It’s become glaringly evident that Western societies (unfortunately, Russia “qualifies”) do not have the state capacity or social discipline to contain Corona. Not high IQ enough to solve it through technological silver bullets like ubiquitous testing. Not imaginative enough to do large-scale variolation, as Robin Hanson proposed. Nor do they have the fortitude to “power through” the requisite deaths into herd immunity – which is perhaps just as well, since the news on the long-term effects SARS2 is unremittingly bad, even in asymptomatic cases. So we are stuck in an idiot’s limbo of uncertainty and cycling lockdowns.
So rolling out a vaccine ASAP is a very good idea, unless you want to be subject to lockdowns well into 2021 as well. But most of the same people who rant against lockdowns and masks apparently do want that, because they also tend to be the people ranting about Bill Gates’ plans to microchip everyone and spread the coronavirus through Chinese 5G. (I might have gotten some of the details wrong, no desire to “study” this Q cult’s religion).
Anyhow, today Putin announced that Russia has developed a vaccine against coronavirus.
Gam-COVID-Vac Lyo was supposedly tested on his daughter. Secret rumors have been going around that Russian elites got access to the experimental vaccine as early as April, which aren’t really very secret seeing as they were reported in Bloomberg.
It’s also less impressive than it first sounds. It has one of many dozens of promising vaccine candidates, not is it even the most advanced in developed; Phase III (mass) testing has yet to begin, unlike University of Oxford’s ChAdOx1. Nonetheless, the Gamaleya Institute and Russia in general have a good track record with developing vaccines – the eradication of polio owes a lot to Soviet research – so there’s no reason to think its “vaporware”. Twenty countries have already made a billion orders.
The vaccine has been confirmed to work, months in people are not keeling over dead from it or suffering notable long-term effects (unlike with the coronavirus), so rolling it out in tandem with Phase III testing is a no brainer. (Every month of delay exacts a large human and economic toll on the non-East Asian countries that haven’t contained the coronavirus, which needs to be balanced against bureaucratic regulations on ensuring perfect safety). But Putin Derangement Syndrome is such that it is now Western libs who are turning anti-vaxxer as well, stating that under no circumstance would they take the Putler vaccine.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Western mass media are really furious about Putler’s vaccine.
Are Russia and China doing provocation trials? If not, why not?
~700k dead globally. Totally weak.
Does your virus come in mens?
Besides what weak ass child needs a vaccine? A 103-year old pakistanni man survived covid-19, does the land of Paks have a second-to-none medical system? I laughed asking that.
It’s not so much IQ as weak ass genetics. If your body has trouble dealing with a bitch flu chances are you are going to get killed by an even more bitch-like infection (like tetanus, if I had a son who died from tetanus I wouldn’t even get him a tombstone… pussy).
I fervently hope that the eventual vaccine will be Russian. I’d like to see its effect on crazies.
I would think you’d have schadenfreude that the homintern’s vanguard will make themselves candidates for darwin awards this way
Here’s a somewhat related question…
In one of your previous posts, you’d suggested that Russian Nationalists were mostly leaning towards the US in the new China/America Cold War:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russian-nationalists-on-us-vs-china-confrontation/
Frankly, I was utterly flabbergasted. I could certainly imagine something like that being the case ten or twenty years ago, but now???
Over the last few years, the US has been intensely hostile towards Russia, in all sorts of very important and sometimes dangerous ways, while breaking every sort of normal international protocol and behaving like a dangerously insane rogue nation.
Moreover, during that same time (and especially recently) the US has proven itself to the utterly and totally incompetent in so many different ways. We’re together with India and Brazil as having the worst responses to the Covid-19 outbreak. America’s ruling elites have been trying to get rid of Trump in the most bizarre and illegal ways. Violent mobs of criminals and radicals have been looting many of our largest cities and tearing down our monuments. We have the highest unemployment since the Great Depression. Our fiscal and trade deficits are horrific.
I’d think that America’s stock should be at an all-time low worldwide, especially in Russia, so I’m extremely puzzled by the pro-US sentiment among those Russian elites. Are they just totally mesmerized by America’s worldwide MSM dominance? Are they hoping that the US will help them turn Russia into another Ukraine?
So, what do you make of the recent developments in New Zealand? An island nation, crushed the curve early, all travelers are quarantined, no new cases for 100+ days. Then boom, 4 cases out of nowhere. No one knows where they came from. Cue new draconian lockdowns, panic buying at the stores, mass hysteria, cats and dogs living together.
So what do you think happen? Did an aerosol particle blow across the ocean all the way from Australia? Or had Covid been spreading asymptomatically all this time unbeknownst to all? In any case, it’s obvious that “state capacity” is useless even for someone like New Zealand.
You do not need high IQ societies to deal with COVID-19. All that is needed is basic competence plus sufficient compliance. The less naturally inclined a population is towards compliance, the more authoritarian methods will be necessary to make them comply. Also, societies which are less densely populated, and whose people are more likely to practice social distancing for other reasons, can probably get away with less competence or compliance.
The biggest problem is that public health officials are nutcases. They have consistently made wrong claims about the ability to stop the epidemic(as opposed to slowing it down, flattening the curve, and other bullshit) quarantines, international travel, masks, nursing homes, about how likely coronavirus is to become a problem outside of China, about preparedness for epidemics, about the range of solutions available, etc. This is a problem of bad ideas, not of incapability of solving problems. Sixty years the public health people were not saying this kind of stuff, it’s a new thing. If Stalin were ruling these people would have all been shot a long time ago, and their dumb ideas would go the grave with them.
There is enough data out there which shows COVID-19 can be eradicated domestically, and that it can be done with a variety of different methods. The domestic situation and the methods used differed in China, South Korea, Vietnam, New Zealand, or Japan, yet they all have the epidemic under control. We also have it easier than people decades ago would have. There are many ways of tracking people and much more biotechnology available to deal with epidemics. We know more about microbiology and vaccine development. There is no reason for COVID-19 to be out of control in any first world country, or even a middle income country. Societies that have failed are simply decadent.
Fifty more years of liberalism, and I bet you East Asian societies would show the same incompetence as you see in the western world today, regardless of national IQ.
Robin Hanson is also a nutcase.
Sorry, I think the “long term effects” shtick is another bit of mainstream propaganda, like the “you can get it twice” nonsense which totally contradicts the idea of vaccination. We also went through a lot of crazy stories about dogs and cats getting it, which went nowhere. BTW, though I’m loathe to trust ANY vaccine that’s’ rushed to market — I’d rather take my chances with Covid — I’d accept a Russian vaccine much more readily than something promoted by globalist shill Bill Gates.
Australia is doing well – except in Victoria where then had a massive surge ten days after a BLM rally. They say there is no connection and it is because of poor protocols in the quarantine centres.
The chain of infection doesn’t need to be very long for it to avoid healthcare system detection for a period of 100 days, remembering that so many cases are asymptomatic (or close enough to it).
We could be talking numbers under 10 total infections, at an R of 1, then it finally hits a family of which one has a severe enough reaction to get tested and registered as a positive case. 10 might be too small, but the numbers are likely extremely low – and the response has been faster an more authoritarian than most Western govts are able to muster. I would be unsurprised if NZ manages to contain this outbreak too on past form and current actions.
In the meantime NZ has enjoyed months of relaxed restrictions and better economic outcomes than they otherwise would have.
We also have influenza vaccines targeting a disease that you can get twice. Or twenty times, for that matter. Whether or not COVID-19 will work the same way simply depends on how fast the virus mutates. Based on the behavior of other Coronaviruses as well as genetic research of samples taken at different times it is entirely plausible that COVID-19 mutates fairly fast and re-infection is possible.
That being said, the longer we go on without this being conclusively proven, the longer the window of immunity probably is. The fact that we’re in August and there aren’t a bunch of clear cases of re-infection means immunity most likely lasts 6 months at the very least.
“Are they hoping that the US will help them turn Russia into another Ukraine?” – No, they are hoping that the US will help them turn Ukraine back to Russia?
“long term effects” = psychosomatic symptoms.
Russia is supposed to be a gas station that doesn’t make anything. Those pesky Russian biologists ruin the narrative.
So the media hounds are released to complain.
Let me take a stab at that one. The reason why the Russian nationalists might be leaning towards US in the China/US dispute is because maybe they mistrust China.
Eduard Shevardnadze – who was the last foreign minister of the USSR – apparently warned the Russians before he passed away: “Keep an eye on China, they want Siberia”.
For all their faults, the Americans don’t have any designs on Russian territory, I guess they are content with Alaska. The Chinese apparently – according to Shevardnadze – do, and the Russians should be wary of them.
I trust Shevardnadze’s assessment, and I think Putin also agrees with it too. Just a few years ago, Putin signed a border agreement with China – I think it was about some ridiculous dispute over useless island in the Amur river – over which China and USSR went to war in the 1960’s.
It was interesting the speech that Putin made during this occasion. He said something like: “Historically our country (compared to China) has been the stronger one, but that’s no longer the case. So I think it’s in our best interest to sign an agreement in order to prevent any future possible border disputes with China”. Something along those lines.
