Currently there are a bunch of Maidan/Crimea related five year anniversaries that have come up, or will soon come up. I will try to poast about them as time permits.
Admin note: Whenever I post more than 1-2 articles a day, some of them may not be visible, since there are three slots and 1-2 threads are typically stickied at any one time (usually the most recent Open Thread or a recent effortpost). Click on the T (“Teaser Archives”) next to my name to gain access to a list of all recent posts. Or just follow my feed.
@ak
More notable posts since the last Open Thread in case you missed any of them.
- Russia’s Military Losses in WW2. A Few Puzzles.
- Is Metro Exodus Russophobic?
- India vs. Pakistan
- Limits to Calculating Space
- *effortpost* The Cognitive Chain of Being: A New Approach to Animal Rights
Featured
- Ron Unz: Gaining Ground on The New Republic, The Nation, and Foreign Policy
- Just had a look at my own stats. February saw 36,803 visits and 131,677 views, which makes it the 4th most successful month ever in both categories. Considering that February only has 28 days, this means that we have recovered from the fall-off in blogging during mid-Nov to mid-Jan.
- Marko Marjanović: Breaking Down Soviet WWII Losses [PDF]. This seems a very good complement to my own post on the subject.
Russia
- The Ukraine elections are in one month’s time.
- I will certainly have more on that in due course, but it looks like Zelensky and Poroshenko will make it into the second round; at that point, Zelensky should crush Poroshenko, short of Poroshenko’s approval rating soaring and/or massive abuse of the “administrative resource.”
- Paul Robinson: The Ukraine bans its own Eurovision candidate ,exits contest, because she wouldn’t parrot Kiev’s propaganda.
- Niccolo Salo: Shifting media narratives: A few days ago an Italian outlet published a piece saying that Salvini’s Lega was going to take money from Russia. Then it admitted it had no evidence. Media went from ‘GOTCHA’ to “it’s a sign of Putin’s weakness”.
- (Former?) Russian oppositionist Maria Baronova hired by RT
- Ben Aris: Putin backs the FSB in the Calvey case because he needs to. Best explanation to date IMO.
- Leonid Bershidsky: Eastern Europe Feeds on a Shrinking Ukraine
- Ivan Katchanovski: Coverage of the Maidan massacre by the mainstream media in the West involves gross misrepresentation
World
- Kenneth Rapoza: Venezuela’s Guaido Says Russia Not Propping Up Nicolas Maduro
- Quillette: Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planets
- Claire Lehmann: Germany’s emissions have flatlined & electricity costs have increased 50% since they invested $580B in a renewables-heavy electrical grid. France produces 1/10th the emissions per unit of electricity as Germany & pays half for its electricity. Guess how.
- Polish support for gay marriages rises to 41% (civil partnerships: 56%)
- Mary Frances Williams: How I was Kicked Out of the Society for Classical Studies Annual Meeting
- Gregory Hood: Amazon and the End of Free Speech
- I notice that Amazon was slower to start actively deplatforming wrongthinkers, but it’s definitely picking up pace now.
- Gab.ai has released Dissenter, an app that allows you to contact on any article/website on the Internet. I have tried it and can’t vouch for it myself.
Science & Culture
- James Thompson: Gould Got It Wrong
I’m not disputing that Eurovision is for faggots and that Poland has for centuries been a failed country cursed by it’s elites with the homosexuality issue on the rise being typical for it………but how can you not put the ukrop eurovision farce in this list?
These trivial pseudo-culture matters if anything do more than most to emphasis what a fake and failed state and ‘culture’ Ukraine is.
Crimean twins, performers who are nothing without Russian demand ( because same culture), ukrop banderatards making even more stupid decisions, hypocrisy…where to start?
This is what he wrote:
Mr. Unz should probably assign more slots to Mr. Karlin – at least one more.
Comedians and outsiders tend to collapse as the election day nears, I would be surprised if Zelensky is an exception. In any case, regardless of who wins, the end-game is approaching. The status quo has been frozen waiting for the elections. In the meantime some things have been established:
– Ukraine will neither prosper as part of EU, nor will it collapse (no big surprise there)
– The military stalemate means a de facto win for the separatists in Donbas – if a rebellion is not suppressed, it is a win
– Financial situation of Ukraine will deteriorate: debts will have to be paid, gas transit money will dry up, the export markets are not opening up.
– Europe will not start a war with Russia on Kiev’s behalf.
– Time is on Russia’s side.
Kiev can try one more desperate move, but at this point they are mostly just pissing off everybody. This has the Saakasvilli-Georgia scenario written all over it. Or they can merge with Poland, become a single state and achieve their European dreams that way.
I think that relations will slowly warm up with Russia (but I don’t know – the US will be in deep Russophobia during the 2020s, and a lot will depend on whether the Euros will go along with them). Certainly the completion of Power of Siberia and North Stream II this year will increase Ukraine’s incentives to restore full economic ties, like Georgia has.
However, I suspect that the Georgia analogy may apply more than Russophiles would wish it to. While Georgia became more “practical” after Saakashvili’s ouster, it has maintained a firm Euro-Atlantic orientation ever since. While all Ukrainian politicians’ ratings have collapsed into the gutter, the pro-NATO/EU orientation is probably there to stay indefinitely. So I don’t know how exactly time is on Russia’s side.
This is a very telling headline by Bloomberg, clearly it is a contradiction if one reads it without any context. Immigration pretty much means non whites, the left gets it as usual, the cuck right repeats its stupid “I just don’t want illegal immigration” or “its about the culture” mantras.
Agree. If Zelensky keeps Tymoshenko out of the 2nd round, Poroshenko has a good chance of winning. A lot of people voting for him in protest in the first round might not want a totally inexperienced comedian as president. I wouldn’t doubt if some dirt comes up about him in time for the second round, after he has fulfilled his duty of keeping Tymoshenko out.
So I’d guess 60% chance of Poroshenko getting a 2nd term.
Questionable. The rebellion wanted to include huge parts of Ukraine but has been limited to just parts of the two Donbas oblasts. Their poor condition serves as a reminder for how bad it is to defy Kiev. So mixed result.
Russian Wiki says nord stream 2 comes online in January 2020, not 2019.
Exports are up over last year. GDP grew 3.4% in 2018, but growth is predicted to slow to 2.5% in 2019. So ongoing growth.
Can somebody explain why Czechia has such high fertility relative to the rest of the V4?
They have a TFR of 1.7 (and climbing), and while the others have made great strides compared to 10 years ago, they seem to be plateauing around 1.5.
AK: UrbaneFrancoOntarian, there’s a special thread for this: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/european-native-vs-immigrant-fertility-rates/
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7857/33361087408_3046c754e8_o.png
Found a music video which people here will surely enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui4eKnA2RlM
Given Ukraine’s poor shape (granted, the west is faring better than the east, but having 3% annual GDP growth when you’re supposed to have 7% annual GDP growth isn’t much of an accomplishment), I really wouldn’t be surprised if Zelensky wins. I mean, when your mainstream politicians have consistently failed to deliver for a couple of decades, you might as well try something new. Heck, I myself would probably vote for Zelensky if I had to choose between him and Poroshenko in the second round and if I was actually a Ukrainian citizen (I’m not).
This sort of reminds me of how Donald Trump won in 2016. Specifically, the Republican base was so fed up with the Republican establishment that they chose someone with absolutely no experience as their 2016 presidential nominee. Trump then proceeded to win the general election by winning over enough working-class White voters in the Rust Belt to win the electoral votes of the crucial swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania–thus giving him enough electoral votes to win the US Presidency in 2016. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if a similar factor would result in Zelensky’s victory in Ukraine if he actually makes it to the second round.
One could speculate that the rebel-controlled parts of the Donbass would have been in much better shape right now had Russia actually annexed these territories like it did with Crimea, though. If one subscribes to such a view, then the mistake would not have been so much in having the Donbass rebel as in having Russia refuse to annex the Donbass afterwards.
I wonder if Russophobia in the US is going to increase even more in the event that Russia will outright annex Belarus (which I suspect is unlikely, but which I am also unwilling to completely rule out as a possibility).
Also, I wonder if Russophobes in the US are going to significantly deepen US-Kazakhstan relations in an attempt to secure Russia’s soft underbelly. After all, Russophobes might already feel that Russia is encircled on three sides (by NATO in the west, north, and east–combined with US ally Japan). Encircling Russia on its southern flank would result in the encirclement of Russia being much more complete–though Russia would still have a lifeline to China in such a scenario.
There is of course talk that Zelensky is sponsored by Kolomoysky. Which would be interesting, since Kolomoysky and Tymoshenko were pretty tight themselves.
Both dislike Poroshenko.
I haven’t been following this closely enough to judge, but could it be that Zelensky was supposed to just nudge Poroshenko into third position and then fold so that Tymoshenko could win? A scheme which got out of hand, as we’re now looking at Zelensky vs. Poroshenko in the second round.
@ Mr. XYZ,
I think Nazarbayev is too cautious to play such games. Though he is getting old, and his successors, of course, might not be.
You know what’s funny? It seems to be geoblocked in the US. Though just the video. There’s a slideshow – maybe the exact same thing.
It would be pretty interesting if someone make a study of general African culture to figure out how representative that is, for instance in Nollywood. Too bad we don’t have any serious news organizations with resources. But I imagine it is probably pretty representative. I wonder where it is on the charts, if they have them.
If two candidates make it to a runoff and one of the candidates subsequently drops out, would that mean that the other candidate would win by default?
If Zelensky actually tries such a move, I suspect that the backlash to this from his supporters is going to be extreme.
Yeah, that’s what I also think.
I suppose the general sentiment must be pretty widespread, iirc there are surveys showing that huge numbers of Africans would like to emigrate.
No idea, but the singer is supposedly one of Africa’s most influential reggae musicians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiken_Jah_Fakoly
Well, it’s about 4% growth per capita.
Also, why is Ukraine supposed to have 7% annual growth? It is in the same general ballpark as Belarus and Moldova.
Zelensky isn’t even a Trump. He is someone who played a Trump on TV. His campaign is financed by one of the oligarchs (Kolomoysky, who like Zelensky is Jewish). People are voting for him as a protest in the first round which won’t result in the presidency, but it’s not as likely that he will win in the second round.
If he knocks out Tymoshenko by absorbing some of her anti-Poroshenko votes this will have been impressive.
Correct.
Kolomoyski follows his own interests though he is allied with Tymoshenko. Given that both the Zelensky and the Tymoshenko votes are anti-Poroshenko votes*, it would have seemed obvious that he would be taking some votes from her. The plan would have been to knock Poroshenko into 3rd place which both Tymoshenko and Kolomoyski could live with.
In the second round Zelensky’s deficiencies will become more apparent. He still has a chance due to a lot of people being fed up with Poroshenko’s corruption. He will have to get young people to vote for him, and Easterners to vote for him, without alienating both groups (the natioinalists won’t vote for him). If Tymoshenko urges her people to vote for him he may well win.
*Their electorates are different. Old non-pro-Soviet people prefer Tymoshenko (the old Sovoks vote for the Opposition bloc) – she is popular with grandmothers from Kiev; Zelensky gets young voters from everywhere in the country, and those from the East who dislike Poroshenko but don’t want to vote for the Opposition Bloc.
Thanks for the correction, but my overall point here still appears to be valid.
Belarus has more than two times the GDP PPP per capita that Ukraine has. Thus, slower growth on Belarus’s part should be expected. It isn’t a very good idea for Ukrainians to compare themselves to a country that has a similar average IQ to Ukraine and yet is already more than two times wealthier per capita than they themselves are.
As for Moldova, based on PISA, Moldovans appear to be as intelligent as American Blacks–possibly as a result of large-scale brain drain from Moldova. I suspect that Ukrainians are more intelligent than Moldovans are–perhaps by as much as 0.5 standard deviations. Thus, Ukraine should have a higher ceiling for its GDP per capita than Moldova should have (considering the importance of average national IQ in regards to economic prosperity). That said, though, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if Moldova is also underperforming. Moldova’s GDP PPP per capita is around $5,700 whereas I suspect that the equivalent figure for American Blacks would be over $20,000. Granted, American Blacks benefit from affirmative action and from living in a country with much smarter ethnic groups, but I would still be surprised if Moldova’s ceiling in regards to this will be less than $15,000. Ukraine’s ceiling, I would suspect would be somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000–in other words, around Greece’s or Turkey’s level of GDP PPP per capita. Ditto for Belarus.
To be fair, though, Trump also made a career from television and entertainment. As for Trump’s business ventures, well, let’s just say that I wonder how much baloney was inside of them.
Anyway, though, my overall point here is that if Ukrainians are sufficiently fed up with the status quo, they could certainly elect an outsider as their President. I still think that my Trump example here is sufficiently valid since he was also a political outsider before he ran for the US Presidency. After all, Trump literally never ran for any elected office at any point during his lifetime before his 2016 presidential bid.
But this hole was dug long ago. Ukraine’s growth is comparable to that of Belarus now. When both countries were poorer (and similar in wealth) Ukraine’s growth was slower then, which is how it got into its hole relative to Belarus.
Yes, but primarily from real estate. And once Trump won the primary he had at least some of the Republican establishment come around, and a governor as his vice presidential candidate.
They could. The problem is that there are outsiders and there are outsiders.
It is not about what we want, but what we will settle for. The rebels are willing to settle for most of two regions, with the capitols included, it is a small victory at a huge cost. In that way I agree that it is questionable.
The growth in Ukraine is not strong enough, the living standards are stagnating, the purchasing power has declined since 2014, the exports are below 2014, there is no way this can be described as a success.
North Stream 2 – whether in 2019 or 2020 – will be symbolically devastating. It will cut off Ukraine from the main flows of energy, and in a related way from commerce. Once NS2 is online, Ukraine ceases to matter to both Russian and German economy. It is not just 3% of the GDP that will disappear, it is the loss of strategic importance. There were 2 things in Ukraine that had strategic value: Crimea and the pipelines. Ukraine is losing both of them because of Maidan.
Porosheno has no place to turn if he wins. Any other possible winner (Timoshenko?) would sooner or later reach out to Russia to negotiate a compromise. The problem is that the terms in 2018 would had been better than in 2020. The old adage that art of living is in selling your horse before it dies applies here. Longer Kiev waits more devastating the eventual settlement will be.
A more likely scenario:
https://www.rferl.org/a/lukashenka-russia-won-t-swallow-belarus-further-integration/29797813.html
Dunno about 98% of Belarusians being opposed to Belarus becoming a part of the Russian Federation. If that were to happen, Belarus would probably have a loose arrangement, which would see some noticeable autonomy.
Good comments thread:
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/land-of-the-absurd/#comments
Pro-Atlantic orientation by itself means nothing. If there are specific things that get done – Nato or EU membership, or bases – then I would agree with you. But ‘orientation’ with no results is like a young girl pining after Brad Pitt, it has no actionable value. All it does is delays her life.
Russophobia has a polarising effect, as do most irrational emotions. There will be more of it in 2020’s, and there will also be a backlash against it. Then it will either blow up as all demonisation manias do – if one’s enemy is literally the ‘devil’ there can be no constraints. Or it will end in an intra-West conflict between the two sides (of course blamed on Russia).
In any case, there isn’t much Russia can do about it. If you think that without Ukraine there would be less Russophobia, you haven’t met the morons pushing it. At this point large portions of Western elites desire evil, white enemies – there are no other good candidates than Russia. If Russia collapses tomorrow and distributes all its riches among the Western elites, it won’t make one iota of difference – they will still hate all things Russian, except they will also again show contempt. Hatred is not something that one can negotiate with, it has to burn out on its own.
How a country got into a bad position shouldn’t be relevant. If two countries have the same potential (based on their average IQ) but one country is more than two times wealthier per capita than the other country, the other country should be expected to grow much more rapidly since it has more potential to grow than the first country has.
If China in 1978 (after a couple of decades of Maoist mismanagement) grew at 3% per year (I’m assuming about the same rate as the US during this time), Chinese would have had absolutely nothing to boast about considering that they were much, much poorer per capita than the US was during this time. In 1978, China needed decades of extremely rapid growth (sometimes in the double-digits) to make up for the time that it lost due to Maoist mismanagement (and, before that, to WWII, civil war, and warlordism). Likewise, right now, Ukraine needs to have extremely rapid economic growth (probably not double-digits, though) to make up for the poor economic decisions that its previous leaders made.
It’s much easier for a country to rapidly grow when it is extremely poor and has a lot of potential (as a result of a high average IQ). If such a country isn’t growing rapidly, then something probably isn’t being done right. Again, I will point to post-1978 China as being an example of what happens when a country acquires competent leadership and when a country’s average IQ is much, much higher than its GDP per capita would cause one to believe. I firmly believe that Ukraine is capable of something similar with sufficiently competent leadership–albeit on a smaller scale than what China did over the last forty years.
And Zelensky is incapable of getting any Ukrainian politicians to support his bid?
Also, how many French politicians supported Macron’s bid early on?
If you say so.
If Ukraine is currently growing at Belarus’s pace in regards to its GDP PPP per capita, then Ukraine is always going to remain significantly behind Belarus. For countries that presumably have roughly similar average IQs, this isn’t a very good situation for the country that is significantly behind (in this case, Ukraine) to be in.
They are forced to settle for those regions because they were blocked from grabbing the rest of so-called Novorossiya.
Positive growth isn’t stagnation. Living standards are certainly improving, judging by increases in salaries and consumption of consumer goods.
It’s actually about the same.
It will not be 2019; current contract doesn’t even expire until Jan.1 2020. It will be 2020 or even 2021. We’ll see what, if anything, that means. However possible scenarios do not generally envision that transit through Ukraine will be reduced to zero. The lowest estimate is it will be about 15% of the 2018 transit while likely estimates are in the ballpark of 60%.
As of January 31st this year Russia was prepared to extend the current transit contract for 10 more years:
http://tass.com/economy/1042686
Planning for Nordstream 2 began before Maidan. Losing Crimea to Russia is probably less of a strategic blow than losing the entire country to Russia.
It’s doing fine without a final settlement with Russia. So it can wait 20, 50 years at current status quo. Without a settlement Ukraine’s West and Center will continue to improve and its East will continue to lag behind. Bad for them, but the country was focused on their interests for 20 years post independence and it wasn’t too nice.
If it was a rapid relative decline followed by correction, sure. But this has been 20+ years in the making, of falling behind.
Is Hungary even close to catching up to Austria?
Integration into Western supply chains are specific things that are getting done and that are expanding. Center of Ukraine’s economic gravity shifting from the more pro-Russian east to the more pro-Western West is another thing. And while NATO membership is not on the table who knows about bases.
They probably have more fun going against these within their own borders.
My point is that by winning the nomination Trump inherited the Republican Party, an established political force with a lot of experienced people and built-in voters. If Zelensky makes it into the second round it is just him. His bid is much more of an outsider bid than was Trump’s, in the worst ways when it comes to winning an election.
Apparently some Russian military expert has noticed good things about Ukraine’s tank modernization:
https://zen.yandex.ru/media/gurkhan/tankist-vsu-rasskazal-o-svoem-tanke-t64bv-obr2017-goda-5c64372b84e0ea00aebfadf9
Ukraine has also begun mass production of new rockets and artillery systems:
https://defence-blog.com/army/ukraine-announces-mass-production-of-new-rocket-launchers.html
I cannot read Russian, but is it about the latest Ukrainian modernized version of the T-64 being more potent than the latest Russian modernized version of the T-72? I think I’ve already shared a link from the Defence Blog about it.
The Russians also have lots of T-90s and T-80s modernized to higher standards, and will soon start mass producing the T-14.
Still I think it’s obviously not a bad upgrade, and shows the abilities of the Ukrainian defense industry.
The Ukraine is about as poor as Vietnam but has better human capital.
7% GDP growth is not only obtainable but ought to be a priority objective of the state.
Belarus is twice as wealthy and in any case has some kind of unique quasi-socialist model. Unfortunately English-language information on Belarus is poor. Presumably you Russian speakers know more.
While the Ukraine is run by retards and obviously made a very stupid decision in 2014, the country will not lose all importance when Nordstream 2 comes online.
It will remain a large country situated between Russia and the European Union.
Its largest trade partners will remain the European Union and Russia.
The Ukraine has considerable economic opportunities in the future as well. With the Visegrad countries growing ever richer, the Ukraine is a logical destination for Western European capital to invest. It should be expected to grow as a supplier to Western MNCs of such things as aircraft components, auto parts, sheet metal, etc.
Based on the recent success in Russian agricultural exports, it would appear that the Ukraine has a lot of potential here as well. And since the Ukraine is so much smaller and poorer than Russia, growth in agricultural exports would have a major impact on the Ukrainian economy.
Subsidized energy from Russia is of course finished, but then Russia should’ve stopped doing this 20 years ago anyway.
The country can also expect no increases in its economic ties with Russia (the opposite is to be expected), but unfortunately for the Ukraine it had to choose between Russia and the West anyway for reasons completely outside of its own control.
The EU made the mistake of making the Ukraine a laughably bad offer in 2014 which is of course what led to the previous government to reject this offer. But now that the country has adopted Russophobia as official state policy, Western integration it shall have.
And EU membership, which won’t happen, isn’t necessary for Western integration or economic success.
Vietnam had large-scale Chinese settlement over a long timeframe. I believe that makes it different from the rest of SE Asia. I think it is quite possible that they have European norms for intelligence.
If I speak objectively, it is actually better for Ukraine if Poroshenko continues to 2024.
It’s not so important who is president there, but the fact that they have some political stability at the top.
Even with a bad president, at least it one form of political stability. Political stability and lack of change of leaders, itself is a value for a country like Ukraine.
Ukraine needs above all now some years of political stability, and this is above even the right or wrong of their actual policies.
It is nice to see your optimism, but your are shading a not very good situation. To be at 2014 purchasing power after 5 years is nothing to boast about. I agree that the Western Ukraine and Kiev have done better – they are benefitting from the westward shift of everything. But as a whole it is not a prosperous place – 2014 was already dismal, that’s why people came out on Maidan. Not to keep it the same.
You know my position: EU offered a cheap deal. For once Kiev acted rationally and asked for better terms via postponement. Partially stirred by Western support, partially by accumulated anger, crowds came out on Maidan yelling for ‘Europe at any price‘ fatally undermining Kiev’s negotiating position. Then it was downhill – stupid language law, over-heated and premature anti-Russian rhetoric, lack of planning. Russia moved first, the Western sponsors peeped like a stabbed piglet and did nothing. Since then it is all consequence management.
If I am in a middle of a negotiation and I am offered a bad deal, but my whole family starts screaming and shouting that ‘we want the deal no matter what‘, it is likely that I will get screwed. EU totally took advantage of Kiev’s weakness. Then the emotional mistakes by the Maidan leaders made it worse.
Whether NS2 happens Dec 2019, Jan 2020, or even in 2021, is of little importance, Russia and Germany are playing the long game. The strategic balance will shift – no need to ship through Ukraine, or ship only minimally, and that means nothing for Kiev to negotiate with. Germans took care of their own needs and the distribution is heading towards Baltic. All of central-eastern Europe will re-orient over time towards the German Baltic coast. There is no reason why there wouldn’t be North Stream III, that ship has sailed and Kiev lost. The LNG terminals, like the one in Poland, only reinforce this new energy reality – Ukraine is no longer a necessary part of transit.
But miracles can happen, we agreed to wait a few years to see how prosperous Ukraine will be. I will here.
Countries run by retards don’t do well, no matter what the resources and potential – check out Venezuela for a recent example.
…for Ukrainian workers. I know a bit about Visegrad prosperity, and a lot of it is based on good supply lines and logistics. Within Visegrad, the prosperity is centered close to German and Austrian borders. Proximity and good infrastructure matter. Poznan, Prague, Budapest are rich, eastern Poland not so much. Most areas bordering Ukraine are the most economically depressed and poor parts of Visegrad.
The problem are roads, communications, railroads – all of it missing when one wants to go east or to Ukraine. It will take 10 years and an investment of 50-100 billion euros just to connect even Western Ukraine to the Visegrad countries (will EU pay?). Until then very few companies will go there. A big issue is that V4 has not invested in its east – there are no roads in eastern V4 to connect to for Ukraine.
What we have in V4 are Ukrainian workers and service people everywhere – they come, most live in miserable temp housing working on contracts. It is something, but it actually delays any potential move to Ukraine – why go there if the workers are coming to you? It is much cheaper.
I agree, that’s what happened. The forever shallow analysis in the West is about slogans ‘Europe or Asiatic barbarism’. What is ignored are the horrible conditions that EU offered to Yanukovitch, cheap doesn’t start to describe it. EU had an upper hand and they don’t think much of Ukrainians – they think of them as accidentally ‘white’ Somalis, or lower. Western integration can take many forms, the one Ukraine is currently pursuing is literally the lowest form – cheap labor, sell resources, the comprador class in Kiev gets rich.
Lack of self-esteem always has consequences, Ukrainians are living with them right now.
“[Dutch diplomat and scientist Johan] Meerman observed around 1800 that the close connection with the German empire ‘removes (…) much of the typical, every other nation otherwise, and nations living on islands even more, always retain (…) and Denmark appears to me in all respects as merely a continued Germany. In the Capital it is even harder to discern between a Dane and a Stranger, if one has not spoken to him in advance’.
Meerman also observed that that the Danish literature of the eighteenth century, ‘in poetry as well as in prose has completely incorporated the German spirit.’ The descriptions by the Dutchman contain a moral judgement that was shared by many Danes.”
Regarding Ukrainian cultural connections to Russia, I thought the essay Germans making Danes: Germans and the German Language in Copenhagen and the Construction of Danish Culture 1750-1880 by Nikolaj Bijleveld on the development of Danish nationalism might be interesting.
From personal experience, all that the average and better-informed-than-most English-speaker knows about Belarus is that Lukashenko hates gays and likes digging potatoes.
Hopefully Herr Karlin will soon be able to inform us further on Belarus.
So what, in your opinion, would Ukraine have to give up in order to restore full economic ties? Another total about face in Ukraine’s political orientation seems fraught with more uncertainty and bumps in the road? It’s clear that inclusion in a Russian dominated CIS is not in the cards. An acquiescence to Russia’s clumsy absorption of Crimea by Ukraine seems incomprehensible. Russia could have reabsorbed Crimea in a much more sanitized version, instead it chose to do so in a manner much more reminiscent to the Sudetenland one – resulting as the cornerstone for all of the sanctions piled up against it around the world.
That describes a lot of people in eastern Europe. And maybe that’s the secret to Luka’s longevity, and not some nefarious plot by a guy named Dugin. Or Luka’s suppression of opposition by attacking them with tractors. Who doesn’t like potatoes?
I thought we all agreed the inappropriate Putler analogies were Hillary’s domain (Mike Pence, I am blaming you).
Didn’t Cindy McCain fuck around 0n the side for only a nickel…on the rotting piece of tumorous cornbeef John McCain?….Kind of humorous….
The figure I’ve seen is that Vietnamese genotypic IQ is 99. Probably the same as the Ukraine or at least not much different.
The Ukraine should still have superior human capital owing to skills and education built in the Soviet period. Thus the Ukraine would have more skilled engineers, welders, machine tool operators, tool & die makers, etc.
Over time of course Vietnam will converge.
What exactly do you find inappropriate about the analogy? It seems like a classic play taken directly from the H-man’s playbook. Don’t blame Hillary for Putler’s blunt ‘diplomacy’ missteps.
You are assuming the West maintains its economic lead and doesn’t collapse.
If the West cannot dole out aid and economic benefits, what good is it to ally with them?
Meanwhile Russia through Eurasia will become much more powerful economically.
Curiously, if you overlay a graph of Vietnamese vs. Indian GDP per capita growth, they will match almost one for one.
Which, I suppose, testifies to the importance of smart fractions.
Also East Asians also seem to consistently do around 5 IQ points lower than what is suggested by their IQs.
All true, but the sort of enterprises where they are needed would require large capital investments, and people are loathe to that in the Ukraine for understandable reasons. (To a lesser extent, that is true of Russia as well).
It has not been run by retards (other than perhaps Yanukovich) but by people who have placed personal interests above national interests to a much larger degree than have the elites in most other countries and who have had little to no loyalty to the state they led. There has been some change in a positive direction after 2014, due to Ukraine being backed up against a wall; it has been forced to build a more effective army, for example.
There have of course been patriots in Ukraine but these have largely been excluded from political and economic power.
As for 2014 – Ukraine had two mutually exclusive choices, a bad deal with the EU or a bad deal with Russia. It chose the deal that was better for the ethnic Ukrainian parts of the country at the expense of the more Russian and deracinated parts. The alternative would have had the reverse effect. So the Ukrainian state moved in the direction that prioritized the needs of the Ukrainian people over the non-Ukrainian people within its borders. This seems as it should be. And 2014 has indeed resulted in unprecennted improvement in western Ukraine; while money-poor due to the cheap currency, Lviv now resembles a Visegrad city of 10 years ago.
Now due to the Soviet legacy the less-Ukrainian eastern parts had a larger economy, so someone will argue that on balance the state as a whole made a worse choice because the suffering of the east was geater than the west’s advantage in terms of the magnitude of the negative vs. positive impact. This is a very post-national argument. In the USA the deracinated multicultural places on the coasts, like CA, contribute more to the GDP than does the American heartland. Yet thanks to the electoral college, America still prioritises the needs of the heartland over those of the coasts to an extent. So the revolt that threw out Yanukovich had something in common with the one that brought Trump to power. Or Brexit. Except these countries have peaceful electoral means for the majority of natives to impose their will.
I agree with the rest of your post.
The West will not collapse and, theoretically, if it would collapse so would China and therefore Russia.
Venezuela is not only run by retards but also populated by retards. Despite its (overrated) oil resources, the country is hopeless.
There’s also some sort of cultural problem with Latin American smart fractions and elites.
Many times in the past two centuries (or really–FIVE centuries), various Latin American countries have been run by their smart fractions rather than democracies.
The abysmal results speak for themselves.
A failed and hopeless civilization which ought to be liquidated and replaced by Americans. Now impossible unfortunately.
Which will lower the Ukraine’s unemployment rate and result in foreign remittance income. Eventually some Ukrainians will also return with their European pensions. If the Ukraine improves its governance, some will also return to start businesses.
This is all true, but not insurmountable. Western capital after all built just-in-time supply chains across the Pacific Ocean.
And not all of the Ukraine’s opportunities require improve roads either. The country is already becoming a destination for IT outsourcing. The Ukraine’s agro-export opportunities require mainly legal reforms rather than investment in infrastructure (though some is needed for farm roads, ports, silos, etc.).
True, and no doubt AP and Mr. Hack agree that the Ukraine needs very deep reforms.
But there’s low hanging fruit to be plucked in IT and agriculture.
Fair point.
The difference between Russia and the Ukraine is that in Russia the state took control of the oligarchs. In the Ukraine the oligarchs took over the state with abysmal results.
The EU’s deal was very, very bad. The EU wasn’t even offering a billion, and they wanted catastrophic increases in utility prices and catastrophic cuts in pensions. The agreement also included a lot of language about “security” sure to trigger Moscow (which of course it did).
Wasn’t Russia offering $25 billion?
The Ukraine’s elites in the past always refused to allow the hryvnia to plummet to a reasonable value because of the negative impact it would have had on their own fortunes. Its devaluation is a good outcome which the crisis forced on the country.
I don’t know that this is due so much to the Soviet legacy as it has to do with resource endowments. The Donets Basin is after all where the coal and iron are. No different than development that was once concentrated in the Ruhr Area, the Midlands, or the Rustbelt.
Soviet legacy I suppose comes into play in that the COMECON economies never went through the “steel crisis”, the energy crisis, or offshoring.
But had Eastern Europe gone through that it wouldn’t logically have resulted in more development in Western Ukraine. In the West itself prosperity shifted from heavy industrial centers to financial, political, and technological centers.
Generally this meant shifting from areas well endowed with coal and iron to preindustrial power centers like London, Paris, and New York. The special cases here being Bavaria and California.
So Moscow (just as in the Russian Federation itself), or in an independent Ukraine, I assume Kiev.
In economic terms however the rustbelt is a lot more like the Donets Basin, and there is no California in the Ukraine at all.
Lviv is already well connected to Visegrad and links are growing. A new railway tunnel through the Carpathians caries up to 100 trains daily. Lviv’s exports to the EU are up 22% last year.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-emerges-from-isolation
On land, more Ukrainians traveled by train to Europe than to Russia last year for the first time since Czarist railroads were built in the late nineteenth century. Traveling on 20 new EU-bound trains launched last year, Ukraine-EU passenger traffic doubled. By contrast, Ukraine-Russia rail passenger traffic contracted by 15 percent.
For cars, Poland and Slovakia are building four lane divided highways that will reach Ukraine’s western borders in the early 2020s. Even without these highways, ads in the Kyiv metro advertise one way bus tickets from Kyiv to Warsaw for the equivalent of $8.
Three years ago, Moscow pundits smirked that Ukraine was shooting itself in the foot when Kyiv banned flights between Ukraine and Russia.
Now Ukraine enjoys the biggest aviation boom in Europe today.
Take Kharkiv airport. In the Soviet era, it was built to fly Ukrainians to Moscow and Leningrad. Three years after losing all Russia routes, Kharkiv air traffic nearly hit a record 1 million passengers last year–20 times the 2002 level. Instead of flying workers to jobs in Russia, a whole generation of Russian-speaking Kharkivites are flying on LOT Polish Airlines to Warsaw, on Wizz Air to Gdansk, Katowice, and Wroclaw, or on Ernest Airlines to Milan and Rome.
In Poland, Ukrainian workers make as much as Polish workers in the same jobs. They take the place of Poles who work in Germany or the UK. However in Ukraine salaries are 1/4 what they are in Poland, so there is still incentive to build factories in Ukraine. And this is exactly what is happening – lots of factories being built and expanded all over western and now central Ukraine (for example Bader the German car seat manufacturer built its second factory in Lviv oblast last year). So Ukrainians who are unwilling to do 6 month stints in Poland have options at home.
Doubling the utility prices would have still left Ukraine with the cheapest utility prices in Europe IIRC. But the reforms that would have resulted in doubling the utility prices also made it harder for government and gas officials to steal so the overall effects were positive.
It was $15 billion over several years with no strings attached, so basically most of it would have gone to offshore accounts. Russia was buying loyalty and access for Russian firms to buy up UIkrainian ones and entangle Ukraine into Russia’s web, while paying the Ukrainian elites handsomely.
Good point.
Ukraine’s legacy of this region being the most highly developed is a Soviet one. Galicuia hjad achieved literacy a generation before Russian or Soviet ruled Ukraine, and per capita GRP in Galicia was higher than that of Russia in the early 20th century (also higher than in Portugal, Greece, etc.) Western Ukriane had a very developed gas industry which was largely ruined or cannibalized. It is being revived and there is optimistic talk of Ukraine achieving gas self-sufficiency in 2023 or so. Lviv and Kiev are Ukraine’s IT centers (Lviv is the leader per capita). While Lviv did produce Soviet TVs and some secret missile electronics it was largely neglected under the Soviets. I visited in the 90s and it was simply a beautiful but ruined place, a crumbling dump with nothing going on, no electricity after 9 PM, no hot water during parts of the day, etc.
Correct. The analogy was that this region produced a very high share of GDP, as CA and NY do for the USA relative to places like Wisconsin. Ukriane prioritizing the needs of Donbas at the expense of the historical core wuild be like America being run for and by Californians or New Yorkers at the expense of people in the heartland. Ideallly there would be a solution that would work for everyone but Ukraine did not have that choice.
There are two examples – Moldova (from which Transnistria separated during the mini-war in the 90s) and Georgia (from which Abkhazia and North Ossetia separated during a really brutal war in the 90s). Georgia (unlike Ukraine) faced a real ethnic conflict (and suffered a complete defeat in it) – more than 200,000 Georgians were expelled from Abkhazia (relative to the entire population – a huge figure comparable to the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe after world war 2). I cannot imagine what factors can make the political evolution of Ukraine different from the evolution of Georgia and Moldova.
all that the average and better-informed-than-most English-speaker knows about Belarus is that Lukashenko hates gays and likes digging potatoes.
And, I might add, at least for those of a certain age, that it was the birthplace of Meyer Lansky.
Yet thanks to the electoral college
Speaking of the Electoral College, what do the cognoscenti here think of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which would revolutionize the electoral system in the US, and assure that a Trump-like candidate will never be elected in the future? Under the “Compact” states would be obligated to give their entire electoral vote to the popular vote winner (recall that Hillary won by 2.9 million). The measure will go into effect once states with a cumulative total of 270 electoral votes approve it — so far the total is at 172. Colorado and New Mexico will almost certainly sign on in the near future, bringing the total to 186. It is probably unlikely that the remaining 84 votes will be found before November 2020, but a Democratic swing at the state level in 2020 could assure its implementation for the 2024 election. And as I understand it, once it comes into effect it is permanent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact#Bills_in_current_session
No, but it is also not a collapse. While the average is at the 2014, the West is above its 2014 level but the east is below.
Yes. And whom should the Ukrainian state serve more – the semi-Ukrainian East or the Ukrainian West and Center?
The people who came out to the Maidan were central and western Ukrainians, who after 25 years (not including 5 years Yushchenko semi-respite) decided to finally take control of their country, and their regions have seen improvement since and because of Maidan. As for “whole country” and how unfair this is the easterners – the easterners ran it for most of the 25 years and ran it into the ground.
This is a good point and true. But the Russian deal wasn’t much better for regular people. A good deal with the EU would have better than a bad one, but a bad deal with EU was better than a bad one with Russia.
Not you AFAIK, but many pro-Russians were insisting in 2014 and 2015 that Ukraine would collapse in 3-4 years. That time has passed and certainly Ukraine has not collapsed. Without serious corruption reforms I do not expect Ukraine’s economy to boom but I do expect steady 2-4% growth every year. This is not stagnation – stagnation would be 0% to 1% growth. This growth will not be evenly distributed across the regions but will be higher in the West and Center and lower in the East.
