There Is A Russian Civil Society. But You Might Not Like It.

Approximately 100,000 Russians took part in the remembrance march marking the centenary of the murder of the Romanov family.

Just for context, this now seemingly remote event, in a regional city with 10% of the population of Moscow, drew as many people as did the very largest protests of the Putin era.

It is also a fundamentally good sign, signifying as it does the retreat of Soviet historiographic smears about Russia’s last legitimate ruler.

sovok-scumAnother encouraging sign is that sovok retrogrades have been getting pushed back by public pressure. For instance, a redactor at Channel One, Timofey Erkamov, wrote “Glory to Peter Voykov” on his Vkontakte page, accompanied by a cartoon exhorting people to “Not Forget to Congratulate Monarchists with July 16” illustrated with the corpse of Nicholas II (see right). Voykov was one of the chief executioners of the Romanovs, who was himself later assassinated by a White hero when Voykov was Soviet ambassador to Poland in 1927.

Incidentally, this follows yet another public expression of Russian civil society – if not how neoliberalism.txt imagines it – a few weeks ago. A PR manager at home improvement chain Leroy Merlin, Galina Panina, made up a story on her Facebook profile about a woman who was torched to death by Russian football fans and condemned the atmosphere of jingoism this supposedly reflected.

When people called her out on her improbable and fake story, she dug in deeper, condemning them as vatniks (cotton-wool jacket, or Russian equivalents of rednecks) and threatening them with prosecution. Eventually, the public scandal reached such proportions that Leroy Merlin said Panina was going on administrative leave, and then she announced she was leaving the company outright, and is now looking for another job. Meanwhile, in a laudable example of laudable viral marketing, competing home improvement store Petrovich announced they would be starting to sell cotton-wool jackets.

This is another example in which scum were dealt with using civilized, essentially American methods such as public pressure and consumer boycotts (as opposed to the blunt force of the law). And this is a good thing.

This is the civil society that is emerging in Russia. You might not like it, especially if you are an SJW or a democracy promoter or some other bugman freak, but it is nonetheless real for all that.

Comments

  1. Russia’s last legitimate ruler

    Get real!

  2. Rational says

    THE FOUR SOCIAL ILLS AFFLICTING RUSSIAN SOCIETY.

    This is an interesting article, and good to see people standing up.

    Russians are generally super intelligent and a great people. I remember that the hardest physics book in college was not by Americans (Halliday and Resnick), but by a Russian and nobody could solve the physics problems in it, nor understand how they solved them in ½ a page that took Americans 3 pages to solve.

    But the social ills that afflict Russia and cause it to go extinct are:

    1. Smoking and Drinking. Russia = Vodka, vodka, vodka. They even drink and fly airplanes and crash them. Putin must make it laws against drinking and driving/flying and put in a public campaign to discourage people from drinking, and make them aware of the ills of drinking, such as alcoholic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, cardiomyopathy, alcoholic neuropathy, brain damage, etc.

    2. High divorce and abortion rates: They used to be the highest in the world. Russians need to marry young and have stable marriages and have many children if they are to save their country. Careerism is spreading among Russian women.

  3. Hyperborean says

    And the other two?

  4. AnonFromTN says

    According to the latest stats, alcohol consumption in Russia fell several-fold, smoking is down, and alcohol-related deaths are down by ~25%. Judging by the fact that life expectancy significantly increased (to 72.5 years, a record for Russia), this may be true. The number of children families are prepared to have can only be increased by strong economic incentives. I don’t know whether the government is ready to introduce those.

  5. AnonFromTN says

    There is civil society in Russia, but it is not monarchist. The best thing about Russian civil society is that it rejects PC BS that dominates officially approved discourse in many self-appointed “democratic” countries. My personal experience in the US shows that the majority also hates that PC BS, but most people are afraid to speak their minds on the subject. Freedom of speech is in fact freedom of approved speech, like under Stalin or Hitler.
    BTW, the last (and current) legitimate ruler of Russia is Putin, whether each of us likes him or not.

  6. ussr andy says

    meta: I think a paragraph is missing between “1927” and “Incidentally”

    This is another example in which scum were dealt with using civilized, essentially American methods such as public pressure

    yes, but what happened to the cartoon guy?

