So I hear that there have been some protests in Moscow regarding the Electoral Commission’s refusal to register some of the liberal candidates, despite getting the requisite signatures.
TBH this is so banal by now that I can’t even be bothered writing much about them, let alone personally reporting on them as I did in 2017. I have much better things to do, such as looking at cryonic catacombs in Sergiev Posad.
But TLDR:
- The liberals are probably right (about unfairly not being registered).
- Who cares.
- There were about 10,000 people there (0.1% of Moscow) – about the same as in the 2017 protest, and an order of magnitude lower than in the “Bolotnaya” protests of 2011-12.
- The meetings were unsanctioned, hence broken up. Whining from Western countries that do the same.
The only person I cared about enough to keep track off is the independent nationalist Roman Yuneman and he was successfully registered.
That said, there was perhaps one amusing thing that came out of this.
The CEO of @teremok_ru told me to F*ck Off today on @twitter because I criticized the arrests of peaceful protestors today in Moscow. He also said nasty things about my son. Journalists, please remember this before anymore fluff pieces on Goncharov. https://t.co/xr1ijiB8W2
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) July 28, 2019
Please make sure to patronize Teremok if you visit Russia.
This is a Russian chain that uses fresh, local ingredients makes a wide variety of blinys (my favorite is the Ilya Muromets) and their own kvas. Their waiters address you as Sir/Madam (сударь). Their conservative CEO Mikhail Goncharov is sort of like the Russian equivalent of Chick-fil-a’s Dan T. Cathy.
Trolling that illiterate McFaul joker is just the icing on the cake.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
German conditions in Russia.
Terrible…
https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1147117050290233344
I am back and trying to catch up.
Speaking of Teremok (and its US equivalent): is it possible to maintain, let alone restore, a functional society (including a robust economy that works for the vast majority of the members of said society) without a moral consensus?
Can there be social progress without moral order?
And can there be a moral order without religion?
These are very genuine questions, almost one year after having left this blog (and not having followed else other than casually) due to much work. Looking at the world around me this past year (I have traveled a lot for work) it seems more obvious than before, at the gut level, that if any version of Christianity is genuine it is eastern orthodoxy. The desolate moral state of Eastern Asian nations (despite high mean IQs) I have found very depressing while I was there. So the Confucianistic/Zen/other East Asian version of stoicism amounts to a mutual suicide pact.
Guillaume Tell is back and looking for answers.
Nothing exciting will happen, so I probably would not look out a window even if such protests were under a balcony.
–
But on the related topic – interesting trend of the last year, is that liberals are really overtaking the internet discussion, without very much effort (unlike oligarch funded Tsargrad TV,etc, which is lucky to receive a few thousand views for most of their uploads).
These are not all (although a lot of it is) government curated zoo of crazies like Echo of Moscow.
E.g. Dud only makes a cheap video maybe 3 times a month, and two and half years after opening his channel he is projected:
https://i.imgur.com/9jRTCy5.jpg
–
It’s because political internet is currently moving move off livejournal, forums, etc, where government could probably influence discussion more easily, if expensively e.g. Kristina Potupchik’s old job giving bags of money to bloggers for writing pro-Putin articles. I’m not sure how the YouTube equivalent of this would function? (Well we already know, when Sasha Spilberg was interviewing Medinsky, but the video was some kind of public embarrassment where comments are disabled).
Welcome back!
Poland is declining but it is still fine, and superior to Orthodox countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y_HKe37yuU
4 million views is pretty respectable, vast majority of likes are positive, too. That said, some of his other stuff is genuinely interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo1WouI38rQ
If liberals are producing this kind of quality content, then it isn’t a surprise they are gaining market share of views.
Generally speaking, a disproportionate share of the best travel vloggers that I follow are Russian; for whatever reason I seem to enjoy their travel writing/videos a lot more. Or maybe Russians are just better at it than others.
So far, results have been ambiguous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVLzn0NSSGc
https://img2.ntv.ru/home/news/20170522/pilberg_vs.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/724wsLo.jpg
2 years later…
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzhw5OzlLdK/
Surely yes, YouTubers often produce good content, and could (if they were more frequently producing), be like single person television channels.
Really people are also even moving from television, to just watching YouTube now, not just for entertainment, but also for political discussion. And that will be a problem for the government, as television is really where they shape discourse the most (more than in newspapers).
On the other hand, there is still addictive television, and an aging population, where median age will soon exceed 40, so this transition to new media will be more gradual and have less impact on political stability.
