The world’s most prominent “anti-science” movements are dominated by Americans:
- Religious nutjob anti-vaxxers
- Neo-Lysenkoist SJWs
- Climate change deniers
But never mind! As Obama and the New York Times inform us, it is PUTLER! who is behind this. What can he not do?
Democracy depends on an informed citizenry and social cohesion. Here’s a look at how misinformation can spread through social media, and why it can hurt our ability to respond to crises. https://t.co/qnLcR3mh8A
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 15, 2020
The allegation that Russia is behind anti-vaxxism is especially hilarious given that the world’s most severe measles epidemic is in the Ukraine, after the measles vaccination rate there fell to 42% by 2016.
For those behind on their timelines, that’s after they became a US puppet state and let all the American evangelicals run crazy in their country.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Anatoly, you’ve spent and wasted too much of your precious time reading and being influenced by the NYT. To wit, American evangelicals have minuscule political and social influence. Every now and then Republicans throw them a few insignificant scraps in a false flag operation designed to excite gullible left-wing rubes!
I wasn’t aware that American evangelicals in Ukraine were running any sort of a targeted campaign to influence Ukraine’s population to forego immunizations efforts? In the Sates, their propensity to support parents rights in deciding immunization issues is only slightly higher than mainline Protestants or Roman Catholics. Besides, the last time I checked the majority of Ukrainians are still either Orthodox or Ukrainian Catholics?
Are you sure it wasn’t Jenny McCarthy and RFK Jr. in Ukraine?
You are going to laugh, but they blame this on “Russian disinformation” as well!
Speaking of state-sponsored disinformation efforts, I think we should mention US-funded “Radio Liberty” providing platform to crackpots like Svetlana Alexievich who thinks, that global pandemic was caused 5G technology. Funnily enough US is doing all the mean things it accuses Russia of doing.
I didn’t realize that Barack was so based. I mean, that is like stuff Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen were saying. Maybe, he’s right about Putin, after all?
Most “anti-vaxxers” are not religious, there are many also in Europe and they are more the secular alternative hippie type.
They are also not “nutjobs”, despite being useful, vaccines contain harmful stuff and can actually cause health problems in some people.
(Is Karlin is a paid Big Pharma agent promoting coronavirus, or is he just KGB?)
Finally, this “Putin/Russia is to blame for all” is an exclusively American-Democrat-Jewish thing, no one in Europe believes that idiocy.
From a very good commentator on that same piece:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/485941-obama-nytimes-putin-coronavirus/
Related is this article, noting (among other things) an earlier NYT prop on Russia exploiting the coronavirus via a JHU “academic”, as well as a red, white and bull National Interest essay:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/03/30/continued-western-mass-media-creativity-misinformation-on-russia-knows-no-bounds/
RFE/RL recently propped a dilettante, who is comparatively softer on China than Russia:
https://www.rferl.org/a/former-u-s-ambassador-power-chides-initial-global-response-to-coronavirus/30545516.html
http://silentcrownews.com/wordpress/?p=4712
Well, if you take Western propaganda at face value, Putin personally exterminated dinosaurs, poisoned Socrates, crucified Christ, burnt Giordano Bruno, shot Kennedy (both, I guess), elected Trump, caused Brexit, and launched current epidemic. That’s not counting his minor sins, like solar and lunar eclipses. God almighty can only envy this man.
Well, look at a very bright side of this – non stop demonization of Russia and China will make it easier to sell World War 3 to the American public. Purely coincidentally I’m sure.
Trump will lose the election (Republican Presidents historically don’t do well when unemployment is 10-40%), and we will get President Joe Biden.
Getting Biden to launch the nukes is a simple matter of convincing him that the red button orders pizza with extra mushrooms. At the rate he is declining, by 2022 there will be a YouTube Challenge “Get Joe Biden to nuke something”. It will be definitely interesting to see how it all plays out.
Yeah, I was wondering what exactly Ukrainian nationalists actually had against vaccinations. After all, don’t vaccinations produce a stronger, more robust, and more vigorous Ukrainian volk?
I’m not sure that it’s related to anything that the nationalists are saying or doing. Perhaps, it’s a problem of logistics and an inability to get enough vaccinations? My parents were as nationalistic as any, and here in the diaspora I was always encouraged to get all of my vaccinations updated, including my yearly flu ones.
That’s why becoming his stooge is the hardest job in the world to get. You have to be elected as the most powerful man on the planet before Putin will even consider taking you on as his stooge.
Because it’s very scientific to believe that if a man says he is a ‘woman’, he is indeed a ‘woman’, and if he gets a fake vagina, that is as good as a real vagina.
Isn’t Trump a good goy? If the Jews already, seemingly, control him why would they replace him with dopey Joe? Despite all the hoorah attacks against Trump I think they’re more about weakening his position to make him malleable instead of outright remove him.
Come on K, the third item on your list is not like the others. Literally nobody is denying the fact that the climate is changing. The climate has always been changing and will continue to do so until the Sun burns out. The people you malign as “deniers” are simply those of us trying to resist the elites’ attempt to turn the changing climate into a pseudo-religion that blames everything on human activity and is being used to justify placing every aspect of our lives under the elites’ control. I am disappointed you went full POZZZ here, it is beneath you.
On this subject the usually interesting writer Anatol Lieven has a new book out on climate change in which he suggests a different approach from the one currently being pursued:
Climate Change and the Nation State: The Case for Nationalism in a Warming World
Anatoly has never “went” anywhere, he’s talked about climate change since 2015. Probably earlier.
We can only hope that you’re correct. Then maybe global warming will force people to finally abandon the automobile, putting an end to the hideous suburban menace and ushering a return of more cohesive, organic, and homogeneous (as who your neighbor is will actually matter) communities.
I, however, am a pessimist and believe either batteries or else reconstitution of hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2 (preferably the latter) will allow the perfidious automobile to persist.
On a more immediate note, one can believe that solar and wind are insufficient power sources, and simultaneously believe that global warming is real. The two propositions are not, in fact, logically connected at all.
Our friendly overlords will need a scapegoat, and Trump is a perfect one. When people start asking questions such as why they are living in a tent while oligarchs got $trillions in free money, the answer will be Trump/Putin. People who believed past Russiagate nonsense will happily swallow this too.
For a country that’s allegedly so anti-vax, it’s weird that the United States has a higher measles vaccine rate than Britain and Canada. Maybe they’re the real anti-vaxxers, logical since a British “doctor” is largely responsible for the entire anti-vax movement. (He now lives here, unfortunately, and hangs out with chiropractors) And the few measles cases we have generally come from the Orthodox Joo communities and often via Israel. I refuse to be held responsible for what a bunch of filthy hand rubbers do. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, frankly.
Unless a very large number of older Americans (heavily white) don’t vote because they die from the virus (highly unlikely despite the exaggerated hysteria) or because they choose to sit it out, I’ll guess that trump will narrowly win the midwestern and upper midwestern swing states he won in 2016 — and win the election.
He’ll get slaughtered by a vast margin here in Mexifornia and in New York, of course, perhaps by a couple hundred thousand more votes than last time due to ongoing demographic changes in both places. He’ll likely garner about half the popular vote in the rest of the country, though, and his electoral college margin will be nearly the same as last time.
If the Dems nominate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for VP, they may tip Michigan back into the dem column, but few other States look likely to change their orientation from 2016. Right now.
A fistful of caveats, naturally: the economic pain from the lockdown will worsen in the next few months before it lessens, and it is unclear which party they’ll blame more; half a year is a long time in politics, especially in a time of panic and alleged crisis; the huge electoral trove of Florida was very close in 2016, as always in recent presidential elections, and its electorate has presumably become slightly more non-American ans non-white since 2016; and third-party candidates like the Libertarians may not draw as much support as last time.
Sure, but millions aren’t going to be living in a tent by the election. Remember what happened after Occupy Wall Street? Woke politics. And if woke politics don’t keep the people in line after this next batch of elite funding, well I shudder to think what’s next.
Anatoly is a time travelling Orthodox Christian KGB agent with a transhumanist agenda who hates Stalin.
Exactly. Anatoly fails Conspirology 101 and Crazyology 101, and this is shame.
Anti-vaxers are either hippies (vaccines are against nature) or conspiracy whackjobs (vaccines are Masonic-Illuminati-Jewish plot to poison our bodily fluids).
American Christian fundies are generally pro science (except evolution fraud) and pro technology. You do not see evangelicals protesting against nuclear power or oil pipelines – or even against fertility clinics and genetic labs.
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russia-burning-not-apocalypse-but-prelude/
You can add to your list:
Anti-nuclear movement, you wrote about this scourge many times.
Libertarian economics, ditto.
Alternative medicine in general.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forms_of_alternative_medicine
Browse this list and you will see that, no matter what “ancient wisdom” they claim, most of it was invented and marketed in California.
Creationism, both soft core “intelligent design” and hard core “Adam and Ever were riding dinosaurs in Eden”. You may not heard about it since their debacle in Bush years when they failed to push ID into schools, but the movement is active and spreading worldwide.
Anti-abortion movement, another proud work of evangelicals, who are busy defending single celled, mindless and brainless “precious unbohn life” and pushing for anti abortion laws worldwide, especially in the third world. Unlike the farce of creationism, this make real difference for the world, and not for the better.
Gunloonery, the idea that bunch of obese bozos with rifles will win against “the beast government”. Defies all historical, political and military science as strongly as the other loony crazyisms you cited defy their respective branches of science, but it is active.
Fortunately, ramblings about the unstoppable power of second amendment are far less exportable than the other things.
US just had 22+ million job losses, and once those people stop buying stuff due to loss of incomes and credit, it will cull the rest of the economy too.
Even if the virus disappears tomorrow, we will be lucky to get half of those jobs back. Millions living in tents by election is not out of the realm of possibility.
Batteries are not a power source, they are a storage device. It’s like a plastic bottle, you can put water in a plastic bottle but water does not come from plastic bottles.
Reconstitution of anything from the atmosphere is something I find interesting, and it’s possible with something called plasma chemistry. You can synthesize nitric acid from air using a jacobs ladder and water. But I doubt it would ever be cost viable because there are so many easier forms of carbon to work with. For instance, wood. Wood can by gasified rather easily into wood gas, which you can actually run a gasoline engine off of. And that is basically what the tree is doing, synthesis of hydrocarbons (wood) from atmospheric CO2 (via photosynthesis).
Even wood gas ends up more expensive than oil though (let alone coal or nat gas) and is probably worse for the environment, because it is less clean, and also because we would clearcut all the forests on the planet relatively quickly trying to run an industrial economy on wood.
The problem with full synthesis of hydrocarbons from CO2 is basically it is a chemical battery just like hydrogen fuel cells. It takes the same amount of energy to turn the CO2 into fuel as what you would get back burning the fuel into CO2 (assuming 100% efficiency) so at that point it’s just a storage device and you still need power from somewhere. The tree only pulls it off by stealing solar energy. But trees are more efficient than solar panels, and even if they were the same efficiency you would have to have solar panels be as plentiful and cover as much of the earth as trees to run an economy off of it, which would involve cutting down all the trees anyway, so it would be even worse for the environment (and more expensive, unrealistically prohibitively expensive) than burning wood.
IMO, the best thing you could do for the environment is rather than subsidize electric vehicles they should be subsidizing nat gas vehicles. Because nat gas is cleaner burning than gasoline to start with, because it’s a perfectly viable fuel for an ICE without any magic fairy dust required, because it’s even cheaper and more plentiful than oil, and also because natural gas gets flared off, burned into the atmosphere and completely wasted as a byproduct just to get oil. So at least until you had a ratio of natural gas to gasoline cars that allowed us to stop wasting natural gas to get at the oil for gasoline.
As for allowing perfidious cars to exist, both the US and Russia independently have enough oil to keep the whole world’s cars running for centuries before even turning to alternative fuel sources which would also suffice.
But if you wanted EV’s with batteries to work and be anything beneficial, the only way to do it is nuclear power. Other than that, you are just burning even more hydrocarbons to use electric vehicles than you would have if you’d used internal combustion vehicles, because batteries are at best 40% efficient. So these EV’s, if the batteries are charged off hydrocarbon power plants, are burning more than twice as much hydrocarbons than they would if they had an engine, just not under their car hood (and Not In My Back Yard). And meanwhile they are still flaring off nat gas to get to the oil because there is not enough demand for nat gas compared to demand for oil, even though nat gas is at least just as good as oil.
Anti-abortion is as much anti-science as anti-cannibalism is anti-food.
The implication that all things enabled by science are ipso facto good and should be engaged in is moronic, it’s the same thinking as the graph go up, world get gooder mentality practiced by neoliberals.
This NYT propaganda article on Putin – part of a continuing series – and retweeted by Obama has less do with Russia than the upcoming POTUS election which will get back to the ugliness that dealing with the first wave of COVID-19 temporarily interrupted. Of course COVID-19 and the chaos it caused will be central.
The Dem establishment and their media’s central strategy has been:
1) Make Putin out to be the love child of Satan and Hitler wanting to destroy the US.
2) Tie anyone who attacks the Dem establishment – whether poor Assange, Sanders (temporarily rehabilitated now that he’s publicly prostrated to the party, like Tulsi) and Trump and his cronies – as Putin’s puppets/useful idiots.