  7. Thorfinnsson says

    When people called her out on her improbable and fake story, she dug in deeper, condemning them as vatniks

    I’ve been trying to trick women lately into thinking the famous shoes (Manolo Blahnik) are actually called Manolo Vatniks.

  8. Hyperborean says

    Nevermind, I was lumping the two each together.

    About first two, Karlin has posted data about how reducing in heavy drinking has led to improvement in life expectancy, although of course they can always get better.

    About second two, like many other below replacement level fertility countries the government encourages people to have more children but they need to work on their ability to shape cultural norms of people for birth rates to rise.

  9. Check on Wikipedia.

    On average (across a whole country), people marry younger in Russia than in the USA by 2 years, and younger than Sweden by 8.6 years.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_age_at_first_marriage

    Divorce rate in Russia, is higher than in America, but lower than four countries (Spain, Belgium, Denmark and Czech Republic).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_demography

    Labour force participation rates of women of Russia is higher than in US (and higher than the EU) – which is positive indication: it shows higher ambition, ability and energy of women.

    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS

    Countries with the lowest indicators in this area of labor force participation of women, are almost all less uncivilized and inactive areas in Northern Africa and Near East, where women have very high rates of obesity – measured by higher rates on the Body Mass Index. (Women in the Middle East and North Africa, have the highest rates on the Body Mass Index in the world, ahead even of the United States)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_body_mass_index

  10. Nice news from Russia.

  11. anony-mouse says

    Did you show up for it? Did anybody here? I know of one (ex?)-Chetnik who didn’t.

  12. Mitleser says
  13. Mitleser says

    The number of children families are prepared to have can only be increased by strong economic incentives. I don’t know whether the government is ready to introduce those.

    https://twitter.com/mmikolajp/status/1017022010642190337

    It’s the culture, stupid.

  14. It’s old religious pilgrims that made a pilgrimage for the 100 year anniversary – it created a lot of traffic jams, and they shut down a lot of streets so they could walk down the highway.

    At least it will add to tourism revenues, which are recording breaking for the year, and they are getting exercise from the walk.

    Kirill flew in by plane, holding some box of relics of Aleksandra Fyodorovna

    https://vk.com/videos-25280329?z=video-25280329_456241130

  15. I had some faint plans to visit Ekaterinburg around this time, which would have jived nicely with the memorial march, but the people I had been planning to go with had unexpected commitments.

    I’ll be meeting with a Western Alt Righter who was there in a few days.

  16. Guillaume Tell says

    AK was real. No legitimate ruler of Russia there has been, since N2 was murdered by the judeo-bolcheviks.

  17. Fran Macadam says

    God Bless this good news.

  18. If you think that the only “legitimate” rule for 2018 runs through a monarch there is no point in expending any energy on listening to what you have to say.

  19. I am a monarchist, so if that’s the sort of civil society emerging in Russia, I would be inclined to see that as positive.

    Either way, the murder of the Romanovs was one of the greatest crimes of the twentieth century, and that’s saying something.

  20. Guillaume Tell says

    Indeed. This is exactly what I think, thank you for the excellent summary.

  21. Baldwin Withersworth says

    If anyone wants a moderate hint that Orthodox Christianity is true, you need only look at modern Russia. They got hammered (and sickled) but they made it through and are the great bastion of sanity in this world. Glory to Russia!

  22. I hope that you get to visit Ekaterinburg. I’d like to visit it someday. I probably never will; but it would be nice.

  23. Maybe Katlin should make a post about the current state of the Russian economy?

  24. I see hijabs…

    #CreepingShariah

    Peace.

  25. silviosilver says

    Fuck monarchy. That was one of the few things the commies got right. Sic semper tyrannis.

    I think I’ll down a shot of vodka in commemoration of this wonderful event (the assassination, that is) – better late than never.

  26. yes, but what happened to the cartoon guy?

    I second that .

  27. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    Anatoly writes

    This is another example in which scum were dealt with using civilized, essentially American methods such as public pressure and consumer boycotts (as opposed to the blunt force of the law). And this is a good thing.

    ((They)) will try to put a stop to that. LOL obviously.

