In recent days, Russia has arrested the American spy Paul Whelan.
This is widely viewed as retribution for the prosecution of Maria Butina. Perhaps the kremlins were finally cajoled into action by China’s example.
(Main theory making the rounds in Russiagate circles is that it is a ploy to arrange an exchange with Butina back before she spills the beans to Mueller).
Still, things might not be that straightforward.
If Whelan isn’t a spy but a “hostage” – and there are doubts on that score, because who exactly physically travels to take delivery of a flash drive in The Current Year? – then it turns out that the Chekists arrested one of the few American Russophiles (as is clear from his social media profile). In which case, no comment.
Alternatively, he purposefully participated in this show for money. His Vkontakte profile had many Russian silovik friends. In that case, the obviousness of that ruse – combined with Americans having little sympathy for a convicted fraudster and walking stereotype of Trump/Russia supporters – means the chances of any exchange for Butina (who has not even been charged with spying) are zero.
He doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who is an actual spy. With his multiple citizenships, colorful history, and open relations with elements of the Russian security services, he might as well walk with a sign emblazoned on his back.
A powerful move would have been to arrest someone in an analogous position to Butina – that is, some American ideological drone harping on about the superiority of Western values, trying to establish contacts with Russian politicians, etc. In other words, almost any American journalist, 90% of whom are Russophobes, would have done. But it seems this is a step too far for the kremlins.
Weird story. I agree that the American could have participated in this voluntarily. Also, Butina is not worthy of being exchanged. She admitted her guilt and is cooperating with the investigation. She might end up testifying against Trump!
Remember, their wifes and children live in the West. This is not a fight kremlins are going to take.
I think it could be on purpose, since he is actually in an analogous position to Butina, who was an Americanophile (which made her arrest all the more disgusting). I am probably wrong but this occurred to me as a possibility before Whelan’s arrest.
Personally I would have also preferred a more asymmetric response like arresting some piece of shit Western journalist.
And?
Trump’s failure to protect/support pro-Trump people makes me think that he earned that.
Of course not, it is a frequent occurrence that a dishonorably discharged marine because of larceny becomes head of a major us corporation’s security that does business in Russia.
More evidence that Putler needs to go.
I love how it’s everyone’s job to protect Butina now! The dumb ho could have used her brain and left the country back in April, when there was a big Rolling Stone article about her.
What about Americans who have supported Trump or worked for him?
I think that American tribunals are a very straightforward, near-Japan efficiency, where almost anyone who is judged gets a sentence in one month or so, and stands essentially zero chances on appeal. Appeals are only allowed for technicalities, but the actual judgement is never called into question. Butina has zero chances of reversing her fate, and therefore zero benefit from “spilling the beans”.
That being said, Butina is an imbecile, who looked for a political role in the country that hates her the most, thought of herself as an informal diplomat when US-Russia barely keep formal embassies and consulates open, and tried to make friends with Americans. She could be stupid enough to sign whatever they ask her to sign. In contrast, Whelan is likely a normal, sane American, who is, therefore, trading secret information only because that is his salaried job. He will not admit to the charges, or will put the blame on the pizdas whom he was seeing. “Dunno, she must have been trying to seduce me with whatever information she though would be useful. Russian women do weird things in order to marry with a Westerner, and get away from Putlerstan.” They always do that.
In South-Eastern Europe, there is a special hate for “delator”, the one who snitches for no reason. (Greeks have it; Russians, apparently, don’t.) It’s not like Securitate pressure everyone, or rewarded everyone who wrote reports on their neighbors and family. There were people who were doing it for fun, and there were consequences when suspicions existed. Even today, we don’t the traditionally moaned-about racist uncle you hear at British Christmas diner, because our racist uncles learned to keep their mouths shut. Despite the success of this heuristic, whose absence put Butina in jail, we are classified and mocked as low-trust.
How is Butina enjoying her high trust? Whelan kept for himself his other three citizenships.
That leftist political activist Stephan Colbert was in Russia once, if only he went there again and was arrested and sent to solitary confinement. And this would not really be any different to Butina, he is very clearly interfering in Russia and has way more associations to all sorts of people (much more than anything Butina had).
If you heard Putin talking about Skripal, you would know that he doesn’t like “Shpions”
How dare you talk about AK’s waifu like that!
Agree with you that he’s not a spy in the sense of being a trained operative working on behalf of the US government. I could believe that he was engaged in some kind of corporate espionage. The US media has been talking a lot about his business links to Russia although they’ve been overall vague on the details.
Re: Butina, imo negotiating for her may make sense from a PR perspective. Putin isn’t worried about her testimony because I don’t think she can tell them anything he’d care about: Butina is not a trained spy and can’t divulge any trade secrets because she doesn’t know any (cf. Anna Chapman). But the idea of her rotting away for years in a US jail cell is probably disturbing to a lot of Russians, so getting her back may help Putin’s image and burnish his strongman credentials a little bit.
And of course there is also the basic schoolyard element to this: if you get hit, you should hit back.
Meanwhile in France,…
http://tass.com/emergencies/1038912
Lol but he was saying about how much he loves Russia at 1:30 (while he was still Russia and in America).
https://youtu.be/WT3VFQ8wYZg?t=90
In America, he was complaining, even so far as to compare Urgant to Jimmy Fallon…
Exactly – otherwise you just encourage people to hit you more (not that Butina is so important or without responsibility for a visa-misuse).
American courts are the exact opposite of straightforward – they are a market place where different parties negotiate. Butina was supposed to get sentenced and expelled – the Whelan affair is more likely to keep her in jail for the sake of appearances.
The Whelan thing is very murky. Cuo bono suggests that it was scripted especially given the media enthusiastic – and uniform – pushing of the story to tie him immediately to Butina and Trump’s. I don’t think Kremlin is playing a game here, maybe they should, but they seem to be unable to even get in the game – different mentality. The incredible projections in the West are actually quite amusing.
It’s funny how no one even considers a possibility that the guy was actually spying.
“Who exactly physically travels to take delivery of a flash drive in The Current Year?” Well, they did arrest a Norwegian grandpa last year for acting as a courier for spy agency, i.e. carrying physical stuff back and forth across the border. I suppose intelligence agencies are not yet as up to speed on cyberpunk as Internet propellerheads.
O/T
According to the modern day successor of “Iskra”, the Lithuania based meduza newspaper, at least some of Navalny’s accusations against Zolotov were made out of thin air. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2018/12/28/in-a-special-interview-the-russian-national-guard-s-sole-food-supplier-addresses-corruption-allegations-by-alexey-navalny
Kremlins 1-0 Navalny
The old-school Cold War shortwave “number stations” are still active, and the old-school British “spy rock” affair in Moscow wasn’t long ago either.
There is a well-founded phobia in intelligence circles of transmitting anything sensitive on-line, regardless of encryptions, proxies and spoofing. I would’t be surprised if typewriters and micro films are still in use here and there, too.
Yeah, a frequent occurrence that a dishonorably discharged Marine because of larceny… who holds four passports… becomes head of a major us corporation’s security that does business in Russia.
This thing stinks to high heaven.
Putin famously doesn’t use computers. Karlin thinks it’s because he is an idiot.
Since even air-gapped digital systems aren’t secure (see the numerous revelations over the past decade, with the latest being that Brutal Kangaroo one, though it wasn’t the first and certainly not the last), I’m positive that it’s still just papers and physical transfers when it comes to certain things.
Putin’s probably a “technophobe” by training.
Interestingly Orbán has a reputation of being an idiot when it comes to computers. He once back in the late 1990s gave a medal to a family member for some IT related stuff, and told him that he didn’t even know how to turn on a computer. Later in 2010 a Fidesz leader in charge of the technical side of their campaign made a speech in front of a some activists (which was secretly recorded and publicized), and he said that for a long while Orbán didn’t even know how to send a text message. He also doesn’t have a cell phone.
I thought about that when in 2014 he had a serious diplomatic spat with the Americans (I think they probably had difficulties wiretapping him, or else they’d have spilled the beans on him), and his technophobia might’ve helped him. I immediately thought of Putin’s technophobia when it was claimed by the Americans that Putin’s actions in the Crimea totally caught them by surprise.
Do you really think you could identify a spy or someone working for them?
https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1080792721164566529
http://themess.net/forum/political-discussion/6767-russian-domestic-issues-thread?p=344016#post344016
Since you brought up the ‘Securitate’ (and the p…) you should have used the therm ‘turnător’ also.
Stalin condemned cybernetics as a ‘bourgeois pseudoscience’. What do you expect from the grandson of Stalin’s cook?
Putin is a bit boring and extremely easy for everyone to predict what his actions will be.
Orban could be a man of genius whose actions probably more unpredictable and visionary (e.g. he said “I cannot switch on a computer”, so that nobody imagines how he has been working on the underground AI program which controls their military robots, or selects targets of Hungary’s secret nuclear weapons arsenal).
Off topic, but it seems like a lot of the Russians have stopped posting the past few weeks. Newsamizdat.com is also not posting new stories. Hmmm.
IIRC, some years ago the Russians switched back to internal communications through messages typed on the old typing machines through strictly controlled channels (all typing machines were individually registered even in Communist times).
Low chance he was a formal trained employee of any of the US intelligence services: his conduct in the military alone would automatically exclude him, and, similar to Butina, he’s almost comically lacking in tradecraft.
Plausible that he was recruited for an informant-type role and compensated for that. I don’t know enough about the US intelligence practices to say whether that’s something they do. Again, though, this guy’s background would immediately raise a lot of red flags, and I doubt he had access to anything/anybody sufficiently high level to make it worth the risk. If the US government wants to pay somebody for intelligence they’ll pay a Russian, I think, not some disgraced ex-serviceman who taught himself Russian as a hobby.
As I said above, the more likely “espionage” for this guy would be on behalf of his employer. As to how he could get a job with a record like his, most likely explanation is that he lied about the circumstances of his discharge from the military and it didn’t show up on any background check (a cursory Google search suggests that military charges generally don’t show up on background checks).
Most likely is that he’s similar to Butina: a goofy escapist who got involved in some vaguely questionable activities and is now being used as a pawn.
4 passports?? I only read that he was a dual UK-US citizen.
From before non-orthodox Xmas to Orthodox Xmas – for a couple of weeks – it’s down time in Russia.
I predicted this:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/technomedievalism/?highlight=russophile#comment-2697920
I suspect that the Russians may do what they falsely claim the Americans did – grab some poor American who really did nothing but share his opinions, and incarcerate him as a spy. Given the clumsiness of the Russian government, I wouldn’t be surprised if the victim were actually a Russophile.
Zero chance because those people always operate under diplomatic cover when in Russia.
A key part of CIA training is in innocuously establishing contact, cultivating, determining relevant weaknesses, and then manipulating hapless people into taking insane risks that are beyond what any professional CIA agent would take.
For non-Orthodox it might be Xmas (or Hanukkahmas, as it increasingly became for Americans) but for Orthodox it always was and it remained Christmas. For Russians it is ‘Рождество Христово’ (Birth of Christ). They are still Christians.
He was born in Canada, and also took out Irish citizenship. Whatever one thinks of dual-citizenship, quadruple-citizenship is just bizarre and farcical.
Sarcasm?
Maria Butina took a plea deal. I suspect she has concluded from diplomatic cover visitors that she will not be got out by an exchange.
OT
This might be a reason why American weapons programs seem to be doing so badly despite the enormous budget.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/trust-women/
In other words, it’s at least possible that American weapons systems are truly inferior.