3) That on COVID-19, Trump was like/following Putin’s “anti-science disinformation”
Trump and his media are meanwhile selling that
1) the Chinese Communist Party is the progeny of Sauron wanting time destroy the US.
2) the CCP and its puppet, the WHO, unleashed COVID-19 because of their inherent “Communism-ness“
3) That Biden and the Dem party are sympathetic to the ideology of the CCP/WHO and are promoting “Chinese propaganda”
So a large part of the election is going to selling to the electorate that the choice is between electing a Russian stooge or a Chinese one.
Sit back and grab the popcorn. The show is just getting started.
Fair enough. I can buy that it’s a transport issue.
The other things maybe, but I haven’t seen much evidence that he’s an Orthodox Christian. 🙂
This science denier is a doctored scientist.
Science is 85% political.
The other 15% is called engineering.
China vilification benefits Russia. Will Russia stoke the fire?
Thanks for proving my point about how insane it’s going to get.
Lol. That’s a phrase I often use on this website. Is Obama also reading your blog? Maybe you can put him into touch with Putin and we can work this thing out.
That’s true, but keep in mind that there are a strangely high number of both French and Japanese who are against vaccination efforts, irrespective of overall vaccination rates; Muslims in France or natives? The CIA’s use of a fake vaccination program to locate Bin Laden’s relatives probably didn’t help matters, either. Americans see what their government does, even if they don’t want to admit it. They fear the government because they are right to fear it — Ruby Ridge, Waco, COINTELPRO …
Ludwig your comments are always of high quality, logical and well-written. You really should post more often !!
This is Scheiße, la merde, дерьмо, this whole “lockdown” thing is pointless, GloboCop police is even busting teens birthday parties and fining surfers now, and anyone who dares to have a normal life, they are confining healthy people in their homes with nothing to do and trying to make them poor, lonely and mentally ill, do you think the Powers That Be will forget their newfound powers after corona? No, the police will start busting “online racists”, “anti-semites who didn’t like Schindler’s List” and other dangerous people next.
And the number of deaths in most countries has yet to surpass those normally caused annually by pneumonia and flu, and even if the bat soup flu is as dangerous as Karlin says, there is no evidence that locking people in their homes is working at all, either the corona-bitch virus is too contagious and it’s impossible to contain and then “we are all gonna die”, either now or when restrictions are loosened, or if we don’t die, then the disease is not as serious as they are saying and in that case, the lockdown is pointless too.
This is the way the [Western] world ends, not with a bang but with an overhyped bat flu and a pointless lockdown ruining entire economies and lives.
(Next in the plan: War. Either with China, Russia or Iran, or perhaps some other safer dump in the Middle East. Wait and see).
Quality times quantity is constant.
The thing is shouldn’t Putin really push for the destruction of America? It is very clear that America wants Russia destroyed, that being the case Putin should do everything in his power to destroy his enemy first. I know some will say this is a bad idea because it will make Americans rally around the flag and make things worse, but the left side of America is already irredeemable, and the cuck right side are mostly made up of brainless idiots and already swallow the “Putin is a thug” without question.
It is suggested to me by thoughtful Westerners not to take it too seriously. The argument is that ‘boys will be boys‘, and it is hard for them to lose. Some hysteria, projection and good-old tribal yelling is to be expected.
Well, yeah, I am sure as the bloodied Germans crawled out of Russia last time around some unkind words were spoken. It hurts to lose and some space for self-therapy should be allowed. After all we let the poor ‘AP’ or ‘Mr.Hack’ pretend that Ukraine is a shining happy place about to be embraced by Brussels. Any day now.
Thus some kindness is appropriate. But the issue is that the anti-Russia dementia is reaching pathological levels. The NYT article (I actually read it) is a descent into Orwellian madness – especially since it mentions ‘science‘ in every other paragraph. The Nobel laureate cliches are as always unbearably void of any meaning, the sleepy mulatto can’t even spout slogans any more.
The unhinged anti-Russian propaganda is aimed at home audience, it makes them more stupid. This is not a victimless crime and the unchecked stupidity will spread to other areas. Ignoring it is foolish, there is no silver lining and the descent could be quite steep.
The consequences of this are not only for the home audience however. The talk and the growing hostility with Russia (and China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, etc) is going to end up causing a real conflict.
While endsieg cannot be declared without at least the break-up of America into its constituent nations, Russia isn’t really being forced into war at the moment (while existing sanctions will probably continue indefinitely, barring some geopolitical explosion, no more significant sanctions are likely to be put on) and America is becoming increasingly partisan and disunited.
From a Russian perspective, why should they make themselves the main adversary when there are so many other quicksands for America to get stuck in?
The way that America pushes for the destruction of Russia is a result of its messianic delusion, not some deep thinking strategic foresight. It’s a bad idea for Russia to do the same, not because it will create a rally around the flag effect, but because it’s poor strategy.
Russia needs the US cut down to size, but not destroyed or debilitated, because it will be a useful counterbalance to the rise of China. The best strategy for Russia is to somehow encourage the US/China rivalry, as it will make Russia more valuable to both sides, and able to extract concessions from both. Russia does not have the population or economy to compete with either the US or China, so destroying one would only facilitate the dominance of the other. Note that this is how Putin manages domestic politics as well.
Yup. But all I want to know is: which party wants to go to war against Bill Gates?
Probably. But only if the deep tankers in Washington can figure out how to do it without Western casualties. That’s a tall order, it might not be possible.
We get an increasingly hysterical media, politicians and most of the population prepared by propaganda for a war that might not be possible. Then what? If I was a weak country with some Russian-speakers or Orthodox, I would worry. It could be Latvia, or Greece, or god forbid in desperation even Canada. The lunatics are on the loose…
Agree. Speaking as someone who checks two out of three of Anatoly’s “anti-science” boxes, I can confirm that I got none of it from Putin and no one outside Russia had even heard of Putin when I formed my opinions. Also, I’m not evangelical, nor are my fellow travelers that I know of.
Science-ism is the modern Theology.
Sure, but none of them mean much. China is unconquerable. And with any of the populous Asian or Latin nations all you get is cheap labor and headaches (like ‘wet markets’ or annoying mariachi music). Syria and Libya were not failed conquests, but simply vandalism – destroyed to make local allies feel better.
The only real country worth defeating would be Russia because of its resources, land, water. Thus Russia is the ‘main adversary‘, there is nothing they can do about it.
In the modern world those two can be the same thing. There are delusional ‘strategists‘ in Washington (and London, Brussels, Paris) who are also what I would call ‘end-of-liners‘. They are done, usually no kids, collapsed culture, no belief in anything, and no self-discipline.
They do a ‘messiah’ because they have no other life. The feral older women among them are especially vicious. Take the likes of Hillary (“we came, we saw, he died, haha…”), Nuland, Merkel, Samantha Powers, and that Indian witch from Carolinas that Trump humored for a while. Surrounded by sub-Beta males like Comey, Macron, Trudeau, BoJo or the squealing Senator Graham. Plus the usual kick-ass maniacs who like to make things go boom while safely hiding far away.
It is a horror show, you can’t reason with them. If Russia would be taken over by a similar crowd of fin-de-siecle morons we would get quite some fireworks. These people crave endings because they are biologically on their way out. It was a huge mistake to give them power. For that I blame the Western rational adults, they also failed.
Slightly OT
More and more people with masks on the streets in Belgrade, 2 meter distance at supermarket checkouts (often violated though during rush hour), limited number of people allowed into stores, people without masks not allowed at all (oddly this was only for local small stores, supermarkets do allow them
24 hour restriction of movement extended to 3 days now (weekend + monday)
Scaremongering is showing some results
Given that Serbia might be a potential hot spot, I think this is good, still lots of room for improvement
And ofcourse, “muh dictatorship in Serbia” from liberal mouthbreathers, the most ridiculous part was when they were quoting and linking to some Croatian clickbait hit piece on our quarantine measures
Those suspicious of Bill Gates – whose politics seem to be that of establishment Dems – are some on the anti-establishment left and many on the right, who are both united in their belief that the dangers of COVID-19 were unnecessarily hyped up as a way for Gates and Govts/media that his (and his fellow billionaires) deep pockets buy, to crater the economy, curtail liberties, increase surveillance and make even more money via Govt bailouts/big Pharma/ increased social data etc. (Bezos is richer than ever thanks to brick & mortar retail unavailability in what’s being seen as a seismic death blow to that sector(s)).
That anyway is the accusation/sentiment vs Gates.
(Incidentally, the most powerful post-McCain era Republican Senator, Lindsay Graham, a key establishment ally of Trump’s, and who sees both Putin and Xi as criminals and Russia and China as threats to be squashed, tweeted that Gates would make a good WHO head that the US can get behind)
Also the Bill Gates IHME models used by many states in the US (see https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america) and being pushed out to Europe have overestimated the severity of capacity issues that States would face even with lockdowns which adds to the narrative on the Right that Gates and Anthony Fauci (the face of the scientists advising Trump and present at the daily POTUS/VPOTUS briefings) are unnecessarily pushing lockdowns beyond what’s needed, to help the Democrats who would politically benefit from the deep structural recession that’ll most likely follow.
“Bill Gates IHME models used by many states in the US […] and being pushed out to Europe have overestimated the severity “ – The models are adaptive and as new data comes every day they are corrected. I kept checking NY for last two weeks and the model seemed to be pretty good. Initially predictions were higher though the peak was predicted to be around April 10-12 which turned out pretty close.
The advantage of hydrocarbons compared to, say, wood, lies in their energy density and liquid form. I doubt electric cars will ever reach the range or convenience of gasoline powered ones, plus batteries contain all kinds of hazardous and polluting materials. Most crucially, switching to electric vehicles would require an entirely new, far more dense refueling infrastructure– you need to totally replace every gas station, plus conservatively double the number on top of that to account for decreased range and longer fueling times.
Reconstituting hydrocarbons from the atmosphere totally solves these problems. No building boom of ugly charging stations, no saddling current gas station owners (who often barely scrape by) with millions in debt. Here is an article about synthsizing methanol from CO2: https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-can-now-convert-captured-co2-directly-into-methanol-fuel. Methanol can also be converted to ethanol without too much trouble. Of course these reactions are endothermic, so to be carbon neutral the heat can’t come from a fossil itself. But this is no different than batteries.
Agreed. I was talking more about the “long term.”
Or, we can just go with my earlier suggestion and ditch the vehicular mafia altogether.
This is putting it too strongly, but the coronovirus does seem far milder than feared. Here are the Swedish figures since April 1 (we have basically let the virus run amok among the under-70s, so these figures give a hint of how it behaves in the wild).
Daily Deaths:
Apr 17: 67
Apr 16: 130
Apr 15: 170
Apr 14: 114
Apr 13: 20
Apr 12: 12
Apr 11: 17
Apr 10: 77
Apr 9: 106
Apr 8: 96
Apr 7: 114
Apr 6: 76
Apr 5: 28
Apr 4: 15
Apr 3: 50
Apr 2: 69
Apr 1: 59
(Note that the figures from April 14 on include deaths that fell at Easter.)
Daily New Intensive-Care Cases:
Apr 17: 4 (preliminary)
Apr 16: 28 (preliminary)
Apr 15: 29 (preliminary)
Apr 14: 37
Apr 13: 45
Apr 12: 32
Apr 11: 45
Apr 10: 38
Apr 9: 31
Apr 8: 44
Apr 7: 46
Apr 6: 41
Apr 5: 45
Apr 4: 33
Apr 3: 42
Apr 2: 46
Apr 1: 43
I think it heavily depends on who the VP is. I think most of the electorate realizes that the choice carries extra weight this cycle because of Uncle Joe’s condition. If they nominate Whitmer or Amy Klobuchar, that means the Dems are serious about winning. If they nominate Kamala Harris or Stacey Abrams, it means they’ve decided to throw the election, perhaps in the belief that the economy will continue to tank under Trump’s second term, and better to have Trump take the blame for it.
I wouldn’t say this is entirely true (as one of those American Evangelicals). There is a religious wing of the anti-vaxxer movement, even if it’s not necessarily the strongest wing. My personal experience is that, among Christians, it’s most correlated with home school, insofar as home schoolers have a tendency to be the sort of people who have no trust in institutions of any kind, Christian or otherwise.
The sort of people who are happy to send their kids to a Christian private school or Classical academy will generally vaccinate, and obviously the sort who are OK with public school will do so as well. These make up the vast majority of conservative churchgoers.
As far as the destruction of the US goes, my impression is that Putin is following the joke “if you see your enemy committing suicide, do not interfere”.
I can understand Germans being resentful: their Ubermenschen army was annihilated by the army of the people they proclaimed untermenschen, with Soviet tanks rolling all over their defeated capital in 1945.
I can understand Ukies: they sold their would-be country for beads, and, unlike aboriginal savages elsewhere, they didn’t even get beads from the Empire and its sidekicks. So, their options are either cling to illusions (however ridiculous those illusions are), or acknowledge the reality and hang yourself.
However, the Empire had a lot going for it. It could have remained on top of the heap for many decades yet. But it is committing protracted suicide by utterly stupid incredibly arrogant policies. China and Russia don’t even need to do much: the Empire is digging itself a hole without outside help. This propaganda is part of that digging. The only explanation I have is that imperial elites degenerated to the point of being beyond salvage.
