Open Thread 40: The Fallout Phase

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.

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:

Question: You know better than I that the OPCW has run tests in four different labs on the nerve agent used in Salisbury. All of them have concluded that that was a Novichok agent in a highly pure form as described by the British government.

Sergey Lavrov: That’s a problem. First, the A-234 agent in highly pure form in high concentration is already raising suspicions.

Question: It came from Russia. In the former Soviet Union, you invented that.

Sergey Lavrov: Steven, you are not factual. You may be hard talking, but you are not listening. This chemical substance indeed was invented in the Soviet Union, then one the inventors fled to the United States and made the formula public. And if you want to check before raising the issue, please do so, the United States patented this formula; and it was formally taken by United States special services or the army, I don’t remember. But A-234 is a very light, I mean, it seriously damages a person, kills him of her, but it evaporates very fast; and the sample taken two weeks after the event cannot, according to our scientists, contain very high concentration.

Question: I guess it’s all the question of credibility, and what you’re telling me, it may be credible for Russia; it’s certainly not credible around the world. See, you’ve had over a hundred diplomats expelled from over the twenty countries. It’s clear where the consensus lies. Russia is seen as culpable.

Sergey Lavrov: If you want to finish the issue of the substance, on Saturday we presented a paper which contains, literally, the conclusion of the Swiss laboratory in the city of Spiez, which was one of the four laboratories, which did say that there were traces of A-234 of very high concentration, but they also said that there was…

Question: I will use: you trust the OPCW or you don’t? It’s quite simple. You seem as you’re not saying you trust the OPCW.

Sergey Lavrov: For a Brit, you have very bad manners. The Swiss laboratory report also said that, and in the first place, they found BZ, which was I think invented in the United States in 1955 and was among the equipment of the US and UK army. And we asked OPCW, whom we trust, whether this is true or not that in addition to A-234 there was also BZ discovered. And we are waiting a reply of OPCW, whom, of course, we trust, but we want trust and verify.

Question: We’re almost out of time. I have to ask you about sanctions before we finish. The US Treasury Secretary is due to announce another raft of sanctions against Russian companies and individuals who are deemed to have contacts with the Syrian military. There are already over the past few weeks new sanctions from the United States on a whole bunch of different companies and individuals which have hit the Russian stock market very badly. Russia’s being squeezed.

Sergey Lavrov: Thank you for your sympathy, but don’t worry, we will survive

and media is usually a pretty good reflection of public opinion in a country.

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.

Hispanics are on the verge of overtaking whites as a share of NYC population

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.

I’m getting retorts from people, who haven’t been to the city recently, and therefore have no idea what they are talking about

AK lives there. He mostly confirms what I observed.

Do you live in Moscow? When were you there last?

Trust me when I say that AP is full of shit.

Your posts indicate who is full of what.

Re:BZ

Statement of Spiez laboratory

GENEVA, April 16. /TASS/. Spiez Laboratory’s Head of Strategy and Communication Andreas Bucher told TASS on Monday that he could not comment on information announced by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday that the samples from Salisbury contained BZ nerve agent and its precursor, part of chemical arsenals of NATO countries.

The laboratory “is contractually bound to the OPCW for confidentiality” and has no authority to make any statement on that, Bucher explained.

“I’m sorry, we cannot have any statement on that, because as you are aware we are a designated laboratory of the OPCW, and the OPCW has rejected the Russian request for making public the involved designated laboratories in this Salisbury investigation,” he explained. “And we are contractually bound to the OPCW for confidentiality. So the only institution who could confirm what Mister Lavrov was saying on the weekend is the OPCW. We cannot say, or confirm or deny anything,” Bucher stressed.

More:
http://tass.com/world/1000017

“Deflategate”

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.

But you don’t tell us who you would bang.

Sergey Lavrov: For a Brit, you have very bad manners

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.

Yes, it is definitely a cultural issue in Germany.

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:

Yes, I know that many people hate Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. And many others couldn’t care less that the National Football League deemed Brady a cheater, a liar and a perjurer over the silly Deflategate scandal. But that is why it makes an excellent case study of how a powerful institution and its clever lawyers can make almost nothing into almost anything and get many people to go along.

Very similar techniques are used in more serious circumstances, such as the U.S. government and mainstream media demonizing some foreign leader in marching the American people in lockstep into another war.

So, the moral behind the story of Brady and the NFL is that the public should be alert whenever some powerful institution lodges an accusation against some figure who is widely disliked. The troubling truth is that often a mob-like excitement overwhelms any skepticism, leaving the few doubters of the establishment’s claims labeled “apologists” and most everyone else going along . . .

