercepted.
What really happened: Syrian air defense is so terrified of Israel that they got spooked by G-d knows what and launched a massive SAM barrage against… nothing. There was no Israeli attack. Somebody is scared alright, but it isn’t Israel. Some serious projection by Magnier here.
I do have to give the Syrian’s some credit, however: by their own account they managed to successfully intercept 9 out of 0 missiles: a success rate of infinity. Way to go Syria! And thank you Elijah for your great reporting of this triumph.
This fiasco demonstrates better the anything else how much credibility Syria and Magnier have when it comes to accurately reporting their military accomplishments.
…
Magnier’s gayness triggers me but that’s my problem, not yours. If my tone is harsh, it’s nothing personal. You seem like an okay guy and I’m not looking for a war of words.
That said: enjoy the remaining time you have left with your Syrians.
I follow Magnier on Twitter. He is just like Debka-file, except he is pro-Hezbollah. They both make up news. Apparently, this is standard practice in the Middle East. Nothing to get worked up about.
Everyone makes up news – Arabs just really, really stink at it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrXhxmQJSS0
Peace.
Quite extraordinary interview with Lavrov on BBC yesrday (“Hard Talk), here is the transcript:
http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/3172318
and an excerpt:
Debka is Mossad funded psyops (and yet they still charge their gullible customers; stereotypes don’t come from nowhere). They don’t actually believe their own bullshit. Magnier is the real deal.
for Felix and all the Russians here:
Can you explain something to me?
When I started posting on Unz, I was very anti Russia. This was due to a mixture of how much I couldn’t stand The Saker*, how annoying Russophiles are, having spent years listening to Russian Jews go on endlessly about how awesome Russia is, the fact that I just had more energy back then and most of all, my assumption that Russians were all die hard Palestinian lovers.
And it makes sense that I would have thought that because RT and Sputnik are Der Sturmer level, and media is usually a pretty good reflection of public opinion in a country.
And yet when I look at public opinion polls, Russia is actually less anti Israel than most western European countries. Something doesn’t add up. If Russians don’t care about Israel, then why are RT and Sputnik so obsessed with it?
*That was then. Since then I have learned to really appreciate him. He’s a homosexual but even though I’m not big into the gay rights movement I’m not gonna hate the gay just because of something that he can’t control.
lol, do you really believe that? Is it true for US media?
I don’t read Russia today, but aren’t they pretty much stuck in Soviet perceptions and modes of propaganda (e.g. pro-BLM because they think the “But you’re lynching negroes!” line works to discredit the US)? So “antiimperialism” regarding the Palestine issue must come naturally to them. I don’t think that says anything about its genuine popularity in Russia.
The US media doesn’t really talk about Israel. This level of disinterest is a pretty accurate representation of the American public.
In 2014, it was common to hear people complain not about the Israelis or Palestinians during the Gaza war, but rather to complain about the media for continuing to cover it when they wanted to hear about the Kardashians or whatever.
I did an informal survey of people these last few days about the Syria strikes and most people I asked hadn’t even heard about them. The media here was basically like, “Yeah there are US strikes on Syria that could potentially lead to a clash with the world’s largest nuclear power but anyway, back to Mueller”.
As for BLM, this is one of those things where polls and reality just don’t sync up. According to polls, 55% of American whites, not all Americans – just whites, support BLM. But any American, of any color, will tell you that that is bullshit.
…
The most angry I have ever seen Americans get at the media was during the coverage of “Deflategate”, which you probably didn’t hear about in Europe. I won’t bother explaining it because it is so boring but absolutely nobody in the US cared about it and the media just would. not. stop. covering it.
I’m not the type to complain about the media but even I was furious.
He was talking about Mexicans, not Hispanics. Again, you lie about what others say.
2010 census indicated 460,000 Mexicans in New York City, about 5.75% of the city’s population. I’d guess Central Asians are about 10% of Moscow’s population.
AK lives there. He mostly confirms what I observed.
Do you live in Moscow? When were you there last?
Your posts indicate who is full of what.
My guess: Staffed by leftist journalists.
Re:BZ
Statement of Spiez laboratory
More:
http://tass.com/world/1000017
I think you are an antisemite pretending to be a supporter of Israeli.
You are trying to make Israel look bad by doing a really bad job defending the Israeli point of view.
You just wasted twenty-seven seconds of my life by mentioning this, since I was compelled to look it up.
To the others: don’t look it up, it really is uninteresting.
No – he’s just a really honest Jewish guy. I, for one, appreciate it.
Peace.
But you don’t tell us who you would bang.
The US-controlled regions include a lot more than Kurdistan. Everything from Raqqa on south is majority-Arab. The only thing that really matters in eastern Syria is the oilfields, in particular the al-Omar oilfield, and those are all south of Raqqa.
Once the SAA finishes mopping up the rebels in the west, and starts deploying tens of thousands of troops across the Euphrates from al-Omar, the USA will have three choices.
1) Massively increase its troop strength in Syria, because airstrikes aren’t going to stop 40,000 troops from overrunning 2000. This will be unpopular with the US public and will increase the number of targets for Hezbollah guerilla attacks.
2) Face the constant prospect of being attacked and defeated in battle by Arabs.
3) Go home (or at least, retreat north to Kurdistan).
It only took 25 casualties to drive the USA from Somalia.
The “modern” view of the journalist class in the UK (and I think the US sphere generally) is that you must take sides, based upon supposedly objective morality. The old view that one should at least strive for the unachievable ideal of objectivity is seen as old fashioned and ethically compromising. In fact the opposite is the case, as you can see with this interview by Stephen Sackur, who is unable to let Lavrov present a case without making his own conviction as to the rightness of the British government story shine through.
Sackur is experienced and intelligent (I do not know his personal biases, so I will not speculate), but he is basically corrupted as far as any possibility of reasonably objective journalism is concerned by his belief in the US sphere’s propaganda and his adherence to the “modern” journalistic creed of taking the morally superior side. That much shines through in this interview.
It comes across as rudeness, but it’s more profound than that, really.
I am not writing clearly apparently. There is a difference between Americans and Europeans in attitudes to tap water. It is historical. It is not about quality of water now which is good pretty much everywhere in Europe. In Europe it was drilled into people’s heads to boil the water before drinking. People were boiling it anyway to make tea, coffee and whatnot. The point was that drinking straight from tap was not OK. The institution of water fountains did not exist.
Yes, it is definitely a cultural issue in Germany.
Trust me when I say that AP is full of shit
Again, as a “neutral” observer I must say that AP provides a whole lot more attractive impression of “Russia” than you do. Fortunately I know lots of Russians, so I realize that you’re not really representative.
To the others: don’t look it up, it really is uninteresting.
On the contrary, apart from its inherent interest “Deflategate” has important ramifications far beyond the world of (American) professional football:
I did drink tap water in Germany, but maybe only because I’m Hungarian.
In Hungary I know that most people do drink tap water. But you offer guests bottled water lest they think you are cheap. With close friends it’s unnecessary, and in any event people will very often tell you that tap water is at least as good and will choose it. (In Hungary tests found some of the bottled waters to be worse, containing less minerals etc. than tap water.)
I thought that was the norm for most people in Western Europe, though maybe I’m wrong.
Gross. Do you use a filter at least?
More 4-D chess (originally from the Wall Street Journal):
My cat drinks from the toilet, I have tried multiple times to get him to desist. He refuses to listen.
He is a Siberian…frickin’ Russians…
Peace.
Gross. Do you use a filter at least?
Greasy, I trust you never have ice in your drinks at American restaurants:
I would imagine, if the pipes aren’t contaminated and the water supply is generally monitored, it is a good thing to drink the water from your locality. It just seems intuitive since our ancestors did that for centuries and the local minerals are what the body expects. No?
Peace.
My cat drinks from the toilet,
That’s okay, see previous post, it’s more hygienic than a Coke at McDonald’s with ice.
Yikes!
Peace.
As you know already, RT is for international audiences, so tries to appeal to international tastes of audiences which is interested in Israel-Palestinian conflict (just look at this website).
It’s like a parallel of Radio «Svoboda» (which is part of US foreign policy) has different interests to the American media.
–
–
As for the Israel-Palestinian conflict in general. It’s a very complicated topic, which – if you don’t live in Israel – I can’t see how anyone has patience to study it.
In Russia, local media view changed on the issue over the last 15-20 years, going from very anti-Israel official position, to a more neutral position – as reflecting government positions.
If you remember in 2014, was the last time there was a war between Israel and Gaza.
You can see the television in 2014, tries to include both points of view. n 2014, the Israeli point of view was often included more than the Arab view. (This was partly a function of where reporters were based though).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RRfBF92DHI
I’m probably naive, but maybe that wouldn’t even be a bad idea, at least it would reduce the risk of some great power confrontation due to Americans being killed.
At least the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs would then be directly responsible for the consequences of their pro-jihadi policy, and have, one hopes, to suffer for it.
Cats always prefer to drink dirty water.
Attitudes about drinking tap water keep changing. In the US it begins to go in the opposite direction and becoming more European. Thera are many factors. Bottle water became a “lifestyle defining product.”
We don’t trust drinking fountains anymore, and that’s bad for our health
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-dont-trust-drinking-fountains-anymore-and-thats-bad-for-our-health/2015/07/02/24eca9bc-15f0-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b05486310421
Fountains were once a revered feature of urban life, a celebration of the tremendous technological and political capital it takes to provide clean drinking water to a community. Today, they’re in crisis. Though no one tracks the number of public fountains nationally, researchers say they’re fading from America’s parks, schools and stadiums. “Water fountains have been disappearing from public spaces throughout the country over the last few decades,” lamented Nancy Stoner, an administrator in the Environmental Protection Agency’s water office. Water scholar Peter Gleick writes that they’ve become “an anachronism, or even a liability.” Jim Salzman, author of “Drinking Water: A History,” says they’re “going the way of pay phones.”
What’s changed in the past two decades is our attitude toward public space, government and water itself. “Most people over the age of 40 have really positive stories of drinking fountains as kids,” says Scott Francisco, who helped organize the Union Square event with Pilot Projects, an urban design company. The sense today, though, is that “they’re dangerous, they’re not maintained and they’re dirty.”
The modern era’s first free public water fountain was unveiled in London in 1859. Thousands gathered to watch officials turn on the tap. At its peak, about 7,000 people used the fountain each day. At that time, the rich were buying water brought in from the country. The poor were drinking water bottled from the sewage-infested Thames. Water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid were rampant.
I would comment further, but Mr. Karlin has already asked to knock off da you-know-whats-it talk…which is a shame because it’s a great setup going to waste…
Peace.
Thanks, I refused ice today. You may have saved my life.
Re: incentives and social credit
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-social-credit-laboratory/
If not enough Chinese won’t want (more) children, they won’t have (more) them.
The drought is not over in Southern California. We still have a dangerously large number of people living here relative to the reliable supply of potable water, and our rainfall levels are still consistently below historical averages — and below what our population requires.
Californians can forestall the inevitable water riots and mass death by continuing to reduce our consumption per capita. But the neverending immigration into California — both “legal” and illegal — ensures that we will still end up with an inadequate water supply for our population.
The really frightening thing is that we already don’t have enough water to comfortably supply residential and drinking water to everyone and also supply CA’s farms at the current level. So we’ll have an unsolvable water shortage AND have to buy more of our food from farther away (at greater cost to our wallets and to air pollution from all the extra millions of truck trips).
I have found a report directly from American television in 1990, about the MacDonald’s opening.
Interesting especially at 4:30 minutes – how serious the staff were – far more than today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FMFmtUnDDw
Thanks, I refused ice today. You may have saved my life.
More life-saving advice, gratis:
RT America and Sputnik are intended for foreign audiences obviously, the stuff Russians consume domestically is a lot different in content and tone. I know the Washington bureau is staffed by a lot of Green Party members and people who were well-known in leftist circles from the days of the WTO and Iraq protests. Earlier in the decade there used to be a sizeable libertarian element too, Richard Spencer was even a fairly regular guest commentator before the alt-right was a thing. They’re more or less free to do whatever they want as long as it’s outside the spectrum of mainstream politics and not openly critical of Russia. It certainly used to be a lot more interesting to watch, offbeat in the way public access TV used to be, but in the past few years it’s become standardized and glossy.
I don’t get the impression from the places Russians gather online and talk politics that Israel vs Palestine is even much on their radar for the most part. Enthusiasm for “Axis of Resistance” stuff seems to be mostly a fetish of Westerners on the far-left and alt-right.
A lot of Chinese want more children and from what I could tell, everyone knows the government wants them to have more children. But the cost is a challenge, especially because having more kids doesn’t give you a more of…ahahaha…social credit but having more wealth does. By that, I mean social status and the like, which is pretty important. Children are frankly expensive in terms of both money and time.
So the idea I’m figuring is that the government is hoping to rig things around enough to encourage children and to make it more affordable overall. There’s always the fairly brute force solution of forcing Party members to have minimum X number of children in order to be promoted and thereby “model” the behavior to others, but I do think that they’re aiming for a more gentle method if possible.
And this is of course where the more conservative/liberal solutions will vary within the Party: should incentives aim to discourage women from the workforce to become housewives? Some effort was leaning that way. Should incentives aim to provide cheaper/free day care so that the burden of motherhood is reduced? Both?
But yes, the article is kind of funny in a way, no?
How terrible.
The spin is on:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/17/syria-crisis-medics-intimidated-over-douma-gas-attack
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria/u-s-suggests-russia-syria-may-tamper-with-douma-evidence-moscow-denies-it-idUKKBN1HN1I0
Are you crazy? RT and Sputnik are in general inept pussies on all issues and on Jews and Israel they are as PC as western MSM.
I think Russia is wasting money on these two media outlets because they are just not good. Why don’t they hire some people including Jews from Sky and Daily Mail and they would show them how to make real media. RT and Sputnik is supposed to be for foreigners not Russians, right? They can’t use Soviet level propaganda of the type that our-shit-does-not -tink that possibly still works on some Russians like Martyanow or Keverich and expect results. But probably they do not expect any results otherwise they would have tried harder and they clearly do not. The usual Russian indolence? Sabotage? Who is holding their hands?
In the UK about 40% of houses still have lead pipes, typically the service line from the street into the house which can’t easily be replaced. I presume the situation is similar in Europe and parts of the US. Ironically those youtube horror videos of rusty russian water imply that most of their aged pipes seem to be iron/steel, so actually safer. Water companies here dose their supplies with orthoposphates to stop lead leeching. I drink tap water, but only after letting it run for 20-30seconds before.
I’ll drink it anywhere, within reason, if there’s decent pressure.
Most drinking fountains in the UK are disconnected which is a shame as there’s some quite elaborate Victorian ones.
Armenians have a strange, quite nice, culture of privately building and financing them as memorials for deceased friends and relatives, so in Yerevan, they’re absolutely everywhere.
Where is the counter spin? Look here at Sputnik article
Russian Military Finds Chemical Weapons Warehouse in Syrian Douma – Reports
https://sputniknews.com
which they illustrated with a picture of Russian jet fighter on a runway being serviced. You want to go to a propaganda war against the most powerful and most effective media machine that ever existed with bumbling and indolent wanna be media Sputnik and RT?
Media should be flooded by now with interviews and footage from the location.
I just thought about the story being reported in The Independent. It’s owned by the Russian Alexander Lebedev. He’s also the part-owner of Novaya Gazeta, but seems to be not totally opposed to Putin. At the time of the Politkovskaya murder he suggested the murderers wanted to indirectly harm Politkovskaya’s enemies…
For a long time it looked like Russia didn’t benefit from a major British paper being owned by a Russian. But now maybe the reporting of the case has something to do with the owner. At least in an indirect way, he doesn’t forbid it or try to put a spin on it.
The spin is on
There certainly has been some major evidence tampering, I would say. Specifically, the destruction of the alleged sites where chemical weapons were produced, and which could have been used to confirm (or refute) the origin of any chemical weapon traces found by the OPCW in Douma.
This is why Huxley’s horse is waaaay ahead of Orwell’s. Orwell’s vision was good and is the more popular, but Huxley was far more accurate.
Peace.
And here’s another story that was never sufficiently exploited (if true, that is):
Wasn’t it supposed to be chlorine gas that was used in Douma? As I understand it, that’s not even something special (not a complicated nerve agent like Sarin), does one even need complex facilities to produce it? (btw, that also affects the argument that the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons in 2013 was totally fake…chlorine itself isn’t prohibited, just its use as a weapon).
As for the sites targeted by the missiles strike, Pat Lang claims they were just chosen on decades-old (possibly outdated?) intelligence data:
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/04/not-a-bad-outcome-but-.html
Doesn’t sound to me like the Americans had any idea what’s going on today at these facilities, they just needed some targets to bomb.
Also they never exploited stories about alleged capture of foreign advisors. Are the stories just lies? If not why they do not parade these advisors in media to drive the point that ISIS and rebels had western support?
This sounds very American. I should add, that seems like a classic example of something I envision German never do: “We have to shoot things because we have to shoot things.”
Interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulpulak
First pulpulaks appeared in the streets of Yerevan in 1920s and over time became extremely popular. Pulpulaks were and are often used by people to appoint meetings and by couples as dating locations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx5u_scdjBA
I remember the beautiful Swiss water fountains as well, and an seemingly odd preference for at least some of the locals to get their water from the fountains rather than the tap. This seemed like it had to be a mistake given the presence of pigeons(and associated avian defecation) but overall it was a pretty impressive example of cleanliness and community trust.
But they aren’t intimidated when the White Helmets are there, in a situation inclusive of Saudi funded jihadists dominating the scene.
From Robert Fisk:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/robert-fisks-douma-report-rips-away-excuses-for-air-strike-on-syria/5636530?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles
I suggested the described scenario:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-latest-atlanticist-tough-guy-act-western-media-in-crisis-the-syria-gas-attack-saga/5636609
Is it possible for some bombing victims to experience a non-chemical attack, while experiencing some (stress some) symptoms that are typically evident in a chemical attack?
One of the main jobs of the CIA operating out of many US embassies abroad was to translate and summarize mainstream newspaper and magazine articles, in order to get a feel for what a regime was thinking. I think there are parallels to the West, even though the media isn’t tightly controlled, their thoughts are naturally congruent with the political class.
I believe it is also pretty meaningful that the enemies of the US never saw diversity as a strength, but practically as the only weakness they could exploit. For instance, when Iranians seized the hostages at the US embassy, there was a black Marine that they especially tried to split off. They were also happy to meet with Jessie Jackson.
Sometimes water fountains are the outlet of some local springs like in so many spas. Then water is often smelly but supposedly healthy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmMip0m8faM
Yes, but that’s pretty much the point I wanted to make: The media reflects the dominant discourse of political and media “elites”, not so much sentiments among the general population. This discrepancy is very pronounced in Germany on lots of issues (notably the “refugee” invasion and relations with Russia) and has given rise to the term Lügenpresse. I’d assume it’s not totally different in many other Western countries.
Reminds me when al-Qaida in its recommendations to lone wolf jihadis a few years ago stated they should kill white Americans. Kind of funny how even America’s enemies mostly accept the “antiracist” narrative pushed by US elites.
It’s pretty startling how high child mortality was in US cities only about a 100 years ago or so. One of my G grandfathers – probably not typical – lost 8 or 9 children, mostly in the 1890s. Some were from these summer epidemics – hot and humid days. There was meningitis. One later died from the Spanish Flu.
Makes any possible future dystopia seem pretty grim, if it means we were returning to that sort of thing or worse.
This was done on industrial scale at various locations in the US like Battelle in Columbus, OH where all available publications, including ones for children, form the Soviet block countries were read, scanned for key words and brief abstracts were compiled by bilingual Americans including many immigrants and refugees form the Soviet block for whom it were well paid jobs though requiring some security clearance. I presume now it is done with AI.
They are not wrong.
White-dominated America did become a superpower, but we don’t know how a more diverse America is going to perform.
Years ago a few of my classmates and I tested over a hundred of water fountains in a New England city for a school project. The water coming out of the drinking fountains didn’t meet the EPA standard. Every single one of them was bad. I was surprised to see how many of them were detected with high levels of lead.
We forget and do not appreciate how much improvement was made in last 100 years due infrastructure improvements. For this reason when I read AK’s prediction that nuclear war would be highly survivable (was it 90%) I was just wondering whether people whose claim he was parroting had enough imagination about what would happen in the space of few months if electricity and water supplies were interrupted in the whole country. W/o killing of a single person but by destroying all power plants and water supply to cities I think you can kill much more than 10% in the US.
Napoleon IV has spoken, it would appear:
https://www.rt.com/news/424417-macron-equal-putin-syria/
http://www.7sur7.be/7s7/fr/16921/Syrie/article/detail/3410365/2018/04/16/Macron-Je-suis-l-egal-de-Poutine.dhtml
Indeed. That’s why we can never trust China. A government that tries to make its own people happy is capable of anything.
I think the problem with Russia is that the political parties are weak and undisciplined. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong or perhaps Anatoly will, but it seems to me that United Russia is basically the party of Putin rather than Putin being the representative of the Party. China has only half abandoned Marxism-Leninism. Marxism may no longer guide economic decision making, but China firmly remains a one party Leninist-state. What this means in effect is that the Party rules over all and all party members must follow the dictates of the party, or else. The Hu Jintao interregnum saw a slacking of party discipline and growth in political decentralization and political liberalism similar to the Perestroika era Soviet Union. What this resulted in was both growing corruption and more critically the inability of government to push top level policy down to lower levels as lower level cadres felt free to be obstructionist if they felt party dictates interfered with their own local prerogatives. This is both good and bad in that it prevents disastrous policies from being felt in force because its application will be both unenthusiastic and resisted at numerous bureaucratic levels but it also makes state policy highly resistant to changes to the status quo and inevitably results in decentralization of power and policy drift/paralysis. What Xi Jinping has done in his first five year tenure is forcefully restored the centrality of the Communist Party in all the affairs of state. In other words what the party says is law and you better fucking do it or else.