Almost all of these states are democratic ones. It would be very funny if as a result these states would one day send Republican electors despite their voters choosing a Democrat for president.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita_growth_rate
No, but its GDP PPP per capita growth rate appears to be twice that of Austria–which is certainly an encouraging sign since it means that the GDP PPP per capita gap between Austria and Hungary is going to narrow over time.
At this rate when will it catch up – 50 years after the Communist disaster?
It would be very funny if as a result these states would one day send Republican electors despite their voters choosing a Democrat for president.
This is very unlikely I think. Given the projected demographic evolution, it will be increasingly difficult in the future for Republicans to gain a popular vote majority, although they will still have the possibility of pulling off a Trump-type (or Bush 2000) Electoral College majority. This is of course why Democrats are pushing for the abolition of the Electoral College, either by constitutional amendment or through the “back door” via the NPVIC. And the NPVIC is a whole lot easier, as it requires the approval of only a minority of states (theoretically as few as 11), compared to the 38 necessary for a constitutional amendment.
Yeah, possibly. Of course, the same thing would have also likely been true for countries such as Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia. Thus, Hungary would not have been particularly behind relative to its neighbors.
You are a master of cherry-picking. Maybe Lviv can become a city-state and show all doubters how prosperous it is. One swallow doesn’t a spring make.
There is no freeway to Ukraine. I am not sure what you mean by a ‘new road’ from Slovakia and a tunnel across the Carpathians – there is nothing there, we don’t even have a freeway completed to eastern Slovakia yet. You are dreaming.
But my bigger point is that business needs solid infrastructure and not buses and old slow trains. How do you move cargo? Are people taking it as luggage on those buses? Are you serious? Have seen the backups on the Ukrainian-EU borders?
The infrastructure isn’t there an won’t be for decades – Ukraine has no money and EU has not offered to pay for it. The outsourcing IT is a niche business – you will not build an economy based on call centers, it is a very fluid and competitive business. Try again.
They do well in the Miss Universe contests. That’s something that could be socialised, or privatised, or whatever. I really don’t care what the term is, as long as it happens in the pre-getting-fat Alicia Machado phase.
The growth prospects for Ukraine (sans Russia and EU) can be summarised as farming, IT outsourcing and remittances. Well, farming is an old profession with not much employment these days. It also requires reliable markets, EU is very restrictive (the damn French), Russia won’t be buying, that pretty much leaves Middle East.
IT outsourcing is not a panacea – 2-3% of any economy max.
Remittances are poverty alms – countries living of remittances, e.g. Philippines, Bangladesh or Guatemala tend to have miserable public infrastructure and a few isolated rich communities where the money from abroad flows. There is nothing to tax since the economic activity is abroad.
I think Ukraine is too rich to truly collapse. It will simply stagnate at 1/4 to 1/3 of living standards of its neighbours. Then next Maidan. By 2100 we could have a dozen Maidans in Ukraine until they run out of color ideas. It is a very sad situation, like dealing with people who simply won’t accept reality and instead do an occasional temper tantrum interspersed with passive fatalism.
My A-level Spanish teacher always used to say that Venezuelan and Thai(?) women were the most attractive. I don’t see it myself to be honest.
Was amazed, but it looks like you’re right. I suppose the Ukraine can still use the Poland route.
https://i.redd.it/5wyzzv7kbfb01.jpg
The Low Countries look like that Civilization game where you can cover all your tiles in roads by the end game.
Polish progress is amazing. I recall reading they had no or almost no freeways as late as the late 2000s.
Not that Russia has anything to write home about, though the picture as of 2018 at least looks less disastrous.
https://www.awaragroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/russian-expressways-by-2018-european-part.png
Plans for 2024:
https://www.awaragroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/russian-expressways-by-2024.png
Russia really need to get going on the freeways and roads. The difference between Moscow-St Petersburg and the rest of the country is among the most dramatic anywhere. One reason is the lack of proper infrastructure – the way to develop countryside is to connect it, to make it more accessible.
When you cannot move the product efficiently, business activity freezes. My point about Ukraine is that it is not easily accessible to EU companies who could manufacture there. Signing papers with EU doesn’t do much, when people look at specifics they evaluate the cost of logistics, they look at how supply chains could be integrated.
One attractive feature of building better roads is the opportunity for enrichment. Come on oligarchs, get going, this beats siphoning off gas or arms procurement fraud, building freeways is literally like mining for gold (for the ones who are given the contracts). And at the end there are nicer roads. Don’t these guys ever study how Americans did it? Road construction contracts are a win-win. They also employ people.
Venezuelan women have a short shelf life, but at their peak they truly rock. If one would live only 3-5 years, I would say go for it. Long term it is a bit more problematic. I am not sure about the Thai ones, a bit underdeveloped in most departments, but they might last longer. Your A-level teacher has never been to eastern Europe, a true nirvana if one can put up with the mental yearning bullsh.t that undermines everything. Plus the nose selection is a bit too varied, one has to get lucky, or try just the right angle for viewing. But the figures are worth it.
I think restraining the emotional speeches would be a good start. Then maybe try to actually rationally address how to have open trade with both EU and Russia – given that EU and Russia don’t have a free trade agreement. It is rather elementary – you can’t have open borders on both sides with no negotiation as they tried in 2014 (mostly EU’s fault, I think some Polish-Swedish duo was behind it, they got fired afterwards).
The ugly reality is that Ukraine needs Russia a lot more than vice-versa. In those situations, yelling at the stronger party tends to backfire.
I am not sure how else could Crimea be reabsorbed. It required a crisis, a distracted Kiev, and moving fast. Other than February-March 2014 right after Maidan I don’t see how there would be another chance. Yes it was ‘Sudetenland’-like, it always is, so was Kosovo.
IIRC the Polish one connects to Lviv.
Also, there is a nice American-style 4 lane highway from Kiev to Zhytomir, that is not on the map. I’ve driven on it.
The unification of Austria and the Sudetenland were accepted by Britain and France. Even after absorbing the Czech parts of Bohemia-Moravia, Hitler could probably still have Danzig, and if he were lucky, a land corridor to East Prussia (also important because Germany could potentially hold a lot of influence over Poland due to the importance of Gdynia for the Polish economy).
So a more similar scenario might be Putler receives the Crimea, then the Donbass, in a diplomatic deal (no sanctions). Then he annexes Byelorussia. By now there is a lot of rearmament and sabre-rattling over the Baltics by both sides, an incident occurs and Russia and the “Western” Powers are officially at war.
Of course, not everything is about Hitler.
They are working on it:
https://economics.unian.info/2247619-road-works-booming-ukraine-plans-to-change-its-road-map-within-3-years.html
Next year, the government plans to allocate at least twice as much. The draft state budget-2018 envisages more than UAH 40 billion. “Starting from January 1, 2018, the Road Fund will be introduced as a new financing instrument. And this will only increase road repair funding… Next year it will be more than UAH 42 billion,” Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman assured recently, and therefore the number of renovated roads should grow. However, to ensure that all roads are put in order, officials need to allocate at least UAH 50 billion within five years. Plans for western Ukraine In addition to road repair and patching pits, in the coming years, Ukraine will see the start of several new large-scale road projects. Among those will be the construction of the Northern bypass around Lviv, which should connect Ukraine’s important road arteries – Kyiv-Chop, Lviv-Krakivets, and Lviv-Lutsk routes. The new bypass will be 24 km long and have four lanes – two in each direction. Construction of three modern overpasses made of reinforced concrete is also planned. Besides, at the intersection of the new bypass with the Kyiv-Chop and Lviv-Lutsk routes near the village of Malye Pidlisky, the government plans to construct a two-level junction. At the moment, the project is only on paper. In the summer, Ukravtodor, Ukraine’s road maintenance agency, announced that it was ready to call a tender for the development of the relevant project documentation. The cost of construction and the source of funding for this project remains unclear. A similar large-scale construction is expected on the already operating Lviv-Mukacheve route. “Now the M-06 motorway from Mukacheve to Lviv passes through a complex mountainous terrain, therefore, it takes about 3.5 hours to travel through it. The new highway will reduce the travel time to just two hours,” Ukravtodor believes.
While Lviv is doing the best it is not just Lviv, but all of Western Ukraine, and central Ukraine west of the Dnipro are doing a lot better. Kiev is all right also.
Essentially all the parts of Ukraine that participated in Maidan are benefiting as a result of Maidan.
There is one in Poland (see AK’s response). They are building one in Slovakia, according to the article I posted.
Nonsense, there a new rail tunnel in the Carpathians, opened in May 2018:
https://www.ebrd.com/news/2018/opening-of-beskyd-tunnel-moves-ukraine-closer-to-europe.html
With the opening of the new Beskyd tunnel in the Carpathian Mountains today, Ukraine has made a major step in closer integration with pan-European transport networks.
The new tunnel crosses the mountains between the towns of Beskid and Skotarske and connects the Ukrainian rail network through a double-track link with the pan-European transport network Corridor V, which will stretch from Venice/Trieste in northern Italy via Slovenia and Hungary to Lviv in western Ukraine. The tunnel will take on 60 per cent of rail traffic between Ukraine and the EU.
The construction was financed by the EBRD with a US$ 40 million loan, while the European Investment Bank (EIB) extended a €55 million loan. The project was also supported by a grant provided by the European Union (EU) and technical assistance provided by the EU and Austria.
It replaces a 130-year-old railway tunnel built under the Austro-Hungarian empire and will almost quadruple the current capacity from 12 trains per day to 46. The tunnel will significantly increase facilities for the export of Ukrainian products, while reducing journey times between Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine and a major business hub, and Chop, a town near the borders of Hungary and the Slovak Republic.
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko opened the tunnel today. The EBRD was represented by Sevki Acuner, Country Director, Ukraine, who said: “The new tunnel is a positive example of the contemporary relationship between Ukraine and Europe. It will unblock the worst bottleneck in the east-west transport corridor. More importantly, it symbolises Ukraine’s aspiration to be integrated into the EU economy and to become part of the 21st century European family. This aspiration is now supported by proper action.”
Further key features of the new seismically stable tunnel:
It was constructed using 130,000 tonnes of concrete and 8,000 tonnes of steel
It is 1,765 metres long, 10.5 metres high and 8.5 metres wide
It is the first public sector project in Ukraine under the construction standards of the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC – Fédération Internationale Des Ingénieurs-Conseils).
[Other article I linked to claimed 100 trains daily – AP]
I posted about highway construction. It’s happening.
What do the lines represent? Controlled-access highways with four lanes or better only?
Looking at the map casually one gets the idea that there are almost no roads on the Scandinavian peninsula aside from the Stockholm-Malmo-Gothenburg-Oslo route.
I’ve driven the E4 all the way to the Arctic Circle.
North of Gavle, it’s true that the highway is no longer a controlled-access highway. Given the low population density of Sweden north of Uppland, such a high capacity road makes no sense. Norrland covers 60% of Sweden’s landmass but has only 12% of the country’s population. Or put in other terms it’s twice the size of England but has one-fiftieth of the population.
Wikipedia helpfully has a photo of the E4 in the sub-Arctic:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/E4_landsv%C3%A4g.jpg
The road is well maintained and carries the heaviest trucks allowed in Europe year-round.
Lower population densities necessitate lower capacity roads which are still perfectly adequate. Maps can be misleading in this regard.
But the anschluss of the Crimea has not been recognized by anybody of importance. Even China hasn’t gone along with this move.
Of course, not everything is about Putler.
I believe the childish game of not “accepting” territorial revisions is a postwar innovation. I can recall seeing embarrassing Cold War era maps of the USSR which included the ridiculous text that the US government did not “recognize” the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union.
Here’s a map of Austria-Hungary from 1911:
http://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd/austria_hungary_1911.jpg
Note that Bosnia-Herzogovina, annexed in 1908, is shown as part of Austria-Hungary.
Here’s one of all of Europe from the same year, with a helpful size comparison to Illinois for some reason:
http://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd/europe_1911.jpg
Bosnia-Herzegovina also shown as unambiguously Austro-Hungarian. Schleswig-Holstein and Alsace-Lorraine shown as part of Germany. No funny business about not accepting reality.
I’ve decided I’m not going to recognize the existence of Canada anymore, and henceforth I shall be revising all maps in my possession to reflect my non-recognition of Canadian sovereignty.
Like it or not, but reality matters more than symbolic gestures. The reality is that Crimeans are now a part of the Russian Reich whether the rest of the world likes it or not.
What’s interesting about that 1911 map of Austria-Hungary is that the present-day borders in that part of the world match very closely with the ethnic/linguistic lines back in 1911. The main exceptions to this rule are the Lemkivshchyna, the Sudetenland (in this case, due to the post-WWII expulsion of its ethnic German population), and South Tyrol.
Right now, I’m thinking that both Canada and the US would have been better off, if Benedict Arnold had won in Quebec.
For instance, they would have had less casualties in WW1, and is there any chance that either Trudeau would have been elected? Meanwhile, Canadian whites would have offset our problems with blacks nearly completely. Perhaps our imperial ambitions would have turned towards Greenland and Iceland, instead of Puerto Rico.
History went wrong, when the invasion failed.
Did you read the essay I linked regarding the development of Danish nationalism? You should find the conclusion heartening.
How come?
Window for poor countries to industrialise ‘closing fast’ – FT
Very interesting article, based on solid original research by McKinsey. It ties into the discussion on manufacturing prospects for poorer countries, Ukraine and convergence in general. The TL;DR version is:
Labour arbitrage is falling in importance for labour intensive manufacturing. It is now at levels not seen since the 1990s. This is bad news for poor countries given that manufacturing has been the traditional path to wealth unless A) you’re tiny and oil rich or B) you’re a tax-haven or C) you’re a city-state. But those are outliers.
Value-chains are increasingly becoming more knowledge-intensive. The figure is that spending on R&D, software development, IP etc has gone from 5.4 percent of revenue in 2000 to 13.1 percent in 2016. This is self-evidently not a strong suit of poor countries, else they wouldn’t be poor.
Trade regionalism is growing, led by Asia and Europe. If you’re outside of these tightly regional supply chains, then your scope to sell to the rich in order to get rich yourself is becoming harder.
Some quibbles/observations: While labour arbitrage is falling, the 1990s was hardly a bad time to do convergence either. The key question is if this will continue to fall. If so, then very bad news for poorer countries. My suspicion is that it indeed will continue to fall, given the rise in automation that seems hard, if not impossible, to stop.
Trade regionalism may not be a major impediment for Ukraine, but it will be for poorer countries outside of these clusters of trade. But one can ask why trade regionalism is growing in the first place. I think the catch-all “protectionism” excuse is unconvincing.
Part of the answer, surely, and which is not explored in the article, is that the remaining poor countries outside of Asia are not very attractive. Business went to China because of the high quality of the workers and great infrastructure, plus the legal environment, despite much whining, was still good enough to ensure stability. You have none of that in Africa. China was also integrated into the world economy when regionalism was just as high, if not higher, as it is now. The point is that these trends are not static, nor inevitable. Businesses adapt and move to new places if there is strong potential for profit. This is evidently not the case in many of the poorer countries left outside of these value chains.
The article mentions Vietnam. Somehow it does well despite all these headwinds. This is a perfect example when mainstream analysis is crippled by a lack of HBD understanding. Of course, HBD has its limits too, as I’ve frequently pointed out. Ukraine should not be as poor and growing as slowly if you only looked at its IQ and nothing else.
Davos elites and neoliberal economists are obsessed with ‘good demographics’, which is solely and idiotically defined in terms of quantum of growth and youth. The research coming out, however, shows that quality of demographics is a much more important factor. India is learning this lesson painfully.
In other words, convergence may indeed stall or even reverse. But this may simply mean that most of the world’s IQ potential is nearing its natural limits given favorable economic and political systems mostly in place, with obvious exceptions (North Korea, Ukraine and a few others). Countries which still have the right ingredients for rapid growth (high IQ, decently good legal systems and stable political foundations) will continue to do well, such as Vietnam. So it is important to read the tea leaves correctly. Nevertheless, the prospective dual impact of stalling convergence and explosive population growth in much of Africa means that we’re definitely going to live in interesting times as the Chinese like to say.
So Ukraine’s focus on IT development has the potential to be more than merely 2% to 3% of its economy as Beckow pessimistically predicted.
The claim of human capital is highly questionable. Rather, we can assume that Vietnam (which is developing similar to other countries of the far East) has a much better human capital than Ukraine.
The Kiev regime should consider you for either minister of tourism or public relations.
I am skeptical of this. After all, Vietnam even outperforms Russia on PISA and Ukraine would probably score lower than Russia on PISA. Plus, this is not to mention the fact that Vietnam might not have reached its genetic ceiling for average IQ yet (though that might also be true for Ukraine).
What might hurt Vietnam is similar to what appears to hurt countries such as Japan and South Korea (and eventually, China as well). Specifically, I am talking about the lack of creativity/curiosity and/or whatever which causes East Asian countries to have a lower PPP GDP per capita than would be expected based on their average IQs. I don’t see why exactly Vietnam would be an exception in regards to this. Then again, though, Singapore is indeed an exception in regards to this, so who the heck knows?
Especially true regarding Porky.
The anschluss term used concerning Crimea is propagandistic hogwash. Austria and Germany were never part of the same nation prior to 1938 – much unlike Crimea’s relationship with Russia.
Russia is nothing closely resembling Nazi Germany. Better comparisons with Crimea can be made relative to northern Cyprus and Kosovo. BTW, with the exception of Turkey, no other country recognizes the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Crimea’s changed territorial status getting greater scorn highlights the gross hypocrisy out there.
Related:
https://www.academia.edu/37358188/Michael_Averko_Consistency_and_Reality_Lacking_on_Crimea
How so? Vietnam has more than twice Ukraine’s population, yet loses to Ukraine in international math Olympiad:
https://www.imo-official.org/year_country_r.aspx?year=2018
and programming Olympiad:
https://stats.ioinformatics.org/delegations/2018?sort=total_desc
But beats Ukraine in physics:
https://ipho-unofficial.org/timeline/2018/country
Literacy lower in Vietnam than in Ukraine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate
Universities ranked higher in Ukraine:
https://www.mastersportal.com/ranking-country/29/ukraine.html
than Vietnam:
https://www.mastersportal.com/ranking-country/142/vietnam.html
Etc. etc.
Someone hasn’t heard of the Holy Roman Empire. Austria and Germany were part of the HRE for about 900 years. Crimea was part of Russia for about 170 years (about 210 if you include its time in the Ukrainian SSR)
I’m being slightly facetious, but I do think it is an interesting scenario that may have possibly created a different racial dynamic, on both sides.
More black movement into Canadian cities earlier may have discouraged experimenting with multiculturalism. They may have pushed more for a hard Southern border, Mexico being more alien to them, and not having the historical baggage of the SW.
It’s harder to say what would have been the effect in regard to blacks in America. I’m glossing over the Civil War. But maybe they would have been a less attractive political block, being balanced by both the additional voters on the left and right.
Maybe Canada’s energy reserves would made war in the Middle East even more absurd. It’s really a kind of crazy scenario. IMO, useless now – you’d need a time machine. It is easy to argue the opposite even. But, its just hard to imagine things turning out worse than they did.
I don’t doubt that the Ukraine has higher literacy in the elderly, but 100% seems kind of like a phony statistic.
Short of embryo selection, perhaps even with it, there’s going to be some people in every society who can’t read at useful level. I feel like Vietnam is probably counting theirs and the Ukraine isn’t. Common type of problem in country comparisons.
Should’ve read as Austria having never been part of Germany before 1938.
So the “Holy Roman Empire” wasn’t a loosely associated enterprise unlike Rus? Question rhetorically presented as such in recognition of your belittling of Rus as a basis for Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian togetherness.
Besides the post Mongol yoke Russian Empire period, a good portion of Crimean territory was part of Rus, well before the Tatars arrived there. Crimea’s re-association with Russia was to a good extent motivated by the troubling Tatar raids from Crimea against eastern Slavs and some others.
The Austrian Lands were part of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation and was only excluded after the adoption of the Lesser German Solution during the foundation of the Second Reich.
When the Hapsburg Empire collapsed the Republic of German-Austria quickly set about reuniting with Germany until the Treaty of Versailles, which forbade their union, was announced.
Ha, Russia in this area is superior to China (which has a population of almost 10 times more), and far superior to Japan (which has the same population). If we calculate the per capita figures, Russia is likely to be ahead of the United States. As you can see this is not an indicator.
This is all the result of Vietnam’s initially much lower “base”. All the experts on the Far East known to me unanimously say that Vietnam (with a time delay) is developing along the same trajectory as Taiwan, South Korea, China. Therefore, I think that Vietnam (at least in the conditions of today’s life) has a huge superiority in terms of human capital over Ukraine. For Russia (due to obvious factors), Ukrainian migrants are probably preferable to Vietnamese migrants. But if I were the head of the Australian immigration service, I’d prefer the Vietnamese.
Notwithstanding, the anschluss occurred centuries after the Holy Roman Empire, when Germany and Austria were part of the same entity.
In the instance with Crimea, there’s a recent as well as more distant association with Russia.
If we continue to measure human capital in this way, how should we measure the human capital of white Americans?
http://chert-poberi.ru/wp-content/uploads/proga/111/images3/0_8711fc_d858f7ff_orig_589.jpg
https://pwo.su/uploads/posts/2018-07/1531649196_1_shot_full.jpeg
It would be an improvement on Phillip Giraldi’s endless one note rants.
Vietnam also has less Indian admixture than the rest of mainland Southeast Asia, which is probably also a factor in higher Vietnamese IQ.
Here is an argument that the conflict between Pakistan and India has never been as dangerous as it is now:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/the-india-pakistan-crisis-deserves-our-urgent-attention.html
On why the mass media has been relatively even-handed on that dispute:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/452759-coverage-india-pakistan-crisis/
Excerpt –
In a morbid kind of sense, I am kind of curious to see how two nuclear Powers would face each other in open combat.
The issue is that it’s underreported precisely because they don’t know who to blame.
I was interested in the Russo-American War (also called ww3), too.
But even this Pakistani-Indian conflict would be an unimaginable disaster. It’d lower the psychological barriers to the usage of nuclear weapons. Or if the nukes aren’t used, it’d further increase complacency about how no one would ever use nukes (and so make it easier to initiate a conventional “limited” war against another nuclear power).
And I haven’t even taken into account the actual Pakistani and Indian victims, tens of millions of whom could die.
What is the future of countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Philippines, and Cambodia?
I posted this before in another thread:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ukraine-crisis-eu/ukraine-pitches-for-more-eu-aid-for-south-east-as-elections-near-idUKKCN1Q717Z
I thought it is interesting considering the Ukrainian east-west economic divisions and nation building discussions.
Not being in Europe or in America’s back yard is a factor. I’ve seen it make the lead headline on BBC World and CNN International. There’s also this previously mentioned factor from the linked RT piece:
Not sure if Pakistan’s Intel value is as influential as much as its military is considered potent with decades of US and Chinese ties. Did the Pakistani government and/or Intel actually help the US in finding OBL?
As % of GDP, not percentage of revenue.
I agree that this is probably just the consequences of a Biorealistic World coming to fruition, cutting off possibilities for further convergence.
(Convergence having been largely already attained if viewed in IQ potential terms).
That said, one thing I have always wondered about, though I don’t think I have written specifically about, is whether structural changes in the economy might not presage a further widening of the gap between rich and poor countries (which have hitherto been obscured by the rise of China, and the abandonment of anti-growth policies in the developing world in general).
In the future:
Increasing globalization (if it holds) will allow both capital and high IQ labor to migrate to countries with optimal legal environments with ever greater ease – environments that are in turn produced by informed, high IQ voters.
Any genetic augmentation of IQ will likely first take place in these elite countries and/or jurisdictions.
This obviously bodes poorly for Africa, etc.
But it also bodes poorly for Ukraine, as its smart fractions have been substantially stripped, and its legal environment, obviously, leaves much to be desired. This is actually true for virtually all East and South European countries, though Ukraine and Moldova to the greatest extent.
I unironically think AP would be an excellent PR spokesman for the Ukraine. They should certainly try to poach him.
Main concern would be not to let his anti-Donbass/anti-East sentiments bubble out as that would be politically damaging.
This is obviously related to the fact that Russia/Ukraine/Belorussia had became modern, universally literate societies by the 1960s, when Vietnam was still a nation of Third World peasants. Today, Vietnam would be like Russia/Ukraine in the 1960s, where all the illiterates are old people.
In fairness, Vietnam seems to be growing at around 7% – see a graph of its historical GDP per capita (PPP adjusted, constant dollars) vs. India, they match almost one for one.
In contrast, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and now China have all grown at 10% during their periods of intensive industrialization.
For god’s sake don’t always compare apples and oranges. Business revenue and how it is allocated is only a subset of GNP. And the idea that all of R&D/IT (let’s say 13%) would be outsourced by companies to Ukraine is preposterous.
You similarly mixed in railroad tunnels and trains with business logistics – they are not the same. If a business wants to move a product it needs freeways or good roads, easy to cross borders and not the nightmare backups currently on the Ukraine borders. In Slovakia a freeway ends in Kosice – it is hours on bad country roads from there to reach Ukraine. And in Ukraine it connects to even a worse 2-way highway. This is a logistics nightmare and no business wants to deal with it. There is no current plan to extend the freeway – it would be very expensive, the area is underdeveloped, and frankly it has no benefit for Slovakia. So who is going to build that freeway connecting to Ukraine? And when? 25-30 years from now?
Yes, people can carry baggage on slow trains or buses, great. Or they can answer phones in Lviv. You are not going to build an economy integrated with EU supply chains with that. This is a multi-generational reorientation of the Ukraine economy towards west – it will take a huge amount of investment and there has to be a return on that investment. Right now it is spotty.
What you have are Ukrainians migrating to work, and most get paid less and do the work that locals are not willing to do – some do very low-level stuff. You also have the energy supply chains reorienting from Ukraine towards Germany, Baltic and Turkey-Balkans. Companies are paying attention to that. Logistics and energy are behind most business decisions.
My conclusion is that Ukraine is slipping further back and that the badly thought out 2014 treaty with EU has not worked. Yanukovitch was told by his experts that it will cost Ukraine more than it will gain (I think $100-200 billion more in costs). The losses have been bigger than gains. A stupid business or economic decision is still stupid even if it makes you emotionally happy (“we are going to Europe!!! mammamia…”). And don’t again tell us about the happy cafes in Lviv, that’s a detail, economies need more.
Will it be a good or bad thing if China decided to cargo cult Calvinism?
You’re confusing nation and state.
Austria is a German nation which lies outside of the German state.
Though as AP pointed out there is shared political history beyond its seven years in Greater Germany.
In addition to the Holy Roman Empire there was the Carolingian Empire, East Francia, the Kingdom of the Germans, and the German Confederation.
When King Edward VII attempted to persuade the last Hapsburg Kaiser Franz Josef to abandon his alliance with the German Empire in favor of an understanding with the Entente, Franz Josef’s simple reply was, “I am a German prince.”
The Holy Roman Empire (full title: Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation) was only finally dissolved in 1806.
The German Confederation was created in 1815. The German Question, which was whether Austria or Prussia would dominate German affairs, then dominated inter-German politics under Prussian arms answered the question at Koeniggraetz.
Austria was so obviously German that the victors in both World Wars found it necessary to forbid Anschluss in the Treaty of Versailles and the Austrian State Treaty. In the interwar period the independent state of Austria was formally named “German Austria”.
Officially the Pakistani government did not help us find OBL and the raid was a surprise to Pakistan.
Unofficially I don’t believe anything about that ridiculous story. OBL conveniently buried at sea (after revealing his pornography collection) followed by the entire SEAL team tragically dying in a helicopter crash. Right.
As Donald Trump and other leaders in the West move to erect barriers to immigration, Japan is moving in the opposite direction.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-26/japan-has-a-new-guest-worker-program-just-don-t-call-it-an-immigration-policy
I believe that AP is on record as accepting the residents of the Donets Basin as Russian and has stated that the Ukrainian state is better off without them.
This would be politically damaging to the regime in Kiev, but doesn’t seem to be hostile to the actual people in question.
Thorfy, you may markup the books within your own private library anyway you like. But trying to compare your own importance with those of countries within the international community is a little bit over the top? Do you own any astronomical maps within your library? Here’s a change that you might want to consider too:
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/a6/cd/9e/a6cd9e814932630b8b97a955dabb21c5–good-night-moon-sun-moon-stars.jpg
🙂
The maps I used come from the University of Texas’ Perry-Castaneda Map Collection: https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/
Nice little resource many people here will appreciate.
To your credit I have to admit that I admire your mutual friendship with AP. Your positions regarding the Ukrainian question are often diametrically opposed, something in itself that would normally drive most friendships apart. On the other hand, I have to admit that I’ve never encountered anybody like AP who has such a deep and genuine admiration of Russia and its culture, and yet so steadfastly supports the idea of an independent Ukraine, outside the orbit of the Russian world – a truly unique individual.
You have a point, the difference today are the institutions. In the past the concepts like recognition were more real, Habsburgs moved in, annexed a land, and that was it: power directly translated into reality.
Today we have the f..ing institutions everywhere, membership rolls, rules, busybodies meetings about commas on our behalf in Geneva (that actually happens). Recognizing realities is more complex, they keep track of stuff.
Crimea is on the outs for now. That is common, there are dozens of similar cases all over the world, from Cyprus, Kosovo, Taiwan to tiny enclaves ‘unrecognized’ and ignored.
All institutions exist to mask raw exercise of power. It is true for courts, parliaments, commissions, etc… Instead of the powerful walking over and doing what they want, they stop by an institution, pretend to deliberate a bit, do some paperwork, and then they do what they want. It is more civilised that way. If the power shifts, the institutions will too, but it is a slow process.
I cannot visualise Crimea reverting to Ukraine in our lifetimes, the demographics just isn’t there. Maidan gave Kremlin an opening and they moved fast. It will be in an institutional limbo for a very long time and eventually people will create work-arounds to deal with it. Then the next post-modernist moron in Russia will gift it on a 500-year anniversary of something. Probably to Turkey.
Having said that, I don’t recognise Canada either; deracinated moose f..ers with a 12-year old kid as a leader? No, not a country in my book, they get one more chance.
Much of this trend reflects a successful effort by the developed countries to permanently lock-in their advantages in the global value chain by increasing the role of and legally privileging “intellectual property”. A lot of the trade in “services” reflects this as well. Royalties from patent-licensing are now a large part of American and Japanese exports.
If you read the terms under which China was admitted to the WTO, this was a very strong trend even then. The Chinese believed they could meet the challenge anyway and were right (Godfree Roberts wrote an interesting piece on this), though there are still some challenges for them as shown when the US Government toyed with destroying ZTE.
There is no law of nature requiring countries to develop by pursuing export-led industrialization. This development strategy is an artifact of the “American-led rules-based international order” we hear so much about.
I also wonder how much of the increase in services as a share of economic output reflects the global collapse of families.
True, though this would still not be politically acceptable now or for a number of years afterwards (some Ukrainian politician/businessman who suggested cutting a deal on Crimea had treason charges levied against him). However, he has also made it clear he sympathizes more with West Ukraine (Kiev and the areas west of it) than with the more Russian and deracinated East, which would play even less well.
He doesn’t wish them ill, but he’s made it pretty clear over the years that he has a low opinion on easterners, and especially the Donbass. It would be necessary for him to mask his contempt/distaste if he becomes its chief spokesman.
Anatoly, you don’t agree with my sentiments about you and AP?…
AK: Why would I not? But it is a funny observation.
Kiev could use better PR. They overdo the emotional, the devotion, and the rhetoric. They have a strong case and AP states it well. The problem is that some mistakes cannot be undone, not even with better PR.
When you do a ‘revolution’, it is ok to attack the former elites. It is not ok to attack the massive power base of that former elite. Maidanistas slipped quickly into a de facto anti-east, anti-Russian sentiment. To say – as AP does – that Donbas can go if they want doesn’t account for the millions of other Russian-affiliated people all over Ukraine.
Deep emotions usually last 3-5 years. As Ukrainians sober up, the anti-Russia mania will seem silly and for millions a sense of hurt will set in. Kharkov or Odessa are the same as before 2014, they are Russian speaking and Russian feeling cities. That will re-assert itself.
You don’t create a unifying state idea by yelling at people. AP prefers to selectively get rid of the Russian leaning areas, but where would be the boundaries? If suffering in Kharkov is something to be happy about for the Galicians or Kiev, they will never have the Ukraine they want.
He seems an order of magnitude friendlier than Azov Battalion stalwarts with their brotherly feelings for “Moskals”.
AP also deserves credit for not having the schizophrenic feelings common in ethnic territorial disputes. The way many Russians simultaneously view Ukrainians as being Russian and African is interesting to say the least.
I get the impression that AP denigrates the East as being more socially and culturally degenerate than the West. Seems to me like the Donets Basin has some of the social pathologies common in other decaying heavy industrial regions globally like the Rustbelt, Ruhr Area, Midlands, Manchuria, etc.
It’s a reminder of how bad it is to defy Kiev and not get annexed, or at least recognized, by Russia afterward.
And even that is only true as long as the DLNR remains less wealthy than the eastern regions which did not rebel. Which may not be too long, if Ukraine continues to neglect the east, while Russia continues to subsidize the DLNR.
Unfortunately, we don’t yet have any GDP statistics from the DLNR, but the anecdotal evidence indicates continued economic recovery. For example, it was just reported that sales by the DNR’s metallurgical enterprises rose from 51 billion rubles in 2016 to 102 billion rubles ($1.5 billion) in 2018. And in January the DNR government endorsed the first annual budget in its history: Previously, the economic situation had been too precarious to budget for more than three months at a time (although neither income or expenditures are made public “due to the martial law”).
They’d probably also have been in much better shape if the rest of the east had joined Donbass in rebellion. That’s why I have no sympathy for the eastern regions that remained loyal to Kiev: They chose to side with a regime that despises them, leaving the DLNR to face military assault and economic blockade alone, so they deserve everything they get as a consequence.
More like 3.4%. Per the World Bank, in 2017 the difference between Ukraine’s growth and per capita growth was 2.54% vs. 2.95%.
Anatoly,
I meant every word that I wrote. Please do indulge me here. So what was so funny anyway?? If you haven’t already noticed, I’m a big fan of using humor and sarcasm to illustrate some of my points, but I’m a little confused with your interpretation here?
The unlikeliness of it is funny, that this blog amalgamates so many unusual people is funny.
Ukraine’s GDP grew 3.4% in 4th quarter 2018 compared to 4th quarter 2017, so it would be just under 4% (about 3.8%) per capita.
Azov is from Kharkiv, as is their sponsor, the interior minister Avakov (who actually came within a couple % points of winning Kharkiv’s mayoral election, under Yanukovich).
During Maidan, judging by vkonakte, the young people were about evenly split between pro and anti.
While pro-Russian views still have majority sentiment there especially when one takes into consideration the older people, the city is certainly no Donbas.
Correct.
It would still be years. And then you add destruction, population loss, etc.
Without Donbas and Crimea, the Russian-affiliated people in Ukraine are a minority and skewed towards the elderly. Kharkiv is the only remaining place in Ukraine where pro-Russians have clear majority support in the general population. But among people under 30, it is a 50/50 split.
Maidan was 5 years ago. No real resurgence in pro-Russian parties in Ukraine, no desire to come back to Russia.
Correct. I see Sovok as the filth that it is and accordingly view the Sovietized people of Donbas with contempt. But I do not revel in their high abortion rates, homicide rates, prostitution rates, etc. I had hoped that they could have been saved from Sovokdom through Ukrainianization but this hasn’t happened; accordingly, I hope Russia can at least turn them into normal people instead.
I’ve lived int he American Rustbelt. Rustbelt people are decent, often church-going, Polish or Irish proles from places like Cleveland or Buffalo or Pittsburgh,who might drink or brawl sometimes but are good people. Donbas was thoroughly Sovietized. Its the abortion capital of the world, fatherless child capital of Ukraine, and the HIV capital of the white world. To the extent it is like the Rust Belt, it is like inner city Detroit.
You stated that no railway tunnels were built and I showed that a large one was built that eliminated a major bottleneck and quadrupled the number of trains that send goods to the West.
You said there were no highways in eastern Europe to the Ukrainian border but AK showed there was a large one in Poland. The Ukrainian side will have one completed on its side of the border within 1-2 years. This will help all of the new factories being built by western companies in Lviv oblast.
According to googlemap it is 1 hour 33 minutes by car from Kosice to Uzhhorod.
I guess when you write something negative about Ukraine your estimates should be divided by two or so.
Actually an extension is planned and a tiny part is already under construction (green is completed, red is under construction, grey is planned):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/Highways_SK_map.svg/1920px-Highways_SK_map.svg.png
I do not know the timeline but presumably not 25 years.
So you have a clear pattern of exaggeration when it comes to negative things about Ukraine. Congratulations, you are an intelligent person and correct with respect to many things, but you share the Ukrainian Derangement Syndrome with Sovoks and Russian nationalists.
Article from an alternate world?
In the interwar period the independent state of Austria was formally named “German Austria”.
Strictly speaking I guess this is technically correct, although it is my understanding that the Deutschösterreich ceased to exist with the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919.
I live in the American rustbelt.
The white American proletariat is undergoing negrization.
Family structure is collapsing. Abortion is not widespread. But single motherhood, bastardy, long-term cohabitation, and blended families are. Fatherlessness proper is fortunately not common, as most children born in these chaotic family structures have at least some involvement of their fathers (who are often functionally enslaved by the child support system).
Where “diversity” exists, miscegenation also exists. Couplings and reproduction with lesser races like negros, mestizos, and filipinos are common.
Drug abuse is rife and growing. Unfortunately, very serious and dangerous drugs like methamphetamines, heroin, and “bath salts” are increasingly common even though their possession is a felony.