Don’t you know any other jokes except this retarded sovok one?
They’ve been okay on projected deaths (with all the controversy on what a COVID-19 death is). Keep in mind they are correcting every 1-3 days – after the initial projection on March 26, they updated on March 30, March 31, April 1, April 2, April 5, April 7, April 10, April 13 and the projected deaths has come down some. (See http://www.healthdata.org/covid/updates).
As it turns out, my own simple regression model which also relies on how other comparable regions have done at an aggregate level, that I maintain and also periodically adjust which does not use an underlying theoretical model like a sigmoid function (as the IHME does) let alone the complex amount of data they crunch per state, seems to work almost as well for Reported cases and deaths.
The REAL value of the IHME model was in preparing states/regions for hospital capacity shortages in terms of Beds, ICUs and Ventilators. (A shortage in medical equipment will impact mortality negatively as it did in hot spots like Wuhan, Qom, Lombardy, Madrid, NYC). And here they had vastly more access to data than any individual can and use their modeling and computational expertise to crunch numbers based on available beds, ICUs, ventilators, demographics, expected length of stay in hospitals and came up with some pretty impressive numbers with 95% CI.
And they have been off by multiples and outside their initial CIs . To be fair, given the exponential nature of any model, a small deviation in assumptions will lead to large deviations in absolute numbers (I see that with my own regression models). But I expected that while I’m doing it as a hobby to exercise my remaining brain cells (beats the crossword!), these guys are dedicated, paid professionals with magnitudes more firepower. (Again to be fair, they claim that their initial models had very little data and now they’re getting better).
The Governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat (and being touted as a last minute replacement for the increasingly addled Biden) and being responsible for the largest hotspot in the US, has himself pronounced that the models were all wrong (fortunately for the better).
My own take is that the IHME models are better than no model at all and can only get better as more data – including retroactive data which can take months – comes in. But the large errors in hospitalization projections currently have been seized by skeptics and critics of the lockdowns to claim that Gates (whose foundation funds IHME) is hyping the threat for his own nefarious ends.
Here is a post-Soviet Ukrainian joke.
New teacher comes to class and says:
– Let’s get acquainted. My name is Petro Petrovych. I am a Bandera follower.
A girl gets up:
– My name is Natalka. I am a Bandera follower.
A boy gets up:
– My name is Vova, I am a separatist.
The teacher asks:
– Why are you a separatist, Vova?
– Well, my father is a separatist, my mother is a separatist, so is my sister, and all my friends.
– What if your father were a drug addict, your mother a prostitute, your sister a slut, and all your friends hopeless morons?
– Then I’d be a Bandera follower.
Enjoy.
Well, we all know how dangerous Mondays can be.
Good thinking down there in Serbia. Here in the forgotten land of Slovakia we are still waiting for the first bona-fide victims and the local busybody in charge went for 6 days of total restriction. It caused a massive traffic jam (I know, counter-intuitive, but this is not exactly Sweden when it comes to self-regulation), so after the first day everybody pretended that there was no order.
Then the loco in charge decided to surround old people’s homes with the military, you know, to protect them from the virus. And on to Gypsies. The military deployed in the forests around the Gypsy settlements in the east and then marched in to forcefully test everybody. Predictably, they all had something. But still no victims.
On the positive side, Bratislava center is swarming with girls in miniskirts wearing face masks and sipping coffee out of paper cups. It is like a medieval Venice carnival. One observation: all women look great in face masks, we should keep this going…
Sure a simple fit of an exponential function will give you a decent prediction for next few days but once the countermeasure begin to kick in the curve departs form exponential shape and obviously you won’t be able to pick the inflection point and the peak ahed of time. As I said their prediction of the peak position for NY from two weeks ago turned out pretty close.
The overestimation of the needed hospital beds I find puzzling. Italian data from of March 9 showed that for one dead 4-5 were in ICU and 20-25 were hospitalized. Similar proportions were later seen in NY. So perhaps here in America which has significantly more ICU beds per capita than Italy they were thinking that they would provide a better care than Italians by putting more people in hospitals.
Yep, great movie. The guy playing the president is a dead-ringer for the current crop of elite males running the West… that Buttafuco dwarf who had a brief moment in the sun in the primaries shows us that it could get even worse.
The bolded phrase is totally incorrect, as one could learn from reading the public philosopher of the home school movement among traditional Protestants, Rousas Rushdoony.
Protestant home schoolers generally seek to build or rebuild, depending on their perspective, alternative Christian institutions outside what they consider to be a depraved and dangerous secular state. And most of these have fair confidence in their individual churches, which they consider to be beacons of cultural light in a secular society.
That covers the Evangelical or conservative Protestant approach to home schooling in America.
But there is also the growing Catholic home schooling movement; from talking to them, I gather that they believe the Catholic Church is going through a period of confusion sufficient that they must build their own sort of alternative parochial schools at least partially outside the authority of bishops they consider to be little more than figureheads for the state. But once again, this is not about a total distrust in ANY institution.
We both apparently have personal experience with home schoolers, but those experiences must have been completely different. And, again, from my reading of the philosophers of that movement, I’d have to say you’re completely wrong.
With that arguably semantic point aside, I agree with you that most Christians are not anti-vaccination on the whole.
Do you even know what “untermenschen” really means?
Oh, wow, Professor, you’re so clever! America will be so much better off once your grant money dries up and you’ll have to continue vagabonding around the world, peddling your sovok nonsense.
Actually I estimated the peak (of reported cases, not deaths) from a simple regression of Growth rates pretty accurately for the US (modulo retroactive case additions) using Italy, Spain, German data for comparison (Germany btw is following Italy in total cases – though they differ in populations and quality of lockdown enforcement – with surprising accuracy). Deaths lag around a week. Most major countries seem to show a reported case peak when the daily cumulative change drops to 8% and the which can in turn be estimated from simple regression on a log scale of current cases. Again, my methods are crude and not based on any theoretical epidemiological models of R-naught, testing coverage, demographics, geographies etc. and I myself was surprised that they seemed to work (both for US as an aggregate and NY as a state since the data for both of these are large and appear to be relatively solid unlike say France whose data seems highly erratic and dependent on holidays and when some bureaucrat is available to update the website).
At any rate, IMO, the key from a Govt preparation point of view is projected hospitalization rates/gaps. This allows optimal Govt preparation. “Natural” mortality rates – the number of people who will die from a disease even given health care availability – is one thing and may slowly tend down as new/optimal treatments are found. But lack of hospital care because there is not enough capacity (beds, equipment, workers, drugs) is the danger since then those who could have otherwise have survived and/or got out with fewer complications, are now compromised.
So what is the purpose of this leak? We knew nothing about the disease. But yes the IDF held meetings about it already in November but only because Americans told us. Will China ask: How could you know it in November if we did not know? Or is it Russian/Chinese disinfo? Who planted it in Channel 12? Who owns Channel 12?
My sense is that home schooling is bifurcated between a high IQ group and lower IQ group (which is really more like middling IQ, as actual low IQ types can’t be bothered to pull kids out of school). My experience, which might just have to do with where I live (nary a Catholic in sight), is admittedly mostly with the lower IQ group.
And “no trust in institutions of any kind” may be an exaggeration. I’m certainly not saying all home schoolers are this way, or even that all middling IQ Christian home schoolers are this way. I’m just saying that certain personality traits are more common among those who find all other schooling options unacceptable, particularly in an area, such as mine, with 3 different choices for conservative Christian schools, and a relatively conservative public school system, and a community small enough that you could make an impact at any of these schools if you had some minor quibbles. And those personality traits also seem to be correlated with refusing vaccination.
“Actually I estimated the peak […] with surprising accuracy.” – You failed the anti-Turing test. You are a human after all. No AI of the third kind would make a claim that can’t be demonstrated knowing that on internet the usual rules of politeness do not apply and thus the claims can be challenged and met with disbelief.
I’d like to congratulate the entire world on making Sweden look like a sane country. They could not have done this without your help.
Wajeed Al-Ismael Bin Fatoum could not be here today because his boat has been iced into the fjord but on his behalf, thank you. Thanks to ordering your militaries to shelter in their homes, you are making a feminist defense policy look viable.
Through the last month, Trump begged Putin and MBS to help him increase the price of oil, while still claiming USA is outside OPEC+. He offered to the Mexicans the equivalent of money, while still muttering about muh Mexico will pay for the beautiful wall.
Whatever Trump said he did to the pipelines has no value. I gather from your post that facts are again different.
Trump cares more about a handful of well owners and oil engineers than about the billions who will carry on paying dearly for stuff that Saudis get essentially for free, by simply pricking the soil. You seem to believe the opposite. I am so happy our country has such enlightened allies!
Is wishing the US to descent scientifically to the level of Burkina Faso considered patriotic? I’ve seen many demented statements, but this takes the cake.
You imply that you do. Why don’t you enlighten us, mere fallible mortals?
Look this fool excuses Trump and McConnell failure with “Xi and some African doctor eat my homework”
You’re such a megalomaniac! I meant specifically what I wrote, that your grant money were to dry up, not that the country’s whole science program were to disintegrate. Somehow, I think that the science programs in the US would continue to thrive even without you!
Relevant https://www.counter-currents.com/2016/03/hitler-vs-the-untermenschen-myth-reality/
Thanks! Interesting. “C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute” sums it up.
That could be, but my personal experience doesn’t comport with that.
Other than a republican jewish friend, my dozens of Republican / “conservative” relatives and acquaintances are mostly skeptical of the belligerently anti-Russia line. They are at least open to hearing a fair assessment of Putin.
Over the past five years or so, several of my acquaintances have moved to the view that Russia’s government is no more corrupt or brutal than ours. Two of them now share my view that whatever Putin is “up to” in terms of personal profit, he’s more competent than our rulers, more honest (even if just as a strategy), and at least accomplishing SOMETHING for his people.
Cuckservatives and internet neo-nazis have become advocates against racism and xenophobia since they saw a black guy get beat up in China
Maybe this will finally get them the black vote XD
this is mainly about the ongoing American civil war and the left with their Russia! Russia! Russia! nonsense narrative. but they’ve mostly dropped that, so Obama, being the uncool, unhip nobody that he always was, is yet again the last man to the meme. “Is this how you do it, guys?”
he’s out of the loop on current leftist thinking, and actually, it looks like the left has mostly dropped him already. they stopped talking about him or referencing him.
a scary demonstration about how quickly the left moves and what their real goals are, discarding even their number 1 puppet of all time, after his usefulness has passed.
he is not useful to the left long term, because the historic American nation rejected this guy almost from the beginning. unlike MLK, which was the left was able to use against core Americans for decades. his utility is just about up as well, but the left got 100 times as much mileage out of him than they did out of Obama, Mr Zero.
Re: Denmark becomes the first EU country to re-open its schools
Thus reinforcing one of Leopold Kohr’s “Kohr” principles: “Size is the root of all evil.”
Kohr was an Austrian economist who is probably best known for his book “The Break-
down of Nations.” The optimal size for a country is 10-15 million people, and the more
homogeneous the better. Anything larger than that is suboptimal, and countries
larger than, say, 80 million are deeply suboptimal. As their population increases,
countries become ungovernable, except first by autocratic, and then tyrannical means.
This is already happening in the U.S., and hopefully the United States will take
the hint and break up as soon as possible. Of course, the same a fortiori applies
to China. China has proved itself a biological menace to the world, and needs
to fall apart into a number of more governable territories. The American and Chinese
empires ended in failure, and both countries need to say to themselves, “We
f**ked up. But what else can you expect from primitive predatory primates (love
this alliteration!) like us. On the positive side, we have an infinite spiritual potential.
This is what we should focus on, especially at Easter time.
Last Christmas I posted a series of comments presenting a simple model of the
evolution of consciousness. The fact that I felt people needed a spiritual
uplift was not far from my mind. Now, at Easter time in both the Western
and Eastern Christendom, it is obvious people need an inspiring message
even more.
We actually live in amazing times. The veil between the natural world and
the supernatural is starting to open. On the theory side, we’re beginning
to understand the structures of consciousness. Transpersonal psychology
has become a legitimate area of study, much too complex to present here,
but as always I recommend the works of Ken Wilber, America’s most
translated philosopher, and Michael Washburn, esp. his “Ego and the
Dynamic Ground.” For those who want to get more deeply into the subject
I’d recommend “Ursprung und Gegenwart” (1953) by Jean Gebser, a Polish-
German philosopher who was important in the early stages of the development
of the field.
(to be continued)
Schools are concentration camps for children, meaning Denmark just sent its poor children back to prison to be tortured.
How on Earth does this suggest that the Danish state is the ideal size?
Great analysis. Seems that we’d be best off moving mostly to electric vehicles whose electricity is generated by nuclear power, plus a substantial expansion of train and bus service in our cities and suburbs.
Can the Left drop its opposition to nuclear power and realize that it’s the only way to drastically reduce our burning of filthy fossil fuels?
https://www.nei.org/advantages/electric-vehicles
Can the Right agree to a new tax source to fund a dramatic expansion in the number, frequency, and geographical coverage of our local train and bus systems? This could be a gradual increase in the fed excise tax on gasoline.
If the answer to these two questions is no, could those of us in the not-so-Radical Center override them both and finally get it done?