I think that the partnership between Russia and China is out of necessity, it’s not in Russia’s long term interest to be stuck as China’s ally. It’s US who is pushing them into this marriage of (in)convenience.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-russia-border/china-signs-border-demarcation-pact-with-russia-idUKPEK29238620080721
Give it a rest, admit your mistakes and move on.
Corona-chan is a nothingburger and the excess deaths were caused by medical malpractice. (Sticking people on ventilators, etc.)
Shevardnadze was the globohomo shill who destroyed the USSR. Listen to what he said and do the opposite.
Which is one of many reasons why flu vaccines are generally pointless: there are usually so many strains of influenza circulating at any given time, and they are all constantly mutating anyway. Oh: and doesn’t the flu have something like a 0.25% death rate? Sheesh! Sounds like Corona virus.
Even though I don’t think they realise it, vaccine delays and haphazard lockdowns benefit them.
That American elites can unleash a 1928-31-style cultural revolution even under Dictator Drumpf shows how little power “traditional” Americans have, so what they should be doing is to hope that the economy crashes to the point where everything falls apart and someone picks up the pieces and forms a genuine nation or two out of the hundred ruin shards of empire.
The U.S. response to Covid has been derisory because — here comes my broken-record post — U.S. institutions and individuals have contagiously contracted the relaxed ethos of “get it basically okay.” I have watched over the decades while proficient/conscientious/fastidious unraveled. I attribute this to affirmative action and migration, coupled with the surrender, of the competent, to the America 2.0 standard ushered-in by these two demographics. Examples abound. A 2016 Hopkins study concluded that 250,000 die annually from medical negligence. Thus, “basically okay” medical care is accepted. The Boeing Max. Homelessness. Academic standards. Infrastructure. All basically okay, good enough.
The worst “surrender” to “basically okay” has occurred in government. People on this webzine are among those who have not surrendered. Resisting surrender is difficult. “I can’t go on. I will go on.” (Beckett)
I couldn’t agree more. I cannot think of one instance of allergies or severe sickness when i was growing up. Today kids are allergic to everything. There are public schools in Ontario Canada (I call it Onterrible) that banned spicy foods and peppers. My neighbor is allergic to onions. WTF. I planted 110 ft. of onions along our adjoining property line. I’m sick of these pansy fucks. We played out doors in the dirt. We lived on a farm. None of us kids got sick but the city bitches were off school all the time. Fucking snot nosed bastards. LOL..
Every day is a comedy act that keeps on giving.
Gamaleya Institute’s virgin Gam-COVID-Vac Lyo vs. University of Oxford’s ChAdOx1
(sorry, couldn’t resist)
America’s international stock may be low, but China does not like to be outdone by America.
I was very worried about a Hillary Clinton presidency. I was convinced that the woman who did so much to bring springtime to the Arabs would have picked a fight with Russia as one of her first acts in office. Even women who are not Hillary Clinton are usually all too ready to go to war.
Trump, as I expected, has done nothing of the sort, with Russia or anyone else. Russia may not quite trust him, but they have no reason to trust Xi more, and many reasons to trust him less.
Russians have a deep, primal hate for the Chinese in the same way that American liberal whites hate whites. This is particularly acute in the Russian security services, especially the military. Furthermore, Russians see no profound reasons to either hate, or be hated by, Americans. They are honestly bewildered by Americans’ animosity towards them, whereas the hostility from Europeans of different stripes at least has some historical basis.
Yes
The average person is not very intelligent, including the Russian nationalists
The cancer of Libertarianism is still not a dead horse in Eastern Europe either, and the US is always the promised land for such idiots
Americanophiles in Eastern Europe are far too inert, it doesn’t matter how many photos of Skid Row, San Fran shit and needle filled streets, Chicago crime stats or BLM/Gay protests you show them, they still have the image of Paradise America in their mind that they soked up when watching TV as teenagers
They try to mask it as “the logical opinion” in order to hide their obnoxious inferiority complex but pick at them long enough and the facade falls off to reveal something rather sad and unremarkable
Yes this is probably projection, I was like this as a youth and am currently witnessing my more intelligent friends from University reconsidering thier dream of moving to America after I sent them footage of what’s going on across the Atlantic
The core motivation is always the money, it’s like every East European migrant to the US is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, not exactly a population that’d form good American patriots in a few generations, perhaps this is why whitey isn’t doing anything about the destruction of WASP heritage, it isn’t really “their” heritage nor do they care much for heritage in general
It will never be fully gone, just like boomers still talk about England as if it’s still a superpower we’ll be hearing about American Exceptionalism till the eagles choke
This will only be remedied when the younger generations grow older, then they’ll likely be Sinophiles or whatever
You realise you are talking about a somewhat more lethal version of a common cold. Are there any effective vaccines against any of the common cold variants?
America still has the strongest economy due to dollar hedgemoney. So the rest of the world still kisses America’s ass because they don’t want to be poor countries.
Once the dollar collapses, Americans will be shocked at how quickly and how throughly countries lose respect for America.
Its like if a billionaire is dating a women and he beats her every night. A lot of women will put up with it because the guy is rich and buys her things.
They are still letting in traveller’s so of course it will spread.
You think everyone is quaranteening 100%? What about rich people and celebrities?
America has no designs on Russian territory lol?
America actively took Ukraine away from Russia and planted its own shill there. America is actively trying to do the same with other parts of Russia.
America is not trying to claim the land for itself, but why does it need to when it can just extract the wealth.
But it is trying to carve up Russia into a bunch of small pieces.
Was it just a coincidence that a Russian inspired proxy war (Donbas) and a large land rip off (Crimea) the likes of which hasn’t been seen since WWII, have slowed down both the Ukrainian and Russian economies? Russia doesn’t need any US tinkering to help damage its own economy, its quite capable of of doing so itself. Just think Ron, if Russia hadn’t meddled into Ukrainian affairs and no resulting war or sanctions, where would both Russia’s and Ukraine’s economies be today?
Good question! Some considerations:
(1) My sample in that post (primarily the Russian language nationalists on Twitter, as I polled the question in Russian) isn’t representative of either the Russian population or the Russian elites.
In any case the dominant attitude there is not Americanophile but xenophobic towards both China and the US.
(2) The approval rate of China in Russia is around ~70%, vs. ~30% for the US. This has been consistent since 2014.
(3) The one series of polls that I am aware of on the attitudes of Russia’s elites, the 2016 Hamilton College Levitt Polls, does not suggest Russian elites are particularly Americanophile either.
WaPo wrote it up: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/07/22/russian-elites-are-more-militaristic-expansionist-and-anti-american-than-theyve-been-in-years-this-new-study-shows/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/WSNJP2I2PEZVLMIL6PO7Y3GO4Y.jpg
Caption: Is the United States a Threat to Russia’s National Security? Data: 2016 Hamilton College Levitt Poll — “The Russian Elite 2016” and “Survey of Russian Elites: 1993-2012,” ICPSR, University of Michigan; Figure: Levitt Research Group, Hamilton College. Note: “Don’t knows” and refusals are excluded.
The only broad political faction in Russia that has a positive view of the US are unsurprisingly the liberals. But they don’t have power, to the extent they exist within the elites, it’s usually in technocratic roles like the Finance Ministry.
However, negative attitudes towards the US don’t necessarily (and why would they) automatically translate into positive attitudes towards China. Especially amongst nationalist-tilted siloviks, who are suspicious personality-wise to start off with. (As JL notes).
What were my “mistakes”?
Identify them concretely.
In about the same place. Ukraine would destroy Donbas industries per EU trade regulations anyway, and EU wouldn’t pay for it (this is why Yanukovich pulled out at the last minute).
Russia would be worse off – ruble devaluation had nothing to do with Ukraine, oil prices would have collapsed anyway. But sanctions and counter sanctions had stimulated Russian domestic production, caused major reduction in foreign debt, and had Russia avoid IMF death spiral that Ukraine is currently on.
Addition of Crimea was a major geostrategic benefit, and Russian economy recovered nicely – 2% growth with 2% budget surplus are very respectable numbers for a major economy. By contrast, US has to print 5% GDP budget deficit to achieve 2-3% growth. If Putin bought everyone a pony to achieve 5% GDP deficit, Russian economic growth would go up well above US levels.
Russian economy was doing poorly before Crimea, but they have been doing mostly everything correctly since then. Russia should have pressed the advantage and went deeper and took over more of East Ukraine (they would have been welcomed there), but Putin is too nice and cautious. But oh well. Russia should meddle more though, and create their own Civil societies similar to how US does it. That’s how you create sof power.
That makes much more sense. I was aware that the poll of “nationalistic Russians” probably wasn’t very representative, but it’s nice to see that ordinary Russians are a little more sane.
Still, I can’t see why the events of the last few months haven’t caused a total collapse in pro-US sentiment worldwide. I mean we’re talking about an India/Brazil-type uncontrolled disease epidemic, Great Depression unemployment, horrendous budget deficits, a Maoist Cultural Revolution, and massive urban riots and looting. If that doesn’t “dent” the US image abroad, what would?…
That’s my guess as well. I’ve published a long series on American Pravda, but even so the power of the MSM endlessly surprises me.
Perhaps part of the problem is that there’s so much “chaff” floating around on Social Media that people can’t judge the relative magnitude of particular events.