Tattoos (including facial tattoos), consumption of negro “music” like hip-hop and rap, and usage of negro vernacular is widespread. The term “baby daddy” for instance is employed without irony.
Churchgoing is still widespread (though in decline), but the churches themselves are neutered and better described as Churchian rather than Christian.
HIV is fortunately not common. Partly this is due to the efficiency of American capitalism. Drugstores sell needles, and white proles have enough foresight to purchase them for their habit.
Cultural factors are of course dominant in explaining their deterioration, but economic factors play a role as well.
According to Instagram, this idiot drug addict is sadly the daughter of Brodsky.
People try to write to her, but she cannot understand Russian.
https://www.instagram.com/p/pPEAXVr0Tn
https://www.instagram.com/p/BI7YHH2D6ZB
Evidence against heredity of genius and IQ. Is it a counter-example to heritability of IQ, or is it victim of lead poisoning?
Father is the famous poet to read at school in the 10th grade .
But the daughter of a genius, cannot understand Russian, and can not write English correctly.
People try to write to her and she does not respond.
Everything about her instagram, indicates an “IQ test score result” of about 80.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMlb7SejSK3/
Same face as her brilliant father of his youth.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a5/6d/ad/a56dad3b3f570b40f7bce46a67c60e27.jpg
But strangely, brain completely removed
https://www.instagram.com/p/BC8sP35L0fs/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BEgTwWbr0W2/
Brodsky’s family in Russia seem normal and adequate.
So alternatively an example of how Western culture destroys the brains of people who emigrate there, at least by the second generation.
Brodsky’s grandchildren in Russia look like normal people – according to Instagram is his grandaughter from Saint Petersburg (from his first marriage before he emigrated), who appears normal.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo9g6wzjlR5/
Agree. OBL had been in Pakistan for long time. If the Pakistani authorities didn’t know about this for much of that period, then how good is their Intel value to the West? Pakistan took offense to the US government act on OBL in Pakistani territory. Obviously, the US only trusts Pakistan up to a point.
A matter that leads to one school of thought, suggesting an inner Pakistani conflict involving those more sympathetic to the likes of OBL. That very mindset explains why India launched a recent strike into Pakistani held territory. The Indians have noted that their previously submitted proof of terrorism in Pakistan/Pakistani held territory has been second guessed by the Pakistani government. Hence, India took a kind of Israeli option.
Hi Anatoly,
I’ve tried commenting on your blogs with the handle “Bao Jiankang” and a fictious email, but the comments never get posted. Have I been banned?
AK: No, you haven’t been banned. Why would I? This is very strange. My spam folder is empty. Could you try commenting again?
Austria and Germany had been separate for centuries prior to 1938. Centuries ago, the HRE was a loose entity of which territory making up Germany and Austria were a part of. Perfectly aware that Austria and Germany (particularly Austria and southern Germany) share a good deal in common.
There’s no great movement in Austria and Germany to get together as one. If presented, I sense it might receive a good deal of support.
I steadfastly maintain that the analogy between Crimea reuniting with Russia being on par with the 1938 Anschluss is propagandistic babble – designed to take attention away from the situations in Kosovo and northern Cyprus. At issue is anti-Russian hypocrisy.
Russia doesn’t resemble Nazi Germany. Note that Nazis implemented the Anschluss before a referendum on the matter was to occur in Austria. As noted, over the course of the last few centuries, Crimea and Russia have a greater length of togetherness than Austria and Germany. In addition, Austria hasn’t been exposed to the kind of provocation which Crimea faced, following the coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected president.
Such is the reality in Kiev regime controlled Ukraine. Gets back to a point someone (perhaps you) recently made about the Kiev regime preferring the image of itself as an important fortress for the West, instead of seeing the benefits of improving relations with Russia.
This mindest is subject to change in terms of its influence. For now, it’s quite noticeable.
On another topic, I was wondering if anyone here has calculated any realistic effect of electric car displacement on oil demand. Obviously this will affect the budget very negatively.
I know there are articles being wirtten by Bloomberg, but has anyone tried to work out better.
Last year, I calculated something more accurately, but I have forgotten what were the results.
But if remember very approximated (this might be wrong from memory), for every 25 million electric cars introduced, might displace around 1 million barrels per day of oil demand.
So currently there are only about 3 million electric automobiles in the world, so all the electric cars in the world today might displace 120,000 barrels of oil a day already today?
But how many millions of electric cars will there be active by 2030? Here is not very clear. But the IEA is predicting wild numbers of 125 million electric cars total by 2030.
This would be displacement of 5 million barrels of oil demand a day, other things equal (from the approximate figures above).
The use of the term Anschluss and comparing Russia to Nazi Germany is of course intended as anti-Russian propaganda.
But in objective terms, it makes sense. The Russians of Crimea were reunited with Russia.
The major distinction is that Crimea was not an independent state, but part of the Ukraine.
As such it actually has more in common with Nazi Germany’s acquisition of the Sudetenland and Memel.
And Austria and Germany weren’t “separate” up until 1938 except for the period following 1871. By 1879 they were closely allied and would remain so until the dissolution of both empires. For most of the previous millennium it was one of many constituent German states of the Holy Roman Empire (and the following German Confederation).
The Kievan Rus was in some respects similar to the HRE, especially the HRE prior to the Protestant Reformation.
Minority only? So on the one hand you are full of ‘going to Europe‘ aspirations, on the other hand the damn minorities have no rights?
Europe has rules, minorities have rights, incl. political representation, language rights, right to associate with whom they want. That’s Europe. If Ukraine is instead aspiring to join Turkey or Pakistan, I could see your glee that ‘Russians are only a minority‘. But with this kind of thinking Ukraine doesn’t belong in EU. We will call you on it.
Nobody was ‘in Russia’, so your comment makes no sense. The Russian-affiliated population in Ukraine is anywhere between 15-40% (speak Russian, ethnically Russian, or have cultural affinity). They have been largely suppressed. My point is that when this anti-Russian mania blows over, they will still be there. And they cannot be turned into anti-Russian fanatics as many Galicians or Kievans have been. People don’t hate themselves and that is something that you have to account for.
Really? Maybe in the middle of the night, and that I would not recommend for a different reason. I drove it, it takes hours of heavy traffic on a 2-lane road. Then you hit 4-6 hours delay on the border. Most people prefer to park their cars and walk across. No business will ever send products on that road.
The grey ‘planned’ lines in Slovakia means nothing – somebody drew a line on the map, but no plan, no funding. The green stuff has taken Slovakia the last 35 years to built. At this rate you can extrapolate how long will take for the rest. I think 25 years would be very optimistic. Let me point out that there is still no freeway to Poland – a lot more important and longer border.
Trains are not freeways and don’t work well in today’s logistics business. How many times are you going to try to mix up trains and roads?
Me thinks that it might be you who ‘exaggerates’. You do like to project your own sins on the others. I am trying to be realistic, that is a gift – all feedback is a gift. Optimism has a place, but abandoning reality also has a huge cost.
They should have rights but they should not have veto powers over national policies.
Last I checked the Baltic Republics are in Europe. How is the situation of the Russian minority in Ukraine worse than in Baltics?
And how about indigenous minorities in France?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breton_language#Education
“In the late 20th century, the French government considered incorporating the independent Breton-language immersion schools (called Diwan) into the state education system. This action was blocked by the French Constitutional Council based on the 1994 amendment to the Constitution that establishes French as the language of the republic. Therefore, no other language may be used as a language of instruction in state schools. ”
It was about 40%-45% when Crimea and Donbas were part of Ukraine. It would have been 20% or so now based in pure demographics but due to anti-Russia backlash might be closer to 15%.
Pro-Russian political parties have about 15%-20% support so this probably reflects the size of the Russian minority in Ukraine. It is smaller than the one in Estonia and Latvia, larger than the one in Lithuania.
They’ll just get absorbed, as the disappearing Russian minority in Lviv has been. I know a hardcore Ukrainian nationalist in Lviv who is 1/4 Russian – the Russian was a hero of Stalingrad who was stationed in Lviv after the war and married a local. Grand-kids are Banderists.
I have part-Russian cousins in Lviv. None of my Galician relatives are Banderists but they think of themselves as Ukrainians.
Same thing is happening in Kiev. Just as Ukrainians in Russia get assimilated, so do Russians in Ukraine. Not all of course, but enough. In Crimea or Donbas there were too many Russians for this to happen. These regions are gone, thank God.
I don’t know when you drove it but google said 1 hour 33 minutes. I just checked again – 1 hour and 31 minutes. That’s real-time driving conditions. Rt. 19. As I write this it is 11:14 PM in Slovakia, not “middle of the night.”
Here is a random travel website:
https://www.rome2rio.com/s/Ko%C5%A1ice/Uzhhorod
Drive: 1 hour 37 minutes.
So you double down on the exaggeration.
The evidence of who exaggerates is right here. It is you, and your “hours”.
I rechecked your comments to me & can’t seem to find the link that you allude to? If it’s at this thread, just indicate what comment it’s within. Thanks.
Why did you equate writing poetry with being a genius, or having a high IQ?
That is outright bizarre.
Furthermore, poetry is decidedly pretentious, overrated pozz incarnate. I suspect the fad originated with well-off people doing nothing but needing an extra activity to feel special and unique, apart from commoners.
On the topic of the stupid bimbo – her father died when she wasn’t even 3 – so she probably can’t remember him, his Russian language, couldn’t get any Russian identity – and most importantly – GREW UP WITHOUT A FATHER, which nowadays inevitably leads to becoming a stupid, vapid, promiscuous, lazy and/or shallow cunt.
She has an odd-looking bottom; might just be the perspective though
HRE stopped being a state (albeit a loose one, even in feudal terms) with the deposition of Frederick II.
Following Emperors were not even a shadow of the likes of Barbarossa or Henry IV in the amount of power and influence they wielded in the realm.
Really, how can you claim the HRE being a single state in modern sense when it was the site of constant conflict between noble families, struggle for inheritance, elections (elective monarchies and empires are a joke – as history has demonstrably shown – I am looking at you Bohemia, and especially Poland/PLC), kings and anti-kings, and appalingly brutal and bloody wars such as Hussite wars, Protestant wars, 30-year war, wars for Silesia and Austrian succession? The Protestant Germans despised Catholics and vice versa – wars inside HRE were probably most barbarous in terms of conduct, atrocities and casualty scale.
Kingdom of Germany in HRE actually didn’t include present-day Austria and Brandenburg because Slavs weren’t assimilated yet.
Regarding Ukraine, Belarus and Russian Federation, you might want to do a bit of a research on their border delimitations and ratified agreements among them, and other countries.
Funny or not, I think that there’s something really good to be learned from you two. How do you do it?
Imaginary conversation netween AK & AP:
AK: Ukraine would be better off within Russia’s political orbit, after all we have so much in common and both have our roots in Kyivan Rus.
AP: Why that may be true to some extent, don’t forget that large parts of Ukraine have had incredibly long periods of time developing under the umbrella of Western states, that has left its indelible imprint on the Ukrainian psyche differentiating it markedly from its neighbor to the north. Also, climate and Russia’s inherent imperial quest has not always boded well for Ukrainians.
AK: But you have to admit that Russia’s imperial nature was to a great extent the creative endeavor of both the Great Russians and the Little Russians too. Look at how many Little Russians shared in the bounty of imperial greatness?
AP: Yes perhaps, but at what price? Sure, hundreds of Little Russians did well for themselves in the Russian north, but they all, to a greater or lesser extent had to trade in their Ukrainian soul for a Russian one, something that millions of Ukrainians today are not willing to do.
Etc; etc; etc;….
A couple of remarks, which good Doctor and Anatoly would be aware of:
Habsburg rule in Galicia-Volhynia would be that period of Western rule in Ukraine – but it was precisely that rule which set Ukrainians on a crash course with Poles and Russians
Bolsheviks failing and being defeated would result in the highest GDP and development in present-day Ukraine, but would probably make Ukrainians of present as common as Zmagars in Belarus
Central powers winning the war, including the one in the East against post-February Revolution government would result in some honorary German/Goth future Lebensraum of Ukraine which would over time share the fate of the Slavs east of Elbe and in present-day Austria. Humanity would benefit in the long run (no Angloatlanticism, Anglojewing, Bolshevism, Trotskysm), but there would be no need for Ukrainian anti-Russian proxy pet nation as originally envisioned by Vatican and German ideologues, nor space for them to inhabit.
Ukrainians should count themselves lucky. The decisive push for their nationhood came from Bolsheviks, who also gave them their national martyrdom/statefounding myth (Holodomor), and whom they despise at present.
You really can’t be helped. It is Sunday night 11 pm, are you seriously using it as a benchmark? Get over your petty infantile arguments. I assure you that no EU business would send regular trucks on that route – it takes hours for trucks, it is a 2-way, bad road with no passing going through small villages (2-3 hours), with heavy traffic and an impossible border crossing for trucks. Then you hit Subcarpathian Ukraine and the road is even worse. There are no plans to fix it, no money for it, it is way down in priority for Slovak gment.
Do you want to argue nonsense or do you want to address the fact that there is no freeway – or even a 4-way fast road – connection from Ukraine towards Slovakia and then on to Austria, Czech R, Germany etc… I am not familiar with the Polish route, but I doubt it is much better. And you do end up in Poland.
Ukraine lacks the logistics infrastructure to easily connect with EU. Period. That matters a lot more than a piece of paper that Kiev is waving around.
It’s at comment 39, regarding the development of Danish nationalism and cultural independence.
Sure you can reject literature (and say only engineers are valuable).
But from any psychometric sense, Brodsky was far more intelligent person, than average person of the population. And, he was also extremely talented, hard working, charismatic, etc.
While his daughter, seems less intelligent than average.
Her face is identical to her father’s, so it’s even more fucking weird that she is just stupid.
She has difficulty writing basic English and does not speak Russian, while her father is famous for how easily he writes in different languages.
It’s a depressing anti-natalism. The child is physical embodiment of the father (with almost his face), but with none of his value.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQtBwY6xP5w
I would not use Baltics as an example: EU is not happy about it and the difference is that large part of the Russian minority there has been denied citizenship. They can’t vote, Russians in Ukraine can.
French can’t be helped, after all they lately gave us that thing called Macron, it is just a cluster-f.ck.
What you say about Lviv is probably true, same is happening with the small Ukrainian minority in eastern Slovakia and Czechia: they assimilate after 1-2 generations. But how about Kharkov or Odessa, 2nd and 3rd cities of Ukraine? Russian speakers have a majority there, how do you assimilate a majority? Your points are in general ad hoc and based on anecdotal data that fits your preconceptions. When people point out that it is more complex, you retreat into minutia and pointless arguments.
It is unlikely that Ukraine will assimilate its Russian minority in our lifetimes. Those people are citizens and can vote. Any system has to account for it. I have also noticed that among almost all people from Ukraine – regardless of ethnic origin – speaking Russian is their preferred choice. How does that square with your theory that they are down to 5, or 15%, or that they are being assimilated?
My older post was from the middle of the day. I’ll check tomorrow also 🙂
There is a gap with only a 2 lane road from Uzhhorod to Kosice that takes about 1.5 hours to drive on a Sunday according to googlemap and some travel website. You assert it takes “hours” to drive.
The 4-lane highway begins at Kosice.
Condition of roads across the Carpathians is less relevant, because traffic from areas north of the Carpathians such as Lviv goes through Poland, which does have a 4 lane highway up to the Ukrainian border. Lviv to Warsaw (400 km) is currently 5 hours 42 minutes. Lviv to Berlin is 9 hours 37 minutes. Kosice, 70 km closer to Berlin than Lviv, takes 9 hours 27 minutes.
As I write, Budapest to Uzhhorod (330 km) is 3 hours 41 minutes. Average speed 88 km/hour.
Budapest to Kosice (260 km) is 3 hours 25 minutes. Average speed about 74 km/hour.
Clearly eastern Slovakia is less ready for European integration than is Galicia 🙂
Tell me more, this actually sounds interesting…
This doesn’t make any sense and is a hallmark feature of crazy sovok BS about Ukraine and Ukrainians. Somebody like you should be able to do better than this (try to be more original)! 🙁
I replied to you in the other thread:
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/animals/#comment-3071166
Well, so EU nations can deny citizenship to ethnic groups living in their countries. Thanks for pointing that out.
Nevertheless, this is a a large core EU member who has one state language and doesn’t allow minorities to use any other language in state schools.
So there is nothing non-European about Ukraine’s legal language situation, despite whining about it not being European values.
They won’t assimilate linguistically but will in terms of ideology and culture.
Again with your exaggeration. Prior to the loss of Crimea and Donbas Ukraine was about 40% Ukrainian speaking, 45% Russian speaking. This is obvious to anyone who has traveled around the country. But you notice what is convenient for you.
Here is the study:
http://www.kiis.com.ua/materials/articles_HVE/16_linguaethnical.pdf
You mix language with ethnicity or national identity.
You do realize that just as many if not most Irish nationalists are English speaking, many Ukrainians speak Russian. Kiev is about 90% Russian speaking, but 82% Ukrainian and 13% Russian. While the half-Russian kids in Lviv speak Ukrainian as their first language, the ones in Kiev speak Russian, but both tend to adopt a Ukrainian identity – the ones in Lviv become Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians and the ones in Kiev become Russian-speaking Ukrainians.* So in these places after the older people pass on younger generations have a smaller % of Russians.
Kharkiv is 63% Ukrainian and 33% Russian. Assimilation may be slower here.
In Crimea, Ukrainians were outnumbered and in Donbas the population was about equal.
What a strange idea. Baroque architecture, Jesuit schools, use of Latin, Magdeburg rights for cities – but not Western?
The “Latifundia” agricultural system was typical of Spain and southern Italy as well as Poland-Lithuania. Spain and Italy are not Western either?
In 1910 eastern Galicia had higher literacy and higher per capita GDP than did Russia.
In the 1917 elections about 70% of people in Ukraine’s core governates (Kiev, Poltava, Volhynia, Chernihiv) voted for Ukrainian nationalistic parties. These areas correspond to “Orange Ukraine.” Even in so-called Novorossiya it was around 50% outside of Crimea and the city of Odessa. I don’t think any substantial number of Belarusians did this. So already the situations were quite different.
The best scenario for pro-Russians, if Bolsheviks were defeated, would be that Russian Ukraine would be like Catalonia. Not that it would disappear.
Nonsnse. Because genocide wasn’t on the table the number of Ukrainians was too large to disappear. Germans were going to turn Crimea into a German summer retreat but Ukraine would just be a large and populous puppet state in Germany’s orbit. This would have been far better for Ukraine than was the Soviet nightmare.
Since Russia would still exist and still be a substantial power, there would always be a need for an allied Spain-sized country in this neighborhood.
Interesting and a good read. Similar to Czechs and German. It is very likely that if all of Ukraine had remained in Poland a similar process would have occurred there as well.
Right now it’s 1hr40min, it’s 7:35 AM.
8:18 AM, 1hr39min.
What I find interesting is that at the same time period as Germany was culturally dominating Denmark, Denmark was culturally dominating Norway.
9:19 AM, still 1hr39min.
Now that the topic of time measurement has been brought up.
I decided to test your hypothesis that Utu and AaronB are the same person.
Utu and AaronB both claim to reside in the USA. So when AaronB was saying that he was on vacation in (presumably South-East) Asia, I was checking what time they would both comment here and it seemed to match with the timezone they were claiming to be in at the time.
If they were the same individual, this person would have rather “unusual hours” either way depending on which continent they were on at the time.
The hypothesis can’t be completely excluded, but it seems unlikelier than before.
So while I can sometimes see why you would believe it based on their responses, I think Dmitry’s joking “evil mirror” theory is more likely to be correct.
The people of Crimea were reunited with Russia. A view favored by the majority of ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea (numbering around 20% of Crimea’s population) as well as a noticeable number of Tatars (between 10% and 15% of that territory).
Crimea had been part of the RSFSR before 1954. Thereafter, it was still affiliated with Russia as a part of the USSR. There’s also the pre-Soviet period Crimean affiliation with Russia.
For a considerable period before 1938, Germany and Austria were separate from each other. Prior to 1938, there was a clearly established Austrian national identity, with Germany uniting in 1871, a few years after the Austro-Prussian War. At that point in time, the notion of a Ukrainian nation separate from Russia wasn’t popular.
Whereas Austria has a centuries national identity of its own, Crimea (in comparison) has more of a regional view of itself. Irregardless of the recent (in historical terms) development of a Cypriot and Kosovar nations.
I sense that many Greek Cypriots wouldn’t mind linking with Greece. The flip side being the parallel view that Turkish Cypriots have regarding Turkey. Similarly in Kosovo, the Serbs there would like for that area to be part of Serbia. Likewise, I sense that the Albanians in Kosovo would favor linking with Albania.
With all this in mind, it’s IMO best to compare Crimea with the situations in Kosovo and northern Cyprus. These territories involve present circumstances. Relative to Crimea, noting the Anschluss without any mention of Kosovo and northern Cyprus, serves as anti-Russian propagandist crock.
10:48 AM, 1 hr 38 min.
I have a very good proof:
Both write silly things. If I lump them together, they just need one slot in my brain. Why use two slots for something useless when one slot is sufficient?
During the the Liberal Nationalist popular uprisings of 1848, there were three options presented: Prussia unifies Little Germany without Austria and under Prussian hegemony, Austria releases its Eastern regions and joins with Greater Germany or the “Empire of Seventy Millions” [All-Germany plus the Eastern Hapsburg lands] is formed.
The short-lived German Empire of 1848-49, that failed because the Prussian king refused to “pick up a crown from the gutter”, both included the Austrian Lands and elected an Austrian as Imperial Regent (Archduke Johann of Austria), which is unlikely to have happened unless Austria was seen as an integral part of Germany.
As to Austria’s exclusion from Germany, this was quite deliberate.
From AJP Taylor’s The Habsburg Monarchy 1809-1918:
And as I noted before, as soon as the Empire collapsed after Great War, German-Austria quickly set out to unify with Germany before they were forbidden so by the imposition of the Treaty of Versailles.
Say no to Chicken Kiev. Rename it Chicken Moscow.
REMOVE BORSCH remove borsch you are worst hohol. you are the hohol idiot you are the hohol smell. return to lvov. to our lvov cousins you may come our contry. you may live in the zoo….ahahahaha ,ukrop we will never forgeve you. bandera rascal FUck but fuck asshole hohol stink ukraine xoxol khokhol..xoxol genocide best day of my life. take a bath of dead hohol..ahahahahahLVOV WE WILL GET YOU!! do not forget ww2 .kiev we kill bandera , hohol return to your precious polan….hahahahaha idiot hohol and baltic smell so bad..wow i can smell it. REMOVE BORSCH FROM THE PREMISES. you will get caught. russia+china+venezuela+bestkorea=kill ukraine…you will ww2/ drake alive in russia, drake making album of russia . fast rap drake russia. we are rich and have gold now hahahaha ha because of drake… you are ppoor stink hohol… you live in a hovel hahahaha, you live in a hut
drake alive numbr one #1 in russia ….fuck the ukraine ,..FUCKk ashol hohol no good i spit in the mouth eye of ur flag and contry. drake aliv and real strong hotline bling kill all the xoxol farm aminal with rap magic now we the russki rule .ape of the zoo presidant fukc the great satan and lay egg this egg hatch and hohol wa;s born. stupid baby form the eggn give bak our clay we will crush u lik a skull of pig. russia greattst countrey
Austria was a German state. The Austrian foreign minister and de facto leader of the country was from another German province. The most famous Austrian composers often came from outside Austria, Beethoven, Brahms from elsewhere in Germany, Mozart and Haydn from areas which at the time didn’t belong to Austria.
Its dialect (especially of the expanding educated classes) was pretty similar to other German dialects, and it never had a separate national identity. In the 1930s many Austrians didn’t want to join Germany because they didn’t want the totalitarian Nazi regime for themselves, it wasn’t a principled opposition to the eventual unification of the two countries.
Are you drunk, parodying something, or your account is hacked?
From the liberal nationalist Linz Programme of 1882:
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/FacultyInformation/jking/linz_pro%5B1%5D.htm
me like hungary. me hungry. me sausage eat. me want porn stars…. mmmm…. ME WANT PUSSY!!!
I think we have to agree that of all the things Hitler did, the Anschluss and perhaps the peaceful conquest of the Sudetenland and Memel were by far the best things. They are only considered bad because of what came later, and also because they were not to last.
If that’s the worst Putin did, then it’s not very bad.
Crimea is Turkey
I forgot to write his name, Metternich. It’s just an example of how German Austria was.
Lay off the alcohol.
11:49 AM, 1 hr 37 min.
AP MAH HOHOL BOI!!!!
hohol boi soyboy. hohol soy. soy scare of big karlin dagestan muscle. karlin eat meat dumpling. karlin strong. karlin hadnsome karlin scary karlin sheremteyevo taxi mafia karlin meathead karlin horosho sport karlin punch soyboy. soyboy cri. hohol cri. hohol white flag. white flag kiev. LVOV JE DAGESTAN!!!!
dat ass
And yet Austria was a national entity for quite some time before Germany (in pretty much its modern territorial form) united in 1871, a few years after the Austrian-Prussian War.
Metternich was a German representing Austria, with Hitler serving as a reverse example. Russia had Catherine the Great, originally from Prussia.
In what was Austria a national entity? Bavaria (a compact, homogenous state) has a greater claim to be a “national entity” based on that claim.
The Austrian Empire (later reformed as the Austro-Hungarian Empire) had been around for quite some time before Germany united in 1871 (in pretty much its current territorial form), a few years after the Austro-Prussian War.
Bavaria has more in common with Austria than Prussia. Prussia was quite influential in the German unified state that came about in 1871. The Austro-Prussian War highlighted the differences between Austria and Prussia.
All this is said without denying that the 1938 Anschluss appeared to have the support of most Austrians.
So had Prussia.
The whole phenomenon of German Dualism was about who would lead Germany and what character it would assume, but it doesn’t make sense if Austria is interpreted as non-German.
Prussia is a fake Chinese knockoff of Russia.
1:42 PM – 1 hour 38 minute drive from Kosice to Uzhhorod.
Beckow was full of it 🙂
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/masonry/000/616/295/fe5.jpg
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/415/543/cb0.jpg
https://img.memecdn.com/go-home-house-you-are-drunk_o_804600.jpg
http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/go-home-bus-youre-drunk.jpg
Why would the victorious Austro-Hungary support an independent Ukraine which would threaten its rule in Galicia and Volhynia?
What makes you think the Germans and Habsburgs would be in favour of it, and not in favour of a protectorate/vassal state/March?
The Austrian national identity is a purely postwar phenomenon, and not a particularly strong one. The main anti-immigration Austrian “nationalist” political party refused to even display Austrian symbols at its gatherings until the 1990s.
Kurt Schusnigg, the last prewar leader of independent Austria, wished to pose this question to Austrian voters in his intended plebiscite to prevent the Anschluss:
The very word Austria in German simply means “eastern realm”.
There was a considerable amount of Hapsburg patriotism in Austria, but this obviously was not the same thing as affirming a separate Austrian identity. Not all German in the empire were Hapsburg patriots (for instance, Adolf Hitler), and there was also Hapsburg patriotism in some of the non-German ethnic groups of the empire.
Its early German history was somewhat comparable to Crimea. It was an eastern march of the German world that was invaded and colonized by Germans, just as Crimea was a southern march of the Russian world that was invaded and colonized by Russians.
The Greeks, incidentally, have their own word for Anschluss: Enosis. This was very popular in Greece proper and in the Greek areas of Cyprus. The Greek dream of reunification was of course crushed by the Turkish invasion.
Cyprus, incidentally, has never been part of any state calling itself Greece. If we consider the Byzantine Empire as a Greek state (they considered themselves Romans, though the oldest Greeks will still refer to themselves as Romans today) then it was last ruled from metropolitan Greece over eight centuries ago.
I agree that the term Anschluss shouldn’t be used in most discussions since it has negative associations and thus is intended to stoke Russophobia.
Kosovo and Cyprus do seem like more relevant examples in that they are contemporary issues. Another one might be Taiwan, though the Taiwanese are supposedly undergoing ethnogenesis. The incorporation of Goa into the Republic of India could be an appropriate comparison since it’s within living memory, Goa was not independent but controlled by another state (Portugal), and India isn’t a fascist state.
Ukraine would be too large to absorb fully. The independent state would be a German-Austrian vassal which naturally wouldn’t claim parts of A-H. For A-H, this would be a lot safer than Russia next door. Austria-Hungary wanted to place a Hapsburg on the Ukrainian throne:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Wilhelm_of_Austria
There were some conflicts between Austria-Hungary sand Germany over Ukraine; if Austria-Hungary had its person in charge of Ukraine it would be a little stronger and improve its position vis a vis its German ally. So Wilhelm was in Ukraine building his own powerbase with Galician support and undermining the Hetman, Germany wanted him removed but A-H did not do so.
The loss of World War I meant that this conflict between Germany and A-H over Ukraine never got very far.
They would have wanted a vassal state allied to them. As I stated, for Ukrainians this would have been much much better than the Soviet nightmare.
An interesting person:
Austrians were simply another kind of Germans, like Bavarians, Rheinlanders, Prussians, Svabians, etc. It was fully understood by everyone. Until 1945 no one had the idea that Austrians were somehow not Germans. In the 1950s in polls some 80% of Austrians said they were Germans. So it’s a way more recent and superficial identity than Ukrainian.
Also Svabia and a few places like that. But that just means that since Bavarians, Svabians, etc. are all just normal Germans, then so must be Austrians.
To be honest, I expected Beckow to be correct. I didn’t find it unbelievable that if it was something like 1 hr 31 min on Sunday late in the evening, then it could be 2.5-3 hours Monday morning. But now it doesn’t look like it. It’s possible that occasionally it’s much longer.
I don’t know about tourism in Slovakia. It may be longer in summer if a lot of people are going to mountain resorts in the eastern Carpathians. Or if there happens to be a major accident on the road at a certain time. Under such circumstances any route could take a long time.
East Asia, with a bit of SEA thrown in. And I barely visited this site till the end of that trip.
Indeed. A guy who plotted with Ludendorff, and rented African sailors. However I checked the book and it mentions Algerians, not blacks so wikipedia was wrong. In Paris he also had a long affair with some Spanish duke, so evidently he had a taste for Arabic-looking men.
No wonder modern Ukraine mostly has forgotten him.
Speaking of Wilhelms, Kaiser Wilhelm II was apparently friends with a gay circle of nobles. They supposedly hid it from him and it became a great issue of embarrassment, when one of them to trial.
It was called the Leidenberg Circle and Bismark’s son wrote “I have known for a long time that HM loves Phili Eulenberg ( their leader) more than any living person.” They called Wilhelm “der Liebchen.”
I think there’s a funny photo of Wilhelm riding a carriage with one beside him, with his arm on him. Some also remarked on his tendency to surround himself with handsome and tall military men.
To be sure, I don’t believe he was gay, but it is nevertheless very funny.
Conflict over the Ukraine in the event of a Central Powers victory would not have gone far in light of Germany’s preponderance over Austria-Hungary. The neglect of the army in the years leading up to 1914, the contradictions of the multicultural empire, and its relative economic backwardness made it the weakest of the European great powers (except, perhaps, Italy) while Germany was the strongest (or at least a peer of Britain).
The Austro-Hungarians could not even liquidate Serbia without German (and Bulgarian) assistance. At Brest-Litovsk the Joint Minister for Foreign Affairs Count Czernin was so desperate for peace at any price that he attempted to threaten General Hoffmann with a separate peace. Hoffmann’s bemused reply was that this would be wonderful as it would immediately free up the 25 German divisions holding the Austro-Hungarian line.
And as poor as the economic situation had grown in Germany, Austria-Hungary’s economy was contracting and there were food riots in Vienna. The desperate Austro-Hungarians even stole a German shipment of Roumanian grain.
In fact, Austria-Hungary’s situation was so bad that the Ukrainian peace negotiators even demanded territory from Austria-Hungary or, failing that, establishing Galicia as an independent Hapsburg crown land (with all the implied outrages this would cause throughout the empire). The Germans politely slapped this down to Czernin’s relief.
There was some modest rivalry when the Central Powers advanced deeper into the east to bring the Bolsheviks back to the negotiating table (and to prevent the Ukrainian Bolsheviks from deposing the Ukrainian government), but unsurprisingly it was German troops that advanced into Kiev. The Austro-Hungarians had to content themselves with Odessa.
In a postwar peace dictated by the Central Powers Austria-Hungary might have had about as much influence as Italy did at Versailles. Perhaps even less since there was no one to play off of Germany.
It is a bit funny how so many government officals constantly hid things from the supposedly-autocratic Kaiser during his reign.
Interesting that Eulenburg, despite being a homosexual, still managed to sire eight children with a woman he hated.
There were a lot of decadent high-class people at the time.
The brother of Franz Jozef, Archduke Ludwig Viktor, liked to appear in public in women’s clothing.
Fritz Krupp committed suicide after public accusations of having enjoyed the attention of young men at Capri arose.
Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria had apparently similar tendencies:
“War Minister Joseph Maximilian von Maillinger, for example, was forced to leave office in 1885, partly because the gay monarch couldn’t refrain from recruiting his lovers from a cavalry unit, the Bavarian Chevau-légers.”
Agree but with some quibbles:
This was because Austria-Hungary had to shift a bunch of soldiers to the Russian front (where they were defeated). Otherwise Serbia would have been finished.
Karl had actually agreed to that. AFAIK the only people this would have outraged were the Poles; however it would have strengthened loyalty from the Ukrainians and given leverage with Ukrainians outside Austria-Hungary.
Wilhelm was further east, in Zaporizhia. IIRC the Austrian zone was along much of southern Ukraine.
::::::::::::::::
Overall you are right, the question is if Austria-Hungary would be given something; if so Ukraine or part of it might have been it.
Eulenburg was quite repulsed by the Emperor’s ‘revolting vulgarity’, but I think Harden comes off as the most cruel of all.
I woudn’t say best, but those actions were least objectionable. If Germany stopped then, Europe would be a very different place today. Most Austrians craved Anschluss and most Germans living in Sudetenland wanted out of Czecho-Slovakia. If one takes the right to self-determination seriously, they had a point. In 1999 Nato with its Kosovo misguided adventure retroactively validated early Hitler. We have been living in a new world with no rules since then.
But there were 2 problems:
– it wasn’t done very peaceful and the optics, esp. in Sudetenland, were ugly – half a million Czechs were immediately expelled
– what followed: 6 months later Germany just took over the rump Czech state. That was unnecessary, it presaged what came in WWII, and Germans were no longer trustworthy.
The lesson in Ukraine today is that outsiders shouldn’t overreach. Ukraine is weak and will probably get weaker. The temptation to take advantage is there, by Russia, Nato, Poland, Hungary, Romania, maybe even Turkey. They should stay out and resist the temptation, it always backfires. But it will be hard.
I’m a natural raconteur…these things can occasionally happen
On the EU values issue: it is easier to get away with it once a country is in EU, but applicants get a much harsher treatment.
People from Ukraine I meet almost always prefer to speak with us in Russian. I am not sure how is that an ‘exaggeration’, it is what everyone in Central Europe can observe. I don’t ask them about their ‘ethnicity’.
The analogy with Ireland and England is not a bad one, but is it going to play out that way? The relative standings are quite different, and most analogies tend be faulty. But you could be right over 1-2 generations.
You ignore a simple fact that the nationalist Ukrainians are literally peeing into a hurricane. They are the weaker side locally, but they think that outside help will somehow balance it. Historically outside help dissipates over time and the local power equation re-emerges. Being in a de facto war with a much stronger enemy is a foolish strategy. Short of Russia’s disintegrating, Russian interests will reappear with a vengeance. Germans know this – they have learned the hard way – so they play it safe (NS2).
All the external help for Ukraine has already been done, there will be no more. It is now down to Kiev vs. Moscow. It is a an economic, political, demographic and military stalemate – and Russia is simply stronger. Absolutely the best option for Ukraine would be to let go off the east and south and merge with Poland – they would be in EU in no time. But it is also the stupid option. So they will slowly climb down from their nationalist high, sooner they do it, better deal they will get.
People sentiment changes based on who they perceive as winning. You will see how quickly the 90% plus Russian-speakers hatred of Russia disappears once situation changes. People’s attitudes are fickle, and they like to say what they think others want to hear. The current war-like attitudes are largely meaningless, they won’t last.
Why do you have to even remotely take as plausible this fantasist spamtroll fucktards obvious lies?
” the west is faring better than the east ” is simply a brazen, retarded scumbag lie.
The west is the poorest region of the country, the least populated…and the most that has been susceptible to migration into Poland and the EU ( and Russia in addition)
Lvov has become the epicentre of that region, Ternopil is slightly improved…but we are talking in terms of shades of shit here
Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, even Donetsk with it’s war ravaged economy are far richer. Lvov itself is closer to war-ravaged Lugansk in living standards…then it is to Dnepropetrovsk ( a Russian/Soviet city in every sense of the term), Donetsk,Odessa. Lvov earn about as much as in Kharkov …except Kharkov is about amillion times more important to the economy( and even fake national idea) of Ukropia, has more people and emits far more cultural and business value into Ukropia, more western goods, lesser energy costs and larger black market
These areas, despite their lack of proximity to the EU, ironically receive far, far more high-end western goods than Lvov
It’s most likely that this sack of shit is insiduously, like the vermin it is including Kiev and Odessa it’s it’s fake point about the “west” in order to make a total lie of a point
Lvov, is the “richest” in the west…..with a wage on average about 10% less than the WHOLE AVERAGE in Ukropia…a state with tan African economy. It’s about the 8th ( “up” from 12th) in terms of highest wages in the country – and the most of rest of the west is near the bottom.
