Moscow 2018.
Can’t believe it has been almost a month since the last Open Thread.
Quick updates:
- Was in the UK for a couple of weeks (as you presumably gathered). Apart from the march in London, I also took the opportunity to tick off Canterbury and the Tank Museum in Bovington.
- Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the London Conference on Intelligence in Aarhus, Denmark, as I had originally planned to. Fortunately, we have James Thompson here to tell us all about it anyway.
- I am going to be in Romania from June 1-June 11: Couple of days in Ploiesti, three in Transylvania, the rest in Bucharest. Why Romania? Friend’s wedding, otherwise it’s about 50th on my travel list.
ROGPR news – Kirill Nesterov’s latest video was so hardcore that YouTube banned it. Here it is (in Russian ofc):
We are also going to be launching a new website any day now.
Featured News
- Alexander Mercouris: Netanyahu in Moscow for Victory Day: why did Putin invite him? MUST READ, especially for those who have been complaining about Putin bending over before Israel and calling me a “ziocuck” or whatever.
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Alexander Mercouris is blackpilled on Iran:
- WAR WITH IRAN: Inescapable logic of Donald Trump’s regime change policy
- The EU will not stand by Iran and the JCPOA. Here’s why.
Note that Bershidsky disagrees… but then again, he has always had inflated expectations of the EU. Even so he points out how the EU, Russia, and China can keep trade and investment with Iran running.
- I was pessimistic about M5S/Lega Nord – in particular, European leftists, including ostensibly Russophile ones, have a habit of disappointing (see Syriza). But perhaps they really will be the first major exception. I also find their economic program, combining bold ideas such as a 15%/20% flat income tax and universal basic income, to be very interesting and potentially very revitalizing for an Italy that is widely regarded as being stifled by bureaucracy.
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Two months ago, I opined that the Alt Right is dead. I can now confirm that with high confidence, specifically with regards to its Spencerite wing, which originated the Alt Right as we know it, and which was most recently active under the banner of AltRight.com [now down for more than a month]. FWIW, my source also told me that Milo was more of a 14/88 Röhm type of fellow than the anti-SJW “dangerous faggot” he posed as in public a few months before Joseph Bernstein broke the story for Buzzfeed, so I pretty much trust him/her on this. But even if you don’t, the signs are all there anyway, e.g. (1) the brain drain from AltRight.com in its final months and (2) their blatantly disinterested attitude towards keeping the website up [say of them what you will, but the Daily Stormer experienced far worse harassment, and they were always back up within 48 hours]. I would henceforth advise nationalists not to get involved in that cluster.
As far as I’m concerned, BAP is now the Supreme Leader of the Alt Right. On to Tropical Hyperborea!
#HandsomeThursday reminder that Dugin is a NWO psyop to prevent youths of West from joining new Atlantis Legion, forge friendship with Russia, rule the broad Pacific together. pic.twitter.com/EaUt0WfLAh
— Bronze Age Pervert (@bronzeagemantis) May 10, 2018
- Scott Alexander: Can Things Be Both Popular and Silenced? One of the best essays on this topic.
Russia
- Nicolai Petro – Are We Reading Russia Right? [24 page PDF]. Summary via Paul Robinson. Good statistical, reality-checking manual on the real Russia vs. the one in the Western media.
Incidentally, my very first (non-intro) blog post was titled Reading Russia Right.
- Michael Kofman – The Collapsing Russian Defense Budget and Other Fairy Tales. Confirmation that reports a few weeks ago that it was going down by 20% were very much exaggerated.
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NBF on Russia’s new hypersonic glide weapons.
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China projects an increase in trade with Russia from around $100 billion last year to $200 billion next year. Much needed diversification. As I point out, Russia can live without China, and it can even live without the West, but it can’t live without either of them.
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Commenter Mitleser on Chinese media guidelines for writing about Russia: Use “USSR,” never “former USSR”; don’t call the people’s armed forces in Eastern Ukraine “separatists” or “pro-Russian forces.”
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Crimea has 5x fewer cars per capita than the Russian average. Results of two and a half decades of Ukrainian occupation.
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The Russian anti-sanctions laws which will penalize businesses for respecting American sanctions are on hold while the relevant Duma committees “consult” with representatives of the Russian business community. If they end up making exceptions for the big ones, which some Russian observers fear, then these laws might as well not exist and will probably become just another enabler of corporate raiding.
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Remember the police raid on Egor Prosvirnin in 2015, the chief editor of Sputnik & Pogrom? It now emerges that the organs originally wanted to charge him under Article 282 for… get this… for offending the Ukrainian people. In 2016.
In the end, the case was dropped at an early point. There are limits to absurdity, even in the Putlerreich.
I know that the Guardian is basically a meme newspaper these days, but still, the title is one of the most egregious in that it combines both a lie and a sordid assumption. The lie is that Sleboda is a pro-Kremlin apologist – to the contrary, he is more often its hawkish critic. The sordid assumption is that having blatantly pro-Kremlin apologists on is unacceptable for some reason. What’s the alternative – an echo chamber of kneejerk Russophobes? Come to think of it, that’s actually the correct assessment.
Incidentally, this follows a similar report on Rosneft, where criticism of Sechin was suppressed. This shows that market research of the kind that is standard in the West is basically impossible in Russia, at least so far as it concerns the state corporations run by Putin’s cronies. This is another Russia blackpill, but I have come to the conclusion that the “blackpilled” view that Gazprom and Rosneft are run for political insider contractors, not for shareholders nor even for Russia’s geopolitical interests, is basically correct.
- Head of state-owned VTB bank Andrey Kostin whines that US sanctions prevent him from enjoying skiing vacations in Colorado and his beloved city of New York. This must be all the more painful for him, since he had lobbies US Congressmen hard to avoid sanctioning him, citing the fact that VTB was “investing in the Ukraine and raising that country’s economy.”
It’s hilarious, really. Begging representatives of a foreign, hostile power not to sanction him because the state-owned bank he was in charge of was helping another hostile country… whining when the American masters turned a deaf year to him. But such is the quality of Russia’s governing cadres and “effective managers” in Year 18 of Putinism.
World
- At last, a serious debate on the JQ.
- Nathan Cofnas: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy: A Critical Analysis of Kevin MacDonald’s Theory
- Kevin McDonald: Reply to Nathan Cofnas
I have only skimmed through both articles. One reason is that the JQ just doesn’t interest me that much (I meant it when I said I hope not to have to write any more about it after this one mega-post). Another reason is that even skimming it, it was sufficient to see that even Cofnas critique is still far more qualitative than quantitative, with the result that the two interlocutors mostly seem to be talking past each other.
I am of the position that Emil Kirkegaard still has the single best roadmap for a resolution to the JQ.
* Bryan MacDonald: Facebook & Atlantic Council unite: Now social media giant serves NATO’s agenda
- Lance Welton: “This Will Not Stand”: Academic Establishment Suppresses Italian Anthropologist’s Proof That Race IQ Differences Are Genetic—For Now
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John Derbyshire: Fertility Collapse—Minorities Hardest Hit! Electing A New People Delayed? That said, as Cicerone points out, this stopped being true around 2016:
Using the same method as for the states, here are my TFR estimates [for 2017, with 2016 in brackets]:
Whites 1.67 (1.72)
Blacks 1.83 (1.83)
Asians 1.68 (1.75)
Hispanics 2.03 (2.09)
All dropping ex. Blacks, Hispanics now below replacement
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Next round of EU funding is going to revolve more around nebulous things such as adherence to “European values” as opposed to GDP per capita gaps. Commenter Polish Perspective has made many good comments about this.
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Audacious Epigone:
- Who loves their homelands most? (spoiler: Jews)
- Alt Right meetup in the Hater’s Ball: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, concluding thoughts. Wouldn’t it be cool if the Unz.com cluster could organize something like this sometime?
- Support for secession by state. I would note that White (former) Puritan New Englanders remain the core of the American nation, while states that were absorbed latest tend to be the most skeptical about the American project.
- US political dissolution a question of when and how, not if. Whites much more loyal to the American project than minorities.
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Estonia is making all its public transport free. This might actually work well in a low-diversity, high IQ country.
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I have no strong opinions on Israel vs. Palestine nor any desire to shill for one of them over the other, but I found this RAMZPAUL take funny and relevant:
https://twitter.com/ramzpaul/status/996327429827452928
- Interesting point from Jose Luis Ricon. Spain might be very pro-gay, but it’s not very gay about it.
Spanish usually tops the ranks in terms of being women, gay, and immigrant friendly. Idk why. At the same time,' dark jokes' (based on sex, race, etc) can be made without much trouble unlike in the UK or the US
— José Luis Ricón Fernández de la Puente (@ArtirKel) May 2, 2018
Science & Culture
* Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and Ron Milo (2018) – The biomass distribution on Earth
- Gwern: Nootropic effectiveness via SSC survey results. I was never deep into nootropics, but Modafinil seems accurate, even if inferior to plain ol’ Adderall (never tried that). Always thought aniracetam was overrated, but surprised that it was basically neutral (at best).
- Peter Turchin – History Is Now a Quantitative Science. Rome’s “secular cycles” [see my intro to cliodynamics] have been tied to historical intensity of lead production.
- Scandal in IQ research – many instances of self-plagiarism from Robert Sternberg. Not a crisis by any means, he was neither a particularly notable nor a controversial researcher.
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Version 1.3 of David Becker’s world IQ database is coming out soon. James Thompson got a preview peek at the LCI 2018, who also has an update on sex IQ differences and the neurobiology of intelligence.
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Robin Hanson on how to maximize the chances of future people actually reviving you from cryonics sleep.
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Steve Sailer on a recent Pinker paper on the optimal age to learn a new language. Stereotypes are correct – the younger, the better.
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Commenter Thorfinnsson on how US Civil War II could break out.
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NBF: Every 3-5 years SpaceX is adding a decade lead on competitors
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IQ researcher Stuart Ritchie threw away a job application from someone who cited their own IQ on the CV. But is that a good idea in academia?
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/999211193846902784
- Commenter Daniel Chieh: Hanzi as an implicit barrier against the Poz?
It is my opinion that the language does indeed gradually shape thought. For example, something “logical” such as the word for “good” is 好 is of course 女(woman, thus breasts in symbol) and 子(child, or son: oversized head to body of an infant). And its a “good” that a woman is with her child, symbolically a “family” and “family” is therefore good.
Not only do the words then imply certain normative standards(and implicitly rejects postmodern construction), but it is also the form of recognition creates what Nisbett calls a “dialectic” form of reading which constantly monitors for context. I know a few friends who grew up in Asia or spent a lot of time there; eventually they basically acquire this form of thinking and become averse with the more normal context-less Western grasp of language and the world.
I also feel, as I said, that this is often “pre-modern” and is probably not conducive to innovative thought specifically due to the normative values implicit. Nonetheless, in this age of hyperreality and postmodernism with a lot of its attendant ugliness, its interesting to see how this appears to serve as a weak, below-the-horizon Chesterson Fence.
- Carl Zha Twitter thread on the history of the qipao. Hilariously, given the SJW outrage over its “appropriation”, it’s more Western than Chinese!
In 1920s Republican China, bourgeois young women started to demand equality of sexes. One way was to adopt men’s originally Manchu based 1 piece robe. Shanghai tailor modified it to body hugging Western cut. Viola Modern Cheongsam/qipao is born! Zhouxun, Shanghai movie star 11/ pic.twitter.com/cGS8b0RIdF
— Carl Zha (@CarlZha) April 30, 2018
Powerful Takes
- The most powerful take yet?
Incidentally, Joaquin Flores is one of the head honchos at the grandiloquently named Center for Syncretic Studies, a Duginist outfit.
So this is what Duginism boils down to. They pay a Mexican Marxist weirdo larping as a Russian agent in Serbia to talk about the Saker’s involvement with the “Latin American junta scene”
* From SPLC-certified anti-Semite to Jew-loving neocon cockroach. 🙁
See also Double Horseshoe Theory in action (this is “B) Stalinism is not true Marxism, and that’s awesome.” PS. Khodorkovsky is likely D. I am C.)
- I run the most multicultural blog:
- Greasy had some very strong opinions on this topic:
- Everybody let’s welcome James Thompson to the RationalWiki club!
- Is Charles Bausman actually serving the Jew masters?
- Pumpkin Person: The most pro-Jewish President of all time? (unironically good take)
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Washington Times: Sarah Palin praises WikiLeak’s Julian Assange; ‘He’s all about freedom’. I have always rather liked her.
* This is what MAGA is all about now:
https://twitter.com/JacobAWohl/status/991181403546050561
PS. Just how neoliberal do you have to be to work yourself up into a lather about Bernie Sanders of all people?
- Eric Garland forgetting to take his meds again:
Russia should be kicked off the UN Security Council, uninvited from global events, massive VISA requirements for any citizen visits. https://t.co/YxAnj5WqmC
— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) May 21, 2018
- Analytic vs. Continental Philosophy:
- Another reason to be aggressively pro-gun. The alternative is unrestrained Poz.
Wouldn’t it be cool if the Unz.com cluster could organize something like this sometime?
You want me to meet with some of these cocksuckers?
Wouldn’t it be cool if the Unz.com cluster could organize something like this sometime?
With fixed bayonets, of course.
The increase in trade with China comes primarily from rising oil prices. Higher oil price means greater value of Russian exports, not necessarily volume.
Russia-China trade turnover reached $80 billion in 2017. $100 billion can happen this year, but $200 billion for 2019 seems unrealistic.
Higher oil price means greater value of Russian exports
Trump payoff to Russia via abrogation of Iran agreement?
Trump payoff to Jewish mafia is more like it. Russia cannot get him impeached, but Jews can.
Any thoughts on why the alt-right (or at least its Spencer wing) failed?
I hope you haven’t forgotten about sharing your Portugal impressions with us.
Can we finally say “the alt right is dead” without people scolding us it’s totally not and actually really, really great things are coming if we just donate more BTC right now?
The audacity of Flores and his circle accusing anyone of LARPing. I’ve seen him claim to have inside scoops from the Kremlin and to be in communication with intelligence agencies. They believe the next world war will break out in the Balkans (again) and they’re training themselves to take a role in the aftermath. Real goofy, cult-like stuff.
Replace China with Asia-Pacific.
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/kennan_cable_33-corbin.pdf
https://twitter.com/ArtyomLukin/status/994186390375149568
https://twitter.com/antsvetov/status/999208839198146561
More than thoughts, but I can’t say more. Suffice to say you were correct in your skepticism and for many more reasons than mere ideological quibbles.
The core problem seems to be just plain human capital. Extreme ideologies per se attract weirdos and unstable people; right-wing ideologies attract less intelligent and lower trust people. Not a good mix, as repeatedly shown by Nehlen, Cantwell, the Trashionalist Non-Worker Party.
It’s the root cause of our problems and I am still stumped on how to solve it. I suppose one thing that’s clear now is that shitposting to victory was always a stupid meme. You need real intellectual content. The old Dissident Right (Sailer, VDARE, even Amren, etc) had that in spades, NRx had that in spades. They also practiced face control, with unstable people getting ejected.