Yes, the Kolyma episode was superb. I also want to put in a good word for the episode with the Chechnya veteran who suffered from PTSD. Brought tears to my eyes. And I was mighty impressed by how Yuri Shevchuk handled their meeting. It could so easily have gone wrong, but he struck the perfect balance between empathy and frankness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjg7WSd8dyQ
Speaking of Russian YouTubers: Why is it that the authorities do not enforce the ban on swear words when it comes to YouTube channels? Even someone like Tatyana Mingalimova, who must have millions of young female viewers, cusses like a sailor. In this episode, she even used the foul-mouthed version of “blin.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6OMOIiTzuo
I was seriously impressed by the quality of the food in Teremok – for a fast food outlet. Beer and Kvass on the menu was also a welcome change from other chains. The main beer was Tuborg though, oddly enough. Will gladly patronise it further upon my return someday.
Thank you!
I don’t know Poland (never been), and all the powers to the Poles if their home country is still a nice place: I have met quite a few Polish-Americans in the USofA and they were almost invariably all very nice and reliable people.
That said, Roman “church” is totally FUBAR: as a corporate organization it has become a worldwide crime ring involved in the institutional protection of homosexual predators who have molested hundreds of underage boys. Cf. all the most recent scandals that keep unfolding, the Viganó dossier, the C9/Maradiaga crimes, the pro-Muslim “pope”, not to mention the doctrinal aberrations since Vatican 2. It’s not fixable. Even the super-trads like the SSPX have de facto created their own mini-magisterium.
That’s not saying that all orthodox countries are doing great (they are not). But Roman Catholicism is a force of decadence of corruption. The whore of Babylon.
Color revolution, Russia edition, just like What’s happening now in Hongkong.
Take this heart : If a Democrat gets back in the white House, they, the crazy blue-haired Democrat nuts cases, would have no problem with an atomic war so as to force American style “gay rights” upon the Russians, even if it costs hundreds of millions of innocent deaths.
Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army vet and pro Jazz artist.
The ‘natural’ and historic religion of China is some sort of monotheistic worship similar to what the Jews had. The Chinese even had a requisite Temple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Heaven
However, unlike Jews, the Chinese had no covenant. (Or, rather, only with their Emperor, not with God.) So the Chinese turned to various humanistic and secular heresies a long, long time ago; before Christ’s time.
In a way, converting to Christianity would be a good way out for Chinese society, provided they avoid Protestant heresy and spin it as a return to traditional ancient norms.
Considering that they literally own the content and distribution channels of the Internet, anything else would be unexpected.
Disagree entirely. Think about the near infinite number of times Zhirik is on TV,but pretty much every week he has 1 million+ viewed video in YouTube, youtube uploads of shows in federal tv like pryamoi efir,60 minutes etcetera are getting large numbers even though they are daily shows. Kiselyov interviews with Sobyanin and VVP were uploaded on vk (getting round election rules that don’t allow that type of interview to occur ) and received 10 million plus views….not to forget numerous patriotic vloggers and so on.
This dickhead dud does not interest me,but many of his interviews are with progovernment figures anyway……and disabling comments isnt strange at all- particularly when we are talking about a schoolkid
They should just copy the US regime and accuse these people of being agents of America (which they really are). Arrest them, put them in solitary confinement and say that they are just doing the same they did to Butina.
Livejournal, which was really popular for political discussion – although now declining – is owned since 2007 by Aleksandr Mamut (who also owns Waterstones bookshop in England, which is a very cool shop actually).
It was interpreted as a light degree of informal supervision, by livejournalists of the time.
https://i.imgur.com/rsTIWPX.jpg
And VK is owned by Alisher Usmanov, which was interpreted as expansion of state capacity (or at least “light supervision”) into social media.
https://i.imgur.com/ihzeXNt.jpg
–
I would say the government were quite sleeping about YouTube, in the last 1,5-2 years, as people like Navalny became viral on that website.
Remember Navalny only became YouTuber (who speaks to the camera), in 2017. His old blog had maybe 100 thousand people reading it.
Yet now on video, he is viral – e.g. his video on Medvedev has 31 million views, and is the probably now most the viewed video that exists about Medvedev.
Look at up old traffic statistics for Navalny’s blog. He is Alexa rank #2,184, if you believe it is so few people read this. He wasn’t that read (and people now don’t seem to remember his old nationalist posts, he used to write years ago in the past).
Yet around 2017, he becomes a YouTuber who talks to the camera directly (which is how people seem to prefer watching), and with a few infographics.
And his video on Medvedev – 31 million views; almost a million “likes”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g.
So basically, boomer.
She seems to be enjoying life in America.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bypi6PCF-mG/?utm_source=ig_web_options_share_sheet
The question is if the boomers in the Kremlin even watch Youtube, let alone understand it. Let’s hope they continue to be behind the curve. Generally speaking censorship never works to the advantage of radicals, which is what most of us are to one degree or another.