To quote Xi
The differences in ability to implement policy I think is best reflected in how China and Russia choose to handle the issue of restive Muslims. Putin has basically decided to do pacification on the cheap by empowering a local Muslim strongman, Kadyrov, to keep the other Muslims in line and pay him for the efforts. This policy can be said to work in that it keeps Chechnya quiescent for now but it is not a long term permanent solution and it does nothing to address Sunni radicalization. Xinjiang’s Muslims basically amount to around 12 million Muslims, about 8x greater than Chechnya I think and are relatively similar proportion of China’s population as Chechens are to Russians. Instead of a hands off approach, the Chinese Communist Party under Xi has went after them with an iron fist. 10% of the population has passed through newly established “Re-education” camps with hundreds of thousands inhabiting them long term. All unemployed men rounded up and sent to the camps. All Muslims who have traveled abroad to other Muslim states arrested. Communist Party cadres sent into the homes of Muslim families to sleep and live there. All older Korans confiscated and replaced with new “revised” editions. Mosques demolished or “renovated” to be less Arabic in style and more Chinese. Existing mosques had their minarets torn down, party and national flags raised to prominent position, their entrances defaced with prominent Communist Party propaganda slogans. Mandatory atheism education in school and children banned from religious instruction. In one instance, a Communist Party cadre was disciplined and demoted for putting out a cigarette when he entered a mosque. His error was failure to established the ultimate supremacy of the Communist Party State and actually respecting local custom when the Party wants everyone to know that their religious values are worthless and powerless. All of this backed up by massive security presence and surveillance apparatus that would have made the Stazi green with envy. All of these activities has to the contrary of Western liberals idea of “inflaming” of Islamic radicalism instead scared them shitless and totally cowed them. All the more impressive is that the state has mobilized the local Muslims in their own surveillance and Muslim cadres are forced into compliance of Party anti-Muslim policies.
This is the degree of raw power that a Leninist Chinese Communist Party still posses, the Soviet Union used to possess, and Putin’s Russia simply doesn’t. I do not think it would be possible for United Russia to bring such a massive degree of coercion on both it’s own members (to get them off their asses) and restive Muslims even if Putin wanted to. This is I think Putin’s biggest failure in that he has built up no institutional levers to exercise executive authority and thus Russian policy implementation is completely dependent on his own personal charisma which will not outlive him.
That’s interesting, how did they “revise” it and how are the new versions different?
Anyway, that sounds really impressive, I admire this unsentimental ruthlessness, I hope the Chinese will keep it up.
My father was drafted in the 1960’s. One day, out of curiosity I flipped through a book the US Army had given him. It seemed to paint what I would consider a rather rosy picture of nuclear war. Don’t be hit by the shockwave, then avoid the fallout for a few days, and you’ll be AOK.
I’m not too sure I believe it though. There is a certain amount of politics to consider in these things. Historically, the military has probably downplayed the potential for civilian casualties. WW2 bombers were sold as being able to drop a bomb down a pickle barrel at 20,000 ft.
What is the exclusion zone for Chernobyl? Like 1000 sq. miles, I think. Maybe, an H-bomb is cleaner, but I am sure nuclear power plants are targets. Those containment domes are impressive pieces of engineering, but I’m not sure they can take a direct hit.
Then there are other considerations. If it is nukes, then it is all out. A whole bunch of international agreements were abrogated during WWI. Every major country but the US had agreed not to use gas, but then they all did, to try and break the stalemate. If we are lobbing nukes, then it is probably everything. Bio-weapons too.
What you are describing is actually less than what the Communists in Russia did in Central Asia. One of my spiritual teachers went through Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and heard first hand accounts of how they kept the religion going in secret. Burying steel tablets with original Qur’anic inscription, passing on the Qur’an through oral transmission, etc.
I don’t think Russia would be willing to do anything like this; Orthodox Christians know too well the nightmare of living under an iron-fist atheist state. They aren’t pushover Christians like some you find in the West, but nor are they the same as the people that ruled over them during the turbulent 20th century.
Peace.
To be honest, I don’t know what is different. But all Korans published before a few years ago were confiscated to be replaced with new authorized ones. I assume all the references to Jihad, etc. were edited out and replaced with something more palatable like love your non-Muslim neighbors. China had already banned all foreign imams a long way back but now they are also cutting the lifeline of native Muslims traveling abroad to receive religious instruction. As I mentioned, all the Muslim students going to majority Muslim nations like Egypt are being repatriated and arrested. Basically what the Party is doing is isolating and localizing Islam within China and preventing foreign, aka the general trend of Sunni ratchet belligerence, from affecting the local community and it is doing so with full force. Even a few dozen Pakistani men married to local muslim women in Xinjiang were deported and their wives sent to the camps. As I said, they are dead serious about severing linkages between Muslims in Chinese territory and Muslims abroad. A sub-optimal solution I think but suffice it to say several light years ahead of what the West is doing and in line with historical record. The last bout of Muslims rebellions in 19th century China were triggered by the arrival of foreign Islamic preachers, one straight from Saudi Arabia that stirred up the Hui muslims and another jackass from Kazakhstan that caused trouble with the Uyghurs.
It sounds pretty great actually…I mean, I understand if you think expulsion or genocide would be better, but even if one doesn’t have any moral qualms, there are probably many practical reasons against that. Certainly much better than what’s going on in Europe, where foreign Islamic subversion and Islamization are completely unchecked and actually aided by the traitors in the establishment.
The Soviets unfortunately didn’t have millions of surveillance cameras and full control over all mass communication networks nor AI driven big data crunching.
However, I do agree that this is all somewhat excessive and expensive. This isn’t a permanent solution unless you keep the Muslims permanently under pressure and the next generation could just as easily slip into recidivism after not having experienced first hand what the Chinese state is capable of. My cheaper, more permanent solution requires emptying out China’s violent offenders from their prisons and deploying them in conjunction with state security enforced safe zones to run amuck among China’s Muslims and drive them into the neighboring stans.
Basically the Chinese inmates will do what Sunni muslims already do organically, i.e. organized bands of rowdy toughs who make life unpleasant and uncertain for non Sunni muslims through random murders (what your own Pakistani countrymen are doing to your Hazara community) on the small scale level; ISIS head choppers once they have sufficient mass and organization. Peace and stability through demographic reduction and transfers. I think once at least 80% of the Sunni Muslim population has been displaced by sub-state violence, the rest will be quiescent for at least a century or more.
Sadly this is just a dream.
The only secure peace with the Religion of Peace as it presently manifests itself is through well secured borders. Borders are pointless if there are significant numbers of them already inside. Population transfers are essential for lasting security and really there is no way of accomplishing this without some degree of coercion. The scale of the violence required is the only remaining question. Practical political considerations of present US liberal hegemony preclude this solution which is why I want to run non-state actors with some degree of deniability but even that is I think somewhat unrealistic at the moment.
The Turks in Germany are an unpleasant bunch. As I understand it, more of them are Islamicized Erdogan supporters than the average Turk in Turkey to say nothing to the Ionian Greek population Islamicized at saberpoint that constitute Turkey’s most productive and secular elements. West Germany made a huge mistake in importing them as surplus labor during the Cold War. The DDR’s economic policies may have been shit, but I think the only immigrants it actively imported were some North Korean doctors and nurses.
No harm at all; I read it as AK just strictly enforcing a sensible rule, as he ought. I understood what you were doing.
I am familiar with Russian Imperial (and post-Imperial) colonialism. I will write about it and I think you’re right to use the word “colony”; any reticence on the part of citizens of Western countries (or former Soviet countries) to use it is IMO a result of successful Soviet moralizing/positioning/propaganda. Prior to 1917, the case was the reverse and colonialism was a topic of discussion among administrative types.
Here, for instance, a PhD talks about his experience trying to talk about colonialism with other Russian Imperial history colleagues: https://eurasianet.org/node/81726
Anyway, my blog is going to be a slow burn for now as I roll out weekly; I have a day job that keeps me regularly submerged. Look out for something on the weekend.
Certainly true for Sunni Turks, there was that constitutional referendum giving Erdogan dictatorial powers, and 400 000 Turks in Germany voted in favour of that. If you detract groups like Alevites and Kurds who are unlikely to support Erdogan given the status of their communities in Turkey, this must be a very substantial proportion of persons with roots in Turkey. And that was after numerous threats and insults by Erdogan against Germany which tells us how these people feel about Germans. But there is no reaction by our cowardly politicians, no one even talks about bringing down the hammer of German wrath on this shit country Turkey that is insulting and blackmailing us, instead we have to pretend it’s all just wonderful.
Agree with your other points, even if I dislike the thought of mass violence which isn’t a pleasant business after all. It would be better though than the nightmare that is likely to be Western Europe’s future.
This is true – we are well past 1984.
Figures, but I am surprised you didn’t just go for forced sterilization option. I mean, since you guys have no moral scruples, I would assume that would be cheapest. With violent offenders you still have to feed them, well – I guess they could eat the Muslims they kill.
Yeah – I hate that kind of nonsense – really pisses me off to see extremist mob violence at the hands of Muslims; there is no sanction for this kind of behavior. None.
Possibly. I guess one option would be for us to try to settle them into the Central Asian states, possibly absorb them into parts of Turkey also, maybe even parts of Malaysia. There’s about 15 million or so – that’s quite a large amount, but I think it is doable if some of the other trouble spots die down and resources can be diverted.
Yeah – this kind of thing would likely cause at least some major contracts to be lost across the Muslim world.
Peace.
Hi, all is going sound here and ofcourse every one is sharing data,
that’s genuinely excellent, keep up writing.
What, he confirmed travelling in a subway car full of Tadjiks the other day? He confirmed that Moscow is “like Paris” in this respect? He confirmed that all the service jobs are held by brown people?
You are very mendatious.
Ukrainian logic:
there are more Asians in Moscow, than Mexicans in NYC, which proves that Moscow is actually browner than NYC. As for millions of NY Latinos, who do not identify as “Mexican”…this is an entirely different breed of people, so it’s plain unfair to bring them into this conversation!
I took a look at Morrison’s blog and unfortunately didn’t see much about Russian colonialism and its effects within Ukraine. This could be expected as Morrison presents himself as primarily a specialist in Central Asian affairs. The article of his that you cite is interesting and he seems to take aim at the type of Russian nationalism that Karlin espouses within this blog:
Karlin can often be heard bellyaching about the Central Asian hordes infesting his ethnically pure ‘Slavic’ homeland, and if I’m not mistaken he has even suggested that barriers, not unlike Trump’s controversial wall to keep the Mexicans out o the US, be built to keep his Russia safe and pure. 🙂
Hopefully, your own blog will offer more regarding the Ukraine/Russia relationship.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-18/putin-said-to-seek-trump-deal-even-after-sanctions-syria-attack
Putlet cucking to his partners.
The link to the original Fisk article:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-chemical-attack-gas-douma-robert-fisk-ghouta-damascus-a8307726.html
Yes, it’s cucking, the way to lose. They might lose anyway, but cucking won’t help them the least bit, so it’s stupid as well.
Here’s the problem. Trump also has to look strong. Because Trump has no control over his media, he’s actually more in need of looking strong. Both sides cannot simultaneously look strong.
So there could be no grand bargain.
There could, however, be capitulation. But it will look like capitulation. Like 1989-91.
Werner Herzog is usually interesting, and probably I’ll eventually watch the film– via the internet.
However, the trailer at least seems to over state its case. Monks on twitter are clearly wasting their time, but a serious monastery or serious hermits would simply ban the use of social media. And there are still some examples of serious ascetics.
Ultimately, the over-abundance of information needs to be treated like the over-abundance of sugar: practicing self-control. There are people who have serious problems with sugar and with obesity, and if those people reproduce more than others, that problem will become worse. But I suspect gorging on information decreases fertility. At least, it appears that wifi is better than sex, chocolate, and alcohol:
https://www.cbronline.com/mobility/networks/wi-fi-better-than-sex-chocolate-alcohol/
So maybe Darwin will sort this problem out.
My wife and I at least make a point to shut off the information tap and talk to each other for a while before going to bed.
Definitely not but this isn’t news.
The problem is that the US just doesn’t believe in spheres of influence, as you yourself have touched on before. Trump does because he has a 1950s mentality but Trump is just one man. If it were up to Trump, he would gladly make a deal giving Putin Ukraine and Syria in exchange for nuclear reduction or something but he just can’t do that.
The good news is that I expect the next generation of western leadership to be more flexible. I don’t think they will be pro Russia, but I don’t think they will be as hostile to Russia as our current leaders are.
My proposal for Western detente with Russia:
The West continues to provide advanced weapons to Finland, the Baltics, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Ukraine and Georgia but explicitly states that it will provide no defense to those countries in the case of a Russian attack in exchange for a public Russian commitment to not violate those states’ territorial integrity.
The West recognizes Assad as the rightful ruler of all of Syria and ends all support to his opposition. Western aid to rebuild the country could be provided in exchange for the departure of Iranian military presence in Syria.
The West recognizes Crimea as part of Russia and bullies Ukraine to do the same.
ALL sanctions on Russia are dropped.
The US and Russia both publicly commit to no first strike with strategic nuclear weapons. This would leave the Russians the option of still using tactical nukes if they felt it necessary. Based on what the Russians on here have to say, I don’t see Russia ever agreeing to this one but it’s worth a shot.
The US continues work on it’s missile shield and tells Russia that it can blow them if they don’t like it.
The US makes a commitment that there will be no regime change projects without UN authorization. The US would reserve the right to preemptively attack nuclear weapons production facilities of states it deems as rogue.
US defense spending is cut by 75%. All foreign US bases are closed down except for nuclear bases that must be maintained in the interests of non proliferation (Japan, Australia, etc.).
The UK and France give up their own nuclear weapons.
The West recognizes Belarus as part of Russia.
what do you think?
Russia is going to capitulate now that it just scored the greatest victory it ever has over the US?
The Russian economy is actually doing okay, fyi. We are long, long way away from 1991.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz9MJVyZ-6U
I honestly can’t understand the logic behind the Russian actions in this situation. Do they think offering concessions will spare them more sanctions? Or is it may be as simple as not wanting to lose their summer vacations/children education in the West. I really hope neither. As we all know, all the concessions Russia offer are usually irreversible in nature, while the west can reverse their end of the deal in the blink of an eye. A lose-lose game for Russia, hence why they should not keep on playing.
Looks pretty good to me, apart from the two items where the US cannot make promises and the one that is out of Russia’s power to give.
The first two are dissolving the EU and having the UK and France give up nuclear weapons. These are things that the Us could in theory impose by brute economic force, but not at any cost that would be remotely worthwhile. Neither are of great interest to Russia anyway, because the EU without the military menace of NATO is something they can deal with, and the UK and French nuclear arsenals are irrelevant to anybody except those countries themselves.
The third is the idea that: “The US would reserve the right to preemptively attack nuclear weapons production facilities of states it deems as rogue”. This is a straightforward breach of its own commitments under the UN treaty by the US, and Russia supposedly agreeing to it would make no difference to that. It’s basically the US saying “we’re special and unlike any other country in the world we don’t have to live with the fact that other countries can attack us and deal with it”. If the US wants such a right then it should do it the honest way and withdraw from the UN treaty.
7 If the Yanks don’t like the stability benefits of MAD then they have always been free to have competitive missile shields. It was the provocative and destabilising forward location in Europe that was always the real problem.
Striking a deal arises only between parties who consider themselves to be on parity. The west does not see Russia as a peer or even a near-peer, and how would they when Russia is only a country of 146 million while the west is about 1 billion. Russia will always get the very short end of the deal.
Russia complains endlessly about the GMD system which is based in Alaska and California and has a grand total of 25 interceptors.
I know, I know. Stop talking. Start banging. That’s what the marriage counselor told my parents many years ago.
But maybe the real problem is not eating enough chocolate. It is supposed to be an aphrodisiac.
1.Facebook,google and Twitter, by and large, follow Russian court requests….Telegram is not
2.This ban has been mooted for more than year, Telegram have refused all dialogue with the government and Durov is openly liberast not ‘”patriotic”
3. Facebook,google and Twitter when faced with upcoming legal cases or threats of a ban don’t start boasting way in advance of how they are not going to follow with government/court requests
4.Actually, Russia is promoting a local alternative to replace Telegram,Anatoly
5. It’s a fact that Telegram is used by terrorists and drug dealers
6. Telegram is not pure Russian
7. Contrary to your stupid lies, Russia is probably the least “repressive” state out of America,Britain,France,China and itself with regards to social media activity and their management…all this retardedness from fuckwits that gets squealed from liberasts everytime Russia tries to create or enact any legislation…or do anything…of ‘repression” is getting beyond a joke
8. Perhaps the fact that Russia keeps on producing software that are equal,superior or more popular than western equivalents desperate to crack the Russian-language market, proves that the authorities are getting something right.
Good thing to know this week you aren’t quoting solely retarded anti-Russian outlets like NewTimes,Ekho etcet as source for Russian news
If you say so. Can’t say I’ve noticed them doing so. Maybe as part of the general objection to the destabilisation caused by European based missile “defence” and the clear threat of enabling a first strike.
To be expected from a Sorosian leaning venue. There’s also a good deal of non-Russian and non-Soviet “moralizing/positioning/propaganda” propaganda.
Russia had a land expansion to its east, that to a certain extent has commonality with the US westward expansion. On the other hand, Britain and some others went well beyond their boundaries under different circumstances . The English dominated Britain had a noticeable separation of land, water and other countries/empires between itself and most of its colonies.
A key difference between the aforementioned US and Russian experiences, is that Russia had more land and people to take. Imagine if Hawaii and California had no ocean separation.
Some Americans and others have an inaccurate way of assessing Russia. An example is the flippantly inaccurate comparison of Britain and India with Russia and Ukraine. Scotland and England with Russia and Ukraine is the more accurate comparison.
With its many faults, the USSR nevertheless put forth a theoretical union of nations (republics). The first post-Russian Empire government (prior to the Bolshes) sought a single entity with autonomy to the differing areas of what made up the Russian Empire. That stance also recognized the independence aspirations of some others (notably Finns and Poles), with a willingness to see some areas become independent.
At the end of WW I, Britain was willing to let Ireland go unlike some others in the British Empire. Comparatively speaking, Russia on the whole wasn’t too different in attitude at that point in time. Post-Soviet Russia recognized the independence of all of the former Soviet republics, without causing considerable consternation in Russia.
Yes, I saw after first seeing the Global Research posted take Fisk’s observation.
Also recall that in 2017, there was a claim that the Syrian government bombed an area where chemicals were present, with the claimed non-chemical bombs triggering a chemical reaction on account of what was on the ground.
On OAN (if I’m not mistaken), there was a news segment yesterday, showing a Russian military person showing a depot of chemicals in the area that the Syrian government had just regained
I knew it.
Macron is French Putin, the establishment candidate who was promoted in order to replace a weak, embarrassing president and push for European integration.
Expect him to win the next presidential election as well.
http://abload.de/img/1487153774354e2kzk.jpg
You are making the mistake to assume that Russia with strong, disciplined political parties would end up like modern China.
It is just as possible as that it would end up like modern Germany and run by Russian Merkel.
Germany is a particracy like China, just with more elections and two ruling parties rather than one.
Better explanation: No new American sanctions on Monday.
Pessimistic answer: Yes
Optimistic answer: They are trying to buy time.
There was a recent article about investments of rich Russians in education facilities in Russia and declining number of Russian kids in British education facilities.
Also this:
https://twitter.com/ArtyomLukin/status/986352867803099138
Of course, it will take years to realize all of that.
Credible, or simply smoke?
** The allegation that Berezovsky wanted to return to Russia seems to been confirmed by his “girlfriend” in 2013:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/russia/9966671/Boris-Berezovsky-sought-Putins-permission-to-return-to-Moscow.html
Too comprehensive, tries to roll back too much of the conflict.
It also sounds pretty much like a US capitulation. I.e. politically impossible. My much more modest proposals (something like explicit written promise of no more NATO expansion, any further expansion would be accepted casus belli; Russia refrains from attacking Ukraine in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality, also gives up the Donbass and pays some money to Ukraine in exchange for international recognition of Crimea; Ukraine would still receive weapons from the US; US withdrawal from Syria; rolling back some of the sanctions and promising not to start new ones in the absence of major Russian provocations) would also sound pretty much a NATO capitulation in the West. On the other hand, it’d sound pretty much like Russian capitulation in Russia.
Something similar was said about Skripal too by a former classmate who was called by him.
Mikhail, I considered doing a “these political views are not my own” type disclaimer but decided not to; perhaps I should have. Sometimes I think there’s just enough value in something to get someone to shift their priors slightly, etc. Anyway, I am largely in agreement with you but for me the words “colony/colonial” are pretty big-tent; using the term (as I do) doesn’t imply that I’m attempting to establish the “colonizer” as a bogey-man.
How reliable is this information I wonder? It comes from Bloomberg citing anonymous sources…Could be just propaganda to show that Western policy of sanctions is working.
This “Путин слил vs Х.П.П” debate has been going on the Russian internet for years now. People here would do well not to overreact to a single newspaper headline.
With a new generation of leadership though it might not seem like a capitulation.