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-gas-tax-money-20180426-story.html
Here’s a deal maker in action:
Perhaps “increasing oil production so that Trump calls me again” doesn’t seem a fact to you.
In your alternative reality, facts are along the lines of “Tedros and Xi killed half of the elderly in NYC senior homes, while Trump was vigorously defending them on Twitter”. Or “Trump fought against As-I-Call-Her-Nancy, but she still pushed the country into the worst loss of jobs in US history”. Do you have a childish cartoon for the latter as well?
Another fact is that China has big respect for Trump’s very very big brain.
But I want to focus more on the empirical side, starting with the
dramatic cases of entry of the supernatural into the quotidien world:
Apparitions of the (Virgin) Mary at Lourdes (France), 1858;
Apparitions of the (Virgin) Mary at Fatima (Portugal), 1917.
The phenomena included a series of messages that have been
carefully recorded;
Apparitions of Jesus Christ to St. Faustina Kowalska,
a Polish nun. They began in 1931 when Jesus appeared to her
in the ancient city of Płock, in her convent cell, and resulted in a famous
painting of Jesus, Feast of Divine Mercy celebrated worldwide in Catholicism
on the first Sunday after Easter (i.e., this Sunday), and her 700-page diary
recounting her conversations with Jesus, which has become the most
translated work in the Polish language, eclipsing even Henryk Sienkiewicz
and Andrzej Sapkowski. This is the work in which Jesus says that Poland is
playing a special role in God’s plan for salvation;
Apparitions of the (Virgin) Mary to children in Medjugorje,
Herzegovina, not far from the Adriatic, which started in 1981,
and, this is the amazing thing, are still continuing. You should
see on YouTube the ecstasy on the face of one of the visionaries,
Mirjana Soldo who is now in her 50s, as she catches glimpse
of Mary. Journalists who tried to interview Mirjana are
sometimes rendered speechless, literally unable to speak, by her
holy presence. Mary appears to Mirjana regularly on the second
of each month, except now because of the pestilence. Messages
are received, and recently the Vatican has decided to allow parishes
to organize official pilgrimages to Medjugorje. Thus we have a miraculous
phenomenon that has been going on for almost 40 years! This is
unprecedented.
Re: Schools are concentration camps for children
As an academic I’m a little more optimistic about schooling,
although I’m horrified by the indoctrination that is now
taking place in America’s schools and universities, so I’m
all for home schooling. As someone who majored in classics
in secondary school, I’m also open to the idea of classical
academies replacing high schools, not that this will ever happen.
Look, all I wanted to convey was that small homogeneous
countries are more resilient than very large inhomogeneous
countries, esp. in times of pestilence, which is an ever-present
danger.
Natural gas engine produce only 6-11% less greenhouse gas than gasoline engine. Why bother?
Renewable natural gas (biogas) could only cover small fraction of the market. Are we going to cover the whole country with compost piles?
Sequestering CO2 from air and converting to methane not practical. Nonsense. You get less power from it than you put into it.
Windmills should be banned for their ugliness. Not significant fraction of energy supply. Esthetic pollution.
Water power can’t be expanded beyond what we have because of ecological arguments for restoration of natural habitat of rivers.
Solar power turbines – only on deserts in the South.
Photovoltaics – zero emission but for first 3-5 year all energy they produce is to recoup the energy used to manufacture and then there is drop in efficiency and the lifespan is not that good. How much country we would like to ver with me? Esthetic pollution.
Nuclear is the only way.
Well, the farce is up and I was right.
The very first scientific study of prevalence rates from my alma mater.
50-85x the number of cases from those recorded. Mortality rate .12-.2%
Its the flu, bro.
That’s …….. science!
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1
I can tell you that the Mercury preservatives used in vaccines and other products caused me considerable problems in my childhood and youth. It also put me on the road to pre-diabetes. It was only by chelating with Alpha Lipoic Acid that I was able to resolve all of these problems.
The UN Convention on Mercury specifically exempts the use of Thimerosal in vaccines. This is likely due to lobbying pressure from the Gates Foundation as well as the Pharmaceutical manufactures.
Do realize that vaccines are the only “product” manufactured in the U.S. where the manufacturers enjoy complete immunity (pun intended) from product liability. Even the manufacturers of other medical compounds (for example, Vioxx) do not enjoy this kind of immunity from liability.
Having been an early promtoer of Anthropogenic Global Warmng, I have changed sides due to the mendacity of the climatologists. The whole thing is a Y2K effect where every industry participant gains from the uncertainy is one direction only. I find myself a luke warmer at best. The slackening of solar output does seem to be having an effect.
I am not sure that the USA has been of one mind since the Vietnam war. The unnoticed Theosophists took over a generation and crazies have been at large ever since. (They are busy in Russia too, anti vax and all). The civil war period was not noticable for unity. Entry into WW1 and WW2 was delayed because of fears that the large immigrant populations from Germany, Eastern Europe and Ireland would not support a war.
The Russian ones I know are both and pagan to boot.
Your foreign minister doesn’t think so.
I’m all for nuclear power, but unless you suggest strapping a mini-reactor to every car, we’ll need a way to store that power for vehicular use. Obviously you get “less power” out of conversion to methanol than you put in, just as you do with batteries. The difference being that the former is far more convenient and doesn’t require massive infrastructure changes like electric cars would.
A “DJ Soros” might actually be an amusing feature at, say, a Halloween dance party. After all they do say he bathes in children’s blood, or something to that effect.
Modify a vampire costume, add a bottle of “baby oil” filled with red alcoholic beverage of your choice. Have your significant other dress as Bank of England (sexy secretary plus top hat and a monocle ought to do the trick), and you are good for triggering SJWs on college campuses.
There is no guessing in the fact that Saudis increased production two days after Trump called MBS. Indeed, we don’t have the transcript for the Trump – MBS conversation. But we know for his pressers that he tried to raise oil price in these phone calls.
Or maybe Trump called him to help make oil and gasoline cheaper. Wouldn’t it be beautiful? Nobody knew it’s going to be such an yuuge discount on oil.
We misunderestimated him.
1) It is not possible for the world to subsidize it’s basic energy sources. It is an entirely illogical claim. Why not? Because it is an impossibility for the derivative use of energy to subsidize the source of energy. Isn’t that perfectly obvious? Because the horse pulls the cart. The cart does not push the horse! Is that clear enough?
For example, it is not possible for tourism, or even farming, to subsidize oil extraction in the modern world. Because the oil extraction is what allows the tourism and farming to exist in the first place.
I don’t understand why people keep saying this. In the modern world, it is first oil and coal, and only then everything else.
If we subsidize an energy sector, such as shale oil, then we can only do that by cannibalizing other sectors. But that is not really subsidization. That is canibalization.
2) The “there is plenty of oil left” talking point is simply ignorant. First, the primary value of oil and coal is that they have created modernity by providing phenomenally cheap energy in an energy-dense and (for oil) portable/liquid form.
The key word here is “cheap”. It does not matter how much oil may be left underground if it is not cheap or cheap enough to extract, refine, store and distribute. Modern society these last 150 years, our consumption and population levels, were built on cheap oil. When cheap oil goes away, so does the related way of life.
The average price of a barrel of oil (2016 dollars) for the period 1920-1970 was US $24. Pre-corona, a barrel of oil was going for around US $72. Three times as much. And that was reflected in the state of the international economy, where demand was failing year over year and global debt stood at $250 trilion. Because oil was too expensive.
https://www.businessinsider.sg/timeline-155-year-history-of-oil-prices-2016-12?r=US&IR=T
The fact is, we are over the hill and on the downward slope of the oil age and ther are many, many signs of this.
the oil majors have spent the last ten years cutting back on capex. In fact, they have essentially abandoned it. They do not believe there is any more cheap oil to find. If you know something they don’t, perhaps you should contact them.
the fact that there have been no new conventional oil projects started for a few decades now. Instead, all oil projects are high-cost/low quality projects in the deep ocean, shale oil, tar sands, and so on. Why? Because the cheap, high quality oil is gone. The cheap, easy to get oil is extracted first, you see. The stuff that is left is the much less economic or completely uneconomic.
the exponential growth math problem. Let’s assume that we contine to consume oil at a growth rate that is similar to the rate of growth of the last 50 years, 2%. That would mean that in the next 36 years, the world would consume as much oil as the total of all oil that had been consumed in the previous 150 years.
Do you think that is possible?
Anyway, I know I am wasting my time commenting because, clearly, your ignorance on these matters is complete and you are just as clearly very happy in your ignorance.
No, you are wrong! Big Pharma loves you!
Don’t be a dirty, smelly anti-vaxxer! They’re unpopular! You don’t want to be unpopular, do you?
Electric cars obviously. If you leave internal combustion engines the best you could do is to use biogas (renewable) but we do not have enough biogas. And the natural gas does not offer a significant improvement over gasoline in terms of greenhouse gases emission.
I can’t stand the ironing… it’s becoming too much to bear…
Sometimes living in clown world is like arbitrarily being pied in the face by an invisible jester that everyone else is eternally oblivious to, how is it that people can’t see this?
What would it even mean for farming to subsidize oil extraction, pay for it? If so they do and must subsidize it because they use it, so they must pay for it.
But I never proposed anything like that. I said the government could use subsidies to bring the balance of energy sources in use more in line with the balance of energy sources available and produced so there was less wastage, and more demand for a (slightly) more efficient fuel over a less efficient fuel.
A123 says the issue is transportation, and I can believe that. But it would at least in theory still work. The more demand for natural gas there is, the higher the price. At some point it becomes too valuable to simply waste and becomes more worth addressing the problem of transport. Natural gas is produced as a byproduct of producing gasoline. At current prices it is worth wasting natural gas to produce gasoline. If more of the market demand was diverted from gasoline to natural gas, the price of gasoline would lower and the price of natural gas would rise. At some point you would rather exploit the natural gas than waste it to get gasoline.
You could also just build a bunch more pipelines which is admittedly probably a better idea, since there is already significant demand for both.
You are making a peak oil argument but you say $72/gallon is too expensive.
We have spent the better part of the last several decades since 1970 paying over $100 per barrel, up to $160 per barrel. And at that time, the general consensus (especially among the peak oil people) was that the price would only continue to rise. European economies typically pay far more than the equivalent of that retail, back then and still now.
However, it was demonstrated to be entirely possible to continue running an economy on those oil prices. We did it. Ahh, but the peak oil concept suggests it will be come a problem eventually because they only go up. But WTF.
Oil has spent the last decade now around $50 on average. Your $72 represents pretty much the high end of the spikes now. It is currently today $19.87. It has actually fallen below the pre-1970 average! Insane. But it doesn’t matter to this argument if it even stays that low.
The US literally does have plenty of oil, centuries worth, at prices below $72. And even more below $150.
And you say the cheap oil is gone. The cheap oil is here today. It’s been here for a decade. There is more proven reserve of oil available today below $72 than there ever was oil available before 1970. Objectively.
You cannot claim this is uneconomic. It’s better than we have had for decades and is a direct refutation of the peak oil claims from 1970-2000. At $72/barrel (which it is currently, and usually way below), it was not suppose to be that cheap according to peak oil. It was suppose to be over $200 and climbing.
Demand has actually flattened. Demand in developed countries has been decreasing over the last couple decades and is only canceled out by developing countries. Many analysts predict peak demand in the next few decades now followed by decreasing demand.
But oil reserves have also grown. Enough to cover it anyway.
Yes, it is possible. With oil alone, let alone with natural gas which there is actually a hell of a lot more of. Without ethanol or biofuel.
You are recycling an argument that might have held water in 1995 but is shot today.
Kudos for recycling though.
It’s all projection.
Compare the rates of such problems in areas that support Bandera and in your Donbas.
HIV:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Registered_HIV_prevalence_in_Ukraine.jpg/400px-Registered_HIV_prevalence_in_Ukraine.jpg
Drug addiction:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4465255/
The regions of Ukraine with the largest number of opioid dependent persons (the south and eastern portions of the country) correspond to the regions with the highest HIV prevalence and HIV incidence.
“Prostitute”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Ukraine
According to the Ukrainian Institute of Social Studies in 2011 there were 50,000 women working as prostitutes with every sixth prostitute being a minor.[6] The organisation claimed the largest number of prostitutes were found (in 2011) in Kiev (about 9,000 people), then in the Odessa area (about 6,000), about 3,000 could be found in Dnipropetrovsk and in Donetsk, in Kharkiv 2,500 and 2,000 were said to have worked in Crimea
Per capita, despite Kiev being the capital and richest city, Odessa easily leads in prostitution. Donetsk ties it. Bandera-country, Lviv, isn’t even on the radar.
“Slut”:
Couldn’t find average number of sex partners by oblast. But it can be inferred from HIV rate and from the extramarital birth rate:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/ExtramaritalBirth2011ua.PNG/320px-ExtramaritalBirth2011ua.PNG
So in reality: ” if your father were a drug addict, your mother a prostitute, your sister a slut, and all your friends hopeless morons” – you are probably from Donbas.
Where are you from again, Anonin TN? LOL.
Another quarantine malpractice from Moscow government officials: they want you to carry domestic Russian passport on you at all times. This demand represents violation of the Russian law and will be surely used to extort bribes.