By ‘this’, do you mean the fact that all the women are white and not African queens?
In the current year? I don’t know. But according to some accounts, back in 2016 Craig Murray was willing to travel to the US to take delivery of a flash device for Wikileaks–possibly from Seth Rich himself.
On second thought, that may be a good reason why it wouldn’t happen again.
A few years ago an elderly cousin of mine inquired about getting Irish citizenship because he was afraid the US was falling apart. I was surprised by how based he was, but he didn’t seem to understand that the same thing and perhaps worse is being done to Ireland.
I think there is a limit to the usefulness of dual citizenship. What sane person wants to be taxed twice? Well, Uncle Sam wants to tax you twice, if you work abroad.
But it’s perhaps the only country to do so. If you live in the US anyway, there’s little downside to having other passports as well.
US citizens working abroad have their first $106k (roughly) of foreign earnings exempted from personal income taxation. For all income beyond that level, you get a deduction for all taxes paid to a foreign government. Since the USA has lower personal income taxes than most other countries, it’s really not that bad.
What actually sucks is FATCA: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/foreign-account-tax-compliance-act-fatca
Good luck opening a foreign bank account as an American.
Thank you for that – that is quite interesting. You must be as good as an accountant.
Actually, my brother had been a lowly intern in Sweden, when he told me the IRS came after him or something. It was many years ago – I must ask him about it to hash out the details.
I’m under some confusion about this. I think you are only supposed to leave on a US passport – it might have something to do with re-entry.
If things were falling apart, I wonder how easy it would be for a dual citizen to leave on a foreign passport. Maybe, the state would be encouraging whites to leave? Or trying to seize their valuables? I don’t know. I figure facial recognition must be used.
You can leave the US on any passport. But you can renter on a foreign passport only if you have a visa or permanent residency.
It used to be that you were not supposed to have a double citizenship and the biggest no-no was to serve in the foreign military which was a ground for being stripped of the US citizenship even if you were US born. The laws were not strictly enforced and then with the creation of Israel Jews contested both laws.
Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg is a citizen of 4 countries, too.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.smh.com.au/business/glencores-ivan-glasenberg-still-a-billionaire-in-every-country-of-citizenship-20150929-gjwxi2.html
Glencore founder Marc Rich was a citizen of 5.
My wife and my oldest child go to Russia with a Russian passport but return to the USA with an American passport.
For some reason I thought that the USA only allowed two citizenships, but clearly I was wrong.
The dishonorably discharged Marine was either (a) doing something illegal on behalf of a corporation or other criminal; and/or (b) blackmailed by an intel officer in to performing a task in order to either (a) actually deliver possibly valuable data, or (b) get caught in order to provide a distraction for operational or political purposes.
I doubt Butina is a Russian intel officer, or has any new information that would be damaging to the Kremlin.
He probably was unaware of the law and failed to file a tax return.
The US doesn’t have departure control, unlike just about every other industrialized country (Britain shares this dubious honor). You don’t even need a passport to leave the country (though the airline might stop you).
My brother has three citizenships.
You mean she had a part in the Golden Shower Event?
I’m afraid so.
If it were up to me, citizens of the USA would only be allowed to keep citizenship in one additional country, and it would only be allowed when at least one of these conditions apply:
Person was born in the other country.
Person has at least one parent who was born in the other country.
Person has lived in the other country for at least two years prior to turning 5, and at least one parent was a citizen or permanent resident of that country at that time.
Person has lived in the other country for at least four years prior to turning 10, and at least one parent was a citizen or permanent resident of that country at that time.
Person has lived in the other country for at least eight years prior to turning 20, and at least one parent was a citizen or permanent resident of that country at that time.
Britain has no formal exit control, but airlines, euro tunnel and ferry companies have to collect passenger details and give them to law enforcement (e-borders) , which means that if you have a warrant, the only way you can leave the uk without getting nicked will be in a dinghy.
So having money in rubles in a Russian bank which gives 7+% interest is bad?
There’s no problem for you provided the Russian bank complies with FATCA and you comply with FBAR: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/report-of-foreign-bank-and-financial-accounts-fbar
Many if not most foreign banks now refuse to open accounts for US residents owing to how burdensome FATCA compliance is for them. It was a tremendous irritation for those interested in trading foreign securities which lack American Depository Receipts (ADR) prior to Denmark’s Saxo Bank allowing US citizens to open brokerage accounts.
There is one fairly decent workaround. The Union Bank (American subsidiary of Mitsubishi UFJ) allows you to open American accounts in foreign currencies: https://www.unionbank.com/commercial-bank/capital-markets/foreign-exchange/foreign-currency-accounts.jsp
Citibank, HSBC, and Cathay offer similar services. Probably there are others as well.
That said those seeking to take advantage of foreign currencies with higher interest rates are generally better off just buying bonds instead. Less hassle and in most cases the coupon is superior to what any bank deposit offers.
Perhaps, he was rum-running whatever Swedes like to drink, in his spare time.
Unless you’re a professional investor with a short/medium term time horizon, or have RUR liabilities to offset, I would recommend you stay away from RUR based financial instruments. The high interest rates relative to those in developed markets may seem attractive, but you’re exposed to currency risk. Russia, with its globally uncompetitive economy, can only devalue the RUR over time, and this usually happens via sharp, quick moves. It’s the proverbial collection of pennies in front of a steam roller.
This is definitely true, but there are some advantages to bank deposits relative to bonds in AP’s case. Deposits are insured by the government (up to a limit), so he would not have to consider default risk and undertake the necessary research of individual bond issues (OFZs tend to trade at a considerable discount to bank deposits). Also, bond coupons are fully taxable, whereas the interest on bank deposits is taxable only after 2% over the CBR’s official rate. As always, of course, it comes down to the various parameters of the specific investor.
Holidays and family. I’m not sure how many Russophone commenters here live in Russia anyway. As far as I know only the much-loved Gerard2 has stated unambiguously he lives in Russia, though I think one of the Ukrainian one-issue commenters still live there.
Offtopic,
It seems the World Cup was probably successful in recuperating much of the money expended.
For the first 9 months of 2018 (which includes the World Cup time), the flow of tourists who are “entering for the purpose of tourism” was 20,3% higher than 2017, and the highest number in history.
By far the main country supplying tourist entry in the first 9 months was China (followed by Germany, Korea, USA, Israel, United Kingdom, Italy, France, Spain, Japan etc – obviously a lot of these are football fans, as from countries like Korea tourism grew 44%).
http://www.atorus.ru/public/ator/data/image/News/45125/ezd3.jpg
Chinese entry (for tourism) was 11% higher than last year and exhibits a steady pattern of growth each year (even though China was not in the World Cup).
Post source: http://www.atorus.ru/ru/news/press-centre/new/45125.html
From what I get, Russia is getting more popular in China for a number of reasons:
1: It is safe physically
2: It is safe politically. Traveling to the west could be seen as somewhat unpatriotic a decade or so from now, and in a decade from now the state will still know where you traveled right now, and the Chinese have pretty good sensors for that.
3: It is in some ways more European then Europe
4: Aurora chasing is pretty popular
5: Peer things. Basically, everyone has been to Paris, not everyone has been to Moscow and Piter.
6: Russia has made some pretty significant advances to being more customerfriendly.
His bad conduct discharge could be a cover story, and even if it isn’t there’s no rule that says crooks can’t be spies (quite the contrary, I’d imagine). It isn’t hard to believe the guy is a spy, but who here really knows?
@AK (and everyone else)
I wish you all a blessed Christmas.
Most Korean tourists in Russia are weekend getaways to Vladivostok that largely cater towards girls in their 20s.
Political safety is not a valid reason for Chinese tourism to Russia, as the region it “replaces”, Europe, is just as safe politically for now. I think only the Nordics are not on good terms with China.
Almost all Chinese tourists in Russia are group tours, almost exclusively lower middle class 50+ year olds, skewed towards female. Russia’s Chinese tourist boom is due to the following:
Russia is probably the only non-Asian country that “zero-dollar tourism” has taken hold, which did so right after the collapse of the Ruble. Essentially Chinese tour operators sell highly discounted tours so they get accompanied by a Chinese tour guide that takes them to Chinese-owned shops, restaurants, and hotels exclusively. This is the biggest reason why Russian tours are so cheap.
The 50+ year olds are the only remaining Sovok-influenced generation in China. Most know Chinese translations of songs like Moscow Nights, Kalinka, and Katyusha well, and if they came of age in the 50s and early 60s, Russian, not English, was the foreign language taught in schools.
Millennial and/or high end individual Chinese tourism in Russia remains a niche, and is off the radar for this crowd.
I think Chinese group tourism to Russia is stalling out. Half of the 11% increase has to do with the World Cup; many Chinese are there to cheer for their favorite teams.
The Chinese tourists that AK saw in Romania are the ones where Mightypeon’s list hold verbatim. This is the crowd that want to go somewhere exotic for a second European trip after visiting France and the UK.
Most of the tourists that go to Russia haven’t been to Paris judging from their socioeconomic status that I saw in Russian tourist attractions.
Also, a big % of the 1.1 million are Lake Baikal tours, which is only 2-3 hours away from China. Moscow and St. Petersburg group tours probably account for roughly 700K of these tourists. IIRC Irkutsk is flooded with Chinese tourists, and majority the shops in the city center there are either straight up Chinese owned, or at least have Chinese signage.
Merry Christmas to all Russians, Serbs, etc
But not the Ukies. They celebrate both Hanukkah and Ramadan nowadays.
And regarding the Serbs:
I believe this is counted differently in the border service. Data discussed above should be only about the “overnight” tourists.
If you have neighbours in America like AP and Mr Hack here, say to them: “S Rozhdestvom!” or “S Rozhdestvom Khristovym!” And they will be impressed with you.
Any thoughts on Russians in S Korea? My former PA is currently stuck in Incheon airport immigration having tried to enter without sufficient funds. She has friends in Seoul (Russian girl married to a Korean) but immigration will not accept that she intended to stay with them. Although visiting she was going to look for work (and then get the right papers – chicken/egg). She was dumb enough to say so.
More than a few Russians live in Korea as guestworkers, usually skilled. Her return ticket is for early March. Are the Koreans cracking down on Russians? Make or break interview in 7 hours.
am not allow no mix species grandparent not recognize cry much
Have you seen how hot Russian/Korean Hafus’ are?
The most prominent Soviet rock star was a Russo-Korean hapa.
As his popularity soared, the Soviet empire crumbled and collapsed.
Coincidence?
I don’t know about others, but if I had those 2 as neighbors, I might tell them to go f*ck themselves in a number of Slavic languages.
I think, IMMSMC, that it is written in the Magna Carta that Englishmen are free to leave the country.
Being reminded of videos like this makes me wonder if Serbs should have their white-pass revoked.
As sub-Danubian Balkanoid swine the Serbs of course should not be considered white, but what was wrong with the video?
How long does it take law enforcement to collect, analyze, and act on this data?
It doesn’t take long to cross the Channel.
I wish you had the balls to say that to a Serb in his face, you effeminate Swedish faggot.
They do stay overnight, for maybe 2-3 nights. There’s around 10 flights a day between Vladivostok and South Korea, mostly Korean discount carriers. I think they’re now the main non-Central Asian foreigner group in Vladivostok nowadays, having displaced the Chinese. Not sure whether Vladivostok has a lot of Central Asian gasterbeiters.
What if Ratko Mladic actually got reincarnated and is now called Anatoly Karlin?