For example, just a couple of days ago a mob of hundreds of black criminals looted and destroyed the wealthiest downtown shopping district in Chicago, America’s third largest city, where nothing like that had ever previously happened. Offhand, that seems like a pretty big deal to me, but people bombarded with vast amounts of junk on Twitter or Facebook might not regard it in the same way.
After reading the Meduza interview with the head researcher, that someone linked to earlier on another thread, the vaccine appears a lot more developed and trustable. They did challenge studies in primates, finished phase II, worked on a similar MERS vaccine for many years and finished phase II with that, and injected basically all the staff of their institute with this new vaccine as a sort of phase III unofficial challenge trial.
None of that information is available in the English language, so it’s easy to take the piss of the Russian vaccine as empty propaganda. It is ‘propaganda’ since they are actually not going to release it to the public until January 2021 and will do Phase III in parallel with limited volunteer injections until then, but at least if that information was available to the Western scientific community, it would be harder to claim it was ’empty propaganda’.
Based on what was in the interview, it’s very likely to work by now, so the risk of it failing and looking like fools in front of the world must be very low, something like a few percent, while scoring a propaganda victory is >90% so they decided to go for it. Maybe it was also planned a bit to make the Russia Derangement Syndrome (RDS) people look like fools in half a year from now with that in mind. Still, the facts are that others are further along in their Phase III trials already, although the Russian vaccine does have an interesting two stage adenovirus method that might offer greater population immunity percentage. Normally it’s bad form to do propaganda like this, but in this case I think the chance of it failing Phase III is quite small and there were political considerations. Of course there shouldn’t be in an ideal world, but in an ideal world there should also not be RDS that a lot of serious Western scientists fall for that are now saying ‘RIP Russian political prisoners’ on twitter.
The West message to Russia is… “Beware Russia. China wants to slave you! If you want to be free from China, be our slave!”.
In addition, a Russo-Chinese war over Siberian resources is the wet dream of Westerner thinkers. It will not happen because Chinese are not fool enough to go to war against the first nuclear power of the world. China just pays for these resources. Cheaper and better option.
A few years ago we were hosting a big name German professor (in science) at our institute and when I was talking to him at lunch, he said that he will never go to the US because he is against it. I was a bit shocked that someone from Germany would express that sentiment and said that I will go, since I still have connections there. He said that he understands others doing it, but it’s his own personal decision based on his views of international politics and dislike of American societal trends. We also have a European prof who I sometimes talk to at lunch who went for a sabattical for a year in Germany and came back rabidly anti-American. He went to grad school in the US, but after he came back and I was mentioning something about coronavirus numbers going up in the US unlike Trump wanted, he said with a venomous voice “I’m sure they’ll be able to spin it somehow, since they pretend they are so good at propaganda.” This hatred or dislike for the US wasn’t there in Germany just a decade ago, so Russia can probably change. Although science profs are not exactly ‘nationalists’.
But I also think you might be making too much out of the current failures as they are not having a dramatic effect just yet. I don’t know much about Ron Unz from a biographical standpoint, but the last interview I listened to with you mentioned a bit of the background, that you live in California and are reasonably well off. Although it is true that when collapses come, signs were there, but they accelerate so fast that you don’t expect them, I don’t see you ready to leave the USA. I left because I had enough of the society, but there are plenty of contributors to very left wing and very right wing media sites that feel very at home in California (Yasha Levine, Curtis Yarvin, etc…). Did the Antifa mob come to your residential neighborhood to burn down some houses lately? Anywhere in California? Are people also dying on the streets of the coronavirus like they had videos out of China in February? Is Chicago paralyzed by riots, or did they just have one day of riots, with order restored and many looters arrested by now?
And yet the mob did come for Yanukovich and associated oligarchs right after Maidan. So probably Eastern Europeans see those drug addicts in San Francisco, but they also see some rich suburbs on some news story about the Silicon Valley that are untouched, and conclude that the riots and unemployment are a small thing to watch out for and ultimately no one can match America. Germans presumably start at a higher income level or have more familiarity with American culture so you have to watch them if you want to see the effect of the last few months having a big negative effect in views towards the country. Most Russians have never been to America, and probably not even to Europe, and it’s easier to romanticize something more exotic.
Also, when the middle class starts not being able to afford mortgage due to not having jobs and benefits running out… then the fun starts and we can talk about world attitudes changing significantly.
Just think where the US would be if it wasn’t so belligerent and hegemonic…with bases all over the planet and involvement in wars in a number of countries. Spending a trillion dollars a year on the War Department. Destroying the middle class to make the rich and powerful…more so.
“…news on the long-term effects SARS2 is unremittingly bad, even in asymptomatic cases.” Source? Your link leads to a NY Fox affiliate reporting on autopsies. I doubt the people who died were asymptomatic.
Not to mention that the quarantine security was run by a Muslim shitskin who was a major donor to Daniel Andrews (Victoria’s communist premier), and the pajeets and hajis who were posted as security guards took money from White women who were being quarantined in exchange for sex.
That’s so cute. I have to remember that the next time a hedgie calls me.
That works as long as the world uses SWIFT. Sanctions and threats have made it clear to the world that dealing in Dollars is increasingly risky business, and serious moves are starting to be made to de-dollarise international trade. If the US provokes China, you can be sure it was because China started buying oil for anything other than Dollars. It will be a short war, and Americans won’t like the outcome, sitting with no power in their un-airconditioned and probably foreclosed McMansions in the middle of Dark Ages America.
Needless to say, the average person does not spend their time looking at crime stats and economic charts
Nor do they pay attention to the news much, even if they read it sort of takes the backseat to the bread and circus requirements of daily life
Only recently have the normies clued in that China is an economic powerhouse, a decade ago nobody cared (at least in my neck of the woods) but looking at the insane growth rate year after year it was obvious back then, even to a teenager like me, that it would inevitably become a Great Power (if not a full fledged superpower)
The US still has all the prestige (though it is being reduced at a glacial pace), Apple phones are still more prestigious to Huawei ones despite the technical difference being unnoticeable to the average consumer
The average person doesn’t know about those, and the elites are paid to ignore it (unless they’re part of the Sino-Russian side of Cold War 2)
Not just libs. The kochbertarians at reason.com, who traditionally have been for the “right to try” and against FDA “bureaucracy”, are suddenly™ doing a 180 as well.
Of course, Reason has long been “not what it used to be” but still, I hadn’t realized their condition had deteriorated so quickly.
Actually, California’s a bad example since it’s probably been doing better than almost any other part of the US. We’ve had minimal urban “unrest” and handled the Covid-19 outbreak more effectively than almost any other large state.
I’m not too familiar with the individuals you mentioned, but frankly that’s one reason I don’t have a high opinion of many Internet rightwingers, who’ve been saying all sorts of ridiculous things about California for years, even decades. If you’re interested, I just published a piece partly addressed to some of these issues, which contains links to several of my other recent ones on similar matters:
https://www.unz.com/runz/the-bankruptcy-of-american-white-nationalism/
I suspect that the Donbas wold have managed just fine and have been forced to finally modernize its industry to reflect 21st tecnologies. Actually, Yanukovych’s last move was to try and sign on with Russia’s Eurasian Union, it was another about face that forced him to finally flee Ukraine.
It’s true that on the upside Russia has been forced to rely more on itself to procure goods that it had been used to buying elsewhere, but I’m not sure that overall this has added much net to overall GDP. Oil and gas prices were being forced down due to US and Saudi cooperation to stem the rise that was supported by Russia. The aggression in Ukraine was a convenient marker in this trend that accelerated this decrease in prices. And today, with the world economy starting to tank, how will that loom for Russia’s economy where oil is still its #1 export?
I do. US role in trying to maintain its status as the world’s policeman is untenable over the long term. It’s way too costly as you point out. On the other hand, it’s probably the price one has to pay in order to maintain the ability to print money, carte blanche. Now, how many countries in the world can do that? 🙂
In this, the cultural hegemony of the United States plays a huge role. Here is our child at school was given a homework assignment-to portray his favorite fairy-tale personages. Quite natural these were American (turtles).
https://b.radikal.ru/b08/2008/95/53c44d28a9fd.jpg
However, American doctors in garbage bags were seen by everyone, and kissing shoes to black dominants was also seen by everyone. And it really damaged America’s prestige
Not just the government, but the great majority of Russian citizens, support improving relations with China.
Russian nationalist groups were mainly crushed, or at least infiltrated and dismantled by government/security services, more than a decade ago, and then part of their views re-arranged, and re-appropriated. It’s an unusual minority view, not some kind of important or common fashion in Russia.
It’s possible that some people who dislike government for its internal policy should be expected to oppose its orientation in external affairs. You can see something similar in America. The people who are against the government for its internal policies, also likely opposed its external policies.
But Twitter polls are the stupidest thing I have ever heard – Twitter operates like a flow-diagram, that leads user to those accounts who match precisely their own, personal views. So the idea of polling people from those accounts, is useless, as the Twitter account itself has already selected people with a predetermined selection of views. It’s just such a simple machine where people input their clicks, and it matches them to other users who inputted similar choices in their clicks. The more you input clicks into Twitter, the more precisely it should lead you to accounts that match your views.
Although this might be in countries like Bulgaria, it’s more of the opposite in Russia. No country than Russia generates endogenously more blog posts and television reports and references about Skid Row, Detroit, gay parades, etc.