Looking to the future of the alt right (lower-case) in the US, it seems there are three main avenues through which it will continue moving forwards.
(1) NRx/Dissident Right/HBDsphere at the elite intellectual level.
(2) Jordan B. Peterson “breadpilling” the normies.
(3) /pol/ and The Daily Stormer (3 million+ monthly visits!) continuing radicalizing a hardcore underneath the surface.
Not going to be playing much of a role:
(1) The Spencerian Alt Right, the various neo-Nazi, neo-Confederate, and sundry militia organizations, many of which are frankly slapstick affairs – neither particularly intellectual (the former after they buried Radix, the latter never), nor spiritually satiating like JBP, and Anglin has the edgelord niche totally covered.
(2) The Alt Lite. Or, as spandrell correctly described them, alt-psychopathic status maximizers.
Glad to see Dmitry featured. His commentary is interesting, objective, and valuable.
When I visit Moscow (I assume he lives there?) I would like to meet Dmitry as well.
Thanks, that’s interesting. I’m somewhat surprised you attribute much importance to this Jordan B. Peterson fellow…haven’t paid him much attention, seemed merely like some self-help guru to me, but maybe I’m mistaken about that.
Deciding where to draw the line and whom to exclude is of course a very difficult problem for any nationalist movement, both always kicking to the right/accepting the framing of one’s enemies and continual radicalization are real dangers. I don’t think anybody has come up with a completely convincing solution so far.
I’ll add that adding women into significant positions is essentially an instant poison pill from what I have seen. I don’t know how AfD is managing it, but its almost breathtaking how quickly it seems to wreck organizations in my experience.
I’m inclined to agree since most female politicians in Germany are horrible (Merkel obviously, but also lots of others…there’s already talk btw that Merkel will be succeeded by another woman, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer who is kind of the Catholic version).
That being said, AfD’s lesbian leader Weidel had some good performances in the Bundestag recently.
Because ideas on these websites are often retarded in the first place, so they attract retarded people.
There’s simple, logical politics things all of us want:
That other people have just enough children (i.e. just averaging around 2 children per woman) so the dependency ratio is not fucked in our countries future. (This is relevant for Russia more than others).
As nationalists, that our country gets rich and its culture flourishes (but what does it matter what happens in countries like America, except to the extent it affects us culturally).
That it becomes richer in a way we can access (not just going to some guys with connections)
Investment in science, robots, military power, cancer-research (the latter we’ll appreciate one day).
Free speech. The government does not ruin your life for any opinion.
So this ‘alt-right’ movement in America might superficially an ally look on something like point 1 or point 5. But really they are just useful idiots for radicals who oppose point 1 and 5 (because they discredit the whole campaign to make people support point 1 and 5) with their other views.
These seems to be:
2.. Believe every conspiracy theory you read on an unreliable internet site (to make intelligent people think you are crazy – i.e. being a useful idiot).
Be like a sheep and follow whatever latest thing you read on an internet website. Weak mind, easily persuaded. . No original ideas or points of view.
Womanly minded people. Without independence and the concept of evaluating both sides of things. Preference for one-sided propaganda.
Thanks. I’ve never lived in Moscow and have only visited it for holidays. It could be great to live in Moscow one day. For the last year and a half, I have been working at the entry level for an international company near a famous university of Western Europe (not a bad place, but with very little to do outside the job).
i think it’s been true for a while that Richard Spencer himself has become a little bored with the lack of dramatic street level progress but the essence of the alt-right was always meme war and that’s been going very well imo.
if he does drop out i expect the crew he assembled to create an online university – “all dwems, all the time” – to benefit from academia’s growing dislike of whypipo.
You need to take your tranquilizers.
Some thing certainly improve in Putins Russia…..
The panel also noted that it is now more difficult to recruit intelligence sources inside Russia than it was during the Soviet era. During the Soviet era, the CIA relied upon “volunteers” who would approach American intelligence officers, Bearden said, but the pool of Russians willing to betray their government largely has dried up. It is not entirely clear why this is the case, but Bearden suggested that given previous Soviet and Russian penetration of American intelligence services, it is possible that the fear of compromise has driven away many potential sources.
Clement suggested that Russian perceptions of the United States have deteriorated so badly that even educated Russian liberals take a dim view of Washington—making the recruitment of spies extremely difficult. Moreover, many Russians who might have betrayed their government in previous eras no longer feel compelled to risk imprisonment or death by working for the CIA. Instead, those dissidents can simply leave Russia for the West—which was not an option during the Soviet era.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/former-cia-officials-assess-russia-25946?page=2
They only like traps.
It depends if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m not but I definitely get that vibe from a number of folks here.
You might solve your human capital problem by offering a moral vision. Haven’t studies shown that more intelligent people are attracted to leftism, and what does leftism offer…
Dmitry’s list of points are very nice, but they will hardly inspire passion. HBD may be true, but how inspiring is it exactly…
You are offering “substance” – i.e rational and evidemce-based prescriptions for what is conducive to our physical well-being – but do studies and statistics show that more intelligent people get highly motivated by this kind of thing?
Your core problem may be you are too left brained – you are not addressing the right brain enough. Keep all your positions, but figure out a way to couch them in an inspiring moral vision.
Then again this may be just unbalanced weirdo low human capital talk, and you may want to just double down on rational substance. You’ll eventually attract smart people, probably. They just have to realize its good for their physical well being.
That women who tripped the “refugee” is a heroine. She showed more initiative than dozens of highly treacherous pols. Quite a contrast to that German state-newswoman who gently encouraged an Afghani who had been in Germany a year without a job to blame ethnic Germans for his failures. I would put a statue up of her tripping the “refugee” and maybe put it at the border or in an airport.
Why wouldn’t Russia want to be a part of ‘Western cultural supremacy’?
Well, I wouldn’t worry about the alt-right lacking individuals with an, um, more fantastical take on reality.
So I’m right where I belong then 🙂
But really I am not alt-right. I despise those losers.
IMO the issues is that the Alt-Right has never been able to escape their demotist origin, which I suppose ties into the entire populism angle. Despite various mumbles about aristocracy or so on that occasionally rise, its effectively a constant mob with perverse incentives that essentially encourage the most insane into prominent positions: external pressure/silencing further cuts down on competent members from joining and journalistic coverage essentially creates a twisted alliance between weirdos and pressitudes.
One could almost say that in its own way, its a microcosm of the larger problems of the world as a whole: short-term orientation, hyperrealism, and atomization of society.
/pol/’s pretty amazing.
“The Fire Rises” INTERPRETED AS Socratic Dialogue:
I rather like RationalWiki. It has lots of useful links and reads like some clever parody. Are we sure that the guy who runs it isn’t really one of us? I think he is just working hard at pretending he is not – maybe making some shekels on the side.
Ha! That is great!
This.
Your comment does make me laugh because when I read it, I thought about indoctrination, propaganda and marketing in the 21st century.
Ideally, all people would be trained against indoctrination.
But if you have to have it, the successful way is the one which focuses on primitive positive emotions (via singing, dancing and socializing).
Compare how Jews are marketing to Jews, and how incompetently America’s Spencer was trying to do marketing to the youth.
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To take first example. Who is being indoctrinated better in the 21st century :
The Belorussian Jews (or Jewish roots) youth camp in Israel?
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Richard Spencer tries to indoctrinate young Americans to ‘alt-right’ by a speech about ‘hail victory’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVeZ0_Lhazw
Israel hosts standard free seminar for Belorussian Jewish youth to encourage them to immigrate to Israel. Not boring lectures, but primitive things likes games and dancing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhRfTQJ5WU8
Question – which youth will be more motivated at the end. Jewish youth or the alt-right youth?
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Finally the Putin’s youth movement summer camps.
There was something seems a little boring (but at least Surkov understood the importance of having mixed genders there).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgm_IbLrONo
But this Putin camp (or Surkov designed camp) is using something more similar to the Israeli methods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM4n9UsiaXo
Regarding the death of altright.com, just so you know, I am 99.9% sure that “Roy Batty” at the Daily Stormer is actually Vincent Law.
He appeared there around the same time that Vincent disappeared from altright.com, also he has familiarity with Russia like someone who lives/has lived there and speaks the language, and he seems to always pick his pen names from cyberpunk classics (Vincent Law is a character from Ergo Proxy, Roy Batty is of course from Blade Runner).
This made me read it. I managed 80% only. Damage control schtick typical for Kremlin sycophants telling the masses that their leaders know what they are doing so there is no reason to be concerned. I would assume Mercouris is remunerated handsomely for his equilibristics.
Mr Karlin, I remember you remarking recently that at the time of the French revolution it was in fact the nobility that held the most extreme positions at the Estates General. Could you suggest some books to put this in context?
A lot written here, but nothing about the coming world cup, are Russians not interested in this event?
You conveniently leave out the fact that Israel extracts billions from other states to fund such things, at the same time the jews pass laws to hound and destroy any white that wants to organize anything involving white people.
Russians probably are. Karlin isn’t.
Peterson is an ideological and political nothing; he is the liberal equivalent of Zizek
I said what I had to say about Russian football here: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/why-russia-bad-at-football/
Despite the untold billions spent on it, the Russian team’s Elo rating is lower than it has ever been, currently 45th in the world – that’s between Japan and Northern Ireland. It will probably eke out second place in its laughably weak (and hilariously unlikely) group, and will be put out of its misery by Spain or Portugal as soon as its out of the group stages.
I see no good reason to pay much attention to this farce and neither do Russian pub owners.
https://twitter.com/27khv/status/999934526754316290
When your only tool is a hammer, the more everything looks like a nail.
Same thing in Hungary, spending a lot of money, yet still a shitty team. I’ve actually seen the Sbornaya meme in a Hungarian National Team version, but I think it’s of Western European origin. (Maybe they usually depicted an opposing team.)
Uruguay came second in a very strong South American Qualifying group ( Chile who could easily be one of the favourites for the World Cup didn’t qualify)…they are also one of the most successful nations at the world cup and finished 3rd in 2010,knocked out England and Italy in 2014 and have at least 3 World Class players (Suarez,Godin and Cavani) Saudi Arabia are decent and have a load of black players, Egypt have arguably the best player on the planet.
Colombia are a good team but Poland, Colombia,Senegal and Japan is a weak group…so is France,Denmark,Peru and Australia ( probably the worst team in the tournament)
Perhaps last time’s disappointment in 2014 dampened their mood?
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russian-football-fans-interest-plummets-after-world-cup-fiasco-39059
I hate to say it, but it’s probably inaccurate. Wikipedia says there are 200 cars in the Ukraine per 1000 inhabitants. Crimea can’t be doing so much worse, than the Ukraine.
Also, as of 2014 the average car in the Ukraine was 20 years old. lol
Next Big Future is a complete joke.
Coming from someone with your predictions, that’s an accolade.
A pity. I suppose such a huge differential was too good to be true. Probably just a registration issue, then.
Even if the team is crap hosting the world cup is a once in a lifetime event, nobody ever expected Russia (and most other teams) to win, I fail how this should automatically lead to a “I don’t give a damn” attitude.
It also proves that cucking is not exclusive to whites, they suck up to Israel and have black players on their team, they should call their country Saudi Cuckrabia.
He’s an intelligent and knowledgeable lawyer who serves his purpose.
Serves what person?
This idiotic (I am talking about utu) that everyone is getting paid handsomely to write what they write is idiotic, and almost always wrong.
The idea that a magazine which prominently and intrusively sells MUGS and BASEBALL CAPS to stay in operations is getting paid to do what it does is preposterous.
Occam’s Razor explanation: Most reasonable people dgaf about your (utu’s) obsession with Israel.
Exactly. Host a wonderful tournament ( Russia will,probably the best ever ), see amazing football ( the last 5 out of 7 tournaments have been extremely shit-average standard of football…so the only way is up), get past the first round ( 50/50 chance I would give it), not have an enemy team win it ( that means Germany because France are respectable, Poland have no chance, nor do England), and have an honorable elimination to Spain or Portugal ( Portugal don’t tend to win 5-0 or 6-0 like Spain do)
All these things are highly likely….this tournament should be a very positive development in the history of Russia.
Purpose, not person. I haven’t read him for a while, but from what I recall, AM is an intelligent and knowledgeable guy who consistently argues the Kremlin’s case and does a good job doing so. One couldn’t ask for a better English-language spokesperson and that’s the impression that I got from him – an unofficial spokesperson arguing the case. You are correct that one shouldn’t go too far in automatically assuming that he is getting paid, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some indirect compensation were involved. OTOH he may just be a very passionate fan.
Which is precisely why the Kremlin’s media outlets aren’t much interested in his services. Mediocrities don’t welcome competition.
We are not obsessed. Israel is a nasty country, but that’s not the point. The point is that Israel (the Jewry) is Russia’s chief opponent in Syria. The international campaign to unseat Bashar Assad is really a Jewish campaign. There is absolutely no way Russia’s interests in Syria can be reconciled with Israel’s. They say they want Iranian influence out of the country. That’s not going to happen. What will happen is a slow motion war of attrition between Iran and Israel, with Russian servicemen standing helplessly in the middle of it.
Russia can put an end to this crap by introducing some costs for the Israelis. Treating Netanyahoo as a guest of honor, while he attacks our allies gets us nowhere. If we are going to have Syria stabilised, we’ll need to confront the problem of Israel.
there’s an aspect of the truth in this – xenophobia/xenophilia are in balanced selection imo with the majority of people somewhere in the middle and the line taken by instinctive xenophobes doesn’t really work with the people in the middle unless and until the bad guys become really obvious about being genocidally anti-white…
so the anti-white dominant culture is creating a moral vision.
I said “offer” – not indoctrinate. You offer an inspiring moral vision and high quality people will flock.
The indoctrination comes later 🙂
How do you train people against needing a moral vision – might as well train them against eating!
Its a strange thing, but high IQ people seem to like it. You guys here who are satisfied with only physical comfort appear to be the minority among high IQ people – what to do? What to do?
And yes, since the enlightenment white culture as a whole isn’t very good at this kind of thing (emotions).
Its something that must never relearned.
Lol.
But nails ARE everywhere.
The anti-white dominant culture will generate a huge moral backlash as whites become victims more and more, but we are decade away from that, perhaps more.
It would be easy to present something they enthused over that worked out, if such things existed.
One of my cars is 15 years old (a Ford truck). I will almost certainly still own it when it is 20 years old, and then it will be eligible for collector car plates from my state. In addition to being far cheaper to register ($20 vs. $70), collector car plates are distinctively blue with red script.
The downside is that you can’t drive a car with collector plates for one week in January, but since I own multiple cars who cares?
I once owned a 1989 Volvo 740, which I wish I had never sold. Incredibly distinctive car, and rock solid reliability.
I assume the typical car in the Ukraine is nothing one would be proud of owning, of course.