Was Thorfinn ‘white’?
“an ugly-looking man with a black head of hair, sharp features, a big nose and bushy eyebrows” (one wonders whether the big nose was a hook nose or a wide nose).
You know I used to be moderately Russophile? That’s how I got my handle.
Eventually, I’d met too many Russians online.
Could be a red herring. Like me, he might be a Europhile albino African, with a gimp leg and eyepatch, and missing arm from when the witch doctors were trying to make a cure for AIDS.
Well Karlin still seems on holiday (or with his new girlfriend) so some of my comments were not approved yet. and also the dates of the comments changed to different days (wtf).
I’ll copy and paste it below.
It’s a “Chicken and Egg” currently, problem to expand the tourism.
To make cities attractive for typical tourists, you need to invest a lot of money.
To have motive and availability of investing a lot of money, you need tourists to provide income for investment.
Ahead of the World Cup, there was investment made available to improve some cities cosmetically, but when you see the improvements now, they are mostly very superficial.
For example, it’s not absurd to say Ekaterinburg has a lot of tourist potential (even if it can be seen perhaps only by people with a visionary eye), but the investment in cosmetic repairs ahead of the World Cup was not even (arbitrarily) 1% of changes required.
Some of the most attractive area of riverside which have the most tourist potential, still is not connected coherently and you cannot walk along one side parts with open access, so that even local joggers have to turn back (Chinese tourists will be completely confused).
For the World Cup, they cleaned up some of the stone tiles and deleted graffiti , but the fundamental problem is not even looked at.
By comparison, if you see how they develop the riverside in London. I London, you can walk from Saint-Paul’s cathedral across the river, then you can walk along the river with thousands of tourists everywhere – where all the museums, cafes are perfectly located for them.
And then these kind of bridges which are mainly for tourists (without cars) which link together different tourists sites of London (with several billion dollars of investment this kind of situation could be emulated).
In which case (multiple day visits) they are really “overnight” tourists, who are boosting the tourist sector.
I don’t know about the South Korean airport. But in general, young women travelling alone are nowadays having the most difficult time in airport control.
This kind of bridge without cars – would be perfect to add over City Pond (if there was enough investment available).
https://twitter.com/alykhansatchu/status/1083068259296047104
Let’s not assume Serbs have no sense of humor.
http://kcmeesha.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/brezhnev_0.jpg
https://twitter.com/KingBaeksu/status/1082877382258610177
https://twitter.com/KingBaeksu/status/1082886654367428608
Relative of yours?
Of course we are not White. Some of us have have blond hair, some brown, a few red; some of us have brown eyes, some blue or grey; skin tones range from extremely pale to distinctly Mediterranean. However, we most certainly have nothing to do with the deracinated and formless white identity of the US and northwestern Europe.
When are you Russians going to stop being on vacation and get back to work? New Samizadat hasn’t been updated for like two weeks. I don’t see what the hell there is to do over there this time of year aside from browse the internet anyway. I suppose abroad…
‘White identity’ is a pure American construct (the only place where it makes a modicum of sense). They managed to foist it on the minds of some few ‘pagan Europeans’ (and laughingly on some fewer ‘pagan Ukrainians’).
South Africa had it as long as America (if not longer), likewise you will find similar things happened in South America where whites were surrounded by many more non whites.
Not this retarded meme again, it arises wherever whites come into contact with people significantly racially different from themselves.
Even in South Africa there was a strong divide between Anglos and Afrikaners, groups with identities that aren’t just empty shells.
This seems to be mostly true in regions where N-Americans are very common.
http://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/WhiteAmerica-chart1.gif
http://www.unz.com/runz/immigration-republicans-and-the-end-of-white-america-singlepage/#p_1_55
Miscegenation between Anglos (the English speakers are not all of English descent) and Afrikaners was not seen as a taboo like it was with blacks. To call it a “strong” divide is overstating things, when you are literally surrounded by hordes of blacks then indulging in past historical conflicts becomes a petty and unimportant issue.
The Apartheid system made it very clear that whites of any background were grouped together as one.
And thinking that Chinese tourists would take a stroll along rivers, contribute to the local economy, go to the tourist sights individually, and sample the hippest local restaurants and nightlife tells me how far behind Russia is in understanding the Chinese.
You don’t need nice riverfronts to attract Chinese tourists. All you need is some combination of world-famous historical sights, beautiful, untainted nature, authentic low-quality Chinese restaurants, Chinese-friendly/owned scamming stores selling stuff like chocolates and jewelry and your good to go. Good infrastructure is definitely not required.
They tour places in huge groups of 20-50 usually led by a Chinese tour guide.
Take the example of Irkutsk, it became a huge hit among Chinese tourists with little to no promotion on the Russian side, not because of how beautiful or developed it is, but due to the following combination:
Lake Baikal (beautiful untainted nature).
Ruble collapse: Tours can be sold cheaply at high volume.
High amounts of empty storefronts due to relative poverty of the city: Makes it easy Chinese businessmen (mostly the ex-traders of the 2000s) to buy up storefronts selling fake amber or low quality Chinese restaurants to scam Chinese group tours.
He’s probably stuffing his face with Indian food
What do you think explains the marked cutoff between Iranics & Balto Slavs then?
Even when they’re phenotypically similar.
Also the marked difference in perception Ancient Romans had between let’s say Syria, Anatolia & Egypt vs Britain, Gaul, Germany.
It’s a combination of the European Church being the only one of three to not fall to Islam + ethno-racial factors.
—
https://mobile.twitter.com/patakaboi/status/1081551853966581760/photo/1
Insane how 70% Irish are dating out, a third of other whites but barely 1/20 British.
Wonder how Avg age affects this.
Location also,
Until I think then 50/60s about 1/5 white American marriages were inter ethnic.
More like permanently sitting on the toilet from the diarrhea all that Indian food gave him.
Can’t be true. In Britain it must be interracial. In Ireland it must be inter-ethnic, ie. Irish and Poles, etc. I don’t really view it as positive, but could be worse.
Separate ethnicities may inevitably be fusing in Europe, duplicating America. I think Northern Europeans are pretty interrelated to start with, but I don’t like what it does to identity and culture.
That’s because they count relationships with other white (British) people as inter-ethnic, it’s not surprising at all.
As the result of an inter-ethnic coupling, I find that it is a peculiar feeling. One hand I do wish for greater European unity, on the other hand, it leaves me wondering how to fulfill de Gaulle’s maxim when I am continually wondering, ‘what is my country?’
Talking about Technomedievalism, it turns out that Huawei is not only the bestselling cell phone in Poland, but also Huawei 5G networks are approved without much obstacles in Poland and Hungary.
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1104677.shtml
https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/deutsche-telekom-launches-5g-network-in-poland-with-huawei-equipment/2018/12/
Since I view Poland as the de facto leader of the Visegrad, it seems that China and the Visegrad are starting to actually implement their comprehensive strategic partnership signed in 2016.
Wonder what that bodes for future Russia-Visegrad relations. IIRC, younger Visegradians are more or less neutral on Russia.
I’m not sure Chinese tourists are actually interested in the shabby “Chinese” market (they will be more impressed to see the Dior and Louis Vuitton shops).
I know the buses of older Chinese tourists.
But in places like London and Japan, there are also appearing so many younger generation bourgeois Chinese tourists who are travelling outside groups. And often in more expensive restaurants, shops.
I would assume that stage of tourism is bringing more money to the local economy than a few tourist buses. When buses of old tourists, are replaced more with bourgeois people independently travelling.
But to attract this obviously requires large investment into the city itself, to become an actually convenient and fashionable city for tourists.
Innoprom outside near the airport, attracts many thousands of Chinese businessmen each year, but does not feed into the city – especially when they build new hotels, with staff trained to speak Chinese, out there.
I recall wistfully some old scifi which had separate European ethnicities colonizing separate planets.
One of my fears is that the mixing is a spur to insanity among liberals who often seem to have great deal of trouble making distinctions between groups to start with – that they will not see the difference between mixing ethnicities and mixing races. On the other hand, it is possible such people may be boiling off – removed from the genepool by mixing or not having kids.
A few of de Gaulle ‘s maxims may really come to the fore in the near future: “China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.” “No country without an atom bomb can properly consider itself independent.”
Anyone following the stories with Yanukovich?
He was supposedly injured in the tennis game. Then last month he was supposedly going to Israel for treatment for the tennis injuries.
https://korrespondent.net/ukraine/4051597-v-hosbuiro-rassledovanyi-peredaly-dela-protyv-yanukovycha-smy
Obviously it’s all some creative way to avoid talking to the court (is there any evidence of how much he is actually injured from playing tennis?).
From the perspective of the EU, it is good for them if Visegrad becomes more powerful (as they contain the most intelligent governments in the EU, including visionary leader Orban).
From geopolitical perspective of Russia, it is a negative, as Poland is the most powerful country of Visegrad, and of course they are trying to prevent Nord Stream 2.
What?
The EU is primarly run by and for the elites of the six founding members of the European project and their friends like Donald Tusk.
More powerful Visegrad = less unity/dominance of the founding members = not good for the EU
EU has 28 countries. Which EU countries do you think have the most intelligent governments of the 28?
I’m not sure of all of them, but of all 28 – in the elite I would include Viktor Orban in Hungary and Milos Zeman in Czech Republic.
Visegrad refers to four countries – Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
So this group contains 2 of the best governments of the whole EU .
Increasing power share of this group within the EU bloc, improves governance of the EU (from an EU perspective).
Brüssel, the ruling establishment of the EU wants obedient, intelligent governments.
From their perspective, Orbán and Zeman and their success are suboptimal outcomes and increasing their power share within the EU bloc very much not desired.
Urlaub vorbei.
https://www.newsamizdat.com
The NSA has not been able to add backdoors into Huawei to spy on people, which is why the deep state is pumping out these endless propaganda pieces in their media outlets.
Fortunately for the EU, it is not only Brussels, Stockholm, Paris and Berlin.
If influence can increase from more intelligent governments of Prague or Budapest, this would be good from the common perspective EU (i.e. for the citizens of the EU).
From the perspective of Russia, though, increasing power and influence of these countries is more ambiguous because Poland is inside this Visegrad group, even as Hungary and Czech Republic governments disagree with Poland’s perspective to Russia.
All 4 countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary) are having very strong economic growth at the moment, so there is no question that their influence is growing relative to other EU countries.
It is primarily about France, Germany, Italy and Benelux.
The EU is not run by them and for them.
Will it last?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-centraleurope/czech-republic-poland-hungary-face-tough-brexit-ride-ing-idUSKCN1NI2IA
From the perspective of German “elites” and EU fans it’s mostly about the Franco-German axis, the rest, especially the East Europeans, is expected to obey and follow the lead of the “enlightened” West.
And lots of average citizens are dumb enough to buy this line (e.g. my father knows a school teacher for French who regards Orban as “anti-European”…presumably because of Orban’s stance on the migration issue, Soros university or whatever; if you don’t follow the likes of Merkel and Macron, you’re against “Europe”).
I doubt the Visegrad group will have much influence against that ingrained arrogance and delusion…Hungary, the Czech republic and Slovakia are all comparably small countries with limited influence anyway. Poland is bigger of course, but its current leaders seem to be autists mainly obsessed with antagonizing both Germany and Russia at the same time over WW2 issues.
But in the field of political ideology, of this group – France at least is starting to become an antirolemodel around the world (where all sides of their politics are viewed as equally idiots).