As for cussing, my (somewhat limited) experience with Slavic girls here in Sweden has been that they are typically wilder (in all kinds of ways) but also more energetic than Swedish girls. The flipside is that when they are on a sour mood they are much bitchier and more annoying. Swedish girls are typically a bit more boring, if we’re being brutally honest, but they are also a bit more even-tempered. I guess this is why I like watching Russians more: entertainment value is simply higher and easier to find, because it is more energetic and funnier (and YT is great for editing out the bad parts) but at the same time it doesn’t have the rock-bottom trash ‘culture’ that much brown/black content has. Swedish content is often a bit mellow and mellanmjölk. Lagom är inte alltid bäst 😉
I thought Sasha was a man’s name? Or is there something about this ‘girl’ I don’t know?
It’s short for Alexander/Alexandra
He admits
Yes.
Asia won’t save you. They in many ways have the disease even worse.
The Chinese are in a very bad moral state, and getting worse. China will start declining soon.
Agree. Western Christianity has failed.
Orthodoxy always had a stronger ascetic element, and a much more prominent mystic element.
Both are essential to religion. When religion in the West lost both, it died.
Orthodoxy is also closest to pure Judaism, so obviously superior.
No. You need a good mystical, ascetic religion at the core of your society.
I actually worked in the parent company that owns livejournal for some time.
Believe me, if there is any ‘informal supervision’, then the people there aren’t aware of any.
There’s a push for monetization and ROI, which implies cutting back on liberal bullshit (liberal bullshit doesn’t sell), but it fails because the editors and managers at the place are still 100% liberal. You can’t deal rationally with these people.
Waterstones is majority owned by Elliott Advisers.
I don’t think orthodoxy is any better than Roman Catholicism. The Russian Orthodox Church leadership is mostly made up of ex chekists who turned into cigarette smugglers in the 90s.The Constantinople patriarchate and by extension Greek Orthodox leadership has sold out to Washington’s church of Satan , the State department. There is no religious fervor in EE, very few genuine practitioners of Eastern European orthodoxy and priests tend to be invariably crooks who sucker believers and steal public funds to buy Lexus SUVs. It’s a de facto dead religion while pozzed new age stuff like Mormonism or Evangelicalism seems alive to me
Hmmmm.
Maybe only converting to Judaism can save you guys.
Boy that’s indeed a very sorry landscape you’re painting!
I certainly agree with your assessment of Protestantism, as being essentially pozzed (and I would add therapeutic: a lot of evangelical pastors specialize in second mariages, former alcoholics/potheads, etc.).
Greek Orthodoxy does not seem very encouraging either — at least from what I have been able to observe of their cousins in the Brave New World. Disclaimer: have hung around with several Antiochian orthodox families: very decent people, and very honest (not like the sneaky Jews by which I was surrounded at work).
East Asia is falling into a death spiral of barrenness with the lowest TFRs on the friggin planet. Korean colleagues and acquaintances are the most depressing sub-variety of H. Sapiens that I have ever been given the opportunity to meet. At least, Gabonese and Congolese blackfaces of which we had some representatives at the Firm were a funny lot. I would not want any of them to marry one of my daughters however.
So, are we to admit that mahometanism will inevitably swallow the Earth, henceforth returning it to medieval Bedouin civilization?
Or better yet, will we all be eaten alive by the
Tide of Color?
No, that’s not possible – I want to believe that some Old Believers in some remote locality still retain a salvific and unadulterated Faith that may save a wretched sinner like me (and all Men of Good Will while we’re at it)!
Aaron, we are very much in agreement here. Thank you for your message.
“God only suffices” (st Teresa of Avila) — do we even need an organized religion? It seems that from the standpoint of personal betterment, not only do we not necessarily need it, but moreover organized structures invariably appear to hinder personal growth.
On the other hand, one would have to be entirely ignorant of the historical record to deny the civilizing effect of clerical structures during various epochs — I.e. the case of the Gaul bishops in the crucial 5th century comes to mind immediately.
So, what gives? How do we get the indispensable Moral Order without the Lexus-driving, cigarette-trafficking, child-molesting clerics?
Its an interesting question, that I haven’t really given deep thought to.
I like your St Teresa quote. It is very true.
Some sort of organization is surely needed, some element of community, but maybe it should be somewhat loose and rather divorced from politics and wealth. There are various degrees of organization one might choose.
But at the same time, I think you are correct that personal experience of the Divine – and everyone desires and can achieve this to a different degree – is absolutely essential to religion. The communal part grows from this – but a deeply felt personal relationship to God is the vital glowing heart.
I think the lesson from the death of Western Christianity is that if you remove mysticism, religion dies. It becomes a system for social justice, at best.
European Jews underwent a similar religious crisis in the 18th century, when the religion became very dry and focused on empty rituals no one understood the meaning of.
What saved it and gave it new life was placing mysticism, which had always existed in the background, front and center at the heart of the religion. The mystical significance of the rituals were emphasized. They were no longer mere laws to be obeyed blindly, given by a harsh despot, but each law and ritual was understood in its mystical task of spiritually elevating the world and bringing one closer to God.