British diversity statistics or the birth of Global Britain
Past foreign born population
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/datasets/populationoftheunitedkingdombycountryofbirthandnationalityunderlyingdatasheets
You guys here who are satisfied with only physical comfort appear
I stay out of your discussions here and I am not putting myself in the high IQ group, but you are straw-manning to the max here. Just because a person doesn’t believe in the supernatural does not mean that they have no moral vision, a “spiritual” dimension to their personality and attitude, and don’t have and wish to cultivate virtues.
Feel free to join my discussions any time iffen.
I am not sure how you distinguish between spiritual vision and belief in the supernatural – I would say they’re the same thing. They both imply belief in a supra material order.
If you mean specific definable beliefs about God or the precise character of the supernatural, i’d quite agree with you – in Zen and Mahayana Buddhism you are supposed to get rid of all such beliefs. They are metaphors for an ineffable reality.
Many westerners however are extremely literal minded – materialism did not start here for no reason – and cannot seem to dispense with specific clearly defined beliefs.
Concerning Syria, Russia’s passivity in the face of Israeli agression emboldens American neocons:
https://twitter.com/TomRtweets/status/999814891593699328
Next thing you know, he will be calling for airstrikes on Crimea bridge. Actually, he already did!
Well, AaronB does troll a lot, but not here actually– this is just part of the ongoing AaronB-Dmitry dispute over, among other things, whether tasteful sneakers and tasty coffee are a suitable ultimate goal in life.
maybe – my take is the people driving this aren’t primarily driven by power or greed but by a compulsion to provoke people into hostility and the more tolerant the population the more extreme the provocation has to be – so at the limit i don’t think the alt-right necessarily has to do anything at all cos the bad guys will do it themselves (although helping the process along as much as possible should make it go smoother).
This is true – the bad guys always overreach, and always miscalculated eventually. Which us why I’m so long term optimistic.
Evil can’t stay still – it must always try and do more – and always overreaches.
But in the meantime there’s lots we can do to help make things better.
You can start from yourself and reveal more of what Russian nationalism really means to you? How should Russian/Ukrainian relations develop into the future? I perceive certain black holes in your content that doesn’t really add up to the ‘intellectual content’ that you’re clamoring for?
Am thinking of buying a new one in Sweden and driving it around. How bad has Sweden become? Should I just head for the mountains and coasts of Norway? A friend has done some business in Gothenburg and he tells me he didn’t see a non Middle Eastern face in the mall he went to.
In Russia the average age of a car is 13 years. The oldest cars in Russia are, of course, Russian-made cars (average age 20.5 years for a Russian-made car in Russia).
I imagine Ukraine is similar, but with far fewer foreign cars than in Russia, thus the older average age.
On a different note, Tesla is going to zero. The company has a number of severe problems:
• Tesla is burning through one billion per quarter and is likely to run out of cash this year
• It is the only company of its size (in the market) offering high yield debt and stock offerings to accredited investors (which do not require SEC disclosure)
• Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly refused to meet with Elon Musk when he was in Saudi Arabia
• Elon Musk has violated federal securities, labor, and OSHA laws
• Musk and many other current and former executives have signed false documents and thus committed perjury
• The Model 3 is a disaster and was panned by Consumer Reports, Car and Driver, and Edmund’s
• The self-dealing merger with Solar City would likely not have been approved by shareholders without Musk’s vaporware demonstration of solar roof tiles that do not exist (securities fraud)
• Half of Tesla’s output is exported, leaving it very vulnerable to trade retaliation
• Quality problems continue to be severe, and Tesla has now resorted to partnering with local body shops for post-production fixes
• Extreme shortage of spare parts means Teslas can be out of service for months
• Tesla takes months to refund customer deposits
• Numerous accounting problems, leading to 86 questions from the SEC for the last fiscal year, compared to zero for Ford Motor
• Tesla “autopilot” units keep crashing
• Highest accident and fatality statistics in its vehicle class (new luxury vehicles)
• Model S wheels and suspensions keep cracking
• Difficulty of exiting vehicle in the absence of electrical power (no mechanical door handles) led to children literally being burned alive
• A flood of competition is inbound, including the 600 horsepower Porsche Misson-E going into production at Zuffenhausen next year
• Tesla’s zero emission credits are set to expire, just as other automakers start harvesting them
Every freely available share is now short–not joking. You can’t even short the stock anymore generally, though puts are of course available.
Musk himself is likely to be personally wiped out as well, as he has borrowed against 40% of his shares. He’ll face a very ugly margin call when the stock starts sliding. Additionally, he’s likely to personally face both civil and criminal liability.
I haven’t been to Sweden since 2014, so I haven’t seen the results of Merkel’s blunder first hand yet. My father hasn’t reported dramatic problems in his recent visits, and he always stays in the posh areas of Stockholm. In 2007 I covered most of the country in a roadtrip, and there were really only major visible racial problems in Malmö.
Prior to 2015 at least Sweden was completely fine as the invaders were largely confined to ghetto suburbs. Until this decade you largely didn’t even see them in service jobs, even taxi driving (other than Yugoslavs). I’ve only seen one “Swede” who is the product of miscegenation ever, though I realize more exist.
Volvo offers factory delivery (as you likely found out), and Sweden’s west coast is spectacular in summertime. Hisingen is gorgeous. The entire country is wonderful in the summer.
It’s 11.5 years in America. My cars are between 5 and 15 years old.
Looking at acquiring some 80s swag for collection soon. E24 BMW 6 series, E30 BMW 3 series, and Volvo 7 series on the list.
Also considering an E39 BMW 5 series, not so much for collection but for actual use. E39 and E46 were the last real Bimmers.
Interesting question about the human capital, but I’ve yet to see issues around that here in Ireland where I’m deeply involved in new nationalist movements. The calibre of people is incredible, and there is active removal of the socially incapable/edgelords/autists etc that could damage the cause.
Perhaps that is just our relatively unusual political landscape by western standards but the dregs, freaks and yuppies are liberals whereas the young and intellectual are tilting hard-right. From what I’ve seen our human capital is large and only getting bigger.
In high school in the late 80s/early 90s, one if my friends had a BMW 2002. That was a fun little car.
Wasn’t there supposed to be a big post on Portugual after the visit there?
2002s can still be had for a reasonable price.
A car that old isn’t very practical however (which is fine if it’s just for a collection). They really needed leaded gasoline, and the only available source these days is 145 octane warbird juice. Needless to say warbird juice isn’t cheap: https://vpracingfuels.com/product/115145/
$13.11 per gallon, ouch.
Yes, I’d like to read about that too.
I’ve only seen one “Swede” who is the product of miscegenation ever
Henrik Larsson?
My first visit to sub-Saharan Africa was in 1981 to the Gambia. I stayed at a hotel on the beach, and at the pool one couldn’t help but notice the large number of unattached, and statuesque, Swedish women. Despite my best efforts I struck out completely, as they were only interested in sampling the local talent.
This is entirely correct. That Israel is in a tussle with Iran doesn’t concern me per se. It is the fact that Israel uses its diaspora lobbies to drag the West into the war by unseating Assad and they’ve essentially bribed all of the US political class into doing so.
This is the essence of the JQ. Jewish interest transcends borders and so it is futile to speak of “Israel wants” when essentially all the major Jewish orgs are very Zionist and in effect act as a fifth column within their respective host nations. They also have a lot of influence. Even they admit this.
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/04/forward-columnist-and-emilys-list-leader-relate-gigantic-shocking-role-of-jewish-democratic-donors/
For AK to underplay this, I think, basically boils down to cowardice. Bashing muslims carries little social cost. Going after Jews does. This doesn’t change the fact that some people overplay the JQ to the detriment of other issues, but it’s a major factor in the West today. A lot of WNs tried to avoid it, like Jared Taylor and he got absolutely nothing in return for it.
I bought some Tesla shares as the company as dipping a few weeks ago.
The criticism of lack of profitability is sound & fair, but I also think most of the overheated commentary has been irrational and overtly emotional. I expect Tesla to gradually improve net profitability as time goes on. Musk has prioritised volume expansion over profits and I think it is fair to say that he underestimated how tough it would be.
That said, it will be interesting to see if your doomsday predictions will hold true or if my more cautious assessment will turn out correct. Both of our credibility will be on the line for the next year or so 🙂
I go almost every year. I was there last summer and will visit again. I have both family and friends there, as well as increasing number of radical right-wing friends. I’ve previously pointed out that Sweden has arguably the most impressive nationalist/far-right scene in Europe. A lot fewer skinheads, drunks and druggards and a lot of family-oriented, communitarian nationalists who are also very much into outdoors activities like hiking, survivalism and the like.
Overall, the Nordic character is impressive and I personally like being around them, they have healthy habits. Low amounts of smoking, drinking etc.
As for Sweden itself, it’s still a great country. You certainly see offspring of miscegenation, but it is no more than perhaps half a dozen a day or so out of hundreds of kids you’d see walking and moving throughout Stockholm (where I am visiting folks). I saw Pericles, who is a Swede, claiming that Stockholm is now third world. I felt it was much whiter than either London or Paris, and even Oslo (despite Norway having a higher share of Europeans). This is because of the Swedish government’s policy to distribute the “refugees” as evenly as possible.
Most Americans don’t understand that European cities work the inverse of US ones. The inner cities are the expensive parts and the suburbs are more varied. In Stockholm, there is a very high degree of segregation in residential terms but the schools are quite mixed. You often have MENA/African kids bussed in to richer neighbourhood schools, not through forced bussing like in the US in the 70s but just because getting into a school is quite easy. Your grades can be terrible but you’d still get in. Only in the very finest schools in the inner city is there some semblance of competition but even there you’d see quite a bit of diversity, since all the non-white elites tend to congregate in Stockholm even if the average population is poorly educated and they all send their kids to these schools.
Some of the villas I’ve seen have sold for 500-700K USD, which is a lot for Swedish wages. A lot of Swedes are drowning in household debt. Partly it is because of very low interest rates, the Riksbank benchmark rate is currently negative (which makes saving punishing and borrowing very easy), but of course the big elephant in the room is the twin effects of demography. The first effect is the composition, or white flight to speak plainly. But then there’s the second, more quantitive component, namely the sheer increase in population growth is higher than the construction rate is, so this pushes up prices in the better parts of the cities.
Overall, I’d say Sweden is still a very impressive country. But as someone who visited Denmark last year, the Danes are certainly ahead now, though the main difference between Denmark and Sweden is just the speed of self-abolition at this rate. Danes are smug about this situation, given the historical rivlarly, but they are just 20 years behind the Swedes, possibly less.
It’s not like he actively attacks those who promote it though, and almost anyone reading Amren will be exposed to it elsewhere. I don’t think it does any harm to have a spokesperson who doesn’t mention it explicitly.
The big mistake of Jew-aware people and organizations is (and has always been in the past) to treat Jews based on that perceived unity as if they were a monolithic organization, which they aren’t.
Hitler thought that Jews were pushing the US (and previously the UK) to enter the war. (He was not wrong.) He thought that a good way to make them stop this would be to threaten European Jews. He thought that if American Jews saw that a war might endanger the very lives of all European Jews (and his threats beginning in January 1939 were quite explicit in that regard – “if Jews succeed in pushing the world into a world war once again, the result will be the extermination of European Jewry”), then American Jews might be deterred from pushing the US into the war.
Hitler’s calculations would’ve been correct, if Jewry were monolithic organization, which it is not. If there was a World Jewish Committee which would regularly meet, then they’d coolly and rationally examine the possibilities, and perhaps decide that the destruction of the National Socialist German Reich was not worth the destruction of European Jewry. They might try to engage in talks with the Germans to get Jews out of Europe in exchange for guaranteed peace, or something.
But Jewry was totally decentralized. Hitler’s anti-Jewish threats merely had the effect of making Jews (including influential Jews) more determined in their anti-German or anti-Nazi hatred, and so strengthened their push for war.
I’m afraid a similar strategy (which I had proposed just this week) would probably lead to similar results: if Russia started threatening Israel in response to American policies (pushed by American Jewry), the result would be a strengthening of resolve and would make Israel (whose policies are currently not very hostile to Russia, for example they don’t participate in any sanctions or embargoes against it) also explicitly hostile to Russia.
So I’m not sure what a strong Russian stance against Israel would accomplish. I understand for example utu, since he’d be delighted if a nuclear war broke out between Israel and Russia, but I can understand why Russians (including Putin and Karlin) don’t really want to risk it for Arabs.
Hedge your long position with some puts. Only reason I am not short is that there are no shares available to short. I did buy puts however.
Congrats for putting your money where your mouth is. By next year this time you may be featured on @Bagholderquotes :).
This has been true. Most Tesla criticism up until now has come from two camps:
The Zero Hedge doomerist crowd.
There have, however, been two major exceptions. Jim Chanos and Bob Lutz.
Jim Chanos is a legendary short seller who nailed Enron and Valeant (though he lost some credibility by betting on a China crash that never happened). Chanos states that the only times he’s seen so many executive departures before are Enron and Valeant.
Bob Lutz likely needs no introduction to you. And while Lutz is a car guy (invented the Dodge Viper), he says the greatest achievement of his career was the Chevy Volt and that EVs are inevitable. Furthermore he highly praised the Model S. Lutz has bluntly called Tesla a personality cult that’s going bankrupt.
Tesla can’t improve its net profitability because it has no profitability to begin with, even if we accept Tesla’s fictitious gross margins and channel stuffing (e.g. “selling” batteries to The Boring Company).
Musk has indeed prioritized volume production, and his failure is due to his arrogance. This arrogance is typical of Silicon Valley as a class. They assume they know better than any other industry, failing to realize their success is due to monopoly and lack of regulation (welcome to the auto industry boys!).
Musk deliberately recruited executives with no experience in the automotive industry, and he attempted to fully automate production (e.g. his infamous alien dreadnought remark). If Musk weren’t so arrogant, he would’ve learn that Roger Smith attempted this in the ’80s and went so far as to buy FANUC. It was a complete disaster. Sandy Munro describes robots as blind one-armed idiots, and notes that not only can they not do everything but one must design the product itself for robotic production.
This arrogance is directly culpable for Tesla’s huge capital costs, as essentially Tesla bought far more capital equipment than it can actually use or is required in automaking. Musk said he was going to build half a million cars this year. He’ll be lucky to hit 200,000.
Even aside from Tesla’s financial woes, regulatory violations, massive civil liability, and outright criminality a massive flood of competition is inbound.
The Jaguar I-Pace electric SUV is on sale right now in Europe, and arrives in North America next month: https://www.jaguarusa.com/all-models/i-pace/index.html?abkid=407_224254&gclid=Cj0KCQjwuYTYBRDsARIsAJnrUXAjcErB3eAzUm3aDwws14fB5_Gi4_-V1yMDCdK81o3JVzfIfP3nvKoaAvGuEALw_wcB&m
The Porsche Mission-E goes into production next year at Zuffenhausen: https://www.porsche.com/microsite/mission-e/international.aspx
The Chevy Bolt is available now, unlike the fictitious $35,000 Model 3: http://www.chevrolet.com/electric/bolt-ev-electric-car
Volkswagen is currently converting twenty assembly plants to EV production, Daimler is investing twenty billion euros in it by 2022, and GM is putting over 20 all electric vehicles into production over the next five years.