It’s most likely that this excrement is merely taking the wage and not adjusting for inflation..in order to make a lie of a point
If Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governor of a place that Ameritards like to remind “has an economy bigger than…insert European country” ( California)
then why can’t Zelensky?…. who has produced some excellent politicized comedy in the last few years
My take:
Very high intelligence may be a freakish abnormality like height over 2 metres or oversized eyes (too much of a good thing…)
https://www.instagram.com/p/BuGLfOLFJEj/?utm_source=ig_web_button_native_share
Geniuses are either too weird/uninterested to reproduce (Leonardo da Vinci, Newton, Tesla, Grigory Perelman…) or have more normal and thus less intelligent children.
Not sure of that, seeing that an Austrian Empire in name had existed, when Ukraine/Ukrainians was nowhere near as evident.
Because some don’t necessarily see the bigger picture down the road – instead seeing something different and in this case quite faulty.
Pilsudski, elements in Germany and Austria-Hungary idea of an “independent Ukraine” was one that included Russian Empire territory, for the purpose of weakening Russia. In turn, the likes of Pilsudski anticipated a grateful “independent Ukraine”, which would accept not having territory from outside the Russian Empire.
Just released:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/skripal-poisoning-salisbury-attack-yulia-russia-novichok-putin-a8807191.html
Did Bellingcat exclusively do its own work on this matter, or was it fed info from Brit Intel?
https://twitter.com/yasmineojay/status/1101787411745525760
https://www.fdesouche.com/1169099-victoire-de-la-diversite-yasmine-remporte-le-prix-de-la-jeune-europeenne-de-lannee-2019-decerne-par-le-parlement-europeen
https://schwarzkopf-stiftung.de/en/young-european-of-the-year-2/
I suppose that’s their way of sticking it to Salvini.
We need a Godefroy de Bouillon prize.
I’m not a supporter of the “Ukrainian Idea” and oppose the Ukraine’s independence. But Ukrainian is a language, albeit a language that ought to be eradicated.
There is no Austrian language, nor has there ever been an Austrian language. There were once other forms of German as there are today several varieties of Russian/East Slavic, but Austrian wasn’t one of them. German language map from 1910:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/German1910.png
The Austrian Empire was effectively a branding exercise in response to Napoleon’s proclamation of the French Empire. It simply consisted of the preexisting Hapsburg lands. Austria proper (which did not exist administratively) was only one-seventh of the empire’s territory and Germans were only one-fifth of the empire’s population.
If we’re going to proclaim Austrians as a nationality (especially before the war) then Bavarians have just as good of a claim to be one. Using your criteria an even stronger one since Bavaria as a state existed since 555, making it one of the oldest in Europe.
Ukrophiles here also like to bring up that there have been various failed Ukrainian states in the past, including at least one sanctioned by elections.
Contrary to the propagandizing of Fritz Fischer, the Germans had no grand plans for the Ukraine. Less sure of the Austro-Hungarian side but we can consider them irrelevant given their weakness.
It is known that the Germans sought to expand their territory in Poland, though they were not unified on this question. The Kaiser favored adding as few Polish subjects as possible given the abject failure of Germanization efforts, and he was not alone.
The lead German negotiator at Brest-Litovsk in fact did not even support the independence of the Baltic states (though most of the German leadership did) because he considered their incorporation into Russia to be essential to Russian security and understood that Russia would naturally become a great power once more.
Russia simply collapsed, and the Ukrainians themselves voted for independence, which the Germans accepted. They were keen to keep the Bolsheviks out of the Ukraine (and everywhere else) and assisted in that enterprise.
I’ve forgotten the details, but iirc Germany and Austria-Hungary proclaimed in 1916 that they intended to set up a Polish state again (obviously only from Russian territories, they weren’t willing to give up German- and Ausrian-ruled Poland, which was a great mistake in hindsight), so I doubt there were great plans for further expansion into Poland. At least the more perspicacious German nationalists didn’t want even more Poles as a troublesome minority within German borders, and Nazi methods were still unthinkable then.
iirc there were some plans by Ludendorff and similar people for German settlement in the Baltics, but as far as I know no final decision had been taken on that until 1918.
Yes, the official plan was for a Polish monarchy. There was of course squabbling about from which royal house the monarch would come from, but presumably a Catholic German would’ve been chosen. Probably a Wittelsbach.
Ludendorff was one of the proponents of annexing a larger Polish strip which would have 2-3 million inhabitants. Modern historians like to claim that this was a forerunner of Generalplan Ost and that obviously the evil Germans intended to murder or deport all these Poles, which I doubt very much.
Other voices, including the Kaiser, favored minimal expansion which would remove various strategic areas from artillery range. Rather like what Stalin did with Finland (though Stalin also deported the Finns in question).
As for Ludendorff’s views on the Baltic:
http://allworldwars.com/Ludendorff%20Own%20Story%20by%20Erich%20von%20Ludendorff.html
I wonder how many close acquaintances really liked Wilhelm II. He seems to have been pretty capricious and quick to take insult, plus many found his attitude to his mother and sister reprehensible.
Perhaps, it is just a sampling error, the rare being noteworthy, but recently I was struck by how many aristocrats seem to have been gay. I think it may potentially be some interesting puzzle.
I believe newspapers facilitated the start of WW1, its continuation, and the strong anti-monarchist movement that followed, even in countries that had some level of press control.
In 2008 the winner was from Georgia (announced post-Russian “invasion”), in 2015 from Ukraine. No political message there, of course.
Last year it was some cretinous British woman who writes as “EU supergirl” on Twitter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleina_Kay
I have mixed feelings about Brexit, but still, it’s stunning how they just ignore that a majority voted for Brexit.
In 2017 it was a (presumably Muslim) Bosnian and the (probably Congolese) president of the “Flemish” youth council Nozizwe Dube.
It really irritates me how something that could actually be in the best interests of European nations (European cooperation in some form is a necessity imo) is hijacked instead for advancing our destruction.
That just means they might speak Russian better than English. Do you offer to speak Ukrainian with them?
Currently about 40% at most speak Russian (vs. Ukrainian) as their primary language. About half of these are solidly Ukrainian.
So have Serbs stopped hating Turks or Muslims? You do know that Slavs often bear grudges. And the wound is not healed as long as the trickle of deaths continues.
Well, Eulenburg seemed to have liked him, but for obvious reasons he didn’t take the stab in the back after twenty years of companionship very well.
IIRC, the Empress insisted on Wilhelm, despite his crippled arm, learn horse riding, something which he, with difficulty, managed.
Interesting, how both Imperial Germany and Nazi Germany, despite having leaders who expressed admiration for England, both ended up at war with them.
(probably Congolese)
Zimbabwean.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nozizwe_Dube
Even worse, what in hell have Zimbabweans got to do with Belgium (especially ones who only came there in 2010!)? Not even an ex-colony unlike the Congo.
I also find it always galling when the children of asylum seekers, refugees etc. become ungrateful ethnic activists.
Do you have good sources for what the world would have looked like had the right side won the first world war?
A-H seemed to have been motivated to place one of their own on the Polish or the Ukrainian thrones. They would probably only get what the Germans would allow them to have, but given that after victory Germany would have been busy in Poland, the Baltics, Belgium, Africa etc. it is not unreasonable to assume that A-H, which already enjoyed the strong loyalty of Galician Ukrainians, would have been given some concessions in Ukraine by their German senior partner.
There were elements in Germany and Austria-Hungary which supported the idea of propping an “independent” Ukraine, which was on good terms with the Central Powers while opposing Russia.
If memory serves correct, Mark von Hagen notes that the Germans pushed Skoropadsky to be more independent from Russia than he wanted.
As WW I was being fought, the Germans had a presence in Ukraine for a period when the warring Whites and Reds weren’t as influential on that territory. The Whites were committed to the Allied cause, thereby making it difficult for Skoropadsky (under heavy German influence) to be on good terms with the Whites. In Ukraine, the Germans backed the anti-Communist Skoropadsky and in Russia, the Germans essentially backed the Bolshes.
Once WW I ended, Skoropadsky attempted to reach an on the ground reality accord with the Whites. Unfortunately, this situation faced difficulties, having to do with:
Related:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/22052011-pavlo-skoropadsky-and-the-course-of-russian-ukrainian-relations-analysis/
Wilhelm II was really tragicomic in that regard. He wore a kilt for a time as a boy, loved being an honorary British admiral and wearing the uniform, was deeply interested in the minutiae of the British navy. If I recall, Queen Victoria died in his arms. Some say it was his love of England that caused him to build up his navy in imitation of it, thus encouraging much of the antagonism.
The people of the Donbass are presumably much smarter than the people of Detroit, no? I mean, I suspect that the average IQ of the Donbass is something like 95 while it might be as low as 80 in Detroit (if Detroit is comparable to Baltimore, which has an average IQ of around 80).
It’s far from clear that Germany would have made any gains in Africa had it won WWI. AFAIK, it lost all or almost all of its African colonies during the fighting in WWI and thus would have been lucky to get those back in exchange for some concessions elsewhere (such as a German withdrawal from Belgium and northern France).
There are no such sources since concrete plans did not exist in Berlin or Vienna. Though memoirs of senior leaders such Ludendorff and Bethmann-Hollweg are available and useful. Plans, aims, and desires that were put to paper changed based on the military and political situation.
When the Germans thought they were about the rout the French Army and capture Paris, they put forth the September Program. With the war clearly stalemated in 1916, the Central Powers proposed a white peace. After Russia’s collapse once more opened the possibility of total victory more aggressive designs were again entertained.
It’s worth noting that Germany and especially Austria-Hungary lacked the effective centralized governments that Britain and France had (and that Russia had on paper).
Austria-Hungary’s political sclerosis is self-explanatory (the empire consisted of two completely separate states), but people would do well to appreciate the nature of the German Empire. The German imperial government lacked fiscal powers (it gained customs revenue in 1879 but had to share half with the states), there was no government responsible to parliament and the Kaiser was a dilettante, the kingdoms had their own armies and diplomatic services (which extended to sending “embassies” to the other German states), and the army was outside of civilian control and drew up many of its own plans.
Based on the September Program and the memoirs of senior German leaders from about 1917-1918, I think the following was likely:
• Coal and iron districts of France and Belgium annexed
• Luxembourg annexed
• Belgium reduced to a puppet state (there was a common view in Germany that the success of German arms “earned” them the right to Belgium)
• Disarmament of France and France to pay reparations
• Expansion into Poland
• Continuous zone of colonies across Equatorial Africa
• Detachment of non-Russian regions of the Russian Empire and their incorporation into a customs union
It’s unclear to me whether or not they intended to incorporate France into a customs union as well.
With respect to the Baltic states there was division over whether to let the local Balts run the countries or whether to have the Baltic Germans run them.
Most of the Austrian leadership I believe opposed further expansion into the Balkans, but I think Hungarian leadership was open to the idea. Perhaps Reiner Tor knows more. Probably they would have none the less annexed Montenegro in order to prevent Serbia from ever reaching the Adriatic.
If Bavaria wants to secede from Germany, I certainly wouldn’t oppose that.
Leonid Bershidsky should be taken to task:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-04/recent-russian-emigres-to-the-west-don-t-all-oppose-putin
Excerpt –
WTF does Crimea mean to him as a strong protest issue? Going to the Western countries which support Kosovo’s separation from Serbia and don’t protest much over Turkey’s action in northern Cyprus reveals something hokey in the above excerpted.
Regarding Bershidsky:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/07/17/dnc-kiev-regime-collusion-isnt-americas-best-interests.html
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/10/11/slanting-against-russia-us-establishment-pastime.html
All of this information sounds accurate. Of course, I have doubts that Germany would have been able to win a decisive victory in the West late in WWI even if the US had not entered the war.
How much better the world could have been..
Thank you for the informative post.
imo stalemate and mutual exhaustion would have been most likely without the US entering the war.
Germany might have forced a negotiated end to the war though and even kept some of the gains in Eastern Europe.
I mentioned the recent “revisionist” history of WW1 by Holger Afflerbach (Auf Messers Schneide) a few months ago. He claims that Germany might have eked out such a draw even in 1918 by remaining on the defensive, instead of committing to the disastrous spring offensives which broke the German army. Hard to evaluate though how plausible that is.
The Donbass is not that bad. I would imagine that human capital in cities like Kharkiv and Donetsk to be no worse than Rostov-on-Don or Krasnodar. Perhaps better as the darker Kuban ancestry there has probably heavy admixture from the rest of Russia and West Ukraine.
Novorossiya if controlled by Russia should be just average milioniki. My guess is that Kharkiv should be more or less another Novosibirsk, Donetsk would be a Volgograd with 1.5 times the population, and Odessa should be competitive against Kazan, if not exceed it, when it comes to tourism and overall development.
However, it seems that not even the Donbass is interested in being Russian oblasts. Instead, Novorossiya seems to prefer being a corrupt Russian satellite state, which unfortunately means that it would at best be like present day Belarus, and even that seems to be a stretch given the corruption.
Corruption seems to be their biggest issue, not human capital.
Yes, Germany might have indeed kept some–if not most or even all–of its gains in Eastern Europe in the event that stalemate and mutual exhaustion becomes the ultimate outcome of WWI on the Western Front. After all, in such a scenario, Britain and France are not going to be able to actually do anything to eject Germany from Eastern Europe.
As for Germany remaining on the defensive in 1918 even with the US already being in the war, a lot might depend on just how willing the American people are to accept massive casualties in warfare. In other words, would the Americans be willing to continue the war and to fight to the finish if they endured, say, 500,000 military deaths in 1918 instead of 116,500? Personally, I don’t know the answer to this question–though there might be a feeling among Americans that if a lot of American lives had already been squandered, then it would be better for the US to remain in the war and to fight to the finish as opposed to accepting a pro-German compromise peace which results in Germany keeping its Eastern European gains–which would mean that Germany would have de facto won the war even if it would have had to make some concessions in the West.
Germany’s biggest mistakes in WWI were bringing Britain into the war and bringing the US into the war. In fact, it would have been much better for Germany to wait until the completion of the Russian Great Military Program in 1917 before waging any wars. Sure, Russia would have been stronger in such a scenario, but this would have been compensated by British neutrality (due to British fears of Russia’s growing power) as well as by US neutrality (since the US won’t get involved in a general European war if Britain doesn’t get involved). Germany’s defeat in WWI could be viewed as a type of historical fluke due to it likely needing an alliance of France, Russia, Britain, and the US to actually make German defeat in a general European war in the 1910s a reality.
Not happening. Crimean Tatars are only something like 12% of the total Crimean population. Plus, Russia refuses to even give Chechnya its independence even though Russia would be better off without the Chechens.
Sure, that’s what happened with the European powers, after hundreds of thousands had been killed in a few months in 1914, it proved impossible to end the war by negotiation, because that would have meant all the sacrifices had been in vain and completely meaningless (which would also have had obvious implications for the status of those responsible for the war).
And for the US the war was an ideological crusade anyway (“make the world safe for democracy” and all that), with fervent support by many “progressive” Protestant clergymen, which precluded compromise.
So I don’t know how realistic a scenario of Germany forcing a draw in 1918 is; but it’s still interesting to think about it.
Britain would probably have entered the war anyway. The invasion of Belgium, and especially the war crimes committed by German forces there, were grave mistakes though (and the autistic and self-righteous statements by German university professors didn’t help either), since Germany lost the battle for opinion in neutral states pretty much at the start of the war.
I like the idea of replacing the Charlemagne Prize, with the name of his grandfather, Charles Martel. What are some other good names for prizes? John III Sobieski? John of Austria? Maybe, that’s too many Johns – better make it the Lepanto Prize.
Did you see that new Guy Verhoffstadt anti-populist video? “Let’s reform Europe, instead of destroying it.” I don’t know if I saw the whole thing, but it was pretty funny, because watching it, I felt certain that they wanted to make a black girl say “I am a European.” But that they just managed to control themselves.
Interesting appearance though.
https://schwarzkopf-stiftung.de/cms/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/eu-2017-04-24-jensschlueter_9506_haris_Kusmic.jpg
Ludendorff in his memoirs gave the following reasons for going over to the offensive in the spring of 1918:
• German superiority in numbers for the first time in the entire war
• Growing Entente preponderance in materiel only growing worse with time
• Lack of success in the U-boat campaign
• Other Central Powers teetering on collapse
• German homefront weakening
• Negative impact on the morale of the German army from staying on the defensive
Hoffmann in his memoirs states that the Kaiserschlacht was incorrectly planned (which I agree with):
Hoffmann himself also had an interesting alternative strategy for 1918. He proposed that the Germans march on Moscow, depose the Bolsheviks, and (re)establish an orderly government in Russia which in turn would furnish the Central Powers with commodities.
The Adolf Hitler Prize for European Integration
The Napoleon Bonaparte Prize for European Unity
The Joseph Stalin Prize for Ever Closer Union
Yes with children of unusual people, there is the concept “reversion to the average”.
For me, the emotion is quite “anti-natalist”. It’s also a good argument against physiognomy.
From cases like his daughter, you realize the soul of the great poet, is nowhere in their genetics or physical features.
Obviously, there are probably some similarities of instincts.
The daughter seems to have “rebelliousness” against society and maybe high sexuality of the father (she instagram’s naked photos, while her father was a womanizer).
But in Brodsky, it was sublimated to nostalgic iambics about former girlfriends, and in the daughter? Photos of her ass.
I’m curious as to what means you would propose to eradicate both the Ukrainian people and their language? I mean the last time something like this was tried, during Stalin’s tenure, it wasn’t a pretty picture. I’m sure that with your knowledge of modern warfare and other techniques of this age, you could come up with something a little less horrific?
I agree with your analysis of most of this. My quibble is with your last paragraph here. Specifically, if WWI would have broken out just several years later, I’m really not sure that Britain would have entered the war on the Franco-Russian side. For one, it would have had to worry about Russia’s growing power–something that would have been especially true had the 1907 Anglo-Russian Entente not been renewed in 1915. Also, Germany would have been unlikely to invade Belgium in a WWI that breaks out in 1917 or later due to the fact that German policymakers would have felt that the Schlieffen Plan could no longer achieve a quick German victory in the West due to Russia’s growing military power in the East (which would have necessitated more German troops to be placed in the East–thus leaving less German troops for the Western Front and thus making a quick German victory in the West less realistic). In addition, the Anglo-German naval arms race would have likely been a distant memory by 1917 as more pressing issues would have taken over. Finally, Britain might have had its hands full busy dealing with the situation (home rule crisis) in Ireland–which could have descended into civil war in 1914 had WWI not broken out and interrupted developments there. A Britain that is already busy dealing with an Irish civil war might be less inclined to enter a general European war.
Thus, I agree with most of what you said in your post here, but not with your last paragraph.
Looks like many Serbs, but I feel almost certain he must be a Bosniak.
In his essay, he referenced Willi Brandt kneeling in Warsaw. It is pretty weird that Germany had a chancellor with a false name – surely a sign of postwar dysfunction. They put up a plaque of him kneeling with a menorah on it.
Nerve gas everthing West of the Dneiper? Three alls?
That essay?
http://iea.rs/blog/2014/04/07/stripping-regional-reconciliation-of-its-profoundness/
tbh, it’s not that bad imo, for a country like Bosnia-Herzegovina his attitude might be commendable…all the more so since his own father seems to have been killed in the war. There’s no Islamic identitarianism in it either.
Brandt had many stupid ideas, but I’m not sure if he wasn’t actually more of a patriot than Adenauer and his Christian Democrats (who frequently attacked Brandt in a way that was just shabby).
That’s probably why he won’t be positively remembered in the new Germany…Anetta Kahane of Germany’s leading “antiracist” foundation has already criticized him for his positive remarks about German reunification…supposedly he excluded Germans of color.
I think he is, it is just a bit funny.
As one person whose intuitions are probably correct recently opined to me, this probably had more to do with Bershidsky not wishing his children to grow up in Russian.
It’s not like he has to be in Russia to write his op-eds for Bloomberg.
Though France was a great deal more exhausted than Germany; the latter had around 2.5x as many men of military age
Military deaths: 1.4mn and 2.0 million, respectively. (Significant part of Germany’s loaded towards the last months of WW1).
I think Germany could have won the war of attrition with Russia out of the picture, and in the absence of US intervention.
The Hungarian prime minister opposed the declaration of war until he was promised that no large scale annexations would take place. Already in 1908, at the time of the annexation of Bosnia, the common sentiment was “who needs two million more Slavs?”
You also have to take Britain and its empire into account, though.
I do agree that Germany would have been likely to keep its gains in the East if the US would have remained neutral. I am less sure of its ability to decisively win in the West in such a scenario, though. After all, even if France is on the verge of collapse, Britain and its empire could help prop France up.
Then why did they do this annexation? To prevent the Turks from reacquiring B-H?
This is completely untrue. There is a Bavarian/Austrian dialect that is at least as different from Standard German as Ukrainian is different from Russian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_language#Samples_of_Bavarian_and_Austrian%5Bclarification_needed%5D
The difference is that Germany never had a communist government that tried to elevate this dialect into a ‘language’ and force it into an official capacity against the will of the populace.
Telling obvious lies just discredits your own positions (though I don’t know if you even notice, probably being the most consistently wrong commenter on my blog).
Are you retarded? (Please don’t answer, that was a rhetorical question.)
Stalin was the biggest supporter of the Ukrainian identity in all of Ukraine’s history.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F
What lie, pray tell.
That Austrian/Bavarian is a German dialect that is significantly different from Hochdeutsch to classify as a separate language, had there been political will? This is a goddamn linguistic and scientific fact.
That ‘Ukrainian’ as an official and standardized language was created during Soviet tenure? That is also a goddamn historical fact.
That the Soviet government forced this newly-standardized language by political diktat, against popular opinion? That is also a goddamn historical fact.
So where is the lie?
There were nationalists proposing expulsion of Poles into “kingdom of Poland” from Greater Poland and Pomerania, though.
You’re wrong.
Plattdeutsch of 30-year war period was vastly different from Bavarian or Tyrolian language.
North German language of Hansa probably had more in common with then-spoken Swedish than with German spoken in Austria.
In alternate reality, the same way the Dutch became an independent nation, the Saxons, Swabians, Bavarians, Pommeranians could have went that way with foreign “assistance”.
I don’t know about the 17th century, but I studied German for one year, and while I don’t remember almost anything about it, so far as the modern day is concerned, the differences between German German and Austrian Austrian were trivial, mostly just calling a few things by different names. The difference is probably similar between the Southern drawl and the Yankee twang. The distance between Russian and Ukrainian (again, the actually existing Ukrainian of today) is sufficiently large to make them mutually unintelligible, albeit the gap is sufficiently small that it can be overcome within a few months.
Well I don’t disagree with any of that.
Friedrich List called the Netherlands rightful German clay in The National System of Political Economy.
You studied the “artificial”, standardised Hochdeutsch (not to be confused with High German).
Saxons, Hanoverians, Prussians, Donauschwaben of the past would learn it as a foreign language.
Among some other things pertaining to Crimea, leave it to Paul Goble to flippantly liken Crimea’s re-unification with Russia to the Anschluss:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/02032019-conflict-over-crimea-between-two-peoples-not-just-two-states-oped/
This recent exchange regarding AC, AK and yourself serves to confirm what I’ve said at this thread on the matter concerning Austria, Prussia and the German entities that united under the Prussian influenced Germany in 1871 – once again noting the Austrian-Prussian War of 1866. .
Revisiting what he said that has been highlighted as hokey:
At the time, Bershidsky wasn’t living in Crimea. Not sure if he ever lived there for an extended period if ever. As written above, Bershidsky is suggestively making an ethical criticism of Crimea’s re-unification with Russia. In turn, I correctly and responsibly call him out for making that matter such a great issue in the way that he chose.
The above excerpted comes across as being soft on Svido transgressions, while okaying the hypocritical stances of the leading Western governments towards Kosovo and northern Cyprus.
From a constructively critical pro-Russian position, there’s absolutely no reason to be soft with him on this matter.
On par with the Svido acts regarding Eurovision and the Russian T-34 movie:
https://apnews.com/acf6b563823e4dfd817b5d88cd8fde02
For clarity sake, by Bosniak you mean a Muslim Slav from Bosnia. Pretty much the same people with religion (not ethnicity) being the primary difference.
A blonde, blue eyed appearance would’ve been good Nazi poster boy propaganda for the predominately Bosnian Muslim SS Handschar.
There are a lot of blonde Serbs?
I suppose he must have ended up with more of the Gothic than Turkish genes
The only one retarded is you, trying to spread these long outworn sovok tropes. It was during the 1920’s that korinizatsiya took hold, during Lenin’s tenure, and during the 1930’s, during Stalin’s tour of duty that korinizatsiya was severely curtailed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainization
You didn’t learn the actual Bavarian language, you learned Bavarian-accented Standard German.
I don’t think you can study German dialects anywhere at all, much less in a school.
Even in Switzerland you can’t learn to speak Schwyzerdütsch in any official place of learning.
BTW, the case of Hochdeutsch in Switzerland is a curious one. In principle, they could have made Allemanic a fifth official language. Beats me why they didn’t; it’s not like they have any real allegiance to Prussia or Northern Germany.
Lenin died in 1924, you tard. Ukrainization started in 1923.
Stalin was the dude in charge of ethnic relations in the USSR:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD,_%D0%98%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%84_%D0%92%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87
First, it had already spread throughout the German speaking realm (except maybe Switzerland) by the late 19th century without much government intervention (there was no centralized authority until 1871, and it didn’t include Austria until 1938 anyway). Austria had the same written language as all other German provinces, with minimal differences. Even spoken Austrian was just minimally different from the others. As opposed to Ukrainian, which is a language of literature (obviously inferior to Russian literature, but still), the different dialects in Germany were never used for writing on a large scale, not in any region (except the Netherlands, where it thus became a different language). So Ukrainian truly is a different language right now (and it was in 1938, or 1917), as opposed to “Austrian German.”
Second, if you take dialects, then obviously “Austrian German” never existed. The dialects of Northern Tirol or Vorarlberg were much different from those around Vienna.
Third, the standard version of any language is always to an extent artificial. This is at least as much true of Russian as of German. In Germany it was created by the spontaneous need to be understood by as many people as possible, so Luther’s version (which was mutually intelligible with both northern and southern dialects) was easy to spread, and then there was a snowballing effect. It was not designed by government officials etc.
I’d say a fair number of young Serbs are blond. Not so many as a place like Sweden, of course, but not so low a number where it would be particularly striking.
I wonder if it could even be increasing, through sex selection. But low TFR might mean there are some weird trends there.
Stalin started his career where he left off, as Lenin’s henchman. Once he had totally amalgamated his power position within the Kremlin by the 1930’s, koronizatsiya ended. If Stalin was such a great Ukrainian father figure as you claim, why were so many Ukrainians murdered in the 1930’s? Why was the usage of the Ukrainian language curtailed during the 1930’s? Go back to the drawing board and come back with something more sane, Okay?…you’re clutching at straws, tovarishch.
Ukrainian differs from Russian as Dutch differs from German. It is further from Russian than are German dialects from standard German, or for example Swedish is from Danish or Latvian from Lithuanian.
No particular harsh measures are necessary.
The incorporation of the Ukraine into Russia and the end of state support for the Ukrainian language will suffice.
Harsh measures are in fact undesirable because they spark resistance and determination.
Just allow capitalism to do its work.
At most the state should set its thumb on the scales by generally preventing Ukrainian language mass media. But efforts to outlaw the use of the Ukrainian language would be very foolish.
As a successful example of this strategy you can look at the complete disappearance of the Low German and Scots languages.
Not a lot, but there are. My impression is there are way more blond Croats.
Low German went into decline over 500 years ago.
I doubt very much it had more in common with Swedish than High German given that Swedish is a North Germanic language and that today Dutch and German have more in common than Dutch does with Swedish.
Certainly in an alternate reality other parts of Germany could have undergone ethnogenesis as the Dutch did. Had the Hanseatic League not gone into decline perhaps.
I honestly haven’t seen a lot of Bosniaks, and so am somewhat ignorant of their physical characteristics. I cannot vouche for the relative frequency of the blond and blue-eyed phenotype when compared to Serbs. I don’t doubt there are some blonds though, since after all the Greeks have some, with probably only slight Slavic admixture.
In fairness to Stalin he was an equal opportunity murderer.
The specific reason for curtailing the usage of Ukrainian in the 1930s was the same as all other non-Russian languages in the USSR. Russian was the language of command of the Red Army, and the military threat to the USSR was increasing. During the same period defense spending increased and Tsarist-era military practices were reintroduced.
If Stalin had really been an opponent of Ukrainianism then he would’ve dissolved the Ukrainian SSR and the Communist Party of Ukraine.
I saw one at a university. He was a fanatic Muslim, wearing robes and with a long beard. Because he was blonde and blue-eyed (and also tall and big), he looked like a Viking.
Here you go, being consistently wrong as usual.
Galician schoolchildren achieved nearly 100% literacy in the standardized Ukrainian language by 1910, no Soviets were involved at all.
In Russian Empire Ukraine, education, printing of school books, etc. began in earnest under the Central Rada and under Skoropadsky, prior to Soviet rule. Prior to that, after the lifting of restrictions in 1905, Ukrainian populist activists had been setting up “reading rooms” for peasants and spreading literacy etc. The Soviets simply allowed this natural process to continue until they changed their minds and cracked down in the 1930s.
Because it’s not really written (except in text messages etc.), there’s no literature, not even a standardized transliteration. To standardize a language, you’d need some version of it elevated above the others. Usually there is some artificial element to it, like a few literate people deciding among themselves what to use. I think it was more organic in Germany than in Hungary, for example, in the latter there was a movement of literary figures led by a famous poet to “renew” the language, which resulted in the creation of thousands of words (hundreds of which stuck).
A few days ago, Russia’s ambassador to the UK was bragging on twitter (#RussianThreat) that according to the IISS, Russia’s 2018 defense spending fell to $45.3 billion: Less than Germany, France, and the UK. Of course, “look how weak we are” is a really stupid talking point, but this seems to be the official kremlin line now.
Although, wikipedia says the IISS’s 2018 estimate for Russia is $63.1 billion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
And at any rate, nominal figures are very misleading, since Russia pays its troops 3x less and manufactures its arms 3x more cheaply than the USA and W. Europe.
I don’t speak Ukrainian, although I can understand most of it. The preference to speak Russian by most Ukrainians is too ingrained. I generally don’t communicate in English with non-English speakers if I can avoid it – it is often embarrassingly bad, the classical ‘500-English word vocabulary‘ poseurs rub me the wrong way. Plus, most of the nuance is lost.
I am not sure what it means to be ‘solidly Ukrainian‘. As I pointed out to you, the Russian link is too old, too strong, and potentially too beneficial to let go. Kharkov will still be a Russian-speaking city in 2030, and that has consequences.
I don’t know, have they? What you usually get over time is more realistic, accommodating attitudes. In 1945 nobody hated Germans more than the French or the Czechs, it lasted a few years, then it subsided, today there is a complete different dynamic. When you are close in language and culture, it happens even faster. But you are right about Slavs holding grudges, my grandma never visited Budapest. I think it is a lovely city, things go back to normal over time. Ukrainians will be do the same.
If we apply the same ratio to Russian defense spending that exists between PPP and nominal GDP then real Russian defense spending is $177bn. The same formula puts China at $441bn.
Japanese and South Korean defense spending are also higher if we use the same formula, though obviously not to the same degree.
Japan and South Korea both rise to $50bn under this formula. Might be less applicable to them however. South Korea imports a lot of its weapons, and Japanese weapons costs tend to be high owing to short production runs.
Otoh Japanese naval construction, a large portion of its procurement, is quite efficient. The Maya-class destroyer is 35% cheaper in real terms than the flight III Arleigh Burke class and 20% cheaper in nominal terms.
You can’t have it both ways – you seem to be talking out of two sides of your mouth here. I’m totally unfamiliar with the way Low German disappeared, but I’d guess that it was a dialect of Great German. Ukrainian is not a dialect of Russian, but a separate language. Scottish, no doubt underwent a great loss due to the hampering of the written Scottish word, over a long period of time. Russificaton of the Ukrainian language has also been going on over a long period of time, with only perhaps 20% who prefer Russian over Ukrainian today. Many Russian speaking Ukrainians prefer to send their kids to Ukrainian language schools today and are stalwart Ukrainian patriots. The fact that they choose to communicate in Russian over Ukrainian can best be described as the inability to rid themselves of a bad habit. 🙂
Sure, using Russian over Ukrainian helped forge a sense of unity during a war period within the Soviet army. But it went way beyond just that. The language policy was always the cornerstone of an intense Russification that engulfed Ukraine for many centuries. The dynamism of the Ukrainian people and their tenacious clinging to their native language is truly incredible if you study the intense pressure to assimilate into the dominant Russian/imperial culture and use of the Russian language. I don’t think that you’re really very qualified to discuss the intricacies of this dimension?
That’s a question of semantics. You could even say Russian was a dialect of Ukrainian, if Ukraine conquered Russia and Ukrainian speakers were more numerous.
You could also easily assert that Dutch was a dialect of German, or that it was a separate language.
It’s also easy to envision an alternate reality where Russian and Ukrainian would end up as one and the same, or where Ukrainians would only comprise a small western part of present-day Ukraine.
Most Ukrainians are content with the current language policy in Ukraine. From a year ago:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-truth-behind-ukraine-s-language-policy
What’s important is not what a Swede or a Ukie living in the USA think should be the policy in Ukraine, but what Ukrainians in Ukraine think it should be.
The Ukraine is a separate state from Russia which is now further choosing a Western economic and cultural orientation over a Russian one. Furthermore, the Ukrainian language received varying levels of state support in the Soviet period preceding independence without which the position of Ukrainian would have deteriorated more in the past century.
Consider if the Ukraine were part of Russia today.
The greatest opportunities would naturally lie with the Russian language, so most ambitious Ukrainians would primarily speak Russian. Indeed many ambitious Ukrainians would in fact live in Moscow.
The language of instruction in schools and the army would be Russian. Perhaps there would be some bilingual schools to placate obsessive Ukrophiles and even solely Ukrainian language private schools (and home schooling).
Most popular culture consumed would also be in the Russian language, further strengthening the position of Russian.
If we return to the example of the United Kingdom, the Scots language disappeared completely. Welsh still exists because the Welsh language is far more different from English than Scots is (and there were never clearances in Wales). But Welsh still declined dramatically, and it would still be in decline had not retarded efforts been adopted in the mid-20th century to revive that awful language (which sounds like a cat being strangled).
The position of Ukrainian with respect to Russian is like that of Scots with respect to English. In a full political and economic union the position of Ukrainian would gradually diminish unless actively supported by a retarded state (for instance, a Bolshevik state).
This is more or less what happened in the United Kingdom, France, and Italy.
For a minority language to survive with a weak language border there must be political support. There were even fears in Quebec that French would disappear prior to the Quiet Revolution.
Whether or not the hypothetical Ukrainians of a Greater Russia would still consider themselves to be Ukrainians (in the distant future, not today obviously) is a different matter. In France regional ethnicities disappeared, but in the UK they remain and add color to the country. Italy is somewhere in between.
Last week, Pompeo announced a new policy, promising that the USA will militarily intervene in a conflict between China and the Philippines over tiny islands in the South China Sea.
I’ve noticed that in general, US elites seem to be much more willing to contemplate war with China than with Russia. Even Russia super-hawks like McCain completely ruled out military intervention in Ukraine, but the prospect of a South China Sea conflict with China is typically treated rather casually by US politicians and media.
This may in part be due to the USA being more willing to fight a naval conflict than one on land. But I don’t think this fully explains it: If there were some tiny islands claimed by both Russia and Ukraine, would the USA declare a willingness to intervene militarily to prevent Russia from seizing them? I don’t think so.
I suspect the difference is that Russia has nuclear parity with the USA, but China is at a >10-1 nuclear disadvantage. Therefore, US elites don’t have much fear that a conventional war with China might escalate to a strategic nuclear exchange.
If so, no matter how large its GDP, China will arguably never really qualify as a superpower until it is a nuclear superpower.
That would also support my theory that Russia today is actually more powerful relative to the USA, than the USSR was in the 1950s and 60s (when the USSR’s strategic position was the reverse of Russia’s today: conventional military parity but massive nuclear inferiority).
What about Hungarians?
For example, Viktor Orban and his family, are almost like half-Indians (especially the Irish Prime Minister).
But flight attendants of Wizz Air – on flights I remember, they usually look just like Austrian girls.
I don’t think there’s a big difference in the prevalence of blonds between Hungary and Austria. Northern Germany is a different matter, but South Germans and Austrians are swarthier.
However, in Hungary there is also a distinct minority who look somewhat Gypsy, but aren’t. I suspect it’s a legacy of all the efforts to settle down the Gypsies (with Hungarian spouses to boot), which was partly successful. Some Gypsies (the Romungro) now look lighter (as a legacy of those marriages), whereas there is a number of Hungarians who look somewhat Gypsy.
Regarding Orbán. There’s a persistent, though in all likelihood false, rumor that he’s (part?) Gypsy. So even to Hungarian eyes he looks a little Gypsy. This despite his blue eyes. Here’s his picture at 18 (I hope it works):
https://cdn.nwmgroups.hu/s/img/i/1411/20141127orban-viktor.jpg
The Kosovo Muslims which were planning to kill the (brown skin) Israeli football team in 2016, after they had returned from a fighting jihad against non-Islamist Arabs in Syria.
They look like they were dressing for a cosplay event for HBO television series “Vikings”
https://i.imgur.com/1cTMLeC.jpg
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kosovo-israel/kosovo-jails-eight-for-plotting-to-attack-israeli-soccer-team-in-2016-idUSKCN1IJ1NP
АК: Removed second image as it wasn’t rendering.
Chinese elites themselves have noticed this. See this op-ed from China’s Global Times: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1111711.shtml
Not sure about the ’50s and ’60s bit however. Compare the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia to Russia’s very restrained approach with the Ukraine. The USSR of that era lacked strategic parity with the USA, but it had the capability to overrun Western Europe (especially before the credible French nuclear deterrent).