New practices were developed for the purpose of developing ones personal relationship with and experience of the Divine. For instance, one was expected to retreat onto solitude for a portion of each day, preferably in field or forest, and pour out ones heart to God in spontaneous, personal language. Formal prayer was for other times.
So I think the mystic heart has to be restored to Christianity – a personal experience of and relationship with the Divine – and only that will avail.
The question is does Orthodox Christianity have enough vitality left? I don’t know.
What you need is great mystic reformers and inspired men to complete this task. Will they arise?
Perhaps you are not ready. I sometimes suspect Europeans must first undergo a period of purification, of atonement, for inventing the modern world (sorry if this offends, that’s not my purpose).
Perhaps after this, inspired men of faith and holiness will arise within you again.
Can one do anything but pray in the meantime?
I don’t think Mohammedanism is suitable for Europeans. It has been an option for some time, yet has had remarkably little impact on the religious consciousness of European man.
Good luck.
Oh it’s true in 2018. he sold his majority: “In April 2018, hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation bought a majority stake in the company, leaving Alexander Mamut’s Lynwood Investments with a minority holding.[118] The sale completed in early June 2018.[119] ”
Still they didn’t remove the Russian books at Piccadilly yet…
https://www.waterstones.com/bookshops/the-russian-bookshop
Русский аппетит > Теремок
(Russian Appetite > Teremok)
A much more impressive fast food menu. Representative of the wide range of traditional Russian cooking while still staying within “fast food” prices and convenience, while Teremok mostly only does bliny (pancakes).
Just look:
http://русап.рф/menu/
I’m not sure if they exist in Moscow. When I was last in Russia a few years ago, I only saw them around Voronezh.
That’s 10-12 years in jail for Anatoly Karlin – and he only has himself to blame. What a stupid and morally indefensible thing to do
https://twitter.com/imerkouri/status/1155093948408487939
nice ass posing
Orthodox Christians, whether Middle Easterners, Eastern of Southern Europeans have pretty much East Asian Fertility rates so we’re just as doomed from that point. I really don’t get why you are so enamored with orthodoxy , it’s pretty much pre Vatican II catholic theology with a few weird addons like theosis that reek eastern mysticism and a looser organizational structure that leaves more leeway for local chaperones (ie:patriarchs). I don’t know if Muslims will take over the world, since the TFR of many Muslim countries seems to be dropping (Morocco, Algeria). The same secularising trends (technology, urbanisation…) seem to apply to some extent to Muslim countries so i’m really ambivalent on that one. I think that a giant negro (tens of millions of starving Nigerians) tide in a few decades is a much bigger risk to Europe. Even now blacks are displacing Arabs in the French banlieues due to their biological breeding advantage.
https://twitter.com/BzdDzapadlowski/status/1155449984126504960
Girl screaming hysterically
Seems to me in manner, to be almost like a stereotypical Swedish women, besides interest in Russian facebook?
People who go to another country at that age (maybe anything younger than about 14 years old going to another country), it’s like your soul is not formed yet – and you can turn into a purebred Swede if you are not careful.
Turn the volume to the max for your own comfort and pleasure! 😀
You would see eye to eye, I think, with Michel Houellebecq on this:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/05/restoration
In measures such as divorce, abortion, religi0us attendance, HIV, etc. Poland is far ahead of the Orthodox countries in Europe.
It is slipping a little bit, the lead is large.
Goebbels appreciated Swedish chicks:
https://i.imgur.com/DirEMEl.png
While you are correct about Church leadership in Russia, there are a lot of good priests and believers in Russia, it is not lost.
She does. But then, it’s well known among sociologists that a teenager’s circle of friends plays a greater part in his socialization than his family.
One must stay ever vigilant lest unimaginable horrors happen.
It is declining from a high level but it is still fine and in terms of moral decency is far ahead the Orthodox and the Western countries.
This describes perhaps 1-2% of priests. The vast majority of priests scratch out a barebones existence going from place to place blessing things and presiding over ceremonies. It is certainly not a career that anyone interested in making money goes into.
Poland and Croatia have de facto state Roman Catholic Churches which are inseparable from national identity and command the most respect and influence in society of any Church in Europe.
While Roman Catholic Church has “moved on”, the Polish and Croat Churches refuse to do so – there is actually a “deep Church” in case of Croatia, and a conflict between pro-state and pro-Vatican (smaller) groups – most evident in Bosnia.
However, the march of Homoglobalism and Neoliberalism.txt cannot be stopped and decadence, erosion of morals and tradition can’t be prevented.
Croats of my age are much more nationalistic and less degenerate than average Serbs – unfortunately. Younger generations are even more nationalist but decadence is running rampant.
I’m unsure of how long back this mannishness goes, but it’s very obvious already in black-and-white Swedish films from the 30s and 40s. And when you watch old TV shows from the 1960s, you are made painfully aware that Swedish men didn’t stand a chance against the onslaught of feminism.