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/02/deflategate-cloud-over-the-super-bowl/

In Hungary I know that most people do drink tap water.

Gross. Do you use a filter at least?

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.

Hungary tests found some of the bottled waters to be worse, containing less minerals etc. than tap water.)

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.

Yikes!

Peace.

In further details, the Trump administration is seeking to assemble an Arab force to replace the US military contingent in Syria

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.

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.

Thanks, I refused ice today. You may have saved my life.

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).

Thanks, I refused ice today. You may have saved my life.

More life-saving advice, gratis:

Your smartphone is even more gross than you thought — here’s how and when to clean it

When was the last time you cleaned your phone?

Chances are, it has more types of bacteria on it than the average toilet seat.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/smartphone-bacteria-how-to-clean-2017-8?r=US&IR=T

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?

In the larger picture, the Communist Party is trying to stay in power “by making China a pleasant and acceptable place for people to live in order to not get angry,” Creemers says. “It doesn’t mean it’s benevolent. Keeping people happy is a much more effective means than employing force.”

How terrible.

I would have thought that because RT and Sputnik are Der Sturmer level

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?

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.

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.

And here’s another story that was never sufficiently exploited (if true, that is):

Terrorist capabilities laid bare in an Eastern Ghouta chemical lab

This week, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) liberated some Eastern Ghouta farmlands between Shifouniyeh and Douma and discovered a well-equipped chemical laboratory run by Saudi-backed Islamist terrorists. Not a single Western reporter showed up to investigate the facility.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/421515-ghouta-syria-chemical-weapons/

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?

Armenians have a strange, quite nice, culture…

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

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?

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

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.

Kind of funny how even America’s enemies mostly accept the “antiracist” narrative pushed by US elites.

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.

Makes any possible future dystopia seem pretty grim, if it means we were returning to that sort of thing or worse.

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.

Keeping people happy is a much more effective means than employing force.”

How terrible.

Indeed. That’s why we can never trust China. A government that tries to make its own people happy is capable of anything.

All older Korans confiscated and replaced with new “revised” editions.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

As I understand it, more of them are Islamicized Erdogan supporters than the average Turk in Turkey

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.

Hi, all is going sound here and ofcourse every one is sharing data,
that’s genuinely excellent, keep up writing.

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:

Nevertheless, Russians were dominant in the USSR, and becoming ‘Soviet’ in essence meant learning Russian and adopting Russian cultural norms. Cultural, if not economic or political colonialism, was a fact of life, and strongly resented by many non-Russians. The ideal of the ‘Friendship of Peoples’ was a noble one, certainly more attractive than the ugly ethnic nationalism we see in Russia and some other former Soviet republics today, but it helped to disguise a much messier and more unequal reality.

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.

The link to the original Fisk article:

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-chemical-attack-gas-douma-robert-fisk-ghouta-damascus-a8307726.html

So there could be no grand bargain.

There could, however, be capitulation. But it will look like capitulation. Like 1989-91.

So there could be no grand bargain.

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:

1. NATO and the EU are dissolved. All US troops leave Europe and the missile defenses stationed there are dismantled.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. The West recognizes Crimea as part of Russia and bullies Ukraine to do the same.

5. ALL sanctions on Russia are dropped.

6. 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.

7. The US continues work on it’s missile shield and tells Russia that it can blow them if they don’t like it.

8. 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.

9. 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.).

10. The UK and France give up their own nuclear weapons.

11. The West recognizes Belarus as part of Russia.

what do you think?

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz9MJVyZ-6U

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.

It was the provocative and destabilising forward location in Europe that was always the real problem.

Russia complains endlessly about the GMD system which is based in Alaska and California and has a grand total of 25 interceptors.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Putin’s decision explains why lawmakers Monday suddenly pulled a draft law that would’ve imposed sweeping counter-sanctions on U.S. companies, two of the people said.

Better explanation: No new American sanctions on Monday.

Credible, or simply smoke?

Berezovsky acted with UK intel, paid with life when he decided to return home – Russian prosecutor

Fugitive Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky worked closely with British intelligence, and paid with his life when he decided to return to Russia**, the Russian prosecutor general has said.

The allegation came from Yury Chaika on Wednesday during a report to a joint bicameral session of the Russian parliament. He reiterated a claim previously suggested by some officials in his department, that Berezovsky’s death in Britain in March 2013 was the result of foul play.

Addressing lawmakers, Chaika claimed that Berezovsky was part of a conspiracy involving the British government to kill his confidante Aleksandr Litvinenko with radioactive polonium, which London used to accuse Russia of murder.