All of my proposals are based on American interests, not Russian ones. In fact, by giving Russia a free hand in their own backyard the US would then no longer have to worry about Russian mischief elsewhere. And America can no longer afford to fund it’s global empire anyway so Russian (and Chinese) cooperation in the future is simply going to be a necessity to secure global trade routes.
Also, good luck on the Kremlin trying to sell massive military spending to the Russian public without the US Emmanuel Goldstein to rally them against.
…
I feel like the current US strategy is to try to drain Russia like they did in the Cold War. But even if that succeeds, then what? Russia is still a massive nuclear power, just a more isolated and hostile one and therefor more dangerous. How is that good for the US?
It’s time for a new approach.
I think perceptions matter a great deal. Most people would believe that it was US capitulation.
Besides, withdrawing from NATO would be a permanent concession (very difficult, probably impossible, to roll back), and so very difficult to pull off. There’s a huge bureaucracy whose livelihood would be lost, and so would be fighting tooth and nail against such a decision.
I think any rapprochement between Russia and the US is now very difficult. A comprehensive one, even more difficult. I wouldn’t even aim for it.
Interesting comparison by Neil Postman quoted in Wikipedia:
Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson’s dystopian novel, Lord of the World (1907), is superior to both Huxley and Orwell and is is much more prophetic and sinister. Just be prepared to look up his occasional sentences in Latin (Benson was a Cambridge-educated classicist).
(and yet they still charge their gullible customers; stereotypes don’t come from nowhere)
Two-fer.
http://www.oann.com/oan-investigation-finds-no-evidence-of-chemical-weapon-attack-in-syria/
OAN Person Sharp is based on Syria — doubts all anti Assad propaganda.
Perfect for the Expanding Brain meme.
Most of your points might be fair.
Interesting. Which?
How is that relevant? Either they’ll keep using it anyway, or they’ll find some other encrypted messaging system. Even in the absence of user-friendly encrypted messaging or email programs, they can simply encrypt their messages using GPG and copy paste the encrypted message into their usual messenger or webmail interface.
What are you going to do? Ban prime numbers?
Probably means ICQ which is owned by Mail.Ru.
Disinformation is certainly a strong possibility. Even if this is false, which might well be the case, we are already 4 years into the sanctions regime, and it only intensified with time, what is Putin actively doing in the meantime to shield Russia from this aggression? Standing still and doing nothing might be as bad as capitulating in this situation. I am asking for economic action, not military one, of course.
He confirmed that mine and other observations were realistic. It is realistic to notice that all the maids seen at a hotel were central Asians, as were most of the fast food workers. You can come down to Okhotny Ryad food court yourself – I ordered some khachapury at the Georgian store – both workers were Central Asians. As were at least one I saw at the neighboring Burger King. Are you even in Moscow?
“Like Paris” was clearly described as a joke. My aunt got on an early morning metro car, saw about 30 Tadziks, and joked – “what is this, Paris?”
Felix Keverich turns this into a claim that I stated that Moscow is as brown as Paris.
I never claimed Moscow is browner than New York. That is your logic. I stated that I estimated Moscow to be about 10% Central Asian. Did I ever claim New York to be less than 10% non-white?
Your pattern of false claims is so pervasive it must indicate dishonesty rather than honest mistakes.
You are simply a liar. Congratulations, Felix.
Let’s wait for the new government first.
Any thoughts on the Pompeo-Kim Jong-un meeting?
One of the main reasons why Pompeo is supposed to get Tillerson’s job.
https://twitter.com/TimothyS/status/986421537539612672
https://www.thenation.com/article/south-korean-president-moons-gamble-for-peace-with-north-korea-has-paid-off/
Timeline it seems:
Moon contacts Kim – ???
Xi meets Kim – March 28
Pompeo meets Kim – April 1st
At any rate, it does seem like Kim wants more engagement with the world and his autarky met its limits.
You are applying today’s narrative to the past, it wasn’t at all like that. In 1900 a small group of Czech intellectuals proposed teaching Russian in schools, it was a symbolic gesture and totally hopeless. They had a pretty hard time just making sure that Czech was continued to be taught in the schools.
Between 1945-55 (or even later) there was a genuine pro-Russian sentiment among plurality of Czechs – from nationalists to communists. The teaching of Russian was initially popular and demanded. Soviets (or Russians) liberated Czechs at a high cost. Czechs were almost certainly slated for soft extermination by Germans in WWII and they knew it.
The pro-Russian euphoria lasted decades, 1968 invasion to suppress liberal communism (what the f..k was that?) changed things. But even today Czechs are relatively neutral and about half of the population, including the President, are by the Western standards quite pro-Russian. Of course, there are noisy Prague ‘intellectuals’, often paid for by the West, but not always, who are every bit as Russo-phobic as the waffle waitress from India yelling at UN, but they have always been weird. Most suffer from conflicted identity and dislike their own countrymen almost as much.
Russian was offered as the main foreign language starting in the 5th grade until 1990. English, French, Spanish and eventually even German were offered as additional choices. Most university aiming students took Russian and English. The ‘compulsory’ teaching of Russian is based on some truth, on and off, but as with most Western narratives it is over-stated, misunderstands the context, and emotionalises relatively normal things. Today Russian is still taught, but minimally.
Putin vows to send a mission to Mars, first unmanned (already next year), later manned:
https://www.rt.com/news/421356-russia-mission-mars-putin/
What a waste.
That’s pretty bizarre, is he serious about that?
I suppose Trump will now follow up with something similar.
BUT BIGGER AND BETTER.
Thanks for the Postman reference. I have long been a fan of the man, ever since I read his book Technopoly soon after getting out of UCLA. I have never looked at technology or the concept of progress the same since.
Thanks also for the book reference, I will check it out.
Peace.
YUGE!
How so? Shortly afterwards bilingualism was required of civil servants, which effectively favored the Czechs (Czechs could speak German, which was a useful language, while Germans couldn’t speak Czech, which was not a very useful language), and certainly Czech language education was never in question.
http://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/attempts-solutions-and-escalation-language-conflict-and-badeni-crisis
Nuclear missiles might be better.
Yes, of course 🙂
Have to admit, Trump talking about space exploration would be something I’d like to hear, it could be one of the more amusing parts of his presidency.
I think pretty much anything would be better than this bizarre idea of manned expeditions to Mars. If Putin’s serious about that, it’s an unfortunate throwback to Soviet times imo.
Well Mars will become pretty important, but probably not until the second half of the century. Although considering how slowly space exploration is going currently, probably the projects to terraform Mars not begin in a serious way until the 2100s.
I agree with your points here.
I am simply afraid that the succeeding generations won’t know where to draw the line on a healthy medium. Then again, as you mentioned, maybe it won’t matter since those going gung-ho on technology (over sex – are you kidding me??!!) will file out of Survival-of-the-Fittest in an orderly line through the door called “Thanks for playing”.
Excellent idea.
Peace.
Second-country-to-wherever might get an advantage, being spared some of the more painful early development experiences.
The “Future is Mars” is a lie.
Mars is as useful as Antartica.
The Guardian provides useful input.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/18/first-human-on-mars-should-be-woman
Well, I’d wager not quite as useful…
Mnogokhodovka vs 4d chess
After reading James Thompson’s review of Cognitive Capitalism, I decided to buy it (the book is incoming to several Polish libraries but I have no intention to wait, plus good authors deserve to be supported financially).
Something caught my eye in the appendix he released to the public:
Putin shrewdly starts a useless Mars mission to induce Trump to waste a lot of money on a useless Mars mission. In response Trump starts his own useless Mars mission to corner Putin into not abandoning his own useless Mars mission. It’s all highly intelligent strategy deceptively disguised as incoherent idiocy prodded on by two senile leaders.
Did he not by any chance cite the great commenter “reiner Tor”?
Not really, Czechs in Prague-Brno could speak German (mostly), but more than half of Bohemia-Moravia were pure Czech regions with small cities and villages where competent German was uncommon. Bilingualism always favours the educated, big-city people. They get the jobs because they grow up bilingual. There was an enormous struggle for even the Czech language to be taught at higher levels of education or in many majority Czech speaking regions. Dreaming of teaching Russian was just that, a dream.
(In Slovakia in 1907, Hungarians started to ban any other language than Magyar in schools, effectively killing the Habsburg empire. With Budapest trying to eliminate teaching in Slovak language, Slovaks fully turned to Prague, and the combination of Czechs and Slovaks was too much for Habsburgs to manage in a crisis. Combined Czech with Slovakia – and other Slavs in the empire – was more than half of the country. Thus in WWI the Habsburg empire disintegrated. If Vienna had the foresight not to give in to Magyars on everything, the empire could had survived in a federated form.)
The lesson is that reality controls dreams and ideologues always over-reach.
I want him to compete against this:
https://www.space.com/32695-moon-colony-european-space-agency.html
I don’t get it; what’s the benefit to the cost involved? It seems silly to put humans on a relatively hostile environment where the cost of just keeping them alive is high. What’s the return on investment? I can see it as a penal colony or something like what the Brits did with Australia, but otherwise what? That’s what I don’t get about this colony stuff. Is the idea to terraform the moon?
I guess, it could be a “Salusa Secundus” to create hyper-violent warriors like Sardaukar.
Peace.
people are always saying manned missions to the Moon or Mars are completely wasteful, that robots are the way to go, and so on…
Few things like space travel, and all the more so manned space travel, can galvanize a nation. I think NASA estimated the cost of a manned mission to Mars to approach $100 billion.
Now compare with the sports industries, worldwide it’s valued at several hundreds billion dollars. My argument is that walking on Mars is orders of magnitude more elevating, exhilarating than any sporting event will ever be. Doesn’t only emulate physical prowess, but also creates motivation for scientific inquiry and educational excellence. Carrying humans is a great burden on any space mission, it’s only feasible through several innovations (some of the most challenging will be to shield the crew from radiations); but like for Apollo the engineering solutions will most likely find other uses for decades thereafter. And finally if NASA estimates it at $100 billion, Russian and Chinese space agencies can probably do it for less.
I would be very surprised if Russia goes alone. You’re probably looking at a joint Russian-Chinese program and crew perhaps with small contribution from other nations, and a rival US-EU one which would probably have a more “globish” flavor- I assume it will take great care that its crew allows for racial and sexual “diversity”.
1) Cheaper launch environment for future space missions
2) Knowledge gained on how to deal with the effects of microgravity, etc.
3) Less expensive “real estate” than ISS in orbit
4) Excellent practice run for more extensive colonization locations such as Mars
Expansion is eternal. It is the birthright of humanity and if we are indeed the only intelligent species in the local cosmos, we owe it to destiny to spread out and among the stars.
OK – that makes sense as an investment for practice runs for deeper space exploration.
With Mars, I tend to see the same issues. The planet is partially the way it is because it can’t keep its atmosphere together. Again, I guess I can see it as a stepping stone. I really don’t see the end benefits of serious colonization unless we find a planet that is willing to meet us at least half way and doesn’t try to actively kill us every moment we exist on it.
Well, I guess we are fighting the great event horizon of Fermi’s Paradox; as we approach the ability to be super-technologically awesome, we approach the ability to completely wipe ourselves out.
The Golden Path.
Peace.
Bohemian parliament record with this proposal, from 5th April 1900, is here:
http://www.psp.cz/eknih/1895skc/4/stenprot/008schuz/s008002.htm
I personally think Václav Šamánek, the MP who proposed it, was just trolling. He was passionate advocate of Czech language, culture and education in thoroughly Germanized northern Bohemia, always in conflict, always fighting. Btw, it was not “vetoed by Vienna”, just ignored and ridiculed.
Probably most interesting are two short paragraphs, why to pick the Russian language. Machine translation improved by me here:
We need to see Russia’s current state, compared to Russia 30 years ago. Perhaps you will all remember – from Vienna’s illustrated humorous newspapers and from other serious newspapers, Russia was belittled in many ways; you may remember their expressions, the claim that Russian muzhiks eat candles made from tallow, and in the political sense, that the Russian Colossus is built on the earthen legs, etc. In one word, 30 years ago, our Germans could not stand Russia.
Now we can see how, within one generation, the judgment has changed. Today all of Europe, I can say, the whole world is applying for Russia’s friendship, and our worst enemy, the enemy of all Slavic, namely Germany, does this above all others. I am convinced that it was perhaps Bismark, the great German diplomat, who made the statement: “The Germans are afraid of nothing except God in the world,” where he concealed, in his diplomatic manners, “and Russia”. Germany’s claim for Russian favor, which has been used by Germany since ancient times, shows that Germany and its Chancellor Bismarck knew very well that Russia had great might, great power, and finally the greatest help for the German Empire.
He then suggests dropping Greek language to make the space for Russian. He also mentions very low quality of French and English language education, and predicts that Russian would fare better, because of being such a close language.
Why?
We don’t know that.
There is no good reason to colonize Mars.
How well does the American establishment at large accept the view of the US as a colonizer, relative to the American Indians? Don’t think that Russians are generally so behind the times as some suggest. Therefore, I see the importance of challenging any suggestion to the contrary – whether intentional or not.
He was like that with the 2017 claim against the Syrian government, before the most recent alleged incident.
Gravity.
And yet you’re a big fan of the Tuareg…
(that was a joke)
There is also noticeable gravity on the Moon surface.
LOL!
“God created Arrakis to train the faithful.” – Fremen saying
The thing with the Tuareg is that they survive at minimal cost – one of us probably consumes the same resources as half of one village on an annual basis.
I’ve known scholars who have gone to study with the scholars of the Sahel region. It is one of the places on Earth where you can go back to an environment that hasn’t moved from the 8th-9th century. Very hardy, spiritual people – everyone reports it to be a phenomenally transformative experience.
Peace.
An old friend/acquaintance of mine — a guy who was once mostly normal (for a nerd) but always leaned left — recently told me that he was “kind of gender-queer”. As far as I can tell, all this means is that he can’t grow facial hair and will occasionally make annoying remarks about dudes being “hot” while still wanting to exclusively bone women.
But I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that he would respond “yes” — with pride! — if asked whether he is LGBTQ, and that, in fact, is the reason he says he is “kind of gender-queer” in the first place.
Concept of programmer’s productivity is ridiculous. What may be perceived as productive is usually spending all waking hours making large quantities of unusable shit. There are significant individual differences, but wasting the talent is really easy.
Left alone programmers usually won’t make much good. What matters is quality of the organisation: if they are able to find out the real requirements, if they are able to avoid useless complexity, if they know how to handle programmers as people. Most of organisations lack this ability and only measure harmful parameters like lines of code or hours spent.
The Guardian writers today can’t even be bothered to do a search of their own online archives. Tereshkova has already volunteered for any mission that will take her:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/17/mars-one-way-ticket
I can’t believe that people are seriously talking about a Mars colony! Come on, it will be one of those great Kremlin “projects” that will never materialise (but a couple dozen of millions, allocated for it, WILL get embezzled – of that I have no doubt).
The greatest yacht project is about to come upon us any day.
https://newatlas.com/solarwave-64-catamaran/47205/
@songbird
Russian language was mandatory in Czechoslovakia, in primary and secondary education. Expectations and requirements were low, so it was possible to pass only by keeping attention in the classes.
Soviet Union was perceived as backward country, and Russian language as virtually useless. Russian movies, books etc found no interest among the public, as they were ridiculously full of ideology. Few good ones were dubbed or translated anyway. Some Western technical textbooks/manuals may have been available only in Russian, but tell this to a young pupil.
After 1989 teaching of Russian almost disappeared.
Interestingly enough, there’s small renaissance of Russian language teaching in the Czech Republic. About 15% of students in secondary education pick it up. Not because it got suddenly prestigious or useful, but because it takes much less time than learning German etc.
There’s a funny thing about numbers: some are bigger, some are smaller …
And sometimes there’s an atmosphere that’s a lot more substantial than another!
Czechs are superior trolls. They have just renamed their country ‘Czechia’ to see how many people get the joke.
That is rather self-evident to people with a minimum sense of resources, geography and numbers. The endless futile attempts by the West to deny it, the silly ‘colossus on clay legs’, ‘gas station, blabla…’, are simply attempts to deny the obvious. The obvious eventually wins.
Oh oh, you’ve just spread a “Ukrainian nationalist myth”
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-40/#comment-2291629
“Horrible corruption under unpopular dictator Putin + hordes of Central Asians <– that's 2, no, 3 Ukrainian nationalist myths about Russia in one post!”
Largely agree, however I would avoid the implication that Putin can’t cut down on the corruption – to an extent the corruption is a feature, not a bug, of the system.
An old comment of mine:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russian-liberals-are-the-nomenklaturas-children/?highlight=putinism#comment-2006244
“My own impression is that Putinism represents the consolidation and stabilization of the 90s rather than some sort of negation of it (Ukraine, in contrast, failed to consolidate and stabilize but remained in looting phase) – Putin emerged from Sobchak’s world, after all. Oligarch-thieves need to be managed and to work together; they cannot take too much, as this would lead to instability/revolution and a total loss by everyone. Nor should they war with each other. Those not getting with the program (Khodorkovsky) need to be destroyed. Regular people need to feel benefit, in order to be placated, but the massive resources and wealth remain solidly in the hands of those who grabbed them. Effective management of this graft farm needs a strong State. Real Russian nationalism, not tied to the State, can be disruptive and must be stifled, but populistic nods to nationalism by the State can be useful for maintaining population loyalty. It is less disruptive for the State to buy off Chechen loyalty with privileges and “special status”, so this is done. But if ethnic Russians riot (as in Pugachev) the State backs off a little, so sentiments calm down and order is restored. And so we have Putinism.”
This is why very few people get punished for corruption, and those that do – not because they were corrupt but for other reasons.
Because the system is meant to last, effective management and benefits for the general population are pursued. It is not simply a nihilistic looting spree, as sometimes portrayed in the West. Competent economic management means that Russia can survive economic problems such as the oil price crash that the USSR could not survive.
It’s human race’s destiny to colonize other planets and solar systems.
But it probably will not be a direct historical stage.
The first historical stage (maybe around the 2060s or 2070s), will be when we start to genetically modify children for higher intelligence (if intelligence is something heritable).
Probably the Americans will be the first to do this process, due to their lack of ethics and looser regulatory frameworks.
Even with these genetically modified new generations of intelligent men, planetary engineering/terraforming of Mars, will probably not begin until the 2100s (at least considering how slow everything to do with space has gone in the last 5 decades – the genetic modification to create intelligent men may make earlier comparisons of progress irrelevant however).
If you read in my criticism of Russia that America compares more favorably, we’re simply having a misunderstanding. I don’t think Russians are “behind the times,” I think they do exactly what everyone does when justifying actions to themselves and the world. In this case, at least, I don’t think the moralizing is out-sized (I mean, taking into account what you call the “propaganda” propaganda, a phrasing I quite like). But one has to admit that there are historical reasons for spin.
If you want a by-the-book definition of colonizing, well, there are several sorts of colony but let’s just say we stick to an exploitative, overseas establishment that aims purely to extract wealth and gets into cut-throat competition with other powers at the expense of the native people and is not motivated by concern for overseeing the replenishment of extracted resources. Well, there you have the story of Russia’s foray into Alaska. This is a long and interesting story itself but I’m sure you have a familiarity with it.
As for America? Probably worse in this more narrowly defined field of view; for one thing, overseas colonial expansion was largely unsuccessful for Imperial Russia (by which I only mean that while it was briefly profitable it was not sustainable). We could talk of the myriad ways overland versus overseas expansions are different (the large one in my mind is that overseas are much likelier to be an extractive model due to the difficulties in permanently establishing these sorts of colonies), but I hope you’ll grant that I was talking about a subordinated relationship the result of (largely) European expansionism.
America’s colonies were in the first place European affairs. I’m not trying to shift blame from the US, but merely to point out that Americans are not more apt these days to identify themselves as Europeans than Russians are even when it is otherwise a good ethnic fit. Intellectually? Perhaps. Spiritually? No. As for myself, I am a Southerner by birth and temperament and raised Protestant and had to get an education all by myself in all-things-European. So, then there’s the later expansionism after independence, at which time, and thereafter, your criticism, which is already apt, gets more apt in leaps and bounds as we move forward on the timeline.
But both systems (and I take your distinction of the republics seriously) had their breaks with earlier imperial powers and nevertheless continued economically and militarily subordinating ‘vassals’ and expanding, etc, etc. But yes, America is a propaganda machine of “No Empire Here” horseshit; no argument from me. And a meager few would actually like to walk the walk, which is why one hears civic nationalists talk about cutting Puerto Rico loose whenever a hurricane knocks the lights out, for instance. It might be a good idea.
Surely the first human on Mars should be a genderfluid pansexual genderqueer Person of Color. The Guardian is just reinforcing hateful outdated oppressive gender binary bigotry. What the hell is a woman anyway?
Well until that day
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/nkramolnik/79254609/63104/63104_original.jpg
Oh, shut up! Ukrainian corruption makes Russia look clean.
Cryptocurrency Exit Scam Robs Investors of $50 Million
The $660 million ICO scam they are referring to is about a guy in Vietnam who did the same thing but on a much larger scale last week. I never invested in ICOs precisely because there was no legal framework. Same reason why I never bought any cryptocurrencies like BTC etc. I did mine some of them years ago for the lulz, but buying them is speculative madness. Investing real money into a virtual black hole like an ICO, with no legal backing, is madness.
Still, I am excited about the underlying technology behind ICOs and cryptocurrencies in general. But this is still the early days and the Wild Wild West rules apply. Some people just didn’t get that memo.
https://i.imgur.com/J5I4xi6.jpg
Ukraine: 38%
Russia: 34%
Not a huge difference. I don’t know why you constantly accuse him of being a biased nationalist, you’re working overtime to prove that you’re just talking about yourself.