    Here in America, we used to have such a civil society working at a much higher level than it does now. But the fall didn’t take long, and was hard. The story of Hollywood is illustrative and key. Jews quickly took command of the white-invented cinema and began funding and producing most of the movies. Some were entertaining, but many were morally objectionable from a Christian perspective. Several Protestant groups, such as the Zondervan (Dutch Calvinist) people in Michigan, fought back, but it was the then-organized and cohesive civil society power of the American Catholic Church that really forced the Jews to back down and agree to the institution of the Hays Production Code. As an example of social power, when the Archbishop of Philadelphia told Hollywood (specifically Jacob Warner) to play ball or face a boycott in his archdiocese, they agreed. Because at that time, when an Archbishop in America asked his flock to do such a thing, they did it.

    Not coincidentally, the time of the HPC was also the time of what even secularists will call “the golden age” of Hollywood.

    The Jews “broke the code” in the 1960s with their movie called The Pawnbroker. This featured partial frontal nudity of a black woman. They passed it off as a movie about the Holocaust, which was a brilliant stratagem: criticize the scene, or the movie, and you’re “anti-Semitic.” Also, by this time, frankly, American Catholics had been weakened – partly by our own doing, partly by social engineering. But once we were compromised, the rest of the country was screwed too. (All of the main line Protestants went along with the Jews, while many of the more conservative Protestants (such as Baptists and Evangelicals) were lacking in historical and theological understanding of the Jewish Talmud, etc, and so unable to really fight back either)

    Just an example of what Russian moral civil society can expect to face.

  28. Jason Liu says

    None of this would count as civil society in the west, though. It’s not “punching up”, it’s glorifying hierarchy and monarchy.

    Real civil society is getting weepy over social minorities, pretending equality is a good thing, etc.

  29. Russia is just Upper Volta with nukes compared to China and its integrated manufacturing supply chain and year round ice free ports.

  30. This is interesting:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan

    The issue of three Russian-Mongol marriages may be traced down to the present. The most famous was the marriage of St. Fyodor the Black, later proclaimed a patron saint of Yaroslavl, to a daughter of the Mongol khan Mengu-Timur. Fyodor’s relations with the khan were idyllic: he spent more time in the Horde (where he was given extensive possessions) than in his capital. Male-line descendants of Fyodor’s marriage to the Tatar princess include all the later rulers of Yaroslavl and two dozens princely families (such as the Shakhovskoy, Lvov, or Prozorovsky, among others), which passed Genghis genes to other aristocratic families of Russia. After the 1917 revolution, most of these families fled, leaving no one in Russia.

  31. Hyperborean says

    Encouraging a culture of regicide is not a good thing.

    It is a lot harder to carry out a peaceful transition of power when the people on the throne know that their lives and probably the lives of their family depend on staying in power.

    In this aspect the late Soviet system of peaceful demotion was decent enough.

    While I generally consider the pre-Deng Chinese communist regime to have been crazier than their Soviet counterparts, at least they let Prince De and Emperor Pu Yi die of old age in relative peace.

  32. Hyperborean says

    How is this relevant to the topic?

  33. Felix Keverich says

    You may be missing the fact that there is barely any Jews left in Russia. The Jewry was the key ingredient in Russian Revolution, they ran the Soviet dissident movement, they were visible during Perestroika, but then the vast majority of them simply got up and left. You see plenty of Jews on the list of Russian billionaires, but they no longer have the numbers to staff a serious opposition movement. I would go so far as to say that Jewish power has imploded in Russia.

  34. Very interesting. Agree!

  35. Hyperborean says

    If you are going to start doing this again, at least try to be a little more convincing.

  36. It’s the culture, stupid.

    True, but dig deeper, ((who)) are the people that determine our current culture?