Your standardized Galician language is very different from standard (Soviet) Ukrainian, and vastly different from the actual dialects spoken in eastern Ukraine and southern Russia.
Your load of stinking bullshit would be factually correct if you replaced ‘Ukraine’ and ‘Ukrainian’ everywhere in your drivel with ‘Galicia’ and ‘Galician’.
Galicia had nothing in common with Ukraine for 800 years, until Stalin annexed your shithole into the Ukrainian SSR after WWII. (I won’t count the 1939 exercise.)
Facial features of people on Wizz Air are for me, when I have been on the plane, usually making me think I am safely with Austrian people.
Lol or maybe I have the unconscious desire to imagine I am with Austrians, and not risking my life on a lowcost Hungarian flying gypsy plane.
But I mean e.g. guys like 0:05 and 0:17 are very Austrian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr6grp_u8LM
Yeah, that’s a given. But why don’t the Swiss standardize their language a bit, compose some novels about the existential crisis of rearing cows and the beauty of alpine sunrises, teach of bit of their language in primary school? The usual nation-building things.
I confess I don’t know much about the Swiss German mentality.
Second reason:
The US elites view China as a credible long-term challenger to America’s sole full-spectrum superpower status, while Russia is a gas station that is going to collapse any day now. (Though even if it doesn’t, who cares. It will still be far weaker than the US for the foreseeable future.)
Moreover, the US window of opportunity to check China’s ascent is rapidly diminishing.
Certainly Steve Bannon was thinking along those lines, aggressively predicting a war between China and the US in 5-10 years (that was 2016).
Hi, Anatoly.
This will likely come as a surprise.
I want to say sorry to you for making fun of your mental illness and for my rants about you generally. I strongly disagree with your politics, but I expressed that in a cruel, uncivilized, hyperbolic way. And I’ve been feeling guilty about that. Hence this message. I’ve had serious illnesses myself, and I definitely failed the Golden Rule test while dealing with you. That’s not how I would have wanted to be talked to or about because of a political disagreement. Of course you have the moral right to say the same things about me.
Again, sorry.
Glossy
AK: Thank you, Glossy. I replied to your Facebook message. I have no interest in feuding with you and will be happy to bury the hatchet.
PS. Context for readers: I had a short period (a few months) of anxiety/panic attacks during 2013. This was pharmacologically cured. I do not know whether or not that constituted a “mental illness”, but it has not been an issue since. I am certainly free of any mental illnesses atm, at any rate diagnosed ones.
You are right, that’s roughly the perception in Washington. The problem is that it is a made-up abstraction based on using faulty categories.
The dominant global powers have historically been all over the map: compact ethnic states, meandering sea-based ’empires’, religious fanatics on a salvation binge, nomads only interested in burn-kill-and-pillage, the British Empire that spread over the planet like an out-of-control commercial enterprise. The ‘super-powers‘ have always come in all shapes and colours, why would it be different today? For god’s sake, Venice was considered a ‘super-power’ in its day, the categorization today is too simple-minded.
China is a challenger, but not in a ‘super-power‘ sense that would look like US-Soviets circa 1945-90, or Britain-Germany. The issue with using the wrong categories is that people end up focusing on wrong things and reality passes them by. US challenge is internal – its slow demographic and infrastructure dissolution, its cultural exhaustion, the unrelenting lazyness of most of its population to do actual useful work. Planting a flag on Spratly islands doesn’t do anything.
Jon0815 is right that Russia’s military position is stronger than during the Cold War. It has lost its periphery and the costs that come with it. It has no ideology and so no need to save face by doing stupid stuff like 1956 Hungary, 1968 Czech… It has an excellent resources-to-people ratios. It is in a compact, tight defensive position. It can destroy any enemy.
If I would advise Washington, I would say ‘wait’. Russia has internal psychological problems and whenever left alone it eventually self-destructs. It lacks a long-term loyal core. For a country its size that is dangerous, sooner a later a post-modernist wacko pops up and starts doing the opposite because he is overtaken by the endless ennui of the Russian steppes. Putin is clearly trying to internally generate this required core loyalty and steadiness – with some success. That is the main reason West cannot stand him, if Russia loses its flaky instability, the game is over for any hope of Western global dominance. But that is a big If.
Firstly, there are more Ukrainians conscious of their ethnic identity today than ever before. I don’t understand why you or anybody else reading this blog would think that somehow, miraculously, Ukrainians would want to give up on their own national aspirations today or in the future, especially as their pro western orientation seems to be helping them slowly get out of the rut that they’re in? I mean, there’s absolutely nothing to indicate that an abrupt about face is in the cards and seems to be only a personal projection of futile and head in the ground Russophiles. It’s a listless pipe dream Thorfinnsson, something eligible for the dustbin of history. And secondly, as I’ve already indicated:
What’s important is not what a Swede or a Ukie living in the USA thinks should be the policy in Ukraine (or a Russia living in Moscow), but what Ukrainians in Ukraine think it should be.
The opposite might be true.
The Denzel Washington movie on Malcolm X depicted a blonde, blue eyed Muslim, who is presented as changing Malcolm’s collective negative imagery of Whites.
Like I said, Serbs and “Bosniaks” (Slavic Muslims from Bosnia) are ethnically the same with religion as a main differentiating factor. To a certain extent, the Croats can be thrown into this mix as well. (Croats having different non-Slav historical/cultural experiences from the Bosniaks and Serbs).
As is true among other Slavs, Serbs and Bulgarians en masse have different looks. Some can look quite Slavic, with blonde hair and blue eyes, with others having a darker look.
I don’t expect Ukrainians (or the Ukrainian state) to change their opinions and plans because of my views. That would be a ridiculous expectation to say the least.
I’ve made my own views on nationality very clear. Small nationalities sufficiently similar to larger, neighboring ones ought to disappear owing to the benefits of scale. That those who identify with these smaller nations tend to object to this is hardly surprising.
What a Russian living in Moscow thinks, at least what one Russian in particular living in Moscow thinks, is however relevant. Fortunately for proponents of the Ukrainian Idea that Russian does not share my views.
I’ll close in noting that what Ukrainians in the Ukraine think is in fact less relevant to this question than what people in Moscow, Berlin, Washington, etc. think. And that reality is why I’m not a friend of preserving small nations in general.
Keeping in mind that Kiev regime controlled Ukraine is far from monolithic – relations with Russia included.
Don’t count on any abatement of state war propaganda against Russia. The UK needs a war to keep their shitty little country together when Brexit makes it an impotent pariah state and its colonies Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales exercise their peoples’ rights to self-determination and break away. CIA needs a war to short-circuit international investigation of CIA’s crimes against humanity of systematic and widespread torture, medical experimentation, banned biological weapons (Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever in Afghanistan, the Lugar Center in Georgia,) and murder.
https://sputniknews.com/world/201903041072947977-skripal-integrity-initiative-statecraft/
In case there’s any doubt that CIA’s on board, dig a little deeper into pukes like Kramer. The article says Kramer worked for the Department of State. Yeah. Right. CIA parachuted him into State DRL after Abu Ghraib broke. The Committee Against Torture raised “the longest list of issues I’ve ever seen,” according to a staffer, and singled out a mind-boggling eight (8) of them for urgent follow-up, confidential investigation, and possible public reporting of independent findings. Other UN treaty bodies, charter bodies, and special procedures converged on CIA torture, and a special rapporteur termed it systematic and widespread, the threshold for crimes against humanity. CIA stuffed Kramer in there to stonewall and recite meaningless lawyer-nonsense like, “The US does not torture,” roboticly over and over. At the review the preeminent international experts of the CAT made fun of him over it. Later Kramer was one of the spies Russia caught and asked to question under mutual legal assistance agreements. Kramer got involved in framing Russia when he worked for CIA as John McCain’s ventriloquist (Congressional staff jobs are a common form of ‘dotted-line report.’ It’s how CIA controls the legislature day-to-day.)
CIA and MI6 are joined at the hip on the Russia mass-hysteria project. Their war propaganda’s going to continue until CIA’s de-Nazified and razed.
Well, it’s clear that people in Wahington feel that helping Ukraine keep its distance from Russia is going to go on for quite some time. Actually, this has been Washington’s stance for quite a few years, 50+. In fact just 10 hours ago the great Russian colluder has come out supporting the extension of sanctions against Russia for its malfeasance in Crimea for another year:
Trump Extends U.S. Sanctions Against Russia Over Crimea
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/03/05/trump-extends-us-sanctions-against-russia-over-crimea-a64711
Given that there are roughly 10 million fewer people in Ukraine than in 1991, that would be quite a feat. ‘Consciousness‘ is a continuum metric that varies in intensity and over time. What you say is too fluid to mean much.
I disagree with Thorfinnsson about small nations since I come from one. I also prefer an independent and well-managed Ukraine in stable borders and without internal chaos. If it is in EU, so much better, but as country that has European mentality, not just some wild dreams. Today’s Ukraine is none of those things. Even the constant ‘but Galicia, Kiev and the West are improving‘ argument goes against what Ukraine needs to be successful. This is not who screws whom inside Ukraine and a winner-take-all triumphalism of the Galician Maidanistas will inevitably backfire. Europe will not touch this sh..t with a 10-foot pole because it will not work.
There is a loud Western faction that encourages this crazy behaviour – you can call them neo-cons, ethnic fanatics, Russo-phobes, whatever. They go to Kiev and smirk at how good it is that the hated ‘Russkies’ are suffering. These nut-cases have no power to help Kiev and are the usual transient idiots who nobody will remember a generation from now. They don’t care about most Ukrainians, they don’t even think about them, they think in terms of maps, bases, arms spending, and the next ‘conference’ in some 5-star retreat. It is a mistake to hitch Ukraine’s future to these people.
Sure. The US Government is possessed of a pathological, irrational Russophobia which looks to be structurally entrenched.
And even in the absence of that it’s not like it would follow that it is in American national interests to encourage the destruction of Ukrainian independence. I’d possibly support throwing the Ukraine to the wolves to get a Russian alliance against China, but that ship has sailed.
Thus the Ukrainian Idea advances.
I’ve suggested in the past some sort of West Slavic confederation.
It’s a mostly moot point today given that all three West Slavic countries are members of the European Union and NATO, unless it would provide some sort of advantage within the EU’s byzantine political procedures.
I really think that you’re too mesmerized by the old trope that the ‘ultra-nationalist’ Galicians are running the show now in Kyiv and that their influence is all pervasive. To this day, can you honestly name even one oligarch that is most influential within Galicia? And we all know that the oligarchs yield a lot of influence within Ukraine. Yes they are a very vocal regional minority within Ukraine, but do they really exert any real political clout within the whole country? Actually, it’s difficult to even name any politicians in Kyiv that are of Galician background, although I’m sure that there are some that swell in the lower and middle ranks of government operatchiks.
The current ongoing Ukrainization of their media for instance is very organic, requires little interference from the state and is based on a relatively large consensus. The moderators of the biggest media outlets simply switched – last year they were still speaking Russian, but now speak Ukrainian (they had strong passive knowledge all along or were bilingual).
Btw, Ukrainian and Belarussian are practically identical like Danish and Norwegian. 🙂
An optimal size for a nation-state is 4 to 15 million homogeneous people. It allows for a more direct democracy and a large enough internal market.
Larger entities spin out of control and the opposite happens: small well-organized groups take over and take advantage of the chaos. The capitol cities get too big and dominant, populated by self-serving class of sinecure seeking insiders who tend to despise the rest of the country.
Smaller than 3-4 million people is too small to have enough internal variety, but it works too.
You seem to prefer efficiency and power projection, my goals are less ambitious.
I used ‘Galician‘ as a place-holder for the Western and Central Ukrainians. I have also not used the term ‘ultra-nationalist’, and I would never use it. I see nationalism as a good thing, so more the better. But one has to be conscious of other people’s ‘nationalism’.
What undermined the 20th century nationalism in Europe were endless mutual fights – we ended up without ‘nationalism’ as a political force. That gave us this globalist sh..t, migrants marching in and we are all worse off. That’s why I criticise the sandbox fights among different ‘nationalisms’, they hurt us all. Who wins are the globalist nation hating elites. But I know it is hard to refrain from attacking each other – it seems to be a built-in Achilles heel of nationalism.
Wrong again.
Until 1772 Galicia and the Right Bank (everything up to the Dnipro river) were both part of Poland. In 1772 Galicia became part of Austria while the Right Bank became part of Russia.
Galicia was split from the rest of Ukraine for 167 years, not including the brief time in 1918-1919 when the two parts were united.
Thanks for showing off your ignorance again.
Shutup you lying cretinous faeces. Have you listened to Gordon and several others?…or the most popular shows?
Now watch this video, everything this guy (Zelensky) says to his fans and to the reporter is in Russian, clips from his show in Russian, the scumbag Kolomoisky is of course saying everything in Russian, only the excerpts from his political advertisement are in this artificial fake sack of shit language
My guess is that when he can speak as he wants to a foreign audience ( this UK reporter) he chooses what is real and best -i.e Russian
There are too many examples of people even doing lessons in Russian, even if imposed on them an Ukrainian textbook(which they quickly discard for a Russian one anyway(, Ukrainian internet is still almost universally an extension of RUnet
Guys, I’m very sorry , I completely forgot about it- the 5th of March is the anniversary of the tragic passing of the father of the nation, Josef Stalin, in 1953.
Of course I’m referring to “Ukraine” here of which he is the father to this bastard transgender child
Please join me for a 10 minute silence at 15:00 GMT time ( a suitable neutral one for this audience) on the 6th dedicated to this docile and funny and witty man
Thankyou in advance
Hey sit not far from the centre of world population (probably Bangladesh) and a little South of Asia’s. With good communications, they will become service hubs. Dubai and Singapore have shown the way.
I agree, but in order to safeguard themselves against larger nations these small ones ought to be confederated in some way. Kind of like Austria-Hungary.
It’s literally Anglo-Saxon. The Varangian AS’s were given lands there.
‘10 minute of silence?‘ …damn deviationists!
I am doing at least an hour, maybe more…and I am reporting anyone who doesn’t join in.
I just find him unsavory. He seems to piggyback on the holocaust a lot, and is rewarded for it. The way he referenced Brandt kneeling as an example of regional reconciliation is weird. Brandt had Ostpolitik, but him kneeling was about the ghetto uprising, not really about contemporary Poles. And the word “regional” and much of his other vocabulary, like “the other”, reads like a glossary of globalism.
He styles himself an expert in religious toleration. His credentials: he is from the Balkans. If he were older, he possibly would have been harassing or killing Serbs. I think we should take the Balkans as a warning, and not elevate its younger cohorts as philosophers above us. I doubt he is living there now, or will ever choose to. His rhetoric is all self-promotion.
I’m sure there are worse, like his Zimbabwean co-winner who having joined the Flemish Youth Council to learn Dutch was elected to the chair of it, to be consulted by the government about problems concerning Flemish youth. She should be in the harem of Shaka Zulu. But Kusmic doesn’t have the right phenotype for that sort of rhetoric.
For you and Thorfinnsson, and anyone else who missed the celebration in Ukraine:
https://cont.ws/uploads/posts2/665851.jpg
Julia Ioffe, Bigoted Hypocrite
Re: https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1102689416664018944
A video which deals with the subject:
https://therealnews.com/stories/ilan-omars-denunciation-of-israel-lobby-is-not-anti-semitism-phyllis-bennis
&
https://www.eurasiareview.com/19022019-putting-the-new-cold-war-and-russia-bashing-into-proper-perspective-oped/
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/02/18/putting-new-cold-war-into-proper-perspective.html
Excerpt –
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1102936802258812930
Oxana Syroid, no?
On his MSNBC show of this past evening, Chris Hayes had (especially by US mass media standards) a decent segment on the subject of Omar and anti-Jewish sentiment versus legit criticism of Israel with Jeremy Ben-Ami and Mehdi Hasan.
https://www.msnbc.com/all
As I previously noted, Ioffe comes across as a Judeocentric xenophobe, given her comments about Poland, Russia/Russians, Omar and how Christmas is observed in the US. She’s grossly overrated and extremely coddled.
Great analytical minds are successfully able to face their opposition in extended fair play exchanges.
The discussion regarding the Dutch reminded me, the 19th-century-built Walhalla memorial in Bavaria does in fact include several Dutch and Flemish figures – van Dyck, William of Orange, Erasmus, Grotius, etc.
Russia has the most expensive cost for building roads due to corruption, weather and isolation.
Austria basically means Ost Reich, it is in the name.
That is generalization unsupported by reality. The most expensive per mile projects have been in the Middle East, Japan and US. In US there is the infamous ‘Boston dig’, the most cost per mile in human history. There are a number of projects in Europe, incl. UK, that have also stood out for their inordinate per mile cost.
Are you just projecting based on what you think ‘could be’? Or do you really believe that there is no ‘corruption’ in the road building outside of Russia? This is another example of he ‘our sh..t doesn’t stink’ bs that we so often get instead of a reasoned analysis.
Poland is going the way of Ireland. There is an Irish psychologist who says the the Irish lost interest in and respect for religion as they got better off, and this is always the way. I know a few people who grew up in Ireland and on going back were horrified at how crass and materialistic the Irish had got in just a couple of decades. I also saw an Irish journalist being interviewed and she disputed the idea that the Church’s place in Irish life had declined due to pervert clergy. Churchgoing had been in very sharp decline long before all these scandal she insisted.
Poor people, and the Irish republic was the worst economic performer in Western Europe (and perhaps all Europe) for much of the 20th century, live in tight knit communities, where they are close to their family and church. Pauper countries also nationalistic. The poor individual might need to call on the resources of those institutions (a friend in need and all that). Obviously the rich person needs less help from others, and cares less about having a reputation as a contributing member. Poland is getting richer, as with Ireland that spells the end of religion and patriotism. Affluence is as acid to nation and faith. Hence gay marriage.
Once it was cocooned in a friendly alliance with no hostile countries on its borders for the first time ever, Germany got rid of anything to do with nuclear weapons such as nuclear power stations and even stated disarming conventionally. They want to be militarily helpless, because everyone has to defend Germany in the centre of nato territory whether they want to or not. American taxes payers for defending Germany. It may have nuclear weapons, but France has been turned into Germany’s girlfriend.
And the signs in Odessa are now confusing Youtuber I watch from Israel – signs are reported now randomly in either Russian or Ukrainian.
https://youtu.be/s44gU9JdjgE?t=53
Inverse relationship of wealth and religion is not always so simple, though.
In the other topic, AP was talking about Utah.
Of course, Utah is very rich and also very religious (Mormon).
There are may be religions which are designed more for consoling poor people, and others which are more suitable for rich people.
Do the people of Mitt Romney find it difficult to reconcile their high income with their high religion?
I never heard of her?…An interesting name.
Syroid – Thyroid? 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv8M66ZbAZA
The Hungarian Panzerwaffe is getting STRONK!er by the day. We’re going to blow the combined strength of the Ukrainian and Russian armies, and won’t be stopped until maybe the suburbs of Moscow and the downtown of Volgograd. Now there are strong rumors we’re about to buy 200 Puma IFVs.
Okay, together with the already bought Panzerhaubitze 2000s and Leopard 2A7+s, it’s going to be enough to form one heavy brigade. Hungary STRONK!
(Unless… our politicians have a nasty habit of not providing money to train the soldiers and to maintain the weapons they buy. Anyway, let’s not talk about this now.)
They’d need to elevate one regional dialect above the others. Moreover, it’d probably have to be the Zürich dialect, which is both the biggest city, and geographically close to the center of the German-Swiss area. (Certainly closer than Basel or Bern.) But Zürich is not very popular elsewhere in Switzerland, it’s a liberal city in a rather conservative country. The other liberal areas don’t like it either for being arrogant etc. or some rivalries (like Zürich and Basel football fans etc.) Some cantons have such divergent dialects that there’d be no mutual intelligibility anyway. (At least that’s true of the German speakers of Wallis.) These cantons would probably not join in the Allemanic effort anyway.
There are a number of other complications.
Switzerland is not monolingual. Currently the official languages are German, French, and Italian. In the French and Italian areas German is compulsory at school, while in the “German” parts pupils can choose French or Italian. (Because French and Italian are less useful to German speakers than vice versa, it’s already very unpopular.) Changing German to an artificial newly created Allemanic would be unpopular among the French and Italians. (As already mentioned, it’d already be unpopular among a large portion of the speakers of the various Allemanic dialects anyway. So probably it wouldn’t have a majority.)
Then there’s a very large number of immigrants now, many of them already naturalized, who wouldn’t be very enthusiastic anyway.
Then there’s a practical argument: as long as people learn and speak German, commercial relations with Germany and Austria are going to be excellent.
Maybe there are some other reasons, that’s what I could think of.
I came across this RT video:
https://www.rt.com/news/453146-hollywood-producers-seek-chinese-market/
It really is a good example of how confusing it is to figure out what kind of narrative RT is trying push. That video seems almost neocon, it does not like China wanting to control what Hollywood produces. Do the morons that run RT not know that Hollywood is hard leftist and that they are openly belligerent against Russia, on top of that China is not hostile to Russia, yet here they are making some kind of stupid yellow peril video.
Other typical problems include:
• Inadequate warstocks (of munitions)
• Insufficient logistical support (trucks, jerry cans, tankers, fuel stores, etc.)
• Insufficient supporting arms (every single NATO army lacks adequate infantry support for the armored formations)
NATO is a powerful military alliance but irrationally structured since nearly every state seeks to build, to the extent that it is possible, “complete” armed forces.
Smaller NATO members for instance nearly always seek to procure the most advanced combat aircraft they can afford. It would be better if they instead invested these resources into their armies, relying instead on the airpower of the USA and the wealthy states of Western Europe.
In similar fashion I’m not really sure why Germany considers it necessary to maintain a large navy including large surface combatants. Must be the extensive German coastline…
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/03/italy-shows-that-left-wing-populism-doesnt-work/
Does Marx f**k Hitler? Probably not.
It’s “Сыроед” when rendered in normal language, you dumb twat.
Can’t you even read a common Ukrainian surname? Are all Ukrainian “patriots” so far removed from their old country that they can’t even read the names of their ancestors?
(Don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question.)
Jesus was a proto-socialist Jewish proto-hippie, who says that rich people can’t enter to heaven, and who is 40 days without eating or showering in the desert outside Jerusalem.
I don’t think the wealthy Mitt Romney people, would have a good rapport with people like Jesus.
https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02264/romney_2264058b.jpg
Even if they later steal a black child so they can self-imagine about their generosity to poor black children.
https://www.deseretnews.com/images/article/hires/1276515/1276515.jpg
But more interesting, that Salt Lake City, Utah, became so nice and economically successful.
They need a program to settle Mormons in economically underachieving countries like Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oIDShz9VJo
German easy-going practicality, I guess.
I’m sure if Switzerland was populated by Slavic or Anglo people they’d go the full hog on Swiss linguistic exceptionalism, and practical considerations be damned. 🙂
Mormon politicians like Romney and Orrin Hatch are about as cucked as Irish ones.
It is interesting to think what might be the difference in church attendance though. Mormons are a bit more identitarian. They have what many deride as “magic underwear” which interestingly, the Sikhs also have. I think their church is more social and some see it as a means to networking and prosperity. But I wonder what the geographic attendance numbers for Mormons would be. It may be harder to identify as a Mormon (since it is not mainstream) than a Catholic. I’ll bet current, actual attendance is nowhere near as high as church attendance in the early ’80s in Ireland, possibly not even half.
Is this a joke? I hope it is, otherwise you’re even dumber than you seem.
Fun fact: the only object that was explicitly mentioned in the Gospels to have been made by Christ’s hands was a whip, which he promptly used to chase the kikes out of the Temple.
“Leftist Jesus” is a lie.
Volgograd is pretty far. Might need some sort of tank carrier to get there. Perhaps, the tanks could be shipped on trains, and the crews could fly commercial. Afraid tanks don’t fit into standard shipping containers, so sneaking them in will be a tricky op. Maybe they could rent one of those big planes, like the C-5 Galaxy or the An-124, and make a few dozen flights, storing the Leopolds in a hangar or warehouse, until the appointed day.
Land invasions can’t be expected to cover much more than 20 miles per day (roughly the rates achieved in Fall Gelb, Barbarossa, Desert Storm, and Operation Iraqi Liberation), and the Hungarian invasion of Russia will be opposed by determined enemy forces (ineffective and doomed as they may be).
Thus tank carriers won’t be required except perhaps for the assembly phase preceding the glorious offensive operations of the Honved.
https://www.rbth.com/articles/2010/10/20/what_drives_russias_astronomical_road_costs05041.html
The big dig was a unique project, beset by corruption for sure, but one can’t deny it has significantly beautified Boston.
I see that those 44 Leopards are just going to be replacing more than twice as many T-72Ms, while I suspect the Pumas will likewise replace BTR-80s in a similar ratio.
You’re not going to revise Trianon at this rate.
RT is run by liberals.
I was joking. There’s a reason I placed a smiley face at the end of my comment. Get it, now? Don’t get so bent out of shape.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/502nd_Heavy_Panzer_Battalion
As you can see from the not at all cherry picked historical record of elite German space marines mowing down hordes of Russian zerglings, each Leopard 2 will be 13 times as effective as the T-72M that it replaces, so the combat power of the Honved’s invincible armored formations will increase six times.
This will also reduce the logistical tail of the Honved to further facilitate deep offensive operations into Russian territory and make it less vulnerable to partisan warfare.
A conservative assessment of the capabilities offered by this acquisition is that Hungary will destroy the Russian Army after approximately 100 days of combat. That said, we cannot rule out a much faster victory brought up by a cascading collapse of Russia’s complex systems brought about by the decisive operations of invincible Honved.
One thing is certain: Russia is doomed
My first paragraph was the antithesis of practicality – basically love of canton and hatred of other cantons.
Their national character was formed by the mountains: difficult to move armies, so impossible for any conqueror (“Mongols,” “Turks,” etc.) or for any one warlord (“king” or “tsar”) to conquer. On the other hand, the guys in the neighboring valley might speak a dialect similar to yours, and you much prefer them over further aliens, but you don’t trust them enough to cooperate too deeply with them, nor is there a need for it. So, some kind of confederation is okay, but a centralized government, or even language, is unnecessary.
Why Volgograd? It seems to me that the genuine Hungarian patriot has to begin with a revenge for Battle of Lechfeld.
I hope they buy enough treads, so they can quickly reverse and take Calais, in preparation for the amphibious invasion of England. From there it will of course be Iceland, then on to America.
Let me take this opportunity to say, I, for one, welcome our new Hungarian overlords.
So have a lot of corrupt projects everywhere. The article is from 2010 and says that there is a bit of ‘apples and oranges’ comparison. I was pointing out that overall it’s hardly all that different from Boston, Dubai, Tokyo, even Prague.
Boston has a pre-bronze age subway system and old Czech buses connect downtown to the airport. The buses run on rails no less – it looks like a bad joke, the D-line has a strong pre-communist feeling, and that is a compliment. Maybe a bit more corruption could fix that.
As long as you don’t head north, you can enjoy the Panzerwaffe even with no training.
A few years back we had a high-level politician who wanted to send Slovak tanks to Budapest, and not for a friendly visit. Then they caught him pissing from a hotel window on the media people below, and Budapest was spared.
“I’ve made my own views on nationality very clear. Small nationalities sufficiently similar to larger, neighboring ones ought to disappear owing to the benefits of scale. That those who identify with these smaller nations tend to object to this is hardly surprising.”
Would you be in favor of North Germanic countries consolidating into one country? Perhaps even a common Scandinavian language?
How could I forget Ján Slota!
A top US commander says that the US should not sell the F-35 planes to Turkey.
They seem to be very upset about it.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/scaparrotti-says-to-not-sell-f-35-jets-to-turkey-amid-russian-missile-system-deal.html
Yes, though a common Scandinavian language is an obsolete proposal in light of the near universal English fluency throughout the Nordic region.
The idea that best practices will be universally adopted seems to be disproved by city subway systems, of which there are a large number internationally. Basically, any sort of infrastructure, like highway systems as well.
Many people working on the T (Boston’s mass transport system) used to retire with a full pension, when they were 40. You should see what their overtime system was like. And Boston has one of the oldest subways in the world – plenty of time to work out the kinks. During the Big Dig, some people on the payroll, when tracked down, were only 12 years old. Highway maintenance is multiples of some states, even those with bad winters.
On your way through Ukraine why don’t you pick up some Stugnas, those babies are only 20K per pop.
They were never as modern as the Leopard 2A7+, especially not by the time they first entered service with the Hungarian People’s Army. (Or maybe they entered service in the early 1990s?) At a minimum they’d need a major modernization. Anyway, their fate is unclear. There were some rumors of a modernization for them, but maybe it’d be too expensive. (Their armor is thinner than those in Russian or Ukrainian service, so it’d be more difficult to bring them up to anywhere near modern standards.)
As an aside note, our genius socialist-liberal coalition government in 2004 gave 77 T-72 MBTs to Iraq as a “gift.” In the early 1990s we still had over a thousand MBTs, admittedly most of them obsolete T-55s.
Ideally, a universal language would be designed from the ground up to have a grammar with built-in defenses against the liberal mind virus. Maybe, it would require speaking in historical allegories.
Whatever the case may be, I expect English and Swedish to not be good for this purpose, but perhaps they could be retooled.
The best defense against the liberal mind are authentic national cultures. Nothing universal. Universalism is a trap, it is a deracinating virus that feeds of people’s lazyness.
Looking at Hungary’s OOB, the country does not have any dedicated armored formations. There is a tank battalion attached to the 25th infantry brigade. The 5th infantry brigade does not have a tank unit attached.
It appears that the 11th tank battalion has 30 T-72s. The other remaining T-72s are in storage. So probably the plan is to completely reequip the 11th tank battalion with Leopard 2s.
This means that instead of only increasing the striking power of the Honved’s Panzerwaffe by a factor of six actually we can expect at least a 13-fold increase in striking power.
Realistically the T-72s should all be modernized. Older tanks are still quite as assault guns if they get modern reactive armor, and if equipped with modern tank guns they’re also useful antitank platforms (important against Russia as ATGMs are not very effective against the latest reactive armor packs). Hungary appears to have no effective antitank weapons so this should be strongly considered. A modernized T-72 in a hull down, camouflaged position remains a threat to the most modern MBTs. There ought to be enough T-72s in Hungary to equip both infantry brigades with a T-72 tank battalion. Poland, Croatia, and the Ukraine are all capable of economically modernizing T-72s.
The Leopard 2 order is enough for another tank battalion, which could be allocated to the infantry brigade expected to see heavier combat. Alternatively each infantry brigade could receive an over-sized Leopard 2 tank company.
Of course Hungary has an extremely limited defense budget. I do see that there are plans to increase defense spending as a share of GDP, and Hungary’s GDP continues to grow. Perhaps the funds are available.
Hungary is currently participating in some completely useless international missions that surely cost money, though who knows if Hungary is actually paying for these deployments. Plus it might not be wise to further antagonize Western Europe and the USA while building Orban’s “illiberal democracy”.
T-72M has worse turret armour than glacis – no point in hull-down position. Furthermore, Hungary probably has only training and downgraded, hopelessly outdated 125 mm APFSDS rounds. Likewise, it has primitive FCS so it would be a stationary, easy target.
There is an interesting series of texts by an ex-Hungarian Army tank officer Joszef Szekeres on T-34, T-54, T-55 and T-72 tanks – he ranks Soviet export ones above Czechoslovakian, in turn superior to Polish produced ones
PS: I never wrote that Plattdeutsch was similar to Swedish in 16th and 17th century – it was about Baltic, North and Hansa German. By the way, peculiarities of German regional dialects remain to this day – Hamburg sounds a lot different from Munich.
The plan is to increase the size of the army and create one new heavy brigade (based on the tank battalion and some other units) with all these new tanks, self-propelled howitzers, and IFVs, and have two new light brigades, basically infantry with all the obsolete Soviet tyekhnyika. I guess all the BTRs would go to the light brigades. I’m not sure if the T-72s are to stay with the light brigades, but I guess not.
I think the idea is that NATO provides us with security (except if there’s a world war), but it requires us to participate in the useless international missions, and also to build a somewhat useful military unit. (That’d be the heavy brigade.) But we also must be prepared for either the disintegration of NATO, or a military conflict within NATO (like between Greece and Turkey). In which case we need to be able to deter a potential aggression or bullying by a neighbor. The heavy brigade is good for that, too.
Attacking any neighbor is out of the question.
Of course’s there’s a point in a hull-down position. It makes the tank less visible and a smaller target.
And yes, I’m sure that the ammunition in storage is obsolete for anti-tank purposes. The tanks as presently configured are only suitable as assault guns and not as main battle tanks or even tank destroyers. And even that’s dubious without reactive armor upgrades.
No clue on the quality of training of Hungarian tank crews. Guessing not good.
The entire Hungarian Army only has five infantry battalions at present.
Is it planned to considerably increase the personnel strength of the army?
That’s because, although we unceasingly and strongly love each other with all brotherly NATO nations, we don’t love each other enough not to consider each other potential enemies in a potential war. We trust each other like no brothers trusted one another, but we still aren’t sure the others will have our backs when push comes to shove.
I just talked to some acquaintances, and they said they thought the most likely war would be against the US. We were preparing for WW3 during the Cold War, but the only conflict was the 1956 revolution against the USSR and the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. No one would be stupid enough to attack a NATO nation, and our neighbors want nothing from us, while we’re too weak to attack them anyway. (And this will stay so in the foreseeable future.)
The only potential conflict is due to our rejection of the multicultural ideology. The only likely war is thus a 1999 Serbia-style conflict, basically a US military punishment for some real or imagined sins. Anyone who attacked us would have to face the wrath of the US, the strongest power on the planet. But the US itself would find itself opposed by just a few Hungarian nationalists. It’s obvious they are the only power for who it’d be absolutely risk-free to attack us.
Therefore, I wouldn’t buy fighter jets: they are useless in most wars, or at least not more useful than lots of other things could be, especially air defense systems. The NASAMS we bought is especially good for such a war.
Yes, it’s still called the Eastern Empire.
Yes.
Some black comedian was showing pictures of Romney’s very large family and saying he would be the first real black president.
Reich means empire, but it also means realm, which is a more neutral word. Richard J. Evans makes a big fuss about how Germany didn’t change its official name to a republic and left it as “Reich.” But I don’t think it matters that much. Besides Austria, the German name of France also contains it (Frankreich), as well as the German word for kingdom (Königreich, literally “king-realm”).
You need a lot of money to train your soldiers well. Oh and for good training, you need large-scale exercises, which is impossible with only 30 obsolete and old tanks (half of which won’t even start at any given time).
The first female pilot in the US Air Force claims to have been raped… 20 years ago.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/06/sen-mcsally-ex-air-force-pilot-says-officer-raped-her.html
Thank you. I had thought Frankreich referred to Charlemagne’s empire. Always nice to learn something new.
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/03/05/1551776462000/Moving-past-the-soyabean-solution/
This is fairly remarkable–Marco Rubio blurted out that America needs an industrial policy.
Yeah, AFAIK, Frankreich means France.
Haha that pic with Spencer.
When you’re a hardcore Zionist but still thirsty af
The joke is that if Gypsy kids get bad marks in school, Washington will bomb us. We are a few steps aways from that, but honestly, I don’t find it implausible. We already get graded by Brussels and the State Department on everything from number of women in different positions, to how many bathrooms there are for what gender. Why measure it and publish rankings if there is no enforcement?
Modern liberalism is a mental disorder with heavy weapons. And there is no fury more irrational than the fury of barren, ageing spinsters, and their homo companions against the injustice of their own useless existence. We better be ready, Hillary II could win and there is no telling what the angry liberal armies would be capable off.
Kongeriket Norge, f.ex, has the same meaning.
You have shown that a successful politician can be publicly religious and family orientated although one might ask if any politician could get anywhere if he gave the impression he was neither. Romney was perhaps unfairly portrayed as a hypocrite selfishly tax dodging, because he is in fact wealthy and no one expects such people to feel strong obligations to the common run of society.
In the above piece the author tries to blame rigid traditional teachings. Maybe if the Mormons allowed women to become priests or blessed gay marriages they would do better? But no, in truth the Mormons are no more immune to the communal-bonds-dissolving effect of affluence than any other religion is.
Correct…really correct. Radical militant feminists also I would guess.
It did strike me the other day….has RT ever uttered a word of criticism against vermin like Khodorkovsky? He is a internationally known figure, unlike most notorious Russian liberasts
No it’s not.
Scandals within the Catholic Church in Ireland have caused the changes in attitudes there.
Poland is nominally Catholic- very low birth rate, much of the population living near nomadic -lifestyles….their “contribution” in Europe to the drug trade, human traffiking, prostitution , violent robbery, sex murders…is not very Catholic.
They recently hired someone who has been associated with Khodorkovsky and has refused to criticize him after her getting hired by RT:
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/03/01/i-want-to-serve-my-country-that-s-always-been-my-main-motivation
As that station has asked some comparatively worthy others to come on that station for free.
Latest Cohen-Batchelor Discussion
On the subject of a liberal to left of liberal historical slant that isn’t complete and periodically crops up with little if any high profile second guessing:
https://audioboom.com/posts/7193486-tales-of-the-new-cold-war-1-of-2-100-years-of-the-us-meddling-in-russian-affairs-stephen-f-co
&
https://audioboom.com/posts/7193485-tales-of-the-new-cold-war-2-of-2-100-years-of-the-us-meddling-in-russian-affairs-stephen-f-co
Concerning the US Civil War, the Confederacy was the upstart against the established Union. At the time, Britain and France were showing some favoritism for the Confederacy, with Russia deciding to support the established Union – well short of actually getting involved in the US Civil War.