–
Aside from the propaganda layer. Most people don’t idealize America in Russia. There is more of positive view of Scandinavia, Europe.
Navalny does actually idealize America – or more the anglosaxon world -, but the reason is because his core politics is like American Republican Party people (he was kind of originally right-wing mild nationalist, who then moderated his views to match a new audience of disaffected hipsters and schoolchildren).
So, Navalny, for example, thinks that we should all have American style of suburbs with large houses, and long drives to work.
Although the most popular American media consumed as teenagers in the 2000s at least, was usually something violent and involving guns, gangsters and shooting. Tupac was very popular at least 15 years ago. The coolest films were something like Goodfellas, Godfather, Pulp Fiction, etc.
However, I think the proportions of consumption, and production, of media in America, exported, has changed a lot in the recent years, to emphasize less violent and sensational media. Nowadays the popular American media in Russia, seem to be media like Grey’s Anatomy and Big Bang Theory.
California is a barely habitable third world craphole with a cost of living adjusted poverty rate of 25 percent that should have a population half of its present population. Much of the interior is mountains, or farmland in the Central Valley with a lot worse climate than the coast, or uninhabitable desert, and the thin sliver of land along the coasts is already fully occupied, unlike British Columbia where is is still a lightly populated interior with a reasonable climate to absorb the overflow from the Vancouver metro area. Well you could build 60 floor cheap commie blocks like the Singaporeans do in order to lower housing costs along the coast, but that is not how Americans like to live, since the traditional layout of US and Canadian cities is a dense central business district core or only a few blocks surrounded by single family detached housing, like you see in Texas. Basically the terrain of California is like Japan or Southern China, and traditionally Americans are used to having a lot more living space and at a cheaper price than the Chinese or Japanese do.
The pandemic is global and viewed as a natural disaster, and while the US has not been successful at combating COVID-19 failures are globally widespread. Additionally, the actual lethal harm caused by the disease is somewhat modest which limits the perception damage caused by it.
Likewise, high unemployment as a result of COVID-19 is not contained to America.
Horrendous budget and trade deficits–not new, and nobody cares.
The Maoist cultural revolution has disturbed many foreign observers, but it should also be noted that this cultural revolution is in support of a religion which been adopted by many foreign countries. Even most non-Western countries incorrectly believe that racism is wrong and that the explanation for black woes in America is racism.
But most importantly you’re onto something in noting that US dominance of global propaganda is effective. Perception is reality for most, and furthermore as John Derbyshire has noted previously perceptions tend to shift slowly. Note how for instance that many people still hold the view that China is a poor and backwards country whose successes are only due to foreign markets and the theft or imitation of foreign technology. This was perhaps an accurate if harsh description of China at the turn of the millennium, but certainly not today.
What would dent the US image abroad quickly? A currency crisis, serious military defeat, or a civil war.
You know what is funny? How the most ardent defenders of China here like Ron Unz or God free Roberts are not posting from China. I mean what do you think would happen to Ron Unz of God free if they are living in China, and posted that same of articles about China that they post about the US here, particularly Ron Unz, Would we even hear about him? Or maybe he would be doing hard labor or house arrest for the next 1000 years, like you know what?
“since the news on the long-term effects SARS2 is unremittingly bad, even in asymptomatic cases….”
If there aren’t symptoms, how can there be long-term effects? The linked article doesn’t say anything about asymptomatic patients.
Then again, we know that Anatoly Karen (I mean, Karlin) has been pushing coronadoom fear-porn since February, including the infamous prediction that it will “kill millions” and his false assertions regarding the fatality rate.
Would any of the China bulls here put their money where their mouth is and live in China and take Chinese citizenship?
None of them are Chinese.
Perhaps someone who is Chinese can inform us what Chinese dissidents are allowed to publish and whom they are allowed to reach.
My take is that Western, and especially American, dissidents are permitted to publish and disseminate propaganda in a limited fashion as an artifact of the fact that the British and American constitutions were established by Enlightenment liberal rebels.
The contemporary powers that be no longer support free speech or the right of dissidents to publish and disseminate propaganda, but legal obstacles as well as simple institutional inertia get in the way of fully stamping out dissent (for now).
China, by comparison, is a communist dictatorship that rules over an oriental society that never believed in any individual rights to begin with.
Who would pay for it? Ukraine, lol? EU lied to Yanukovich by low balling the costs of EU trade agreement. And even then they refused to pay even the little fake number of a few $billion. When Ukrainians did their own audit, their cost estimates were closer to the truth, in the range of couple hundred $billion, similar to what EU was paying Poland. This is why Yanukovich bailed on the trade deal.
Nobody in EU cared about Ukrainian heavy industry. How many Antonov airplanes did EU purchase? Motor Sich helicopters? Lol. It was Russia who was the customer, and it was Russia who was supposed to pay those hundreds of $billions and go broke trying to modernize Ukrainian production to EU standards while EU would be happily raping Ukraine of their people and resources and using them as their cum dump (excess product dump).
Russia refused to be a part of that and localized production instead, wisely. Ukrainians lost people and strategic industries. But hey, they can now develop Candy crush apps for Western corporations in Lvov coffee shops, hipster style, so its all good.
Domestic production means domestic employment which means domestic paychecks that drive consumption aka GDP. It also reduces oil export dependence because need to import is less.
And now shale oil is down big time. At Russian sweet spot price of $42, shale will find it difficult to come back.
Oil exports are only something like 8% of Russian GDP. Even if they disappeared completely, it would hurt, but wouldn’t be the end of the world. Russia is well on its way to become breadbasket of the world with booming agricultural exports, and its manufacturing is sufficient to cover domestic demand. This obsession with trade balance is weird anyway. US hasn’t ran a trade surplus since the 70’s, and US didn’t end. If Russian oil exports decline and trade goes into deficit, its not the end of the world either.
No, because I’m not Chinese.
The fact that you think this is clever is part of the problem. It betrays the idea that anyone can become, or at least should be able to become, an American.
If anyone can become American, then Americans don’t exist. Or at any rate soon won’t.
The number of officially registered deaths from coronavirus worldwide is 750,000, and the epidemic (on a global scale) is growing. This number is greatly underestimated. The actual number of deaths from coronavirus has undoubtedly already exceeded one million
Karlin’s warnings (in January) about the need to close borders, provide people with masks, etc. were absolutely correct (it’s a pity the politicians did not listen to him)
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1287879663038038016
My question remains, would we still hear about Ron Unz if he was Chinese, and he had the same attitude towards Xi personally and the Chinese government that he has towards the US government, do you think he would be permitted to publish allegations that Beijing was deliberately spreading coronavirus in order to sabotage Western economies, if he was Chinese and living in China? Because Ron Unz and some people here putting China on a pedestal is so tiresome.
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/corona-will-kill-millions-crater-the-world-economy/
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/corona-cost/
It didn’t “kill millions”, the world economy is more or less fine (a fake and gay thing like a “subprime crisis” did worse), and life expectancy is okay.
Another example of CCP Taiwan psychosis:
‘Those who play with fire will get burned’: Beijing warns Washington after US health chief’s visit to Taiwan
https://www.rt.com/news/497821-us-taiwan-china-coronavirus/
https://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/jinping-takes-up-the-us-challenge/#comment-3922573
“If the US is really going to contest and stop China, Taiwan is the place where to draw the line in the sand.”
One who labels those who question the mainstream consensus as mere “conspiracy theorists” is either being dishonest or naive. We have ample evidence of duplicitous media manipulation of public opinion dating back over one hundred years with many prominent examples; rabble rousing coverage of the destruction of the USS Maine leading to the Spanish-American War, atrocity propaganda during WWI, Walter Duranty’s duplicitous coverage of the catastrophic effects of Dekulakization. The capacity to manufacture consent has been greatly enhanced by the pioneering work of Edward Bernays following WWII, the ubiquity of mass communication, and the declining capacity of the critical reasoning and independent thought capacities of the general public which has been reduced to utter dependency upon their little devices and social media networks.
The technocratic scientific dictatorship is looming, and one need not be Sherlock Holmes to piece together the various seemingly disconnected strands that taken individually appear harmless, or even benevolent (to some). Various agendas are being openly discussed by the Davos set: transhumanism, digital ID, DNA/RNA vaccines, cashless society, Chinese style social credit systems, AI governed facial recognition technology/ubiquitous surveillance cameras tied to urban 5g smart-grid.
I urge everyone to research these questions, and further, research the motivations and interests of the various commentators, industrialists, journalists, economists and doctors on both sides of the debate. Study their physiognomy. If once can become properly attuned, it is quite possible to discern those who speak with love in their heart from those motivated by avarice.
An interesting interview detailing some aspects of my comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKdsL57SUZo&feature=youtu.be
These are decent points that you make – we’ll see how the world stands at this time next year.
You seem too intelligent, if not too well read, to post something as naive as this (Me thinks that you are a wee bit disengenuous here,Thorfy)? Do you really have any doubts that China is one of the most authoritarian governments in the world today, and is drilling down quite hard on any signs of dissent?
Well, my impression is that in many respects America these days is far more “totalitarian” than China.