  37. So the question is why Burkino Faso (or any other black state) is not able to build nuclear weapons?

  38. More interesting info here:

    https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/pushkingenealogy.html

    A branch of the British Royal family is descended from Russia’s greatest writer, the part-Ethiopian Pushkin, who himself belonged to Russian aristocracy:

    https://cdni.rbth.com/rbthmedia/images/all/2017/06/05/pushkin-b.jpg

  39. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    Well, I sure hope you’re right! But I’m a pessimist about it. (Doesn’t mean the Russian people shouldn’t try, of course – one must always try)

  40. Mr. Hack says

    As long as the women you’re fooling don’t think of you as:

    Malo Vonialo

    you’ll be Okay! 🙂

  41. The Big Red Scary says

    Even if your conclusions might be sound, I find your arguments less than convincing. Choose your preferred utility function, which depends, among other things, on the percentage of women working outside the home.

    Why in the name of the god of optimization should this dependence be linear?

    Maybe Russian women are working more because they feel they have to, not because they want to. And even if they want to, why would you assume that more is better with respect to your utility function? In a precise sense, this is false for almost any utility function.

    Note also that this discussion can be repeated for men, thought the constraints will naturally differ.

  42. for-the-record says

    So the question is why Burkino Faso (or any other black state) is not able to build nuclear weapons?

    Because they are signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons?

  43. Thorfinnsson says

    we wuz muscovitez n sheet

  44. Thorfinnsson says

    The truth about Russian infatuation with tacky jewelry revealed??????

  45. Lars Porsena says

    Wait, are you saying the Romanov family was black, or that they built the pyramids?

    Or both?

  46. Felix Keverich says

    Not every country in the world is Jew-occupied, you know. Russia is not Jew-occupied. It’s not part of US-led “Global Liberal Order” either.

  47. Daniel Chieh says

    Personal experience is that I have never seen women more opposed to working in a “serious” job than Russian women. Purely ancedotal, but I’ve heard everything from “working is only for those who are ugly” to “working is for those who have failed at being women” to “working is only to buy lingerie.”

  48. Have you seen their church attendance rates? Not even getting into abortions, divorces, HIV infections, etc. I like Russia too, but it’s far from the reincarnation of Holy Rus that braindead Western “trads” believe it to be.

  49. Daniel Chieh says

    Maybe Katlin

    Meow.

  50. Daniel Chieh says

    Orthodox priests are also excellent curators of gold and silver timekeeping ornaments.

  51. Nick II was almost entirely non-Russian (127/128) in ancestry and was apathetic at best to the issues facing Russia’s masses. He did have unimpeachable character in his personal life, but it seems silly to build a cult of personality around him.

  52. This is great! A healthy patriarchal culture should build itself up so that it is culturally discouraged for women to aspire for jobs that are in the scope of male aptitude and competency while making allowances and room for those that are exceptions to the rule.

    Peace.

  53. Hyperborean says

    Perhaps they didn’t fancy eating grass?

  54. Daniel Chieh says

    Yes, maximizing lingerie gains is optimal.

  55. I think this has less to do with the family themselves than a rejection of what came after them. Also, the Tsar was the symbol (for better or for worse) of the glory days of the Russian Empire.

    I wonder what the scene will be like in Istanbul in a few years when the 100th anniversary of the abolishment of the Ottoman Empire comes up…

    Peace.

  56. Darn right – women should be encouraged to spend their money on beneficial things.

    What is up with them and shoes – I will never get it.

    Peace.

  57. Daniel Chieh says

    Well, if you had to choose between that cult of personality and this, what would you pick?

    http://newslanc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/saint_stalin1.jpg

  58. Daniel Chieh says

    Any comparison of Russia with an African country is so hilariously silly that its hardly worth any thought.

  59. Hyperborean says

    I know it is silly, but I’ve wondering why some rogue African dictator doesn’t just use his country’s natural resources to buy a dirty bomb.

    Then again, like Latin Americans, they seem to enjoy fighting civil wars a lot more than inter-state wars so even if they could acquire them it probably wouldn’t be worth it.

  60. AnonFromTN says

    Neither. Both Nick II and Stalin are guilty of heinous crimes. However, Stalin was not made a saint by the Russian Orthodox church, whereas Nick II was. When a criminal becomes a saint, something is seriously wrong with the church. Just read New Testament.

  61. AnonFromTN says

    It’s just as silly as the boilerplate phrase that Russian economy is the size of Italy’s. How often do we see Italy or any of its leaders mentioned in the MSM? The difference between mentions of Italy and Russia/Putin tells us all we need to know.