Stephen Cohen says that many in the West are unaware of the US involvement in the Russian Civil War against the Bolsheviks. I respectfully counter his thought by noting that over the decades, there has been a generation of US academics (typically left of center), who comparatively bloat the image of a Russian Civil War foreign intervention against the Bolsheviks, relative to the foreign support for the Bolsheviks. A point that finds me in agreement with the late Richard Pipes:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/25062018-remembering-richard-pipes-oped/
To a noticeable extent, the Bolshevik takeover amounted to a German supported coup. Western involvement in the Russian Civil War was primarily limited to protecting foreign business interests on territory that was in a civil conflict. Poland’s Pilsudski’s refused an alliance with the Whites – instead opting for a then secret agreement with the Bolsheviks. This is a historical fact and not an opinion. See:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/08042016-fuzzy-history-how-poland-saved-the-world-from-russia-analysis/
The stated (in the Batchelor-Cohen discussion) 8,000 US troops in Russia had little involvement in the Russian Civil War. In the West, there were elements, who if anything supported the Bolsheviks. In the Soviet era, much propaganda was made of that US presence. The post-Soviet period in Russia has seen a more balanced approach.
Contrary to John Batchelor, the British support for the Whites proved to be noticeably limited. Related, is this piece which first appeared in a Russian based (not US) venue:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/03/22/reexamining-russias-past.html
Excerpt –
On the subject of US meddling in the 1996 Russian presidential election, Cohen and Batchelor overlook an aspect brought up in this piece:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/02/21/overhyping-us-russian-differences.html
Excerpt –
The Franks would be Frankenreich.
Reich/rike/rige/rijk can be neutral, indicating a realm of any size, but it is also commonly applied to large states like the Romans or the Achaemenids which may be where the confusion originates.
Correct, was thinking of the roots of that name.
There is now a lot of talk about replacing our Gripens with F-35s. I’m half-hearted about it.
The F-35 is (contrary to what its detractors say) a pretty modern and good fighter, though perhaps worse and simultaneously more expensive than it could have been, but it’s not bad. It’s not even that horribly expensive. But… the Gripen is good enough. Why spend a lot of money to improve something which we’ll never need?
The only possible advantage is that it’ll make it more difficult for the US to get into serious conflict with us: we could then provide the technology to a third party. I guess the Russians and Chinese would die to take a closer look at one of these.
Anyway, buying F-35s means that likely it’s all in the good old Hungarian tradition of buying expensive toys and then neither equipping them nor paying for their maintenance and the proper training for the crew. They didn’t buy any missiles for the Gripens for a long time. Then they bought a few, which was barely enough to get practice.
The establishment of the Hungarian-Japanese common border in the Far East has been postponed. Anatoly can sigh in relief.
However, if China had 6000 warheads and 1500 strategic warheads, they wouldn’t even be thinking about this.
…
It’s true America has invaded its ally before – Panama, but in that case Noriega was probably trafficking cocaine and George H. W. Bush was still alive.
Objectively, America does not usually go to war even with enemy countries which burn their flags, like Syria, Iran, etc.
For such a world dominant superpower as America is, with the military budget larger than all other countries of the world combined – America is an unusually non-aggressive country, in the military sense.
Even the British with a much weaker empire in the 19th century, were going to military conflicts far more often than America does today.
In the case of a war, Hungary’s airspace could be patrolled by Poland’s air force (and perhaps even Slovakia’s new planes). So Hungary should “free-ride” from Poland’s air force.
Which seems to be what Hungary plans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Air_Force#Current_inventory
It has only 12 inferior planes. With this number, it is not intended to go to war, but seems to be only a symbolic force, which prevents complete retirement of the airbases and commanders. Maybe they can use them for airshows, or to film aerial videos of UFOs?
Any chances they are in English and on the Internet?
A common Scandinavian language would to somewhat insulate the Scandinavian cultural climate from outside influences. Which could be good or bad, depending on the situation. It would also serve as an identity marker.
Kan du forstå Norsk eller Dansk?
I’ve made my own dictionary of Russian nouns, which is 526 pages and 1074 KB as a word doc. I’d like to post it online where it can be viewed by anyone with the link- what is a good site to do that?
Personally, I think Romney is not so bad.
If you watch Romney’s presidential debates, and ignore his violent desire to recreate a Cold War – he is generally intelligent. His IQ is obviously higher than other presidential candidates for many years, is significantly higher than Obama (or Trump), and he has more economic knowledge and political theory than in our politicians.
Just the distance of his religious culture, from the unwashed proto-socialist Middle Eastern proto-hippie who was the historical Jesus, is quite amusing.
His family were actually refugees from Mexico. His family in Mexico today, are really Mexicans speaking Mexican Spanish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKxW2MXTocQ
Why?
He was a commander in the 1980s and maybe 1990s, then a teacher at the military academy. So maybe his opinions are not totally up-to-date. But in general he had a very good reputation, so maybe he’s still very relevant.
Also, like all other Hungarian military commanders, he never actually participated in an actual war. Though he did participate in many large-scale exercises with the Warsaw Pact, so he might know more than current military commanders in Hungary and maybe in many other countries. Probably current or past American or Russian commanders are more knowledgeable.
Not so minor things to ignore IMO, as well as his pathetic flip flopping on Trump.
This guy has made the rounds and really sucks:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/russias-repulsive-new-insult-to-the-children-of-the-innocent-briton-it-murdered
He didn’t make RT’s list for such manner:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/24102018-rt-russophobe-rating-challenged-oped/
This would be repeated flip flopping on Trump.
First he seeks out, and receives, Trump’s endorsement in 2012.
Then he condemns Trump during the Republican Primary, but after the election he seeks a cabinet position.
He accepts Trump’s endorsement for Senate in Utah, then after winning he pens an op-ed slamming Trump ostensibly about Trump’s naughty words but in reality because he was outraged that Trump ordered a withdrawal from Syria.
Romney is, as Trump said in 2015, a “mixed up man”. As was his father George who was guilty of very similar antics in the 1960s.
1) helps me learn
2) some English-to-Russian dictionaries have words/phrases that others don’t, or do a better job listing and translating the different definitions of an English word, and it’s more convenient to have them all in one spot
I’ve also made fairly complete lists of Russian verb pairs and some other things
Here’s a link to the current doc on Word Online
https://1drv.ms/w/s!AoO6BEd8A63D9gVlOvhPOj9ZwibN
Sacradence: A societal condition whereby decadence goes from being tolerated as natural vice to being elevated as the new sanctity. Homo and tranny decadence went from being tolerated to being consecrated as the highest spiritual value in the West, though in neck-and-neck competition with Jew-Worship and Negro-Worship. Sacradence is far more dangerous than decadence. With decadence, at least you know vice is vice. With Sacredence, poison is mistaken as medicine, not unlike how the poisonous opioids peddled by the Sackler family came to sold as good medicine.
Too much decadence is bad but it’s far far worse when people mistake decadence as the new holiness. Just look at all the sicko homo parades that are celebrated like Catholic rituals.
The US seems to be pushing for a military confrontation between Russia and… the Europeans.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-07/merkel-is-said-to-reject-u-s-pressure-to-provoke-russia-s-navy
He can go to Northern Ireland for an Advanced Studies course.
I’m not sure Elon Musk is actively trying to take over all Russia’s industry’s, as some kind of revenge for USSR’s support for the ANC
Musk so far:
Revolutionize electric cars and electric freight transport, which will lead to the beginning of a displacement of oil demand during the 2030s and 2040s. (Oil and gas – half the budget in Russia).
Dragon Capsule to end the monopoly of Soyuz, which is one of the great legacies of the USSR..
Actual quantity of decadence in the society is falling now according to data in different countries (for example, teenagers around the world are reporting less sex, later age of sex, less drugs, etc).
This is cross-country, that young people are less decadent than they were in the 1990s and 2000s.
At the same time, if you look in the most popular trending in YouTube, you can see that weird gay and transgender politics and aesthetics, is becoming a new religion in some spontaneously fanatical way, at least with the young generation in the West. (It’s like a return of some weird fashion of Ancient Greece).
For religious fashions, weirdness is not unusual though. When new religious trends are first perceived, they usually have to be weirder and more bizarre than everything before it. Think how for the Romans, Christianity was a weird and subversive oriental cult, before they went for it:
https://aeon.co/essays/how-an-obscure-oriental-cult-converted-a-vast-pagan-roman-empire ,
Poland is divided. Those parts of Germany under Polish administration were repopulated by people from the now Belarusian East. They show very high levels of social distress. Core Poland, not affected by population transfers is much more traditional and law abiding. Divorce, abortion, crime, emigration are all lower.
Some truth in this piece:
https://europeansworldwide.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/the-reich-wins-russian-hearts-and-minds/
c/o
https://russia-insider.com/en/russian-popular-support-german-occupiers-ww2-much-higher-you-are-told/ri26477
The Nazis blew taking advantage of this situation.
As an outsider, I would think Danish. The Norwegians and Swedes have spoken it before.
Probably both declines are the result of a vast increase in average screen time. Better statistical measures of decadence might be percentage of people with tatoos, or out of wedlock births. Though Japan and South Korea are low on those metrics, but in an obvious state of decadence, nevertheless.
I was thinking he could take his advanced philosophy to Kashmir or perhaps South Sudan.
Right I tried to follow Karlin’s “guidelines”…but enough of having to put up with this nonsense…….you think I want to click on another stupid link by yourself probably featuring a goat sodomising a man you sick idiot? ( in other words a January 1st Bandera celebration event)
Stalin is Mr Ukraine, or at least he is the Nehru figure to Lenin’s Gandhi in the setting up of “Ukraine”
There is no such thing as “Ukrainian” or “Ukrainian language”
What is the Ukrainian word for “Golodomor”?….there isn’t one- because there is no language, a Russian word must be used for the name of a fake tragedy to give a fake cause for am existence of a fake nation created in quiet areas of the US and Canada by shamed pitiful people.
You watch international womens day…absolutely identically celebrated in Ukraine as it is in Russia…right down to all the fine details – from all classes, all jobs, normal people to state officials – even different to all the other ex USSR countries..that is because Ukrops and Russians are the same people and same culture
I agree that screen addiction (which is cross-country) is probably causing youth to stay indoors more, which results in less sex and drugs in multiple countries.
You said Japan and South Korea in obvious state of decadence. But by what criteria?
In Ancient concepts. Ancient Jews would consider Ancient Greeks to be decadents because they exercise naked as gays and eat lobsters. And Ancient Greeks would consider Ancient Jews to be decadents because they don’t exercise naked and follow primitive superstitions.
In either case, they both use subjective criteria, although today we seem to have incorporated both of these subjective criteria (from Athens and Jerusalem) for decadence.
–
Objectively, I think we need to base it in a concept of health – as this is universally binding across cultures.
If youth is addicted to unhealthy drugs, then it’s objectively decadence. But if the youth is addicted to video games? (As opposed to reading novels or classical music?) Is this decadence objectively?
Is Mukbang objectively decadent? Viewers proxy eating by Mukbang could potentially be a healthy trend, if it substitutes for really eating such meals.
Not necessarily.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18141550/ns/health-health_care/t/mauritania-struggles-love-fat-women/
It is hard to be both universal and objective.
In this there is no truth utterly, only lies and manipulation . The German official propaganda is quoted (as a reliable mirror of the era), completely fictional story about Russian army fighting on Hitler’s side (such army dont existed), but the scale of the guerrilla war against the Germans ( real indicator) is completely ignored.
http://www.tank-net.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14200&page=299#entry1416791
Partial translation in three parts.
I just re-read the original Hungarian interview with the guy (it was really a monologue), he was in active service until 1990, then he taught until 1996, when he retired. The information he gave about the T-64 was inaccurate (though in fairness he never served with it, as it was never exported), but the rest was very interesting.
December 10, 2011 -during a Republican Presidential Primary debate on middle east issues Mitt Romney says ‘I would ask Netanyahu what he wants me to do’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd_MBxwy__k
Trump was right.
It must cause you all sorts of inferiority complexes to know that so many Ukrainians want nothing to do with your asiatic culture and would love to have their country moved to some other part of the planet. as far away from Moscow as possible. Anytning that Russia has touched or will touch is doomed to 3rd world like poverty and backwardness. Russia’s only hope for a better future is to continue aping Western ways – its never been able to produce a superior product on its own. 🙂
Galicia is not Ukraine and Galicians aren’t Ukrainian, you dumb twat.
As for the rest of your stupid post: stop projecting.
Probably one the most reliable metrics would be TFR. Japan and SK both come in low. SK has what I would consider an absurd level of education, with about 98% of the younger adult cohorts having gone to at least junior college – this I would consider to be part of a fertility trap. Japan has its Hikikomori -its shut-ins, its family rentals, and large porn industry.
Health is an interesting suggestion.
I agree, really, like all of these things, including TFR, I think it is sort of hard to do cross-country comparisons. East Asian decadence probably looks a little different than European decadence. Africans have higher TFR than both but an objectively lower state of civilization. Some of those oil Arabs are pretty fat. They are decadent for sure, but probably retain some religious or cultural values.
I was thinking of Chile. Out of wedlock births are like 70%. I remember being told in school that many there consider it rude to wear shorts, instead of pants.
In China, I have heard there is a trend for virtual girlfriends. They are real girls who chat in front of a cam online, opening gifts sent to them, and giving compliments in return for money.
A good metric would probably be political. How diverse is the representative body? How is it possible that London’s Paki mayor can go to Pakistan and say Pakistanis are welcome in London?
I know someone who went to one of the top schools there, which has produced lots of prime ministers etc., very white, and they had a beauty pageant for the girls (down to thirteen year olds) as one of their end of term events.
Reminds almost exactly of the view of Trump which I watched – Romney was like Trump for Israel, 4 years before Trump has become Israel’s patron.
The position on Israel-Palestine has been:
“Pressure both sides concessions, for the negotiated two-state solution only.”
Vs.
“Support what Israel recommends for Israel-Palestine conflict – two-state, one state, flexible etc. (With Netanyahu, currently trying to do nothing). ”
–
*
https://youtu.be/boZZEGFJBik?t=1077
The reason for the Republic change since 2008 is very simple:
Israel became a partisan zone between Republican and Democrat voters of America. So both sides become polarized about Israel.
It’s bad progression for Israel in the long term, as a result of becoming partisan zone, have increasingly stronger support from Republicans, and weaker support from Democrats, in the next decade.
https://i.imgur.com/9jNKsy2.png
Fertility is a kind of objective since we can have comparable numbers from it.
But, it is often inversely related to the quality of the population. So is low fertility a sign of decadence?
The laziest and most degenerate populations, are often the highest fertility rates around the world – we see today low fertility of the industrious Germans and Japanese, compared to the high fertility of nationalities like Pakistan and Niger.
I would perceive often that the population which irresponsibly multiply like rats can be the most decadent, while more self-disciplined middle class people have lower fertility rates.
Higher fertility rates can be an indication of disorganized habits and lack of planning (or care about looking after children), which is why there is a high fertility in all the same poor third world countries, where trains will never arrive on time, or be built at all.
That is, real world high fertility groups are not usually self-sacrificing themselves for the next generation, but just third world people, gypsies, etc.
So I’m not sure low fertility is indication of increasing decadence of the population (although it is a future problem for countries on a national level).
Japan’s low fertility rates are behaving not differently than most other developed countries though.
https://japan-forward.com/mythbusters-foreign-reporting-on-the-japanese-population-and-birth-rate-reaches-a-new-low/
I think our own criteria for this is also internally incoherent.
We currently inherited both the Jerusalem and the Athens views, which are incompatible with each other.
What do you think about Socrates debating philosophy with his gay boyfriend Alcibiades, while being served from a slave (as in Symposium of Plato)?
For some Athenians like Plato – Socrates (although not Alcibiades) is the most noble and valuable man, and this Symposium is the most valuable human activity.
On the other hand, from the Ancient Jewish (whose morality was then spread by Christianity and Islam) view, this is an ultimate decadence. And in the anti-Greek Marxist view, it would also be decadence.
But from a noble Ancient Greek perspective, superstition and religion (as we see in the Jerusalem view), and over compassion for the weak, is the ultimate decadence.
Here it’s necessary to look for objective more criteria than this, and this can be set by scientific findings. If we use criteria like physical health.
We can say here is an objective decadent cultural value, as it will damage the health of the Mauritanian women.
It sounds a little nihilistic, but at least it is a judgement which can be derived from objectively binding reality (all nationalities have more or less the same consequences of overeating), and from application of reason.
‘
Stoics were trying to bind their values in this way (to objective facts of health and nature), although they then had a lot less knowledge than we would have if we tried to derive a system like their’s today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_boys_(Mormon_fundamentalism)
When Romney’s ancestor was on Mexico he was practicing polygamy even though it had been abandoned by Mormons in the US. Men tottering on the brink of the grave married to girls barely more than children. The corollary was that Mormonism exploited young men, and thus it selected for a certain type of personality. Mormons are very conventionally minded and accepting of hierarchy I think. Netanyahu used to work for Romney by the way.
Do you see the three oblasts in the west of Ukraine (on the colorful map for your benefit!), Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil? These are traditionally considered to encompass the territories of Galicia. Quite large actually, the size of perhaps of Czechia or Slovakia, with a population about three quarters of Hungary’s. It’s always been traditionally referred to as the ‘Piedmont’ of Ukraine. You need to go back to school and do better in geography and history.
http://annamap.com/ukraine/ukraine-map.jpg
Appears that the major change for the GOP is 9-11. Republican voters see America and Israel as united in struggle against terroristic Muslims.
The Democratic change in opinion is much more recent. Where does that line begin to rapidly drop? It seems like it might be as late as 2016. In this case the loss of Democratic sympathy reflects Trump Derangement Syndrome rather than the changing demographics of the Democratic electorate.
WTF lol.
Can someone explain this to me? I would normally think that, while it’s bad because it breaks the embargo, it gives the US a chance to find out the secrets of the S-400, and it gives Russia no chance to find out the secrets of the F-35A. (Unless, of course, the Turks will give those secrets to the US. But even if Turkey cancelled the S-400 after such threats, how much could the US trust it? I’d trust it even less. So why would they give him lots of military technology if Erdogan cancelled the S-400?)
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-08/pentagon-issues-firm-ultimatum-erdogan-dont-expect-f-35s-if-russian-s-400s-bought
Should be read: the Turks will give those secrets to Russia.
This isn’t about the “secrets” of the F-35, which is merely a convenient pretext. It’s about shutting out Russia from the international arms market. The US has also issued threats to India about the S-400.
So what is your goddamn point? Those parts had nothing whatsoever to do with Ukraine for 800 years until Stalin forced them into Ukraine at gunpoint after WWII.
As far as being “Asiatic”, Ukraine is significantly more “Asiatic” than Russia by every conceivable metric: genetics, language, culture, food, government, corruption, mentality, etc. (Considering that Ukraine is the focal point for invaders from the steppes and the Middle East, that’s not surprising.)
Russia has a larger finnic heritage, but that isn’t “Asiatic”.
Yeah, but then they gave them an exemption. Even though they are buying more, and they aren’t an important NATO ally like Turkey. India is barely an ally at all.
Why can’t they just give an exemption to Turkey, tell them (privately! it’s important for Erdogan to save face) that now they have to spend twice as much on American weapons (especially they now have to buy the Patriot), and move on?
They are now risking losing an important NATO ally, which will give further arms exports opportunities to Russia. What am I missing here?
If they were just doing some big theater to punish Erdogan, credibly threaten him with a real embargo in the future if he buys from the Russians again, and so prevent future such purchases, I’d understand. But they keep doing it, and now they’re adding deadlines and the likes, while publicly dressing down the Turks. This has no chance of influencing their purchase of S-400, while the risks of totally alienating the Turks (and making an enemy from an ally, even if not highly trustworthy ally) are going up. What’s the point?
Wrong again, Buckwheat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Ugric_peoples
I did not write this nonsense, why do you answer me, not Mikhail?
I was agreeing with you. Answering you continues the thread.
Main motivation is just to believe opposite of what your political opponent views.
Any topic which becomes dispute between Republicans and Democrats, suddenly polarizes them into two sides according to some mysterious sorting algorithm.
For example, in 2012, Obama was more pro-Russia, and Romney more anti-Russia.
Republican voters were slightly more anti-Russia than Democrat voters, until the end of 2016, when Democrat political strategists proposed Hillary Clinton should use the conspiracy theory about Trump being controlled by Russia.
As a result of the use of this conspiracy theory, at the end of 2016, there is reversal and polarization, where Democrats suddenly became more anti-Russia than Republicans, where formerly they were slightly more pro-Russia.
In 2017, the anti-Russia number even falls of Republicans to 38% – which is similar to the number in 2013 (this is all just a response to the Democrat conspiracy theory about Trump).
https://i.imgur.com/OyDlHb0.png
Note that piece was JRL promoted unlike some more historically on target pieces.
I chose my words carefully by saying some, adding that the piece at issue doesn’t address how the Nazis blew an opportunity to overthrow the Soviet regime – a point having to do with the Nazis’ overall horrid attitude towards anti-Communist Russians.
This “lost boys” culture seems very similar to the Muslim-Arab culture – where making young men to die in Jihad is the most convenient way for securing more young wives for the polygamous old men who lead the Arab societies.
But otherwise, Mormons seem like a very industrious, eugenic race, so the opposite of the Arabs.
Did you watch the video I posted of Romney’s Mormon family in Mexico?
They are living like wealthy, industrious Americans, in large, clean looking buildings.
I’ll post it again with the timestamp at 0:11
This Mormon city looks more like America, than Mexico. Economists need to explain why they are so successful, with recommendations to generalize the economic lessons of the Mormons to other countries.
https://youtu.be/PKxW2MXTocQ?t=11
Merkel ally Ralph Brinkhouse has supposedly expressed a favorable opinion on Muslims joining the CDU, and has welcomed the idea that one might be the leader of the party and even chancellor as early as 2030.
Can he really be that delusional? ( that Muslims will join any banner with the word Christian, or not nearly all be Greens and SD) Or is he just lying to curry favor?
Mormons like to practice eugenics and family values but they are over represented at places such as the State Dept where they follow the neoliberal ideology very obediently and do not mind at all promoting it in other societies.
The main work I am aware of is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber.
I don’t know if it is a good work or not, but it is a classical piece, so it is probably a good starting point.
You are exceeding even your usual stupidity.
Galicia and Right Bank of Ukraine were both part of Poland until 1772, when Galicia became part of Austria and the Right Bank became part of Russia.
Galicians were often travelling to Kiev and central and eastern parts of Ukraine. The famous Zaporozhian Hetman, whose troops plundered the Moscow suburbs, Petro Sahaidachny, was a Galician, born outside Lviv.
Galicia even had a lot to do with Russia. The first head of the Russian Church under Peter I, Stefan Yavorsky, was a Galician who had moved between Kiev and Lviv before going to Russia.
Howard Hughes hired Mormons because he liked how they didn’t smoke or drink. Granted he was crazy, probably from tertiary syphilis, but they helped keep him isolated from his few friends, stole a fortune from him and probably killed him purposefully through neglect and drugs.
Don’t get me wrong: I am sure your average Mormon is a nice person, probably better than the average non-Mormon. But not everyone who wears a suit and goes to church is a good person.
I don’t know, maybe it is a snap judgement, but I think there are more Mormon leftists than in other, more orthodox churches. There is something about the social aspect of Mormonism that makes leftists less inclined to leave it. And Mormonism is more identitarian than other branches of Christianity. In this manner, it resembles other faiths like Islam, Sikhism, or Orthodox Judaism. IMO, meaning, perhaps counterintuitively, it has an easier time holding on to its leftists.
Though, I suppose all churches are having problems with leftist subversion.
I have been to Salt Lake City and they should definitely practise eugenics there. But it doesn’t look like they have been. Maybe their understanding of eugenics is all within a family.
Mormons are over-represented in US foreign-intelligence-security positions, except in the actual military. They learn languages when young in order to be missionaries, and few other groups in US can compete with them, other then the ethnic offspring of immigrants. Mormons put a mid-America face on what would otherwise be a bunch of screaming ethnic lobbies.
Having said that, Mormons are very unsophisticated even when they are smart, and their level of understanding is very parochial – see Romney for a perfect example. They are diligent, obedient, studious, relatively normal in personal lives, slightly infantile, but you will never explain to a Mormon anything nuanced or complex. Their thinking stops at a certain point, in some ways they are like different species with a different mind architecture. Even when smart like Romney they will mostly repeat densely packed cliches as if always trying to be the perfect student. And they believe in magic underwear, and not just for women, scary stuff…
Doubt
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1103700869164326913
That is also happening in Germany.
Cemile Giousouf, CDU member, Muslim and former member of the federal parliament.
Allegedly, she is tied to Turkish nationalists and Islamists.
https://p5.focus.de/img/fotos/origs6312389/709142590-w630-h370-o-q75-p5/cemile-giousouf-pressefoto-by-tobias-koch.jpg
I don’t think Weber was investigating anything like Mormons though?
Mormons are very distinctive culture. And for example, in Salt Lake City, you can read reports they control the city in a very exclusionary way which some call “Mormon Mafia”.
And they have an army to recruit more Mormons around the world (government in Russia is frightened of these, which is probably why Romney is anti-Russia).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxvTcVvTttU
Supposedly, they buy the records of dead people in Russia, so they could convert 15-20 million Russians posthumously (although considering the channel, the whole story could be nonsense propaganda).
https://youtu.be/JwHH4X80lGA?t=85
I think it is also true that Mormons are whiter than many other branches of Christianity. In population genetics, you often see the code “CEU. ” This is an American genetic cluster based largely on white Mormons and Utah. I believe it was designed to be an approximation for Northern Europeans, since if I recall, their history suggested less opportunity for mixing.
Obviously, within Mexico, this is probably somewhat different, but, needless to say, they are probably whiter than Catholics there.
But I do find that video Dmitry posted to be funny with regard to the guy proselytizing for open borders. (I imagine Univision asked a few people before getting the right answer) Three-fourths of the Mormons left Mexico and never came back because they were afraid. Not to mention, Mexico lost Texas through immigration. And really the SW and California too.
They follow neoliberal ideology? – This would be support of Hayek, Friedman, Pinochet, small government. It would be a good thing.
I do not see much evidence of this in the American State Department.
Looking at the Mormons in Mexico though, they seem very resilient, and can perhaps live well anywhere.
Maybe they would be useful for terraforming on new planets outside the solar system. Or you could settle them in Perm, Chelyabinsk and Omsk, return later, and they will convert them to clean and high income Salt Lake Cities.
If Mormons are as economically successful as some journalists say, perhaps the economic development strategy of countries like Ukraine, should include adapting Mormon as the state religion.
What is the relation of opposition to solar farms, to oil displacement though?
Electricity is not commonly generated by oil in America or Europe (or many other countries) – except as electricity peaking stations (and these are being removed anyway, as there are now cheaper alternatives).
For each 25 million electric cars, this might predict around 1 million barrels of oil demand displaced a day.
Energy for the electricity will not be from oil, but all from gas, coal, nuclear, wind, hydro, etc (and then much more efficiently used).
It is oil demand which will be displaced. IEA predicts 125 million electric cars total by 2030. This is already 5 million barrels of oil demand per day displaced ceteris paribus by 2030.
It’s possible oil price could fall to 1990s levels during the 2030s decade in my opinion.
Interesting. First Muslim CDU member elected to Bundestag. Perhaps the only? And her parents were born in Greece, and she was sent back there.
She voted for gay marriage too (along with all the other Muslims.) Therefore, I believe the allegations.
You answered your own question.
There is not just opposition to solar farms, but also to wind farms, coal energy, nuclear plants, etc.
Therefore, it is not obvious that oil demand will be displaced anytime.
So far the only, but she is not going to be the last.
Share of non-Protestant/Catholic members in the CDU is constantly rising.
https://abload.de/img/unwahrecdulerq8jll.png
Why? What proportion of electricity is generated from oil in the countries where there are these protests?
In Russia, it’s almost nothing from oil. In America, only 0,6% is from oil. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
And this is just peaking stations I believe (which they are not replacing).
So there is opposition to solar and wind farms.
But the substitution for solar and wind farms would not be oil – but any other electricity source which is all cheaper than oil (i.e. gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, etc).
Mainly electricity is increasingly from gas in countries like America, Russia, soon China, and I believe much of the EU. (And oil price is multiple times higher than gas price for the same energy).
I was once in a small town in the Utah desert (if you enjoy outdoor activities such as hiking and skiing Utah is a paradise) and came across a store owner speaking decent Russian. Her son did missionary work in Russia (they do this for two years) and the whole family learned the language; they must have good language instructors.
This kind of background, plus absence of drinking and drug use, makes Mormons natural for jobs in the CIA or state department.
Some people in Utah or Nevada convert to Mormonism in order to establish business contacts. Others do so in order to marry. Mormons tend to be healthy and attractive people. In Salt Lake City, they hire pretty girls as tour guides to the Mormon sights. There is a certain “look” to many of the ones in Salt Lake City – they are not fashionable like beauties in Moscow or Montreal, but athletic and thin, and dressed up with impeccable makeup and long hair that they spent a lot of time on. My wife thinks they look like beauty pageant contestants. One sees such women all over the place in the cities, even as waitresses in diners.
My family is not the only ones who noticed (actually, a very good article about Utah and its women):
https://www.allure.com/story/why-so-many-beauty-bloggers-are-mormon
Generally speaking Mormons are very friendly but one suspects their friendliness has the ulterior motive of conversion. They do run a very good state.
Lviv seemed like an increasingly prosperous city (signs of both wealth and poverty) when I went there courtesy of Uncle Sam in the summer of 2003.
If not already seen, see:
http://southpark.cc.com/clips/104253/joseph-smith-part-1
http://southpark.cc.com/clips/104256/joseph-smith-part-2
http://southpark.cc.com/clips/104257/joseph-smith-part-3
http://southpark.cc.com/clips/154257/joseph-smith-part-4
They are significantly wealthier than normal Americans.
A strange thing is they worship a leader called Russell Nelson as “the currently living prophet”.
At 4:50 in the video the leader of the religion, says what is unique about their religion is “no one else can offer perpetuation of family unit beyond the grave”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOc2R2IpK7w
Focus on the continuation beyond the grave, sounds a little similar to the Ancient Egyptian religion?
They have a university in a dangerous area of East Jerusalem.
The youth visit the Egyptian pyramids as part of their spiritual journey.
Going to Egyptian Pyramids – normal for secular tourists, but I think unusual for pilgrims in the Holy Land.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPsvqGVNN0k
Mormon is a very syncretic and open religion, which incorporates elements of the Ancient Egyptian religion.
http://www.ldsliving.com/3-Fascinating-Connections-Between-LDS-Ancient-Egyptian-Temple-Worship-Beliefs/s/83415
Lol I have a good intuition. After watching the interview with the leader of the Mormons, I just randomly sensed in my soul the Mormons must be similarit to Ancient Egyptian religion.
It’s really not an accident they send their youth to pilgrimage to the Egyptian pyramids, as they write on one of their websites:
http://www.ldsliving.com/3-Fascinating-Connections-Between-LDS-Ancient-Egyptian-Temple-Worship-Beliefs/s/83415
Mormons are being captured often by police in Russia.
For example, the 5th most trending story in the Mormon news websites at the moment is that two were captured in Russia:
http://www.ldsliving.com/Russian-Police-Detain-2-Latter-day-Saint-Volunteers-in-Novorossiysk/s/90319/?utm_source=ldsliving&utm_medium=sidebar&utm_campaign=popular
I guess this could be a cause of Romney’s anti-Russia views, which had shocked Obama in 2012 during the Presidential Debate? (But the Mormons could just not send the missionaries to a country where the authorities don’t want them to convert people, it’s their responsibility).
Regarding Mormons and family, they do spend some amount of resources on copying genealogical records. Not just for Mormons either. Familysearch.org is a big free site that they host. Decades ago, they made microfiche copies of a lot of records. As well as the website, they maintain physical centers where people can look at the ones that haven’t been digitized.
I always thought it was a clever way to proselytize – show people you care about their roots. Or offer a service.
Ancestry.com was started by Mormons too.
They keep those accurate records so that they can effectively convert the dead. That way, the descendants who become Mormons will see their deceased, converted relatives in the afterlife who will see their own converted relatives and so on.
So if you become a Mormon, your deceased grandfather will meet you. And he won’t be lonely – his parents and grandparents will have been converted after their deaths by the diligent Mormon researchers, also.
‘Terraforming Mormons’ on other planets or in the Russian Far-East, or supplanting Orthodoxy with Mormonism in Ukraine to help spur on a new economic era? Well maybe, they believe that God was once mortal and perfected himself on another planet along with perhaps ‘billons’ of other gods. Sounds like a lot of mularkey to me, but then again I’m opposed to wearing ‘magic underwear’ especially in bed:
https://youtu.be/-VKT4hrBTuk
What does it mean to be a ‘Piedmont’ of Ukraine? Piedmont drove reunification of Italy. Galicia was not even a part of Ukraine until 1945, it has a different traditional culture (closer to Central Europe and Poland) than the rest of Ukraine. Piedmont-like? I don’t think so.
You are off on the numbers too, Galicia has around half the population of Hungary, and is 50% smaller than Czechia. Don’t get me wrong, Galicia is a nice region, but it is a rather backward, traditionally poor rural region that has never been a core of Ukraine.
I’m with Hack on this one. While Galicia didn’t unify Ukraine, it was the birthplace of Ukrainian nationalism and thus ensured that Ukrainians would have an alternative to viewing themselves as Russians’ little brothers. Without Galicia, the current wave of nationalism in the rest of Ukraine would almost certainly have not occurred.
I was at work when I made up those figures, and I couldn’t get a hold of my professional geographer friend, who would have corrected me – however, the idea of a Galicia being larger than what many people think wasn’t totally discredited.
As far as being the ‘Piedmont of Ukraine’ Galicia played an important role in being a repository of Ukrainian ideas and printing presses that offered a save haven for Ukrainian literature from Czarist Ukraine, that underwent much greater censorship. Galicians were also developing many of their own local writers too and all of this culminated into a crescendo by the end of the 19th century, before WWI. Paul Magocsi, a reputable historian has written a whole book devoted to this topic:
‘The Roots of Ukrainian Nationalism: Galicia as Ukraine’s Piedmont’
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442682252
I wonder–might PISA be overstating Vietnam’s average IQ? Specifically, might a lot of dull Vietnamese not take the PISA test and thus make Vietnam look smarter than it actually is?
Of course, this might be mitigated to some extent by the very real possibility that Vietnam hasn’t actually reached its genetic ceiling in regards to average IQ yet.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-08/trump-said-to-seek-huge-premium-from-allies-hosting-u-s-troops
I hope Trump goes ahead with this, it might just be enough to remove American troops from large parts of Europe.
Correct. Galicia’s population is more like that of Slovakia. It is more urban than Slovakia – its largest city Lviv has almost twice as many people as Bratislava. Its second largest city Ivano-Frankivsk has about the same population as Slovakia’s second largest city Kosice.
Poverty is relative. Before World War I it was tied with Dalmatia as the poorest part of Austria. But it had the same per capita GRP as Slovakia and Transylvania, and was wealthier than Russia, Portugal, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria. In 1939 Lviv was far more civilized and cultured than any Sovok place, so hardly backward.
Italy’s Piedmont was also on the Italian geographic periphery; it played a similar role in Italy as did Galicia did for Ukraine though as in all analogies it is not a complete fit, the mechanism was different.
It’s more complicated. The Ukrainian nationalism that came to dominate Galicia was largely imported from Central and Eastern Ukraine. Originally Galicia was Russophile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_Russophilia
There were native Ukrainian nationalists in Galicia too, but they were inspired by Easterners and joined by them (Hrushevsky who was at Lviv’s university was the most famous example). Eastern Ukrainian aristocrats who couldn’t openly support Ukrainian nationalism in the Russian Empire also poured money into Galicia to help defeat the native Russophiles there.
But yes, by the late 19th century the native Russophiles had lost and with the achievement of mass literacy on a Ukrainian national model, the region was a solid nascent Ukrainian nation-state within Austria. The Ukrainian idea was then mass-exported back to its original homeland starting in 1905 following the end of language restrictions there, accelerating under the Rada in 1917-1918, and continuing under the early Bolsheviks after 1919.
Dmitry, I enjoy reading your comments here and agree with a large proportion of your views, however, this infatuation of yours with the Mormon faith seems a little over the top to me. I live in Arizona, where there are many of them. Sure, on the one hand they seem like a good moral group of individuals who care about others and certainly don’t do any harm. On the other hand, they’re known by outsiders to be extremely clannish and practice nepotism to a high degree. They can (and do) make life difficult in work relationships, especially for those that don’t acquiesce to their steady stream of proselytism. Of course this may be an oversimplification, as I can say that I once had a manager that I worked under, who did not display these aggressive traits, however, I have heard this from others. Also, Ex-Mormons who publicly leave Mormonism often face extreme social stigmatization, the internet is strewn with their stories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Mormon They already exist in Ukraine (even in the countryside of Poltava) and probably have a presence in Russia too:
https://youtu.be/HOfFaqIFCww
It is partially about arms sales; one thing leads to another, and soon Turkey could start buying all kinds of arms from Russia or China. It is also a message and punishment for the Turkey military for failing at the 2016 coup, since most didn’t join in.
But the overriding reason is a simple equation: NATO exists to fight Russia, Turkey is the second largest member, and Turkey wants to buy S-400 from Russia. It is simply unseemly.
If Erdogan doesn’t give in, NATO would be diminished, so there will be a deal. Never trust a Turk, they are genetically predisposed to betray :).
The last 20 years have largely been a history of trying to keep NATO relevant – and the resulting careers, arms sales, symposia. Almost all major events have been driven by this desperate search for a mission. As the options get worse, they will have to try harder. The cheapest way for mankind would be to create a virtual world with all the perks and benefits where they could do their pretend ‘all important protection of the Atlanticist ideology’ (really a form for bizarrely twisted nationalism)’. Otherwise they could blow it all up in their ever more desperate search for relevancy.