Moscow police will be checking your passport for local “propiska”, and if you are renting apartment in Moscow, be sure to carry a copy of your rental agreement every time you go to the grocery store – more bribes.
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4325796?from=main_4
I’m getting more and more annoyed at Russian bureaucracy and their harebrained attempts at “containment”/”mitigation” or whatever they’re trying to accomplish right now. Russian bureaucracy is probably more dangerous, than COVID-19 at this point.
I consistently pointed out the reality that Ukraine while still poor by Euroepan standards had gotten better than it had ever been before. As evidenced by per capita GDP PPP, wage improvement, etc. It looks like the hit from the coronavirus will be no worse for Ukraine than for most other places (predicted decline of 4% in 2020, same as in Russia).
You, on the other hand, have written clear falsehoods, easily disproven. Such as this gem, written in 2016:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/ukraine-economic-collapse/#comment-1281740
“There will be no growth in Ukraine for years. What would the economy grow from?”
GDP growth per capita:
2016: + 2.9%
2017: + 2.9%
2018: + 3.9%
2019:+ 3.4%
Brilliant example of wishful thinking by the dishonest Sovok.
You apparently do not understand what I am saying.
a) All wealth in the modern wealth – everything we have – derives from oil and coal. All wealth in the modern world is therefore a derivative of oil and gas.
b) It is therefore not possible for these forms of wealth to “subsidize” oil and coal because they only exist because of the fact that oil and coal extraction precedes the creation of that wealth.
The horse pulls the cart/ The cart does not push the horse.
I really can’t say it any clearer than that.
Contrary to what you say, the world economy has been consistently deteriorating since 1970, when US production peaked and oil prices started to rise, right up until 2009 when we got $140 and the world economy crashed. Since then, the US has effectively been in a Depression, as since the year 2012 there has not been even a single quarter of GDP growth once government debt is subtracted. In fact, privately funded GDP has declined every quarter since then.
This is one of the effects of the end of cheap oil.
Throughout the last 50 years, wages and the standard of living in the United States has fallen to a level that for many people can be called “immiseration”, in particular as higher energy costs has meant that producers have had to offshore to offset higher energy costs with lower labor costs. In the US another sign of this has also been the mass importtaion of cheap labor to create downward wage pressures.
These are the signs of a long-term deteriorating economy.
Globally, ever-higher higher energy costs and lower present-day incomes have forced the world economy – and in particular the US consumer – into an ever-accelerating process of debt creation, resulting in few US citizens any longer having any savings at all and a global debt of $250 trillion.
Why have we had to have that debt creation? Because it was essential in order to maintain the world economy and the demand for oil.
Yes, demand has flattened. This is the point I want you to understand. People can’t afford energy. So the demand falls off. So their standard of living declines.
The problem with falling demand, however – apart from the fact that it indicates an increase in poverty – is that we live in an economic system that requires exponential growth. It isn’t the case that we can stop right where we are and stay here. Rather, it is like paddling a canoe upriver. If we stop paddling, the canoe starts going backwards.
Consider it: we decide that everybody in the world now has “enough” of everything. So we don’t need any more new cars, or any more new houses, or new clothes, and so we don’t need any more new debt either. That would be a world without growth.
So what happens if the growth economy goes away? Well look around at the pandemic scare and what has happened. No demand doesn’t just mean the end of growth and we stay wehere we are. No, it means a shrunk economy. And once it starts shrinking it keeps shrinking.
First, the idea of the US having plenty of oil is just silly. If we have plenty of oil, why are we drilling uneconomic shale oil? And as to speculating how much we have and how long it would last, you would have to make some statemnt asbout rates of consumption and prices. You are just talking uninformed nonsense.
I could provide an endless number of links. Here are two.
https://www.desmogblog.com/finances-fracking-shale-industry-drills-more-debt-profit
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Shales-Debt-Fueled-Drilling-Boom-Is-Coming-To-An-End.html
As to the term “cheap oil”, it doesn’t mean just “cheap for consumers” (and you are wrong on that, otherwise why can’t people live without credit as they formerly could?) it also means “cheap to extract”.
You see, for the economy to work, it must be possible for oil extractors to extract oil at a price that is low enough that marginal consumers can afford to pay for it. Currently, extractors cannot produce that cheaply, or they would go broke, or deeply into debt like shale oil, and so over time the oil customer base shrinks (as it loses marginal consumers) and we get the demand destruction that you correctly referred to above.
Anyway, I can’t sit here arguing all day. Got stuff to do. Cheers. Have a good one.
They’re extremely low human capital, the lowest of an already globally average (at best) country. If you spend time in Azov telegram and other social media they all look like untermensch from Nazi German propaganda posters, their speech incoherent and their movements uncoordinated.
Is Trump causing an increase in corona quarantine resistance among right wing Americans compared to where it would normally be?
To be fair, I do think there is information warfare going on by both sides. But why the former president chooses the US’ most reputable and powerful outlet and spread something so easily refutable, which makes both look unreliable, is very strange. One would also think they would choose CHYNA as their target for this, not Russia. Just more of the same Russiagate retardation. The USA is getting worse at propaganda…, really strange to see.
You could also do a Norkbro and /archive/ those articles you link in your own.
How politically viable will a travel ban be against the US by countries like Canada, China, and Russia be, say if by summer the coronavirus pandemic is still not under control in the US, and it is already under control in other countries, considering that the US government will surely retaliate if Canada or Germany continues to close its border well into the summer and autumn, in order to prevent Americans with coronavirus from entering into their countries , maybe with 100 percent tariff on all Canadian and German goods, or financial sanctions.
Not to be too mean about it, but WWII massive victory by Russia established the pecking order. When the chips were down the Germans couldn’t quite cut it. They lost catastrophically and became a de facto subservient nation focusing on fixing car engines and drinking left-over beer in Octoberfest. It culminated with the ‘Willkommen‘ culture during the migrant debacle in 2015.
The Empire can’t stay still. Unfortunately digging a hole into which they eventually fall is a part of being an Empire. Once they decided that they were ‘indispensable’, and ‘special’ there was no way back. It was effectively a declaration of a demigod status – and we know from the the Illiad story that demigods don’t do well.
That was obvious to any thinking person from the beginning. It’s good to have it confirmed.
But how are we going to save the grandpa? Also a large part of the elites in the West are elderly, sickly males who are most vulnerable. It is an ugly dilemma and nobody wants to touch it. So they shut down the store.
Yep, after the economy dropped by 15% in 2014-15, it bounced around the bottom with 2-3% growth. And that with a population drop of a few million and very heavy borrowing from IMF/EU. Wonderful results.
But is this how your respond to my empathy? I actually said that it is a kind thing to let you do a little rosy-picture pretending, and it is understandable. I meant it.
That’s like saying that while Macron is not much of a man by normal standards, he is better than Chelsea Manning. Yeah, obviously.
But the poverty is very deep, the last time I checked Ukraine had living standards about 1/2 to 1/3 of its neighbours (other than the cursed Moldova). That was not the case in 1991. After about 11 cumulative years (out of 29) in the ‘we love you Europe, do whatever you want with us‘, in a submissive monkey position to Brussels, it is time for some self-reflection. I will be waiting.
It is your generation that is responsible for the spread of globohomo and deserves to be democided and wiped off the map, if that. It is your generation that if truly worthless and little if any redeeming value. If this virus mutates and begins to take out 25 year olds and people like you and your type turnabout is always fair play. the fact that the country was still sane into the the mid 2000s was due to all the boomers and silents and their leftover political and social influence.
So why does South Korea, which has a high testing rate, have a fatality rate of 2 percent? And Taiwan also has a fatality rate of 1.5% despite universal testing. Are people basically just passing off coronavirus deaths as pneumonia or asthma deaths? That will explain the outliers for the countries with coronavirus death rates in the 0.3% something range.
I mean it may be hard to fake a coronavirus test result, but it is easy to game the system and pass of a coronavirus death as something else.
Same old song from Mr. Technical. The only thing that I can come up with whenever I read your monotonous dialogues is that for Ukraine to improve its situation within the world it needs to severe its relations with the US and Europe and reapply for a position as the supreme submissive monkey to Moscow.
“Back to the future, again!” or: “Moscow’s penetration is worse than Brussels”
One would also think they would choose CHYNA as their target for this, not Russia.
A Democrat choosing China for a target would be almost as unthinkable as choosing Israel.
Sorry to disappoint: unlike Ukies, scientists have brains.
Hate to disappoint: posting something for the umpteenth time does not make it true.
If. A big if, but it won’t mutate. It is here as a cosmic rebalancing for the boomers’ and silents’ selfishness – everything from asset grabbing pyramid schemes to open borders madness for cheaper labor. So they could play at being posh. Losers. From school debt to miserable incomes and expensive housing for the young – there is a lot to atone for by the boomers. This will hurt.
We inherited a sh..t world, and yes, some went totally bad into the globohomo idiocy. But even that I blame on the boomers, they made it possible, almost inevitable for the weaker ones. They set the ground rules with the idiotic “Imagine” and “We are the world” stupidity.
Now, who thought that Clintons-Bushes-Blairs were all swell and globalism with mindless travel and outsourcing a great opportunity for a boomer adventure? I kind of hope the percentages climb up a bit, it would be just. And dreaming of coughing 25-year olds is a sad way to go into oblivion… it is never going to happen.
So you lied about no growth for years.
And you can’t help yourself but lie even here. 2.9% to 3.9%, not 2%-3%. You provided figures that were 25%-30% lower than reality.
Do you lie to yourself, to others, or both?
The loss of Crimea and Donbas actually makes Ukraine’s growth more impressive because Donbas has provided a lot of hard currency and was the richest part of Ukraine outside Kiev. That is, if Ukraine minus Donbas even has the same income as Ukraine including Donbas once had, this means those parts outside Donbas have gotten richer.
But instead, Ukraine’s GDP (minius Donbas) per capita in 2019 was $9,775. In 2013 (plus Donbas) it was $8,695:
https://knoema.com/atlas/Ukraine/GDP-per-capita-based-on-PPP
You lied when you considered it pretense. Just as you lie now, as proven above. The question is whether 2/3 or 3/4 of what you state is a lie.
Ukraine has to start somewhere after disastrous rule, mostly by Sovok compradors. 2.9% to 3.9% consistent growth had been solid.
As I has written before, there were three approaches taken by Ukraine’s neighbors after 1991:
Integration with Russia (Belarus)
Integration with neither but mostly with Russocentric elite (Ukraine, Moldova)
(1) has been the most successful. Those countries are now 3 times wealthier than Ukraine.
(2) was better but not as good as (1). Belarus is about 2 times wealthier than Ukraine.
‘
Another lie. Yushchenko was president for 5 years but for 1.5 of those years Yanukovich was PM. So actually one can say 9.5 years out of 29 years. Only a third. Moreover, Association Agreement with EU wasn’t signed until 2015 and didn’t become operational until 2016. As we have seen, growth in GDP and wages have been solid since that time.
Furthermore, Ukraine had dropped to 1/3 of Russia’s and Poland’s per capita GDP PPP by 2013, prior to Maidan. So the “pro-Westerners” were not responsible for the relative decline as you lyingly imply. However, they have been responsible since 2015 for the gradual relative improvement. By the end of 2019 Ukraine’s position relative to Russia had not only overcome the post-Maidan transitional decline but had also erased the Yanukovich-era decline, returning Ukraine to its position visa vis Russia that it had in 2011 . This in spite of the fact that post-Maidan Ukraine no longer has its wealthiest region. So the improvement of the regions under Kiev has been more dramatic.
As is clear to any objective observer, Poland’s and Romania’s strategy of pursuing integration with the West was more successful than Belarus’ strategy of integrating with Russia, with Ukraine’s previous approach of integrating with neither being the worst of all.
Had Ukraine pursued a maximum pro-Western strategy from 1991, it’s economy would be in the same boat as those of Romania or Poland. Had it pursued integration with Russia, its economy would be comparable to that of Belarus. In 2018 Romania’s per capita GDP PPP was $28,206. That of Belarus was $19,994.
Since Maidan, Ukraine’s regions that are ruled from Kiev have “gained” significantly on Belarus relative to 2013. Obviously it will take a very very long time to catch up to its neighbors who have been pursuing integration with western Europe since 1991, and it may never happen. The damage of rule by Sovok compradors may be permanent. 30 years after disastrous Communist rule ended, Czechia still hasn’t come close to catching up to Austria economically despite the two being similar in wealth prior to Communist rule. But Ukraine has certainly been improving since Maidan, relative to Belarus and Russia.
If that’s the only thing you can come up with, you really lack critical thinking skills. There is such a thing as a rational and national position for Ukraine. With no monkey stuff. (Well, maybe Porky can dance for you.)
When you start out from an assumption that ‘penetration‘ is inevitable, your choices are limited. Somebody with views similar to mine will eventually take over in Kiev and straighten out the place: a national viewpoint with no tolerance for oligarchs, compradors and divisive fanatics with historical traumas. With focus on Ukraine, and people who plan to stay and live there, not on Brussels, Washington, Ottawa or Moscow. It might happen sooner then you think.
This victory speaks to the stupidity of the decision to going to war against most of the entire world, and not to the superiority or inferiority of the people or soldiers.
During the war about 3.8 million German soldiers were killed in combat vs. 6.8 million Soviet soldiers.