  62. I wonder what the scene will be like in Istanbul in a few years when the 100th anniversary of the abolishment of the Ottoman Empire comes up…

    I hope that President Erdogan will officialy turn the Turkish Republic into an Islamic Republic.
    All the other successors of the great Muslim gunpowder empires, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan are already Islamic Republics. Turkey must follow them.

  63. Daniel Chieh says

    Pretty much. The fundamental issues in African states are intense, overwhelming chaos on just about every level; I remember that Russian criminal mobs* were considered as highly reasonable and organized people to work with in comparison. To a significant extent, this makes them quite ineffective at even invading each other.

    The problems are really just ridiculous. Maybe Ethopia is different.

  64. John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan says

    Indeed, Russia is not totally part of the US-led New World Order.

    But I believe Mr. Karlin would confirm that there is a Jewish-inspired liberal “fifth column” within the Kremlin itself. Certainly The Saker has said that explicitly. It’s pretty obvious.

    Besides, other countries with no Jews within were taken under liberal domination by outside liberals and Jews. After all, a kingdom is always made weak by its own sins. Self-ownership is what the enemy fears most.

    Vigilance is a necessity, Jew or no Jew.

  65. Both Nick II and Stalin are guilty of heinous crimes.

    Only a crypto sovok could come up with that.

  66. Hyperborean says

    However, Stalin was not made a saint by the Russian Orthodox church, whereas Nick II was.

    For all its faults, at least the internal Russian Orthodox Church doesn’t decide whether someone should be canonised based on winning a popularity contest, unlike the KPRF.

    https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=468_1216760717

  67. Question: What do Russians think of Alexander II? I can’t say I’m well read-up on the matter but I got this impression that he was modernizing and liberalizing (in a good way) Russia at a tremendous pace, until some retard proto-communists assassinated him, leading to the reign of Sasha the third who on the other hand was a reactionary/staunch conservative and undid a lot of this, and by doing so ultimately set the stage for the growth of future protest movements which culminated in you-know-what.

  68. I choose the error 403 img you linked

  69. Despite his rhetoric to the contrary, I doubt Erdogan really wants a restoration: he has power that Ottoman sultans could only dream of, people forget that monarchies were infinitely less repressive than what came after.

  70. He is a saint because he was martyred, not because he was an incredible ruler.

  71. Says the guy who makes the same silly arguments about Ukraine.

  72. Wow – that’s true – never thought of that connection before.

    Turkey must follow them.

    Aye, aye Captain!

    Well, the turn out in Istanbul on that date will determine whether that might become a reality or is a pipe dream at this stage of development.

    Peace.

  73. Good points. Nothing, but nothing can beat the modern technocratic nation-state at that game.

    Peace.

  74. Hyperborean says

    Question: What do Russians think of Alexander II?

    I am not an ethnic Russian so my opinion may not be relevant, but I have fond impressions of the Tsar-Liberator.

  75. AnonFromTN says

    Nobody is as blind as someone who refuses to see. When people like that call you names, you know that you are right. I’d be very much worried by the praise from those people.

  76. AnonFromTN says

    Quite a few people were hanged on the verdicts of Nuremberg Tribunal. Should they be beautified, too?

  77. AnonFromTN says

    I didn’t notice any mention of Ukraine (or Burkina Faso, for that matter) in this paper or comments. Did I miss something?

  78. Arguments are the same and of equal worth.

  79. Were those ones martyred for the Christian faith?

  80. Mitleser says

    I think he was decent, but overrated.

    He was a competent Tsar. If his heirs would have continued his track record Russia would probably have done OK.

    On the down side of his accomplishments:

    1. He passed up on the chance to eliminate AH as agreat power by declining to pariticipate in Napoleon III’s war of 1859. In retrospect, it’s fairly clear he could at the very least have managed to gain Galicia, and quite possibly separate Hungary from the Habsburgs. He had the same chance of accomplishing this in 1866 and screwed the pooch again.

    This was a particularly bad screwup because gaining Galicia might have enabled him to make concessions to Polish national feelings from a position of strength- and wrongfoot Prussia given it’s own restive Polish minority.