We can see why the deep staters hate Trump so much. They have a great thing going, Trump with his mafia-like collection mentality is ruining it. He is a numbers guy, so they will find just the right amount for each country to pay after a good-will discount.
The issue is not the money, that can be fudged. It is the explicit visibility that these ‘payments’ (in the form of buying US arms) would have over the long run. Historically a protection racket can work only if there is a real enemy to protect against, or if the ‘protector’ has full control over the ‘protected’. The first can lead to an actual military confrontation with Russia, the second one is a very bad fit for European self-image.
It is a mess and Trump is making it visible. That cannot be good for anybody.
The analogy of Galicia with Piedmont is too imprecise, I am not comfortable with it. Just because someone wrote it in a book, doesn’t make it true. This matters a lot in today’s Ukraine – it is all about different disputed visions of Ukraine and what it is.
I would nominate the regions of Vinnitsa, Zhitomir and Poltava (with Kiev in the center) as the core Ukrainian region that unification was centered around. It makes more sense historically and it is also the core region today. Galicia is in many ways an outlier, it would be like trying to create a new greater Germany with Austria as a core region. These visions have consequences: the idea that Odessa or Kharkov (or Donetsk) would ever embrace Ukraine state idea based on Galicia is too far-fetched.
I keep on saying this: Ukraine is very diverse in its shades of ‘Ukrainness’, to force it into any unified vision will lead to problems. (We have a saying: ‘komu neni rady, tomu neni pomoci’).
I think I have an even better, more realistic idea:
I would nominate the regions of Vinnitsa, Zhitomir and Poltava (with Kiev in the center) as the core Ukrainian region along with Galicia in the West (along with Volyn and Bukovina too) as has already materialized and is today a historical fact.
Well, Rome is Italy’s central core but the Piedmont that unified Rome was up on the French border.
Or Prussia.
:::::::::
As I wrote in the other post, Galicia basically adoped a central Ukrainian national idea and mythology and then came to the rest of Ukraine with this idea that had been developed in Poltava, Kiev, etc. in the first place. It wasn’t spreading a Galician dialect (which sounds a lot like Carpato-Rusyn) but a standardized langage based on the Poltava speech. The national heroes (until World War II) were Cossacks, not Galician princes.
I assume that as usual the Dweeb State will figure out a way to subvert and roll Trump. After two years in office it’s clear that the only thing he’s really been able to change in trade policy. There’s already a trojan horse in the proposal to offer allies a rebate for policy alignment, which obviously can be manipulated into anything.
Though this has a chance of succeeding because Fox Bolton has genuine antipathy for our European allies.
It will also be highly amusing if Trump succeeds and our allies just pay the Danegeld instead of demonstrating some self-respect.
Ok, so how are you going to have the east – Kharkov is the second city of Ukraine – and the south embrace that vision of Ukrainian identity?
To have 1/3 to 1/2 of the country treated as ‘secondary’ with all the consequences like language, business, foreign orientation, heroes (Bandera!), history, is not going to work. It is not France or Italy in the 19th century, we live in different times.
I don’t really put much stock in those “Trump fighting the deep state, trying to roll back the empire via 4D chess” explanations tbh, imo he probably really believes he can succeed with this. It’s probably also related to the Iran obsession of his administration…one only needs to look at the Twitter account of his faggot ambassador to Germany, it’s “Iran, Iran, Iran” and nothing else (apart from occasional homo stuff or visits to exhibitions about the Nazi era). Trump and the people around him probably really believe they can pressure the Europeans with such bizarre threats into falling in line with US Mideast policy.
The one developed in Kharkiv in the first place?
And did you know Banderist ideology was developed by a southern Ukrainian?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmytro_Dontsov
Today the radical nationalist organizations such as Azov (Kharkiv) and Right Sector (Dnipropetrovsk) are based in southern and eastern Ukraine. To be sure it’s a minority there, but a strong one.
You have a country, Ukraine, with a weak and relatively recent sense of unified identity. The single worst way to create a sense of unity is to accentuate these divisions, as post-Maidan did. It cannot be who-whom, that will not work.
In the Sub-Carpathian region of Ukraine they don’t like the Galician idea. They think of themselves as Rusins and are pro-Europe, but without the Galician-Kiev hostility to anything Russian. Maybe you should learn from them. Before they split at the next opportunity and move west on their own.
About Kharkov: a strong minority within a large suppressed majority has no chance to succeed in the long run. The underlying sentiments are with us for a few generations. (You like to fool yourself with minutia.)
It is not 1995 or even 2005 anymore. National identity has consolidated.
A gross exaggeration. Sub-Carpathians are indeed a lot less nationalistic than the Galicians on the other side of the border (and are irritated by them) but their voting patterns are consistently similar to those of central Ukrainians like Poltavans.
Only about 1% do. The Rusin idea is much more popular on the Slovak side of the border.
Again, they are like people from places such as Poltva or Zhytomir. They are not going to split from Ukraine due to Russophilia.
Trump personally would be quite comfortable walking away from Europe completely. His advisors would not be, and no doubt they do think they can pressure the “weak, soft” Europeans into falling in line on Iran or navigation rights in the Sea of Azov.
My basic point is that Trump, for all his braggadocio and imperviousness to media attacks, is a weak President for a variety of reasons. Since the Empire abhors the idea of walking away from any part of the Empire, I doubt the cost plus 50 proposal will be adopted. Good example of this is Syria. It didn’t take them long to successfully sabotage his directive to get out.
The only area where he’s had some success is in trade policy. Partly this is because it’s the issue he’s cared the most about for decades, but more importantly he actually picked the right people (Ross, Lightizer) and there are at least some parts of the American elite in agreement with him.
Elsewhere he has faced the unified opposition of a hostile elite, picked terrible advisers, shown an inability to focus, and made poor political judgments. I suppose North Korea is a bright spot but the Dweeb State seems to be successfully sabotaging that as well.
His administration doesn’t have any unique Iran obsession as Iran has been an obsession of every US administration since 1979. Being a Republican administration there’s a different approach than the preceding Obama administration whose approach reflected the typical Democratic love of “multilateral” initiatives involving Europeans.
No one remembers this anymore, but back during the first Bush administration lots of Democrats were outraged that Bush was refusing to sign up with some gay international court based in Europe or whatever. I never heard about it again.
imo Obama’s approach was about containing Iran and making sure they don’t build nuclear weapons…by contrast Trump’s administration is clearly working towards regime change in Iran, on the assumption that pro-American democracy will break out there and everything will be fine in the Mideast (which seems rather foolish to me, it’s much more likely to end in disaster).
I didn’t like Obama as a person due to his multicultural sermonizing, but his foreign policy, while still flawed, was a lot less demented than what Trump, with his 100% embrace of Israel and Saudi-Arabia, has been doing.
The Obama administration took an initial stab at regime change in Iran with the failed “Green Revolution” in 2009 and didn’t open talks with the Iranians until 2013.
And in any case the fact that they were deeply concerned with Iran to begin with demonstrates that they had an unhealthy obsession with Iran as all American administrations since 1979 have had.
The mideast is not actually important to America and needs to stop being a focus of American foreign policy. From that perspective there’s no difference to me between the Trump and Obama administrations (or the second Bush administration for that matter).
iirc they offered purely verbal support, and Obama was heavily criticized by interventionists for supposedly having foregone a unique opportunity.
Trump’s people by contrast are deranged enough to present even that MEK cult as a viable “democratic” alternative for Iran.
That may be your opinion, but tens of millions of Americans seem to disagree, given the prominence of Israel in American political discourse. Regarding identity issues, the Mideast is apparently extremely important to what many Americans care about.
Trump has already managed to make either war with Iran or Iran building nuclear weapons much more likely, so imo the difference is substantial.
Obama was also heavily criticized for wearing a tan suit.
For all we know Bolton and Pompeo will “succeed” and install an American puppet regime in Iran run by emigres and thots. That actually seems a lot more likely in Iran than it ever was in Iraq.
They’re wrong. My message to them is the same as my message always is to wrongists: “How does it feel to be wrong?”
And the fact that they do care doesn’t reflect some sort of organic groundswell from the American people. They care because they’ve been propagandized for decades to care, and the US has been intimately involved in the Middle East for so long now that it seems “normal”.
People have been saying this for my entire adult life and across three Presidential administrations.
The US is clearly not gearing up to attack Iran, and for its part Iran keeps making pathetic overtures to the other JCPOA treaty parties to preserve the treaty.
The main change has been that the US is attempting to collapse the Iranian economy by shutting out its oil from the world market.
SK reached a deal to increase its payment to the US yesterday. (Still needs to be voted on) Quite interestingly, whether just rhetorically or not, Trump seems to have turned a negotiating point with NK (dropping mass joint exercises) directly into a demand to SK to pay more (by saying the exercises are costly.) Once you add China in, I hesitate to say it, but it almost starts to seem like genuine 4D chess. Or at any rate compared to the usual machinations of US foreign policy.
Of course, I am in favor of isolationism. I don’t think the US will do a global pullout until it goes bankrupt. If NATO is ever disbanded though, there will likely be an EU army. I don’t know if that would be really better for Europeans or not, but I suspect not.
They are having a civil war!!! They lost Crimea, and a large part of the Russian-leaning population is in a passive resistance mode. That was not the case in 2005. Me thinks, the ‘consolidation’ looks rather unconsolidating.
I wrote that in the Sub-Carpathia region they don’t like the Galician idea. Your response below said basically the same thing, but then you called my ‘don’t like’ a gross exaggeration. Do you think about what you write? Is there a difference between ‘irritated’ and ‘don’t like’? What is it?
You say that only 1% of Sub-Carpathians identify as Rusins. Well, almost every Sub-Carpathian coming west (Czechia, Slovakia) says that he is a Rusin. Or sometimes of ‘Slovak origin’. What gives, are they lying to us?
Few things they all have: they are very pro-Europe, very anti-Kiev, and mostly with positive attitudes toward Russia. None wants to fight in Donbas, they think it is madness.
If Sub-Carpathia splits of it will have nothing to do with Russophilia – I said so above. They want to be in Europe – now. They also have very strong ethnic links to Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia. If they could, they would abandon Kiev and join EU today as Sub-Carpathia or by merging with the surrounding countries. Kiev has a problem, building more Bandera statues won’t solve that problem.
Mormons are very disproportionately of Welsh descent, along with England around Liverpool and also London. Of the first 5 of Smith’s converts two were Welsh women who went home to convert others. After the US set up immigration controls, Mormon sponsorship was (and still is) a way to emigrate.
Currently, Israel seems to be benefiting from the Arab-Iran cold war. They’ve won a lot of small concessions from Arabs. Saudi intelligence sharing and overflight. MbS even saying something like, he thinks there’s room for a Jewish state.
It’s not in their interest to upset the applecart with invasion. Of course, interest and instinct often diverge, but Iran is just too big. At worst, Israeli jets would bomb limited targets. No invasion, no explicit US involvement. Iran is just too big, and if the warhawks don’t know that, there are other people who do.
IMO, Trump is about sending signals, which is demonstrated in his regular exercise of flattery. He is not a genuine warhawk.
There were Russian ‘Mormons’ under the Empire. They were not LDS. I am not clear on the exact meaning of the term Mormon in this context. I met two Mormon bishops setting up a church in Saratov. They were most concerned about finding the nicest place to live, with a golf course. (Later some Russian thugs kidnapped and ransomed two Mormon missionaries in the city-there has been a film about it).
That’s interesting. I didn’t think there were as many Welsh immigrants because of the Industrial Revolution. Of course, Jones is a common name, but it is just a patronymic of John, and so there are quite a lot of countries that had that name, so I didn’t think they were a real ethnic influence on the US.
But they formed part of the Mormons, so I guess they did help shape the US. A lot of mining experts too, and I think some did come before the Industrial Revolution.
You’re assuming that the Israelis are entirely rational, I’m not sure about that…maybe they really believe all that stuff about Iran planning another Holocaust. Netanyahu and his ilk also pushed for war with Iraq back in 2002, and that strengthened Iranian influence in the region (which can’t have been the intention of the original plan), so they might not be exactly realistic about the likely consequences of conflict with Iran.
As for Trump, his views are hard to pin down imo, but he’s certainly re-empowered a lot of the worst people from Bush II’s administration, which must be at least some indication of his personal preferences.
Southern Idaho is like that too. I’ve been to Nevada rather than Utah. Desolate place.
You are right. Wales was a place of net immigration but Quakers and Mormons did go to the US. Specialists went as they were paid large sums. So did Jack Daniels and other distillers to escape the prohibitionists. . My great grandfather and his brothers went to Chicago to make their fortunes, which they did. There is more to their story. Another time. But the unskilled workers and farm labourers emigrated internally.
I think that Kharkiv and Odessa have for the mot part embraced the vision of one unitary Ukrainian state. In August of 2018,
Read more on UNIAN: https://www.unian.info/society/10228038-most-residents-of-lviv-odesa-and-kharkiv-consider-themselves-patriots-poll.html
Both Kharkiv and Odessa (outside of the building bombing incident in Odessa) really didn’t seem to embrace the idea of separating from Ukraine and creating a NovoRussia state. This is a well know fact and forced the Russian’ support for ‘separatists’ to be scaled back to Donbas in 2014. Why do you seem to always try to paint a picture of Ukraine falling apart due to lack of national cohesion, when in fact this isn’t the case?
As odious as I find Bolton, he’s a good pick if you want to saber-rattle to win concessions, or bring people to the negotiating table.
I also think there is a sort of age cohort trend. Vietnam dulled the desire for large scale war. When that lagged, there was Afghanistan and Iraq, but that will provide some protection for about 30 years. Of course, there’s a lot of room for stuff below that, but that’s not regime change in Iran, IMO. And by that time the US will be substantially weakened as a military power.
There will not be a war with Iran because military planners understand that attacking a country of 80 million, 3-times the size of France, with supply lines in the north that cannot be blocked, would be too costly. No Western countries could tolerate the casualties, and no local country in the Middle East would provide the boots on the ground. This is an unfixable constraint. There might be some random bombing, but how do you fight a war half-way around the world with no willingness to take casualties?
The problem with collapsing an already struggling economy – like in Iran – is that it is hard to tell the difference. When US slows down by 2-3%, it is very visible, what exactly would happen in Iran if the economy dropped by 15-20%? The best thing to do is wait – as almost always in similar circumstances. Most countries have huge internal issues and divisions, smart policy is to let them play out, don’t interfere.
Washington’s obsession with Iran is unhealthy – it is the only country other than Turkey in that region that is quite normal. Maybe it is the fact that losing Iran was one of the biggest strategic setbacks for US in the last 50 years. Probably the biggest till US cleverly triggered the new China-Russia alliance after 2014.
The faces in White House change, but the arrogance behind Washington foreign policy is constant. What I mean by arrogance is not being uppity. What I mean is the deeper definition of arrogance: the inability to accept that you made a mistake. This denial of losing is today almost pathological in Washington, one wonders about the maturity level.
Oh, I should add, there was a lot of emigration to the Caribnean and US South in the 18th Century. Welsh sea captains and. Read sailing from Bristol and Liverpool in particular. Black names like Lewis, Lloyd, Davis, Floyd, Fluella, Rhianna are of Welsh origin but again the Welsh were highly skilled specialists or Plantation owners. One of my relatives was the first British governor of Jamaica. Like my great grandfather, he made enough to come home.
There are some national parks in northern Nevada. If you drive around up there you can contrast Mormon towns with non-Mormom ones. The Mormon ones are neat, with fenced-in yards. The non-Mormom ones have trailers or shacks, brothels and such. It’s a huge contrast. One thing they all have in common is that everyone is well-armed out there.
I have never painted a picture of Ukraine falling apart, I have actually explicitly said that it is unlikely. My view is that it will stay together, but will be in a state of political and economic mess (or under-achievement) for quite some time. And that some peripheral regions might try to secede, but the core Ukraine will be with us – we have to learn how to manage its internal dysfunction. It will not get better until the Kiev-Galician maximalist attitudes change. They cannot have a happy and unified Ukraine (in EU no less), until they learn how to live together. And that includes dropping the stupid ‘we hate everything Russian‘ mania.
Surveying people on ‘patriotism’ in the middle of war is retarded. What do you think they will say? What would you say, or I? Of course, people will say the safest thing. I am surprised that so many would openly state that they are not ‘patriots’. Those surveys are meaningless. People side with the winning side, if things change they will change.
Negotiate about what? Regarding the nuke issue (the only thing that should be really important to Europe and the US imo, another nuclear-armed Islamic country is undesirable), there’s an agreement that Iran so far has adhered to. All the other issues Trump’s administration has brought up, like Iran’s missile program or its “destabilizing” influence in the region (which in reality is probably not more destabilizing than what Saudi-Arabia and other Gulf states are doing, with their support for Sunni jihadis), merely look like pretexts for demanding unconditional surrender from the mullahs, not like the basis for serious negotiations.
At the very least, the end game seems to be creating the conditions for an internal revolution within Iran…but imo that’s very unlikely to succeed, so military options of some sort might eventually look more attractive.
In the case of South Korea, there’s a genuine argument that the US is defending it. A similar argument might be made regarding Japan and maybe a few other countries in Asia. It’s also a genuine thing regarding the Baltic states. With Poland or Romania it’s getting more dubious, but at least the Poles do believe it. Regarding Germany, and basically any other European country, it’s outright idiotic to claim that the US is “defending” or “protecting” it. From what? It’s clear that while Russia might have the ability to conquer some parts of the former Warsaw Pact, it’s incapable of keeping them occupied with a large police force. But attacking farther to the west is clearly beyond Russian capabilities. Germany is not threatened by a Russian invasion. Nor is there a danger of a Polish or Czech invasion.
Anyway, it’s not like being in Germany has zero benefits to the US. It’s using the bases in Germany and the German (and other NATO nations’) airspace to fight its stupid wars across the Middle East. Germany under a vertebrate government might actually demand the US to start paying for the airbases and the airspace.
The Europeans also keep participating in stupid and pointless American wars, for example in Afghanistan and even Iraq. The US has never fully reimbursed these costs, though they usually contributed to the expenses one way or another.
Then there’s the requirement to buy overpriced American weapons. Of course not all Europeans do this (the French don’t spend much on American weapons, though in their case it’s pretty obvious that they aren’t “protected” by the US from anything, nor is there a threat, and even if there were, France is a nuclear power with a relatively strong military), but most do, and there’s always pressure to buy more. We are forbidden from buying Russian or even Chinese weapons, so it must always be expensive weapons from our suzerains (in Hungary’s case, besides the US, it’s mostly Germany).
It’s pretty sickening to think that our spineless governments are going to pay for nothing, and then we even have to pretend to be grateful.
There’s only one good thing here, it will at least make it obvious that we are vassals.
Losing Crimea and Donbas has helped enormously with consolidation.
Obviously I was discussing Ukraine within its current de facto borders. These no longer include the non-Ukrainian parts but also have seen an increase in patriotism in the other parts. Dnipropetrovsk has become rather nationalistic, closer to how Kiev had been prior to Maidan (Kiev has become more nationalistic).
You linked the Galician idea to Kiev and I assumed that by this you meant “Ukrainianism” in general (versus some non-Ukrainain Rusyn identity). In which case you exaggerated again. Did I misunderstand you?
If you meant, specifically, Galician but not Kievan Ukrainian nationalism than you were correct.
On the last census about 10,000 people in Transcarpathia identified themselves as Rusins rather than Ukrainians. Out of about 1 million eastern Slavs there. This is corroborated by the level of support for Rusyn political movements in that region – they are small and marginal.
Maybe they were undercounted but even if the real number was 2 or 3 times higher than the official one it is a tiny percentage.
The situation is dramatically different in Slovakia. IIRC something like 60% of the Eastern Slavs there identify as Rusyns, only 40% as Ukrainians.
Given your demonstrated habit of exaggeration it would be nice to have some links or evidence for this.
Ukrainan wiki has election results by oblast for Ukraine.
In the 2012 elections, the anti-Russian Ukrainain nationalist Svoboda party got 8.35% of the vote in Transcarpathia. About the same as in Vynnytsia (8.40%) and Zhytomir (7.5%) but lower than in Galicia (38% in Lviv oblast). The East Slavic vote for Svoboda in Transcarpathia would be even higher, remember 10% of the population there is ethnic Hungarian.
So Transcarpathia is about as anti-Russian as is central Ukraine. Only in contrast to Galicia is it “pro-Russian.” It is your usual exaggeration.
In 2012 the total Russia-friendly vote (Party of Regions plus Communists) in Transcarpathia was 36% compared to 56% for pro-Western parties. Note that the Hungarian-populated areas voted for Party of Regions.
In 2014 Transcarpathia followed the same trend as central Ukraine and became more nationalistic. Only 7% of people there voted for pro-Russian parties. Compared to 45% in Kharkiv oblast (and 1.6% in Lviv). The most popular party in Transcarpathia was that of the guy responsible for the war – Poroshenko. His party did better there than anywhere else in Ukraine. Pro-War Right Sector and Radical Parties did about as well as in Transcarprthia as in Zhytomir.
So “pro-Russian” – your usual exaggeration. It is only pro-Russian in comparison to Galicia on the other side of the Carpathians. But it’s pretty much the same as Zhytomir, Vynnytsia, etc.
Exactly. Even Schröder’s government, despite their anti-American posturing, allowed the Americans to use their bases in Germany for logistics during the 2003 Iraq war.
And yes, it’s been 30 years since US troops could be said to be in Germany to protect it against any credible threat (and back then West Germany had conscription and large conventional forces, so it wasn’t quite as one-sided as many Americans seem to believe). Given that the US today is run by crazy ideologues, the presence of American troops might actually be detrimental to German security nowadays.
Which never gets appreciated by Americans, instead it’s endless derision and lecturing about free-riding. Especially galling, when one compares it to the endless fawning over that very special country in the Levant, or even about those horrible Gulf Arabs.
All polls that I saw prior to 2014 showed that the vast majority of Ukrainians viewed Russians and Russia favorably. Could it be only a coincidence that these positive endorsements of Russia changed negatively after Russia invaded Ukraine, ripped off the Crimea, and helped foment serious unrest in the Donbas? Those pesky Ukrainians should be grateful that their big Brother has done these things,to teach them a lesson and steer them back into the right direction! Opinion polls should be glowingly positive endorsing the brotherly actions of Russia, I think? Yes, beat them into submission and force them to love Mother Russia! When will they learn?….
Severe warning:
The Russian trolls are back! They are now even more sophisticated than before, only amplifying wrecker content instead of creating it themselves. That’s horrible.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-09/russian-trolls-shift-strategy-to-disrupt-u-s-election-in-2020
Do you advocate the dissolution of NATO and the development of German (or perhaps European) nuclear weapons?
Yes, I do, some sort of independent European defense structure is necessary, and that includes nuclear weapons. But of course European political elites are probably too spineless and incompetent to bring that about (there are also many tensions and antagonisms within Europe, Germany is widely disliked and distrusted, both because of the WW2 past and current economic realities; but it would have to be in some sort of European structure, Germany alone is too weak). It’s unfortunately more likely that Europe will be merely an increasingly irrelevant Eurasian appendix, powerless against the influence of outside forces like the US and China, and submerged by the Afro-Islamic masses.
That’s a good summary. The idea that any EU countries have to have more over-priced US weapons is beyond ridiculous, who are we supposed to use them on? Most are also so complex that there are additional and permanent expensive service-training contracts.
The gratefulness is embarrassing, but somehow mitigated by the obvious discomfort most politicians have talking about it. In most countries, 3-5 billion that we are spending on new weapons would go a long way to do other things. So governments are trying to keep it hush-hush, pretend that it is very long-term over many years, that there will be money also spent from those contracts at home (1-5%).
This latest shake-down is not good for morale.
If this happens, and it is unlikely for numerous reasons, an independent European nuclear power would be Poland-Ukraine. Ukraine has the knowledge base and missile-production capabilities, both countres have some will for this (unlike pacifistic self-hating Germany). But neither is rich enough to do it and it would be very risky, due to possible Russian preemptive strike and massive blow-back even from the West. Ironically if Trumps were in charge of the USA for 20+ years it would be more likely, he probably wouldn’t mind Polish-Ukrainian nukes.
Oh boy, you suddenly seem like a very shallow thinker, what happened?
‘brotherly’, ‘ripped off‘ – we were having a reasonable discussion and you start with sloganeering? Maybe you run out of arguments, or maybe the reality is too painful, so you throw out a few slogans?
I give up, let time decide it – if a united, prosperous, and thoroughly anti-Russian Ukraine joins EU by 2025, I will fly to Lviv and buy a dinner to the first few local girls wearing a tryzub with the NATO sign. I might even enjoy it.
http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/guest-article-view-olympus-north-korean-threat-china/
What makes you think that?
But yes, I know some people in Poland are thinking about nukes, a few years ago I read an interview with Jaroslaw Kaczynski where he hypothetically spoke about European nuclear weapons, he seemed quite interested in the idea. But any Polish-German cooperation about this seems extremely unlikely for the foreseeable future, due to many reasons (e.g. tensions over the WW2 past and differring views about Russia).
The current friction between “nationalism” and “globalism” is unfortunate.
In principle, I don’t see the issue of the Stuttgart declaration of “ever closer union”. The next logical place to build this after economic integration (which remains incomplete) is defense integration.
This could be done with or without NATO. There are some benefits of NATO to Europeans, such as:
• Elimination of security competition between Europe and America
• Extension of American nuclear umbrella over Europe
• Any conflict in Europe necessarily involves Americans and is therefore unthinkable
Of course you and other commenters have laid out the drawbacks of NATO to Europe. These are compelling and could grow worse.
But since “Europe” and “European values” now means the destruction of Europe, understandably the appetite for “ever closer union” is gone. The very big brains behind the Eurozone haven’t helped either.
There’s a horribly stupid politician from the Greens in Bavaria, Katharina Schulze.
Recently she got a lot of criticism in the net (“hate”) because from her Instagram account it had emerged she spent her Christmas vacations in California…hardly climate-friendly and quite hypocritical, given Green concern about global warming.
Anyway her explanation for all the hateful net comments against her:
I sometimes think AK is exaggerating with his complaints about irrational Russophobia…but then I read something like this.
What your excursion into wiki minutia says is that Sub-Carpathia is very different in its attitudes from Galicia. That was my original point. The rest of what you say is irrelevant: there is no way to express pro-Russian sentiments in today’s Ukraine, the pro-Russian parties are not allowed to contest elections openly, so reading too much into a very politically constrained situation is rather stupid. In 2014, Poroshenko run explicitly as the ‘peace’ candidate – he switched to a more military posture only after he was elected. Tymoshenko on the hand talked about nuking Moscow. Those were the choices and still are. No wonder millions of normal Ukrainians are leaving in any way they can.
Thousands of Sub-Carpathians who have migrated to Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia have registered as Hungarians, Slovaks and Rusins (mostly) – those are our government statistics. It makes it easier for them to obtain permanent residency (we are tribal her so blood ties help). Maybe they are being opportunistic, I am just telling you what we see every day.
Next time I will take a video, if she lets me. Those Rusin girls can be stubborn.
Another establishment propped hack.
I know, and if we were still talking about Eisenhower’s America, things might be different.
But given the trajectory the US has taken over the last 30 years (both in regards to foreign policy and its internal cultural and demographic development), the disadvantages are increasingly serious.
Of course, if US influence ever gets removed from Europe, Europeans will probably find a way to screw things up in some way, Germans especially.
I agree about “European values”, in its current incarnation the EU is deeply harmful. It would be good if it could be reformed and turned away from the universalist delusions which are predominant today. The European elections in May might give some indication, if that’s possible and whether right-wingers from different European countries can achieve at least some limited cooperation.
This Mormon belief there are billions of different gods living in different planets, and that life on earth is designed to allow you to become a god yourself – is very similar to Mahayana Buddhism.
In Mahayana Buddhism, they believe in many levels of dimensions which are higher than human one, but lower than Buddhas (Buddhas as plural). They believe with reincarnation they can become these higher beings (often in different dimensions), or lower ones than humans.
For example, Japanese Buddhist hierarchy, above humans are several levels:
https://i.imgur.com/DEIOXSj.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Buddhist_pantheon
It would be interesting if Joseph Smith had created his Mormon cosmology separately, or (I guess more probably) had first read texts of Eastern religions.
Smith publishes Book of Mormon in 1830.
Hindu texts translated into English in late 18th century years, although they became increasingly fashionable in 19th century. But Buddhist texts were only being translated to English from 1830s.
Mormons believe that “City of Zion” was transported by aliens on a spaceship to Planet Kolob.
Mormon songs about this Planet Kolob. (I cannot understand English lyrics in the song)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMlbwYVb8kk
This is spiritually highest planet in the Mormon religion. (Smith says he discovered about this planet from the Ancient Egyptian texts)
Are you sure you this is not just a view of propaganda which claim America is externally aggressive and crazy, or becoming externally more aggressive and crazy each year?
There has to be a way to measure this more objectively
I was thinking recently, subjectively, about how little military action America has, relative for its power, or military size:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
America seems to fight a lot less often than expected relative to its power level (by far the world dominant power). And since Vietnam (which finished 45 years ago), only very minor wars with poor and weak countries.
If you compare British of the 19th century, with a lot less dominance as the international superpower of the 19th century – they seem they were more frequently fighting in larger wars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_Kingdom#United_Kingdom_of_Great_Britain_and_Ireland_(1801%E2%80%931922)
At the same time, they are probably far more internally aggressive and authoritarian, to their domestic population, than American propaganda describes, or would be expected from their economic development level.
https://i.imgur.com/IOMrCOF.jpg
EU already has nuclear weapons in UK and France.
Fortunately, for the UK, they will now leave EU. (On the other hand, France will probably collapse by the 2070s).
What’s your view of UK exit from EU by the way?
My view is that it could be very positive for the UK, but it depends completely on what kind of leaders they have.
If they elect socialists, they will be far worse than if they were still part of the EU (as the EU has a moderating legal and regulatory influence, which would stop socialists from expropriating property, for example). But without EU, there is also more upward potential.
For example, if they England remodel themselves for rich investors from all world, reject extradition agreements with Europe, eliminating taxation for the wealthy, eliminating Scotland, working to free other countries from the EU, etc. The aim should be for the UK to become a rich pirate colony.
It seems like the situation with British nuclear weapons might be a bit more complicated.
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-trident-nuclear-program/
“Fortunately, for the UK, they will now leave EU. (On the other hand, France will probably collapse by the 2070s).”
Recently, migration to the UK remains the same, but the slack in mostly indigenous European EU migration is being replaced by mostly non-white migration from abroad.
“Mormon Temple in Kiev, Ukraine”…
And so it begins 🙂
Architecture reminds a lot of Scientology buildings.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/28/migration-from-non-eu-countries-reach-highest-level-in-15-years
I don’t think “internationalisation” is a good idea for Britain, probably it will just accelerate the “reverse empire” that has been created in the UK.
Britain and France both have “minimal” nuclear deterrents which are inadequate. There are some other issues as well. France’s Force de Frappe is specifically excluded from NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group, and the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent depends on American delivery technology (the Trident).
BREXIT was driven by an amusing but irrational aversion of “the Continent” that has long been a feature of British culture. There was a major tendency to blame political and economic problems which the UK created for itself on the EU.
That said, I agree with you that BREXIT could be an opportunity with the right leaders. Unfortunately for the UK they do not have these leaders, so the results are likely to be bad. Certainly their exit negotiations with the EU have been embarrassing so far.
The USA aren’t fighting more wars because the equation just isn’t there.
They can’t fight Russia and China, the only actual competition in any way for obvious reasons, and they don’t need to/costs would outweigh the gains in case of other countries around the world. Resource concessions, Arabs, Mestizos, Africans are kept under thumb with occassional “anti-terrorism deployment” and export of democracy – cue US forces in Nigeria and elsewhere under the radar (ambush footage).
Why are you trying to make us believe that US decision and policy makers are benevolent?
That they hadn’t done the benefit/cost analysis for invading Venezuela, Iran, Cuba?
Obviously, they did, and despite being capable of defeating them in a matter of days/weaks, the costs and consequences of such actions were deemed too big.
Your obsession with Googling random stuff and pasting the results is cluttering the thread, again.
I would ban every single American cult, religion, sect and “Christianity” they export.
The sheer, mind-boggling stupidity of it all, the empty stares of drones and the simpletons that constitute them irritate me to no end.
Praising Mormons for being non-subhuman in manners and appearance while believing in subhuman-tier nonsense and engaging in brazen nepotism and tribalism is – retarded.
Thanks for linking this article. I did bring up Trident in my response to Dmitri, but what I forgot to bring up is the internal configuration of British politics with respect to their nuclear arsenal.
There has long been in the UK an opposition to nuclear weapons by certain political factions. The petty nationalists at the fringes of Britain have traditionally opposed them, and much of the left in Britain have traditionally opposed them as well.
This creates a real risk that Britain could agree to abolish its nuclear weapons.
To the best my knowledge this is not a significant or respectable political position in France. In one of the most glorious episodes of postwar French history the DGSE sank a Greenpeace ship (the Rainbow Warrior) that was protesting French nuclear testing.
Most people refuse to understand that beyond a certain point reducing immigration to the rich countries cannot be done without throwing out the rule book. The motivation, the numbers in the Third World, and the simple using of the liberal rules – all of those mean that migrants and their allies have a lock on the system.
UK is beyond this point, so is France. They might try throwing out the rules, or simply surrender over time. But this is not in the realm of normal politics any more. UK has lousy leaders, but even best leaders following today’s rules would fail to change the migration tsunami by much.
No-one says Americans are benevolent.
As you write, they are using benefit/cost analysis., which is a sign of rationality and predictability, not madness. And the result, is very few conflicts by any historical standards (even compared to the 19th century, which was considered by historians unusually peaceful after 1815).
American external policy I do not find scary, and generally there is almost zero probability of a military conflict with them (they will only fight weak and poor nations, and even then in a very limited way).
American internal policy I find more scary, but I do not live in America.
As for “googling random stuff and posting results” – it is immodest to say, but I see even my random googling is often far more insightful and accurate than most newspaper and website articles on these topics.
You must not be very well acquainted with your own, Russian Orthodox faith? One of the main goals of Orthodoxy is to help the believer unite with the uncreated energies of the Lord, and enter into a state called Theosis. This theological concept is biblical and points man towards the end result of becoming a ‘god’. It’s actually quite different than the Hindu concept of a universe with many gods that is explained here:
Theosis is the Pearl of Great Price alluded to by Christ. It can become a present reality for those who are willing to tread the path, and so it is not exclusively an after-death experience. With Theosis death is transcended.
http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/theosis.aspx
Slavic privilege > White privilege
No browns, bulbs, homoglobalism > First world HDI
You said it wouldn’t go along with “Kiev-Galicia” but I demonstrated that it is just like places such as Vynnytsia, which do go along with Kiev-Galicia.
She did about as well there as in Galicia.
Is that what they had to claim to easily get residency status?
Evidence of a pattern, not of an individual.
You know, like voting patterns in Transcarpathia that prove it is as nationalistic as central Ukraine.
Mormons are more externally successful than non-Mormon Americans.
I believe we all agree, content of their religion is nonsense, or material for comedy.
However, the fact people believing this nonsense, creates more externally successful people, is interesting and would have practical applications.
Also very counter-intuitive (in Enlightenment, always believed that correct knowledge should result in better life).
19th century didn’t have mass media, Hollywood, the Internet, “soft power” tools; nor CIA and MI6.
Why fight a war when you can sanction and embargo a country, cut the critical exports (medicines, spare parts), confiscate property and deposits and threaten anyone willing to do business with your target nation?
Ferment revolution, insert operatives and reap the benefits. They tried it with rump Yugoslavia in 1990s (Serbia+Montenegro), Iraq (Albright 500k dead children comment), Iran since Revolution – they are definitely doing their best in Venezuela.
In EU4 terms, USA has PU with Israel, vassals, marches, tributaries, independence guarantees all over the world, and supports rebels in every single country opposing it.
Many symbolic and decorative motifs found within LDS temple architecture is identical to Masonic symbolism. This shouldn’t surprise anybody because Joseph Smith and his family tree included Masons. http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/masonicsymbolsandtheldstemple.htm
British nuclear weapons are only deployed by their navy, but it is in the most sophisticated and advanced form of deployment (submarine launched ICBMs).
I know Hyperborean added above an article about their dependence to maintain these weapons on America.
There is discussion of UK politicians, that UK could become like Singapore or Switzerland (i.e. they may try to be like a tax haven).
It also depends on exit of Scotland. Scotland is much more leftist. However, if Scotland can exit the UK, then the politics of UK will shift more to an (economic) right (economic liberalization).
I guess we should bow down to Indian Americans, not to mention Jews.
Also, I see Orthodox people outperforming Mormons in America, by a significant margin.
How about that – even the Orthodoxy – Greeks and Slavs!
This is description of a spiritual process – and surely this spiritual process has relation to alchemy and also various Eastern religions (e.g. Buddha consciousness).
But Mormons is something else. They literally believe there are millions (or billions) of different, independent, gods, living on different planets in the universe.
And they believe they can become gods and live with their family on another planet, which will be their own kingdom.
It’s true – American Orthodox are rich: 29% with income over $100,000, compared to 20% for Mormons.
https://i.imgur.com/9xBdS0N.jpg
http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/mormon/
Also Mormons have been growing, incorporating (probably poorer) Latinos into their religion, while the other religious groups are falling.
“The Future of the Mormon Church? It’s Latino”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/future-mormon-church-it-s-latino-n570621
Some politically good things of the Mormons, like belief government should be small:
https://i.imgur.com/ilYjuQs.jpg
The UK becoming like Singapore or Switzerland with respect to taxation is unrealistic in the short term as it would require a substantial contraction of the British state.