I’m not sure other governments will want to listen to French ideology, when they are such a disaster inside France.
It was only around 10 years ago, when France was seen as an aspirational sample to follow around the world.
At this point growth will surely fall. But if they will become net contributing countries to the EU, it will also expand their political influence.
Currently their political influence inside EU is heavily limited by the fact they are recipient countries. Dynamic now of EU now something like “we pay for you, so you should do as we say”
And what would happen if Austria would join Visegrad? There is a point where the balance of power can change, at least in relation to the dominant political ideology.
I know there exists a lot of genuine love of the EU – I have colleagues from countries like Spain which had been studying in Erasmus program, and (this is probably understandable for some countries) prefer EU to their own governments.
But if you analyse this, a lot is just product of vast EU funding.
You only have to see the difference in tuition fees. If you want to study at somewhere like Cambridge University – as a Russian citizen you will pay three times more than a EU citizen for the same courses. So even if Russia joins the EU, you would suddenly find most educated young people falling in love with the EU, and then brainwashed with EU ideology.
However, if a country which provides all this funding (i.e. Germany) would modify EU ideology itself, then all the same people will love this new ideology. As the real incentive is the funding structure.
Governments should beautify cities, but not for the pecuniary motive of attracting Chinese tourists (places like Japan, Britain and France have too many already).
Unrestrained Materialism bears a large part of the blame for the situation Europe is in now.
To reestablish a Regime of Truth and Beauty the Homo Economicus needs to be vanquished and we need to learn how to make sacrifices and dedicate ourselves to a higher purpose once more.
Russia allows dual citizenship? Surprising!
The US doesn’t care how many other citizenships you hold. Looks like that applies to Canada, Ireland and the UK as well.
The senior citizen Chinese bus tours don’t benefit the economy at all. Their tours are budget, all-inclusive tours that money just circulates within China.
They have done nothing but cause overcrowding and cultural clash with locals. Russia doesn’t see the sheer volumes that France or Japan has, but the volume in Russia is bad enough for tourist representatives to discuss this problem.
Do you really want to go to say, the Red Square, and notice the crowd being 80% Chinese and with 3 groups singing the Chinese National Anthem at the same time, or go to the Hermitage and then see again a 80% Chinese crowd that just want to take pics of the art and then sit at the benches and eat oranges? This is what unrestricted Chinese tourism would look like.
And nobody in Japan or France complains about the higher end, individual tourists of any nationality. Its the annoying senior citizen Chinese bus tours that everybody complains about, including (future) Sinosphere countries like Thailand and Cambodia
Likewise, Viesgrad and Baltic major cities have a problem with British stag parties.
People need jobs, which requires money, which requires industry (and tourism is an export industry which is still very undeveloped compared to some countries, and not spread across cities equally). Economy also needs to diversify, and this will be one of the potential areas.
But tourism is also creating the benefit of more equal distribution of export income to small businesses, of improving diplomatic relations with country from which visitors arrive, and of incentive and funding for repairing and improving experience of the city (as you only clean your bedroom if you think a girl will visit, people have more incentive and funding to repair and improve the city when there are visitors).
Although sometimes the plan can go too far – you can have a governor like Markelov expending billions of dollars to build crazy buildings on the riverside, while failing to repair the roads.
Surely, it is desirable to receive the more attractive, cultured and bourgeois tourists. If you see all the nice Japanese girls on shopping trips in London (that is the kind of tourist which is both throwing money into local economy and improving the atmosphere).
But this is not everything – even the buses of old impolite Chinese tourists are not something negative for me, when I see them. I’ve had experience last year seeing these impolite Chinese tourists singing loud songs in an Ancient ruin of the Mediterranean, and yet did not view it negatively (when this happened, an American tourist group looked unhappy, but for the Russian tourist group – everyone was clapping their hands for the old Chinese).
Many Western European towns used to rely on more on internal, compared to foreign, tourism.
In England there are many small towns that went into decline after mass international travel became possible and all the British people started vacationing in Southern Europe instead.
Most of the beautiful things in Europe were built by the generations before people started wondering how to sell away their heirlooms.
And really, catering to the gauche tastes of tourists and hungering after their shekels demeans and cheapens both parties.
People go to Paris because it is part of the soul of Frenchmen of Celto-Roman and Germanic orgin, not because of the Africans hawking shit on the Tuileries Garden to foreigners.
The salt enjoys water, but how much salt can one pour in a glass of water before it becomes undrinkable?
Anyway, my point is that there are intangible virtues like honour, dignity and beauty that should not be sacrificed on the altar of economic efficiency.
If Russian citizenship is the first one, otherwise it is not allowed.
It is this materialistic and greedy vision that has led to Qatar owning Harrods and London Eye being operated by Coca Cola and beautiful French Riviera residences owned by Saudis.
Everything is for sale and nothing matters except money.
Agreed. Russia implementing Dmitry’s plan of revamping entire cities across the nation to cater towards Chinese mass tourism and possibly Chinese businessmen-settlers would make Russia look like cheap, limp wristed losers that sells out their entire nation for some yuans that won’t even circulate within the population. If this happens might as well pawn off Rosneft to Sinopec, and pawn off Sberbank and rebrand it as China Construction Bank (Russia).
If this happens, Russia will look even worse on the global stage than the neoliberalism.txt wet dream of Russia being actually conquered and defeated by China after a noble defense.
This would turn Russia into nothing but an alternate model of neoliberalism.txt that bows to China instead of the Anglo (((elites))) and their third world pets/house servants like what’s going on with most of Western Europe.
On the topic of budget mass tourism, especially cheap high volume group tours. I support banning it and raising the cost and service standards of international leisure travel to the point that its actually a privilege or reward like it has been before the age of budget airlines, budget ho(s)tels, and budget package tours. This phenomenon often as bad as rapefugees in ruining the vibes of places.
Its not just the Chinese with their overcrowding and trash/noise-inducing budget group tours. You know there’s a serious worldwide problem with overtourism when every single Council Estate lad can now have a Visegrad stag party and every single American college student does a summer-long Eurotrip, mostly thanks to low cost carriers and cheap hostels.
And yet…
https://twitter.com/SCMPNews/status/1083654765739945984
Some of us liked those…
At the rate things are going…. it seems like either Russia will also join in the fun and arrest Chinese spies, or Russia will end up really pawning off key national assets to China.
I have always had the hope that Chinese tourists to the West become a little more based – that they are smart enough to put 2 and 2 together while taking pictures of murals filled with whites in buildings filled with blacks in American cities. That they can understand that these cities owe what functionality that remains to college students, suburbs, and massive subsidies.
I don’t know whether my hope is vain or not. Perhaps, one needs to get robbed to return with tales. It is an interesting question whether tourism fights globalism or aids it. In my experience, local pols do like to take up the mantle of cosmopolitanism, when tourism abounds.
I guess the practical question is that say once an authoritarian conservative regime is established, how do you make it last beyond its original founder, because the only two recent examples of conservative regimes in Western Europe, Spain and Portugal, did not last beyond its original founder, and never had genuine support among the greater whole of the population, judging by how quickly they fell after their founders died, it seems that any conservative regime ends up being hated by its own people, simply because of the fact that people do not like being told what not to do, and any conservative authoritarian regime that overthrows a pozzed liberal order, is by definition going to have a lot of rules about what you can not do.
In fact that’s the risk all strongman authoritarian regimes face. So short of going full aristocratic dynasty by installing your favorite son, it seems that all strongman authoritarian regimes start falling apart one way or the other after the death of the founding ruler; a non-family protege have time and time again either showed extreme incompetence (Maduro) or traitor (Taiwan). Even the USSR got done in by successive mediocre dictators in the latter half.
Given Putin’s full-spectrum dominance of Russia since 2000, this puts a huge question mark on post-Putin Russia.
And once you don’t have a son whose fit to take the reigns, might as well kiss your regime goodbye.
I don’t follow.
You can arrest Chinese spies without “pawning off key national assets to China”.
The campaign against Huawei is a campaign of the 5 Eyes alliance.
https://twitter.com/chinahand/status/1074390108718063616
“Visegrad” is not excluded.
https://twitter.com/chinahand/status/1078381625098948608
The thing is Putin was not the founding ruler of the RF, Yeltsin was.
The transition has already happen two decades ago.
Crowd singing is great and should be celebrated. Freddie Mercury loved it, and who are we to argue with him on music matters?
https://youtu.be/cDo8gSeIM-E
(I’m one of those post-movie Queen fans, please don’t hate:))
What French ideology?
France is run by centrists whose model is Germany.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/04/france-elections-emmanuel-macron-fn-en-marche/
And just like in Germany, the French progressive centrists are not going to be removed from power anytime.
Whose political influence? The influence of the countries or the influence of their governments?
The latter is easier to change in Visegrad than in France or Germany.
Declining growth would make it even easier.
Because it’s more enjoyable for British people to vacation in Southern Europe, than to vacation in the British city.
As you see, lack of visitors lead to economic decline for those British cities. It’s why it’s nice to actually have visitors to invest in your city.
The first time I was in holiday in Paris (as a child), I had never seen so many African and Arab people. So I’m not sure this was exactly my impression.
(Of course, we also travelled in many other parts of France, where the French culture is very strong. We even stayed in Deauville in a time before all the Russian tourists have discovered it.)
In reality, it means investment in making cities more pedestrian friendly and physically attractive, and people cleaning and repairing the city. Small businesses opening, gentrification, etc.
You can joke about Yoshkar-Ola. But imagine same investment, with someone with good taste – to repairing in Ekaterinburg, building pedestrian bridges, etc.
I don’t see the relevance of your comment to my comment.
Your comment is some dreamy statement you believe in “beautiful, soul and honour” and not “economic efficiency”.
I’m not sure how this is relevant to tourist figures for Russia. You think it would be good if we have less tourists in our cities (outside Peter and Moscow?).
Why do you think in Moscow they are finally putting the cables underground? Do you think they would expend hundreds of millions of dollars (as it costs in Moscow) to put cables underground in cities like Volgodonsk? It’s because Moscow is a showcase and they want it to be attractive for visitors.
As for “economic efficiency” – the important priority now for the 2020s, is to diversify the economy. It’s quite possible oil demand will peak in the 2030s, so there needs to be investment in diversifying other industries.
French political ideology, French philosophy, economic policies, etc.
Even just 10 years ago, I believe France was seen still aspirationally, as an example to follow for many countries.
Today, it is still seen positively for industry and education levels. But it is more like an anti-model in other areas.
In Germany, the politics seems more normal, and could adapt more easily. If policies of AfD are integrated into the normal centre, then it would not be so different to a Visegrad country political ideology.
Influence of Visegrad countries’ ideas on the EU.
Lol I don’t think Chinese bus tourists are Westernized enough to know how to sing Queen..
I videod an incident last year on my old phone. Chinese tourists were singing communist songs in an Ancient Greek amphitheater, while annoyed American tourists who are trying to listen to their tour guide.
Politics in Germany isn’t “normal” at all, there’s no open debate about the migration issue, and the open borders faction (which includes much of the supposedly centrist CDU/CSU) is absolutely fanatical. I see little hope for positive change, and imo it will eventually come to political killings (most likely by Antifa far leftists who have a lot of experience with organized violence; though right-wing loners or small groups might also do something).
I refreshed the page, to wait for a response where I could ask about Austria.
In Austria they already have this Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, who is perhaps more similar to leaders of Visegrad countries. You are sure the post-Merkel Chancellor will not be moving more to convergence with Sebastian Kurz?