I don’t know about this survey, but I read an article in New York Times that said Ukrainians must pay a bribe every time they visit a doctor. That’s a whole another level of currupt! I can attest that this never happened to me in Russia personally.
And of course we all heard rumors of Arseny “Yats” Yatsenuk resigning from government as a dollar billionare.
My point is AP, if he had any sense of decency, would keep his mouth shut, instead of pontificating about Putin and his “corrupt system”.
Dr. Preobrazhensky does seem to be a nationalist in-denial.
Punishment! Punishment!
https://www.apnews.com/amp/13ee0b95c05249a8be7c0467bf413b6e
Hush. Let the goys have their fun.
You uncritically referenced a source who suggested that Russians can’t face up to a reality that goes against them. In turn, I wanted to underscore what I did, given the predominating anti-Russian biases out there.
Concerning your stated upbringing, I thought you’re of a Polish-Ukrainian background? A good number of Jewish atheists still consider themselves Jews. I know a Baptist priest who was raised as a Polish-Catholic. He still very much identifies with being Polish.
Churchill referred to Russia as a “land animal” and Britain as a “sea animal“. On that issue, geography greatly explains the difference between the two.
On Alaska, the Russians had two perceptions, feeling either potentially or actually overextended at the time of Alaska’s sale to the US, while being unaware (at the time) of the extent of Alaskan natural resources.
Do you also believe everything the New York Times says about Russia?
Ukraine is of course somewhat more corrupt than is Russia, on a daily level. It’s governments have been far worse, as I have already written.
And every homophobe is a secret gay, right?
Although I view nationalism as a lesser evil than other ideologies, such as Communism, I am opposed to nationalism, which is in essence a form of idolatry. I prefer prenationalist systems such as Austria-Hungary and with strong qualifications Rzeczpospolita, to the nationalist states that followed. Love of local cultures and traditions is not nationalism.
My origins are in Ukraine, and I support all locals and their movements, be they decent nationalists (I am not a supporter of bloody mid-20th century Banderists), both Bohdan Khmelnytsky and his nemesis Jarema Wiszniowecki, Little Russian activists, Galician Muscophiles, all who have supported their people in their own ways, regardless of their ideology.
That would make me a patriot, not a nationalist.
My wife is Russian, I have lived in Russia, I love Russian culture, Russia is my adopted second homeland. Hopefully that is clear.
I wish more people understood this distinction. Thank you for articulating it so well.
And it should be noted that nationalism is often at odds with these.
Peace.
So are universalist religious systems like your Islam or AP’s Catholicism which also have strong levelling and homogenizing tendencies.
I’m certainly not one to deny the dark side of nationalism like oppression and forced assimilation of minority cultures or external aggression. But religious traditionalists really shouldn’t pretend that they’re motivated by some cute concern about diversity of local cultures (which traditionally they’ve often regarded as diverging from desired religious norms and in need of correction). Especially in your case, you’re just pissed that nationalism (especially of a distinctly secular kind) would threaten the all-pervasive centrality of your Ummah and of Islamic norms.
Putin, Xi and (though it pains me to say it) Assad have healthy nationalism. A pluralistic, civic nationalism is good. Japanese style ethno nationalism, on the other hand, is gay.
How is Japan “gay”, what’s that even supposed to mean? You may regard the Japanese aviators who crashed their aircraft into American ships in an effort to protect the Japanese home islands as evil fanatics, but they certainly weren’t effeminate homos. And by any standards Japan is a highly successful society today. And not just in economic terms, imo it has also much more cultural power than any of the formerly great European countries that have become “diverse” and embraced the lame kind of civic, constitutional patriotism you’re proposing here.
It’s probably true that in a multinational and/or multireligious country like Russia explicit ethnic nationalism of the majority population could have dangerous consequences…but “pluralistic civic nationalism” can hardly be more than a precarious compromise.
Greasy, you are American, live in the US, and yet you’re Israeli nationalist.
What is it if not ethnic nationalism?
I’m a Jewish nationalist but support a pluralistic Israel.
I don’t believe in ethnically pure states.
“pluralistic Israel” just means a dozen different kinds of Jews who mostly are well on the way to mixing (apart maybe from the nutty religious subgroups) and forming a coherent Israeli nation + precarious tolerance for the remnant of the pre-1948 non-Jewish population.
“Pluralism” in the US and Western Europe means something drastically different. Don’t think we’re too dumb to notice that.
At least the Japanese don’t make a fetish out of self-hate.
Yes, and I admire them for that.
Israel is 30% non Jewish and I think that is a good thing.
countries should be 10 to 30% ethnic/religious minorities. A little diversity is good.
edit: I didn’t say Japan was gay, I said their “Japanese only”, racist, ethnic nationalist mindset was.
Sorry, can’t take you seriously about that, since in previous threads you’ve indicated you’d like to see (somewhat) secular democracy in Israel replaced by a hardcore religious system (sounded like Jewish Taliban to me tbh) which obviously wouldn’t be all that great for non-Jewish minorities.
And while some minorities like Christians or Druze may be accepted in Israel, the Muslims are widely regarded as a potential fifth column there, so how is their presence a “good thing” from the perspective of a Jewish nationalist?
This is incorrect, and it is clear you have not lived in Israel to say this.
Israel is a lot more pluralistic, multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-cultural, than any European states I’ve visited (and I think I know more about Israel than anyone on whole website).
All this said, it’s not a good thing – and Israel suffers from this in every level (even aside from its literal civil war with the 25% Arab citizens, there are daily tensions between other populations).
As for Japan – it is a utopia and role model in terms of its demographics, culture, and civilization – basically a complete opposite of Israel’s situation with demographics, and with the level of peace that you would expect from that.
You have still to explain how Ukraine becoming puppets to the international jew types (Soros, Zuckerberg, Netanyahu) and their lackeys (McCain, May, Macron, Merkel) is going to be able to remain white? How exactly do you think you will be able to prevent the mass migration of non whites when the EU demands it from you? You are worried about Central Asians in Moscow, you should worry about blacks, Indians, Arabs, etc, in Kiev.
You’ve also told us that there is lots of mixing between European and Mideastern Jews, in time this will produce a coherent Israeli nation, so the “pluralism” among the Jewish population may be just a transient phase in the process of nation-building.
And regarding the minorities who are descended from pre-1948 inhabitants, that’s not the kind of “pluralism” that Israel has chosen voluntarily, but just something one has to accept unless one resorts to ethnic cleansing again (which would have negative repercussions for Israel’s international standing). And as you admit yourself, it’s “not a good thing”.
I am liberal and tolerant person, in all kinds of ways – but I would still much prefer the demographic situation of Japan, to demographic situation of Russia.
Japan is 99% ethnic Japanese nationality, and they don’t have conflicts on issues of nationality or religion. There are no terrorist attacks there, and the national question is just ‘one less thing to worry about’ for Japan.
I’m doubting you have been in Israel or even read in Hebrew media – if you think the national minorities in Israel, and the Israelis ultra-liberal tolerance for being abused/raped/killed by them, are the good thing for the country.
Okay, first of all, there is no question that too little diversity is better than too much. So while I don’t like the Japanese system, it is infinitely better than the contemporary German or even American system.
Second of all, you are absolutely correct about the 5th column thing. I believe in pluralistic states that value and protect their minority communities, but it has to be a 2 way street. I think that countries like Russia and China show the way: minorities are honored and protected but the loyalty of those minorities to the state is expected in return.
Are you implying that I want kill, expel, enslave or otherwise lesson the status of non Jews in the Land of Israel? That’s a pretty serious accusation and if that is what I wanted, why wouldn’t I just come out and say it? It isn’t like I’m hesitant to make extreme statements.
I want to expel the Arab Christians because they are Nazis, I don’t think that Nazis should be in Israel. Sue me. The 5 or 6 Arab Christians who oppose Nazism of course should not be expelled and I would be willing to give them tax breaks and special privileges to convince them to stay.
…
It seems like I have offended you but I’m not sure why. I thought that you would have agreed with my position.
Thought experiment: let’s say there was a guy born in Germany to parents from Ghana. He 100% identifies as a German and opposes all immigration, including his own family members. He votes for and joins the AfD. He is totally assimilated into German society and all his friends are ethnic Germans.
Why wouldn’t you want such a person to remain in Germany? Of course you wouldn’t want a million such people but there should be room in every country for loyal minorities.
So you think that Israel should be some Nazi like, “Jews only”, ethnostate?
But you may still have rosy tinted views for Ukraine.
I can’t as an expert of the country – I have not lived there – but my two friends from Ukraine all have talked of the complete disaster for the last several years.
Why? Can you tell me what any German, Swede or Englishman will gain when their countries are 20% Muslim, as they are likely to be in a few decades? All it will bring (and already has brought to a noticeable degree) is no-go-areas, constant threat of Islamic violence and continual pandering to the sensibilities of Muslims. No positives whatsoever.
If there has to be “diversity” at all, it should at least be of a kind that doesn’t have such absurdly negative consequences (e.g. immigration of Filipino nurses at least brings some benefit…groups like Somalis that are just horrible in every way need to be kept out).
so you don’t want any diversity?
American was paradise in the 1950’s when it was 90% white. And the other 10% was blacks, the most inassimilable, destructive group on the planet. Even so, that diversity made the US a stronger and better place then it would have been if it were 100% white.
I agree that we have way too much diversity in the West, but a little bit can be a good thing. Maybe 15 to 5 percent is a better range than 30 to 10.
if diversity is so bad, then why do the Russian and Chinese governments promote it for their own countries?
edit: I didn’t say that the west should import large numbers of Muslims or blacks. Those groups should absolutely be prohibited from immigrating en masse.
Why would black or brown people ever move in large numbers to Ukraine, when it’s at a similar economic level to many of their home countries.
In reality of course a guy with roots in Ghana is far more likely to be a militant antiracist who thinks Europeans should just bend over and accept the inevitability of a black planet.
I mean I get what you’re trying to say, 100% purity obsessives who don’t see that reality can often be more complicated, especially on an individual level, are usually rather unpleasant and sometimes quite dangerous people. But I don’t see how this means one should regard large-scale diversity as inherently good when it’s usually quite problematic. It’s one thing to say that one has to live with existing diversity and make the best of it…but what you’re writing sounds like “Diversity is strength” to me. No thanks.
Your antipathy towards Arab Christians (who seem largely powerless to me, in a very uncomfortable place between Zionists and Muslims) is one of the stranger elements of your thought, especially when contrasted with your fairly positive view of Muslims. I have to say I find it rather repellent on some level, that kind of sentiment is sure to erode Western support for Israel, probably even in large sectors of the US population.
As for what your idea of a Jewish fundamentalist state of Judea would mean for minorities, I obviously can only have suspicions, but in any case I’m not in favour of theocratic systems of government.
99% is high and almost certainly inaccurate given the large, if somewhat hidden Korean diaspora in Japan.
Japan isn’t really ethnonationalist, though it highly tolerates ethnonationalism in its population and permits informal enforcers such yazuka to exist to beat up on foreigners. So its the flip side of Germany allowing antifa to beat up on their own people.
Japan not multicultural in any way. I remember reading about Indians who work in Japan, most who leave in two or five years; they found the rituals and obsession with cleanliness to be boring. And so it is, it mentally destroys all except those who want to effectively reduce their own identity to nothing to fit in.
In an ideal world, it would just be civilized people. (Countries like Japan have already achieved this state).
In Israel, this can be only Jewish people, secular people or Christian people from Europe, or Shinto people from Japan. It could even be Muslim Arabs or Africans, if they were filtered carefully for desirable characteristics (including political loyalty to the state), which may be found – although perhaps at lower rates.
Obviously a lot of Arab Jews – are not that civilized, and neither are the ultra-religious ones, neither are a small minority of the Russian-speakers.
But Israel should be working to reduce the component of uncivilized populations, if it will have any possibility of survival. Whereas the exact opposite is happening every year.
Arabs are becoming more and more brazenly hostile every year, with rapes, murders and terrorism. There are mass rallies for Islamic Jihad movements, with tens of thousands of participants. As individuals, there may be many good fellows, but as a group it is not a pretty image. At the same time, Israel worships them with ultra-liberalism and tolerance. Whole areas of city are taken over by African illegal immigrants, which Israel has not deported any of. The Haredim are another factor of disorder.
I’m fan of Israel, lived in Israel for several months, have taken the teudat zehut (but not in Israel long enough to get the darkon), keep studying Hebrew for years, have friends in Israel. But it is like building on the slopes of vesuvius, unless they will start to become more realistically in the political center, abandon the ultra-liberalism, and get control of their demographics (and start to deport or get control over their uncivilized and enemy demographics).
They didn’t do that. You might criticize those policies back then, but it’d be nice to do that based on facts. First, state schools (as opposed to municipal or parish schools) had always taught in Hungarian only, and they received more money (though the gap kept decreasing). However, the vast majority of schools were municipal or parish schools, and they could teach in any language.
The 1907 education law (commonly known as “Lex Apponyi” named after the nationalist minister of education), to which you’re referring to, made it more difficult to teach in Slovak (or other minority languages) where there were a lot of Hungarian pupils (or pupils whose parents wished for their children to be taught in Hungarian), because it made it mandatory to provide Hungarian language classes in schools where there were at least 20 Hungarian pupils, or alternately where the proportion of Hungarian pupils reached 20%. (Many schools must’ve been really small back then.) It also mandated that a Hungarian-only school should stay that way, no matter what.
In retrospect it was a mistake, but the reason for it was clear: most minority students never learned Hungarian (despite Hungarian language becoming a mandatory subject after the early 1880s), in part because the teachers either couldn’t speak it properly themselves, or at least were unenthusiastic about teaching it. Lex Apponyi has been criticized in Hungary retrospectively, but it didn’t matter much. Nationalism was the trend of the day, and while in 1918 the new Hungarian leadership could find some Slovak and Ruthenian leaders willing to cooperate with it, in general it was pretty clear that these loyalists were getting both less loyal and less influential within their communities. It was overall a good thing to lose areas with disloyal ethnic groups in the majority.
If you can still see Hungarians whining about the Treaty of Trianon, it’s because of the way the borders were set. In the case of Czechoslovakia, the First Vienna Award set an ethnically correct border, which minimized the number of minorities on both sides of the border. Now the ethnic composition has changed, but there are still compact (albeit ever smaller) areas close to the border which are ethnically Hungarian. I don’t think it’d make sense for Hungary to lay territorial claims now, but those borders were in no way just.
You are so full of shit. A walking talking (((stereotype))). China and Russia used to promote diversity when they were actually still Communist in deed as well as name, busy classifying ethnicities and in China’s case making them up wholesale. Putin’s Sovok legacy “Big Russia” autism aside, neither are actively promoting diversity now because having experienced raging Leftist ideology manifest in full force, they are now innoculated against its more terminal but slow spreading Western post Marxist variant.
The trend of the new Xi era is unbridled ethnonationalism. Yesterday was actually the first annual Hanfu day, imagine if you will if Western governments made a new Holiday celebrating “Germanness” or “Frenchness” by encouraging young people to wear dirndls, lederhosen, or berets. Of course you can’t imagine it because they are busy abolishing their native populations and are more likely to celebrate Algerian immigrant enrichment day.
How so? What have US blacks contributed to American civilization except some forms of music? Even if one accepts that their history in America is pretty tragic and characterised by oppression, their presence and the racial turmoil associated with it seem like the USA’s fatal weakness to me.
I don’t get the impression they “promote” it like in the West, it’s more a matter of accepting the realities of a multiethnic/multireligious state and putting a positive spin on it, so the whole structure won’t be blown apart by sectarian strife.
And in China at least, this doesn’t seem to preclude the rather robust measures described by Duke of Qin above.
There’s always a case to be made for doctors and engineers, but that’s usually not what people who are pro-diversity are talking about. Anyway, that in many ways is a “solved problem.” Professionals can be seen as human resources, just don’t give them citizenship or any role in governance. They’re mercenaries in the information and knowledge wars of the modern world.
Europe is literally doing the worst of all possible decisions.
I’ve been in Japan (Tokyo and Osaka only) – and I have seen some Arabs in the metro (they were probably Iranians) and I think I remember seeing an African working in the shop.
And, other than that, there are a lot of European or American tourists everywhere, but it’s middle class tourists who behave well (not like the tourists in Mediterranean ).
But – aside from tourists – it is a mono-cultural country. It doesn’t solve all their problems, but it is one reason probably that there is the peaceful and civilized atmosphere there.
Yes, its mono-cultural(subcultures exist but only in a hidden manner with a clear hierarchy) and I think that’s the only way it can function. There are downsides, but its pretty pleasant.
The diversity in various Catholic cultures contradicts this claim; eliminating cults that practice human sacrifice is a type of homogenizing that one shouldn’t complain much about, however.
German Reader, I came across this article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/opinion/german-conservatism-comeback.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region
What do you think of these guys? I know nothing about them other than from the article, but they seem sympathetic to me.
Well I certainly oppose mass immigration and I super oppose mass immigration by blacks and Muslims because those groups are so hard to assimilate. I also oppose any immigration by Latinos simply because I hate them. I never said otherwise. I was trying to say that indigenous minorities should be protected and valued and that they were a source of strength. I was not clear and apologize.
Having said that, I do strongly support small scale immigration of people who will assimilate quickly and contribute to the country.
I find Japanese style ethnic nationalism racist and too closed for my tastes. The Japanese have every right to run their country however they see fit, but I’m not obligated to agree with it.
What does Greasy have to do with Israel. I don’t think he has been there, lives there or speaks any Hebrew.
I know Israel well, with friends and often visit, it’s one of my main hobbies. The problems there with the minorities are very serious, so that many people (including one I know) are desperately applying to Canada for citizenship to escape from the Arabs. It’s funny to see Western people complain about their demographic problems and claim that Israel is some kind of solution – when in Israel people are dreaming of the West as an ‘escape from all the Arabs’. And Israel really would be a utopia without the demographic problems.
Which is exactly why China just opened up an immigration bureau to promote more foreign immigration.
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001913/china-seeks-to-standardize-immigration-with-new-bureau-
You want to believe a lot of things, I know, because you’re a Han nationalist. However, the Party is run by technocrats, not nutcases. And if the numbers show that the country needs more technical specialists(and it does), then they will promote more foreign immigration.
Giant North Korea is not the future.
I think this is a good point – it’s the forming of a kind of new population which will have more in common with each other, than different populations.
The difference in historical process doesn’t make a difference to the multi-national situation on the ground, which can be arrived in various processes.
In America, African Americans were carried to the country as slaves, and have a very correct claim to injustice. But this fact does not mean there is less tension between the nationalities in America, or that America is less multi-national.
In Israel, both the Arabs and the different kinds of Jews have various correct claims to injustice. But this is kind of irrelevant (how it got to the multi-national situation), to the fact that it is still a multi-national situation.
Not really. I suggest you visit Lviv and and Kiev and then compare your impressions to mine. It seems that Russians often tend to treat Ukraine like Westerners treat Russia in terms of views of economic collapse.
It may depend on where they are from. Kharkiv and the East have had a rough time. Lviv is doing quite well. As are most of the areas between Lviv and Kiev, such as Zhytomir or Vynnytsia (I found Ternopil to be a strange anomaly). Kiev seems to have declined a little but is not doing badly at all. It feels slightly poorer, slightly quieter than it was before but was always the richest city in the country and still is, so it’s not doing badly. AK’s article seems to be right:
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/ukrotriumph/
the Israelis ultra-liberal tolerance for being abused/raped/killed by them
So based on your unique knowledge, can you confirm that far more Israelis have been killed and injured by Palestinians, than Palestinians by Israelis?
If there are lot of filters place to select for desirable traits, I agree with this, but it is not very related to how you started the debate praising the multi-cultural ideals of Putin, Xi and Assad.
I’m not sure of the other two. But in Putin’s case – he’s embracing a multi-national situation which is inherited from more than a century.
I like aspects of multi-nationalism, but the costs can often/generally outweigh the benefits.
And Putin has not concept of introducing this concept of filtering the best immigrants (although I’m neither sure many want to come).
He’s really from a different generation.
As for Japan – they are the complete counter-example for ‘multi-national ideals’. They are mono-nationality and yet far more civilized than almost all other countries in the world.
Obviously I’m not in favour of human sacrifice, and that’s not what I was thinking about. I was thinking rather of something like the Church reformers of the 11th century who wanted to impose unity on religious practices throughout Latin Christendom, with the pope as the central authority. Part of that effort was a quest for liturgical uniformity and the abolition of local liturgies like the Mozarab liturgy in Spain.
I accept however that such efforts often weren’t successful (I’ve now googled it, apparently even the Mozarabic rite is still in partial use) and that in practice the Catholic church has tolerated much local diversity. In any case, the situation in Christendom with its quasi-national kingdoms and strong traditions of secular law was always different from the world of Islam (which imo would definitely benefit today from a strengthening of nation states and a lessening of Islamic religious influence).
As for Werteunion, they have a lot of good ideas, but frankly, I think they’re ineffectual and won’t be able to take the CDU back in a more conservative direction. I understand that you as a Christian conservative have reservations against a party like AfD, given the history of German nationalism (not least in relation to Poland) and the sometimes excessively pro-Russian stance of some AfD members. But imo AfD is absolutely necessary today for change in Germany. I don’t think the CDU is really redeemable, it’s Merkel’s party on every level, and after what they’ve supported over the past few years (all around disastrous for German interests, not just on the immigration/asylum issue) and how they’ve behaved (total arrogance of power), I just want that party to disappear tbh.