That’s great quote!
I agree with everything in it.
This man totally gets it.
I don’t think extremist Mahomatanism will hold out that long unless i’m mistaken. Our friend Hyperborean has talked about how muslim Maghrebi immigrant women from the north of Africa are becoming whores and getting blacked hence becoming known in french as “buerettes a khel”. Muslim immigrants in Europe become more like american feral negroes than radical mahometans if they become more “secular”.
Well, the Chinese had a brush with Protestant Christianity that ended very, very badly in the mid-1800s… as in, “tens of millions of people dead” badly. Ironically enough, though, Mao and all the rest looked upon the Taiping quite favorably despite their general hostility to religion in any form.
With that said, evangelical Christianity-and Catholicism-is quite popular among ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia, and even to an extent the mainland nowadays. Party membership still requires atheism, but as long as you aren’t leading protests about government policy, these days, Beijing couldn’t care less what you worship. That is, if you are Han. People get the whole “Islam is being persecuted in China” thing wrong: it comes down in large measure to race, not religion.
Goebbels was a relatively indiscriminate horndog, from what I recall. Inferiority complex about being a cripple, maybe?
I swear Houllebecq has been channelling me lol. This is exactly what I’ve been saying on this site for more than a year, only to be net with ridicule, anger, and hostility.
Well, if you won’t listen to the Jew, maybe you’ll listen to one of your own European thinkers.
.
This is really the whole European problem in a nutshell.
The rage and hostility I provoke among Europeans on this site for saying this is because they know its true.
Part of my ancestors suffered under the National Socialists, but every time I listen to you my empathy for Hitler, flawed as he was, grows.
This is a perfect example of the kind of insane rage any criticism of the hegemony of reason over the Western mind provokes on this site.
Because I question the hegemony of reason, it is better that Jews were killed by Hitler.
Well of you won’t listen to me, perhaps you can get over your rage long enough to listen to Houllebecq – not a Jew, incidentally.
I disagreed on a lot of things with Talha, but even with the wide differences in worldviews it was possible to have a functioning conversation with him.
You, on the other hand, are a cockroach. Disgusting, yet impossible to eradicate.
Talha does not emphasize things like mysticism, or challenge the hegemony of reason.
Plus, its more threatening to you coming from me, because I grew up in Western culture.
But I am literally stunned at the intensity of your hate. Goddes Reason, enshrined by the French Revolution, truly is the European God.
I suspect what you really hate in me is that I call you to higher things and away from your swinish instincts.
Yes, yes, I know, we are all savage, hedonistic forest pagans who are unable to appreciate the clarity that comes from dehydrated visions in a harsh desert.
But there is no reason you must remain in that lamentable state.
I pressed agree but do not agree completely.
Agree. This is also true of the Greek Catholic Church in Western Ukraine.
Makes sense.
Who knows? Things work out, eventually, as they must. Maybe Europe will be saved by its eastern parts and hinterlands. A tricky thing is that our European tradition values also compassion, which is used against us but which should not be discarded in the struggle.
This presupposes that much of Europe wants to be saved.
https://i.imgur.com/npO0UmT.jpg
Despite the imminent danger of falling into the dark depths of Sharia Law due to a shocking lack of Christian ethics and morality, the most liberal Germanic countries seem to be filled with people who rather enjoy life. That’s the first blackpill for you.
The second blackpill is that most people in Eastern Europe don’t care about religion or ‘saving Europe’, either. They will continue to go to areas which have substantially higher QoL and that’s our countries. The peak of the emigration wave has likely passed but it has not completely subsided and likely never will as long as these differences are there. Cultural considerations are pretty unimportant. That’s the second blackpill.
I think we have to be careful projecting our own personal obsessions onto the population at large.
That way they don’t have to feel bad about being crooks and parasites.
Not even close to imminent…yet.
Wrong on the second.
They go there to make money. This doesn’t translate into value shifts. They come back with terrible stories about the migrants. It’s actually an inoculation.
Certainly not a personal obsession. Nothing to project.
But what matters ultimately is the leadership, and almost all eastern orthodox churches happen to be run by crooks who will sell out dogma for a few kopecks. At the time of Vatican II, before the 1960s pseudo liberal revolutions, the majority of the catholic clergy and believers were probably opposed to “Protestantisation” of the church yet John XXIII and his clique were able to push their reforms and wreck the church. Just look at the Ukrainian issue, Patriarch Bartholomew was ready to betray one of orthodoxy’s core principles, the independence of each metropolis, for the sake of the state department and presumably money.
I agree with that. Bart is bought by the State Department, and Gundyaev smuggled cigs and is controlled by the Kremlin.
I don’t know as much as you do regarding Eastern Orthodoxy — but your description of what happened with Roman Catholicism under J23 ( and his successors) is exact.