So one German was worth a little less than 2 Soviets.
In the Battle of Isandlwana, 10,000-15,000 Zulu warriors defeated 1,8oo British soldiers. Does that mean the Zulu soldiers were “superior?”
You really are one sick puppy, with all the “lie, lie…” I am starting to think that you can’t stand different viewpoints.
Your extensive treatise shows nothing. It is based – as always – on cherrypicking and a mythological faith in the goodness of Brussels. Aspiring to be Romania, well, that’s pretty sad. You want the whole Romanian package? Rusty cars, pot-marked roads, loose dogs and even looser women? How about also changing the alphabet, that plays really well with the French. I have never thought that anyone would dream of Romania, the times must be really tough in Ukraine.
I can already see how this will end: a screaming bunch of drowning fanatics claiming that if they were just given another 5 years, another $50 billion IMF, and a visa-free status with US and Canada – it would all work out. First Orange, then Maidan, then a comedian, just keep on digging.
To summarise:
– Ukraine will not be in EU
– Ukraine will not win a war against Russia
– The only utility that Ukraine has for the West is as a tool against Russia, that has never ended well for anyone doing it.
I find it interesting how very different US conservatives and UK “conservatives” are. Many if not most US conservatives seem to be actively protesting/defying the lock down while in the UK the “conservatives” are the main supporters of the lock down and would be against anyone protesting/defying it and would likely consider them to be “anarchists”.
Nigel Farage, who is as conservative as it gets for British politics, was openly calling for Universal Basic Income the other day. He clearly actively supports the lock down. British “conservatives” love authoritarianism, especially when it’s their people in power. They are nothing like “freedom-loving”, anti-authoritarian US conservatives. Most Tories think the commoners should just do what they’re told by blue bloods like Boris Johnson and do what the Queen implicitly implies British people should do in her speeches.
It’s not my fault that you 2/3 to 3/4 of the time. I have disagreed at times with others here but if they do not lie I do not say they do.
Economic growth has been 2.9% to 3.9% and you lie by stating 2% to 3%. Ukraine’s economy started growing last quarter of 2015,m, but in 2016 you lied and said it wouldn’t grow for many years. And it grew every year since then.
Rather than whine about being called a liar, you should try to be honest for a change.
Romania has a higher GDP per capita PPP than Russia. In 2018, $28,206 Romania vs. $27,588 Russia.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=RU-RO
Is aspiring to be Russia also sad?
Or were you dishonestly implying that Romania is poorer than Russia.
Because lying is what you do best in life.
You previously claimed that Ukraine’s economy would never grow. How did that work out?
Not in 20 years but no one claims otherwise.
Neither side wants a real war so irrelevant claim.
“Only utility Poland/Baltics have is as a tool against Russia that has never ended well for anyone (i.e., Napoleon) doing it.”
Poland is better off after choosing West vs. staying in Moscow’s zone. As is Ukraine in it current borders.
From your other post:
This part is what Ukraine has been doing prior to Maidan. Committing to neither Moscow nor Brussels. It hadn’t worked out very well…Didn’t you want Ukrainians to reflect? Perhaps you should apply this advice to yourself.
Moscow tolerates oligarchs more than does the West. And avoiding both had been Ukraine’s recipe for oligarchs to run wild. West’s pressure is the one interfering with Kolomoysky’s plans.
Mr. Karlin, you got to keep your bogeymen straight. Writing from Kiev, I note that my son’s third grade class hasn’t worried about measles for a year or more. I think that’s old news.
American evangelicals do not run this place. There are a handful of fair sized evangelical congregations, and the Mormons are pretty successful. I’ve had quite a few conversations with them and the question of vaccines has never come up.
I agree with another poster that vaccines are a complex issue. Some are undoubtedly safe and useful – polio has that list, and measles certainly belongs on it. At the same time you can count me among the skeptics when it comes to Bill Gates’ promoting vaccines and all of the intrusive tracking that he wants to accompany it. As Mencken said, for every complex human problem, there is a solution that is neat, simple and wrong. Vaccines are not an easy issue.
A month ago you prognosticated that the Ukrainians returning from Western Europe would inundate our country with COVID-19, while Russia would be relatively immune. I read it with interest, but could not understand how anybody could be so certain. As I write, Kyiv has 1,100 cases and Moscow 20,000. Returning Ukrainians may be less of a liability than the large numbers of migrants Moscow has attracted from the Stans. Who knew? I write this in humility, recognizing that testing regime, statistical accounting and so on are certainly flawed. Question is, to what degree?
Bottom line, Russia and Ukraine are very similar countries. Similar histories, similar peoples. I do not understand why you feel obliged to beat up so severely upon Ukraine. Fanning the flames of enmity doesn’t serve the interests of either. The two countries should be standing shoulder to shoulder against the cultural onslaught from the West.
Mostly agreed. I would just add that there is a world of difference between anti-waxxers (which is an ideology) & people who are critical of some aspects of some vaccines.
US conservatives are really libertarians and deserve to be put away.
Wrong. It was all of Europe (minus UK) going to war against Russia. There were Italian, Romanian, Finnish, Hungarian, Croat, Slovak, and other armies, plus France, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Latvia, Western Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Albania and others sent hundreds of thousands of volunteers and all the material equipment they had. So did Czechs and Poland, whose industries worked overtime all war to supply the attack on Russia.
And the ‘Allies’? French were defeated and on their back. A lot more French fought for Hitler than against. British and Americans sat on their hands until June 1944 – less than a year before the end of the war and with Germany completely defeated by then. Spare us the ‘supply chain‘ stories, the Anglos didn’t fight much in Europe.
It was basically a redo of Napoleon’s invasion: all of Europe against Russia. And guess what? Russia won, and won big, wiping out all the scumbags and burning down Berlin, as Germans planned to permanently burn down St. Petersburg and Moscow. I can see that it bothers you, I can see that after 75 years this is something that is burning inside of you with a deep hatred. But it happened. Now who is the ‘Ubermensch‘? Are you going to try again? My guess would be that third time would be the end of Europe.
US white conservatives who oppose this lockdown and favor decimating their own demographic base are useless vermins and oxygen thieves that should be disposed of from this place.
Well, the people of Ukraine have made their choice and its directions is West, not North. It’s interlopers like you that always try to ram your own vision of how and where Ukraine needs to be. Let the people themselves decide what they want to do.
Lol – everyone knows the current granddads, on average, are better people than the younger generations.
It is a generation which has higher levels of education, averagely culturally higher levels, and intellectual superiority, and listened to better music.
But they themselves, were living in a cultural/intellectual decline relative to their parents, and also (in America, although not the USSR) grandparents.
E.g. in music.
Popular musicians born in the 1920-29 – Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Charles Mingus, Ray Charles, etc.
Popular musicians born in the 1940-50 – Freddie Mercury, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Simon & Garfunkel, Arethra Franklin, Jimi Hendrix etc.
Popular musicians born in the 1970-80 – Tupac, Kurt Cobain, Liam Gallagher.
Popular musicians born in the 1990-2000 – Justin Bieber, One Direction, Ariana Grande
As for the main blogpost – this is just internal American partisan arguments, projected onto their internal opponent as being “too soft” to rival external powers.
Because Trump decided to be more sympathetic to Russia, the Democrats argue in the opposite direction.
Similarly, because Trump is more critical of China, the Democrats argue in the opposite.
A few years ago (before Trump), it was the opposite direction. Republicans say the Democrats are too “soft” to Russia, and the Democrats say this is an old 1980s policy.
It was just a few years ago, President Obama says in response to Governor Romney, when Romney believes Russia is a threat to the USA: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back”.
True of your evidence-less claims and jokes that you repost many times, not true of published epidemiological data that disproves your claims.
HIV, drug addiction, prostitution, promiscuity – these are Donbas specialties. They are much less common in areas of Ukraine where Bandera is popular.
So in reality: ” if your father were a drug addict, your mother a prostitute, your sister a slut, and all your friends hopeless morons” – you are probably from Donbas.
🙂
Aside from perhaps UBI (a question which could be interpreted from different perspectives), I find this a strange complaint.
Most Americans who label themselves conservative will almost always seek to defend the gains of their rebellion – but this is really just a defence of classical liberalism. Unfortunately, due to American cultural influence such misunderstandings which are based on peculiar national conditions are spread abroad.
—
Opposition to “anarchistic” attitudes, class hierarchy and obsequiousness, belief in the utility and moral justice of authoritarianism “especially when one’s own people are in power,” evocation of the monarch as a national symbol and lodestone – these are, for better or worse, traditional features of conservative regimes.
There is something in this: every Empire that ever existed rotted from the inside and fell. However, I believe the US could have declined slowly, over many decades. But its deranged elites do everything possible to ruin in much faster. If the morons cancel its debt to China, this would be a fatal blow: it would irreversibly ruin the credibility of Treasury bonds and ensure that nobody lends the US money. That would translate into a rapid catastrophic crash that nobody would be able to prevent.
Ukraine had a chance to become a decent country: neutral, with good relations with all its neighbors. It blew its chance, because its stupid elites decided that rabid primeval nationalism and hostility to Russia is the best fig leaf for their rampant thievery.
Looking from historic perspective, Russia should avoid any alliance with Ukraine at all costs. The same would be prudent for the Empire and its European sidekicks. Ukraine is like typhoid Mary: whoever it allies itself with crashes and burns.
The die is cast, though. Life is irreversible.
Let me point out a simple fact: it you don’t test anyone, you have no cases. How many tests did Ukraine perform, and how many did Russia? Therein lies your answer.
Humanity peaked around 1910. But these people, giants compared to moderns, brought about the debacles of the First World War and Revolution.
As a Gen X-er I will point out that you ignored our popular musicians, born between 1950 and 1970, who surpassed those who came immediately before and all who came after. Kurt Cobain was actually born in 1967. Then there are also Ian Curtis, Morrissey, James Hetfield (Metallica), Trent Reznor, Robert Smith, etc. And of course techno composers such as Andrew Weatherall, Vath, etc.
This was of course the Golden Age of Russian rock.
All of the bad things that Beckow has been complaining about are not the fault of the Boomers but of the GI and Silent generations. They set it all up, the Boomers were not given much of a choice. The fatal mistakes were set in motion the late 1950s (economically) and mid 1960s (culturally), at a time when the oldest boomers were still teenagers and the younger boomers were in grade school.
Conservative oriented people usually idealize the culture of their grandparents’ generation, to an extent they can understand or be exposed to it.
It’s healthy that there are such people, listening to their grandparents. This kind of Darwinism is normally anecdotal nonsense – but it is intuitively like there is a genetic reason, selected in tribes, for why old people live so long even when they do not have any martial use, and would need to rely on hunting by more physically fit generations, while they sit in the cave shouting at younger people.
What conservative politically support, varies to a similar extent between different countries, as the countries of their grandparents’ generation vary. Although there is of course a lot of commonality in terms of personality characteristics (the kind of rosy people who romanticize the past), and that culture varies less between countries than between different historical epochs.
So, in America, young people with that orientation, are romanticizing 1950s – with strong gender differences mediated by capitalism, unlimited oil consumption, big cars, “anyone can become rich”, a strong rival external enemy, etc. Trump has marketed these themes even to younger conservatives.
Such conserrvatism is quite easy for Americans, having such successful 20th century ancestors. If you are in Macedonia or Nigeria, I doubt it will be as easy a conservative, that romanticizes your grandparents. And for currently middle-aged Germans.
What it was doing in the 1990s. That did not work out well.
Nice try:
Spain contributed 22,000 volunteers for the Germans during World War II. However there we also a few thousands Spanish Republicans fighting against the Nazis.
Slovakia contributed 45,000 troops to the fight against the USSR, but they quickly returned to Slovakia. OTOH more Slovaks fought against the Germans during their national uprising. Slovakia mostly just paid to have the Germans kill their Jewish neighbors, they didn’t do much fighting, but overall more Slovaks fought against Germans more than fought for them. So you lie about that, too.
You do bring up a good point though: not only did the Germans invade a much larger and more populous country, they did so while also occupying much of a hostile continent.
This makes the disastrous Soviet performance look even worse.
BTW, by 1945 there were 450,000 Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Czechs fighting on the Soviet side.
So you will also include massive American lend-lease aid to Soviets then?
Another of your lies. This may be your most outlandish lie yet.
About 15,000 French troops fought for the Nazis:
https://www.feldgrau.com/WW2-German-Wehrmacht-French-Volunteers
The French army when Germany invaded consisted of over 3 million troops:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France
After France fell, Free French forces numbered over 500,000 by 1944:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_France_during_World_War_II#Campaign_of_France_(1944%E2%80%931945)
Another statement by Beckow, another lie.
Do you ever get sick of being dishonest, Beckow?
The wrong side won World War I, the right side won World War II, though both wars were unnecessary tragedies.
Well, it depends a bit on your genre. In music, in “classical” music/opera, 1910 is already late and perhaps a little “overripe”.
Strauss begins writing operas around 1910.
For Puccini, this is last masterpiece published in his life time: Madam Butterfly – 1904
Scriabin, Poem of Ecstasy – 1908 (beginning of more unashamedly atonal modernism).