In China, you can get into serious trouble if you criticize the government too harshly, or if you touch upon especially sensitive topics like Hong Kong or Taiwan. But otherwise, I think you can say almost anything you want without concern. That’s my impression, and a couple of people with good ties to China have basically confirmed it.
But in the US, there’s a very long and rapidly growing list of things can get you destroyed if you mention them in just a casual Tweet or a Facebook comment. You can get fired from your job, banned from social media, and perhaps even banned from various vital Internet services.
And some of those deadly “triggers” are totally insane. For example, saying that you support Donald Trump or “All Lives Matter,” let alone commenting on the racial skew of certain crime rates or saying that men and women are biological different.
Even several years ago, the CEO of Mozilla was summarily purged when it was discovered that years earlier he’d made a small contribution to the successful anti-Gay Marriage ballot measure.
China’s government may have been crazy back during the cultural revolution, but these days it’s exceptionally competent and sensible, while our own government is totally insane. I’ll take the liberty of repeating that funny joke that was going around Chinese Social Media a couple of years ago about Chairman Mao coming back to life and asking all sorts of questions about the modern world:
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/ChairmanMaoAgain.jpeg
(1) 750,000 global deaths (official) to date, which excludes large undercounting even in the developed world to say nothing of the rest. https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1284501385472610304
(2) 2020 world GDP growth projected at -5%. This is the biggest y/y decline since WW2.
(3) Life expectancy numbers for 2020 haven’t been released, and won’t be until 2021 or 2022 in some countries.
But good of you to maintain your unrivalled record of being wrong on just about every single record.
You are making my point. If this thing can spread asymptomatically for months, there is no conceivable “state capacity” that can prevent or even mitigate it.
There was a study done some time ago from a Western source that found that by and large, China’s censors did not really bother with paying attention to random dissenters. Organized opposition to the government was censored but individual complaints are generally ignored.
I suppose it could be different with hot button issues like HK but the limits are always very clear.
There are about 30 autoimmune disorders, many of which essentially didn’t exist 30 years ago. These are real new diseases with real suffering, not artifacts of better reporting or imagination. Also rates of the older autoimmune diseases have shot way up.
Something in the environment is different. For example, gluten in bioengineered wheat is far stronger than it was even 10 years ago. Gluten is a natural insecticide which attacks the gut of insects. Also it stimulates pleasure receptors in human brains. In humans, a function of the gut is to let nutrients in and keep poisons out. If the cells which do this are attacked, you’d expect pathological autoimmune responses to various non-nutrients crossing the gut barrier…
Do not blame the victim. Blame the psychopathic Ag/Medical/pharma complex.
“This number is greatly underestimated. The actual number of deaths from coronavirus has undoubtedly already exceeded one million”
Do you have a source for these claims? It seems more likely that the current figure you cite is an overestimate, given the generous criteria used to count something as a “Covid-19 death” (e.g., no distinction between “dying with” and “dying from”). Other illnesses are not counted this way.
Closing borders is ultimately an unrealistic way of stopping the spread, as illustrated by the recent emergence of cases in New Zealand, which has been in a hermetically sealed lockdown for months.
This is a media virus, and A. Karen/Karlin is unfortunately contributing to that with his hyperventilating, panic-inducing coverage.
The US was picking the fight with Russia, which means that sanctions and economic war were always on the cards, which means that we would end up where we are now regardless.
I saw this coming 10 years ago with the big push for Globohomo. Why single out Russia, whose laws were less restrictive than “good boy” Poland? Most Commonwealth nations and Arab monarchies outright ban or execute gays, but Obama was kissing the Saudis’ ring less than a year after criticizing Russia. Also, he couldn’t remove the very outdated Jackson-Vanick sanctions without levying new ones.
As for Ukraine, you can’t trust any statistics about the economy when it is coming from a country that has been lying about its population size for 20 years.
Is Crimea bigger than Kosovo? I have never checked.
Well you could argue that Unz.com or its Chinese equivalent is something that somebody or a lot of people could organize on right?
Imagine thinking that a virus could be contained through “social discipline.” Karlin should stick to HBD and other topics that are more within his purview.
“Nor do they have the fortitude to “power through” the requisite deaths into herd immunity – which is perhaps just as well, since the news on the long-term effects SARS2 is unremittingly bad, even in asymptomatic cases.”
Where does the linked article mention anything about long-term effects on asymptomatic cases? Oh wait, it doesn’t.
But then there really is a difference in what makes a person a pariah in the US and China are different, but still the point is that the authors here would not even be allowed to print this website and would all be gone if they are Chinese in China and the things they were saying about the US they were saying about China, especially if they are in the position to influence people.
Really? While I abhor the curtailment of freedom of speech going of in the US that you do a service to expose, there’s really no reason to try and downplay the draconian efforts going on within China.
It seems that you’re giving a green light associated with the problems of free expression as regards Hong Kong and Taiwan, as if these are minor issues not really worth complaining about, but how about the problem in the far north west of China, regarding the Uighurs? Should we sweep their human rights problems under the rug too? Add all of this up, and I think that you have a problem much larger than anything you see happening in the US.
https://youtu.be/OQ5LnY21Hgc
China doesn’t hand out citizenship as easily as decadent Western countries.
With regards to corona, I think the evidence shows that it can be contained if you are willing to resort to Chinese measures, or have a naturally compliant population with almost no contrarians, or where social and political pressures marginalize contrarians, but then China would not be allowing the corona skeptics here to publicize their views if they were Chinese living in China right?
I mean for a long time someone had a little cult preaching the destruction of the Han “slave race” and how China should stop existing.
https://supchina.com/2019/03/13/chinas-intellectual-dark-web-and-its-most-active-fanatic/
Agreed. Also, I’d be curious to know as well whether those blood clots are permanent. The individuals in question died. Does anyone have any idea whether or not blood clots are still present in those who survived, and if so, doesn’t the body of a healthy individual have the ability to eventually expel blood clots (honest question. I know nothing of blood clotting in the body’s organs)?
I don’t doubt that China is authoritarian nor that it suppresses dissent.
But I remain ignorant of how extensive its suppression of dissent is, how harshly dissidents are treated, and which topics are taboo.
I know a few things from English language media and social media, but overall my knowledge is limited.
In any case that’s not really my point. 128 apparently thinks it’s some sort of fantastic point that China presumably clamps down more harshly on dissidents than the United States does. It’s a bad point for two reasons:
1 – None of the points Ron Unz raised in his original post that spurred the discussion had anything to do with dissent. He brought up COVID, fiscal and trade balances, unemployment, and order. China appears to be doing better than America on these things.
2 – More fundamentally, it betrays a liberal universalist worldview that anyone can become American–or Chinese. The embrace of this worldview is leading us to extinction. The old “Love It or Leave It” yarn implies that America is good because of its positive qualities rather than it is good (or at least important) because it is one’s home. Whether or not Chinese dissidents enjoy the same freedoms as Ron Unz, Paul Craig Roberts, and Godfree Roberts is therefore completely irrelevant.
While I’ll agree with you that it should take more than just the ability to breathe and have a heartbeat in order to become a US citizen, the US has historically played a role as a large country willing to take in new citizens from around the world. We should have stronger controls at our borders and curtail the influx of criminals and felons from other countries. My parents were immigrants to this great country, but needed to have somebody sign their request for entrance that would ensure that any financial obligations that they incurred, would be handled by their sponsor in case they couldn’t find employment, and this included rent and groceries too. This sort of an arrangement is still within human memory and I think that it would be wise to incorporate some of these ideas into the current model going forward. The Democrats should think of newer and less costly ways to find members for their party, don’t you think? 🙂
I can see certain cases where some help could be afforded to those perhaps from war torn areas, but now we’re getting into specifics, and as we both know “the devil is always to be found in the details”.
Watch the clip in #79 to get a better idea of the police state and surveillance going on within China.
The previous US immigration system with national origins quotas privileging Northwestern Europeans and requiring sponsorship for naturalization was certainly superior, though we shouldn’t romanticize it too much. And it must also be remembered that this system was put into place after decades of uncontrolled mass immigration that resulted in catastrophes like the world’s single largest Jewish infestation and the mafia.
The “my parents” bit is part of the problem. I don’t mean you in particular, but it’s quite common that many otherwise patriotic Americans struggling with immigration reform because they end up taking it as an insult to their own families.
And yes, Steve Sailer has frequently described the Democratic “new majority” strategy as being analogous to using ringers to rig Little League games. Apt.
I’m not going to watch the clip because I am not a video peasant and video content makes me angry. I’m not wholly ignorant of Chinese tyranny or anything–simply not that well informed for the simple reason that I’m not Chinese.
I’m aware, for instance, that China has London-level CCTV covering the entire country but with far more advanced biometrics and AI. I’m well aware of their “Great Firewall” and am also personally victimized by it (commercially). There are many other such things, and of course in these Marxist-Leninist gangster dictatorships sometimes far more horrifying things happen. But it’s not my fight, and it was also not germane to the points Ron Unz made.
What’s there not to “romanticize” about the older system, where the US acquired needed workers for its factories (yes, at one time the US had a lot of factories), and still didn’t need to be saddled with all sorts of “entitlement” payments? My father became a highly skilled machine operator, as he said an “A” operator that could run any machine in the shop. The company specialized in producing highly accurate toleranced gears for military contracts, made of very expensive metals. He was never unemployed and lived well and was able to assist both myself and my sister gain college educations (we both earned Masters degrees). So yes, I’m quite proud of my father’s achievements.