I don’t think that Eastern Orthodoxy is permeated and controlled by a homo/paedophile clique the way the Vatican is. This is a much graver matter than trafficking cigarettes IMO.
Really? Are you serious?
Name one dogma that was ‘sold out’, I double dare you.
Bartholomew was opposed by every single other hierarch.
They go there to make money. This doesn’t translate into value shifts. They come back with terrible stories about the migrants. It’s actually an inoculation.
For some, yes, but you are overconfident here. Living in another country changes you forever. Many – maybe most – of these people will go back to Poland from the UK, Sweden or wherever, and over time find their native country frustratingly corrupt, parochial and backwards. Liberalism will probably become more attractive to them the longer they are back home. Those who never left will just see the West as high-status winners to be imitated. There is no way of predicting what will happen but so far the record shows that Western liberalism wins when up against the complacent conservative half-hearted nationalism of less powerful countries.
I’m amazed you haven’t heard of him before. His novel Submission pretty much lays out your ideas in fictionalized form.
Dear Thulean friend
This is an interesting map, but I assign low confidence and information content to these kinds of self-reported “I feel good/bad” polls.
As with everything else, actions speak louder than words. Consider for instance Finland, which, according to the map you sent, firmly camps in the “feels super good here” category. And yet:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
how do we reconcile its 13.8 overall suicide rate (per 10
grand inhabitants), compared to the meager 3.8 (four times smaller!) of Greece — which is supposedly a super crappy place to live according to the poll you sent.
Of course, quality of life does not collapse into a single issue (suicide — or not suicide), but whether or not someone is going to suppress their life or not tells a lot
about how they “feel inside” (to quote a famous if tacky 1980s classic).
Another interesting indicator is consumption of antidepressants and/or anxiolytics. Last time
I checked France was world’s champion on both counts.
Again: I have recently hung around a lot with Koreans and Chinks for work. They all seemed incredibly depressed and had NO or at most 1 kids nor any intention to have more than 0 or one. With my 6 kids I was the local curiosity at the Firm.
May I ask how many children you have dear Thulean Friend? I think this is an action that talks volumes
about one’s faith in the future.
Best
No doubt. And part of the problem is that the mere process of learning English — the mother tongue of the hostile culture — is in itself a form of brainwashing. Mr. Scientism:
I’ve actually heard of him many times, I think it’s impossible not to these days, and I was mildly interested, but somehow I did not realize how close his ideas were to mine.
I will have to read him now.
According to the Pardee Center for International Futures, whose specialisation is forecasting, and whose work has been utilized in the US National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends reports, you may end up being disappointed.
https://imgur.com/a/jMCIppp
Their GDP (in MER) forecast as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9l2yCH5wBk
Western mainstream media certainly care a lot. Why give them such an undeserved present to stoke Russophobia even more among Western audiences, especially if liberal opposition in Russia is not so popular? Why not let them get registered and fail at the polls?
And, seeing how the Chepiga-Petrov saga finally unfolded, I wouldn’t discount Navalny having been indeed poisoned in prison, as Western media are reporting with more joy than indignation, I would say.
Russians once again behaving as their worst enemies.
Would they? (Central) Moscow is one of their strongholds.
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/the-moscow-municipal-elections-2017/
Grigory Chkhartishvili in The Writer and Suicide put it like this:
P.S. Finland and Hungary in 2016 WHO stats were the 8th and 9th most suicidal countries in Europe; the leaders were almost all post-Soviet.
I could be wrong, but that’s not what I have seen. Generally speaking, they see what they like and see what they don’t like. They can become more aware of local corruption, but they don’t want migrants like in the West. It’s more likely that they adopt what works and reject what doesn’t, than that they will just imitate everything.
It seems to have hit a brick wall in eastern Europe. Hungary and Poland aren’t getting liberal.
Well, I am not very convinced that you should prevent your opponents from taking part in elections just because you fear that they may win.
In any case, from your own link:
So why not let those liberals manage the park benches in Central Moscow and disprove all those accusations of being a murderous dictatorial regime?
Poland is getting more liberal at least at least socially. There are also increasing number of gastabeiters in poland even under the PiS government. Poland is still not as wealthy as Western Europe so it’s still hard for extreme numbers of third world migrants to settle there but who knows what could happen in the future.
You’re projecting the status of impotent puppets ruled by Neolibs like the Japanese onto China. China has its problems, but they’re overall less degenerate than all of “The West” and Oriental puppets. This is reflected by births:
https://twitter.com/Cicerone973/status/1147242504925917185
China is ahead of West in births. This is a sign that the Chinese have a will to achieve a shining vision with all knowing their place. Not just live and die like animals.
You’re wrong, but the map is interesting. If correct, it looks like Tibet, Guizhou, and Guangxi have the highest TFR in China. Those are some of the poorest and most minority heavy provinces.
Such a supreme argument.
Partially – Poles are not hating gays as much. But they are disliking Muslims more.