Then there’s the fact that the Model 3 turns out to be something of a dog. Consumer Reports, which called the Model S the best car it has ever evaluated, noted that the Model 3 has a greater average stopping distance than the Ford F-150.
What’s the story for Tesla surviving? A company that appears to be under SEC investigation somehow raises $20 billion in the next few years, achieves mass production, eliminates its severe quality problems, doesn’t get sued by all the people it killed, and beats the competition handily?
Then there’s the fact that Musk appears to be personally melting down. Feuding with Warren Buffet, attacking the press Trump-style, and dating someone named “Grimes” who is an “anti-imperialist” singer (?!).
I highly encourage you to check out Fintwitter on this (the only Twitter that can compete with Frogtwitter). No one does scuttlebutt like bears.
Only true if your savings are in the form of SEK deposits.
Granted, ZIRP makes saving for short-term goals very difficult owing to asset price volatility.
Glad ZIRP is over in America and getting 2% interest is no problem now.
It’s not a fair comparison, because difference in budgets.
Secondly it’s all indoctrination of youth is bad thing – but it’s still useful to look at the high-budget professionals compared to the amateurs (professionals focus mainly on dancing, music and group activities, to simulate sense of family; while amateurs do speeches and focus on negative activities).
It’s interesting to look at the difference between professional state-actors indoctrination, compared to how Richard Spencer tried it in America.
Spencer has quite a simple and plausible idea (to create WASP only, or European-American only, territory).
Obstacle is that it is currently not fashionable idea or politically attractive or ‘cool’ for young people.
In responsive, Spencer tries to associate this proposal with homosexual imagery and fashions of the 1950s Americas, including a special kind of haircut, which participants have at his seminars.
In addition, he adds motivational speeches talking about going to the stars (as if it was the 1950s and are beginning the space race).
It is a combination of homosexual and 1950s aesthetic, with Italian Futurist style of speeches. (It’s not completely thoughtless, because 1950s was a golden age for America).
The end impression of Spencer’s attempts is a failure – his proposal seem less attractive than it was before, except for small subset of young men with interest in homosexual aesthetics (who would probably have joined the seminary in former times).
How would he have been more successful? A more competent person would normalize the idea of ‘European-American territory’, remove negative aspects, and associate it with positive emotions and ordinary (not mentally ill) people, who simply want to live in a more comfortable, meaningful and safe community.
(Even I, despite having no psychologist training, could a far better job than Spencer).
The way to conduct a seminar for youth, is just to have a normal summer camp or trip, but in which people of the ‘European-American’ will be together and realize that it can be more comfortable, etc.
Here Spencer amateur attempt at a indoctrination seminar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o6-bi3jlxk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rnRPhEwELo&t=31s
Here is how Russia (Putin’s youth movement) does indoctrination camp. Whole focus on socializing and – dancing (losing inhibitions creates a feeling of family) . All focus on positive emotion – at 4:02 even Timati singing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUJV9XpqgCs
There’s even Zhirinovsky – I wish I had gone to these.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RHOtAGY2dM
Here is how Israel does it for the Jewish/Israeli camps for teenagers. Again the same indoctrination technology as Putin – focus on creating positive emotion, komsomol style dancing, etc.
They don’t even need to add ideology – just the fact of put Jewish teenagers together and make them have fun (then the positive emotions will be associated with Jews/Israel).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IHchkzYtrQ
You know far more about the Musk empire than I do. How would Tesla’s possible collapse rebound on SpaceX?
The ideology itself is not so inspiring. It’s just what it can offer.
On the material (rational) level – money, power, successful.
And on the spiritual level – family, community, positive emotions.
The indoctrination aspect into ideology is usually through the ‘spiritual’ aspects (to associate warm feelings as a kind of classical pavlov conditioning).
Tesla has a super-charger network, which is the main advantage for customers in Europe and America (where they are well established).
The interesting thing will be what happens with the CCS installation in Europe, whether it will go up to 350 kW, whether many electric cars will soon be able to handle this.
I would strongly predict that electric vehicles will start to take over in 2020s – the reason is simply physics – skipping a step in energy transformation.
I have never shied from the JQ. I stuck up for Bausman when almost all the rest of the Russosphere crowd rushed to disassociate. I have been officially certified by the SPLC as an anti-Semite.
What else do I need to do to disprove my “cowardice” on the JQ?
Go full-scale 14/88 stormer? Okay, I scare off my 70% of my readers, and eventually probably get booted from here. I go from being unwelcome at “respectable”/leftist venues to being blacklisted across almost the entire swathe of Russian, European, and American sites and organizations. I also discredit by association the standing that I do have within both the Russosphere and the HBD/IQ community. I don’t have Anglin’s work ethic or talent for dark humor, nor will I have much interesting or original to say about the JQ because it doesn’t interest me like it does Kevin McDonald or Durocher, so I will sink into irrelevance and will eventually need to find a conventional job. Ooops.
Reality – I am first and foremost a Russian nationalist. ZOG is primarily an American problem (because it rules them) and an Iranian problem (because it is most opposed to them), not a Russian problem. Western countries might have problems with Jewish organizations pushing diversity and poz on them, but that is not so much a Russian problem, because they are largely marginalized within Russia – our problems in that department, at least for now, have nothing to do with Soros or the Frankfurt School. All that aside, I do not see how taking the side of Arabs against Israel helps promote Russian interests.
PS. I also don’t even attack Muslims all that much. As I think I made quite clear, that’s an Alt Lite obsession (“what about muh gay Muslims”). I dgaf.
My knowledge only dates to last weekend really. Got tired of hearing about Musk and decided to do some scuttlebutt.
Space X is a private company, so I’m unaware of its financials or ownership structure. I suspect it is not profitable as it raised capital as recently as last year, but in principal there is nothing wrong with its business model. Its technical and commercial achievements are impressive. Unlike the situation with Tesla, Musk actually recruited experienced aerospace executives and engineers for Space X instead of Snapchat retreads (not joking–some dipshit from Snapchat is now running the Autopilot program).
The collapse of Tesla will do two things to Space X:
1 – Musk has borrowed against 40% of his Tesla shares, likely to finance his other businesses and fund his lavish lifestyle (Bel Air and London mansions, Gulfstream G650, etc.). This means he’ll face a crushing margin call, possibly forcing him to sell his shares in Space X.
2 – It will destroy his halo, which is source of his success. This is why Musk committed securities fraud in order to have Tesla acquire Solar City, which was rapidly headed for bankruptcy. With his reputation in tatters, it will call into question his leadership of Space X. Certainly ideas like going to Mars with other people’s money will be out.
There is also a real possibility that Musk will face felony prosecution, in which case he certainly won’t be running Space X.
A lot of the Tesla bears assume there’s something wrong with Space X as well, but I don’t think this is warranted. One guy who is documenting all the Model S suspension failures has invented a half-cocked conspiracy theory that Space X’s achievements are fictitious. It’s pretty common for short sellers to get emotional during a great bear raid, which is part of the fun. 🙂
Some resources for you all on Tesla’s impending collapse, starting with FinTwitter:
FinTwitter Resources
Mark Spiegel, Managing Partner of Stanphyl capital and Tesla bear
https://twitter.com/markbspiegel
Tesla Charts
https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts
Elon Bachman, great source for product flaws
https://twitter.com/ElonBachman
Montana Skeptic, and see his Seeking Alpha articles as well
https://twitter.com/montanaSkeptic1
Elon Musk himself, useful because of his ongoing meltdown
https://twitter.com/elonmusk
Model 3 Reviews
Scathing Edmund’s long-term test: https://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-3/2017/long-term-road-test/2017-tesla-model-3-monthly-update-for-april-2018.html
Consumer Reports “not recommended”: https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla/model-3/2018/road-test?pagestop
Sandy Munro’s teardown: http://www.autoline.tv/journal/?p=54950
Yea, not bad. I have a friend who’s connected to the Arktos crowd and he is exactly the type of a nationalist that you mention – in National guard, outdoorsy (still does survival camps in the north). Btw, there are some crypto-Nazis inside the Moderaterna, too.
The overall situation is not good, ofc, but it seems better than the UK, France, Belgium… (that’s not saying much though, it is close to catastrophic by my standards anyway). Re: Stockholm – unfortunately, there are some pesky Albanians (?) running around downtown, around Drottningatan (main shopping street), who work service jobs. Medborgarsplats (one of the main squares) has a lot of Turkic / Arabic looking guys. Other parts of Södermalm are ok (nice cafes, relaxed crowd).
Btw, contrary to the common myth, the Swedes don’t really race mix that much. I’ve never been able to relate to those Scandinavians who take all those exotic trips (to Marrakech, the Philippines, etc, I mean.. ew, and frankly ethically questionable), but it is my impression that at least in Sweden itself (and when it comes to more stable relationships) the like go with the like – the more attractive women are usually together with some native stud (btw, these guys are very well dressed with friendly, decent, non-stuck up personalities – quite a combo), often they hang out in groups of similarly looking people, the hipster types hang out with their equivalents (the Södermalm crowd), and the Pakistani and Arab dudes at clubs usually stand by the wall in a self-segregated all-male line.
The housing market is simply insane (already was 10 years ago and at this point it may be a permanent problem). I suspect it’s not just because of immigration — there must be some structural issue there (maybe tied to hyresrätt, but I wouldn’t speculate). I know someone who took out a 30 year loan while in his early-mid 20s to buy an apartment in Kista (a suburb of Sthm). Is this supposed to be normal (at least he knows where he’ll live)? What’s good is that some of these younger guys have a technical education and can launch into adulthood pretty early (but the debt they take on just seems wild…).
I don’t see the supercharger network as a major competitive edge at all. People interested in long-distance driving don’t buy EVs. I can “recharge” any of my vehicles in one minute.
And the rest of the industry is not standing still on this. The German automakers and Ford Europe are partnering with Shell to create their own network in Europe. Many other efforts underway in America and Asia as well. These efforts involve automakers, oil companies, power utilities, and in some cases governments. An ocean of capital is available for this.
EVs will not completely take over unless the government forces it, but I agree they will comprise a large percentage of new auto sales in the next decade. Maybe even a majority.
The thing is that these EVs will not come from Tesla, unless Tesla survives as a brand of a global OEM (I see GM and Ford as likely candidates for acquiring Tesla).
Remember the auto industry is the most brutally competitive industry on the planet.
Spencer’s disdain for Christianity and anything connected to it also meant he had to bypass huge sections of European history and we wuz antiquity for his frame of reference of what “white culture” even is. Perhaps you saw the video of him some months ago making a speech and triumphantly shouting “you are Greece, you are Rome!” to an indifferent audience of Alabama college kids whose ancestors were probably all Scots-Irish. His message was totally disconnected from any traditions or identity people identify with or find resonant, just some staid EVORPA of the imagination that’s all dour marble statues. Maybe they thought he was just forming some kind of queer frat with no darkies allowed.
Thanks, almost all this is TIL.
I will admit that amidst Musk’s meltdown I actually do like his media ratings website idea. All the Blue Checkmarks I follow on Twitter are breaking down over it so it can’t be a bad idea if it triggers them so much.
Correct, I’m doing it right now and will probably finish it tomorrow.
For now:
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/978688416211701761
You’re welcome.
A media ratings website is something Trump should’ve done.
In Musk’s case it is ridiculous because the media has been polishing his knob non-stop until his disastrous performance on the last earnings call.
He’s also angry that the press is reporting on the alarming work conditions at Tesla’s Fremont assembly plant, including some poor schmuck who suffered an arc flash explosion that melted all his skin because Tesla refused to de-energize the high voltage equipment he was working on (a violation of NFPA 70, OSHA, and CalOSHA).
Financial journalism is mostly solid as Peter Brimelow will be happy to tell you.
You’ll be happy to know that Teslemmings are accusing the Wall Street Journal reporter Charley Grant of being a RUSSIAN TROLL.
Obviously, Israel is primarily a problem for its neighbours like Syria, but ever since Kremlin blundered into Syria, it has become Russia’s problem also. There will be no stability and no lasting success for Russia in Syria until some solution is found for the problem of Israel.
Putin’s approach to managing Israel is to bury his head in the sand and hope that his ass goes unmolested, and apparently Karlin thinks it’s a bright idea, but to me it is very DUMB, and embarrassing for a country that fashions itself as a great power.
This does not mean that we must immediately escalate to nuclear war, but the Israelis must pay some price for their destabilising activities. Otherwise, why would they stop?
As long as the Israelis don’t touch Russians in Syria (which they haven’t done – unlike Americans) and don’t hinder the Syrian anti-jihadist operation, the Israelis don’t even threaten Russia’s goals in Syria.
Syria gets put back together – incidentally, the main obstacles to that are going to be the Turks, who actually have an overt occupation zone there, and the Americans, who overtly lay claim to a zone of influence, before the Israelis – and Russia’s job there is going to be done.
The Israelis will ofc retain the Golan, but that’s only natural, considering that was the pre-civil war status quo.
Eh?
I wasn’t following about the story at the time (2016 Trump election). But after watching some videos about him on YouTube now, this is my impression. Either this or it is something about marketing a new kind of haircut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMCHELIJt14
He is still more strong interventionalist than average people, who can’t explain the reason for soldiers dying there without a strong motivation like the bombing of ISIS had been.
Aside from a few thousand people who follow Syria online like an obsessive soap opera, and will usually be the ones who post comments underneath the website articles calling for interventions, most people are less interventionalist than people like Karlin.
This said, popular view is not necessarily the objectively correct one, but it makes sense from Putin – as a politician – to follow kind of position that the matches average people’s reasoning and level of knowledge about the Middle East.
I’m much stronger on the other side, with personal connections to Israel – but still can’t take a step back, and objectively think about advantages of sending money and soldiers for defending Iranian positions in Syria. In a scenario where the Assad regime in which the Kremlin had invested is safe, then falling Iranian influence over the investment is not necessarily a bad thing, as getting a large portion of a prize that has to be shared .
Agree with commenter ‘utu’ here, that Alexander Mercouris piece AK recommends was pretty lame, quite unconvincing and ‘ziocucky’ in its excuses for the alliance between Netanyahu and Chabad-Rabbi-consulting Putin … seems people just don’t wanna face the truth
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/76644eaf990fcd2135d100a0ba2115d15a2c17f5ee741a91a39a9bbbffa0082c.jpg
A civilized culture would be training youth to spot and avoid people trying to brainwash them with any kind of one-sided propagandas and political technologies. A greater concentration on balanced evaluation, learning to look fairly at both sides of every subject, and scepticism to all cults and religions.