Mahler Symphony 9 – 1909 (his last completed symphony)
Debussy preludes, Book 1 – 1910
Rachmaninov Piano Sonata 2 – 1913
Stravinsky Rite of Spring – 1913
Elgar Cello Concerto – 1919
And by 1919, Prokofiev’s Symphony number 1 – self-conscious imitation of Hadyn. By the time, composers are trying to re-create music of more than a century earlier, it’s probably not a good sign of confidence in your epoch.
On the other hand, 1910, – for the American original music tradition, they are just setting the foundations. Scott Joplin is still composing; Duke Ellington is 11 years old; Gershwin is 12 years old; Billie Holiday will be born in 5 years, Dizzy Gillespie will be born in 7 years.
I was skipping 20 years to try to match parents and their children.
But the sad thing in American jazz music, is that the people born in 1950-1970, (the grandchildren of the radical generation of post-war Jazz), are already too late to be part of the living creative genre.
This generation in jazz, are led by conservative, traditionalists already. So, Wynton Marsalis (born 1961), was already a conservationalist, trying to preserve the dead music of what had been radical ancestors.
If you think this current dystopian nightmare and white genocide are ok, then you are right.
Russian Ministry of Emergencies doesn’t want you to wear masks in public, because “not effective”.
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4323950
Central Asian immigrants are no longer required to pay for ‘patents’ (work permits), enabling them to legally work in Russia, because Putin doesn’t want these people to go back to Tadjikistan. Putin wants them to stay in Russia.
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4325991
Those problems are the result of the wrong side winning World War I.
Nazis winning World War II would have meant tens of millions of murdered Slavs and ascendance of Islam in much of the world. Nazis themselves were moral degenerates committed to undermining and destroying traditional European values and culture, and their ideology faddish, with questionable staying power. Grandchildren of Nazis would probably be not much better than modern Germans, or grandchildren of Bolsheviks.
How would there would have been an ascendance of Islam in the world? The mass immigration of non whites into white lands is happening only because the jews won WW2, I cannot see any hypothetical scenario where a Third Reich would ever embrace Islam or invite masses of Muslims into Europe.
As for the Slavs, I do not deny that millions would have died, however in the end Slavs will also come to their demise because in this world current ZOG world, the desire for the destruction of European people and its culture is baked into the jewish DNA and they rule you now. This is the most degenerate of all worlds, it is ridiculous to argue that a German Reich would be practicing homosexual marriage, transgender surgery for minors, and all the other things happening now.
You are correct, I meant broadly, not in terms of music specifically.
My taste for classical music ends after the early 1800s, other than opera.
BTW, you appreciate good sound. What do you think of sources that provide this quality of music:
https://www.hdtracks.com/audiophile-picks/j-s-bach-the-cello-suites-according-to-anna-magdalena
Standard CD quality is 44.1kHz/16-bit FLAC, but here one can find 96kHz/24bit or better. I’ve sampled them on high-end stereo equipment and heard a subtle difference, but this may be psychological in nature.
Am I out of touch, or has the West just stopped producing any new musical styles since the 1990s? After jazz, the 60s spawned rock and roll, the 70s created punk and disco, 80s created post-punk and New Wave, 90s created techno (I suppose grunge wasn’t that new or different). It seems that all modern acts are derivative of what had been made before.
I have a weird aversion to all products of African-American artistic culture. Unlike many of the posters on Unz, I don’t have an aversion to the people themselves, I’m realistic about general problems but I sincerely wish them all the best. Nor do I mind reggae or ska music. But jazz, blues, R &B, rap, and thus most modern American pop music – I can’t listen to any of it. I don’t even like Detroit-style techno compared to how it is made in Europe.
You a weird kind of a Nazi sympathiser, wistful for the pre-Nazi Germanic as..holes who got clobbered in WWI. Are you going to start about the Habsburg retards again? What are you 110-year old? Get over it, those inbred bastard lost badly, were defeated and crawled out of history. Good, we never have to hear about their ‘morganatic’ marriages, fat archdukes with bad drivers, and weird suicides by their dysfunctional offspring. They are done. Have the courage to cheer for what you really secretly like: the WWII Nazi alliance.
I am not going to argue with autistic nonsense. Suffice to say the German-controlled continental Europe had more than three times the population and five times the economic resources of Russia.
“by 1945 there were 450,000 Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Czechs fighting on the Soviet side.”
By 1945? No kidding. Maybe most of them switched sides since they were losing so badly? What difference did it make in 1945? When it mattered they all joined the Nazis, e.g. the Romanians switched in August 1944. You can’t be that dense, or can you?
I know the Slovak situation well. The uprising was in late August 1944, it was a conscious attempt to join the winning side. It was still better than the valiant Czechs who staged their ‘uprising‘ on May 5, 1945 – you read that right, 4 days before the war was over. Quite some help for the Russians, while for the previous 4 years Czechs obediently provided about 20% of Germany’s military production, the tanks in front of Moscow were made by Czechs. Same with the Poles.
There was French Charlemagne division defending Berlin until the last moment. There were Swedes and Danes in SS divisions. There were Romanians, Hungarians and Latvians massacring any Slav untermensch in sight. Don’t pretend that you don’t know that.
The truth is that nobody wanted to talk about any of this because the behaviour of most European nations in WWII was embarrassing. But it was Europe against Russia in 1941-44, that’s when it mattered and that’s when Russia won. Late 1944 and 1945 were an afterthought. But even there some fanatics like the Hungarians fought on the Nazi side till the end.
But you know all of this. You just don’t like it, so you lie about it and twist yourself into some kind of a ‘Habsburg Nazi‘ not a ‘WWII Nazi‘. There is no such thing. If you representative of the current Ukrainian worldview, they deserve all the hurt that’s coming their way.
Actually, thanks to the Soviet freezer and West European stupidity the Slavs have a once in a lifetime chance to overtake Western Europe as the dominant side
Fingers crossed
In 1950 people would have said the same about the USA, but there were so many gay Nazis that the party had to try to purge them.
Nazis appreciated Islam.
https://www.dw.com/en/how-nazis-courted-the-islamic-world-during-wwii/a-41358387
At the height of the war in 1941-1942, when German troops entered Muslim-populated territories in the Balkans, North Africa, Crimea, and the Caucasus, and approached the Middle East and Central Asia, Berlin began to see Islam as politically significant. Nazi Germany made significant attempts to promote an alliance with the “Muslim world” against their alleged common enemies — the British Empire, the Soviet Union, America and Jews.
German military authorities also made extensive efforts to co-opt Islamic dignitaries. German propagandists in the eastern territories, the Balkans, and North Africa tried to use religious rhetoric, vocabulary and iconography to mobilize Muslims. They politicized sacred texts like the Quran as well as religious imperatives, most notably the concept of jihad, in order to foment religious violence for political ends.
From 1941 onwards, the Nazi Wehrmacht army and the paramilitary SS recruited tens of thousands of Muslims, mainly to save German blood. Muslim soldiers fought on all fronts. German army officials granted these recruits a wide range of religious concessions, even lifting the ban on ritual slaughter, a practice that had been prohibited for anti-Semitic reasons by Hitler’s Law for the Protection of Animals of 1933.
Overall, I think that Muslims were means to an end. Nazi policies towards Islam were informed by pragmatism. Some leading Nazis, particularly Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, repeatedly expressed their respect for Islam. Whenever denouncing the Catholic Church, Hitler routinely contrasted it with Islam. While he denounced Catholicism as a weak, effeminate religion, he praised Islam as a strong, aggressive, martial religion. Overall, however, it was strategic considerations, not ideology, that led to Nazi Germany’s campaign for Islamic mobilization.
Hitler had already postulated the racial inferiority of non-European peoples in “Mein Kampf.” Once in power, however, German officials showed themselves to be more pragmatic: Non-Jewish Turks, Iranians and Arabs had already been explicitly exempted from any official racial discrimination in the 1930s, following diplomatic interventions from the governments in Tehran, Ankara, and Cairo. And during the war the Germans showed similar pragmatism. Muslims everywhere, it was clear to every German officer, were to be treated as allies.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/nazi-romance-with-islam
Ihrig argues that the Turkish treatment of minorities, both under Atatürk and earlier, was the true precursor for Hitler’s murderous policy in the East. Those “bloodsuckers and parasites,” the Greeks and Armenians, had been “eradicated” by the Turks, Tröbst explained in Heimatland. “Gentle measures—that history has always shown—will not do in such cases.” The Turks had achieved “the purification of a nation of its foreign elements on a grand scale.” He added that “Almost all of those of foreign background in the area of combat had to die; their number is not put too low with 500,000.” Here was a chilling endorsement of genocide, and one that surely did not escape Hitler’s eye. Shortly after his articles appeared, Hitler invited Tröbst to give a speech on Turkey to the SA.
From 1923 on, Hitler consistently praised Atatürk in his own speeches as well. Berlin, like Istanbul, was cosmopolitan and decadent. Munich, site of Hitler’s beer-hall putsch, was the place for a German “Ankara government.” When Hitler seized power in 1933 his Völkischer Beobachter cited Atatürk’s victory as the “star in the darkness” that had shone for the beleaguered Nazis in 1923, after the putsch’s failure. Turkey was “proof of what a real man could do”—a man like Atatürk, or Hitler.
You already started your post with a lie LOL.
Sure they were defeated. And with their defeat, all of Europe was defeated and has lived with the consequences.
You lied and claimed more French fought for the Germans than against them, remember?
3 million French fought against the Nazis during the invasion. 500,000 fought against them during the liberation.
SS Charlemagne had 7,300 to 11,000 troops at its peak.
“Autistic nonsense” LOL.
Indeed, while invading the USSR Germany was occupying Europe also, while getting bombed by the British and Americans.
And the USSR was getting massive aid from America.
Remind me how many Poles joined the Nazis in 1939. You claimed they all did.
So small Germany invaded big USSR (which was getting massive help from the USA) and managed to kill tens of millions of people from the hapless USSR. While also fighting the British and Americans and occupying a hostile continent.
Since you love Sovoks this upsets you. So much anger and lies from you 🙂
Liar, Hapsburgs were placed in concentration camps by Nazis.
If the price of oil being over $20 was the singular reason for the debt bubble, why didn’t they switch to coal?
There was never any peak coal, coal has always been cheaper than oil, and coal is fully capable of running an industrial economy. For portable applications, you don’t even need to design a solid fuel delivery system, you can gasify it. But if you think gasification costs too much, you can design a solid fuel injection system.
You, sir, are spouting the selfhating nonsense politkorrekt Germans have to firmly believe.
Are you German?
Or are you one of the case officers who are telling those scared-out-of-their-wit-by-the-guilt-of-their-great-grandfathers suicides what to think lest they remark their cognitive dissonances?
That is a controversy which people have been arguing since Sony introduced SACD around 20 years ago.
As a listener, I don’t think I would be able to identify Hi-Res files, as different from the redbook audio files – but I haven’t test this in a careful way.
For producers, audio engineers, etc – 24-bit instead of 16-bit, makes sense, as allows them to apply more processing operations without dropping below a point where there will be audible deterioration.
–
There are of course huge difference between different remasterings of albums, but it depends on the engineers’ aural skill, rather than technological issues.
Some of the remastering engineers are excellent, but a lot of the remastering engineers are idiots, who make the original recording sound a lot worse. (Which is why collecting original vinyl is probably not so illogical for certain albums, when remastering engineers have made it worse for CD – for example, to avoid the Rudy Van Gelder Remaster CDs which sound a lot worse than his original recordings).
A lot of this, though – in a kind of sadly trivial way – is also dependent on technology.
For example, I think most people will love Duke Ellington, with a pair of really good studio monitors, when you can hear the interaction of beautiful timbres and voicings in his band. (Or live, as people had originally listened to it). But I don’t even enjoy the same music, if I would listen on radio, headphones or YouTube.
On the other hand, what about something like Beatles (which I am admittedly not a great fan)? It doesn’t sound worse, on the worst audio equipment, than on the best ones. Does Tupac sound worse on cheap earbuds in the gym? – actually I think that’s only place you will appreciate him.
Then there were people like Phil Spector who designed his production and recording of pop songs to sound good on terrible audio equipment, like 1960s radios (but it sounds simply weird on nice equipment).
–
Also there changes in peoples’ preferences, from unpredictable inventions like headphones, which composers never dreamed of. I do not enjoy composers like Bruckner with headphones – even $800 neutral open back headphones. But on the other hand, Brahms and Sibelius symphonies still sound great, with cheap noise-cancelling bluetooth headphones on the train.
Did Zulus win the war? As far as I know, they lost, first to Boers, then to Brits.
There were thousands of battles in WWII, each side lost some and won some. The only thing that matters is that the USSR won the war with Germany, not a particular battle.
Although, combination of lack of training with medical masks – can create more dangerous behaviour from a “false sense of security” in Russia.
In videos, police in Moscow are going far too close to people to scan QR codes, with false sense of security from the medical masks.
And you look at the teenagers in Tagil (fortunately almost no cornavirus is in the city yet), that buy for pensioners and low-mobility demographics. They do not socially distance, perhaps from a false sense of security from the mask and gloves.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-6aYA7Jfp3/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-pZdR3peEX/
I saw a video of the same kind of volunteer teenagers in Israel – those teenagers don’t use masks or gloves, so their airborne infectivity is at maximum. But they probably also have less false sense of security, as at least they leave the bags outside of doors.