The AP ran a story recently about some kids who were homeschooled and so taken away from their family for a few days. Holy fuck! And a while back the US which is by now really messed up denied such a family asylum.
My impression is a lot of Austrian right-wingers regard Kurz as a fraud, or at least not entirely trustworthy (iirc there was even something about him having once participiated in some Soros programme for young leaders…)…an establishment candidate who claims to have understood, but who’s really intended to defang and neutralize genuine opposition.
I’m unsure about him myself; but in general Christian democracy is a political movement that needs to die imo.
Something like this might only happen if AfD gets 25%-30% of the vote, like the FPÖ in Austria.
But Germans are probably too brainwashed for that. There’s probably also more repression against right-wing opposition in Germany than in Austria (which doesn’t seem to have quite the same culture of national masochism and endless Nazi witchhunts).
You probably should be glad they didn’t get it, because undoubtedly it would have been used as a precedent for all manner of 3rd worlders to claim asylum for similar reasons (like the damned Eritreans we have in Europe…”Uh, my country has such a horrible conscription system…I have no choice but to flee over thousands of miles to Switzerland, Germany or Sweden!”…just with the school system instead of the military, which would be even more ridiculous).
And yes, homeschooling isn’t allowed in Germany…but tbh for me the worst thing about German authoritarianism is how selective it is. As a normal citizen you are subject to all sorts of absurd rules (e.g. people have been sent to prison because they didn’t pay the TV licence fee…which is mandatory, even if you don’t own a TV), but all of that doesn’t apply to Merkel’s little darlings from the Mideast or Africa. It’s really anarchotyranny.
I read in an article that he has become Chancellor of Austria, without ever having a job before.
This said, you need the more normal, central politicians to support immigration restriction, for it to become default political setting.
In Merkel or Putin – the politicians which are successful in most topics (i.e. economy), but which believe in open border. This is one reason open border becomes such a default setting. While in Visegrad countries, default setting is the opposite as it is believed by the most normal politicians there.
When this normal position (immigration restriction) is proposed by people who are crazy in other areas – and it becomes associated with all these other positions. E.g. Marine Le Pen wants to increase corporation tax (opposite of the visionary Orban). So she suddenly in your mind of people employed in multinational companies, the sensible position in immigration (Le Pen) is associated to a threat to your industry (also Le Pen), which can override your support for her.
This is also why Echo of Moscow can be owned by Gazprom. It’s basically becomes a zoo, which associates some sensible viewpoints (which is not supported by current authorities) with people with eccentric views on other topics.
And so for Orban. I don’t think it makes their positions unsensible, as they are the opposite of Soros on this topic.
And positions of Merkel on open borders is supported by the other politicians of her Party?
Wow, that is even worse than the UK.
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/gez-gebuehren-nicht-bezahlt-frau-nach-zwei-monaten-aus-gefaengnis-entlassen-a-1085585.html
iirc Germany’s public broadcasters have stated though that in future they’ll refrain from having people sent to prison because they didn’t pay the fee (apparently that brought too much negative publicity).
But yes, every household (businesses too) has to pay that fee, even if you never watch tv or don’t own a radio, it’s a quasi-tax. Germany’s public broadcasters (which have massive funds, iirc they get 8 billion Euros each year…still not enough for them) are a massive propaganda apparatus, and you can’t boycott them.
Merkel isn’t successful in anything, don’t believe the hype. She’s really horrible on every level, her chancellorship must rank as the greatest disaster in Germany since 1945. More than a decade completely wasted, nothing done to prepare for the future, infrastructure crumbling, energy security endangered because of the idiotic Energiewende, the army rotting away, the education system in decline, high taxes for increasingly little to show…even without her open borders lunacy her record wouldn’t be good. Though her being responsible for all the murders, rapes and assaults committed by the scum she invited is of course the greatest betrayal.
Her damned party (and the “right-wing” CSU as well) just pushed through the UN global compact for migration (which they would have liked to keep secret, the little public debate about it was solely due to the efforts of right-wing bloggers, AfD etc.)…if CDU politicians managed anything beyond the usual “Nazi, Nazi! Fake news!” babbling, they were actually shameless enough to claim the pact would reduce immigration (which is the opposite of its intention, it’s designed to facilitate mass immigration and make restriction impossible).
Hope for a reform of the CDU is really misguided imo, that party is irredeemable and needs to go.
More obstacles in Poland.
https://twitter.com/chinahand/status/1083816020467314688
More of Karlin’s Technomedievalism?
https://twitter.com/SteveSueoka/status/1083673887873806336
Who was the really successful German Chancellor – I guess Gerhard Schroder? As Germany is, regardless of negative or positive influence they have on Europe, one of the world’s most successful internally countries.
Or should we view Germany just as spontaneously a successful country (like Japan)? And that all the politicians only make it worse to greater or lesser extents.
Kurt Georg Kiesinger was the greatest of course.
I can’t stand Schröder, and his reforms were quite questionable in some ways, creating a huge low-wage sector, but yes, to some extent at least they probably are one of the reasons for Germany’s comparatively strong economic performance in recent years.
And at least those reforms were something one could argue about. Merkel is really appalling not least because of her political style which has really damaged German democracy imo…there’s no debate, everything is alternativlos (without alternative, AfD’s name is a reaction to that), citizens shouldn’t think too much about politics and leave it to professional politicians. Merkel really is 100% GDR (combined with globalism).
That is because the political system of the FRG is fundamentally a two-plus-party system.
The decline of the SPD in the 2000s and them failing to recover, broke the system.
It remained a multi-party system, but only one party could lead the government.
Just like the GDR.
Bismarck had something to do with it.
People do visit Paris because it is seen as the heart of France, and the reason it is not is because it has been defiled by Americanisation and Métèques.
Not surprisingly, it is the Japanese who have the racially idealistic view.
(By the way, why do Americans often say waiters in Europe are rude?)
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/paris-syndrome-a-first-class-problem-for-a-first-class-vacation/246743/
Chinese mass tourists don’t care about that. You’re better of trying to astroturf some monument or historical relic or set up fancy expensive Galeries.
Enterprising Chinese will try and corner the market. All-inclusive tour guides, buy up shops, rent out private residences, etc.
And if locals react accordingly to their poor behaviour then they will throw a hissyfit and there might a diplomatic incident.
Given that you state that:
I am reluctant to trust your judgement.
For Homo Economicus, this does not matter.
This is a point for America, and a point aginst Russia.
Is this just one of your baseless assertions?
Like when you stated that China was intensely interested in Israeli development and said that one of the first universities was Israeli, when in reality it was only opened in… 2017, long after other international universities.
How you perceive something is not necessarily how other people perceive it.
Race and culure actually matters? How surprising.
I think the mainstream voices who shrilly engage in ‘TINA’ rhetoric realise on some subconscious level how outrageous their programme really is, and how people would object if they were given the chance to actually comprehend the consequences.
It wouldn’t make a difference, the upper-level people in multinational corporations are fully in support of all the radical social projects (often even pushing them on ordinary people ‘before they are ready’) and the lower-level people are mostly normies.
Le Pen père pursued a liberal economic policy combined with a nationalist agenda, in contrast to his daughter who has adopted a social democratic economic policy.
Nevertheless, Le Pen fille got twice the amount of total votes Le Pen père did during the single time they succeded to the second round in the presidential elections.
I think Marine hurt herself though in the presidential election by her anti-EU stance.
My impression is even many somewhat nationalist people aren’t completely against the EU (at least in continental Europe, Britain is a special case), because they see the need for at least some sort of European cooperation in defense of common interests, and because nobody wants a return to the 1914-1945 era (even if a replay of that is unlikely for many reasons unconnected to the EU, like the age structure of European populations).
It’s of course ironic that she probably did so in an attempt to be more mainstream and civic nationalist than if she had focused more on France’s domestic diversity problems.
I agree. I also think a lot of people were worried by the talk of withdrawing from the Euro and restoring the Franc and the resultant economic uncertainty that would entail.
I don’t think being anti-EU is that useful, because in the end, what goes on at a national level matters more in domestic matters. Italy turned around very quickly after Salvini got in power.
It’s certainly true that they’re less eurosceptic than the English, and the motivation for elite eurosceptism in England is suspect. The euro has massively increased the financial risk of quitting and makes it less electorally viable if people are scared about the prospect of peing paid in rapidly devaluing national currencies. Nevertheless it’s a massive blind spot on the part of European nationalists. By hurting the EU, the English have done Europe a massive favor.
The EU, certainly since Maastricht, has been one of the cornerstones of atlanticism; look at the way in which countries that were neutral throughout the whole of the cold war, Finland, Ireland, Austria, Cyprus, voted unanimously for Russia sanctions, whereas far more naturally russia-hostile countries outside the block, Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia have done nothing. The peace argument for the EU is silly; there was a century of relative peace before 1914 and there were some very close calls during the cold war. Given that the next US administration is likely to packed witg vindictive warmongering SJWs who, sincerely believe that ‘Russia stole our election’ there’s likely to be plenty more in the yeard ahead. Free movement of peoples means that any action taken by a single state is meaningless; illegal migration to Italy post Salvini has dropped, but risen by the same amount in Spain. Free movement of capital has given eastern europe less economic sovereignty than under communism. Warsaw pact countries were at least allowed to design and produce their own dated, smoky commie cars, and not just rebadge zhigulis. This means that, if push really does come to shove, any errant government will be be sanctioned into submission in days. Orban and Salvini are merely tolerated.
You know that Dmitry is a Reaganite libertarian right? This he worships the market.
Agreed.
The EU has become a fully neoliberalism.txt project ran from the New York-Washington-California-London axis, which has absorbed the entire modern-day European “aristocracy”. From Dublin to Lublin, the entire upper class consisting of politicians, bankers, consultants, corporate executives or businessmen, academics etc. fully and genuinely declare their allegiance to the neoliberalism.txt cargo cult headquartered in these 4 cities.
My take on Brexit being allowed to happen is because the EU is supposed to be fully subordinate to the Five Eyes and taking UK out of the EU is essentially transferring its status from “colony” to “dominion”.
My aunt in Moscow is the daughter of well-known Soviet-era actors and has had a somewhat cushioned life (she complains that the new mayor has made it more difficult to park her car in downtown).
When I met her in Moscow last spring she had taken the metro for the first time in years, very early in the morning before the general population uses it. She complained that she saw so many Tadjiks on the metro it felt just like Paris!
This would make him a mainstream 2000s Russian liberal.
Prussian unification of Germany turned out brilliantly for Europe, didn’t it?
Which has at least partly to due with the traitors’ administration that has taken power in Madrid.
And maybe British nationalists hope for Brexit to be a chance to regain their nation, but that is not how the mainstream pro-Brexit supporters have portrayed it and they are far more likely to be the ones who decide national policy.
I was reading British newspapers during the referendum and, so far, it seems as if the liberal-cuckservative idealistic vision was basically to:
1) tie themselves even more to the American monster and once again resume the position of Washington’s humilated poodle
2) replace the Polacks with ‘Commonwealth’ immigration (essentially Indians and Africans)
3) Beg to be allowed to trade with America, China, India etc. and other nations that will impose their own baggage.
So to continue Britain’s shady ‘Globalisation’.
Of course, that was before the national debate devolved into a complete and incomprehensible farce.
Although, since the UK would often lean pro-American and pro-Polish-Baltic axis, Brexit is not necessarily a bad thing.