His Alt-Right site’s podcast was absolutely hilarious. Him and a couple of his incredibly pretentious groupies trying to one-up each other with random, superficial allusions to history and right wing ‘philosophy’ (Spengler was a favourite). Sometimes one of his acolytes would make a remark that went a bit too far and you could practically hear him kicking them under the table.
I am an atheist and a materialist, but I don’t have any urge toward proselytizing.
This from Wiki:
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness, are results of material interactions.
not this from Merriam-Webster:
b : a doctrine that the only or the highest values or objectives lie in material well-being and in the furtherance of material progress
or this:
2: a preoccupation with or stress upon material rather than intellectual or spiritual things
I am not sure how you distinguish between spiritual vision and belief in the supernatural – I would say they’re the same thing.
That’s why spiritual is in quotes. I do not believe a supernatural exists, but rather we have a “religious module” in our psyche that needs to be “filled.”
That was precluded by his anti-Americanism. His ideology, from what I can tell, is based around what he thinks seems cool (hence the imperialism).
I met Dick Spencer in 2011. Struck me as a dandy and a gadfly.
The man is fundamentally unserious, but thinks he’s a Very Serious Man. A particularly damning indictment of him is his titcow wife, Nina Busted-tina. She didn’t take his last name, and she briefly left him. And rather than being a disciple of Spencer, she’s a disciple of Alexander Dugin. If you aren’t the whole world to your woman, you’re unqualified to launch the Reptile Ragnarok.
I don’t begrudge him and certainly won’t snipe at him, after all he is putting himself out there. That takes guts.
But we’re not going to create the ethnostate with such leaders. In fact the ethnostate itself is a ridiculous idea. What, we’re going to deport or execute 100 million people? Or we’re just going to give up our major cities and ports? Come on.
The future will be more like the Ottoman millet system, but with a population policy intended to bolster the white cohort over time.
The situation in Europe is of course different. There’s something particularly offensive about non-whites living in Europe. It’s extremely irritating meeting non-whites with European accents and claiming they’re European.
Question for the Russians here–Karlin, Dmitri, and Felix Keverich.
Are you guys long on your own country’s stock market? Prices are extremely attractive.
What is “Syrian anti-jihadist operation”? As I understand it Assad’s army today is mostly a mix of Alawite militias, pro-Iranian militias and Russian mercenaries. Israelis are demanding that pro-Iranian militias, a key component of “Syrian anti-jihadist operation”, leave.
I don’t believe that Israelis can compel pro-Iranian forces to leave (and if they do, it will be up to Russia to find some people to take their place!). Israelis will continue bombing military infrastructure in Syria, threatening the lives of Russian personnel (how can you be certain they didn’t kill some Russians already?). Israelis will do it simply because they can, until they finally do enough to aggravate Iran, and it causes a regional war, and Russia will be caught in the middle of it.
This notion that Syria gets put back together, and Jews go gentle into the night, accept Iranian bases in Syria, give up their dreams of regional domination – it just seems implausible to me.
A society that trained its youth your way, will be conquered by a society that trains its youth in a passion inducing moral vision.
Your paradise cannot survive in this world. It is a fragile flower (weed?).
I am fully invested into my remont right now – don’t have any spare cash to make investigating this worthwhile. 🙂
But I think Ben Aris/BNE are pretty bullish right now.
It’s worth noting that Russia is what is called a high beta economy – trends in the wider global economy reverberate with double or triple the force on it. If you think the US will boom in the next few years, investing in Russia should be even more profitable (unless, perhaps, you think that sanctions are going to be turned up to eleven). If you think there’ll be a downturn soon, best to keep away.
Thanks, iffen.
But to believe only in matter, yet to believe that matter possesses a “spiritual module”…does this not mean that matter points beyond itself?
The subject is complex – I would say your position is not logically sustainable if closely examined, but is rather the afterglow of a religious faith. You are Jewish, are you not? Others have gone further than you – and believe matter does not posses a “religion module”.
In any event, I have no quarrel with your position – I don’t agree with it, but people with your attitude can certainly be valuable members of a social community.
No. What’s the point owning a market that consistently underperforms? Russian stock market is a joke anyway, dominated by state controlled energy companies. You will be better off owning XLE.
That is not Assad’s army.
That is just a bunch of pro-government forces.
Assad’s army is the Syrian Arab Army, the dominant pro-government force.
They already have the SAA for this job.
Iranians prefer their militias.
But do you think that matters?
The US is now in the ninth year of (tepid) economic expansion and an incredible bull run that has seen stocks (with dividends reinvested) surge 400%. Unemployment has dropped under 4% for the first time in nearly twenty years. Subprime borrower defaults are ticking up, and the 2/10 yield curve is narrowing. A recession is coming.
I believe this recession will be “normal” and there will be no massive crash or economic crisis. We now have an entire generation of people who have never seen an ordinary recession (the last was in 1990) and are primed to think that the only way it happens is through a financial collapse.
That said macro forecasting is a bad way to go about investing.
What do you own?
I don’t own XLE (indexing is for cowards), but I do own Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, Hess, and Kinder Morgan.
The point of owning a market that consistently under performs is that cheap valuations imply superior future returns. The US stock market is very expensive at the moment, though things have been improving this year.
See here: https://www.starcapital.de/en/research/stock-market-valuation/
The state capitalism thing is a big problem with Russia. I own Magnit for instance. Now one third of Magnit is owned, apparently against the wishes of Magnit’s founder, by a Kremlin-controlled bank. Depressing.
And that’s basically why I am hesitant to go in more. I also have modest positions in Gazprom, RSX, and RSXJ (small cap Russian stocks). Normally I am opposed to index funds as indexing is for cowards, but hard for me to do good scuttlebutt on Russian companies for obvious reasons.
I first went into Russia when the Rouble mysteriously collapsed a few years ago.
No, if he actually brought up children not to believe anything their parents said without examining it for themselves his society would disappear before anyone bothered to conquer it.
But I get what he means, and it is an interesting starting point though not, I think, quite thought through.
Questions:
I would like to know what was the REAL reason for Russia’s involvement in Syria? Not some BS reason that they went there to fight jihadists because better there than in Russia. Even Americans do not buy such BS anymore when told why they must send troops to Niger or Afghanistan.
Why would Russia want to save regime of Assad in 2015 while now in 2018 it is willing to follow Karlin’s peace w/o honor doctrine and leave and let them perish? We need to know what was the understanding between Putin and Netanyahu in 2015? How did they play each other and who was really playing whom? I strongly believe that if Netanyahu in 2015 did not want Russia in Syria Putin would not move there. So why Netanyahu did agree for Putin to have his little war?
What was Putin expecting to get form this adventure? Was it a leverage that he could use later? What would be this leverage if he seems to follow the doctrine of Attila the Honey: Let Israel bomb Syria? Who is he leveraging with this doctrine?
Did Netanyahu do anything for Putin? Did Netanyahu help Putin to squash Kripal affair or MH17 investigations or did anything about sanctions? It does not look like it. Putin got nothing from Netanyahu so far.
I have only one very speculative answer to all these questions.
Netanyahu being exasperated with Obama (an hating his guts) for his obstructionism to bring Syria to its Libyan sorry end via the no-fly zone decided to play Putin with some promises including a promise of glory and phoenix like rebirth of Russian military as well as securing Russian base in Syria plus using his juice in Washington on behalf of Russia. Netanyahu needed Putin there to stop Turkey from taking too big a chunk of Syria after its demise. So Putin moved in under false pretenses of saving Syria and fighting the jihadists. (Putin was not Karlin and he did not believe his own BS.) This was accomplished and now came the time to the phase two. There must be a regime change in Syria and a purge of Iranian troops which will cut off Hezbollah and lead to their demise.
In 2015 Netanyahu did not know that Trump would replace Obama but “All the crooks in Israel” were already working on Trump’s election. He assumed the worst that the cunctatory policy of Obama with emphasis on Global Faction of the NWO and not on Israel Zionist ME Project along Brzezinski’s vision will be continued by Hillary. But with the election of Trump in 2016 Russia became superfluous for Netanyahu. Now he could get everything form Trump he could not get from Obama though Trump had to be roughed up and boxed in first which media and Democrats were doing leaving Trump free hand only in ME. So whatever Netanyahu promised Putin or whatever Putin was hoping to get may not happen.
Obviously this calculus could be changed if Putin were willing to put nukes on the table but it seems that he has no intention as clearly he was in cahoots with Netanyahu from the very beginning. Now it all comes to the question whether there is honor among thieves. Will Putin get his cut or be screwed?
The major state-owned energy giants are run incompetently and corruptly. Its CEO Miller was predicting Gazprom would be the first company with a $1 trillion capitalization one time – it is currently down to around $60 billion, from $250 billion or so in 2008. Considering it is run primarily not for the sake of its shareholders, or even Russia’s geopolitical interests, but of a group of politically connected insiders/Putin’s old judo buddies – who happen to have enough pull to suppress market research reports pointing out such banal facts – one can’t see this changing for the better anytime soon. Conversely, its hard to see things getting much worse.
Ergo for Rosneft, which might be even more catastrophically mismanaged. Perhaps the best anecdote from the past year is how they paid the Iraqi Kurdistan authorities $1 billion for rights to oil fields on their territories, just a couple of weeks before the Iraqis reestablished control over Kirkuk and the location of those oil fields. The Kurds: “Too bad, take it up with Baghdad.” So, at best (or worst): Complete incompetence – alternatively, a $1 billion scam, the latest of many. Sechin is a value destroyer and Rosneft will go nowhere while he remains at the helm. But he is also the second most powerful man in Russia, so he won’t go anywhere anytime soon – indeed, he will continue casually imprisoning people who happen to cross him on flimsy charges (Ulyukayev), and suppressing market research reports identifying him as the value destroyer he is (incidentally, I know the guy who was tasked with quickly redacting the Sberbank report from references to him, LOL).
So you can see why the market value of these oil/gas rent stations has been plummeting in recent years, despite the recovery of oil prices to $80 recently.
Due to the collapse of the market value of these energy giants, contra Felix Keverich, other more “normal” Russian companies have increased in relative weight, making the Russian stock market less overwhelmingly dominated by energy companies relative to what it was a decade ago. I suppose the investor’s job is to see which of them are undervalued, and which are not. Even amongst the state-owned behemoths, far from all of them are as atrociously and venally run as Gazprom/Rosneft. I have had positive impressions of Rosatom and Sberbank, for instance.
Lol.
No, I would not.
As long as he’s into spirituality even slightly, its good.
Dude, why not choose a handle? You’re leaving a bunch of comments.
Correct. No society is sustainable on the basis of “questioning everything”.
Nothing could even be accomplished. Inherited tradition is indispensable. Even Euclidean geometry has unproven axioms you just accept.
I compare value investing to used cars.
Proles buy deeply flawed, damaged beaters at auctions and then restore them to good condition and profit.
It’s not the 1940s anymore when you could buy good companies for less than the value of their cash holdings.
Contra Ben Graham and his cigar butts of course there is Charlie Munger:
I was lucky to buy Costco at $150 in recent times. Definitely not selling that anytime soon (Munger is also on the board). Also bought Kroger at the same time but got out when it hit $30. Trigger for both was Wall Street losing its f@#$ing mind after Amazog bought Whore Fools.
And in deference to Felix Keverich (an amazing name), momentum investing works as well. Two good trader sayings on this:
The trend is your friend
Don’t fight the tape
Aside from the individual level, collectively more cynical, less ideological and more sceptical populations usually maintain greater power, more stably, at least in the sense which actually affects us.
Well Ukrainians, not the Swiss, were part of the people with the first nuclear reactor, the first ICBM, the first man in space, the most gold medals in the 1972 Olympics, etc. And yet today it is Ukrainian women working as prostitutes in Switzerland, not Swiss women working as prostitutes in Ukraine.
But this is just as a collectivity (We can watch videos of Berlin in July 1945, or Hiroshima in August of that same year, to see where collective indoctrination dangers can lead your people).
I was thinking more on a level of civilization. I prefer unindoctrinated people, that respect balance, two-sidedness, and do not fall over conspiracy theories, one-sided propaganda, etc. (It’s not difficult to see these as traits of civilization and higher culture)>
The Kremlin has been a long and importantly invested in the Assad family,* including $9.8 billion debt write off in 2005. Preserving Assad, keeps Syria open shop, stopping Russia completely being marginalized from the region. This was the main priority.
Secondary reasons have to do with ideological framework as Primakov’s multilateralism (which had become more urgent after American backed rebels had lynched Gaddafi – and Hillary Clinton laughed about it).
Other secondary reasons, to increase leverage with the West in other topics (sanctions), to create common cause with West in bombing ISIS, to destroy Jihadist networks before they are spreading to Caucasus, and to test many weapons systems, to market them, and to increase deterrence of the military force itself.
The intervention greatly increased Russian influence in the region (with all sides – Arabs, Sunnis, Shias, Israelis, Turkish, Iranians, Kurd), although it’s not clear how you ‘cash this out’ or make it benefit you – beyond weapons sale (like of S-400 to Turkey).
At end of the list, there are also domestic political considerations – Putin likes to look strong overseas. The effect of this only lasts a short time – after a few months the average people on the street cannot even remember where Syria is on the map, and after a couple of years even formerly interested people are bored of it.
*
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2005/Jan-26/71201-russia-writes-off-98-billion-of-syrian-debt.ashx
Mostly because I’m already pretty easily identifiable. I started to use a regular handle a while back but I didn’t think it was any improvement.
I’ve been commenting a lot recently, but I don’t view that as a good thing. This site is a sink for excess nervous energy; when I start commenting this much it means I should relax a bit.
$9.8 billion debt write off in 2005. Preserving Assad, keeps Syria open shop, stopping Russia completely being marginalized from the region. This was the main priority. – Yes, but you had to have exit strategy. What do you do when Israel puts his foot down? Leave and forget about $9.8 billions?
after American backed rebels had lynched Gaddafi – I read somewhere that Putin watched Qaddafi death video several time and swore nothing like that would happen under his watch. True or Fake? Does not matter because it is irrelevant.
to destroy Jihadist networks before they are spreading to Caucasus. – this is for consumption by the sheeple only.
to create common cause with West in bombing ISIS – shooting down of Su-24 by Turkey and forcing NATO members to close ranks ended this fantasy.
cash this out’ or make it benefit you – beyond weapons sale – Russia not particularly eager selling S-XXX to Iran or Syria because Israel does not let her.
Turkey is buying S-400. ($2.5 billion – for delivery in 2019).
Saudi Arabia is buying S-400 and some other things ( $3 billion).
Egypt, UAE, Bahrain – all these countries are also suddenly ordering billions of dollars of weapons.
The rising prestige of Russia’s military and political power in the region, after the Syria intervention, has influenced the frequency of deals.