Many Ukrainians, a trickle of non-Muslim Filipinos and Nepalis.
I’ve noticed that Poles like Filipinos a lot. The Catholicism helps.
Not only wealth, also less welfare, more native hostility, and no existent community to welcome newcomers.
Navalny is employed by the FSB. Don’t be an idiot, they won’t poison their own agent.
He seems to be a very highly ranked agent, as well. The FSB pulled a lot of strings to keep him out of jail, despite his absolutely reckless and clueless disregard for law.
That article was about the municipal councils election, this protest is about the more relevant city council election. Different elections, same voters.
https://twitter.com/yashalevine/status/1155134988062515200
On the other hand, you should not let people who support that in their own country and oppose you let guide your decisions.
Do you by any chance happen to know why some Russian nationalists consider only Patriarch Irenaios (former Patriarch of Jerusalem) the “only true remaining Patriarch”? What is so special about him?
P.s. Hope I didn’t offend anybody, just curious.
I am not fluent in Russian nor am I an expert in Eastern Orthodox matters, so I cannot give a definite answer. It might have to do with the fact that Irenaios prevented land sales to Israelis and settler communities in Palestinian Territories and was subsequently removed from his position. You may find some form of answer in an Israeli journal like Haaretz or the Jerusalem Post.
Ok, I was wondering if it had to do with those land sales or anything pertaining to the Orthodox dogma, but thanks anyway.
Oh, I see. Thanks for taking the time to inform this clueless foreigner.
And, of course, I presume that the recent scientific article in PNAS about the radioactive leak at Mayank is a CIA plot, isn’t it?
Glad to hear! Also make sure to read his second Paris Review interview. It puts some of the themes in Submission in context with his own return to faith.
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/02/scare-tactics-michel-houellebecq-on-his-new-book/
Building on this, Duke of Qin is on point as always:
Somewhat on topic: Poland’s anti-Gay violence
Warning: The above is by Rod Dreher. One of his commenters replied:
The violence happened in Bialystok, one of Poland’s least cosmopolitan cities.
Thanks, I will!
Get a grip, you’re clueless. Navalny might be the only person in Russia with a get-out-of-jail-free card. Even top-level ministers aren’t immune, but somehow Navalny is made out of teflon.
First of all, it’s “Mayak”, not whatever the hell you wrote.
Secondly, I have no idea what stupid article you’re talking about.
Thirdly, it wouldn’t surprise me if there is, indeed, a radioactive leak. Either way I don’t care, and certainly neither should you.
Haven’t I already thanked you for getting me out of my cluelessness through your Russian security services insider information?
PNAS stands for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
While not fail-proof, the peer review process takes care that articles published in such journals are anything but stupid.
And in this case, the conclusions corroborate what was already established by the Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Security in Paris and vehemently denied by the Russian government.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1907571116
Perhaps I should agree with you here. If your authorities leak radiation into your cities and countryside, lie about it to you and to the world and you proudly declare that you don’t care, why should non-Russians care?
Indeed, why should non-Russians care that you guys are not allowed to run for public offices or vote for anyone not approved by your masters if you don’t care yourselves?
I’m already about 50% Italian genetically, just slightly more than the typical Ashkenazi “Jew.”
No need to convert.
ROC is corrupt tool of Russian government is an old and cringe take. The Russian Orthodox Church stood with the legitimate Georgian Orthodox Church against the Russian government created Abkhazian Orthodox Church, all the proof one really needs its legitimate.
Pagancucks and Vyšyvatniks can cry all they want but they are wrong
Indeed. So why do you care? Are you some info-terrorist hellbent on polluting the noosphere with the mental equivalents of cow farts?
In any case, go away and don’t come back. Have a nice day.
We’re near an age when brain enhancements/implants will allow people to speak as many languages as they want to. Now they’re developing technology to help people with speech impairments:
http://www.voiceitt.com/
When it’s perfected enough, I have no doubt the healthy will use it to be fluent in foreign languages, just like students already use ADD drugs to cram and beautiful people have plastic surgery to become more beautiful. A dictator who bans language learning in this world will lower his people not even to the level of North Koreans, but of primitive tribes who practice ritual mutilation (deliberate diminishment of people’s capabilities will likely be regarded as just that.) Is it actually nationalist, or treasonous to the nation? Not to say that such a dictator will face massive disobedience that will undermine his authority. Just ask what Soviet people did when the government tried to stop them from listening to Western pop music. My mom grew up in a remote village, and they still managed to get records of bands ABBA and Boney-M to dance to as teenagers.