“The highest concentration of polonium was found in Berezovsky’s office, but Berezovsky could not get polonium on his own. Neither could he fabricate such a trace of evidence. He was acting under control of the British intelligence services, acted together with them,” the Russian official said.

“When he decided to return to Russia, they could not allow that a person with access to secrets about radioactive terrorism did it,” Chaika added.

Chaika added that his office will hold more events for the media to reveal additional evidence in criminal cases relating to Berezovsky, Litvinenko and other Russian individuals involved with Britain. He said the next one should be expected in June.

https://www.rt.com/uk/424450-berezovsky-uk-intelligence-death/

** 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

Something similar was said about Skripal too by a former classmate who was called by him.

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.

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.

(and yet they still charge their gullible customers; stereotypes don’t come from nowhere)

Two-fer.

Orwell
Huxley
Benson

Perfect for the Expanding Brain meme.

Interesting. Which?

Probably means ICQ which is owned by Mail.Ru.

AK lives there. He mostly confirms what I observed.

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?

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.

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 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.

Any thoughts on the Pompeo-Kim Jong-un meeting?

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.

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/

That’s pretty bizarre, is he serious about that?
I suppose Trump will now follow up with something similar.

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.

They had a pretty hard time just making sure that Czech was continued to be taught in the schools.

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

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.

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.

Second-country-to-wherever might get an advantage, being spared some of the more painful early development experiences.

The Guardian provides useful input.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/18/first-human-on-mars-should-be-woman

Mnogokhodovka vs 4d chess

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.

bilingualism was required of civil servants, which effectively favored the Czechs

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 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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Why?

Gravity.

There is also noticeable gravity on the Moon surface.

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.

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

The greatest yacht project is about to come upon us any day.

https://newatlas.com/solarwave-64-catamaran/47205/

There’s a funny thing about numbers: some are bigger, some are smaller …

Czechs are superior trolls. They have just renamed their country ‘Czechia’ to see how many people get the joke.

Russia had great might, great power, and finally the greatest help for the German Empire

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.

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.

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.

Well until that day

https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/nkramolnik/79254609/63104/63104_original.jpg

Cryptocurrency Exit Scam Robs Investors of $50 Million

Not even a week after an ICO scam cost investors $660 Million, another exit scam has occurred costing investors $50 million. CoinTelegraph is reporting that the founder German-based startup Savedroid, Yassin Hankir, has absconded with the money raised from an initial coin offering, as well as private funding. The CEO tweeted earlier today “Thanks guys! Over and out!” apparently while in Egypt.

The coins website, https://ico.savedroid.com/ , has been replaced with a full-screen South Park “Aannnd It’s Gone” meme. While not quite as clever as simply leaving “penis” it gets the point across nicely. The whole “A fool and his money” seems apt when talking about ICOs.

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.

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”.

Punishment! Punishment!

Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Laura Stone said Wednesday that the U.S. was deeply concerned about China’s detention of at least “tens of thousands” of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims and could take action under the 2016 Global Magnitsky Act.

Beijing has defended its crackdown as a “People’s War on Terror” and a necessary move to purge separatist and religious extremist elements from Xinjiang, a vast region with more than 10 million Muslims. But an extrajudicial detention program has swept up many people, including relatives of American citizens, on ostensible offenses ranging from accessing foreign websites to contacting overseas relatives.

https://www.apnews.com/amp/13ee0b95c05249a8be7c0467bf413b6e

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.

seem to be a nationalist in-denial.

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.

And it should be noted that nationalism is often at odds with these.

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.

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.

I’m a Jewish nationalist but support a pluralistic Israel.

I don’t believe in ethnically pure states.

At least the Japanese don’t make a fetish out of self-hate.

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.

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.

Israel is a lot more pluralistic, multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-cultural, than any European states

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”.

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.

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.

So you think that Israel should be some Nazi like, “Jews only”, ethnostate?

countries should be 10 to 30% ethnic/religious minorities.

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).

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.

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 Slovakia in 1907, Hungarians started to ban any other language than Magyar in schools

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.

Even so, that diversity made the US a stronger and better place then it would have been if it were 100% white

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.

if diversity is so bad, then why do the Russian and Chinese governments promote it for their own countries?

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.

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.

So are universalist religious systems like your Islam or AP’s Catholicism which also have strong levelling and homogenizing tendencies.

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&region=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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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?

eliminating cults that practice human sacrifice is a type of homogenizing that one shouldn’t complain much about, however.

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.

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.

Japan not multicultural in any way.