Israel is unlikely to want to buy any weapons. But it boosts the ego of the leadership in Russia to have the rising prestige there too. They make up news stories that Israel (and Syria) want to buy the BMPT Terminator (I believe this is fake news, as Israel produce their own vehicles in this role). https://ria.ru/defense_safety/20170907/1502036030.html
In the case of S-300 to Syria – the issue is likely whether or not Syria would pay for it. When/if Syria pays the money (probably financed by Iran), then they will go to Syria.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/76644eaf990fcd2135d100a0ba2115d15a2c17f5ee741a91a39a9bbbffa0082c.jpg
Holy shit! Lol
So who won the stare down?
Netanyahu is looking at Putin like he’s got something on him and Putin knows what it is.
Israel sure punches way above its weight class…
No it’s not.
For example: the pagan Vikings traditionally killed young women to accompany dead heroes into Valhalla. How is that “indispensable”?
Numerous such historical and current examples from every part of the world.
The supernatural exists. It is your very being. It is pure consciousness.
The atheist-materialist dogma that consciousness is a result of “material interactions” is a category error. Matter is objective and observable, while consciousness is subjective and non-observable. No combination of the observable, no matter how complex, could conceivably result in the un-observable.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Sometimes virgins must be sacrificed for the good of the community 🙂
In all seriousness tho, tradition can err – that does not mean it’s not indispensable, and most sophisticated civilizations did not practice virgin suicides. Tradition corrects itself.
No guarantees in life. No panaceas. Live dangerously.
An interesting article on the recent conclusions of the St Petersburg economic conference from the Financial Times. Their headline is alarmist but the actual text is more nuanced. Key takeaways? The most hostile countries of the West are basically the anglosphere, especially the US but also largely the UK.
Some quotes:
The biggest winner of the conference was likely France. Macron gushed to Putin for most of the conference and Total, the French oil major, got a major contract. In conjunction with this, I also read that Russia stated in recent days that it is willing to ditch the dollar for the euro in oil trading with the EU. This doesn’t matter to the Brits, but it certainly matters to the French and the Germans.
The theme of Anglo isolation was pronounced even more at the end of the article.
This gels with the recent article from the National Interest where US intelligence veterans said that even during the Cold War, relations were better. It is not Russia that is irrationally hostile. But relations with others is either going on as they were or even improving, especially with Asia.
Seems like the Russian strategy of ignoring the US/UK and focusing on continental Europe, with a continued outreach to Japan and China (Abe was there and the Xi Jinping’s right-hand man, Wang Qishan was also there) is working fairly well. I do not believe the gloomy predictions of “autarky” will come true. The reality is, Russia is too important to far too many big players to ignored or crushed. The US doesn’t have that kind of control anymore.
Some of you might have followed the news on Argentina of late.
https://i.imgur.com/OyfA4Cg.png
30 billion dollars – the amount requested by Argentina – is a lot of dough to ask for. We’re told that obsessing on current account deficits is “irrational” and “populist” but the only reason why Western, and usually US, economists can say this is because of the exorbitant privilege.
Yet, Argentina is now paying the price for this. If you do not have capital controls, which we’re also told by the priest of orthodox neoliberalism is an unremitting evil, then you are at the mercy of foreign currency flows.
Now Turkey could be next.
https://i.imgur.com/4N344b1.png
Of course, Turkey has been running a current-account deficit (CAD) of around 4-5% of GDP for some time now. Inflation, which was never beaten in a substantial way, has worsened since the coup, jumping to double digits. They do run a strong fiscal budget, unlike the Argentines, which has shielded them somewhat. Nevertheless, the combination of high inflation and deep CADs was inescapably going to draw the vultures to Turkey sooner or later. Erdogan has drawn a recent election closer to June 24th in order to consolidate powers even more. For this reason, he balked at raising the interest rate (which you normally do in order to stave off inflation), but finally yielded to market pressures a few days ago.
It will be interesting to see if it’s going to be enough. The dollar strength, which is rising due to continual interest hikes by the fed, is exposing who is bathing naked. Poland has a small and declining fiscal deifict of 1.7% of GDP, it achieved a small current account surplus last year, so we are safe for now, but certainly not as safe as countries with ample external buffers (read: Russia).
I will also note in passing that I’ve long doubted Turkey’s supposed growth rates. It seems that the market adjusts you to reality in the long run whatever PR tricks, including statistical manipulation, that you may try. The collapse of the Turkish lira – it has lost 20% since April alone – wipes out a large amount of on-paper-only “growth” in nominal terms. The high and persistent inflation will also likely negatively affect the next round of Turkey’s PPP adjustments.
This is a trying time for a lot of emerging markets. More money going back to the West, rising oil prices (and hence rising CADs) and the continual struggle many face in having strong export sectors. Over the next year or so, I think a lot of wheat will be seperated from the chaff. We will see who truly are rising to become wealthy and who were simply pretending.
SpaceX doesn’t have a business model. It’s a shell company so that USA can launch a 1960’s-style rocket without a NASA logo. Apparently, something labeled ‘NASA’ can only be all high-tech and innovative like. (This makes no practical sense, of course, but then again, nothing that the US Government does ever does.)
Israel 30 years ago was a hostile American airstrip to Russia, while today it’s the 16th post-Soviet republic. (Friendlier than Ukraine or Moldova.) Doesn’t look like “burying your head” to me.
I have an acquaintance who works in one of the Tesla factories in Reno. Based on what he has told me I would not touch the product or shares with a barge-pole. Musk has no real experience in manufacturing and has made many basic errors like trying to create a fully automated production facility on the fly.
Even your questions are loaded with unproven assumptions.
It doesn’t let Assad “perish.” Assad now controls a larger territory than anytime since the start of the Russian intervention.
How could Israel have prevented Putin from going there? Other than going to war with Russia. While Putin is unfortunately weak in most confrontational situations (he’s visibly afraid of a war against a strong opponent), I have yet to see evidence that Netanyahu is any different in that respect. He’s not very keen on starting a war against Russia.
Syria is getting under Assad’s thumb, Israel bombing or not bombing notwithstanding.
Netanyahu didn’t participate in any of the sanctions. Given what I know about Jews (e.g. selling American military technology to China), or their own history (Israel sold Russia drone technology back in 2010), I think it’s very likely that Israel is a hole in the wall of sanctions, probably even regarding military or at least dual use technologies.
While these benefits are probably not very large for Russia, they are probably not negligible either. Moreover, the cost of it (Israeli bombing of Syria without a Russian response) is not very high.
So why is it all a mystery? It’s parsimonious to assume that neither Putin nor Netanyahu want a war with each other, so both let the other do things which they don’t like, as long as those things are relatively limited. They also provide each other benefits.
Your twin mysteries of “why did Netanyahu let Putin do things which are good for Putin but bad for Netanyahu” vs. “why did Putin let Netanyahu do things which are good for Netanyahu but bad for Putin” could be parsimoniously explained by simply pairing them.
If I had uncommitted cash, I would slowly accumulate shares in the Russian and Canadian stock markets. If global warming pans out then both countries will blossom and their economies will expand generously. Russian wheat production is already on the rise. Both countries also have substantial water resources which will become much more valuable as Asia runs out of water. But that is an investment that will not pay off for another 30 or so years.
http://www.lastampa.it/2017/09/14/esteri/global-warming-is-transforming-russia-in-an-agricultural-superpower-1NaU3js4Jql9VyuhNBP5aP/pagina.html
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/mbanm4/how-climate-change-could-turn-canada-into-a-global-superpower
lol How is this an achievement for Russia? I can see what Israel is getting out of this relationship. A good quarter of Russian oligarchs now have Israeli citizenship. And they moved a lot of Russian money into Israel.
http://isroe.co.il/neveroyatnye-investicii-russkix-oligarxov-v-izraile/
Hosting an event like the FIFA World Cup, can lead to better things in the future, in terms of motivating greater interest and participation of the sport in the home country.
Reminded of this piece from 2013 –
https://www.eurasiareview.com/06032013-overview-of-the-2014-sochi-winter-olympics-analysis/
Russia should be more competitive in football (soccer). Attendance wise, the US hosted FIFA World Cup was a grand success, which served to enhance US based scholastic and pro-soccer. Granted, that the US men’s national football team hasn’t really had good success.
What happened to Greasy?
https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/996827629213773824
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DdmHzihV0AEytzh.jpg
https://twitter.com/BhadraPunchline/status/1000309397631856641
It always annoys me when long lists of countries arbitrarily leave out some.
Hungary has a current account surplus around 3% of GDP, foreign currency reserves somewhat below 20% of GDP, while inflation recently rose slightly above 2%. Government debt is by far the worst, above 70% of GDP.
Ok, even if we take this Iranian statement at its face value, the key qualifier here is “when situation [in Syria] stabilizes”. Israel is here to make sure it does not.
Israel will continue to be a destabilising factor in Syria, trying to spark a regional war involving US and Iran, because why not? They have permission.
Israel has so far been unable to do much to prevent the Syrian consolidation. The only countries which are clearly trying to prevent it are Turkey and the USA, both occupying large chunks of Syria, operating no-fly zones, etc.
Why are people so obsessed with Israel’s role in Syria?
Turkey and America play a worse one.
This is a good example of why spics should not be allowed to move to America.
Argentina being one of the very best spic countries.
Joke civilization.
It wasn’t mysterious. It tracked the oil price exactly.
That’s because Israel is by far the weakest of three, and should be much easier to contain. Just because there are other bad actors in the region is not a good reason to tolerate Israeli behavior. We need to put Israel in a box.
1) Without Assad or a successor in continuity, there is not much hope of Russia expanding its naval base. Without a base capable of supporting medium term (let’s say a year) operations in the Mediterranean, Sebastapol (as it is around here) is a white elephant as the Turks can easily blockade the Bosphorus.
2) Russia promised the Saudis a pipeline across Syria for their oil and gas. The Qataris too. As both sides to the Saudi agreement are duplicitous lying bastards neither believed the other. The Qataris are on their own track to rejection by those who matter to them.
Have you heard of the lobby?
By the way Turkey has no nukes, so I don’t think it’s stronger.
A base in Syria does not make any difference in such a case.
In fact, it is far more easily to block than Sevastopol.
Israel Lobby is today effectively influencing policy only while there is a Republican President, which case they would probably do everything they do anyway.
When Obama was in power, he could move around it and ignore it, to do the Iran nuclear deal.
It seems they are powerful when they agree with the president’s views, and not powerful when they disagree.
As for Felix’s view, I think he is right that Turkey is more powerful than Israel, particularly within a Muslim country like Syria, as well as in terms of its economic and political power.
Countries like in the EU, Asia, America, Russia, – are scared to even criticize Turkey (Erdogan is scary), while Israel is everyone’s punch bag. Although the latter, people are also not scared because a tradition where every other country is doing it (there is a kind of anonymity in numbers at the UN).
–
In some areas like cyberwarfare, Israel will be a lot more powerful and frightening than Turkey (and surely Russia) . But things like cyber attention is focused on the Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Islamists in the Sinai, etc. The idea they would want to change focus from their immediate enemies is unlikely.
At the same time, the idea Russia would become hostile to Israel seems implausible without a change of leadership. Putin has spent 18 years moving in the opposite direction – and 65 year olds are not often suddenly changing their view. We already saw something similar with Turkey when they actually shot down a plane – there was a pretending to be angry for a year, before the act was over.
Imagine the Iran nuclear deal was a proper treaty backed by the American Congress and there was no (GOP) majority opposed to it.
The Republican President could not “do everything they do anyway”.
He would not be able to undone the deal.
The Israeli lobby in America could not prevent the deal, but did make it easy to undone it by denying it parliamentarian legitimacy and support.
Hosting a World Cup is very good for the image of the host country, even regardless of host team performance.
Remember how television became obsessed with Brazil for a few weeks in 2014.
In addition, the authorities in Russia is much better at image management than Brazil – really it is their talent. So I’m expecting an excellent PR.
The only thing is that it is very short-term effect (the high level of interest). The challenge will be to convert short-term interest, into long-term change in travel patterns.
But Russian tourist destinations are currently an ideal candidate to convert this successfully, because of geographic nearness to rest of Europe. There’s a huge potential increase for low-cost tourism from EU countries to Russia – the requirement is simply to change tourists’ preferences and image of a country.
By comparison, for countries like Brazil or Japan, there is a less easy conversion, due to the geographic distances and costs of travel there.
Turkey has the second biggest army in NATO, which makes possible to project force and seize large territories. Turkey could occupy entire Syria if it wanted to. By contrast Israel can only launch pinprick airstrikes from Lebanese airspace. Nukes don’t matter in this situation because Israel won’t use them against Russia.
Turkey is also an important economic partner for Russia, which gives them leverage. I’m a proud Russian nationalist, but even I will admit we cannot afford to completely antagonise Turkey.
On the other hand, with Israel we don’t have a relationship, that’s worth preserving. I actually think, conflict with Israel will be good for Russia, as it will help marginalise the Russian Jewish community.
Something sad in relation to the topic – the advertising for Donetsk as host city of the Euro 2012.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gllw2cm1Ahc
Only 6 years ago, they opened the new Donetsk International Airport for the Euro 2012.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY2vwbfeqYQ
I wonder how much having a currency taken out of the government’s hands would go to solving Argentina’s problems. Or for that matter Venezuela’s.
Maybe, there are techno-solutions that can solve some of the issues relating to Hispanic misgovernment. I would not go so far to suggest the same would be true for blacks and Arabs, at least not to the same degree – though it certainly would help in some places.
They’ve had these problems since the 1930s, when it really was very European. The problems with Argentina are Southern European more than they are Mestizo.
That’s an interesting chart, but I have some quibbles with it.
For starters, I don’t think debt as a percentage of GDP matters too much, except foreign debt denominated in dollars, but mixing domestic debt and external debt makes no sense.
A lot of South-East Asian countries in 1997 had relatively low debt ratios, but most of their debt was in dollars, which blew up in their faces. Who owns your debt is more important than how much of it you have.
Furthermore, a lot of debt is hidden in the corporate sector. Turkey has this problem, even if their debt to GDP is relatively low for the public coffers.
Finally, import cover is important only to an extent you do not have a balance of payment surplus with the rest of the world. Here’s Poland’s, via the EU commission:
https://i.imgur.com/bTOJGQ1.png
Net lending(+) or borrwing(-) to the RoW(Rest of World) is what matters for balance of payments. We have low import cover, but that doesn’t matter much because we are systematically reducing our historically high NIIP (net investment international position). This means that we are not at the mercy of foreign investors to cover our international positions the way, say, Turkey, Pakistan, Argentina and even India are. The problem with the map is that it only looks at foreign reserves, which is a stock measurement whereas I am talking about flows.
For example, India got a lot of reserves by getting large amounts of FDI while it got low CAD due to collapsed oil prices in the last few years. It is now on track to get -3% in CAD in the current fiscal year and as such, FDI can no longer cover that deficit. The result? It is losing reservesby the billions each week. India is in a lot better position than Pakistan, which is likely to ask for more IMF support in the coming months, but the example illustrates that while forex reserves are important to keep track of, countries with smaller reserves but positive flows are in a stronger state than those with large(ish) reserves but negative flows. Of course, the best position to be in is to both have A) large forex reserves and B) also have positive net lending towards the RoW, which Russia has. Putin’s running a tight fiscal policy and inflation finally seems to be at low and stable levels. It’s a trifecta. Now only growth needs to restart, which should happen once the interest rate regime normalises.