In Switzerland and Singapore healthcare is paid for by compulsory private insurance, whereas in the UK it is paid for by taxes. And the NHS is quite popular in Britain, so privatizing it is highly unlikely.
It could, however, become like Ireland (low corporate tax rate) quite quickly. Actually it seems to me that a major opportunity would be simply eliminating the corporate income tax entirely. It’s unnecessary even from a “fairness” perspective since capital income is easily taxed when it is distributed (dividends, interest, etc.) or realized (capital gains from selling assets).
However leaving the EU isn’t necessary to do any of these things.
To my knowledge the only high tax required by the EU is the VAT, which must be a minimum of 15% for all EU members.
There is more opportunity in BREXIT in the area of regulation, where many things are mandated by the EU.
The biggest short-term economic opportunity for Britain would simply be liberalizing construction (also doesn’t require leaving the EU).
Small government and associated mantra is nonsense peddled by libertarians and similar simpletons, or shabbos goyim.
European greatness was achieved during times
of rigid, centralised and big governments.
Making government “small” and allowing free reign of big money, trusts, lobbies and special interests turns your country into USA or browning Western Europe.
The role of a national government should be to ensure the survival and prosperity of the host ethnicity in that state – not to create ideal conditions for 0.1-1% of the population to transform others into wage- and debt-slaves.
Of course Jews would like ultraliberalism, anarchocapitalism and immigration in White nations – their tribalism would serve them well in such conditions, outcompeting atomised host nation people, all the while more easily blending in among ever more minorities, not sticking out like they used to in Europe of the past, which always ended up with locals getting tired of their shit at some point and expelling them. Oh, the (sur)name changing is part of the societal endoparasite role.
I would gladly exchange top economic performance for a homogenous society with 2+ TFR.
While the benefits of economic liberalism are often oversold (including by Dmitri), it’s not true that, “European greatness was achieved during times of rigid, centralised and big governments.”
By modern standards European governments were then quite small.
I agree with your other remarks.
Theosis = has relation to alchemy.
How so?
Also, the Buddha never believed in God and Buddha consciousness has nothing at all to do with attaining a vision of God. Theosis is a conceptualization of biblical principles that poinst to the ability to actually unite with God, with his uncreated energies and ultimately become a god. It’s clear to me that you didn’t read the tract that I included for your benefit. It can be read in many languages including English and Russian. I think that you’ll find it fascinating and a real page turner.
By modern standards, it wasn’t.
But it was arguably the biggest government they could effect with then-available technology and means of communication.
From recruitment cantons, mobilisation lists, to tax collection on national level, tolls/tarrif data, all the way to state organising arrival of foreigners (Hugenots in Brandenburg, Germans in Russia) and development of certain regions,
micro-management of strategic industries.
I mean, Sweden had tax deductions and exemptions in 1700 for farmers who supported a professional infantryman or cavalryman in the army.
In my opinion, small government in that time frame would be the decentralized, feudal version of monarchy, or unfortunate examples like Rzeczpospolita with weak central power.
The Church runs a lot of charity and relief institutions for Mormons in Utah in place of the State, so they have a safety net.
On the other hand, from a Mormon mafia POV it is beneficial not to subsidise non-Mormons.
The small government / big government dichotomy implicitly assumes an effective modern state apparatus with effective police, courts, bureaucrats, etc.
The idea being that government should remain “small” by limiting its activities to upholding law and order, enforcing contracts, adjudicating civil disputes, defending the realm, etc.
Of course if we go back in time such a government would not be considered “small” at all as you point out. In the late middle ages noblemen strongly resented the imposition of taxes, believing that the king should live off of the income of his own estates. Many civil disputes were still “adjudicated” through combat and Paris had a higher murder rate than modern Detroit.
And what exactly are ‘soft pro-Russian views’? Is it like being allowed to read Pushkin?
Look, there is no robust freedom in Ukraine today to express pro-Russian views. Maybe there is a good reason for it – Crimea, Donbas – but don’t pretend and play with words: anyone with even slightly pro-Russian views is keeping it to himself. Pro-Russian candidates or parties are not allowed to contest elections, they have to hide behind ‘soft pro-Russian’ views. The turnout in traditionally pro-Russian regions was way down in the last elections. That makes all your endless wiki quoting silly. How do you measure something that cannot be expressed in public?
Tymosko-babe is from Dnipro, she was the maniacal ‘nuke the Russians‘ candidate, Sub-Carpathians rejected her. Galicians had the Lviv mayor who was running, so your comparisons are but snapshots of partial information. You try too hard to avoid the obvious: Sub-Carpathia is different from Galicia.
Ok, I will try to take multiple videos, but give me some time, even I am only human…
POWERFUL TAKE:
AP is a Polanophile.
Notice how he absolutely hates Eastern Ukraine, which true Ukraine nationalists are willing to lose life and limb to recover it. He’s only lukewarm on Kiev, for him solidly inferior to Moscow any day of the week. On the other hand, he’s the biggest gung-ho supporter of Lviv and Western Ukraine imaginable. And guess what? Lviv is one of the few parts of Ukraine that used to be straight up parts of Poland, and hence its architecture and vibe in the center. In fact, AP is a mild Russophile, which svidomists can’t be but a workable position for Polish nationalists.
He’s also obsessed with a Polish-Ukrainian alliance. He doesn’t care about Ukraine joining the EU or any Brussels gibsme, but he wants a full-spectrum alliance with just Poland.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/05/middle-income-earners-behind-rising-racial-tensions-research-suggests
With the caveat that it is from a rather hostile source, it would seem to discount Dmitry’s theory that it is the worse off who are most resentful over migrants.
I looked at the study, middle class people (£25,000 – 49,999) are slighty more negative regarding muslims, immigrants and gypsies than lower class people (under £25,000) while upper class people (£50,000+) are a lot less negative (8-10%) than middle class people regarding muslims and immigrants but share more similar opinions on gypsies (perhaps it is because there are no “good” Talented Tenth gypsies).
Of those who consider immigrants a threat to Britain, 75% are very or fairly content with their life at the moment and 64% feel completely or mostly able to influence decisions that affect their lives.
However, the more education they have the less negative they are regarding metics, much more so than compared the distinctions between wealth.
So wealth matters but only at a certain high height and much more important is the level of education, which would suggest that anti-national socialisation affects people’s views more.
TAKEAWAY:
AP is a Polonaphile who is a mild Russophile.
Thank god that he’s not a Ukie nationalist! 🙂
Like encouraging rapprochement with Russia, but not supporting the annexation of Crimea. There are parties such as the Opposition Bloc that support that. These parties are about 7 times more popular on Kharkiv than in Transcarpathia, which you falsely claimed was pro-Russian.
LOL. Someone should inform one of my cousins in Ukraine who posts that stuff on facebook.
It’s a question how much they have to hide due to repression, or how much they hide due to pro-Russian views not being generally popular.
But this is irrelevant to the point. You exaggerated pro-Russian sentiment in Transcarpathia by claiming that the region was pro-Russian. Yet on a measure of pro-Russian support (voting for pro-Russian political parties) Transcarpathia both in 2012 and in 2014 was not at all like an actual region with a lot of pro-Russian support, Kharkiv, but instead was like pro-Ukrainian Vynnytsia.
If you had said – Transcarpathia was pro-Ukrainian (or anti-Russian) like central Ukraine but not as extreme as Galicia, you would have been accurate. Instead you went over the top and claimed that it was pro-Russian and that it rejected the “Galicia-Kiev” idea.
“Way down?”
More exaggeration as usual. Ukrainian wiki provides turnout by oblast in 2012 vs. 2014 parliamentary elections.
Turnout by oblast in 2012:
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BA%D1%96_%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8_%D0%B2_%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D1%96_2012#/media/File:Ukr_election_2012_turnout.PNG
Turnout in 2014 by oblast:
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BA%D1%96_%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8_%D0%B2_%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D1%96_2014#%D0%AF%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0
The difference was 10% in Odessa, 7% in Kharkiv, 7% in Transcarpathia, and 5% in Dnipropetrovsk.
Even if you assume all of those % are pro-Russians who refused to vote, you still have a significant anti-Russian swing in Kharkiv and you still have mostly anti-Russian vote in Transcarpathia. Kharkiv remains pro-Russian (but it is close), while Dnipropetrovsk has flipped. Trancarpathia is as always just like central Ukraine. Only 7% of Trancarpathians voted for pro-Russian parties. If you want to assume that the missing 7% voters who didn’t vote were all pro-Russians – it was still a small minority.
She got 13% of the vote in Transcarpathia, 12% in Galicia.
No he wasn’t.
I’m glad you are finally learning. I have repeatedly been explaining to you that Transcarpathia is like central Ukraine, not like Galicia and not like eastern Ukraine.
I’m talking about it as a generality. Saber-rattling is part of the negotiation process with North Korea. It has long been their own strategy. They recognize Bolton and what he represents. Kim said he was famous and told him he wanted to be in a picture with him.
I don’t think the Trump administration has a coherent Iran strategy. Their policy seems to be to maintain the status quo. Keeping up the rhetoric to signal the Israelis and Arabs that the US is toeing the line. I don’t expect any kind of change. I mean, Israel and Saudi Arabia probably have more political influence over the US than any other two countries.
IMO, US intelligence services are quite incompetent and have always been so. When a coup happened, they claimed credit. I don’t believe they have the ability to cause a revolt. Iran has an oddly-shaped age pyramid too. Starts to collapse <25. Has there ever been a successful revolt in a country with a TFR below replacement? Guessing no. If so, that is sad for all of us.
I agree, imo it’s wishful thinking that the regime in Iran will be overthrown if one just increases political and economic pressure (which even many Iranians who don’t like the present system will probably regard as unjust, given that Iran has adhered to the nuclear deal so far).
The question is if Trump’s administration can accept that. Given that Bolton apparently inquired last year about possibilities for bombing Iran because of some minor incident in Iraq, I’m not convinced of that.
Nightmare scenario would of course be if hardliners in Iran decide they have nothing to lose anyway and actually do start a nuclear weapons programme.
Russia is a useful bogeyman to explain the presence of wreckers and problems in our new wonderful multicultural utopia.
The irrational Russophobia is growing in Hungary, too. Naturally among liberals and leftists. Meanwhile, Fidesz and Orbán voters have grown a Russophilia for themselves, though one can argue that on average it’s still just a more balanced view of Russia. (E.g. why would it be Russophilia to agree that “a strong Russia is good and necessary to balance American power?”)
Obviously there’s a growing minority who project their hopes and desires on Putin, for example I’ve seen a Facebook meme of Putin saying something tough against Muslim immigrants. I would put it into the category of “irrational Russophilia.”
In Norway it usually said that written Norwegian looks more like written Danish. While spoken Norwegian resembles Swedish more than Danish. It is also said that Norwegians are more likely to understand Danish and Swedish, than vice-versa. One of the reasons for this is that we have many dialects. Another that we have two forms of written Norwegian, ‘bokmål’ and ‘nynorsk’.
I Thorfinnson is Swedish he should be able to understand spoken Norwegian. It is just laziness to not be able to do so.
Currently there is a trend of Scandinavians speaking more English with each other instead of Scandinavian. For many this is the easier option.
“Russia’s only hope for a better future is to continue aping Western ways – its never been able to produce a superior product on its own.”
That is true for Ukraine too.
Most of the world look to USA for cues of what is ‘good’, cool, modern, ‘right’, ideal.
Writing this to a Serb. Another proof (if any further proof was needed) that Dmitry is an autistic normie.
Your terminology seems to be a non-sequitur?
I was curious to find out what defines an ‘autistic normie’ and after googling it in this is what I found:
It seems like “contact hypothesis”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_hypothesis
This obviously exists, but it depends on the nature of the immigrants you contact.
If you live in an area with a lot of immigrants, but no-one is not killing each other, very hostile, or fighting, then the contact hypothesis is probably true.
If you live in an area, where people are attacked by immigrants, then contact hypothesis obviously not true, but expresses itself as the opposite (for example, Americans who are near dangerous black American areas will have some inverse contact hypothesis).
In the UK, it’s generally safe, so you could imagine overall contact hypothesis probably exists (although not in all areas).
–
My theory why it is difficult it is to be racist as rich people, is part of contact hypothesis, but accounting for type of contact.
If you access international schools, then you have far more contact with other nationalities, than normal people. At the same time, the samples of the nationalities you are in contact with, are not of the negative type that would lead to “inverse contact hypothesis”.
A lot of the problem is just sampling error – e.g. when all Turkish people you meet seem like secular Europeans, there is probably a sampling problem.
I’m not autistic in the normal life. On the internet, I don’t have memory or interest in the nationality or personality of the different users I did not interact with. This is strip of electronic paper, for writing text or posting images.
As for “normie”. When people are writing about the violence of American external policy, this is the normie position. It’s probably a sign of too much gullible propaganda and media consumption, and not enough analysis.
If there is more than expected violence in American external policy, then should be able to be demonstrated by historical comparisons to other equivalent powers.
I expect you are clever enough to know this and should be able to see it in yourself.
If I remember Reiner self-diagnoses himself as “autistic”, so I receive it as a compliment.
I remember how I became addicted to this website, was a debate with him about whether anything is important after you die, and he and German Reader diagnosed me as a psychopath for saying it’s not important for you if there is a nuclear war after you are dead.
Here – it is all same description of same “spiritual path” (hopefully without too much Mormon literal interpretation about becoming a God with your own plant).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_and_Alchemy
Dmitry, I am sorry to say it, but saying things like that sounds rather autistic.
I remember that. I didn’t write you were a psychopath. I wrote that what you wrote was, on its face, psychopathic, but I also wrote that probably you were just autistic and didn’t understand that your very “logical” opinion was neither logical nor normal.
Anyway, German Reader didn’t even write much about your opinion being psychopathic (I think you mix him up with AP), though he was also involved in the discussion.
The various “color revolutions” throughout the former Soviet Union as well as the Maidan.
You just need a ruckus in the capital city and some elites willing to defect to get the ball rolling.
More young people helps of course.
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of Iranian regime change. There are a lot of Iranians, particularly within Tehran itself, who are dissatisfied with the Iranian regime and want to be a “normal” country. There are constantly episodes on social media of Iranian thots removing their head coverings as an act of “protest”, and there have been anti-Islamic rallies against the regime featuring people chanting that they are not Arabs. Supposedly Iran’s deep involvement in the Syrian civil war is unpopular.
I doubt these people are a majority of the population at all, but I suspect they are disproportionately concentrated in Tehran, Isfahan, and other important urban centers.
The US doesn’t have the ability to cause an insurrection or a coup d’etat in Iran, but it does have the ability to amplify one that occurs and can offer things to dissident elite factions willing to reorient. The extraordinary pressure being applied to Iran’s economy is likely to make certain elites entertain the idea if they see a window of opportunity.
There’s really no need to cloud the message by any ‘alchemy’ provided by Jung, Freud, Hesse etc…
Try some real ‘opium’ as provided by Archimandrite George, you’ll sleep wonderfully tonight and wake up tomorrow totally refreshed…Don’t be afraid Dmitry, just read it. 🙂
I remember the users here I found interesting and interacted with in the past, like yourself Hyperborean. As for that user Reiner says is from Serbia (or it could equally be Paraguay), I never interacted with them before.
This just a shared strip of electric paper, which we access from the around the world and add notes to, and it’s a bit autistic not remember that you are mainly interacting with those notes, and not the actual person.
For example,Reiner is still lost on a question if AaronB or Utu are same person, whereas in neither case is it important, as they (or “he”) at least write some of the strangest content on the internet, and that has some value in itself.
Reiner is an good writer. But he likes writing complicated conspiracies, and he is not happy when you challenge it too much. The same if you challenge conventional views (it’s a kind of disenchanted). But if he wants an accurate view of the world, then he should welcome as much challenging as possible.
Doesn’t he belong to the Uniate Church?
Diagnosing views and people you disagree with as “autistic”, “psychopath” – it’s indication you don’t want to think, but more often (and I think this is case for some of your views), rely on those views to feel better about something, and prefer to dismiss criticism of conventional views without challenging them.
If a view is wrong, then you can say why it is wrong, without calling “psychopathic”, “autistic”.
For example, someone who criticizes Marxist ideology, this is not an indication they have schizophrenia, except for those who want those views suppressed without freely discussing Marxist ideology. You won’t find the answer by saying the person who proposes it is a psychopath, anymore than you would by calling them “infidel”, “heaven”, “witch”, “capitalist”, etc.
As for autism, psychopaths, narcissist – these are all useful terms for diagnosing peoples’ social interaction, not for dismissing arguments you disagree with on an internet forum.
As for “normie”. I only disagree with your comments, when you are writing very conventional “normie” things, such as about external aggression of America – these are political views which correspond to the views of websites like this, or even government television. But whether America is externally aggressive by historical standards for the world power, is an interesting question.
French nuclear weapons are French.
On the other hand, Brits rely on foreign missiles.
What other nuclear-armed country relies on foreign missiles?
Others (coal, nuclear, hydro, etc.) are also problematic for various reasons (CO2, loss of institutional knowledge, regulations, flooded landscapes, etc.) which would prevent them from being good substitutions.
Gas is arguably the least problematic alternative energy source, but…
…it won’t remain cheap if the demand continues to increase and production in traditional supplier countries decline.
Heck, German Greens want to phase out natural gas too.
AP idealizes Poland because of economic development, which is largely from joining the EU.
In the last few months, he writes some things about being more morality in Poland (which is a bit unrealistic and not what Poland people say).
I don’t think he goes on holiday in Poland, so he is not that Polanophile.
I guess his real view which would not be illogical or unusual, would be to want Ukraine to join the EU.
EU is unpopular on forums like this. But economically, it’s sensible for poor countries to join EU. They will lose some of their population to emigration (like Poland did), but they are also growing economically from access to the large market, and receive a lot of free funding for redeveloping infrastructure.
Emigrants also send back money to the domestic economy – Poland receives $8 billion a year as remittances from Polish emigrants in Western Europe.
The question why should EU accept and fund another country, as large and politically unstable as Ukraine? If EU citizens had an opportunity to vote in this issue, why would rich countries, want to fund more and more poor countries?
Natural gas is still half the price of oil in current prices. And now obtaining over 60% efficiency in modern turbines.
https://www.energy.siemens.com/co/pool/hq/power-generation/gas-turbines/SGT5-8000H/gasturbine-sgt5-8000h-h-klasse-performance.pdf
Gas price fluctuates, but it’s still twice cheaper than oil now. For the EU, they will soon have the Northern Stream and the Turkish Stream supplies.
Coal is around three times cheaper than oil per kwh in current prices. But with the latest turbines, gas can now be almost twice as efficiently converted to electrical energy as coal usually is (and gas does not have the same ecological disaster costs as coal power stations).
Coal power stations also quickly converted to gas (I remember some were converted in around a year).
You insisted back then that it was irrational for anyone to worry about what would happen to the world after our deaths. You obviously implied that you are one such “rational” person. This means that you don’t care what is going to happen to your descendants or the descendants of the people you love (your friends and relatives), provided there’s any. What is there to debate in it? Psychopathic people only care for what is going to happen to themselves. Normal people also care for others. Including people yet unborn. Your statement is, on its face, psychopathic. It’s a value judgment, you cannot really argue for or against it, other then pointing out the inherent psychopathy in it.
By historical standards all countries in the world are peaceful and non-aggressive. This is a result of many things, including technology, the nature of the economy, etc. Any other country as a hegemon would be peaceful and non-aggressive by historical standards. Already the USSR under Stalin wasn’t remarkably aggressive by historical standards. Only a few 20th century countries (Hitler’s Germany, Imperial Japan 1931-45, I’m not sure there are any other examples) traditionally considered aggressive lived up to their reputations, if you compare them to “historical standards.”
But its completely different when you dismiss arguments you disagree with as redneck…:)
That’s dumb too, but it’s less dangerous than the Russophobia spreading among centrists and liberals/lefties.
There was an interesting interview with Horst Teltschik, Helmut Kohl’s foreign policy adviser, in yesterday’s SPIEGEL. He strongly criticized Merkel for not doing more to improve relations with Russia, and argued that Russia’s actions were basically defensive and reactive, that there was no real Russian threat to Poland and the Baltic states, that Putin (whom he contrasted positively with Mike Pence who merely wants to boss Europeans around in his view) was genuinely interested in cooperation with the EU, but feels rejected, and that one has to understand Russian perceptions as well (he mentioned the German war on the Soviet Union in this regard). Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be available online in an English version (and the German is behind a paywall), and I can’t be bothered to transcribe and translate it from the print edition.
imo the problem is not least with younger age cohorts who have no genuine connection to WW2 anymore and also don’t realize how dangerous the Cold war was and how lucky we were that it ended with Russians just giving up on their empire.
Irrational Russophobia is dangerous because it’s in power, and also because it’s not totally symmetrical, the phobia leading to unnecessary confrontation, while the philia has more indirect dangers.
The reactive nature of Russian actions is something which, when mentioned, will immediately get you accused of being a Russian troll or at least having been duped by Russian propaganda. It’s already pretty obvious that the Russian question is something which you don’t have a chance to discuss online. Perhaps in person.
I don’t have much experience with that myself, since I don’t really write regular comments anywhere but here. I did encounter one example though in 2017…an insufferable German SJW (very much into gender ideology, pro trans people, anti-Trump, anti-AfD, claimed the Cologne sex assaults were made up, thought Poles need to face up to their alleged Holocaust responsibility…the full package) who was also strongly anti-Russia, not least because of Russia’s intervention in Syria, supporting the evil dictator Assad (and “Russia has always been aggressive, that’s why we need NATO”).
I was somewhat taken aback, but such people exist, and they’re a lot more “respectable” than you or me.
EDIT: I also had some discussions with a young German CDU cuck back in 2014-2016. That guy was also horrible, in favour of arms shipments to Ukraine. Also extremely pro-Israel (member of the German-Israeli society in fact).
I was making much more subtle point.
It’s rational to worry about what happens after our deaths, while we are alive.
Of course, in reality, there is nothing to worry about – as there will no “you” there. It’s an impossibility for something to affect nothing. There could be nuclear holocaust 5 seconds after you lose consciousness, it will have no effect on you.
But if someone told you think would happen 10 seconds before, then it will have effect on you.
Irrationality is we don’t really accept the reality of death, and that’s shown in resistance people such as you had to me saying this point (if you understood the point).
Maybe Epicurus’s views are “psychopath”, “autistic”, etc. Of course, no-one says you shouldn’t worry about things while you are living. The point is that it is not compatible with what will actually happen to you (it’s all sign of our lack of acceptable of reality of death). This is natural and “normie” not to accept it, but you should also have the ability to see what is really going to happen to you.
So you accept that overall is non-aggressive, militarily, for dominant power, by historical standards? Because this is my point.
Well this unproven counter-factual. But if anyone talks about the aggressive and violent American external policy? I prefer to compared to history. Now in the current situation there is dominance, with generally non-aggressive military external policy, combined with quite aggressive internal policy and soft power.
This doesn’t condone America. America itself is far from a paradise, and this is a lot more interesting. Just when I read people hysteria about how America’s violent military policy – I wonder about their observation abilities or awareness of any other historical eras.
The SJW views have become a full ideological package: unquestioned ‘values‘, heroes and myths, internal and external enemy who are linked, with the external enemies Russia pulling the strings. There is the usual justification for restricting speech and political activity by saying that a ‘foreign power is trying to divide us, and it is all lies anyway’. We have the Western unity uber alles mantra.
We can already see the Stalinist argument that people are enemies not because of what they do, but because it ‘helps the enemy‘. You can’t beat that. If this globalist SJW ideology gets consolidated – and it might – we are in for some fun times. They will reeducate us, make retarded movies about how Da Vinci was a woman of colour, and probably ban white-on-white marriage with kids as intrinsically racist. Then they will march on Russia and we know how that usually ends.
Russians have a saying that ‘who comes to us with a sword, will die with a sword‘. I doubt they are kidding. But even saying this ‘objectively assists the enemy’, so I am off to watch BBC and DW to start the self-reeducation process…
Inter-state war has been getting steadily rarer over the last 200 years or so, so “by historical standards” is inherently problematical for comparisons (read Azar Gat’s War in human civilization, there’s a long segment near the end of that book about why war has been getting rarer; iirc it was mostly due to economic factors, but demography also plays a role…even Americans don’t have that many spare sons nowadays).
There’s also the issue that since 1945 war has been considered illegitimate in international relations except under very specific conditions. Also the consequences of nuclear weapons which so far have prevented direct great power wars.
You are obsessive. I said that the Sub-Carpathians are ‘pro-EU, anti-Kiev, have mostly positive attitudes toward Russia, and don’t want to fight in Donbas‘. All of that is true and they are different from Galicians.
You zero in on details that usually have little to do with the overall narrative, misrepresent it, create a strawman and think that by dismantling your own strawman you are making sense. You are not, this is Unz, people have higher comprehension abilities here. Your blase mixing of categories and inability to focus hurts your case.
My last point: your constant refuge in ‘it is exaggerated’ when you lose an argument is not helping you. Of course things in shorthand are ‘exaggerated’ – that’s how we all make points, this is not a symposium with hours to discuss minutia, so the points have to be to some extent clearer and tighter. If you don’t understand that, this is hardly a forum for you.
You could be autistic, or more likely you are just Polish.
Sure there must be many reasons for why there is less war and a very interesting area for study, with human benevolence being least likely influence.
But there is far less military conflict and less conquest and war than expected from America, and is one of most notable things about our era. The country with more military budget than all other countries together and modern equivalent of the Romans, uses their military so insignificantly.
When last America attacked a country that wasn’t appearing to them weak, third world, or an easy target (Vietnam wasn’t in reality, but appears to be)? Almost 70 years ago?
So when I read about aggression and war from America, I find these discussions a little without context or unbalanced often. America’s actual aggression against strong countries, is economic and cultural. Their threat is sanctions and funding of NGOs to create color revolutions, while the missiles and tanks are only very theoretical threats.
Grabbing another state’s territory – defensive and reactive.
On another topic, this Boeing 737 MAX has crashed from Ethiopia, 4 months after it crashed in Indonesia.
https://www.eturbonews.com/246922/boeing-737-max-not-safe-2-crashes-62-airlines-in-danger
Anyone else here has flied on these or will? I remember this is same new Boeing plane that Ural Airlines is going to start flying later this year:
https://newsroom.aviator.aero/ural-airlines-to-lease-14-b737-max-in-us-1-5-billion-deal/
Lol maybe don’t think about booking in Ural Airlines for some time then…
Why are they not flying Russian planes? The Russian government should push its airlines to fly Russian planes wherever possible.
Correct.
They are not anti-Kiev. There is no real separatist movement there. Unless you are trying to state a meaningless platitude, such as Russians outside Moscow are anti-Moscow, Americans are anti-Washington or whatever. Majority of people in Transcarpathia vote for pro-Kiev parties.
Only 7% voted for Russia-friendly political parties. Usually you exaggerate but here you are simply lying.
There are less anti-Russian than are Galicians.
So only one of your three claims is accurate.
Empty and false claim. It is the substance of your statements that are false. Even here, 2 of 3 things you said weren’t true. I guess you can’t help it.
My post was full of evidence demonstrating that your claims were false.
You chose to ignore it, and to whine about me instead. Well, it’s all you can do when the facts are not on your side.
Yes, people disprove your nonsense here. You can’t get away with it. It’s hard for you.
When you claim a drive from Kosice to Ukraine is “hours” when in reality it is 1 hour 35 minutes, it is exaggeration, not “shorthand.”
When you claim turnout was “way down” in the election in pro-Russian areas when in reality it was 7% lower in Kharkiv and 5% lower in Dnipropetrovsk, it is exaggeration not “shorthand.”
When you claim that most Transcarpathians are pro-Russian but only 7 percent voted for Russia-friendly parties it is falsehood, not “shorthand.”
The question is whether Russia would have done that without all that prior talk about NATO accession for Ukraine and Georgia. You can’t ignore that context and pretend this is solely a Ukraine-Russia issue, with the US coming to Ukraine’s aid out of purely altrustic considerations. At the very least, EU and US politicians didn’t pay much consideration to the likely results of their actions.
I’m not totally unsympathetic to Ukrainian national aspirations (and the chauvinism by many Russian commenters here who claim Ukrainians don’t exist is rather ugly), and Russia’s actions were certainly a grave violation of international law (something which Teltschik doesn’t deny either btw). But still, the question is how one should deal with that (and apart from your fantasies about basically recreating the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth in the form of “Intermarium” I can’t recall many constructive proposals from you).
It’s horrible when a European state actually wants to defend itself. How un-German of it.
Bombing North Vietnam after a staged false flag provocation was a defensive action (even if later it turned out to be misguided), while legally it might have been an unprovoked aggression.
Itself? Germany? In Ukraine?
Not only that. Sweden is economically developed, there is little to idealize about that country now.
As measured by facts (divorce rate, abortion rate, HIV rate), it is a very moral country. Poles complaining doesn’t mean it is not a moral place. It means Poles are moral people who complain about things that non-moral people think are normal.
It’s fine when Ukraine defends itself. But the question was whether Germany (or other Western states) should send arms to Ukraine. Since I’m not overly keen on a proxy war with a nuclear-armed power which enjoys regional dominance, for the sake of a country which isn’t a NATO or EU member, my answer was no.
Stalin’s USSR was also very peaceful by that metric. Which might mean that it’s not a very meaningful thing.
Which is why the whole anti-Russia hysteria is so scary.
The competing Russian product (Irkut MC-21) has not yet been introduced.
US sanctions are complicating Russia’s ongoing civil aviation revival: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/02/19/business/u-s-sanctions-force-russia-delay-mc-21-jetliner-roll-rostec-ceo/
Helping a country that is willing to defend itself.
I do not disagree that Russia’s actions weren’t reasonable given the circumstances. If I were in Putin’s shoes I might have done the same things; Crimea fell into his lap. They were reactive in the sense that an opportunity presented itself and he reacted, but they were also clearly aggressive.
With what, specifically?
You have a country doing something laudable – willing to defend itself. There is nothing “horrible” (in your words) about wanting to reach out a helping hand to this country. It might not be a good idea (I think it is) but it is not “horrible.”
The context was about the commenters here worrying about demographic trends which will only affect the next generation, but not yet us. You explicitly stated we shouldn’t worry about it, even though demographic trends cannot change overnight, in other words, we shouldn’t worry about something we know is bound to happen.
Not an interesting argument, so I won’t reply any more.
Stalin’s USSR only attacked much weaker countries, where victory seemed certain. And even then, it spared Finnish independence both in 1940 and in 1944. It retreated from North Korea and Manchuria militarily. It gave back Port Arthur to China. It created a milder form of Stalinism (still horrible, of course) for the countries it conquered. Externally, it was pretty benevolent.
With the situation since 2014.
iirc you’ve even admitted yourself that Russia is unlikely to give back Crimea (and probably the same applies to the Donbas territories run by pro-Russian proxies), Putin wouldn’t survive it politically. And unless I’m mistaken, you’ve even admitted that Ukraine might be better off without those regions with their disloyal population (which you regard as morally defective post-Soviets anyway iirc).
So the question is, how does one get out of this situation, what’s the endgame? Right now Western (or at least American) policy seems to be full-on confrontation and a new Cold war that will last until Russia surrenders. Which ignores that we might not be so lucky like we were with the 1st Cold war.
I can’t really recall anything from you about constructive, realistic policies (apart from that “Intermarium” idea, which tbh seems merely like irreal nostalgia for the long-gone Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to me). You also ignore that the issue has gone well beyond Ukraine by now, with all that demented “Russia stole our elections and is our greatest enemy” nonsense in the US.
Finnmark and Bornholm too.
I wrote that the CDU guy I was talking to on the net was horrible.
And he was also horrible for lots of reasons unconnected to Ukraine (e.g. he turned out to be a little snitch who wanted to report people to police for “racist” comments on Facebook).
Ukraine defending itself is of course totally legitimate. I take a rather dim view though of US involvement there (which imo might turn out negative for Ukraine as well in the end), but obviously our views are going to differ on that.
Are you going to be commenting here again?
Your original musing was that the rise of electric cars is going to be a future problem for Russia,…
…but if natural gas is going to be the best energy source that replaces oil, it is not going to be much of a problem.
https://icdn.lenta.ru/images/2017/12/08/19/20171208194211309/detail_5ee238c4ae47969bd4d6b108196fccdf.jpg
Discussion was about whether something which happens after you die can affect you, Epicurus, and then you were angry and started psychological diagnosis when I used nuclear apocalypse as an example.
It was an interesting, but you did not want to understand what I was writing.
Stalin invaded half of Poland for annexation, and for annexation Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (obviously just were regathering Russian Empire territory). Also the attempt to take Finland, less successfully.
But when was the last real military annexation by America? Maybe Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Philippines ?
Their military annexations were all before America was a superpower.
America is interesting how little it uses its vast military power.
And when it does, very modestly retreating after without taking anything – this is how Trump was feeling when he wondered why they did not take the oil of Iraq (Trump sounded bizarre to say this today, where we are conditioned by international law, but for a 19th century English or Russian (or for anyone like Zhirinovsky), this would have been a very normal question).
Sure, gas sales and export is still going to be ok, and Russian gas is really an energy of the future of the EU, Turkey and China.
Problem will be with always volatile oil price, when demand is displaced during the 2030s, in my prediction.
Oil export is much more profitable than the gas export (sales are usually more than twice larger by total income, but also with much higher profit margin than the gas export). Oil export has much more significant contribution to GDP, when prices are high.
Gas is more geopolitically important though, because supply is not so fungible.
These new pipelines (to EU, Turkey and China) are an important strategic inheritance for many years, which will also safeguard for better relations with these countries in the future.
No one knows what happens after death. To insist there is nothing is as irrational as to insist there is something.
The truly rational position is skepticism – just say you don’t know.
Military aggression =/= annexation
It is the very opposite.
Their armed forces have so many commitments that they are described as “overstretched” despite spending far more on the military than anyone else.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a15338212/navy-officers-involved-in-deadly-destroyer-collisions-face-court-martials/
Trump did not look close enough.
http://chinascope.org/archives/6458/76
People from the 19th century would be familiar with money-motivated military policy which does not aim at looting the other country directly.
https://sites.google.com/site/ageofsteelandcoal/home/1902-venezuela-gunboat-diplomacy
These airlines had a renaissance in reputation with customers, when they buy or lease for their fleets the newest Airbus and Boeing planes.
This is matches my (and most people’s popular) prejudices. It’s not abnormal that customers avoid airline which would still fly Tupolev, Antonov, Yakovlev.
By the way, your country’s airline Wizz Air is all on Airbus, so this is nothing unique.
With Ural Airlines, I usually had a bad customer experience and poor meals, but the planes are all new, safe, etc, which is the important thing. (And Aeroflot even better, has one of the newest fleets of any airline in the world now).
I don’t think repeating what happens with crashes of Saratov Airlines, Yak-Service, and Pulkovo airline, is a good idea. (Just from amoral business perspective, they all collapsed after their planes crashed).
There are a couple of new domestic planes entering now, and Aeroflot is ordering some (Irkut MC-21, Sukhoi Superjet 100). Both these are still majority components made by Western companies so there is some problem with sanctions with these planes (if they will sell to Iran).
But we are talking about future.
Oil being more important now does not mean it has to remain more important than natural gas.
When saying “reactive”, hopefully, it is assumed by default that Russia had long standing contingency plans for taking Crimea. Yes, it was kind of like how Dugin says “If it’s just laying there, why not take it?”, but the take over was partly so spectacularly successful because it was meticulously planned.
In fact, Ukrainian nationalists anticipated this and held meetings on this topic around 2010. One seasoned Ukrainian soldier even said that when he heard Zhirinovsky talk in 1989, he knew right then there would eventually be war.
I was reading Taleb recently, and he says that every failed business owner he has known fails to grasp the point that what works, by definition, cannot be stupid.
Our cognitive processes do not have privileged access to truth, because we cannot verify our cognitive processes through some meta-cognition.
Intelligent evolutionsts have long known that the human mind evolved to favor what works, not necessarily the truth.
The height of irrationality seems to be to deny beliefs that have demonstrably worked to create healthy societies, like belief in the afterlife which is practically universal, because it is not strictly verifiable.
In the discussion on Mormons, people were saying their ideas are obviously stupid, but lead to success in the real world. But success in the real world, for animals trying to survive, is the criterion for what is intelligent – a lesson failed business owners never learn.
Success in the real world may even the only criterion for truth that we have.
Hungary does not produce airliners.
Neither is it a good idea to rely foreign aircrafts who cost more and more.
http://www.rusaviainsider.com/soaring-fuel-prices-russian-airlines-losses/
MC-21 is mostly Russian.
Intermarium is not about nostalgia, it is all about the future and about rising above the current system. It would of course require an insane amount of work, a major attitude adjustment and self-sacrifice.
Syrians are “moftkhor” which was hilariously translated for me as “like worthless welfare nigger” the first time I heard it a few years ago.
Is there really widespread interest in “Intermarium”?
tbh I alway wonder whether AP’s views on this aren’t strongly colored by his own personal background as a descendant of Ukrainian-Polish aristocratic exiles. Or is this actually seriously discussed in Poland (which is the country that would really matter in this regard), with ordinary people being enthusiastic about the idea of a political union with Ukraine? I find it difficult to believe, but then I have no idea about the discussions about this project.
I am quite superstitious and believe in soul.
But if there is no soul outside the body, then this is what not existing actually will be: you will not exist, and nothing that happens afterwards can affect such a non-existent thing.
You can imaginatively project what will happen beyond your own life-span, but in that case all that is relevant is content of your imagination while you were alive (what actually happens when you are non-existent, will be totally irrelevant).
Neither philosophers like Epicurus were not being autistic or psychopathic, when they saw how people do not accept implications of such nothingness and still act like they will have some intermediate existence, from which to be affected by death and by time periods in which they do not exist.
I have friends from politically elite families in Poland and this idea is popular. Not political union/annexation but alliance.