Sixthtone is filled with Fifth columnist baizuo quislings. Besides that though, the article said nothing about welcoming foreigners, merely that they would administratively streamline immigration issues by merging the entry and exit with the immigration inspection bureaus. In theory it could make immigration easier, in practice it makes it simpler to identify illegals and visa over stayers and kick them out. The only immigrants that China “welcomes” is other Chinese.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201801/23/WS5a668664a3106e7dcc135dfb.html
But the Arabs causing problems in Israel aren’t really the Christians, are they? More like militant Muslims.
Anyway, you make a lot of good points, it’s interesting to read your honest views about Israel, based on personal experience, on AK’s blog.
I was unclear/mispoke and was engaging in some typical Jewish hyperbole. I was typing faster than I was thinking and went overboard.
What I meant to criticize was old style Japanese nationalism that obsessed on racial purity. Other people here who know better than I are saying that Japan is done with that, and if that’s the case, then I have no major quarrel with Japanese style nationalism even though I’m not a great fan of Japanese culture and find it to be excessively xenophobic.
I agree that states should, for the most part, encourage assimilation by their minorities but I also think that a little bit of multi multiculturalism a la the 1950’s US or contemporary Russia and China is a good thing and I think that it is sad that the people here don’t want that for their own countries.
That’s how I feel. I wasn’t trying to offend anybody or dictate how things should be.
Japan not multicultural in any way.
Oh, I certainly don’t deny that a religion like Islam expects certain baseline conformity to religious norms among its adherents, no matter what their local background. This is one of the reasons the Taliban went after something like bacha bazi or the forced inheritance of widows with extreme prejudice. And the dark side of religion, when it gets into the hands of extremists can be very, very scary in this regard. But the normative voice also breeds a mentality that respects local norms and cultures and even accords local norms a place in the religious law – which is where the maxim ‘al-adatu muhakkamah’ (culture/local norms are made the arbiter) derives.
And it traditionally doesn’t care much about non-Muslim cultures and what they do as long as they pay taxes and don’t do stupid things like public blasphemy. Which is why Muslim polities drafted dhimmah agreements with or created millets for local populations to let them have autonomy in the most important things in life; belief and culture.
Prof. Jonathan Brown mentioned the case of the Mughals who even allowed the Hindu practice of widow burning to continue (as detestable as it was in our tradition) as long as it was confirmed that the widow was doing it out of choice. The British were the ones who shut it down.
Yeah, I don’t like nationalism because it has pitted Muslim against Muslim in maddening fratricide based on borders (often straight lines) drawn up by people who killed our forefathers – the entire enterprise is stupid from the outset from a Muslim perspective. Would you respect this if the Muslims had overrun all of Europe and left it in this state?:
http://assets2.bigthink.com/system/tinymce_assets/5407/original/Europe__Colonised.jpg
It’s a joke. Look at Syria – straight lines? Are we supposed to take that seriously?
I also don’t like what it did to non-Muslim minorities who were often purged by the millions when our multi-ethnic, multi-religious polities gave way to imported ethno-linguistic-nationalism.
Our only saving grace has been that we are generally very incompetent at it (no surprise) thus a nation like Pakistan can remain a nation of about 5 or 6 distinct ethnicities that still have their local language and culture though the elites from Islamabad would love to do with enforcing Urdu what the new Parisian elite were able to do in rooting out local dialects of French:
“Diffusion of the standard language throughout the community in the nineteenth century involved not just a change of linguistic habits, but also the spread of a whole set of beliefs about language, which we referred to earlier as standard ideology, namely: 1) the ideal state of a language is one of uniformity, 2) the most valid form of the language is to be found in writing, 3) the standard variety is inherently better (ie. more elegant, clearer, more logical, etc.) that other varieties. The Ancien Regime had not felt the need to propagate the standard very far beyond the ruling elite. However, with the abolition of the monarchy in 1792, the French language was promoted to being the prime element binding the French people together. It became the central criterion of ‘Frenchness’, the badge of French nationhood, the symbol of rationality and partiotic values, to which the whole population was now expected to subscribe.”
A Sociolinguistic History of Parisian French (Cambridge Univ. Press
Maybe you think that’s a great thing, someone like me doesn’t. Even the Qur’an is phonetically preserved in the local variations of Arabic dialect that existed at the time of the Prophet (pbuh).
AP brought up the example of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which I personally like; they gave Muslims in their land a degree of semi-autonomy to live by the Shariah in certain civil aspects.
So it’s a cost benefit analysis; one picks one over the other based on what values they prioritize in life. I can hardly expect our values to be the same in this regard due to the differences in belief.
Peace.
Its directly been mentioned in Party initiatives that one of the goals is to increase technical immigration and I’ve read one that specifically mentioned that non-Han immigration was targeted. You’re conflating Xi’s efforts to increase “cultural confidence” to counter the well-known issues of “West-loving” Chinese and general cultural infiltration by the West with your own pet pinata.
I imagine that in a few years, you’ll be going back to calling Xi a cuck again.
It’s not the militant Muslims. It’s the bottom feeding, working class Muslims who have never opened a Koran in their lives and think that sleeping with Jewish girls counts as “resistance”.
Agreed – adding in “Turkish only” is gay. Only people like the Young Turks (no, not the youtube guys – the real ones) would have pushed it.
Peace.
Exactly. Dutch, Russian, Japanese … they don’t care.
Dang bro – maybe they can arrange a swap; Canada trades its Muslims (like say 3 a piece) for every Israeli Jew it takes in.
Totally down for that.
Peace.
I was just at a Muslim conference over the weekend – there was a booth catering to Muslims to visit China on vacation to explore the historical Muslim presence and culture.
If someone looks at China (as a historical phenomenon) then one realizes that the post-Mao era is part continuity and part aberration (why wouldn’t it be, it was based on philosophical writings of Jewish heretics halfway across the world). I’m not an expert on China, but from what I know about Muslim history there; it is generally either positive or at least balanced on the whole.
Even during times of turmoil like certain Muslim revolts (which were fairly late in the game) – the Chinese emperor fielded loyalist Muslims is large numbers to help put down the revolt.
Peace.
Global Times is also a “quisling” rag:
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1094412.shtml
In all honesty, its clear that China does want to shape the flow of immigration so that it is heavily Han – but not exclusively. But Duke’s dreams of Giant North Korea will be frustrated, unfortunately. In fact, Juche paradise is probably going to open up in a few years.
And then he can go back to bitching about the traitorous elites, blahblah.
I think you should drop the idea that Israel at some point in the future is going to disappear or be overwhelmed by its Muslim environment like the crusaders’ states were.
Even if one accepts that the Palestinians have many legitimate grievances (certainly the case), such sentiments aren’t constructive for peace and will be rejected by even the most liberal Israelis.
And if it ever would come to a point that the Israelis feel it’s over for them, who knows what could happen…they have many nuclear weapons. One shouldn’t hope for such a situation.
You don’t need loyalist Muslims to put down Muslim revolts if there aren’t Muslims there in the first place.
That is true, but we’re talking extremely small numbers. China actually tightened its immigration policies under Xi. There are a lot of stories about muh poor black street-peddlers no longer living the life in Guangzhou, many are forcibly deported.
Furthermore, China recently overhauled its visa policy and it has instituted a color-coded system, where highly technical immigrants are given an easier time to immigrate while all others (who constitute the vast majority of potential entrants) are given a much harsher time (from an already difficult system). This is good.
Finally, China in 2016 granted something like 1000(!) citizenships. According to one, admittedly somewhat dated, study, only about 845K foreigners live in China. A significant chunk of those will be from neighboring countries, too. Japan has twice that number with an order of a magnitude lower population, and it’s hardly seen as a multicultural paradise. China’s immigration and citizenship policies are extremely harsh(or just sane, really), even for East Asian standards. I don’t see how selective liberalisation for a tiny amount of highly specialised experts would change that fact. Xi has continued and in fact deepened this legacy.
To underline my point.
Life drains from Little Africa as China dream fades for its fortune seekers
https://i.imgur.com/78vOApM.jpg
Could you say no to this man? This horror cannot be allowed to stand!
Sarcasm aside, there is absolutely a crackdown on unskilled immigration on the part of the Xi administration, which wasn’t even that pervasive to start with. Highly selective liberalisation for a tiny amount of specialised roles does not change that overall pattern. Xi deserves praise for this.
Why? You really think it’s going to be around in 500 years? Why? I can easily see it being absorbed into a semi-autonomous largely Jewish area within a greater Islamic polity. And things going back to status quo before Israel, where Jews could settle across the Muslim world as they like – as far as Morocco, Yemen, Indonesia (actually there is a Rabbi named Tovia Singer who has helped Jews – left over from Dutch colonial times – in Indonesia establish a synagogue in Jakarta).
I mean, I don’t even see Pakistan being around in 500 years.
Israel is a fairly recent phenomenon and wouldn’t have gotten off the ground even in the Jewish diaspora across the Muslim world if the Arab nationalists hadn’t stupidly added fuel to the fire by considering all Jews (that had lived in the lands for centuries) to be 5th columnists. It’s obvious in the writings of many Zionists that they were frustrated that groups like the Jews of Egypt and Iraq weren’t very interested in their pipe dream.
I’m literally teaching my kids about the Crusades right now. I expect them to teach their kids and so on. An imam came back from a trip to Ghana recently; the ulema of Ghana were speaking about the plight of the Palestinians.
Peace.
This is true but let’s be real:
1) Muslims have been around in China (and quite native to it for centuries)
2) Chinese history shows us that they don’t need Muslims around for impressive, record-setting, brutal civil wars and revolts where they curb-stomp and starve each other – I get China seems internally peaceful right now but that is about as much a historic anomaly as nobody marching across the border between France and Germany
Just sayin’…
Peace.
You would probably need something even more radical, though I like AfD. They got rid of a lot of weaklings during the election season instead of debasing themselves like FN has done under Le Pen. Gauland is my favourite politician in any Western country of a major party.
If Höcke would take the helm, I’d consider them to be close to be sufficiently radical to drive real change. But ultimately, I think they can best be thought of as a bridgehead. Germany, along with the rest of Europe does need ethno-nationalism without excuses or apologies. This is not a path without dangers, as the 20th century showed, but we now have the scorecard for what happens when you don’t have it and that is guaranteed submersion and self-liquidation, accompanied by large-scale self-hatred.
This is the case even in countries with little history to hate themselves for (such as Sweden). That shows that the pathology cannot be blamed on historical circumstances but is an in-built feature of the current ideological system.
LMAO I sincerely hope you’ll get to experience it someday, living on $200 per month. And don’t forget, they are moving towards European utility prices as well.
Speaking of which, I’ve been thinking about your previous comment regarding the upcoming world cup in Russia, which will raise prices for everyone and generally mean more tourists (including imported drunkards & hooligans) than is usually the case. Maybe better to visit Kiev and/or Lviv this summer instead of Moscow, and save that for next year when there will be less commotion and lower prices.
May I ask if you’ve been recently to either city(Kiev and Lviv) of late? And if so, do you recommend visiting them both in tandem or on separate visits? Any general comments on both? Obviously I have affection for Lviv due to the complex history vis-a-vis Poland that city has, but I’ve also been thinking a lot about Kiev since it feels more like ‘Ukraine Proper’, for a lack of a better word. Any thoughts/recommendations/tips, preferably those which many don’t think about. I trust your judgement more than a generic travel guide, half of which are corrupted and bribed anyway.
Thanks – yes Israel/Hebrew is one of my main hobbies. I don’t know that much about the history, but I’ve travelled in almost all parts of it.
The Christian Arab-Israelis are only 8% of the Arab-Israelis. If you go to Haifa, you can see more of them.
Like most Middle Eastern minorities, they side with whichever group is the powerful one where they live.
The Christian Arabs, which live in mixed villages with Muslims (this might be the majority), are outwardly pro-Palestinian. And the ones which live in mixed-towns with Jews, are often outwardly pro-Israel (a lot started volunteering for the army in recent years).
–
There are also some cultural differences inside Israel in attitudes to Arabs. In Haifa, people are quite-pro Arab. Even the Russian people there seem to talk about their Arab friends.
Whereas there are other towns, like Lod.
It’s one third Arab ( a lot are Palestinians from the West Bank, who Israel gives citizenship to for collaborating with the security service), one third-Arab-Jewish, and one third Russian-speaking – and they have almost three separate, hostile ghettos for each group. (This kind of city is a mess).
But why would Muslims want to move from Canada (with its record breaking standard of life), to the Middle East?
Well, yes, but there’s no reason to try to actively ethnically replace your own people unless you actually hate them. The only people needed are those who’ll add to the quality of the country and the living standard of the population.
I’m sure they might not want to – but this thread is full of statements about policies that Muslims might not like. Plus it’s a democratic country where Muslims are a minority; if the overall population could be convinced it was a good thing, they would simply be forced to take the deal – there’s really no technical limit in majoritarian rule – even constitutions can be amended.
Actually if that offer was on the table; I might actually take it if I was compensated for my house and such. Of course the wife would have to be on board.
Peace.
Höcke is too toxic, even I have grave reservations about him because of his obsession with WW2 issues…there’s absolutely no point in going on about Bomber command’s bombing of German cities during WW2 or about the expulsions of Germans from the lost eastern territories (Höcke is the grandson of East Prussian expellees on both sides of his family…East Prussia seems to be something of a lost mythical paradise for him). Going on about that kind of stuff will only lead to bad blood among Europeans and might harm Germany’s relations with her neighbours…it’s also completely irrelevant given the pressing issues of creeping Islamization and demographic replacement underway in Germany.
That being said, Höcke is often unfairly maligned imo, and bourgeois losers who say they can’t support AfD because of him are just conformist cowards imo.
Gauland is a good guy, it’s unfortunate that he’s so old.
Aside from some scenarios like war, persecution, deportation – the net migration always flows from places with a lower-quality of living, to places with a higher-quality of living.
So Canadian Muslims (even Palestinian ones) would not even want to go to Israel/Palestine on net.
There’s the same reason – with greater distinction – Canada and Norway are full of immigrants, and Ukraine is not.
With Israel, it’s quite popular to hear people from Ukraine or Russia talking about it as a ‘stepping stone’ on the way to places like Canada or New Zealand. That said, it’s true there are a lot of eccentrics who fall in love with the stepping stone, and never make it further . (Attitude to Middle Eastern life, depends a lot on your personality.)
Yes – I agree with you. That’s what my Dad stood in line and moved his family for; material betterment.
I guess my point is that a Canada that will actually be willing to legally force transfer some of its Muslims to Israel to swap them out for Jews, will have already become a place that is not very pleasurable to be if one is a Muslim.
It’s really up to the Canadian people which way they want to go.
Peace.
It’s the unreported inflation which has really gone crazy in Ukraine in the last year – according to my friend from Odessa. A lot higher than is claimed in the official figures.
A Felix Keverich post would not be complete without a lie.
It’s more like $250 per month in the oblast, higher in the city. $300 per month in Lviv city is probably like $1000 per month in Moscow. Liveable. Ukraine has the cheapest cost of living in Europe.
Some English tourist made a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTY7xx0Zdnw
Life is too good and safe in the West – even the Western Muslims have probably lost the ability to survive in a stressful Middle Eastern environment. (If say a future Palestinian state wanted to invite them).
The Arab-Jews in France have also found Israel too tough in the recent years.
I know this more intense and stressful atmosphere in the air in the Middle East, and can see how it would turn Westerners crazy in a few months.
It’s already reported in the Israeli media, how the Moscow people (who came in the ‘Camembert aliyah’) are returning to Moscow from Israel, feeling stressed out. They say the Eastern Ukrainians, are the best new olim coming there now because they are toughened by conflict and seem interested in staying.
A tourist travelling in tourist areas, does not necessarily get much understanding of how life is for the average people.
Obviously Lvov is great for tourism – and should be receiving far more tourists than currently. But the life for the average people, whose salaries are devaluing through inflation?
I thought about the Mars project. How much would it cost? 50 billion? That’s the cost of a Sochi Olympics, and probably not only better PR, but also would result in the development of new technologies. For example the nuclear engine. That’d be cool. So I don’t think it’s the dumbest idea ever. Okay, dumb, but not very dumb.
So interesting you say this. I would definitely agree with you when it comes to environments that are basically free-fire zones; nobody wants to live there. People like stability for sure.
I actually find those countries less stressful if one is simply willing to relax and not have the same expectations as in the West; things will not be done in an orderly manner, they won’t get done right away, close your eyes when in a taxi so you don’t see the maniac way your driver is ducking in and out of traffic, be willing to put away some of your individual preference to merge in with local culture, etc.
Those places seem more relaxed and allow much more time for family, leisure, and (gasp!) prayer.
But if you expect Morocco or Egypt to function like Paris – then you will be disappointed for your inane assumptions.
Peace.
I’ve been saying for a long time that we need a new corruption index.
A lot of the corruption in the West is codified into the system, so everyone plays make-believe that it doesn’t exist. But, it does, and the scale of it is truly massive, and it impacts all levels of life.
A good number of Jewish atheists still consider themselves Jews.
Should read as : A good number of atheists raised as Jews, still consider themselves Jews.
Yes, after following your dialogue for several years now, I would also qualify you as a Ukrainian patriot, not a nationalist. And although I’m glad that there are clearheaded individuals like you out there, I find it hard to believe that you don’t, more than occasionally, rub up against friends and acquaintances that might find your rolling mixture of likes and dislikes somewhat confusing if not disconcerting? Let’s see, you’re a Ukrainian patriot, who more than on one occasion has exhibited a strong Polish leaning, who at the same time ‘loves Russian culture’? Without trying to pry and get too personal, I wonder how your wife adjusts to your pan-Slavic, if not cosmopolitan, cultural milieu?
As it’s no secret that you currently live in America, I wonder what language you mostly communicate with your children? You’ve already disclosed that you send them to Ukrainian language schools. Like yourself, I also have Polish and Russian components within my pedigree, and can strongly identify with your sympathies and open mindedness, but at the end of the day, my Ukrainian sympathies always remain steadfast and dominant.
I was in Ukraine in the summer of 2017. My previous trip had been in 2013, so I can compare before and after Maidan.
Lviv is a jewel. It is certainly worth seeing. It’s a beautiful city. It has really transformed itself. In the 90s it was in horrible shape; in 2002 when I visited the first signs of life had appeared – a few great restaurants, but the city was still mostly crumbling. No electricity after 9 PM, which was bad for locals but wonderful for tourists. Imagine being in the 17th century center of a city of 800,000 and being able to see the stars as if in the deep mountains. It would be like stepping back in time in Prague or Krakow. By 2011 the city was about 80% restored (that is, 4 in 5 buildings were remade, occupied, there was still some crumbling or gaps in development). By 2013, 95% restored. In 2017, the center had little room for improvement, but luxury stores such as Emporio Armani have appeared, and large malls have been built in the suburbs as they have expanded.
Good food, good beer. All Europeans. Occasional nationalist protests. Very cheap for peole with foreign currency. I suspect that because of the hrynia drop a lot of people from Kiev who previously would have gone to Prague now come to Lviv for short holidays, there is more Russian spoken in the cafes than before (and I doubt, by tourists from Russia). In 2013 I saw a huge anti-gay religious protest, led by columns of priests and nuns marching in step, followed by laypeople singing religious songs. It was very impressive.
A video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTY7xx0Zdnw
Lviv’s tech industry is expanding rapidly and even for not highly educated people there are a lot of light industrial plants being opened.
Locals tend to be friendly and nice towards Poles but be prepared for possible annoyances – the locals have erased a lot of Polish history, and Banderism is everywhere, though sometimes it is kitschy and tongue-in-cheek. There is a restaurant with an indoor shooting range where you an shoot Stalin or Putin, and it serves dishes called “meat of drowned Moskal.” Some actual Banderists are offended by this place. Banderism in its modern form is anti-Russian, not really anti-Polish (indeed, it sees Poland as a model) unless provoked. Russian nationalists, naturally, want to have it provoked by Poles.
Ivano-Frankivsk is about as nice as Lviv, but smaller (haven’t been there). Ternopil (have been there), for some reason, has skipped development and is depressing. If a Russian nationalist would want to make a dishonest video of western Ukraine being poor and depressed, he should avoid Lviv and come to Ternopil.
Kiev is worth seeing for political reasons – it is the capital and largest city, and commercial center. But it is like Warsaw to Lviv’s Krakow – not as beautiful. Moscow is much prettier. Though Kiev has more trees than Moscow, nice beaches on the river, it is less hectic and has some easy-going sort of charm. It used to have a very active punk scene, and friends from Moscow who are into that used to even fly down to go to concerts. I have no idea if this is still the case, Muscovites have been made unwelcome there now.
In 2017 Kiev had seen slight decline from 2013. While Lviv stores and cafes are packed, and new malls being opened, in Kiev they are not empty but not so busy either. I didn’t see empty or closed places, just not very busy ones, and some residential construction, but it has been modest. Still plenty of traffic, it’s not a dead city by any means. National Art Gallery is very nice, the old churches and monasteries are worth seeing too.
So Kiev is worth seeing to get a better picture of Ukraine but Lviv is much more pleasant and fun. I would recommend seeing Kharkiv too to get a full picture of the country, but I haven’t gone there.
Trains are great.
Everywhere in Ukraine one comes across recently demobilized ATO soldiers in uniform, from time to time. This was different from 2013. Kiev has become pretty nationalist, but still Russian-speaking. It has surpassed 2013 Galicia’s level of nationalism.
Sure, though this video of bad driving shows driving around random parts of the city:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb0aZ6nlfN8
Looks good. Does not look like some third world dump as some Russian nationalists wish it to be.