This clip illustrates how multilingualism is an expensive status symbol (both characters are very smart and rich and the lady is literally immortal, so she could practice it to perfection.)
https://youtu.be/bctOrvs95so
A healthy nationalism wants the nation to possess expensive status symbols, be cool and envied by the others. The Russian Empire produced cool automobiles, world-famous jewelry (that the British royals bought on the cheap from the Bolsheviks and are wearing publicly to this day) and most trendy art (e.g. the Russian Seasons ballet performances). They also taught a ton of languages in high-status gymnasia schools, including Classic Greek and Latin. It was nothing like the dreary, beards-and-kvass isolationism some modern ‘patriots’ love. In fact the computer animators who made Masha and the Bear (the only world-dominating product of our pop culture by now) are more in the vein of traditional Russian patriotism, than those fools who believe computer is a degenerate enemy invention and should be shunned.
If this comes to pass they way you imagine it, then that actually obviates Mr. Scientism’s point, which is that learning a foreign language using today’s tools — textbooks, media, summer schools — is necessarily a form of indoctrination [1]. If some Babel fish-like translation tool comes along, the languages of the world will be on a far more even footing and people won’t have to immerse themselves in foreign cultures to make themselves understood.
This last point is also why I don’t think this gizmo will make much of a difference short of extreme artificial intelligence. For languages are above all sociocultural means of communication. Literal translations, even very good ones, fall far short of being even remotely acceptable to someone for whom even a few short sentences in his mother tongue carry an ocean of connotations. Just consider this passage in Nabokovs’s Pnin:
Or this passage in Edna Andrews & Elena A. Maksimova’s Russian Translation: Theory and Practice:
I hope you see from these very basic differences (there are thousands far thornier even between such nearly-related languages as Swedish and English) that languages are intimately tied to their time and place and that it takes great social intelligence and understanding to express oneself in them.
[1] The process itself makes this always true, no matter the learning material, but it’s often overt and intentional. Swedish textbooks, for instance, typically make a point of putting in happily-married gay couples, interracial couples with non-stereotypical jobs, have-it-all career women, and so on.
Thank you for quoting Houellbecq in English — I was not aware of this interview with First Things.
I did not know he had said that, but that’s exactly my thinking about the Latins.
Houellbecq is the only decent French thinker currently alive.
No really, there are very fundamental differences. The Filioque, to begin with, whose ramifications continue to unfold to this day and to which I attribute the heresy of individualism (with its current metastases such as transgenderism). A very incorrect understanding of the Fall, and of Original Sin, too (hyper-Augustinism).
The mariolatry (Grignon de Montfort, etc.) also paved the way for feminization of the clergy, and subsequently its homosexualization.
Theosis is actually scriptural (e.g. at the Transfiguration).
These are just a few items to make my point that V2 is not the only issue (disclaimer: I used to believe it was the case — I used to be a SSPX parishioner). Things go way further than that.
Could not agree more. And there are plenty of absolute insane French bourgeois catholics who believe than African priests and cardinals (Sarah) are the living future of catholicism, and are very content about it.
Thank you, Toronto Russian, for the reference. I am going to look into it.
Suicide is indeed an interesting topic; one Korean colleague once told me it was the only decent way to die.
Interesting. I did not know. That’s indeed a very strong argument against the ROC=FSB line.
https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1156541529122594816
I don’t think that Navalny works for the FSB, but anonymous coward has a point.
He is very protected and not in danger from the Russian state.
These “some of the liberal candidates” committed wild violations with signatures. As you can read from quite liberal-oppositionist authors
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2343171232443537&id=100002520504444
https://rojkov.livejournal.com/262787.html
It’s certainly possible that Navalny was not poisoned and Western media are just capitalizing on a minor incident to promote their Russophobic agenda, although I wouldn’t jump to categorical conclusions based on reports from Vedomosti and Novaya Gazeta either. And unfortunately, the Chepiga-Mishkin precedent, among others, will always make such poisoning suspicions plausible a priori.
In any case, no, Anonymous Coward does not have any interesting point worth considering. Except that defending Russians too much, as I have done in the past, is not very wise because very often they don’t live up to one’s expectations. That’s all I was trying to gauge in my exchange with him and he has already provided the information I needed.
Well if the United States is any indication: many of the left get into power by ignoring the intent if not the letter of the law. So even small discrepancies (when you sort through them) turn out to mask larger frauds…
For instance, there is a lot of voter fraud in swing states that often goes undectected. Even in Florida in the last Governor’s election there was massive fraud and the only way it was uncovered was the left got sloppy and cast more votes for their candidate than there were actual registered voters in the county. Yet we still had a Democrat judge screaming “All Ballots Must be Counted”…
So if the left in Russia is anything like the left in the US, then they must be closely monitored and denied registration as candidates when small discrepancies show up as it is probably concealing larger cases of fraud.
There is a good chance he has some sort of understanding with Sechin: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/navalnys-krysha/
Ukrainians and butthurt belters tend to respond saying that Russia only created the Abkhazian Church so that the Russian Orthodox Church can stand with Georgia against it to give the look of impartiality. Frankly if they had such epic and powerful 4D chess that would only be proof that God gives them power for such zrada