Nobody mentions Taiwan anymore.
The rot in Argentina goes much deeper than that. The previous regime systematically cheated their inflation statistics, so it isn’t just about the currency. People just focus on the currency because that is where the damage is done the fastest when all the macro indicators flash red.
It’s reminiscent of Greece faking their way into the eurozone, lying and making up all kinds of numbers in order to be admitted into the club. They were forced to reform after the eurozone crisis but I read a few months ago that new concerns are raised over more dubious cheating. Whenever I talk to Greeks they will tell you that everyday cheating is normalised. Such patterns of behaviour also exists in many Latin American countries, including Argentina. So even if it would be tempting to take away their currency, they’d find other ways to cheat.
They are more Mestizo than they like to think especially Rosario way. Extermination of the natives was another failed policy. The real slide came with the election of Peron, the nationalisation of British interests and expulsion of the managers and engineers who ran them. Corruption exploded.
Correct and Argentina remains very southern European (southern Italian, Spanish and Spanish-Galician. mostly). Argentina is what a country looks like when it is completely swamped by southern European peasants. If America hadn’t cut off immigration in the early 20th century, forcing the peasant hordes to assimilate into and adopt native dominant WASP culture, it might have ended up like Argentina. Not a terrible place by any means, but rather corrupt and dysfunctional.
I’m astonished that over seventeen years after the Argentine default it is still coming up. I thought it was thoroughly disproved back then.
I haven’t been there but an aunt, uncle from Ukraine and their two kids (now in their 40) moved there in the 1990s, and have visited us in the states. The country is maybe 20% Mestizo but their Mestizos are more European than our (Mexican ones) are. There are migrants from places like Bolivia but due to Argentina’s own lackluster economy there is not a flood of them.
Argentina has some Volga Germans, Croatians, Ukrainians, many Jews, but Argentina is basically a Spanish-speaking southern Italy/Spain melting pot, even the language is almost as close to southern Italian as it is to standard Spanish. As one would expect from a place primarily populated by southern European peasants, Argentina wealthier than most of Latin America and about as wealthy as a poor EU country such as Bulgaria.
The place has always been Europhile. Apparently the Argentine elites in the early 20th century even toyed with the idea of forcing the country to become French-speaking. This would have been possible at the time because the native Spanish speaking population were being swamped by Italians, who could have been taught French rather than Spanish when they came over.
Here’s an older post from Razib:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2009/12/how-argentina-became-white/
In fairness they didn’t do so badly before they joined. Apparently both joining the EU and joining the Eurozone were mistakes which only slowed down their growth.
Some countries just do better with all their cheating, and trying to force them to adapt Northern European institutions like hard money will only cause problems for them.
Yeah, it really is a shame that such a beautiful, brand new airport was pummeled into the ground soon after its opening. It’s a shame that Russia got involved directly into the affairs of Ukraine and was responsible for starting the Donbas war. What’s every bit as damning as the latest revelations brought to the world’s attention (the video clip is from RT) regarding how a GRU officer, Oleg Ivankov, was responsible for the procurement of the BUK missile launcher used in the downing of MH17, is the fact that individuals like him were sent to Ukraine from Russia to foment this war, Ivanko was:
In other words, Ivankov held total control of the whole war efforts there. Russia’s insistence that it never was involved in the initial war efforts in Donbas is quickly unraveling for the lie that it is. Locals could never have started such an operation, lacking both the will, manpower or weaponry( nobody doubts that some unemployed locals did join in, being driven by Kremlin propaganda and remuneration):
https://youtu.be/mdDu1i8b3OI
Mr. Putin:
Are you talking about the restructuring process?
I think implicit in the idea of an independent currency is that it would make borrowing a lot more difficult. Some even believe that it would make taxing a lot more difficult and therefore change the bloat and corruption of government. Seventeen years isn’t a good time frame anyway because the tech level is different. It arguably wasn’t possible then. It may or may not be possible now with cryptocurrencies and cell phone technology.
No. I’m talking about the currency board until the 2001 crash.
Interesting. However the study did not seem to differentiate self-identified mestizos from self-identified Europeans. It seems to just give average across the entire sample. The overal population sample could show that Argentines are about 80% European, but this could mean that the self-identified European Argentines (80% of the population) are actually 90% Europeans, 4% are simply indigenous and Mestizos are 50% or 40% or whatever European (I am too lazy to do the math).
AP the language is just Spanish, but with an intentionally much nicer (also more funny and musical) accent, and more use of certain grammatical forms. (The language difference is like between UK English and US English).
Unfortunately, in my Spanish classes, the teacher just taught us the accent of Spain, so this is how I try to pronounce in Spanish.
The accent of Spanish people sounds horrible and ugly (Spanish language in Spain, is really a harsh, angry sounding peasant language for my hears). Also the Spanish use more vulgar and informal grammatical forms.
All the Latin American countries, by comparison, try to make the language sound a little more aesthetic.
In some (like Mexico), it has a kind of comical tropical sound (imo).
Whereas in Argentina, their accents have a smoother edges, and musical intonation.
In Argentina and Uruguay, they have used very unusual pronunciation (the ‘ll’ sound is pronounced like ‘sh’, whereas normally in Spanish it is pronounced like ‘ya’).
–
The difficult part is to tell the differences between accents like Argentina and Uruguay (which is like English difference between America and Canada). It seems mainly the difference in words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq8l6Fsg_IQ
Argentinian mestizos more interesting this morning than the new info regarding the downing of MH17 in Ukraine presented in comment #174? Even your eclecticism must have some limits? 🙂
Spain is the land of vosotros. Although in pop culture, the genteel hidalgo is the archetype of a Spanish man.
I don’t know about the other Latin American countries, but you are wrong about Chile; the accent there is horrible and much worse than any other.
I remember getting off a flight into Madrid airport after two months in Chile and being relieved to hear people speaking proper Spanish again. Even the indigenous Bolivian maidservant spoke much more comprehensible and more pleasant Spanish than the rich Chileans.
$300 a month was the crossover point. Before that it was mostly the long term unemployed over 40 years old. Girkin was disappointed at the initial response to say the least. His cover story for increased pay was that they robbed the banks during the retreat from Slavyansk.
Real die hard ‘Triune’ patriots – the kind that Karlin is relying on to support his plans for a reconstituted ‘Greater Rus’. 🙂
Lol, well unlike you I’ve never actually been there.
When I was trying to learn Spanish more seriously last year, I was watching a lot of YouTubers from Chile.
Their accent does sound funny – but I prefer this accent to Spanish, because it is still somehow clearer and easier to understand for me than the Spanish accent, even though they do something like skipping the pronunciation of the ends of the words.
I personally like Venezuelan/Colombian accents (it sounds how Spanish should sound for my ears).
Yes, it is the rise in the rate of non-governmental, private debt over the past five years which is the strongest predictor of whether a country will suffer a debt binge-fuelled recession.
AP the language is just Spanish, but with an intentionally much nicer (also more funny and musical) accent
That was my initial thought as well after reading AP’s post, but then looking into it in a bit more detail it seems that there is indeed some basis for what he says:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20171001-how-italians-influenced-a-south-american-dialect
The intonation is different to the one in Spain, and surely has Italian features in stretching a little the words at the end of the phrase. (Although it’s not exaggerated like the real Italian accent.)
The thing I notice is how they do a lot of different things to smooth out a lot of the harsher sounds in Spanish.
Part is the adding ‘shhh’ sound to everything (which seems original – Italians are not obsessed with ‘shhh’ sounds).
And also the effect which comes from preferring this grammatical form with vos, so that e.g. instead of ‘tienes’, ‘entiendes’, they use things like ‘tenés’, ‘entendés’ (for me it makes them sound like they are too lazy to pronounce the extra letters).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdbenkkqTtc
I guess the fact that Japan is not eager to leave China with a total monopoly on relations with Russia also plays to Russia’s hands. same probably can be said about SK, especially if relations with the north were to warm. Same is also true with India. Hence why shifting to Asia is the strategy to follow, Russia is in higher demand in Asia compared to Europe. Distance from the population centers of Russia will remain a challenge though.
Argentina is not the only country to practice voseo (the use of vos as a second person singular pronoun):
My wife, who is Colombian, uses it with some members of her family (although not always).
Similarly, the fricative sh pronunciation in me llamo ( in much of Argentina it is actually voiced zh as in measure) is not unique to Argentina.
PORTUGAL UPDATE
2,800 words, and uploaded all the photos (110 of them!). Will fill out the rest of the text for them and publish tomorrow (Sunday).
Mediocrites don’t welcome competition – but not in the manner that you suggest.
Alexander Mercouris has had his share of RT and JRL propping. This is what hinders him:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/21/past-comes-back-to-haunt-struck-off-barrister-turned-russia-comm/
I’m all for giving folks another chance. I’m also not for the phony, crony, baloney establishment propping that has been evident. “Awful Avalanche” and “Kremlin Stooge”, aren’t qualitatively better analytical sources than Srdja Trifkovic and James Jatras , among others – a pointed shot at JRL and those who don’t call out its otherwise clear flaws, while sucking up to it. On a related note, is Ira Straus actually a noticeably better analytical mind than Trifkovic and Jatras, among some others not getting the nod at JRL?
BTW, Mercouris (as well as the one time JRL promoted Ethan Burger) supported a partition of Ukraine prior to Yanukovych’s overthrow:
https://marknesop.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/fear-and-loathing-behind-the-faith/comment-page-3/#comment-43157
The well over 2/3 pro-Russian majority Crimea aside, the present and arguably foreseeable future, reveal that such a thought is problematical, in addition to being questionable for Russian national security interests.
The likes of Lucas and Ioffe get paid.
Why shouldn’t he?
A rhetorical question relating to this piece:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/10/11/slanting-against-russia-us-establishment-pastime.html
Since this is an open thread I will introduce another item: bachelor cooking.
Pickup a nice one pound Atlantic salmon fillet from your local grocer. When you get home, set your oven to “bake” at 300 F (you metricucks can do your own conversion).
While the oven is warming up, dry off the moisture on your salmon with paper towels. Then coat it with EVOO and generously salt and pepper it.
Grease a pyrex baking dish with EVOO, then sprinkle coarse salt on it (prevents sticking, and salt rules).
When the oven has reached 300 F, place the salmon in the oven for around 20 minutes.
Brown four ounces of butter on the stovetop, and once brown add juice from one lemon to it and reduce it.
When the salmon is done, mix the brown butter and lemon juice with an immersion blender. Plate the salmon and pour the sauce on it.
If you’re not a bachelor then just add more salmon. If it’s a date night add vegetables (brussels sprouts are the king of vegetables) and a salad as well. No dessert as you don’t want girls getting in the habit of eating such shit.
Isn’t it interesting that you’re not afraid to be associated with Anglin, who openly fantasizes about replacing women with sexbots, but you do fear being associated with (14/88ers)? It looks to me like the alt-Right has been Gelbaumed.
I reckon the incel faction wanted to deposed Spencer from leadership of the movement he founded for not hating women enough and refusing to go along with their most blatant lies. This has been a long-time coming.
Bad idea. Skip dessert and you’ll just want second helpings. Agreed about the Brusselssprouts. Salmon should be started under the broiler for crispiness, finished on bake.
If you’re going this far you should glaze the salmon with some kind of sugar to have some very handsome (and tasty) browning.
Second helpings are fine. Carbohydrates are not (other than for athletes).
Are you married with children Rosie?
If second helpings are fine, then so is dessert, so long as it’s evening. Otherwise, you risk setting yourself up for more sugar cravings later on in the day.
Yes, why do you ask?
BTW, if you use butter instead of EVOO, you’ll get a nice crust without adding sugar.
To see if you’re actually trad or just a thot.
Good for you. I wish you and your family well.
You’re completely wrong on nutrition but I am not going to bother diving into the weeds on this.
I had a lot of fun when I was single, traveling and studying. I encourage other girls to do the same. Wouldn’t that make me a thot?
Maybe so, but you’re completely wrong on psychology.
Turkmenistan does a lot of trade (for its size) with Iran, and relatively little with the US. If Turkmenistan was willing to be used as a middleman (using shell companies) for foreign trade with Iran, it would be difficult for the US to stop.
In Cuba in the late 1990s, most of the vans were Fords, in spite of the embargo.
Sugar is poison. Carbs are not, but better cut them unless you’re an ectomorph. Or doing sports. Even ectomorphs should cut them as they age. Aging makes you less of an ectomorph.
You’re wrong. The less sugar you eat, the less you crave it. Try a full month without sugar.
Maybe you should consider giving up sex. If you struggle, try chemical castration.
Salmon recipes aside, China is continuing to do amazing strides in AI.
Cambricon, Makers of Huawei’s Kirin NPU IP, Build A Big AI Chip
For those unaware, Tesla is Nvidia’s line-up for deep learning and the V100 is their latest model.
https://i.imgur.com/zJTpMdf.png
China is now doing the Full Stack: software, hardware as well as the VC funding ecossytem (China last year funded more AI startups in terms of value than even the US, and that’s in nominal dollars. PPP-adjusted, the difference is even greater).
Some of you may have heard about Google Duplex, namely the Deep Mind(headquartered in Europe) created AI technology that can call for you and manage bookings, do boring routine tasks etc. This led to a freakout because the demo was very impressive, the voice, which was using WaveNet (DeepMind’s proprietary solution) was extremely life-like. It even used “uhm” and similar phrases in order to increase the humanity of it.
While I never bothered about the supposed controversy, it underlined how extremely quickly AI is progressing. TPU 3, Google’s newest iteration of their customised AI chip, was announced in conjunction with the latest Google I/O conference. It’s important that Google does not get to dominate AI hardware and I’m pleased that there are several dozen AI hardware startups that are publicly announced, and a significant share of those are in Asia.
Overall, I stick by my previous hypothesis, that robots will replace (manual) labour much slower than AI sortware will replace routine service jobs. People obsess over robots because those are physical, you can touch and see them, but given the dominance of service-sector employment in most Western countries, people should worry more about inventions like Google Duplex getting much smarter 10 years down the line. Imagine the hordes of jobs that can be automated away by a click. This kind of software is self-learning, too, and it isn’t geographically constrained like a robot. Exciting times.
Damn shame that farm raised salmon typically has negative attributes that offset the health benefits linked to that fish. There has been reasoned second guessing about the condition of some of the wild salmon as well.
To be eaten on a limited basis along with tuna and other fish.
Why are you so aggressive?
Paul Robinosn’s pointed criticism of Bausman/Russia Insider (RI) comes to mind. Robinson went out of his way to note how he removed RI from his links list.
Never mind Robinson’s promoting of the anonymous blog censoring troll “Jim Kovpak” (of the so called “Russia Without BS”), as well as some other venues that aren’t on par with the Strategic Culture Foundation.