IIRC Lviv’s salaries rose 20% but prices rose 9% in 2017. People are coming out ahead.
None of my relatives in Lviv have any problems, all of them are doing better than ever. My relatives in central Ukraine are more mixed. Two of them moved to Poland to work. One owned a small construction firm, had no business for a year, moved to Germany for 6 months (before visa-free), came back with money and a newer VW, and now business has picked up and he’s is doing almost as well as before. His wife worked for a bank that closed, but after a year was rehired by another bank, at a lower salary. They are doing okay now.
It may be worse in Kharkiv or Odessa.
Excellent point.
Peace.
I know Israel and Israelis very well, and this is in my opinion pretty much a guaranteed outcome in the next 100 years. As I’ve mentioned often, modern Westerners have a hard grasping the concept of “change”, as well as seeing the larger historical picture. They subscribe to a kind of simplistic “essentialism” – you are not likely to persuade them otherwise.
Historically, no state has lasted very long in the area now called Israel. It’s always been incorporated sooner or later into larger political entities. Basically, Israel’s survival is entirely dependent on America, and once American decline reaches its decisive point, it’s pretty much over for Israel.
It would be difficult to prove to people that the project is actually happening. What I mean it would be easy to sabotage it by undermining the public trust. Perhaps it is better to make a good movie for 50 millions and make people dream about it than make it real for 50 billions and have people doubt it.
Kids speak both languages fluently. I have to say – I spoke a lot of Ukrainian in public in Moscow with my kid and never had any unpleasantness from anybody. Otherwise I’ve probably revealed too much as it is. My own family despised Bandera – when I was a kid, before I understood politics, if someone asked what “Banderist” meant I literally would have said it’s the Ukrainian word for “jerk.” If someone asked me what a proletarian was I would have responded – a slob who doesn’t tie his shoelaces or tuck in his shirt (it was how I was chastised if being messy – don’t be a proletarian).
Kiev
Do Ukrainians still refer to it as Kiev as opposed to Kyiv (whereas no one seems to refer to Lvov much these days)? If so, is it because it is primarily Russian speaking?
When I visited a colleague’s father in Lviv in 1993, matches were an unobtainable “luxury good” whereas cooking gas was still virtually free, so that he left his gas burners on 24 hours a day.
Japan may be the only country to still export its culture (as a consumer product), and that is part of what makes it so successful, as an export, IMO – the lack of any competing product. I know I’ve spent money on it because I’m really tired of the forced messages which infuse almost everything the West produces now. However, it is unfortunately easy to see negative influences like feminists and multicult believers in the West putting up barriers to the unfiltered culture (raising stinks on Twitter, etc.)
What America exports started mostly as a lifestyle, but now it has become an ideology. This ideology has spread to the rest of the West. Some years ago, I watched a cartoon movie produced which took place in Medieval Ireland. One of the characters was black! A king Arthur movie was produced by Guy Ritchie a short while ago, and it had at least 3 blacks – one actor even born in Africa.
It is so funny that the Lord of the Rings movies were produced only a few years ago, and were a huge, mainstream success, based on European mythology and history – even the siege of Vienna – and starring only whites. Now, a lot of fringe elements are calling Tolkien a racist, and nonwhites are obnoxiously saying that movies like that can’t be made anymore. Amazon paid a lot for the TV rights, but Bezos seems to be an ideologue judging from WaPo, so it will be interesting to see what he does with it. I’m sure they will try to subvert it. Make the elves Nazis or something.
Some Ukrainian nationalists get upset by Kiev but it is the English and commonly used standard (chicken Kiev). Apparently the Ukrainian language originally used Kiev, also, switching the 19th century. Most natives speak Russian so they use Kiev.
Article quoting a Ukrainian linguist who prefers Kiev:
http://www.infoukes.com/faq/kyiv-2/
Lvov on the other hand is strictly the Russian word for the city, used internationally only during Soviet times. It’s a Sovok relic, like Sverdlovsk or Leningrad. Prior it Sovok rule, when it was populated by Poles, it was written Lwow (pronounced “Lvoove”). Or Lemberg under the Austrians for 150 years before that. Or the Latin word Leopolis. Lviv is what natives call it.
LOL, that is true. I was there in 1990, it was awful for residents (but beautiful).
I would not compare modern Kiev to modern Moscow. But Lviv can be compared, “pound for pound.” It’s 1/12 the size, so a different league as a city, but if someone transported Lviv to Moscow one would not at all feel that entering the “Lviv” area meant entering a worse area. Kiev OTOH is certainly not as nice, despite some particular advantages (more southerm, laid back atmosphere, greener areas, beaches, as I had mentioned).
Hopefully, you now realize that the vast majority of young Banderite recruits were not the bloodthirsty, anti-Semitic, scoundrels that a few of them represented? This is not to try to exculpate the whole movement from responsibility for any racist and unnecessary crimes that were committed under its banner of extreme nationalism. It’s just a reminder that a lot of young, ‘patriotic’ Ukrainians were often times limited to the type of organizations that were prominent in their specific neighborhoods. In general, older Volhynians tended to associate more with the Melnikyte branch, whereas, younger Galician types tended to be over represented within the Banderite ranks. A great majority of these Ukrainians (in either camp or belonging to other forms of associations) were just patriotic types, trying to defend their homeland from the intrusions of their over zealous neighbors. A young Bukovynian Banderite recruit undoubtedly had no idea what a Melnikyte was up to in Volhynia. The movements were scattered wide and often didn’t communicate with each other. Coherence and centrality was often a missing component, therefore it’s hard to generalize about these movements.
Hey AaronB,
Glad you could throw in.
I certainly hope to live to see that; I’m fairly sick of how Zionism (and honestly, idiotic Arab nationalism) has completely derailed the relationship between Jews of the Middle East and Muslims. Personally, I’d like it if they were able to live safe and secure lives wherever they wanted across the wider Muslim world (parts of the Hijaz might be restricted though). Part of that also requires Salafi-Wahhabi thought likewise losing ground and being marginalized within the that timeframe.
Exactly – as I pointed out to Daniel, the fact that the border between France and Germany is quiet right now is not normal, it is an anomaly. Is this because of; 1) the modern educational system of the nation state that fudges history in this manner in order to make its citizens feelz good or 2) the myth of human “progress” and “end of history” is essential for the psychological welfare of modern man (whether it’s true or not)?
If, as Gore Vidal stated, “history is nothing more than the bloody record of the migration of tribes”, can history simply be stopped by making sure those damned tribes cannot move again and sit still?
Exactly – even during times of Muslim control, it went with one or another sovereign; whoever fielded the largest army. In fact, I thank God that Tamerlane never besieged it like he did Damascus, otherwise it may also have a historical marker in the city called the “Tower of Heads”.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but Haim Farhi was a Jewish adviser to the local Ottoman Bey of the area and he was crucial in repelling Napoleon’s siege of Acre (one of the few successful defenses against the French who ran amuck over Egypt and the Levant handing Muslim armies defeat after ignoble defeat – see the lopsided deaths at the Battle of the Pyramids). Anyway, Napoleon offered him the patronage of the Jews to control that land to try to swing him to his side, but the man refused:
“France and his army, Napoleon wrote to the Jews in what many today point to as one of the first iterations of modern Zionism, ‘offers to you at this very time, and contrary to all expectations, Israel’s patrimony.’ Haim Farhi, Jezzar Pasha’s advisor, was not, however, wooed by the French general’s promises of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel.”
http://www.jpost.com/Features/In-Thespotlight/This-Week-in-History-Napoleon-is-repelled-from-Acre
I tend to, as it seems you do, take the long view of history and not get distracted by smaller patterns or abnormalities. Law of averages and what not…
Peace.
Frickin’ awesome too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmx4eX6SO48
Peace.
Hmm, defining culture as entertainment production for the sake of exploration in this post:
I think there is competing product out there – India comes to mind. I know that Turkey apparently had fairly good quality as well, and original Conan the Barbarian’s director made an effort close to the end of years to cast a new Conan in Turkey. Its a pity that he didn’t succeed – I do love the first Conan movie(and the Howard, for that matter).
Gwern wrote an essay about this once and he noted that Japan’s strength is that it just seems to produce a huge quantity of intellectual property in terms of fiction and art in spite of its not very large population. A huge quantity of it is copying each other, but activity is extremely high at imageboards(4chan was a copy of Futaba Channel) and there’s an active local community for doujins, etc. There’s an Indian analyst who talked about this and he mentioned that there’s nothing at all comparable in India, for example.
By the time something actually makes it to export, its usually among the best of the pile.
During the war people fought against occupiers in various formations. Not every Soviet soldier was a Stalinist, of course, and plenty of people joined UPA (at least later on) not out of ideological Banderism though I suspect any UPA person who was in Volhynia in 1943 has a lot of Polish civilian blood on his hands.
Bandera was a nationalist-fascist and his movement nasty and abhorrent to a lot of normal people.
For example, Andrei Sheptytsky used his personal funds to buy a newspaper just to prevent it form falling into the hands of Banderists. This fact is often whitewashed now. After Banderists murdered an ethnic Ukrainian school principal, veteran of the Ukrainian Galician Army, who had apparently given some of them bad grades, Sheptytsky wrote in the largest pre-war Ukrainain newspaper about Banderists:
“If you are planning to kill treacherously those who are opposed to your misdeeds, you will have to kill all the teachers and professors who are working for the Ukrainian youth, all the fathers and mothers of Ukrainian children…all politicians and civic activists. But first of all you will have to remove through assassination the clergy and the bishops who resist your criminal and foolish actions…We will not cease to declare that whoever demoralizes our youth is a criminal and an enemy of our people.”
Here is one of my relatives:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyryl_Studynsky
Brutally assaulted in his office by Banderist thugs.
::::::::::::
This of course has little to do with the sanitized, modern idea of “Banderism.”
You are not going to stop the invasion by repeating their slogan with a modifier.
Ahahahaha. Academia really is an universal bastion of leftism everywhere.
It is easier to lure Chinese talents to China simply because they already speak the language and feel comfortable with the culture.
But the Chinese gov doesn’t care if they are Chinese, and it is not something the Chinese officials have to worry about at this juncture because it is not easy to attract top talents around the globe to live and work in in China. I doubt it could pick up 200,000 in the next 5 years. It would be a drop in a bucket even if it hits a million. It is not like anyone could get in. Good luck if you are a Han Chinese cab driver born and raised in Malaysia trying to move to China.
I use “Kiev”, with rare exception like when referring to the “Kyiv Post”. That’s how that org spells itself – so I’ll respect that, while disagreeing with its general slant.
On the other hand, I’m prone to using Lviv, in recognition of the very obvious predominating preference there.
On the subject of Kiev:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/12/countering-anti-russian-propaganda.html
Excerpt:
“In the US, White Russians like the Kiev born Igor Sikorsky, have led successful careers as loyal American citizens.”
Here’s a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, using the more common Russian preferred English language transliteration of “Vladimir” as opposed to the modern Ukrainian English language version “Volodymyr“:
http://www.stvladimirparishcenter.com/eng/index.php
Numerous other instances like that.
That’s definitely increasingly a thing in Western popular culture, there was some discussion about this in relation to that Kingdom come deliverance video game (which has been criticized for not featuring blacks in 15th century Bohemia):
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-38/
I think flight from diversity messaging is definitely a factor in the popularity of foreign cultural products among Westerners.
A few years ago I even found myself greatly enjoying the Israeli tv series Hatufim. At least it featured people with normal patriotic sentiments and didn’t include any didactic pro-diversity narrative, like so many Western movies, series etc. nowadays.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2131030/ethnic-chinese-and-want-live-china-find-out-if-you-qualify-new
Technically it isn’t racial, its based on ancestry of citizenship. But unless you’re that extremely rare case, everyone who has a grandparent with Chinese citzenship is ethnically Chinese. In the case of our Malay Han driver, I imagine he could make a fair argument though he might be denied.
I can fully understand your distaste for the Banderite movement. It appears that members of your family experienced some harsh and unnecessary treatment from some extremist members of their movement. But you don’t hold every member associated with the movement responsible for the acts of a few depraved individuals? I’d be interested in reading what exactly Petro Mirchuk wrote about the treatment of Ivan Babij, that you’ve cited. I wasn’t able to load his citation listed within your citation. Mirchuk was quite an intellectual, not unlike your relative that received such harsh treatment. He was a very devout Catholic/Christian whose son became a priest. He lived through the horrors of Auschwitz and was a personal confidante of the Bandera brothers, later in life becoming one of their chief apologists and a historian of the movement of some note.
I was under impression that one is not allowed to travel into the real Muslim areas.
There are Hui, who are “good” Muslims and generally tolerated; they also largely do not practice anything close to faithful Islamic customs. They eat pork, drink alcohol, etc and occasionally complain and get their way. They’re okay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_people
And then there are the Uyghurs, who are a massive effing pain.
They seem to not quite appreciate Confucius.
Why don’t the Communists just outlaw Islam? Don’t want the bad PR?
After colonization of Mars.
According to this Russian lady, living there as a citizen can be way harder than as a foreigner. So, not much demand for it on the other hand.
https://maria-gromakova.livejournal.com/1143473.html?thread=41110193#t41110193
Tragic case of a long-lost Indo-European kingdom in the middle of Asia that was conquered by Turkic tribes and its native culture obliterated by them. The people are something like 30% “European” but are Turkic-speaking Muslims.
Uighur who are more European-looking:
https://dvqlxo2m2q99q.cloudfront.net/000_clients/657152/file/657152wV3UFaw9.jpg
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2611/3704291272_3f30509c17_b.jpg
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BBM1P5/local-uyghur-people-in-urumqi-xinjiang-china-BBM1P5.jpg
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5gU4ehBoAgs/UZtb32M-9wI/AAAAAAAAA_Y/Ivgi0zLHQ4w/s640/Girl_in_Turpan,_Xinjiang,_China_-_20050712.jpg
They seem to be on their native land, I have some sympathy.
There are definitely some other centers competing against Hollywood, but I never watch soaps, so that cuts me off from a lot of it. What is so impressive to me about Japan is that its stuff seems to be so ubiquitous. One can walk into a lot of non-specialty stores and buy it, especially if you think of video games.
I’m kind of dismissive of Bollywood because there is only one Indian movie I’ve ever seen. I’ve actually seen more Indonesian movies than Indian ones, but I don’t know if that makes me untypical or not.
I wish I could find some sort of numerical comparison, but I’d bet Japan is far and away on top. Certainly in Europe and the Anglosphere. It will be interesting to see if China can displace them. They certainly have the advantage of a bigger domestic market, but from my perspective, they’ve been somewhat handicapped by the CCP, and Japan already being an established player. Yet, in a way that could turn into an advantage, as Disney is now even trying to challenge traditional values.
That and, I’d guess, loss of some lucrative contracts in the Muslim World. I mean, they even do research and joint development for things like tanks and jet fighters with Pakistan.
Last time I went to Saudi; everything from prayer rugs, prayer beads, skull caps, thobes, etc. were made in China.
It’s nice to have a large Ummah; sure we don’t have our act together some times, but numbers help. What was that old French saying? Something like; “God is on the side of the bigger battalion.”
Nobody that I know of backs an armed separatist movement for Uighurs in that area, but it would be nice if they just left them alone in that area – even if they simply isolated them from coming to the rest of China – think of it a little like Gaza – with less fences.
Peace.
This doesn’t sound completely accurate anymore(private universities have expanded and operate by their own rules), but it is correct that life is very tough there. More than anything else, in my opinion, that has the main impetus for emigration. There’s a number of jokes like “being born Chinese is starting in Hell mode in Diablo”, or the usual “pressure cooker” comments.
Life is very, very hard there.
lol yes i’ve noticed this too. Isn’t he a Belgium? These sort of people find anti-imperialism as another means of being anti-white
Daily Beast is reporting Syria only shot off two missiles against the FUCKUS strike, AFTER they struck.
Its not their native land, they were invited to settle by the Qing in the 1700s.
That’s a very interesting point about the perceived backwardness of the USSR. I’m pretty sure East Germany had a higher standard of living. It wouldn’t surprise me if that were also true of most of the Eastern Bloc, except Romania. Even with limited travel permitted, some of that must have filtered back and influenced how the language was perceived.
something is up with my comments; recent ones are not showing up under my name. @RonUnz
Hmmmm…issues kicked off by a distant ruling elite that didn’t think of the effects of immigration in long terms, now where have I heard about that before?
That’s OK – everyone makes these mistakes. Large parts of the Muslim world outsourced a lot of its fighting to Mamluk slave-soldiers that were bought from Central Asia and the Caucasus…then they took over control. It happens…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyer%27s_remorse
Peace.
Didn’t the Turkic Uighurs overrun the Indo-Europeans Tocharians and mixed with them? Tocharia was ancient:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocharians
And existed in what is now modern China.
You know much more about this than I do, but it seems that the partial Indo-European heritage of the Uighurs is undeniable. Perhaps the Qing expanded their settlements.
Uighur who are more European-looking
Presumably related to the Tarim Basin mummies
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2015/07/18/these-red-haired-chinese-mummies-come-from-all-over-eurasia-dna-reveals/#18c4ab843e2c
and perhaps to the Tocharian language (said by some etymologists to hold the key to the mysterious origin of the Germanic neuter word “wife”).
East Germany’s standard of living was the highest of the entire Eastern Bloc iirc.
It was pretty crap though by comparison with West Germany, most East German households didn’t own a telephone even by the late 1980s. My father worked in West Berlin in the 1980s and occasionally made excursions into the GDR…he felt it was like traveling back in time to the 1950s, and claims that occasionally one could even see pre-WW2 cars on the streets.
And East Germans knew of course how backwards their living standards were because they could watch Western television. They must have drawn conclusions about the Soviet union from that as well.
They existed there, but were oppressed by the Dzungar Mongols in the land. They asked Emperor Qianlong for help, who essentially genocided the Dzungars and gave the land to the Uighurs who pledged vassalage and loyalty to China in exchange.
These vows evidently did not last.
They probably wouldn’t exist at all today if Qing had not intervened for them.
Fascinating stuff. Apparently their extinct language may have been closer to Celtic and Germanic than to other Indo-European languages:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Centum_Satem_map.png/305px-Centum_Satem_map.png
To be clear, most of the Uighurs on googleimage look Central Asian, but the exceptions are striking:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v7FznJect6M/UZwuN4t4DdI/AAAAAAAABBI/Hi4hvfBhna4/s1600/Capture.PNG
Okay, thanks for the explanation. They are natives after all, but were saved from destruction by the Chinese in exchange for loyalty. I still have mixed feelings but don’t know nearly enough about the situation to argue about this.
The loss of an Indo-European Central Asia is one of those obscure historical topics that makes me strangely sad. Imagine we could have white(ish) Zoroastrians and Nestorian Christians handling the baggage at Sheremetyevo or busing trays at Mu-Mu instead of what we ended up with.
DDR was great. Kind of boring and and little bit depressing but I always enjoyed going there. Bohemia and Moravia was comparable imo and was a little bit more fun.
Did they pledge them to “China” or the institution of the emperor? The “Cultural Revolution” wiped all of that away.
This is the same reason for the current fighting between the Kurds and Turks:
“Especially among the Kurds, the caliphate had been held in high esteem. When, at the outset of the First World War, the Sultan in his capacity of Caliph or supreme leader of all Orthodox Muslims proclaimed a jihad, most Kurds rallied to the call. The large sums that had been spent by Russians in an attempt to buy some Kurdish chiefs’ loyalties were of no avail, nor could emotional appeals by Kurdish nationalists complete agains the Caliph’s word…As Van Bruneissen observes, it was not until this supra-ethnic bond was severed with the elimination of the caliphate that ‘more or less nationalist-inspired revolts’ began to emerge among the Kurds.”
Longing for the Lost Caliphate: A Transregional History (Princeton Univ Press.)
The institution of a figurehead – emperor/king that serves as a father-figure for the people allows these bonds to remain since – even tough he is a figurehead – he represents real blood and bones, a human heritage of sorts. Something that an abstract idea like the nation-state has a tough time replacing.
Peace.
Apparently their extinct language may have been closer to Celtic and Germanic than to other Indo-European languages.
Its a long story, but in short: most of them remained loyal to China even as late as the RoC era but due to outside intervention and subversion, this cohesion has been increasingly destroyed. I believe that they can still be assimilated and brought back to order.
Separated from Islam, they are perfectly fine. The issue is not with the people, its their religion.
Hui are the ones that look a like Han? I think when looks differ that opens up another fissure.
Hui are the ones that look a lot like Han? I think when looks differ that opens up another fissure.
Hui are 90% Han, yes, but I think it has more to do with not going into murder sprees than anything else:
I know Lvov, Chernovtsy and Kiev. Not recently, but in the past I was on holiday my parents all over.
Of course they are great cities for tourists, with beautiful architecture.
But beautiful cities – does not necessarily correlate with good living standards or income for ordinary people.
Sometimes there can be little connection.
I think in relation to Ekaterinburg – it looks like total shit. But it’s still a lot wealthier than Lvov.
But it’s even more striking if you compare to Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv is a ‘third-world’ (to use your words) looking city. In Tel Aviv, you even have to be careful not to touch random hanging wires, if you don’t want to electrocute yourself.
When you first arrive there, you will think you are in the third-world. It’s only when you get to know it really well, you’ll realize that people are rich (statistically it’s richer than Moscow). Superficially it has a lot of Third-World feeling (this is changing only in the last years with all the new skyscrapers).
Ironically, in the same country you can have a clean, modern, middle class looking city like Ashdod. And yet Ashdod is one of the poorer cities in Israel (but superficially it feels richer than Tel Aviv).