It only takes 1 out of 28.
I’m well aware, but most of their energy is going to be consumed by infighting and arguing with the EU. It was quite funny to watch Michael Gove (quite a good education secretary btw) address parliament and loudly proclaim that, without the EU, Britain would be free to confront p-yu-tin, without realizing that using the EU to coerce formerly neutal counties into doing so would be far more effective.
It’s physically impossible for them to do this any more than they have done already.
Poland, the “European success story” will have to provide economic opportunities for its own working poor:good.
Literally beg them to buy high bypass turbo fans, cpu architecture and pharmaceuticals.
Without this complete farce they’d be debating ways to further moly-coddle upper-middle class women, sexual and ethic minorities et al and ban/tax pleasurable frivolities, long may the farce continue.
I really don’t understand it. Perhaps, I am not remembering correctly, but I thought that education in Germany was the purview of the German states. That it was written into the constitution, perhaps under American influence, in an attempt to prevent national militancy.
BTW, the wikipedia article on German schooling is interesting, if disturbing. One thing that it says is that the curriculum has been largely internationalized to facilitate immigration to support aging cohorts of Germans.
Leftists in the US really hate school localism and are always trying to undermine it – it is really weird to see it articulated rather schizophrenically in the documentary “Superman Is Not Dead”: Our schools are failing and we need a new model – but one reason that they are failing is that we have too many models. ( not that I would recommend the movie)
Another thing that I think is fascinating in Germany is the perennial movement to eliminate school tracking. One would think that Germany might have better data than nearly any other white country on aptitude – but apparently no amount of data can convince a leftist. With current trends, it seems obvious to me there will be egalitarian changes.
Funnily enough, the English wiki article has quite a lot of information about immigrants and the German article mentions them only once
No, my understanding is it’s been banned since 1919.
tbh so far it’s not really an issue, I don’t see even much of a theoretical interest in homeschooling (how would most people even be able to afford it?). I have to admit I find the reporting about it in US media somewhat annoying (even more so the outrage by evangelicals and other religious busybodies), imo there’s the usual undercurrent about foreign barbarians in need of American-style liberty in it.
Sure, the law in Germany on this issue is probably unduly authoritarian…but compared to the really urgent problems of nation-destroying mass immigration I don’t care that much about it (maybe would be different if I had children, but I don’t).
The left definitely still has the end goal of uniform comprehensive schools, and in leftie-dominated states the education system is pretty shit…in a state like North-Rhine-Westphalia the three-tiered system is pretty much already meaningless anyway, because about 50% of each year get the Abitur (kind of like A-levels in Britain, qualifying you for studying at university), which is just ridiculous.
End result will of course be that the public school system will be ruined and that everybody who can afford it will send his children to private school.
That is curious.
Much as I like English from a utilitarian point of view, I guess one has to come to terms with the idea that it is the language of globalists. Far better for us if they were clicking in Zulu or speaking Esperanto, but they have chosen the language of Shakespeare to spread their memes.
I’ve heard vague references that it might go back even to 1871, in some form. I guess it must be state law, duplicated in each state. It seems some American states were similar until a Supreme Court case in the early ’70s.
From reading wiki, I thought the policy on crosses was interesting: if one person objects it comes down. Of course, that is basically the idea that took Christianity out of America’s schools and made it a taboo subject there. When you link it to mass Muslim migration, it becomes a farce. But it is curious in the context of German history. Supposedly, Bavarians got really pissed off when their crosses were taken down and portraits of Hitler put up.
I think it is true that public schools are how susceptible young people bond with the state. Homeschooling is perhaps not a solution to that, since heritability means that the kids who are homeschooled probably aren’t that susceptible. I only knew one guy who was homeschooled (and only for a few years, after he had enrolled in public high school), he was very non-conformist. One of the few people I know who openly criticize open borders, so I guess I view it through that lens (a continuation of the politics of mass migration), though it might be minor by itself.
A lot of liberals truly don’t know about the authoritarian aspects of many globalist governments (such as this and the TV thing.). I don’t know if it helps to publish it or not, but news is filled with such fluff, it can’t hurt.
The Crimean War, The Franco-Prussian war, the Danish war with Prussia, Russian efforts to subdue Poland. Wars in the Balkans. There was relative peace for Britain but life went on in the rest Europe.
That’s a comparatively recent development though, iirc it goes back to some lawsuit by stupid atheist parents in Bavaria in the mid-1990s. Actual consequences are limited though.
I have to admit I’m ambivalent about those issues anyway; given how insanely pro-mass immigration the Christian churches in Germany are and how they do everything in their power to ostracize people like me, I can’t really look kindly on their influence. My impression is the situation is quite different from the US…in America, you’ve got anti-Christian Jews and really militant liberal atheists who hate the religious right, and there are all those culture war issues about homo “marriage” etc.
It’s different in Germany, the Christian churches are basically firm supporters of the establishment, really extreme in their pro-open borders stance (e.g. cardinal Marx recently donated 50 000 Euros to some ngo transporting Africans from the Mediterranean to Europe) and see their main task in denouncing “pagan” nationalists. As a consequence, lefties and liberals who once were against religion, now often speak respectfully of “Christian values”.
Maybe. I thought many of my teachers were morons and they had zero influence on me, but maybe it’s different for other people.
It’s certainly true though that the left wants to use the school system for indoctrinating youth. So in principle, I do believe that something like homeschooling should be allowed. It’s probably not a realistic option for most people though.
That is already happening.
In New East Germany, more than 10% are sent to private schools.
https://gfx.sueddeutsche.de/apps/e839212/www/_image_desktopw1840q70.png
It’s really surprising to me that the percentage for private schools is higher in the east than in West Germany; states like Saxony and Thuringia still have a fairly decent public school system with comparatively high standards; also not so much diversity, so you don’t have to be afraid that your child will be tormented by violent Arabs or Turks.
But yes, it’s definitely a trend that is set to increase, unfortunately.
Talking about Germany, according to the 2016 census, Germany is apparently 92% white. Given the amount of nonwhite crime it has, I really doubt Germany is just 8% nonwhite at this point.
Can someone on the ground verify this number?
If let’s say 5% of young Chinese after visiting the Hermitage, etc. grow enchanted with Russian culture… and if later some of these young people become influential in China… then it all had been worth it.
It’s true in America with respect to mainline Protestant Churches and gay “marriage.” It’s true with respect to absolutely all Churches and open borders.
To take one example, this is how Minneapolis is becoming Mogadishu North.
https://twitter.com/MiaVendetta110/status/1082085981262622721
Although the EU is promoting immigration, a lot of Britain’s überfremdung was carried out by the national British government, especially under Blair’s tenure.
Poland would be better off if their people stayed home instead of importing Filipinians, Indians, Nepalis and Uzbecks. But Britain wouldn’t benefit from more annoying non-whites coming over.
I am not mocking the value of Britain’s goods and products, merely the way British ministers signal weakness.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/06/india-warns-uk-immigration-policy-wreck-post-brexit-trade-deal
D’accord.
The blob is about get even blobbier.
Regarding European unity and subaltern migration, I find it interesting how quickly North Italian separatism disappeared once they came into contact with Merkel’s Millions.
Many European Liberals love to use gratuitous English. Even French newspapers, who are supposed to be notoriously Anglophobic, utilise a lot of ‘chic’ English loanwords.
But what is really scary is when talk about white privilege, Black Lives Matter or racialisation starts popping up suddenly without context.
Sorry, link:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-11/france-germany-merge-economic-and-defense-policies-create-cross-border
This is what I’m talking about how the current European “aristocracy” simply following whatever is in vogue with the California-London-NYC-DC axis.
There was an brochure targeting schools relatively recently released by a German Jew-organisation.
https://diversitymachtfrei.wordpress.com/2018/12/04/pigtails-dresses-and-runes-booklet-helps-german-teachers-identify-children-from-nazi-households/
I found the section ‘Für Empowerment und Diversität – die jüdische Kita Tamar in Hannover’ most notable.
English or pseudo-English words are given a special significance:
‘Empowerment-Arbeit’
‘Diversität’ (instead of the more natural sounding ‘vielfalt’ used elsewhere in the paper)
‘die Jüdische Community’
‘Shoa Education’
(And of course they wouldn’t be Jews if they didn’t note that ‘die Existenz von Diversität ist aus jüdischer Perspektive positiv zu bewerten’.)
Private schools cost a hundred euro a month? Is there something I’m missing?
Here is the 5 billion dollar question, why are liberals simply a lot better at winning hearts and minds than conservatives? To the extent that the only way that conservatives have of evening the odds against the liberals is with 7.62mm NATO rounds, otherwise conservatives will always lose the messaging and marketing battle? But then this approach, I. E., gargling gunning gay pride marches and napalming them brings forth problems of its own. I mean if the hippies and civil rights protesters in the 60s ended up being machine gunned and ran over by M48s then maybe the Sexual Revolution would have been stopped in its tracks, I mean look at what happened to the Chinese people democracy movement after Tiananmen, but then such a brutal crackdown would have produced problems of its own.
Do you think it is high or low?
People, consciously or unconsciously, like to follow winners and whose who are successful (or at least can put up a presentable façade of it).
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/27/average-private-school-fees-rise-above-17000-a-year-for-first-time
Young, wealthy millennial Chinese who have the possibility to lead China are the ones who hate being stuck near these senior citizen mass groups the most.
And the siloviks in charge of Ministry of Tourism somehow managed to completely skip on out the wealthy Chinese individual travelers while letting the zero-dollar tourism mafia from China to take hold. Russia now ranks #3 in terms of group tour infestation in Europe right behind France and the UK while remaining relatively irrelevant for high-end individual Chinese tourists.
And those wealthy ones that do go to Russia, tend to have a slightly negative opinion towards it. Common complaints include poor services for the prices paid, bad infrastructure, and low English abilities. Some individual Chinese tourists have even gotten mugged by Caucasians/Central Asians
Poland needs at least 2 million of its diaspora back, and again, it can build a pretty technologically advanced economy with its human capital and current GDP per capita.
Right now there’s around 30K non-white immigrants in Poland that arrived in the past 10 years or so. Whether this will balloon into 300K or even 3 million is still uncertain.
I don’t know how it is in Germany, but in Sweden there are a lot of independent schools subsidised by the government, so tuition fees are often not so high.
On another note, I like that English schoolchildren are in traditional uniforms, it creates a certain sense of propriety compared to the informal no-uniform style in other countries.
This is why I have said in the Molly McKew thread that Russia’s single biggest failure to generate more international support so far is its failure to build an economy as complex as that its GDP suggests, and to apply its high-level military expertise to the civilian sector.
No one would take Russophrenia as seriously and there would be far more Russian lobbies in the West if say, Sukhoi had the market share of Embraer in the US civil aviation market and Kaspersky and Telegram actually became full-spectrum international competitors to say, McAfee and Whatsapp.
Saxony and Thuringia are/were doing fine, but other states are more leftist influenced.
One of the most famous German cases of a parent who sent her child to a privat school is Manuela Schwesig, the social democrat who runs Meck-Pomm.
That’s funny, I cannot imagine that ever happening in Britain. In fact in Britain, they want to take away some of their existing tax exemptions. My impression is that private schools are not as much of a nexus of hatred in other countries as in Britain. There was even a long article by class-traitor David Kynaston in the Guardian today attacking them for producing inequality and saying that private schools should be taxed more and forced to take (at least) a third of their students, non-selectively, from state schools. The fact that private-school children do better because their parents are more intelligent is, obviously, never mentioned.