Along those same lines, I don’t quite follow what you mean by the “my parents bit” being some kind of a problem?…Although I’ve been unemployed a few times throughout my life, due to regular recessions and company closures (my sister has not and worked her whole life as a schoolteacher), I’ve always payed my taxes and never spent one day in jail, not even a misdemeanor…I’m not bragging, but just making the point that overall, it’s turned out good or everybody involved. 🙂
LOL. That doesn’t really surprise me. When a country’s leaders are doing very well, they’re far more tolerant of “eccentric” dissenters. The real income of urban Chinese has been doubling every decade, while the real income of American workers has been stagnant or declining for 50-60 years. That and all the other crazy government policies is the reason people got so fed up they voted for an ignorant buffoon like Trump.
There’s also another factor, directly related to the #1 “touchy” issue in America, a topic that can get you purged faster than anything else. Back in 2012 I published “The Myth of American Meritocracy,” which got lots of nice attention and was ranked as probably the best magazine article of the year both by David Brooks of the NYT and a top Economist editor.
It was extremely candid about all sorts of things, and near the bottom it contained the following paragraph:
https://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/
When a large country is ruled by a narrow elite misaligned in numerous ways with the overwhelming majority of the population, instability may result. When that ruling elite has become remarkably corrupt, greedy, and incompetent, leading to poverty and misery for the bulk of the population, plus endless foreign and domestic disasters, such instability multiplies. Under such circumstances, the likelihood of that elite believing it needs to severely clamp down upon such an apparently restive population becomes ever greater.
Covid is like the flu. Enough with this bs that it is like the t virus from resident evil.
The thing with America is that these factors apply to a certain extent but not to an extent necessarily extreme enough to predict a collapse. People may be desperate enough to elect a Trump but not desperate enough to go open mass rebellion.
So far it is not an overwhelming majority. The elite establishment (everyone other than Trump and perhaps Cruz among Republics, everyone other than Warren and Sanders among Democrats), had the support of at least close to half of their respective parties. It may be a slim majority on both Right and Left who are out of step with the elite, but not an overwhelming one.
Correct. But the severity of instability reflects the magnitude of the disconnect. Trump got elected. Sanders almost became the Democratic candidate. We are seeing riots worse than LA in the early 1990s but not as bad as the late 1960s.
This part is very accurate.
This part is not accurate. The upper and upper-middle (professional) classes have been doing well, much better than ever. That’s about 30% of the population. Another 20% to 30% or so are doing about the same. Such people probably wouldn’t want a lot of disruption either. And another third to 40%, primarily the white working class, have seen their fortunes sink.
Correct. Fortunately the severity of the factors above in the USA is not yet such that instability is of disastrous proportions. It has taken the form of Trump disrupting the Republican Party thanks to angry white working class voters. At the other end of the political spectrum, the riots are not yet close to 1960s levels.
The elite can also seek to coopt and water down resistance to it.
Your point is indistinguishable from mouth-breathing retarded fuckwits whose response to criticism of their weltanschauung can be summarised as…
Folks like that are generally ignorant of the world beneath their feet. They tend to invest emotional energy in retarded shit – e.g., stupid ignorant primitive tribal fairy-tales and nonsense that proceeds therefrom.
I have no strong affection for the Chinese political leadership – like the entire global political class, they are grifters whose first objective is to enrich their cronies by organised parasitism, and I would applaud executing them all pour encourager les autres.
The Chinese variant has acknowledged that stealing other people’s shit through conquest doesn’t work as a long-term strategy anymore, which is something of a geopolitical mitzvah (especially relative to the behaviour of the US Death Machine). The CCP has recognised that the best way to achieve their narrow, venal objective is to generate supernumerary output (i.e., output above subsistence) in as large a population as possible… and then to grift as much of the surplus as possible.
A side-effect of that realisation, is rapidly rising living standards for a billion people who don’t yet give a fuck about individual rights… because hitherto they were more focused on ensuring they had adequate calories to survive the short term.
Give it another 5-10 years and the average 20-something urban Chinee will be just as self-absorbed as US undergraduates, and the CCP will have to let out the reins.
Censorship has similar characteristics to torture and prohibition: everyone knows it doesn’t work, but some people find it profitable to do it anyhow.
Chinese censorship seems to be a bit like the US drug prohibition strategy… a hyper-expensive way to ensure that some apparatchiks get paid, while ensuring that anyone who wants the banned thing can get it anytime they like.
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ok, let me save you the five minutes of googling… it most certainly DOES NOT test for COVID19 specifically, it ONLY tests for coronavirii IN GENERAL…
would you tell me, please, are or are not coronavirii omnipresent ? ? ?
ding time’s up: yes, everywhere, all the time… huh, how about that…
bonus question: if the false positive rate is a reasonable 30-60%, how many tests before you face a near statistical certainty of ‘testing’ ‘positive’ for, well, um, for something… maybe…
yeah, i will let you do the math (or ‘maths’ for retarded euros)…
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heaven forfend, surely it cain’t be that ! !! where is my fainting couch, i have the vapors ! ! !
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perhaps mr k would agree with forbes that we leave this type of injurious conjecture to the ‘experts’ (you know, the ones who likely created the pandemic, one way or another)…
Thanks, that was an interesting article. I agree with the thesis. I’ve been an immigrant for now more than half my life in various countries and I’ve never taken out unemployment (and I’ve been unemployed for some stretches) and try to follow the rules of the host society and learn the local language.
There are some caveats though. It is true that immigration depresses wages. Especially massive, low skilled immigration and suppressing it effectively like Trump wanted could have lead to higher wages for poor blacks. It’s also true that it creates a less homogeneous society and there are no guarantees that second or third generation children whose wages will be depressed by new waves won’t try to form an ‘Aztec nation’ culture that divides the country along one more fault-line.
In terms of race, I might have a strange view on it. Human societies are social and they do have friend groups and societies and tribes, that helps groups to compete and survive, but ultimately race is a biological concept. And if you think about it from that perspective, then in every species, your biggest enemy are other members of the species in competition for food and mates. I noticed that in the last 15 years, the people who I really got angry at and was ready to punch their face in after an argument, were very close to me genetically and grew up in a similar geographic location and spoke the same mother tongue, and one even looked a lot like me. This is probably partly genetics based. Only when I have a job and family can I afford to worry about luxuries like my tribe. In the modern world my tribe also doesn’t offer protection to me, and if they have bought into Woke culture and transgender kindergarten reading hours that might actually be harmful to my children and passing onto them what I think are good values, there is less reason to waste time on them on the Internets. I’d rather live in an anti-Woke country where I was a minority. Sometimes I do miss the community, and talking to people in a bar who get my cultural references, and even the organized religion aspects… but the feeling passes if I read enough news.
Anyways, I’ll try to read the columns more regularly.
Agreed. The allergy thing is yet another example of media-driven mass hysteria. And social media encourages even more mass hysteria.
When you have mass media, and even worse when you have social media, you end up with perpetual mass hysteria which leads to a Nanny State.
The allergy thing is just one example of the crazy hypochondria (and in the case of children hypochondria-by-proxy fuelled by hysterical parents) that mass media has created. You want other examples? ADHD. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Fibromyalgia.
And unfortunately nationalists do seem to be even less intelligent than the average person. The quality of human capital in nationalist movements in all countries is abysmally low.
Actually, until the last few years, issues of race, ethnicity, and social policy, especially including immigration were the primary focus of my writing and research. So just in case you’re interested in a much more detailed exposition of my views, here’s link to one of my major articles on the subject, that directly led to major changes in American public policy across the country a few years later:
https://www.unz.com/runz/immigration-republicans-and-the-end-of-white-america-singlepage/
Very Chad.
https://youtu.be/dym4IF0z3sY
https://youtu.be/FSHl4kyd5Jo
Given the MSM’s total dishonesty on a plethora of other subjects, why should we give any credence to their narrative regarding Xijiang?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYc0OvrWsAANmx7.jpg?name=orig
https://d.radikal.ru/d40/2008/99/ee65d2c15796.png
etc
the number of deaths from covid is underestimated everywhere except Belgium
The U.S. is an extreme example of the phenomenon.
Even better, if he published long articles how Nanking massacre and other Japanese atrocities in WW2 were fake and Japanese empire was the good guy who was liberating China. This would be even funnier 😉
The story in the link you provide refers to people who died of Covid-19. I never heard of long-term effects in asymptomatic cases. Could you provide a link for that as well?
I think it’s because they still see the US as basically a white/European descent country (even though whites are now arguably in the minority) and therefore more like them on that level.
Also, I think a lot of Russians don’t like the Chinese and feel threatened by having such a large population and economically powerful nation right on their border, especially on their sparsely populated but resource rich Far Eastern border. Many seem to see Chinese annexation of Siberia is a real possibility and threat.
CCP really isn’t that concerned with “crank” opinions; I’ve seen “Japan wuz right” before. Posting Coronavirus came from a Wuhan biolab, though, will get you a tea drinking meeting.