There’s other cases of this. For example Buenos Aires – I haven’t been there (it’s one of my dreams for the future), but this is famous for being grand and beautiful city. At the same time, the economic situation for Argentinian people is a disaster.
Islam has been in slow decline for the last thousand years though.
The Muslim world even won lottery in the 20th century, with oil discoveries. And yet even this vast wealth didn’t changed the situation.
So anything can happen – but I don’t understand how Islam will be resurgent in the future, when the last 1000 years have been the opposite process. It’s difficult ship to turn around – that’s been going downwards for so many centuries (China have managed, but few other people).
I’ve heard that there was a TV reception deadzone somewhere that was to be dreaded if you got reassigned in your job, and that shows like Dynasty and Dallas were popular. Guess it goes to show how powerful Hollywood can be.
Back when Hugo Chavez died, I was really fascinated to watch the channel from Venezuela because it felt like I was stepping back in time and watching communist TV. It is kind of funny to think of it: Venezuela and Cuba actually have an over the air signal here in Boston – you don’t even need a dish. Lots of regimes (including those in the West) seem to spend a lot of money on ineffective propaganda. I was shocked when I heard the Chinese numbers (they are pretty ambitious and maintain a radio network as well as a TV channel), and almost as shocked when I learned what Germany currently spends on state news.
For most people, this environment (Middle Eastern war countries) is only survivable if you have a lot of family and friends in the location – and even then you still have to be mentally tough person.
Israel is a very tough and stressful place to live (too much for most Westerners). So you can’t imagine what Iraq, Syria, Gaza, would be like now.
Whereas Western Europe and North America is the opposite – you can easily move there, even without knowing anyone. And you don’t need to be tough at all – life is on a silver platter, even for immigrants (let alone for the locals of Western countries, who are the most spoiled and fortunate populations in human history).
Yeah, I know of Chinese Muslim families whose grand parents were part of the Republic (as in with the government) but had to flee to Taiwan or elsewhere when the Communists took over.
Sure – as I mentioned about the post-Mao era being an aberration in Chinese history, we are undergoing our aberration. If the Takfiris don’t have much regard for Muslims who disagree with them, there’s very little hope they are going to play nice with non-Muslims. If I remember correctly, even part of the Dungan revolt was Wahhabi inspired.
And I have zero problems with the Chinese, just Communist-inspired ideology. Separated from that, they seem to be really cool folks.
Peace.
I doubt Sochi Olympics actually cost that much though (maybe they spent that much – but it didn’t cost that much).
Public broadcasting in Germany is a massive propaganda operation, and yes, the funds they get through the mandatory licence fee (basically a quasi-tax, every household has to pay it, businesses as well) are just obscene, about eight billion Euros a year iirc. Some of the heads of the networks and some of the anchormen earn hundreds of thousands of Euros a year.
It’s one of the main channels for pro-mass immigration/diversity propaganda, and you are forced to support it (there have been cases of people going to prison when they refused to pay). Some of the stuff they broadcast is really grotesque, e.g. there have been several episodes of Tatort (a horrible crime drama that for unfathomable reasons has acquired cult status in Germany) where the bad guys were right-wing populists clearly modelled on AfD politicians, or a bizarre movie in which all of Europe turns fascist and German lefties have to apply for asylum in South Africa (lol).
What I meant was on the other side of it, the Uyghur and Hui sides.
Islam has a lot of practices which seem to be meant to promote group solidarity. The least (but still significant) being the prohibition on pork. It seems to be meant to be exclusionary to other groups. (of course Jews have a similar practice – also meant to be exclusionary – but many have abandoned it) We all eat together, and you can’t eat with us – sort of thing. Christianity has Lent, but that seems more to be a scarcity sort of thing, like Buddhism’s prohibition on killing animals.
When group practices are added to different looks, it seems to be detrimental to public peace. I think that could be one reason that, for instance, Indonesian Muslims aren’t seen as being as restless. In a very broad way, they have a more Eastern look, and so identify as Eastern. Of course, there are many conflicts, where people look exactly the same.
seen as restless – where? Muslims are the majority in Indonesia.
They also seem to be getting more extreme by some reports, the stereotype of Indonesia as some paradise of moderate Islam might soon be outdated, e.g. see this:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-politics/jakartas-christian-governor-jailed-for-blasphemy-against-islam-idUSKBN1842GE
You’re looking at the wrong metrics, everyone makes that mistake. The problem is that the world has convinced itself that religion is of marginal importance and no longer a force to be reckoned with. They have bought their own propaganda. They’ve been telling us Islam is dying since before the Ottomans collapsed. As you said for the last thousand years. But the issue is you said “Islam” has been in slow decline, no it hasn’t – the material position of the Muslims certainly has vis-a-vis the rest of the world, but we started out like this and frankly we’ve had massive crises like the Mongol takeover and European colonialism that we recovered from. Islam is in a remarkably strong position since it is a religion, a very serious religion that still takes its tradition as normative (that’s what pisses everyone off):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bKpjjzBdFw
I’m literally still praying the same manner as transmitted by the Companion, Ibn Mas’ud (ra) whose opinions are where the Hanafi school is mostly distilled from. We still have phonetically preserved original recitations of the Qur’an – my daughter has almost 1/3 memorized. Plenty of my friends’ kids have the whole thing memorized. As Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad points out; by the metrics that count for a religion – relevancy for the spiritual needs of the masses of its adherents, it is well in top position.
The issue is fairly simple:
1) if a religion like Islam is made up by man – no problems, Muslims are delusional and you win – the game only goes in one direction – joke’s on us.
2) if a religion like Islam is true – then the only ones that win are those God blesses with victory, because He runs the show:
“He it is Who sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth that He may make it prevail over all religions; and Allah is enough for a witness.” (48:28)
“Allah has written: I will most certainly prevail, I and My messengers; surely Allah is All-Powerful, All-Mighty.” (58:21)
There’s just no room for despondency – not for us, not in the long haul.
The serious thinkers knew better than to write it off – read the chapter “On the Possibility of Islamic Resurgence”:
“In the major thing of all, religion, we have fallen back and Islam has, in the main, preserved its soul.”
The Essential Belloc: A Prophet for Our Times
Again, there’s not much discussion here since neither of us knows the future and we certainly won’t be around to see what happens, but it is essentially a metaphysical question at its core.
Peace.
Exactly. Uyghurs were where they are before Chinese got there. I am really surprised that seemingly reasonable commenters on this blog can be so easily sicced against them by Duke of Qin.
It is an incredible self-contradiction that the German government still funds Goethe Institutes in many countries. I suppose they are teaching potential migrants the best routes into Germany or something.
The US stuff is as bad, or worse, and I am galled by the BBC. It is crazy that people on either side of the pond think the Anglosphere isn’t big enough to be serviced by the commercial sector and in the age of streaming. IMO, all state broadcasts are destined to become evil, especially in multicult societies. They should all be abolished. People drawn into entertainment seem to be wired mostly as Leftists. Basically, it is self-organizing, and that is what makes it difficult to combat.
Sure. Lviv oblast has the highest life expectancy of all East Slavic oblasts. It has the lowest crime rate in Ukraine. Third highest % of population with post-secondary education in Ukraine. This suggests good living standards. It’s anecdotal, but none of my Lviv relatives experienced any hardships after 2013. Indeed, the statistics show mild decline 2014-2015, followed by growth. City isn’t merely architecturally beautiful – it has a rich cultural life, and is full of busy cafes and restaurants.
I’ve never been to Ekaterinburg so I can’t comment. I suspect that the cost of living is higher than in Lviv, so some of the difference is erased. There may also be more income disparity (true of Russia in general vs. Ukraine, and Lviv is an oligarch-free area so probably less income disparity there than in Ukraine overall) so further difference removed.
Good point. I wouldn’t mind seeing the Austro-Hungarian Empire recreated. Of course to make it work you need a monarchy as a focus for loyalty. But then monarchy is a far better system than democracy – as long as you avoid the temptation of “constitutional” monarchy which is simply an abortion.
There is a perception that abroad – for example, I think, in Singapore and Taiwan – they don’t blow stuff up. Possibly, it may be related to numbers though.
I wouldn’t encourage their migration or like to be a minority in Indonesia (but nor would I like to be a minority among Hindus in India) , but I do think there is a certain reality to them being less militant. Many movies made there seem like old HK action movies. I have seen them take the headscarf abroad though, which, of course, is worrying.
Sure, religions are always popular and will outlast us all, although probably amongst diminishing congregations. They can even come back from the dead, like Rodnoveriye.
But the political and military power of the Muslim world has been in constant decline. A thousand years ago – they ruled half world and were expanding, with the world’s best armies and leading technology.
And today – well Sunnis are 1.5 billion people. But they cannot even know what to do with Assad – without permission from Putin or Trump.
Russia has less than 150 million people, and a history of economic failure. And yet even then, it seems in reality, has more military and geopolitical power than the Muslim world, or 1.5 billion Sunnis.
As for the future – I do not see contrary trends. Islam will remain a popular religion, but I don’t think Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Iran will to become the next super-powers.
The Islamic world is also going through demographic transition, and will follow the downsizing pattern of Western countries as they continue to develop economically.
That’s not to say the Christian world is not also losing relative share of power in the future.
On the other hand, relative power of Confucians and Hindus will surely increase over the next century.
You haven’t actually explained why it’s a good thing.
I think this might be playing into your perception of anti-Russian bias on my part. To be fair, you don’t accuse me of that personally, but now I’m thinking you sensed something in my sharing that article that in conjunction with your misapprehension of my background led you to believe I have an ax to grind. The opposite is true; I think the anti-Russian propaganda is overblown. Also, you think I was uncritical with the article because I didn’t share with the other poster my concerns for its author’s bias. That’s something I’m rarely willing to do because it’s condescending to him and also signals that I don’t think he has the goodwill to assume that I know the author is overstating his case.
Anyway, I’m a white mutt from the American South, western European descent. Raised Baptist. I can assure you the average Southerner has no clue what his heritage is; I have a clue about my own, but not much of one. Poor record-keeping and the boat ride over, I guess. I didn’t meet a Pole or a Jew until college. I’m sure there are Polish Catholic Baptists, but that sounds like to my ears like citified syncretism. Atypical.
(It was the original poster who mistook me for a Ukrainian blogger he knew.)
due to outside intervention and subversion
By whom?
So you can’t imagine what Iraq, Syria, Gaza, would be like now
Interesting selection, in these three places most of the stress can safely be said to be externally induced.
And it would be a major morale-booster for Russia.
And it would seriously piss off the Americans.
What’s not to love about an idea like that?
https://icpc.baylor.edu/worldfinals/results
As expected Ukraine and Estonia…nowhere, Russia winning massively
Do the equivalent competition in many other scientific or arts fields…and expect more of the same
You don’t know what you are talking about. Uyghurs were not native and Chinese got there before they did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_to_Xinjiang
hahaha! Lvov as 10th highest salary region of Ukraine, an African level country is “doing well” for an fantasist attention-whore scumbag as yourself. Pillock
The city itself atrocious run , lost many people to Poland. huge problem with the rubbish collection, the tourist parts getting decayed (Russians pretty much the one and only tourists there, except “Ukrainians” themselves, bad roads and so forth
Stalin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_East_Turkestan_Republic
From the link:
Lviv National University tied with St. Petersburg State University and Stanford (among others) in 14th place. Top Ukrainian ranking.
Uzhhorod State University in 31st place, tied with Novosbirsk and Oxford (among others).
Taras Shevchenko National University (Kiev) in number 56, tied with Cornell (among others).
Retard2 can’t read.
The West is certainly more corrupt, but it’s mostly corruption that is technically legal. Or at most borderline illegal and impossible to get convictions. It’s more dangerous because a lot of it is very high-level corruption – senior politicians, bureaucrats, top businessmen, senior military officers, judges, etc.
The West has streamlined and modernised corruption. It no longer involves brown paper bags filled with bank notes being exchanged in dark alleys. It’s bribes in the form of political donations, or incredibly well-paid jobs involving no work being given in exchange for favours rendered.
The idea that the West is less corrupt than the East or the Third World is one of those touching fantasies we cling to, like our belief that liberal democracy has some connection with actual democracy.
I’ve seen a couple of Turkish action/adventure movies from the 70s. I highly recommend TARKAN VERSUS THE VIKINGS. Silly but enormous fun.
When Ukrainians leave Ukraine, their financial contribution corresponds to their estimated IQ:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DVoNSihU0AAERJd.jpg
Not true, the Chinese were there first. Chinese rule over the territory that now encompasses Xinjiang has been sporadic but it has spanned several centuries and was first established as early as the 2nd century BCE. China’s most famous poet was born just outside of Bishkek Kyrgyzstan in 701 CE. Chinese present continuous rule over the area has dated since 1756 after the last Mongol Khanate was wiped out of existence.
The Turkic Uyghurs swept into the region from what is now Mongolia back in the 10th century and basically demographically obliterated the Indo-European, more specifically Eastern Iranian, peoples who were native before the Chinese arrived.
The best European parallel I can draw is that the Uyghurs are essentially Anglo-Saxon invaders vis-a-vis Britain and the Han Chinese are the Romans. Yes we aren’t native and ancient invaders at that, but our claim is older than that of the barbarians who now have the gall to claim that this is their homeland when their actual original Urheimat is now in Mongolia. They are now Turks, and Sunni muslim ones at that compared to polyglot Christian, Manichaen, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and even Hellenistic Pagan original inhabitants. There is one community in Xinjiang that can actually be considered autochthonous to the region and it isn’t the Turk Uyghurs, but rather the Iranian Pamiri Tajiks of Xinjiang. They are still primarily Indo-European and actually speak the closest living descendant of the extinct Tocharian language. Not only that, but they aren’t Sunni but rather Ismaili Shia. These people would be analogous to the Welsh to carry my Britain analogy further.
I have no idea what drives your apologia towards the Hui, but they are as murderous as any other Sunni Islamist scum can be. Being Muslim means they have turned their backs on being Chinese forever.
You are forgetting that the Hui rebellions preceeded and probably kicked off the Uyghur rebellions and when push came to shove, most of them sided with their Islamic “brethren” to murder Han Chinese. The only reason they are quiescent now is that the aftermath of their failed Islamic uprising saw all the Jahriyya muslims massacred just as they had done to their non muslim neighbors.
To help people understand just how not loyal the Hui are, one only has to look at their descendants, the Dunggans of Kazakhstan. These were the descendants of small communities of muslim “refugees” who settled in areas under Russian control after the failed Hui rebellions. This community is quite unique in Kazakhstan compared to some other distant settlers such as the shrinking Germans and Koreans in several particular ways. Most notably is that they are 1) much more endogamous than the other minorities 2) still actually speak a bastardized form of zhongyuan mandarin 3) much more religious than the Kazakhs at large. In fact, contrary to both their neighbors and their ancestors, this community practices very early marriages and still has relatively larger families. Why is their behavior so atypical? Because their 19th century ancestors were straight up Islamic Jihadists fleeing not from persecution but from reprisal after having been defeated.
To be more specific, the Uyghur population prior to the 18th century was primarily concentrated along the very southern strip of Xinjiang along a series of oasis city-statelets. Their self-proclaimed title of “East Turkestan” is actually a transliteration from 19th century Russian because Chinese Turkestan obviously which was also in use at the time doesn’t have quite the same ring. Xinjiang is de-facto a combination of two geographically disparate areas by the Chinese, the southern Tarim basin where the Uyghurs originally dwelled and the northern Dzunghar region which is part of the central Asian Steppe and hence previously occupied by Mongols. By the 19th century, the Chinese were already 30% of the population but were reduced to less than 10% by the 20th century via massacre during the muslim rebellions spanning the 1860’s-70’s. Another lie of omission by the Turk Islamic scum claiming that there were never any Chinese there prior to the Communist takeover. Chinese are now about 40% of the total population and the settlement patterns follow historical records. The counties in Northern Xinjiang are actually majority Han, those in the South are majority Uyghur. The majority of Uyghurs of Urumqi, the capital which is in the north are actually very recent economic immigrants themselves.
The Qing had a very soft touch in Xinjiang prior to putting down the Islamic rebellion. The Uyghurs pretty much governed themselves as individual city states under local begs who were the only ones who had to be Sinicized and the area was actually known locally under its Iranian name of Altishar rather than that Turkestan nonsense. It’s a fitting name because each of the oasis cities on the southern rim of the Tarim basin was functionally independent of each other prior to the aftermath of the rebllion. After the muslim rebellion triggered by the Hui and that Kazakh interloper Yaqub was put down, all of the loyalist Begs and the traitor ones too were basically dead so Chinese rule became much more direct and it’s administrative structure changed to the provincial system seen everywhere else in China.
Corect, but genetic research (as visual images) of Uighurs show that they have some, on average 30% – 40%, descent of the original Indo-European inhabitants – although sadly all traces of the culture, language, religions have been obliterated, only phenotypes remain.
A good analogy. To make it complete – the Anglo-Saxons would be about 30%-40% Celtic in descent, despite losing the language and religion (which is actually the case of the English people, if I am not mistaken).
DDR was better than other Eastern Bloc countries, but still not great. The two-stroke engine cars (we also had a Wartburg, so I know what I’m talking about) were horribly loud with very high pollution levels.
Thanks for the great write-up. I’ll certainly be looking at Kharkiv, too. I’d also be interested if you have any thoughts on what to see outside the major cities. I am primarily very interested in learning about Ukrainian culture and history first and foremost, rather than trying to shoe-horn in a Polish angle in every activity. In my view, travel should be about learning about other cultures as much as possible (that’s probably the most unironic SJW belief I have, and one I hold strongly attached to).
I will have a recently short summer vacation this year (<4 weeks), lots of work to do so I'm planning to do most of this in July or so, therefore, are there any seasonal things to think about? Maybe vaccinations of some kind if I'm going into fields and forests? Thinking about TBE for instance.
Duke of Qin, you need your own blog. Your comments on China are fascinating, especially Chinese history. You should expand them in the written form and organise them in one place.
Your goals and approach are excellent. The best way of doing so would be to go with a local- you have Ukrainian friends, might one of them be visiting home? I have family in a village 3 hours from Kiev. When I come it is a feast, different waves of food, my uncle’s homemade salo, vodka. People talk about their lives, etc. A cousin served in ATO, another one is planning to go to Poland for a few months, etc. Then we wander around the village, to the cemetery, chat with neighbors curious about the Americans in the village. Kids run around, there are cats and dogs and geese, kids use an old bed frame with springs as a trampoline…
As you know, Ukrainian culture (like Finnish, or Slovak, or Baltic) is traditionally rural-based. But for an outsider to penetrate it would be difficult. How would, for example, a French visitor without local connections, experience what a Polish village is all about? I can only thing of joining a friend on a visit home, if he is a close friend perhaps he can arrange a visit out to the countryside.
Otherwise, just driving around rural roads would be nice. But be very aware that the roads are sometimes in horrible condition, so get full insurance coverage on any rental car. I destroyed a tire and even part of a car’s underframe when I got lost in the middle of nowhere in Ternopil oblast. Friendly random villagers changed the tire for me (I got to hear the old Galician speech, absent in Lviv). But it’s nice to see the countryside, with its shrines, fresh springwater, villages and churches.
I would recommend that you travel with at least one other person, if you don’t hire a local guide for the trip.
There are excellent tours in Lviv (ok, a major city). Poles usually take tours with Polish tour guides, you’ll want to try a Ukrainian one instead and explicitly request that you want to hear the Ukrainian POV about everything. I think they would be very happy to share it. A Polish friend hired a guy who took him to his ancestral villages, this may have been a lot more expensive. But you can ask in Lviv at tourist offices if you can get someone to accompany you for a day into the countryside. Some of of the guides are history students.
One can drive from Lviv to Kiev through Zhytomir on good roads. Zhytomir is a small city that rarely gets visitors because there isn’t much to see, but it will give you a taste of the unknown country. Another unknown city worth seeing would be Vynnytsia; both the president and PM are from here and supposedly the place is booming. However, the road to here from Lviv is awful – hundreds of km of miserable driving.
Carpathians might be too touristy and less “natural” than places like Vynnytsia or Zhytomir, but they are beautiful.
Or you can take an overnight train from Lviv to Kiev. It is dirt cheap, and very nice (air-conditioning, clean, etc.). You get get a kupe with 4 beds and chat with the random people in your compartment.
A Polish journalist interviewed a Right Sector leader:
http://euromaidanpress.com/2018/02/22/poland-journalist-talks-nationalism-with-ukraine-right-sector-leader/
I have no contacts with RS but presenting yourself as a curious open-minded friendly Pole might get you some interesting local contacts through them. You’ll probably hear a lot of criticism about Poland’s history law.
Highly recommended. The train ride from Kyiv to Dnepropetrivsk is quite long and allowed me the opportunity to really get to know strangers in an intimate way. The highway between Chernivtsy and Kamienets Podilsk is scenic, not to mention that both towns are worth visiting and seeing.
Yes, long train trips are a good way of meeting and chatting with locals. This is also true of Russia.
This is not bringing it back. Once a religion is dead, it cannot be brought back – they have started a new religion making assumptions about what the religion was in the past. This is another mistake many Westerners make; religion is not books – it is people and institutions, it is a living and breathing reality. Once it is dead, it cannot be brought back to life. Just as Elvis impersonators aren’t Elvis.
We’ve reached a nadir before and in fact we are not in decline, we have been bouncing back (slowly – as we usually do) from our lowest point which was under European colonization. The whole of the Muslim world (minus one or two exceptions like Turkey and Afghanistan) were under European hegemony. That ended relatively recently – my father is old enough to remember the days of independence of the majority of Muslim countries.