So long as they have their mask on, it will keep their droplets from infecting other people.
QR-codes and various lockdowns in general is a terrible idea, doing more harm than good. And we don’t have overloaded healthcare system yet, so why are we quarantining?
With respect to history – yes.
With respect to the supposed superiority or inferiority of the soldiers (this discussion) – no.
On the eastern front about 1.7 Soviet solders were killed in battle for every German soldier killed in battle. Germans simply ran out of soldiers. It was foolish of them to invade a nation with such a larger population, while also fighting to their west..
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-pZdR3peEX/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_mid=B32024B5-1EAA-4398-9A6E-8B9D92DC494F
Could someone knowledgeable please comment on the door/locking mechanism in this picture. Many thanks to anybody who does. How common are they in modern Russia ?
A lot more French fought for Hitler than against. Another of your lies. This may be your most outlandish lie yet. – Slovaks can only dream of being in the company of the French even if the French record was spotty. That Slovaks were the most trusted ally of Hitler they would like to forget. They attacked Poland with Hitler in 1939. Deported Jews when Nazis did not ask for them and even paid transportation costs so Germans would take them. Sent army to fight Soviets in 1941. Czechs had much better deal with Hitler than them. Czech did not provide the cannon fodder to Hitler and went through the occupation almost unscathed. Slovaks had to redeem themselves so they let Soviets manipulate them into the pointless uprising. I do not judge Slovaks. The decisions were tough and every country tried to to what seemed to be good in the national interests in given circumstances that small countries like Hungary or Slovakia could not control. Czechs did the best. Hungarian and Slovaks were worse off. And Poles got the worst deal because they were on the right side, the winning side from the very beginning to the very end. The problem here is that Beckow likes to make moral judgments and pronouncements while he is absolutely in no position to do it. Why instead doesn’t he tell as all about things that Slovaks really excel in and can be proud of like the Sheep Kamasutra or how the poor hygiene is critical in making a perfect brynza.
One of many Russian coronavirus jokes:
Customers complain that shawarma does not taste the same. This is because the staff started washing their hands. We promise that as soon as the epidemic ends, things get back to normal.
Spare us the false humility, we all make judgments here. It comes with the territory. You make a number of questionable and false claims:
Not even close, you literally pulled this one out of thin air: small, unreliable, didn’t fight well, and staged an uprising in 1944 that cost Germans substantial casualties.
In 1938 after the love-fest of Munich Treaty with Hitler, Poland attacked Czecho-Slovakia and took a Czech region and two smaller Slovak regions. Naturally, when Germany attacked Poland in 1939, Slovakia re-took the regions. If that is an ‘attack’, what was it that Poland did a year earlier? You are incoherent.
No, Germans insisted, as they did all over Europe. The payment was a face-saving ruse since it allowed the Slovak government to pretend that the Jews were going for ‘resettlement‘ in the eastern Poland. To say that ‘Nazis didn’t ask‘ is about as historically stupid as it gets. And why ‘Nazis’? They were simply Germans, own up to it.
Yes, and withdrew in 6 weeks since the small army didn’t fight and fraternised with the locals. Quite a bit different from Romanians, Hungarians, French Charlemagne division, the Nordics in SS divisions, etc…
Complete nonsense. Czechs ceased to exist as an independent entity and simply survived by obediently working for the Germans. Germans also massacred them at will killing tens of thousands, putting in prison even more, wiping out whole villages. Slovakia on the other hand was peaceful with almost no internal oppression, prosperity and its own government. The Slovak uprising was not ‘Soviet inspired’, it was very local (I had family in it) and barely coordinated with the Soviets. It also belatedly established Slovakia as an ally and in that it was successful.
You are living in a make-belief world. Your understanding of bryndza cheese is also wobbly. You do know that all cheeses require bacteria?
Finally, can we hear about a single place where French fought against the Germans after 1940? We know quite a bit about the French fighting with the Germans and Vichy. I am sure by the end a lot of ‘Resistance fighters‘ appeared to shave hair of French Nazi whores, but did they ever fight?
“…army didn’t fight and fraternised with the locals..” – Is that what they told you in the kindergarten and you still believe it? Slovaks did quite a lot of fighting against Red Army and were very busy pacifying partisans and local population. Does fraternization in Slovak mean raping? Feldgrau.com is very positive about Slovak accomplishments.
https://www.feldgrau.com/WW2-Slovakian-Axis-Forces
But Beckow, before you mentioned the Slovak Army as part of all of Europe going to war against Russia. Clearly you implied the Slovaks were important or something, otherwise why mention them to prove that the invasion wasn’t primarily a German invasion:
But now you are writing that the Slovaks weren’t important at all when it came to the invasion of the USSR. Therefore it was in essence a German not all-European invasion after all.
So, were you lying then or are you lying now?
It must be exhausting being you, not being able to keep track of your lies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_France#Battle_of_Bir_Hakeim
General Marie Pierre Koenig and his unit—the 1st Free French Infantry Brigade—resisted the Afrika Korps at the Battle of Bir Hakeim in June 1942, although they were eventually obliged to withdraw, as Allied forces retreated to El Alamein, their lowest ebb in the North African campaign.[60] Koenig defended Bir Hakeim from 26 May to 11 June against superior German and Italian forces led by Generaloberst Erwin Rommel, proving that the FFF could be taken seriously by the Allies as a fighting force.
Italy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Expeditionary_Corps_(1943%E2%80%9344)
France:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Armored_Division_(France)
Your ignorance is astounding.
Anyone who can right something so stupid and incoherent as the above illogical statement, is beneath any rational discussion.
Oh boy, I showed you that your claims were nonsense and that’s all you got? A random German self-justifying article?
This is too easy. Well, maybe next time, you are usually a lot more rational.
Did they also tell you in the Kindergarten that Gen. Augustín Malár and Gen. Jozef Turanec were awarded Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes by Hitler? Was it for the courage and bravery while fraternizing with Soviet citizens?
You mentioned the Slovak Army as part of all of Europe attacking Russia. But in another comment, you let it be known that the Slovak effort was inconsequential. So you were either dishonestly portraying the Slovak effort the first time you mentioned it, or the second time.
Again, were you lying then or later?
You mentioned Italians. Italians got bogged down in the Balkans, forcing the Germans to apply fewer forces in the USSR than they would have, in order to fix the Italian mess. Italians were a hindrance, not a help. If you weren’t so ignorant about European history you would not have mentioned the Italian Army.
*write LOL
You didn’t even know about French fighting against the Germans in World War II and you speak of stupidity and incoherence 🙂
So we can add ignorance to dishonesty as your principal traits.
And what did you “got” when your nonsense was exposed?
“Finally, can we hear about a single place where French fought against the Germans after 1940?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_France#Battle_of_Bir_Hakeim
General Marie Pierre Koenig and his unit—the 1st Free French Infantry Brigade—resisted the Afrika Korps at the Battle of Bir Hakeim in June 1942, although they were eventually obliged to withdraw, as Allied forces retreated to El Alamein, their lowest ebb in the North African campaign.[60] Koenig defended Bir Hakeim from 26 May to 11 June against superior German and Italian forces led by Generaloberst Erwin Rommel, proving that the FFF could be taken seriously by the Allies as a fighting force.
Italy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Expeditionary_Corps_(1943%E2%80%9344)
France:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Armored_Division_(France)
It’s probable wearing such a mask will reduce airborne infectivity of the person. However, this would be a reduction of their level of infectivity, not elimination. How much this reduction would be – something which nobody knows.
It’s possible the benefit of wearing such mask (which I believe is a much better idea to wear such a mask, than wearing nothing), could be eliminated if people move closer together, than otherwise – from a false sense of security.
Anti-lock braking system in a car should reduce traffic accidents, ceteris paribus. But people should not then start to drive their car faster.
They want to reduce the rate of infection, and stop an Italian scenario where hospitals are suddenly flooded.
But total idiocy is when they were sending infected people from the airports of Moscow, back to their uninfected region. Then a week later, whole cities locked down, because there might be those infected tourists who were sent to a previously uninfected area some days before.
Even more idiocy – cities which were locked down strongly two weeks ago, with no epidemic. Now are starting to re-open when the epidemic is more developed.
From what I can tell Italy has exquisite, but low-capacity healthcare system. It gets flooded during regular flu season.
It is dumb that Russian officials decided to put the country into partial lockdown, because of something that happened in Italy, and without properly examining our own situation. It’s even dumber that Russia continues to ape Western countries in its quarantine practices.
Italy actually has more hospital beds per 1000 capita than the UK, US, and Canada.
Dean Anon —
Of course. I caveated for just that exigency. However, anecdotally, nobody we know, personally or more broadly via Facebook, is affected. The greatest concentrations here are in the Kyiv Lavra monastery (Moscow Patriarchy) and upscale Koncha Zaspa, reportedly brought there by the masters of the universe who ignored common sense by skiing Courchevel (France) instead of locking down.
Here’s Zerohedge today on Moscow. Don’t see anything similar about Kyiv.
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/russia-sees-coronavirus-infections-explode-8th-consecutive-one-day-record
But that’s beside the point. WHY INCESSANTLY PICK ON UKRAINE? Even when you are right – which you are not in this case – why belabor it?
Russia cannot conquer and dominate Ukraine again at this point in history. World would not allow it, Ukrainians would bridle under the Russian yoke even more than in Soviet times, and Russia simply doesn’t have the manpower or the will to dominate. Give it up.
Once you give up the notion of reinstantiating the Russian Empire, perhaps the countries can again recognize mutual interests. There are many.
So… enough with beating up on Ukraine. GIVE IT UP.
Anonymous –
I put in a caveat about testing, which you failed to credit. Nonetheless, if the virus were widespread one would know it.
The two pockets of infection here in Kyiv seem to be the Pechersk Lavra monastery, belonging to the Moscow patriarchy, and the elite suburb of Koncha Zaspa, where the high and mighty, imagining themselves immune to the diseases of the hoi polloi, rubbed elbows in Courchevel, France while getting in late season skiing.
Why must you incessantly pick on Ukraine? We will never be reincorporated in the Russian Empire. Ukrainians definitely don’t want it – We resisted the call to arms when insurrectionist movements were fomented in every major city in the east and south in 2014, with only Lugansk and Donetsk unable to resist, despite the fact that the Ukrainian military was hors de combat.
Russia lacks the manpower and the will to occupy Ukraine again. World opinion would not tolerate it. It could not be done in darkness, as was the case during the Bolshevik revolution and following.
Ukrainians would bridle under the Russian yoke even more than in Soviet times, and Russia simply doesn’t have the manpower or the will to dominate. Give it up.
Once you give up the notion of reinstantiating the Russian Empire, perhaps the countries can again recognize mutual interests. There are many.
So… enough with beating up on Ukraine. GIVE IT UP. We should be allies in fighting the decadent West, trade partners. It takes trust, which you are destroying rather than building.
What made the Chinese health experts decide to blow up their economy by locking down the entire country instead of going the herd immunity route? Surely they are not illiterate at math and could do the herd immunity calculations themselves? At that time there were only one or a few dozen official cases in places like Harbin and Gansu, so they could just have gone the Iowa route and lock down when you had hundreds of cases in Harbin, and not crash their economy. You can use the same its just the flu argument that only Wuhan needs a quarantine while places like Beijing and Shanghai only had a few hundred cases in late January, and anyway, if you follow the arguments of the corona skeptics here, the models are all alarmist in nature.
You are fighting a strawman. This is the least desirable outcome for those who care about Russia. Any alliance with Ukraine is toxic: historically, Ukraine was like a typhoid Mary – anyone it allied itself with crashed and burned. No Russian ruler who has Russia’s interests in mind will lift a finger to take Ukraine. Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics are a different matter. These will be eventually recognized, possibly even accepted into Russian Federation, although if I were Russian president, I wouldn’t accept them, just deal with them as independent countries.
You are speaking as if Ukraine is a player. Ukraine is a piece played by others, mostly Soros-funded scum. It is so dependent on IMF life support that to get another loan (loan you must repay, not aid) its vaudeville parliament passed a clearly unconstitutional “anti-Kolomoysky” law (even though Kolomoysky is scum, normal countries do not violate their constitution to get a loan) and signed Ukraine’s death sentence by adopting law allowing the sale of agricultural land.
Anyway, Russia has written Ukraine off as beyond salvage, so you are welcome to enjoy “independence” of financial slavery.
How is that oil price going for your beloved deal maker? Minus 37 dollars per gallon, nobody knew.
We accept your generosity.
Right you are about Kholomoisky and Soros. You don’t mention the CIA, but I suspect you are right there as well. Also right about toxic IMF loans, though I don’t think that Ukraine is in substantially worse shape than other countries. My bet is that all will be written off in the coming financial cataclysm. We will see.
Anyhow, thanks for not thinking about us. We’ll return the favor.
Loans from the IMF, by definition, cannot be “written off”.
“why should they (Russia) make themselves the main adversary”
Who else? This is about nuclear capabilities. One must differentiate between quicksands nuclear is taboo (N.Korea) and conventional is (Grenada) go ahead. Of course Russia will remain USA main adversary, only slogan has changed from a lie “we hate their communist ideology” to “we hate the Russians”. Sanctions are an enemy status manifestation.