In Homogeneous Japan, an African-Born University President

. . . Dr. Sacko, who is believed to be the first African-born president of a Japanese university, segued elegantly into fluent Japanese, invoking Hannah Arendt, Edward Said, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ. The university, Dr. Sacko said, was “diversifying and internationalizing,” and he wanted the students to “recognize your difference from others.”

. . . Ryo Ishida, chairman of Kyoto Seika’s board, noted that the university had recently started a campaign to embrace diversity.

“But I don’t think his election was much to do with the university’s promotion of diversity,” Mr. Ishida said. “He was elected as the best leader of the university among his colleagues.”

In a practical sense, Dr. Sacko’s appointment could help Kyoto Seika appeal to more foreign students at a time when many universities across Japan are struggling to maintain enrollment.

Already, 20 percent of its student body comes from abroad, much higher than the 4 percent overall ratio of foreign students in Japanese higher education. Dr. Sacko said he hoped to raise Kyoto Seika’s level to 40 percent within a decade.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/world/asia/japan-african-university-president-sacko.html

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.

I said their “Japanese only”

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.

desperately applying to Canada for citizenship to escape from the Arabs.

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.

Global Times is also a “quisling” rag:

Wang Huiyao, president of the think tank Center for China and Globalization (CCG), told the Global Times that the agency is needed to cope with globalization and attract global talent rather than strictly managing foreigners.

China’s demographic dividend is fading as the country becomes an aging society, and the establishment of the new body will help the country transform the demographic dividend into talent dividends by luring more international elites, said Wang, adding that with a shift from attracting investment to introducing brilliant minds, China is capable of absorbing more global talent amid fierce competition.

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.

You don’t need loyalist Muslims to put down Muslim revolts if there aren’t Muslims there in the first place.

To underline my point.

Life drains from Little Africa as China dream fades for its fortune seekers

For at least 20 years dealmakers and dreamers from across Africa have been flocking to the area around Dengfeng village, an inner-city trading hub that teems with factory outlets hawking every conceivable made-in-China product, from prayer-mats and popcorn machines to police uniforms and political propaganda.

At its peak, about a decade ago, tens of thousands of Africans reputedly lived here, all hoping to repatriate a slice of the economic miracle that has made China the second largest economy on earth. Baohan Street, Little Africa’s main drag, buzzed with Malian merchants and snappily dressed Congolese sapeurs. “You would feel you were in Africa,” reminisced Moustapha Dieng, the leader of Guangzhou’s Senegalese community, whose office overlooks the place some locals call “Chocolate City”.

In recent years though the life has started to drain from Little Africa as Chinese authorities tightened visa rules and cracked down on overstayers amidst a surge in xenophobia some blame on President Xi Jinping’s increasingly jingoistic tone. Today, a Chinese flag and troops brandishing automatic weapons and claw-like man-catchers keep watch over the community’s recently re-urbanised main square.

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.

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.

Lviv is doing quite well.

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.

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).

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.

If Höcke would take the helm, I’d consider them to be close to be sufficiently radical to drive real change.

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.

So Canadian Muslims (even Palestinian ones) would not even want to go to Israel/Palestine on net.

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.

“Lviv is doing quite well.”

LMAO I sincerely hope you’ll get to experience it someday, living on $200 per month.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

A lot of the corruption in the West is codified into the system, so everyone plays make-believe that it doesn’t exist.

Excellent point.

Peace.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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).

Hey AaronB,

Glad you could throw in.

pretty much a guaranteed outcome in the next 100 years.

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.

modern Westerners have a hard grasping the concept of “change”, as well as seeing the larger historical picture.

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?

It’s always been incorporated sooner or later into larger political entities.

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.

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.

You are not going to stop the invasion by repeating their slogan with a modifier.

In all honesty, its clear that China does want to shape the flow of immigration so that it is heavily Han – but not exclusively

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“We have to conquer our own country and purify it of all infidels. Then, we should conquer the infidels’ countries and spread Islam. The infidels who are usurping our countries have announced war against Islam and Muslims, forcing Muslims to abandon Islam and change their beliefs.”

They seem to not quite appreciate Confucius.

After colonization of Mars.

And then there are the Uyghurs, who are a massive effing pain.

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.

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.

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

Its not their native land, they were invited to settle by the Qing in the 1700s.

something is up with my comments; recent ones are not showing up under my name. @RonUnz

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.

I’m pretty sure East Germany had a higher standard of living.

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.

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

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.

…who pledged vassalage and loyalty to China in exchange. These vows evidently did not last.

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.

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 lot like Han? I think when looks differ that opens up another fissure.