I had recently brought up an example; the Netherlands and Indonesia. The Dutch used to run Indonesia, do you think that is remotely possible right now? What about France and her many colonies; maybe she could try to take Algeria again – it would be difficult, but that would basically be it – she wouldn’t be able to take on the multiple colonies she used to have.
The Muslim countries are steadily cooperating to make their own armaments and defense compacts; Turkey is going to work with Pakistan and they have already produced a medium tank with Indonesia. So I simply don’t see the constant decline when looking at things from a holistic perspective.
Our issue is that we are divided – that is what we have to overcome, we were already warned of this:
“And obey Allah and His Messenger; and fall not into disputes, lest you lose heart and your power depart; and be patient and persevering: For Allah is with those who patiently persevere:” (8:46)
Well, part of that is how the UN is set up – she sits on the security council permanently. But her influence in the Muslim world is not without cooperation of parts of the Muslim world. For instance, some of her goals in Syria had to be worked out with a quid-pro-quo with Turkey.
That’s fine, that’s only the goal if one makes it so – most Muslims I know would be perfectly fine with the capability to fend off unwarranted aggression against Muslim lands like the war on Iraq without the need to participate in king-of-the-hill.
I still don’t think you are seeing what I’m getting at. The strength of Islam is not in the material realm – it is in the ability to give people hope and guidance in how to live their lives. For example; the Mongol and Turkic people completely decimated half the Muslim world. Millions killed, cities razed, all that stuff – established the largest empire known to man at the time. The Muslims they had conquered were completely under their thumb. But then what happened – did Tengrism all of a sudden become the dominant religion of those lands or Mongol culture? No – they eventually became Muslim, piece by piece, and got absorbed into the local populations.
Possible, but I’m not sure the Muslim world will ever reach the same material level as the West (nor do I see any reason that that is even desirable).
China has come up again and again – so it’s good to take a look at it as an example:
https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/640-width/images/print-edition/20170923_CNM954.png
https://www.economist.com/news/china/21729573-no-province-has-many-babies-some-shortfalls-are-much-worse-others-chinas-demographic
Contestant: “Alex, I’ll take Modern China for $600.”
Trebek: “Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin.”
Contestant: “What are three shiny graveyards where Chinese go to work on technology before dying?”
Please read Technopoly:
http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/postman.html
https://www.amazon.com/Technopoly-Surrender-Technology-Neil-Postman/dp/0679745408
Islam is not interested in signing up with what everyone else is doing, it is interested in offering an alternative…
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-avSrI7Re_38/VKtWaSzO18I/AAAAAAAAAGk/50_qIUiAaM8/w506-h910/1420508352277.png
(Source) https://iasp.info/pdf/papers/Bertolote.pdf
…life.
“O you who believe, respond to Allah and to the Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life. And know that Allah intervenes between a man and his heart and that to Him you will be gathered.” (8:24)
“And be not like those who forgot Allah, so He made them forget their own selves. Those are the defiantly disobedient.” (59:19)
Like I said – this is a metaphysical question which you are trying to assess by the wrong metrics – and incorrect ones at that.
Peace.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-20/democratic-party-sues-russia-trump-wikileaks-conspiring-hurt-hillary-2016-election
I like how a political party can sue Russia.
as expected and as I said …nowhere you dipshit…the ratio and sheer number of Russian dominates at the top and throughout the list, as it has done for many years
…and with Damascus among others, Damascus University probably doesn’t shut-off the heating and close down large parts of its campus for months during winter,
Lvov University is simply not the joint 14-th-31st list type of University ( you could easily say 31st as 14th so I will put it at 20th place), it has a very average reputation in everything, absolutely nothing of repute in the post-Soviet sphere, European sphere or world sphere….the other universities in the east and Kiev more focused on study of things actual relevant to the “Ukrainian” economy in the science, technology and humanities…and all this average reputation , all this focus on an unproductive IT sector…and regional Russian Universities , fighting for a decent budget , are still are outperforming/the same as Lvov in programming and much superior in many many other subjects
As for Oxford and Cambridge…I don’t think they even have a strong reputation in Information Technology at research level(Manchester University was probably more useful in the initial development of computers)
and I’m not even talking about Russian Universities total dominance of the top 10 positions every year this decade and Saint Petersburg University were due a “normal ” year
….Uzhgorod ( gee…that Uzh and gorod sounds like a russian composite…oh, yes quite normal in a fake country like Ukraine)
Lol…..you met this freak……your own stalker? Don’t believe it
this retard spams comments on here, not on a pro-Ukrainian blog( because in that fuckedup country nonse exists in either the “Ukraine” itself or in Nazi-Bandera animal rapist )…this is obviously because he’s a spamtroll attenti0nwhore with the brain of a flea and obvious mental problems and nothing else to do. Like those facts of the pipelines underneath an icerink cumulatively add up to the whole diameter…this utter freak’s imbecile comments in one month add up to years or even decades worth of what a normal person’s is.
..spends all his time making obsessive, fantasist million posts on here , but has a “busy schedule”? haha- bullshit on an intolerable level.
We all make our posts based on our own life experiences and knowledge——this POS does it from Wikipedia
This obviously a not real meeting, and the only possible explanation is that we have a Norman Bates/mother scenario going here. Think about it. What does a blogger want? Comments. This fictitious lying, dumb as fuck idiot “AP” provides, this, inane, stupid, liar comments that try and provoke others into creating more comments. It’s a creation of Karlin
You need to read things several times to understand them.
Your link:
https://icpc.baylor.edu/worldfinals/results
Your claim:
As expected Ukraine and Estonia…nowhere,
Reality:
Lviv National University at 14th place
So, not nowhere.
You couldn’t understand that it was a tie. 6 problems were solved. There is no ranking within that group, they are all tied at 14th place because they solved the same number of problems.
A claim made by you, who cannot even read, as we have seen.
According to this link, it scored 14th place, tied with Stanford and Saint Petersburg State University.
Here are results from 2017:
https://icpc.baylor.edu/community/results-2017
Lviv National University is in 20th place, tied with MIT and St. Petersburg Academic University.
Uzhorod at #34, tied with MGU, Novosibirsk and UC Berkely.
Results 2016:
https://icpc.baylor.edu/community/results-2016
Lviv is in 11th place in the world. Not tied with anyone. Above MGU, St. Petersburg Academic University, etc.
Retard2 does what Retard2 does best – fail.
err…..numerous governors and ex governors, a ton of cabinet ministers in oblast level, deputy Culture minister ,Mayors, etecetera have been arrested and imprisoned…1000 officials in Russia last year alone were sacked for corruption you ignorant dipshit.
Unlike in cesspit Ukraine which does the same thing, the President of Russia appointing the governor is not an authoritarian move (due to the complex composition and form of Russia), as such these arrests aren’t a cronyism fight as they are with the ( very few in the abysmally corrupt) Ukraine with Poroshenko
errmmm…..Ulyukaev in no way crossed Putin you dumb POS.
A huge amount of very high ranking guys in the FSB, MVD , and Investigate Commitee have been arrested and imprisoned
there has also been quite a few deaths in custody of these guys
Roskosmos,FCIN…I could go on and on
Now compare this to Ukraine which, since the Nazi-coup has in fact tried to exact copy Russia’s fight against corruption but failed miserably
So you know even less about Russian politics then you do about “Ukrainian” politics of “Ukraine ” in general…..what a messed-up idiot
…and proportionally , in the last 5 years, there have far more anti-corruption arrests in Russia, and high profile corruption arrests…then in China…and it weights up far more in an open society like Russia.
…more time wasting , imbecilic retardedness.
You get exposed as an imbecile…..so continue more time-wasting , lie bollocks.
I like how a political party can sue Russia.
Very easily, and there is the precedent of Iran (probably others as well):
Lots of Russian assets in the US (currency reserves, etc.) if they want to up the pressure.
I think AK mentioned that if such things become common, it essentially is a violation of the rule of law that even Russia doesn’t fantasize of doing.
The game changer might be if they started doing this to the Chinese. After that, trust in western institutions, which took centuries to build, could collapse in the rest of the world overnight.
Well yeah, if you can sue somebody for bombing your armed soldiers in the middle of a war zone during a civil war – that seems to be pretty over the top.
Peace.
it essentially is a violation of the rule of law that even Russia doesn’t fantasize of doing.
Of course not, Russia doesn’t have anywhere near the power to do such things, but the US certainly does. Just look at the fines they have collected from international banks for transactions with 3rd parties that the US doesn’t approve of, notably Bank Paribas ($8.9 billion):
https://risk.thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/openweb/documents/pdf/risk/infographic/fines-banks-breached-us-sanctions-infographic.pdf
And the idea that the US won’t seize assets of “rogue” States doesn’t hold much water:
It seems to me that there are 2 ways of viewing this lawsuit:
(1) as frivolous, intended essentially to embarrass Trump
(2) as an escalation of the moves to isolate a notorious international outlaw State (one that would stoop to carrying out a chemical weapons attack against a US ally).
Just as AK had a brainstorming post to explore “How Can Russia Hurt the US” you can be sure that there is high-level brainstorming going on in the Land of the Free as to “How Can the Forces of Good Hurt Russia”.
No borders are ever just, we can agree on that. To separate Slovak and Hungarian areas after 1918 was almost impossible. Trianon put the border on Danube because it was neat, because Czechs were among the ‘winners’ of WWI, and because a delegation of Hungarians from that area (southeast of Bratislava) petitioned to be in one country with that their main agricultural market, e.g. Bratislava. I think they thought that would block Bratislava from becoming a part of Czechoslovakia, instead Triannon just gave the whole area north of Danube to Slovakia. Further east it was even more messy.
First Vienna Award was also not just. It took a few hundred thousand Slovaks and added them to Hungary in addition to the majority Hungarian areas. After WWII, the status quo ante – 1918-38 – was restored.
You are understating the impact of 1907 education law. When it fully kicked in in 1911-14, they were forcing 6-year olds in Slovak villages to learn mostly in Hungarian. It was a disaster, there were literally thousands of almost pure Slovak villages where the schools were suddenly changed. I could give you examples, and the anger that generated was extreme. In Western Slovakia where people were always close to Czechs (and more advanced and nationalistic in many ways), there was a sharp shift by the intelligentsia to look to Prague for allies and help. Then WW1 started and the rest is history. Lex Apponyi put the coup the grace to the Habsburg Empire.
Giant straight-line border: https://www.freightcenter.com/images/default-source/shipping/shipping-map-united-states-canada-cross-border.jpg?sfvrsn=6&MaxWidth=600&MaxHeight=600&ScaleUp=false&Quality=Low&Method=ResizeFitToAreaArguments&Signature=83655940E07DBAA3C5FCA224E291EF68B1BD3FA0
Sure – ask the Native American tribes what they think about that? This was something worked out between two parts of the Anglo-Saxon world and their mother empire.
Now if the Ottomans or Mughals* had drawn it, you’d have a great point.
Peace.
*Speaking of Indian Muslim kingdoms and the US:
https://aeon.co/essays/why-american-revolutionaries-admired-the-rebels-of-mysore
Ask the Assyrian Christians what they thought about occupation by various Muslim powers?
I’ll be here all week, try the veal, it’s halal.
Sure, if you want to call it that. Your link pretty adequately summarizes the nature of their relations with Mommy Dearest, though, for a very long time. Notice the southern border is pretty regular too.
But, on this analogy, I’m all for a grand Arab summit to redraw borders to everybody’s liking. Not sure the borders themselves have started too many wars; the only people really left out are the Kurds.
They liked them better than the Byzantines (which they often called Melkite as a pejorative):
“Only through the campaigns of Islam in the first half of the 7th century was it possible to free the East from the Byzantines and the Persians. This happened with the help of the members of the Syrian Church; the original inhabitants of Syria of whom one part was of Aramaic origin who inhabited these areas for generations and another part was of Arabic origin. When the Arab Muslims marched into Syria they were welcomed by the Syrians who saw the new rulers as saviors who freed them from the yoke of the Byzantines because the Byzantines tried by force to assimilate them into the Byzantine Church. This was the church of the empire and membership in it would have meant compulsorily acceptance of the resolutions of Chalcedon: that Christ had two natures, the human eating, drinking and feeling pain and the divine making miracles. This would have been a denial of the dogma of their church fathers. The Syrians were also able through the cooperation with the Arab Muslims to retain their ecclesiastical dogma, the Antiochian See, their churches, monasteries, ecclesiastical inheritance and their liturgy…The Syrians put great hope in them, not only because the Muslims liberated them from their religious trouble but also because they relieved the Syrians of the burdensome taxes that were placed on their backs. They said, ‘Praise be to God, who delivered us from the unjust Byzantines and who put us under the rule of the just Muslim Arabs.’“
http://syrianorthodoxchurch.org/2010/03/a-short-overview-of-the-common-history/
Most people have a comic-book understanding of history and a lack of knowledge about how criminally stupid Byzantine policies were in the region.
Agreed.
So you haven’t read about the various border wars between the countries of North Africa – that’s ok, most people haven’t.
Peace.
So you haven’t read about the various border wars between the countries of North Africa – that’s ok, most people haven’t.
Enlightenment, please.
I’ll use wiki – I usually don’t, but just as a short list…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan–Egyptian_War
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_War
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadian–Libyan_conflict
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara_War
And these don’t cover some of the Horn of Africa ones. And you already know about some of the border conflicts in the other parts of the Middle East like between Iraq and Iran, Kuwait, etc.
Now I’m not saying Muslims aren’t at fault for fighting over these lines, I’m just saying it seems to be a really idiotic thing to do and use as the primary means to identify oneself.
Peace.
And the Tlaxcala liked the Spanish much better than the Aztecs.
Since you bring up North Africa, ask the Berbers of Libya what they think of the Arab occupation?
At any rate, a palpable hit!
Would these wars have been different if borders were curved and meandering? I notice there are still straight-line borders, so they seem to have worked out pretty well in the end. The guerilla war over Western Sahara was not over the straightness but the existence of a border, which is in fact not the colonial border.
There is no causal connection between straight lines and war.
This is the plight of the little guy in history; find the better option for suzerainty.
Historically – in that region, sometimes Berbers have had top-billing, sometimes Arabs. This is another issue that imported ethno-nationalism has brought up; “Libya is for Arabs” and other nonsense.
That wasn’t my point. My point is that it is stupid to fight over and identify yourself over borders somebody else gave you.
Case in point – the tribe of Bani Tamim has a tribal identity from before Islam – they straddle multiple nation-states across those straight line borders:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Map_of_Arabia_600_AD.svg/400px-Map_of_Arabia_600_AD.svg.png
Are they supposed to all of a sudden identity themselves as Saudi or Kuwaiti or Iraqi or Jordanian based on some lines some British and French guys drew up? And consider other tribe members as “the other”? Why? It’s fine if they want to, but it’s also obvious why they would reject it.
Peace.
Colonization of Mars is science fiction, only without any science. We evolved to live on Earth, in 1g gravity.
http://academicvc.com/2015/09/09/why-we-cant-go-to-mars
http://www.stephenfleming.net/files/Fleming_DragonCon_Mars_v6.pdf
Even better would be spent few hundred of millions to create really awesome fictional planet, much better than the real piles of useless dirt.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b0/Avatar-Teaser-Poster.jpg
Most of Mars’ immediate issues can be resolved by restoring the magnetic field, which is entirely possible. This gets rid of space particles, etc and will allow for the accumulation of an atmosphere.
https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-wants-to-launch-a-giant-magnetic-shield-to-make-mars-habitable
The microgravity issue is by far more serious and close to “unresolveable” but we already have some solutions for it at the moment. In the long run, I think that its possible to genetically engineer for it, among other solutions.
That’s a good point. It was originally badly expressed, and it masks the general truth that Syria, Mesopotamia, and so on (I was mostly thinking of those two, given the context here) are ancient civilizations and at least quasi-national identities, separated by oceans of sand where the precise point of a line doesn’t really mean all that much. That’s why I posted about the US, to get you to think a little; that’s the main reason I post at all these days, to try to put a new and startling perspective on things (that and that I get sucked into discussions– I just had a long and fruitless one over on Revusky’s article; I think I’ll just quit it at this point).
Your point is much clearer now, but (or “and”, if you like) I would argue that if it were shortened as follows, it would be wrong:
I stand corrected on the First Vienna Award.
However, my larger point still stands. The border set at the First Vienna Award could easily have been corrected by awarding some areas around Nagysurány and around Kassa to Slovakia. I’m unsure about the exact ethnic situation in Kassa itself, I’m fairly sure it had been majority or at least plurality Hungarian before 1914, but I’d need to read more to find out the situation in 1938. In any event, there’s no harm in allocating a city to a different country than the surrounding villages. Or to allocate both, and compensate the loser elsewhere. Basically, the simple principle should have been to follow the ethnic line wherever possible, and allocate roughly as many Slovaks to Hungary as Hungarians to Slovakia.
The Lex Apponyi’s impact is overstated. (It’s a favorite pastime of Hungarians to analyze our own past mistakes which led to us becoming a small country from the middle sized power we had been in the Middle Ages. So it’s usually listed among the many mistakes we should have avoided.) I think it’s obvious that it merely hastened the inevitable, the national awakening of Slovaks. It was impossible for Slovaks to stay loyal to Hungary in the age of nationalism. Despite Slovaks having quite similar culture to Hungarians.
I get your point for sure and I agree, fighting over borders is totally fine and (as far as I’ve learned) something that is actually a noble act of worship. But if you are going to be willing to die and (more importantly) kill someone over something – in my eyes, you should have a sound reason to do so – because you will certainly be asked about it when you stand up for judgement. Especially because in Islam, fratricide is extremely frowned upon – the scholars often castigated the rulers for taking up arms against rival rulers (often their real brothers – not just in the spiritual sense).
I mention the Tuareg, they have been traversing the sands of the Sahara for centuries; their migratory patterns cross multiple nations’ borders – those borders are literally a threat to their ancient identity if they are strictly enforced.
I never post under his articles anymore. I also don’t reply to any of his posts to me. I learned the hard way, that sometimes it is much, much better to simply avoid certain people. This is also a reason why I don’t post under Sailer’s articles either.
Peace.
A few small points.
Pozsony/Bratislava: it was plurality (42%) German in 1910, with Hungarians being a close second (41%). Slovaks were nowhere near (15%) and mostly recent arrivals. It was obvious that Hungarians didn’t expect to lose it at the time. After it came under Czechoslovak rule, thousands of Hungarians (mostly the educated classes, including the teachers and other staff of the university there) fled the city. Thousands more fled later on.
Another point is regarding the census numbers (this is also about Pozsony/Bratislava). The numbers seem to jump with each change in the border. One reason could be different methodology (the 1910 census asked for mother tongue, while the later censuses asked ethnicity), and another is a quick change in population (tens of thousands fled when coming under alien rule, in 1918-20, 1938-39, and 1945 as well), and I’m sure that the census takers were never impartially interested in the truth only (i.e. the numbers could have been slightly manipulated by all sides), but another reason is that probably there is a great number of fair weather Hungarians/Slovaks. It’s well known in Hungary that Hungarians in Slovakia are the most prone to assimilation (because of the similarity of culture and religion, unlike in Romania, Ukraine, or Serbia), and I guess it’s like that the other way around. The Hungarian census of 1941 showed only 117 thousand non-Hungarians in the areas received during the First Vienna Awards, while I think the 1930 Czechoslovak census showed maybe 200-300 thousand Slovaks there.
The most important reason why Slovakia wanted the area was that the most important railway line (built by Hungary well before 1914) was there, and also the area was valuable (the best arable lands in Slovakia). I don’t think it’s Hungarians’ fault that they happened to live in the best arable area, and how much would it matter today anyway? As to the railway line, Hungarians as losers could have been required to build a railway line in Slovakia proper. I’m sure they’d have happily accepted it instead of losing the area.
Czechoslovakia had truly excessive territorial demands (including for example the westernmost part of Hungary to create a corridor to Yugoslavia, although they proposed to give some or all of it to Yugoslavia). Then when they got a lot of such territories with non-Czech and non-Slovak populations (including the Sudetenland in Czechia), and those populations were disloyal (you could hardly expect any loyalty from such populations who had for centuries or a full millennium lived there under the rule of ethnically similar rulers), then these populations (or substantial portions of them, as happened to Hungarians) were deported after 1945. (Including a number of my relatives.)
Life is unfair, and certainly it had been more unfair to a great many peoples than to Hungarians. But at least let’s not pretend it was fair.
That is one explanation for the wildly fluctuating census numbers. There is also substantial intermarriage, given that there are no religious barriers. Then there are career objectives, in 1910 it was more beneficial to choose Magyar language, in 1950 Slovak.
I know something about Bratislava pre-WWI and the 1910 census numbers are simply not accurate. Bratislava was surrounded on three sides by Slovak countryside (mostly). Depending on how you decide city boundaries, what suburbs and villages are included, you get completely different numbers. Today the city covers literally dozens of villages that were outside city pre-WWI, but were completely integrated into it on a day-to-day basis. It is similar with many large cities.
I agreed above that one can never draw a ‘fair’ boundary when separating two intermingled nationalities. It is always a mess.
Well, Hungarians and Slovaks were not that intermingled back then. Depending on the censuses used, you could’ve reduced the number of minorities by at least half a million, while making it less lopsided (i.e. roughly the same number on both sides of the border).
Also very little cultural barriers. Hungarian and Croat culture is for example somewhat more different. As I wrote before, I think Slovaks are closer to Hungarians in culture than any of our neighbors.
I don’t know how much you read about Jozef Rohác etc. (I think the last “c” has a diacritical), but even our criminal gangs are intermingled.