It is the same in Germany.
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bildung/schule-privatschule-schueler-1.4258364
Note what the German “constitution” says about private schools:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html#p0047
Americans should have feared the African, not the Mexican.
http://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/immigration-2000-2016-by-source.jpg
In the US, you sometimes hear the surprising factoid that Berlin has more debt than Detroit, but it is probably not really that meaningful, since Berlin is also a state, as well as being much more populous. You’d have to be out of your mind to loan to Detroit, anyways.
lol, absolutely delusional.
It reminds me something of Yiddish, with English becoming the new Hebrew from which loan words are sought to combine with German.
I wonder whether there could be some simple mathematical way of looking at it beyond there being a lot of people who speak English as a foreign language. The US easily has to have the most Ashkenazi, but perhaps it is not even that. Could be the distribution of Hollywood productions, or the amount of humanities departments at US colleges. Perhaps even the dollar amount subsidizing them.
It’s not directly a Jewish organisation, but rather Germany’s leading “antiracist” foundation, the Amadeu-Antonio-Stiftung, which gets massively supported with taxpayers’ money, due to the SPD-initiated “Kampf gegen rechts”.
The founder of that foundation Anetta Kahane is Jewish though, and obviously motivated by anti-German resentment (e.g. she’s said things like East Germany is “still too white” and even criticised the late Willy Brandt – a “good German” if ever there was one – for supposedly having excluded “Germans of color” in his positive remarks about German reunification) and Jewish ethnocentrism (she has the usual inflated sense of Jewish importance in history, making ridiculous statements like “The ten commandments made democracy possible”).
iirc there are some other Jews (political scientist Samuel Salzborn, journalist Esther Shapira) affiliated with that organisation, also pro-Zionist gentiles (looking for antisemitism in criticism of Israel is a favourite sport). But calling it a “Jewish organisation” is probably going too far.
Well, in some sense that’s probably true; but the private school system in Britain is so prominent not least, because the damned Labour party wrecked the state school system with their abolition of grammar schools (a huge crime which must have significantly reduced social mobility).
You were offended because I said your statement about “beautiful, soul and honour” was dreamy (or reminds of a statement of AaronB).
But you used this comment to me when I explained about how tourism was important.
I’m sure we both value to have a more beautiful city, but what can actually create this.
Compare a city which was closed for years to foreigners – Magnitogorsk
And a city which was partly built to impress them – Saint-Petersburg.
Which was more beautiful? Sure the comparison is unfair, to compare “the cultural capital”, to a city of a completely different historical epoch and status-level.
What happens to historical buildings in Peter and Moscow? They are carefully treated or restored.
What happens often to prerevolutionary houses in Ekaterinburg? They are quite often destroyed or (when lucky) ignored. And then there are cities where this is more common (less preservation) than Ekaterinburg.
Every day beautiful prerevolutionary houses are destroyed across the country, and common factor in this is that it happens mainly in cities where tourism and visitors are not an important consideration.
If you live in a city where industry is more important to build ugly office and residential buildings, and tourism is not an important industry – then authorities do not care much about preservation of historical architecture (demand for convenient modern buildings will override, and often result in demolition of old buildings).
On the other hand, where visitors’ impression are high priority, they might even put the cables underground (which costs a vast amount) – aesthetics is suddenly important.
So maybe we want that putting cables underground, improving pedestrian street experience, and preservation of historical buildings will be a high priority regardless of if there are visitors or not (and there would be endless funding available for this). But in the real situation, we see this in cities where tourism and visitors are common and with some economic implication to them which is understood by the authorities.
All that besides the fact the young generation needs jobs and economy needs to diversify in as many spheres as it can (before it is too late).
Well, I videod it – they were definitely entertaining to me. But as I wrote above, not all Chinese tourists are some vulgar village people.
China has professionals, intellectuals, cultured people, and also a bourgeoisie – all these also need vacations.
I can recall very much (from up to about 10 years in the past) when France was still described, including by people like my parents, as if it was an example to follow across the world. Recently, I see mostly only discussion in the other direction.
I don’t understand Chinese. But the video I added said that according to the automatic translation of the Chinese title, it is the ‘first coooperative foreign university in China”*
You replied Liverpool University has been in China earlier. I searched about this and your statement was correct. At the same time what I read was a bit ambiguous – it was a private initiative, and I so I assume it was an idea from the English side (I imagine it could be a way to generate money from foreign students).
Anyway, I wasn’t interested enough to read more. For the overall discussion we had, this opening of the university (whether 1st, or the 100th) was strengthening my view, which began when I saw so many groups of Chinese businessmen personally (when I was in Israel itself) with my eyes. Basically, exactly what the media is always talking about how Chinese business is interested in Russian industry, I saw the process actually there.
*
It is an interesting hypothesis for Germany and Japan (that they self-organized effectively without adequate leaders). It would be unusual (to become successful without talented leaders).
In America or Russia, the country is developing happily with talented leadership, and rapidly the opposite with untalented leadership.
Here precisely, we see how bad the French political sphere is compared to Visegrad countries.
In Visegrad countries, leadership commonly has intelligent immigration policy views, and intelligent economic development views (and various other normal views). And people vote for the adequate politicians.
Well here is the answer.
We raise the quality standard in the tourist industry, and will receive larger numbers of (relatively) higher quality tourism from China – which is the market with the highest potential.
Interesting, I have not heard of Chancellor Kiesinger before.
Schroder’s economic reforms, seem to have been very successful (as always statement is bit subjective – there is no counterfactual control you can assess their success against).
So Merkel has no important economic reforms? I guess the positive is that she supported some fiscal discipline?
Historically, I think it is fair to say that the church has usually favored the establishment. So maybe all this cucking isn’t really a new thing, just part of that old process, and maybe it would be true if the Druids were still around and the faith was pagan.
With regard to schools, I think it even goes beyond indoctrination. Just meeting a lot of one’s peers there, spending so much time in a building the government created. Being away from one’s family and having teachers who are paid by the government become one’s parent figures. I think it has a seductive aspect to it. “If the government can create this school, imagine what else it can do.”
I’m trying to think how much I might have been influenced. In high school, I laughed at a lot of the blatant propaganda, like the idea Spain was a multicult paradise under Arab rule. But some of the stuff hits you at a young age, like the MLK myth. I feel like a lot of my peers were influenced negatively.
He’s barely remembered in Germany either (my previous comment was a joke). His chief claim to fame is having been slapped in the face by “anti-Nazi” activist Beate Klarsfeld, for his alleged Nazi past (which had been exaggerated by an East German smear campaign).
Maybe, some reforms were probably necessary. But they were also widely seen as unfair and a betrayal of working class interests, which has permanently eroded SPD support. There’ll probably never be another Social Democrat chancellor, to a large extent this is the legacy of Schröder’s reforms.
I can’t think of any.
As for fiscal discipline, just think of the absurd sums spent on “refugees” (or German liabilties when the Euro comes crashing down; or the billions spent on the misguided Energiewende)…this isn’t sound financial policy imo.
The academically failing end up in British “Public” Schools as well as the highly intelligent. Fewer of the intelligent actually. They can do OK in the state sector, especially girls.
Half the pupils in most boarding schools are now foreigners. Typical, a lot of different variations of Chinese and a mixture of others. Too many of one group and they form a clique and don’t mix. Their language skills are then not as good as they could be. Turks are a new additiin in recent years.
My old school is now setting up in Malaysia as it doesn’t want to go beyond 50% foreigners in its home base.
Energiewende is an important economic reform, but not a good one.
https://twitter.com/Rainer_Klute/status/1084499921103998976
Any evidence for this? And do you mean ‘academically failing’ or ‘highly intelligent’ relative to other middle class children, or relative to all British children (in which case your claim is obviously laughably wrong).
I don’t think going to state schools would have a massive effect on their results (Grammar Schools none), but it is obviously much less pleasant to be surrounded by stupid people and/or blacks and pakistanis if you are highly intelligent/white.
It’s an insanely irresponsible policy, leading in all likelihood to major deindustrialisation and possibly large-scale blackouts, which will kill people.
But the majority of voters is complacent, believes this “You’ve never had it so good, be thankful to Frau Merkel!” nonsense and keeps voting for this crap. Hard to see a way out of this.
I am not offended, I believe idealism can be healthy. I just object to your neoliberal economic view ex. when you praise Ireland for its low corporation tax rate – even though these MNCs hate normal Irish people.
Better to compare SPB with Moscow.
But this happens even in Western Europe where there are a lot of tourists – London has many ‘sleek’ Modernist buildings in certain districts. And this is because of a deliberate ideological view.
National traits tend to emerge strongest in groups, including unpleasant ones.
Instead of trying to increase the magnitude of tourism, why not increase the quality of tourists and the range of areas they visit? If done well, this would also reduce the pressure on SPB and Moscow.
Generally, China just has too many people. Even if they were just as uncultured the tourists wouldn’t as much of a problem of China had the population of Japan or (North and South) Korea.
Recently? How recently? By whom? In what sphere?
Your examples of ”French political ideology, French philosophy, economic policies” do not make much sense.
Political ideology – no major Western European govenrment has a strong leader and Merkel only appears so because she is being propped up by the international media (which seems to have affected your view of her).
Philosophy – This makes no sense. People who like French philosophy like it and the people who don’t like don’t like it. It has little to do with contemporary conditions.
Economic policies – France is within the normal range of European economic policies.
I can’t see the video right now, but that doesn’t make sense.
Technion (which I assume you were talking about) is partnered with Shantou University.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2017/12/first-israeli-university-inaugurated-in-china/
Liverpool University is partnered with Xi’an Jiaotong University.
New York University is partnered with East China Normal University of Shanghai.
Etc.
And then there are European and Anglosphere individuals working directly for Chinese universities.
Chinese enterprising people are everywhere. There are even some in darkest Africa with half-breed children.
Why is it interesting?
Core Europe (France, Germany, North Italy, Benelux, Scandinavia) can mainly only be made worse as a result of politicians. If left alone, they will operate at the general level of their ethnicity.
I don’t really know much about Czechia or Slovakia, so can’t comment on that beyond the fact that they (like the rest of the region) are owned by Germans.
Poland is busy trying to pick a fight with Germany and Russia at the same time, has begun (minor) importation of guest workers instead of just raising wages higher and has lowered the retirement age as well as increasing welfare payments.
As for Hungary, Orban’s administration has probably done reasonably well, but the previous liberal government also ran Hungary into the ground.
It is a bit amusing how Germany was demonised for its treatment of Greece and other southern European countries but as soon as Merkel committed the far more treasonous action of inviting millions of migrants she became the darling of the media (and the fact she admitted multiculturalism has failed a decade ago lies forgotten).
I can’t help wondering how much better off we would be if Germany and other northern European countries would be if the governments had simply decided to hire Greeks, Spaniards and Italians to guard their borders and force migrant boats to return.
Although I don’t think they see the irony, American cuckservatives have declared Merkel’s Germany Best Germany.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/angela-merkel-germany-generation-after-reunification/
In other news, a literal party to support illegals will compete in the next Europarl elections in Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Germany.
https://www.rtbf.be/info/belgique/detail_peps-le-projet-de-parti-europeen-des-sans-papiers?id=10117248
Your idea of further SWPLizing Russian cities, and improving the services and English levels is good for attracting high end tourists all over the world. And of course, high end tourists includes rich, individual Chinese tourists. These tourists will actually contribute to the local economy by directly participating, and enhancing, the atmosphere of the nicest and/or most touristy areas of the city. In this case, you shouldn’t cater to any specific nationality, but have the general bourgeouis tourist in mind.