Boosting analytic philosophy against “continental” (also believing philosophical questions can be resolved, and even thinking the latter is a unit, as if all philosophers who ever wrote in English were analytic) is one of the most pathetic pursuits of a hajnalcel.
What is so wrong about that?
Continental ‘philosophy’ is retarded mysticism.
Robinson needs to maintain his handshakeableness, hence his Skripal articles.
This is a very good comment.
You won’t even have a chance of triggering me until you list exactly what you classify as “continental ‘philosophy'”.
Anglin’s a 1488er himself FFS.
Yeah. He’s not alone. In comparison, there’re some quality dissident sources being blatantly downplayed. His promoting Meduza over the Strategic Culture Foundation is one example.
Reminded of the JRL promoted Keith Gessen hoopla. (Sean Guillory said that David Johnson had asked him to submit a bit on Gessen’s much overrated NYT piece.) Like we really need Gessen to explain the obvious.
Contrary to Robinson – Gessen isn’t so radically different from his more well known sister Masha. The latter has said that too much hype has been given to the notion that the Russian government greatly interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. Ultimately, both Gessens have an overall slant against mainstream Russian views – thereby explaining why Keith got the nod by The NYT to run his much discussed piece.
Concerning “the paper of record”:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09062016-enhanced-russia-bashing-at-the-new-york-times-analysis/
Regardless of the legit qualms concerning Robinson, one can nevertheless give him credit, as indicated towards the end of this piece:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/12/12/countering-anti-russian-propaganda.html
Impressive streak at being wrong about everything.
Doused with lemon juice in a pan coated with olive oil, fry/boil salmon on top of the stove flame, followed by a stint in the broiler, ending with a bake. Good idea to baste the salmon before and after the baking process. The key is an even blend of the aforementioned three cooking versions, that results in a finished product, which isn’t over or under cooked. Garlic and/or pepper can be added in this process.
Goes great with spinach and/or rice. Great served cold as a sandwich with spinach and mayo.
Continental philosophy is incomprehensible mindmush.
What is a hajnalcel?
Because I get tired of the imperious, know-it-all men of the alt-Right telling me how to run my life: what to say, what to read, when to get married, when to have kids, what to eat, what I may buy from the grocery store and what I must bake from scratch, etc…
It’s a wonder you all can stand each other. Oh wait, you can’t stand each other, which is why you can’t get anything done.
Skeptical.
That said, yes, even wild fish has problems. Often overflowing with histamines and parasites.
The true king of meat: fish.
I strongly object to rice.
Next up for you all is my steak methodology.
Sounds fabulous.
I may be wrong, but I’m open to reason. Enlighten me.
(Dessert is non-negotiable, though.)
Meant beef. Signals got crossed.
I blame Rosie (who is definitely a thot).
From you, I take that as a compliment. Hopefully of you ever meet my adult sons in a dark alley, they won’t know about you calling their mother a whore.
Anglin is the very definition of 14/88, LOL.
Bad guess. And wrong.
The food pyramid is ZOG propaganda.
I have no quarrel with you.
You’re a victim.
Hope your sons are doing well.
OK. So do you think Anglin is good for White men?
Why?
OK. I’ll take your word for it.
Now for beef steak, which we can all agree is the king of food. Perhaps Rosie will find a reason to disagree since she’s so ornery.
The first step is to use paper towels to blot off all moisture from the meat.
Then generously salt both sides, and place it on a wire rack in your refrigerator at least overnight. But you can in fact keep it like this for weeks.
When ready to eat, set your oven to the lowest temperature it will accept with the convection setting, Cook the steak until it reaches 110 F.
Then remove it and SEAR both sides of the steak in a cast iron pan heated to the highest possible temperature for 45 seconds each.
Strongly recommend compound butter for this. If you’re feeling fancy, make bearnaise.
How so?
Do you really want to get into this with me?
The reason you chose to become a whore is because our culture encourages it.
If you had been born a century prior you wouldn’t have pursued “fun”.
Now whenever you and your poor husband have sex it invites comparison with other lovers you had “fun” with.
And it’s not just you, Rosie. Nearly all of our women are victims.
Re oligarchs and sactions:
Moscow’s Gold: Russian, Corruption in the UK just published by the House of Commons
Foreign Affairs Committee, including a chapter entitled “Closing the ‘laundromat’ “.
Also an article from The New Yorker about Abramovich’s recent (and still current, apparently) visa problems:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/britain-considers-life-without-its-russian-oligarchs
And they thought their assets/money were safe. 😀
https://www.rt.com/business/427943-kazakhstan-frozen-assets-us/
Maybe if you avoid getting into conversations about ways of life, if you don’t want to hear opinions, you might be less tired?
I’m not telling you to do this, but it might help your specific problem.
I’ll give examples. Talha thinks I should be a Muslim, AaronB thinks I should have some sort of nebulous spiritism, Dmitry thinks I should refocus my life around acquiring more expensive sneakers, DFH probably wants me deported though, despite whatever he may think about the continuity of the British Empire in the US, he lives in a different country. We mostly get along, though, despite ribbing like my exaggerations above.
You are trying to strengthen our beliefs in all the negative stereotypes we have of women, aren’t you?
I think you should travel back in time, acquire BTC, maximize your gains and then fund Patreon for worth writers and researchers, of which there is only one, of course. His last name starts with K.
Thor plans to be the next prez after Thrump. Of course this will be a step down for him, but he has given assurances that everything will be okay as long as we don’t ask too many questions.
The only plank currently in his platform is that chattel slavery for black Americans will be restored.
Thso, if you’re thot then he might make polyandry his thsecond plank.
Where would your husband fall out on selfless sacrifice for the cause?
I don’t doubt what’s negatively said about farm raised fish. Under ideal conditions, that process stands to be healthier. At play is what they’re juiced with, in conjunction with being on top of each other in limited dirty water conditions.
Have come across sources saying that in the US, the inspection of fish farms isn’t as detailed as beef, pork and poultry, where there’s suspect review methods.
Many wild fish are said to be ingesting crushed plastic material.
For varied reasons, a good number of folks have problems with wheat products. Specifically, with how much of the wheat products are made. A similar issue concerns milk products. On that latter score, people with milk issues do much better with non-GMO grass fed milk products. Likewise, some wheat products are more tolerable than others.
Some people have milk and/or wheat issues from the get go, or develop such later on in life.
Rice tends to be more GI friendly.
Credit goes to a NY metro area upbringing, where one has numerous different types of food experiences. The TV cooking shows are another contributing factor.
Through the years, I experienced how salmon tasted differently using different cooking methods. It dawned on me to try a combo, with the idea of getting the best of all.
Cucking level #35646744:
https://www.gofundme.com/help-virag-gulyas-get-to-israel
There is cucking and then there is… this. Whoever brainwashed her in her youth really broke her.
Only $300 or so! Cucking hasn’t been profitable enough for her. The Russian bot known as Syrian Partisan makes twice as much on a monthly basis.
Looks like Abramovich found a work-around for those visa problems:
Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich ‘eligible to be Israeli citizen’
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the BBC referring to Abramovich as “Russian-Jewish” before.
Always amusing when establishment leftist publications like Der Spiegel unselfconsciously reveal the illiberal truth about EU “voluntary union”:
Members of the European Union need to send a clear message to the new Italian government: We will not allow you to destroy the eurozone.
Also amusing to see the standard use of delegitimising pejoratives for anyone who wins an election (or threatens to win one) whom the leftists see as unacceptable to them: “Trumpists” or “populists” (both terms in repeated use in this article).
Though the Spiegel SJW Euro-ists needn’t have worried, the fix was in anyway by the Italian branch of the Euro-establishment to protect Italy from the consequences of its own democracy:
As Spiegel shamelessly oozes admiration for Italy’s President it’s worth considering what he has done – basically abused his position to thwart the will of the Italian electorate for political reasons. Imagine if a President of a European country were to decline to approve the cabinet choices of a politician dedicated to mass immigration (ie, an establishment politician) on the basis that it was a threat to the people of the country and the electorate had been wrong to vote for him. We’d never hear the end of the wailing and gnashing of teeth about “democracy thwarted”.
Yes, pretty stunning what’s going on in Italy. I think it will backfire badly though, Lega and Ms5 are bound to make gains at the next election, and Di Maio has already stated they want to impeach and remove Mattarella.
Not sure about MS5, but Lega or more correctly Salvini will likely win the next election.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=148805349&postcount=786
I don’t think they can impeach the Mattarella dude.
It does not look like he did something unconstitutional.
Still, his authority needs to be reduced.
Don’t know, here (admittedly not the most unbiased source)
https://jungefreiheit.de/allgemein/2018/mattarella-stuerzt-italien-ins-chaos/
it’s claimed that according to at least one constitutional jurist (Livio Paladin) Mattarrella has arrogated powers to himself he shouldn’t have according to the Italian constitution.
Impeachment apparently requires majorities in both chambers of the Italian parliament.
I’ll have to look at Italian newspapers what they’re writing.
I have mixed feelings about this, it certainly would be better for Italy to leave the Euro. The consequences for Germany might be dreadful though.
On the plus side, that might mean the reckoning with the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats comes sooner rather than later.
It seems indeed to be controversial, more a case of Mattarrella having broken “unwritten rules”, since the text of the Italian constitution is somewhat ambiguous,
e.g. here’s a professor of constitutional law claiming he’s within his rights to reject certain ministers for political reasons:
http://www.lacostituzione.info/index.php/2018/05/23/il-presunto-veto-presidenziale-sul-ministro-delleconomia-e-legittimo/
Seems likely most Lega/MS5 voters will disagree, while most establishment supporters will choose to agree (though as I noted above, they’d certainly disagree if it were a pro-immigration politician rejected for that reason – but as we’ve seen over free speech, establishment politicians and their voters are shameless hypocrites). I’d have thought there are likely to be some formerly undecideds who will just interpret such “sophisticated” arguments as being establishment bullshit and decide to vote Lega/MS5 in protest.
Yes, pretty much that.
Livio Paladin (a constitutional jurist who died in 2000) in his manual about constitutional law took the view that the Italian president can’t just reject a minister on political grounds:
http://news-town.it/politica/20540-la-crisi-istituzionale-il-ruolo-di-mattarella,-il-dettato-costituzionale,-lo-scontro-politico-con-lega-e-movimento-5-stelle-che-gi%C3%A0-pensano-alle-prossime-elezioni.html
So at the very least Mattarella’s actions are highly controversial.
I think it will backfire badly on the establishment to ignore the will of voters like this, all the more so since this can (probably even with some reason) be seen as betraying Italy to German influence.
Savona was a real problem for the German Christian Democrats.
He wanted to save Italy either by establishing a transfer union or by leaving the Eurozone.
Either way, a uncomfortable moment of truth for Merkel.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=148759595&postcount=735
Also amusing to see the standard use of delegitimising pejoratives for anyone who wins an election (or threatens to win one) whom the leftists see as unacceptable to them: “Trumpists” or “populists” (both terms in repeated use in this article).
Does this mean that trying to be like Mike can be a good thing sometimes?
Hope it goes better than her previous GoFundMe to build a Ferenc Szálasi mural in downtown Budapest.
Who’s Mike?
Mike would be America. I had resolved to stop beating the dead horse of my commenting on your eccentric habit of blaming America for all things bad, but couldn’t resist pointing out that Europeans emulating America by electing a populist would be a good thing.
Europeans aren’t emulating America by supporting populists.
Italiy’s MS5 and Lega were founded before Trump became a relevant force in American politics in the 2010s.
British Euroscepticism is even older.
Europeans aren’t emulating America by supporting populists.
I didn’t say supporting; I said electing. Anyway, it is not important to me who is emulating who, but rather is it a step in the right direction, or in the case of Trump, not taking a further step in the wrong direction.
Far from clear if that view is justified, if Trump manages to start a new Mideast war (and it doesn’t seem unlikely given what he’s done so far and the people he’s surrounded himself with), he might easily come to be seen as the worst US president ever (in some ways he might already be a strong contender).
Whatever their faults, Italian populists could at worst break up the Euro (which might actually be good) or the EU (also possibly good, though preferably without reigniting old national hostilities). The damage Trump seems likely to do is of an altogether different kind.
Far from clear if that view is justified
Contrary to what some may believe, we can go face down. I don’t think that it can be ruled out with confidence that Georgia will not flip to blue, if not this year then by 2020 or 2024. Trump is the last chance to keep the country together. When the SJWs take complete political control the mushy middle will fall in line and there will be a permanently estranged white minority, albeit a large minority.
if Trump manages to start a new Mideast war
I’m not that worried about it. Besides, let’s be realistic, we are a warlike people and always have been. I think that we have had some sort of armed conflict going on since our founding.
Whatever their faults, Italian populists could at worst break up the Euro (which might actually be good) or the EU
I think the EU is a kiss of death. I don’t believe that the UK will actually exit and if the Greeks can submit themselves to penury for eternity anything is possible over there.
The damage Trump seems likely to do is of an altogether different kind.
That’s what the SJWs and MSM say.
So far I don’t get the impression that he’s done much to fulfill his economic promises (infrastructure projects…what happened to that?) or has achieved anything positive in domestic affairs at all (no real solution for the immigration problem either), his entire energy seems focused on foreign policy characterized by absolutely horrible decisions.
In the 19th century you only killed Amerindians or your own countrymen, that wasn’t that important to the rest of the world, it’s different today. And the kind of perpetual, generational war in the wider Mideast that the US has waged for the last 30 years or so, is an unprecedented and mostly disastrous phenomenon.
I think you’re being too dismissive of the risks. Trump’s administration seems set on regime change in Iran, if that leads to war it will be a catastrophe imo, much worse than Iraq. Even if you don’t care about foreigners, you should at least consider that the consequences for the US will probably be disastrous as well.
You can’t start a war against an enemy that refuses to fight, as Israel is learning the hard way.
Fucking Russia has robbed us of an Israel versus Lebanon/Syria/Iran war. Thanks for nothing, Russia.
Hey Andrei, if your reading this, how does it feel that your idol Putin has denied us of a chance to see cool western weapons against cool Russian ones? Putin spent all that Russian taxpayer money on developing new weapon systems but now he has made it so we don’t get to see what they can do. All those articles you wrote about Russian weapons were a complete waste of your time since none of them will ever be used. If I were you I’d find a new hobby.
…
Most people want to see a major mideast war. If Russia isn’t willing to help bring it about then Russia should just leave the region so that the people who do want war can make it happen.
What would you have done about them? They were attacking our settlers. We dealt with them as humanely as was possible given the circumstances.
Where did I write that I blamed the US for it or that Americans should feel guilty about it? It was merely a statement of fact.
i misread. sorry.
No problem. Nice to see you back.
孔夫子?
I’d have to start up Patreon a few millennia early though.
@Anatoly Karlin Would you include TRS as part of the Spencerite wing of the alt-right?
I ask this question because Spencer has suffered reputational damage by his association with them.