I’ll admit I was being loosely rhetorical. But things really are pretty bad for a large fraction of the population. There are numerous surveys indicating that roughly half of Americans have less than $500 in available savings, a huge fraction of younger people are in permanent debt-servitude to their student loans, and we’re likely to have a massive eviction-crisis due to the Covid-19 employment collapse. The overwhelming majority of our consumer goods are imported, and when/if the dollar finally collapses, Americans will discover just how poor they really have become.
Heh, while there are still some weeks left in the year for Corona-chan to ramp up the death rate, and the CDC might find some more Democratic Party voters, it seems:
Report Shows 2020 with Lowest Number of Recorded US Deaths Since 2009
How about liberate HK? Like if a man of Ron Unz’s prominence were to have a website about liberate HK? How about get rid of the CCP? And you may be downplaying Beijing’s sensitivity with respect to the Sino Japanese war.
Do you honestly think that the the interviews within the short documentary were staged? There are plenty of other pieces about the sorry plight of the Uighurs at the hands of the ruling Chinese clique, check them out if you need more proof. Sorry to see that Ron Unz never bothered to reply…
At a time when a great many Americans are skeptical of official Government proclamations around the Kennedy Assassination, TWA Flight 800 and 9/11 why should official Government statistics be accorded any credibility.
After all, many in government regard 1984 as a how-to manual.
I imagine there’s also an element of the “Japan wuz right” people marginalizing themselves through their own freakishness so far as normies are concerned.
Another example of a legitimately strongly repressed subject as I gather is historical-demographic work on the death toll of the GLP.
I’d be interested on that issue. Back a few months ago I finally got around to reading TOMBSTONE, published back in 2008 by Yang Jisheng, a high-ranking Chinese journalist, and it seemed a very good and solid work, persuasively documenting that around 35M people had died in the disastrous famine, almost entirely due to Mao’s stupid policies:
https://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962/dp/0374533997/
Apparently, the book was freely published in Hong Kong, but “banned” in China. My impression was that “banned” meant it couldn’t be legally published on the Mainland, but I really wonder whether anyone ever got into serious trouble for just bringing copies in and circulating copies. And I’ve never heard that Yang himself ever got into trouble for publishing it. Is discussion banned or censored on Social Media? Are such individuals fired from their jobs or punished in some way?
I mean 35M deaths due to CCP government policies is a pretty big deal, and it would be interesting to compare the “repression” on that subject with e.g. telling your co-workers in America that you think men are generally better at math than women…
It’s almost as if keeping people at home reduces the death rate(also premature births).
I can remember a number of people suggesting economic turmoil and “stress” is going to kill lots of people. I saw some people here make that claim, and tons of people in Audacious Epigone’s comment section. It looks like those people are complete idiots.
That was an interesting thing, actually. He did not get into trouble – but I believe he was a Party member as well, so in a sense he was permitted more latitude and more safety in researching this. He mentioned that he was assisted by librarians and other government entities as well if I recall correctly.
It was a strange thing because it was clearly politically sensitive, but at the same time, many of his sources felt that it had to be at least documented somewhere so that the genuine toll would be known. In summation, it seemed that they wanted the truth to exist somewhere, but also for it to remain deniable.
Some messy compromise of principles and pragmaticism, perhaps symbolic of much of China.
American then had about half the population compared to now…. and even with attempts to reduce the population coming in from from immigration…it is still going to increase in population at a rate much higher than other European countries, much of it hispanic or non-white. Australia and New Zealand face the same sort of dynamics ( i.e all relatively low density, english-speaking countries perceived as highly desirable to live in) but wont have anywhere near the same type of problems as US because they have had a much more selective and harsher immigration policy then US and for longer…and the south asia/Asia-pacific region ( i.e potential feeder region of immigrants) is going to remain at a fairly high rate of economic development and reduce flow of their emmigration, but for the US – central and South America are still likely to have staggering growth causing much emmigration.
Americans become as dumb as f*ck after first generation migrants, maybe even halfway through the first generation – without waves of talented and motivated Europeans and Asians emmigrating there – Americans become fat, dumb and lazy.
All this is relative though. American narcissism and insecurity creates the effect they are losing primacy in finance and military even when they are not even close to doing so . You see this in the “Make America great again” BS. Most of these people probably don’t even think America has ever stopped being the “greatest nation in the history of the earth” – that is not criticising Trump – he is doing fine,perfectly normal domestic policies and the usual american scumbag foreign policy
Mr Hack my good friend, please don’t insult 35% of Ukrop GDP, American people worked hard for that money.
One wonders if Yang Jisheng would have gotten the same latitude had the book been released in 2020. My guess is not.
Websites encouraging plots against the American government, or against ethnic groups in the US are actively attacked by federal agencies as well. I could think of a few websites off the top of the my head, as well as the memetic term of “fedposting” to bait such individuals.
“Beijing” has better things to do than to personally handle the verbal ejaculations of all the anguished souls on the Internet.
Quote possibly not, though I imagine it would still be collated somewhere. His confederates seemed genuine in their desire for the truth to exist somewhere and worried that people would die of old age and lose data forever.
Well aren’t the contents of this website basically providing contents to inspire people to attack the Federal government? That does not even go into the question of what types of links, if any the authors in this website have with governments or NGO, probably yes, probably none. You know about that billionaire who called Xi a moron for his handling of the coronavirus crisis, who is now charged with corruption and is now going to jail? It may be a coincidence, or not, or somewhere in between? I am not saying that the authors here are puppets of foreign governments or travelers, just asking the question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_influence_on_the_peace_movement
Well of course I would I would expect people who takes sides to dismiss these things, but that really goes with the territory right? And isn’t it funny how the people here for condemn the US government for printing money and so blase about the Chinese printing money and for their debt bubble?
And calling for the CCP to be driven out of office is the same as calling for the republicans or democrats to be elected out of office, which no one is going to jail for yet. And calling for HK or Xinjiang independence is basically the same thing as calling for Scottish or Texan independence.
Well, the CCP currently has 90 million(!!) members, so I doubt that was a major factor. And I also do remember that his research was heavily assisted by all sorts of local government officials and archivists, who certainly didn’t seem worried about their involvement. I wonder if local American officials would be as willing to leak secret government data on racial crime rates or that sort of thing.
Again, let’s step back a bit. We’re talking about 35 million(!) Chinese deaths, probably the greatest catastrophe China suffered in the last 100 years, and entirely due to disastrous Communist government policies. If the CCP is only so mildly repressive on that issue, does anybody really believe they care about people making anti-government jokes on Weibo or something?
What are you blabbering about again, Mandela? 🙂
US, IMF, Oligarchs effectively run and finance Ukraine, Mr Hack. Plenty of american taxpayer money is involved in that. It’s still too pitiful amount to assist the failed state…but is still alot of current GDP/State budget of Ukraine.
Things are so bad that under the conditions imposed on Ukraine, their non-existant growth is not the worst possible thing…..the worst thing would actually be growth because then the loan repayments increase under already ridiculous conditions. LOL.
On the good news…..Ukraine have qualified for Euro 2020 ( postponed to next year) football tournament
Lol no.
I quite dislike a lot of things about modern China and Chinese “culture” but your gaps in awareness are a barrel of laughs.
Wait. Can we have a reduced death rate and excess deaths at the same time?
They are ramping up the anti-Russia propaganda.
Now it’s a case of Russians are interfering in our fake pandemic vaccine profits!
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/08/11/the-russian-vaccine
Here’s a recent one.
A female professor was relieved of her teaching duties when it became widely known that she’s been saying, publicly and on the web, things like praises of Japanese raping of Nanjing. She’s still got the salary and all. Just no more teaching. 🙂
And her sayings became widely known only because she’s involved in some active back and forth on the web over the COVID-19 handling in Wuhan. She’s been posting such stuff for quite a number of years.
She studied in a Japan university. On hearing her treatment, some Japanese professors protested publicly until they being informed that she’s saying praises of such kind and the Japanese professors took back their protest.
Just the teaching duties. 🙂
Well if you think that the Ds and Rs are a uniparty so gettting rid of one is like the other then you have a point. And maybe put your money where your mouth is, try to start a party around Xinjiang independence, or a party around HK independence, like the SNP in the UK or the Calexit in the US, see what happens to you. Or maybe try to hold placards in the middle of Tiananmen calling for the Chinese Politburo to be beheaded in the name of Islam, like what the Muslims did in the UK? Why don’t you try to shoot A VLOG of yourself doing it while giving an interview live on the air to CNN and see what happens? Or maybe organize your own posse to burn down an effigy of the entire Politburo in the middle of Beijing, try to shoot a VLOG of yourself, and then report here what happens?
When your rape fantasies become your politics.
Well if you think that the Ds and Rs are a uniparty so gettting rid of one is like the other then you have a point. And maybe put your money where your mouth is, try to start a party around Xinjiang independence, or a party around HK independence, like the SNP in the UK or the Calexit in the US, see what happens to you. Or maybe try to hold placards in the middle of Tiananmen calling for the Chinese Politburo to be beheaded in the name of Islam, like what the Muslims did in the UK? Why don’t you try to shoot A VLOG of yourself doing it while giving an interview live on the air to CNN and see what happens? Or maybe organize your own posse to burn down an effigy of the entire Politburo in the middle of Beijing, try to shoot a VLOG of yourself, and then report here what happens? Or try to establish a millenarian movement with political aims questioning the legitimacy of the CCPs mandate of heaven, try to establish a popular movement, get an interview on the BBC about your aims to do so, and see what happens, and then try to report here on what happened to you.