But your goal is to boost the volumes of Chinese tourists. In which case, all of this is moot. In this case, your better off shutting down the existing SWPL establishments and invite Chinese businessmen to open up their own stores/restaurants in their place, provide parking for buses, stick up as many Chinese signs as possible, build massive low-quality hotels, and sell bulk all-inclusive tours as cheaply as possible. With this, you’ll only get overcrowding, mass Sinofication of Russian cities, failure to cater towards locals or any other tourists besides Chinese groups, and forget about any money they generate touching Russian society.
Tldr arguing economics vs ideals with a Jew, the real idiot is YOU.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/when-londons-dragons-ruled-before-skyscrapers/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/how-todays-skyscrapers-assault-the-skyline-and-the-street-linkedin-building-san-francisco/
I have to admit it’ pretty perverse how there’s all this selective charity for every damned African or Arab inviting himself to Germoney, but the horrendous youth unemployment in southern Europe isn’t something that bothers people in Germany all that much.
Yeah, doesn’t surprise me this asshole Will thinks today’s Germany is the best ever, people like him operate on the principle that a de-nationalised Germany on the path to oblivion is wonderful.
He even wrote a piece about AfD, with the usual Russia-hysteria:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/alternative-for-germany-opposition-party-asylum-crisis/
Of course he doesn’t mention that this horrible hack attack has been attributed to a 20-year old German acting on his own and with no known connections to Russia.
Silly neo-luddism. The glass towers are generally replacing post-war mid-rise dross (It was the latter that attractive historic buildings were demolished to make way for). Traditional street patterns are respected and the preservation of heritage buildings in London over the last couple of decades has been much higher than in the regions. An example:
http://www.healthclubmanagement.co.uk/health-club-management-news/Marshall-Street-Baths-to-reopen-in-2010/153243?source=search
http://thebirminghampress.com/2013/11/the-insane-vandalism-of-birmingham/
Entirely anecdotal evidence, personal experience over generations. It gets comments in the press sometimes. When there were large numbers of grammar schools, public schools were supposed to have lost their attraction for clever pupils.
Some mixture of truth and working class inverted snobbery I think. There’s always been a Grammar school disdain for public schoolboys as rich 11 plus failures; see Harry Enfleid’s “Tim nice but dim” sketches on YouTube. When the Callaghan Labour government set about abolishing grammar schools, some conservative education authorities dragged their feet until he was voted out of office. Mrs Thatcher stopped the closures but didn’t restore the ones already closed, so, in the UK, there’s some areas with no grammar schools at all, some where the system survived unscathed and others where there’s one or two grammar schools in an otherwise comprehensive area (you have to be an exceptionally strong student to apply to one of these and, even then, it’s a lottery). I suppose if you live in one of the latter areas, you might sent your children to public school if they don’t get in.
The problem, even with good comprehensive schools is that they’ll be devoting the vast bulk of their resources into getting as many kids to pass the government exams as possible. Kids on the right tail end would be able to ace these without much effort and their time would be much better spent practising step exams, or art, music, culture, sport etc. or even just socialising with influential, learned people. This is what people pay school fees for.
ROI saved from bankrupt debt dynamics, by multinational investment and corporations’s contribution to GDP.
In addition, to great economic benefits – elevation of human capital in the country (gastarbeiters of the multinational corporations are usually very nice, presentable enough people to pass interviews and with high education).
And above all, it produces more opportunity for local people. High salaries, in multinational corporations, that intelligent computer science graduates in Russia with years of experience will dream for, are attained in Ireland by hipster 22 year old Irish girls with an MSc in digital media (multinational corporations in ROI are trying to recruit local young people, almost like an affirmative action).
They are the visitor and tourist centres. Again, why in Moscow are they putting the cables underground?
It’s not because there are more rich people there (other cities with a lot of rich people, cables are not put underground and historical buildings are destroyed).
It is because aesthetics and history is viewed as important, in places where there are important visitors, particularly international visitors.
Historical buildings of London are preserved or restored. It is even not legal there to modify externally, the historical architecture.
Modern buildings of London will also be constructed in high quality materials and with a high budget.
In Ekaterinburg, “restoration” has a different reality – regularly they demolish the oldest buildings and build a new one in the place.
Regularly even the church demolishes old churches’ actual building and then rebuilds plastic, fake historical churches in the same land, and they call it “restoration” (when they completely destroy the original building, and replace the building with a “historical style” building).
The same happens for all kind of historical buildings of the city.
Meanwhile, “Architecture” of the 5 star hotel (where Putin hosted the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit in 2009).
https://cdn.101hotels.ru/uploads/image/hotel/12/1189581.jpg
Well next to it, they demolish the cities oldest bathhouse last summer. (Sure not a great building, but just to say respect for city history is just not very developed or codified, outside some journalists and local activists).
https://itsmycity.ru/static/uploads/ece6696cdfe7689d2e233302cfe79c1840df470e.jpg
https://static.ngs.ru/news/99/preview/c93016bce7366d2963bd0e6646b0a61f213ce389c_1200.jpg
Badly behaving tourists are usually going to a beach in Turkey or somewhere like that – I don’t believe they are so interested in cities.
It was recommended to follow the French political and economic model, especially with their working hours were the best in the world, their life style the healthiest in the world, and how they also defeated the demographic decline. In addition, I remember books of “how to be beautiful like a French woman”. And of course, intellectuals dream of drinking coffee in the Left Bank of Paris, like a French philosopher.
Now, of course, all this still exists – France is still popular. But our consciousness is crowded with thoughts of Islamists killing cartoonists, of yellow vests running crazy, and of a lot of problems of the multicultural, economic, cultural and political model in France, which has been revealed in the last ten years.
A lot of shopkeepers, etc (for example, you see them all over Spain). But I have not consciously noticed the serious business people before (in groups with suits and briefcases). (In England, I have seen a lot of bourgeois young Chinese – but I assume these are the children of the businessmen).
Well this is just the automatic translator of the video title. If a Chinese speaking person would view it for us maybe they could translate.
Sure, but with successful national development, there are in recent history often some visionaries responsible for the intelligent reforms and modernization.
So I was curious of German Reader’s view of who is responsible for Germany’s success.
E,g,
In Singapore – Lee Kuan Yew
In UK – Thatcher
In Russia – Putin (really, Kudrin, et al, via Putin)
In Chile – Pinochet
In Israel – Ariel Sharon (via Netanyahu as finance minister)
In Hungary – Orban
In USA – Reagan (domestic policy)
In Czech Republic – Klaus
In Germany – ?
Those were already clearly discernible ten years ago though, remember the riots under Sarkozy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_riots
If you’re wondering about post-war Germany, Ludwig Erhard comes to mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Erhard
But reducing complex trends to the influence of single persons is usually too reductive.
”Now, of course, all this still exists – France is still popular. But our consciousness is crowded with thoughts of Islamists killing cartoonists, of yellow vests running crazy, and of a lot of problems of the multicultural, economic, cultural and political model in France, which has been revealed in the last ten years.”
So basically, your impression isn’t actually about France but just about the shit that is being enforced on every West European nation.
The children of rich people in general.
”ROI saved from bankrupt debt dynamics, by multinational investment and corporations’s contribution to GDP.”
Such a theoretical textbook answer, it fits you.
”In addition, to great economic benefits – elevation of human capital in the country (gastarbeiters of the multinational corporations are usually very nice, presentable enough people to pass interviews and with high education).”
This is what you see. In general they will lobby for more migration to undercut the wages of local people (this happens with most corporations but MNCs are particularly vulnerable due to their international status), so the few ‘nice’ ones are not
Because the computers are going to rot if we don’t import more Indian code-monkeys.
I made the comparison because you stated SPB was built to impress foreigners. So I gave a counterpart that developed more organically.
Just use your logic.
Reagan and Thatcher contributed to the social tearing apart of America and Britain with their ‘there’s no such thing as society’ policies.
Yes, I feel rather foolish.
I think this is the second time I talk to you Hyperborean and now I will have to stop – wondering why this forum is such a magnet for unpleasant and rude characters, who cannot talk in a normal way.
Not to mention, the connection to reality becomes very tenuous (how many times shouting about Jews to people who are, proudly, 1/8 Jews).
Thanks, I guess we found him..
“He is often famed for leading German postwar economic reforms and economic recovery (“Wirtschaftswunder,” German for “economic miracle”)”
But some lack of execution…
“Late in the 1950s, Erhard’s ministry became involved in the struggle within the society between the European and the Anglo-American factions, and sided with the former. Erhard viewed the market itself as social and supported only a minimum of welfare legislation. However Erhard suffered a series of decisive defeats in his effort to create a free, competitive economy in 1957; he had to compromise on such key issues as the anti-cartel legislation. ”
And the flaw…
“Erhard believed the major world problems were solvable through free trade and the economic unity of Europe (as a prerequisite for political unification); he alienated French president Charles de Gaulle, who wanted the opposite. “
I disagree with many of your views (though they’re still interesting, some ideological diversity here doesn’t hurt), but yes, this is indeed an annoying tendency by many commenters here; it would be better, if it stopped (along with similar ad hominem attacks).
Well I couldn’t resist answering..
I was just talking about our (as someone very distant from the country) old view of France. Nnot sure what your problem against it is.
Just reality.
Salaries based directly from FDI are a lot higher than local salaries, and overpaying everyone. FDI related salaries are going higher every year, so how does your argument make sense.
If non-EU foreigners are desired by multinational corporation – (i) company can sponsor a skilled work visa, (ii) number of employees is quite small from any perspective.
Direct employment of multinational corporations is not large – everyone could live in single small city together.
If you wonder about why there are so many foreigners, it’s not because a few thousand critical skills work visas have been given.
EU membership and various migration pacts and agreements made by government, some exploited in various ways, will be the reason for almost all immigrants.
People going to a country to become citizens of the country is happening (in mass) on a different plane, and responsible for this are governments, not FDI (which primarily wants a low tax environment and access to certain markets, without any particular moral interest in the country itself or its local politics).
Around 4000 Indians who received or renew a work permit each year, almost all of them are doctors and nurses for the government health service ( they are not for multinational corporations).
Of those related to multinational corporations, a lot are for Indian pharmaceutical companies which invest there. But when saying – “a lot” (it’s likely not even thousands).
Anyway, how do all the tens or hundreds of thousands of brown people there for? There are quite a lot of brown people. But this number nothing to do with renewable work visas, which are only given for some hundreds of Indian engineers a year.
And which is more beautiful? (Definitely not Moscow). But Moscow restored and improved every year to a large extent because it is a showcase for visitors and tourists – which is what we were arguing about.
Seems like quite socialist views, but written without any explanation of them.
And from Russia only 200 a year, which are almost all for multinational corporations (unlike many of the Indians who are working as doctors and nurses – the health service imports the highest number) . It shows what a minority multinational corporation contribution to total immigration is.
By far, most immigrants there are not a result of coming there as visas sponsored by multinational corporations, but entering in all kinds of other ways.
You’re right – it was impolite of me. I’ll abstain from UR for a while to calm down.
Well perhaps it’s better to be impolite to people you really don’t know anything about, on the internet. Than to people in real life.
Nevertheless, it was improper. It is not well to lelt a bitter heart fester and I shall strive to comport myself in a more virtuous manner in the future.