I’m sorry that the Chinese are not extreme self-hating ethnomasochists. We actually do that a lot and indulge in quite a bit self-hate at times, but the West is definitely #1 on this.
Frankly if you practiced that in any East Asian country, e.g. call for Abe to be killed in Japan, I don’t see how you don’t get into trouble. If you called for the murder of the Emperor, you might just disappear one day after an accident with the yakuza.
It is just a difference between legal and social repercussions, yeah you may argue that the US judiciary is captured by the deep state, so the independence of the judiciary is a sham (which is basically a claim that is almost impossible to prove or disprove), but in the US and Western countries there is separation of powers, and you have legal safeguards in the form of the legislative and the independent judiciary providing a legal counterbalance to the executive branch. You can also argue that such things as pulling a hitler salute or putting on a blackface, or attending a Nazi rally, and become unemployable as a result do not fall under the legal purview, and the US has at will labor anyway, so it is legal for a company to dismiss you for that for putting the company’s reputation in ill repute. Basically it is not the government sanctioning you, but a private enterprise, so that does not count under political suppression.
I’m sure they also help when antifa bashes your head in with almost no consequences.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/ex-professor-accused-of-hitting-trump-supporters-with-bike-lock-at-free-speech-rally-in-berkeley-gets-probation
Russia is far more immersed/connected in western and American culture than the exclave of Albania ( commonly referred to as “Poland”) is . Consumption of western products, adoption of western trends and ideas are far more advanced in Russia than the rest of the “Eastern bloc”.
Many of the things that fall under the “crazy Russia” category are not actually backwardness but are part of the same mindset we have with Americans that causes us to be involved in extreme events in common life. Free solo-climbing skyscrapers around the planet and posting it on Instagram, some of the extreme violence crimes, stories such as when that young woman with over a million followers on social media because of her advice on medicine….she took part in her birthday party in an indoor swimming pool, they dropped a huge amount of dry ice in …which then proceeded to her kill her husband and friend because the room was too small and enclosed for the subsequent reaction ( all recorded by themselves of course)! leaving her to care for their 2 children….and then one month after the deaths she got and publicised her new breast implants! Incredible that Karlin uses the cretinous and nonsensical term “sovok” when stuff like that is happening .
I think all these things stem from the fact Russia and US are frontier countries which creates these personalities.
No coincidence ( though American russia “experts” have no self-awareness ) that 2 terms most frequently applied to us in the 90’s and early 2000s …”like the wild west” …and “mafia state” all derived from the american conception of these terms.
We have the ability and strength of mind to decide what western things we like and what we dont like and want to adopt……prostitute states such as Poland do not have that
No one, however, is forcing the US to financially support Ukraine. It must see some value in doing so.
It reminds me a lot of when Khrushchev and others began to cast blame and an accusatory finger at Stalin for his mismanagement and crimes. I would behoove the CCCP to loosen things up a bit, as they’ve allowed the country to go in an entirely different direction since Mao’s time.
I haven’t read Tombstone. (It’s on my reading list but far down).
However, Richard McGregor does have an entire chapter on it, and freedom to explore historical issues in general in China.
It looks like they consciously chose to ignore it to relegate it to obscurity. Some quotes I saved from that chapter:
Meanwhile in America: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/us/Babson-professor-fired-Iran-trump.html
Should be pretty obvious what he meant by ‘parents…part of the problem’. I’ll often hear someone say for instance, they can’t oppose immigration because ‘My grandfather was Polish, and he fought the Nazis!’… etc (and this is in Britain, in the USA that ‘I’m the product of hard working immigrants so therefore we must let more immigrants in’ is even more widespread). I mean, even you felt obliged to invoke that trope in the context of immigration restriction, so for most drones it more or less demolishes the idea that immigration restriction is a good or necessary thing at all…
So even if the immigrants are hard working and productive (helping the US war machine or whatever – some irony there) it still ends up biting the butt of the former-majority when their descendants open the floodgates because ‘my grand/parents were immigrants too!’ (and that’s the just white, assimilated ones, never mind the rest of them…).
I don’t get why people here of all places are so butthurt about ‘Chinese repression of dissidents’ anyway. Is China actually suffering as a result? Seems to be just getting stronger to me. & Just about all of the western countries (even the supposedly ‘genetically liberast’ Anglo ones) used to be very ‘repressive’ by today’s standards until quite recently (of course, repressive in a way that was acceptable to conservatives, not so much for leftoids). Would it be better or worse if our countries had continued to ‘repress’ the kinds of mentally ill people who have taken over the teaching and running of higher education here by denying them from attaining their positions (like say, Chinese did with the Nanking fantasist mentioned above?) & I can’t really imagine them being allowed to thrive here at any time in history other than the present…
Quite a bit of US open and kindness, to any kind of dissidents, comes from its unique position of being a rich and very powerful country.
Frequently we can see in history that the confidently powerful are usually having an open mind and constantly going out of their way to be kind to peaceful enemies.
Also the modern west societies are organized in a historically speaking very peculiar way. It is centered on businessmen, for example. This bit of uniqueness after it being painted into a kind of generality, a universalism, often makes other societies in different times and places look awfully strange and oppressive. It gives the impression that the middles ages were dark and the Chinese past was a nightmare.
One way to look at it is to try to remove the benefits that should’ve being credited to technology, and then you have a hard look at the values of the political and spiritual arrangements.
I actually have this book on my shelf. This, and a number of books on Raping of Nanjing, and one on CCP campaign in 1948 in a norther Chinese city during the civil war that the CCP purposefully starved the city in an effort to destroy the enemy army within.
I have those books, but never quite managed to read them. Extremely difficult to read. It’s definitely a good thing, a great thing, that those brave authors researched and documented these events.
A related item is how Rwanda is getting out of their recent history. Chinese and CCP’s attitude seems to be to pushing those awful events into history research. The past is frankly on everybody’s mind, only that there’s not much to argue about. It is just downright painful. Other than having a watchful eye, what else can you really do about it? Constant discussion by general public is not desirable and that seems to be more or less the consensus of current Chinese society. When perceived necessary, the Culture Revolution is still mentioned in public, as a warning to the future, by even some of the top most CCP officials.
And of course there’re crazy folks who think Mao did everything right.
Many Chinese for a long period of time wanted and fought for freedom but not for anything that you mentioned here. You take for granted that those are the desirable ends by themselves. Not many Chinese agree. Unless they are thoroughly doctrinated by the West.
Chinese ever since the opium war has a mission that is to make Chinese rich, and free from foreign horrors, like any other nation, like France (when they were not bullied by Hitler) and Britain. At times, Chinese thought it was industrialization, then a republic, or a revolution, or another one, or finally communism. Eventually it is pragmatism that put Chinese where it is today.
Chinese is still not really rich. Majority of Chinese are still poor. And Chinese got many problems, huge historical packages, historically recent dark memories. But I think the one major differences between today’s China and USA is that China has a clear view of its mission and that is to make any ordinary Chinese as rich as a middle class westerner. When and if China reaches that stage, China may eventually prove to be quite a disappointment again. 🙁
Is the average middle class Korean or Japanese as rich as the average middle class Dutch? Is that even a fair comparison?
What would happen to this website without the 1st Amendment?
China is at the same level as Malaysia now, I have been to Malaysia, even if you go to the rural areas in peninsular Malaysia you really will not call it a poor country, China is also at the same level South Korea and Taiwan were in 1990, or Japan in the 1970s, South Korea and Taiwan in 1990 were not poor countries, Japan in the 1970s was not a poor country either.
There are still 600 mil Chinese with yearly income less than 1727 USD.
That is less than 4.74 USD per day.
Or, it is less than 32.88 RMB a day. They can barely buy three serves of noodles in coastal cities of China. One might call it a bare minimum.
From what I’ve heard and seen from people in China, Deng Xiaoping, Liu Shaoqi and people associated with them were the ones directly managing then and thus largely responsible. Mao’s responsibility lies in promoting Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi to top position in 1956; since they were probably the two most influential ones then, maybe there weren’t really that much of a choice. He did what he could to get rid of them later on, starting the Cultural Revolution, etc, but Deng Xiaoping managed to sneak back to power in 1977 despite being removed from all posts in 1976 after being let back in 1973.
Deng Xiaoping in late 1970s officially pardoned or rehabilitated the party secretaries of the provinces that suffered most during 1958-1962, who were demoted afterwards and more harshly attacked during the Cultural Revolution. He is visibly guilty. He was not Mao’s designated successor. It was Hua Guofeng. But Hua Guofeng, Wang Dongxing etc overestimated the threat to them by the leftist Gang of Four and underestimated the threat of bringing Deng back, which they permitted in 1977. In fact, some older folks think Hua Guofeng, Wang Dongxing, etc, those in the middle faction were politically foolish and weak; by bringing down the Gang of Four, which indirectly justified Deng’s return to power in some sense, they essentially planted their own demise. Deng was political commissar of the 2nd Field Army, he had control of military and once reinstated he could use it to get rid of Hua Guofeng.
See https://gmachine1729.livejournal.com/172902.html for details.