    I started writing a TL where he takes a different course in “A heartbeat away from greatness”

    2. One reason he failed to do so was that instead of wrapping upo the Caucasian war in 1859, he gave in to Dmitry Milutin’s insisitnce to carry out an Ethnic cleansing of the Circassians- which cost a great deal of blood and treasure, left the region economically devastated, and held down nearly a quarter of Russia’s millitary force until 1864.

    3. He failed to pre-empt the Polish revolution of 1863 via negotiations, or utilize Lithuanian national feelings as a counterpoise to Polish ones.

    (granted, many Polish expectations, especially regarding the Eastern frontier of any Polish autonomy were unreasonable).

    After crushing the revolution he failed to take steps which would have limited the impact of any future revolt (Eg; large scale ethnic cleansing of Polish speaking Catholics east of the Bug into the Russian interior)

    4. He failed to join and fascilitate a common Anglo-French front to mediate the Holstein question. Such a front might have settled the issue in a manner which would not have facilitated later Prussian dominance and German unification.

    5. He chose a nearly blind Pro-Prussian position out of misplaced gratitude for Prussia’s neautrality during the Crimean war. Granted, that stopped him from being involved in the disastorous 1870 war (Prussia’s army so outmatched everyone else at that point that any Russian involvement would have been disastorous) but there were plenty of opportunities prior to that to limit German unification. He repeatedly backed Prussia against France when geopolitical facts should have led him to do the exact opposite.

    6. All of the above are excusable foreign policy errors. His greatest failing, however, was in the emancipation of the serfs.

    What Russia needed was a land reform which would either:

    a. Transform Russia’s nobles from a rentier class to Prussian/British style estate managers who live on their estates, know them, are familiar with modern agronomy and the related sciences and invest most of the profits of these estates back into the estates.

    The way to do this would have been to grant the serfs freedom and minimal working conditions, but no land torn from the noble’s estates. Social unrest among the new rural proletariast would have had to be met with a combination of state subsidized immigration to the North Caucaus, Volga lands and Siberia and repression.

    b. Eliminate the rural gentry as a class, as was done in France, and divide their lands between individual peasent owners.

    Given the makeup of Russia’s bueacracy this would have been very difficult. But the blow could have been cushioned with time-limited subsidies.

    c. Nationalize all land in the empire, retrain willing nobles and retain them as managers.

    #a was fairly easily acheivable. But the Tsar ended up choosing a middle path between #a and #b which contained the worst of all worlds.

    It left land hungry peasents ineffeciently and individually working communaly and periodically distributed, but not managed, farms on inadequate amounts of land next to remaining Great estates which contained the better portion, and better land, of the old agricutural units.

    It further saddeled the state with a massive debt to the landowners which it in turn saddled on the ex-serfs… who were also made the sole taxpayers while the landed nobles were granted state loans under favorable conditions and de-facto tax exemption on their remaining lands.

    As Japan, and even Romania, showed this path was by no means necessary. Nor was it driven by any sort of unique Russian cultural heritage. Contrary to Myth the Mir was little different from mediveal peasant communes elsewhere in europe. It’s edification by the state was.

    7. The Russo Turkish was was intially mismanaged within adequate forces devoted to achieving it’s objectives and with the help of Romania refused. As a result, instead of approaching Istanbul in one or two months, while Western Sentiment was stil outraged at the Bulgarian horrors, Russian forces first meandered on the Danumbian plains and withdrew back to Odessa for the winter, and then bogged down in the siege of Plevna.

    Neither outcome was inevietable given the correlation of economic and millitary forces.

    8. Much of the screwup in the Russo Turkish war flowed from the manner in which Alexander II abandoned Dmitry Milutin and his pro-reform Clique before they could complete their reform.

    He often balanced the reform clique against the “Planter party” instead of backing the reform group to the hilt.

    https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/an-execution-preempted-a-lethal-otsu-incident-russian-empire-centered-tl.369488/page-6#post-11505441

  81. for-the-record says

    Personal experience is that I have never seen women more opposed to working in a “serious” job than Russian women.

    Can’t speak for the situation today, but when I worked in Russia/Ukraine a couple of decades ago I came across many women in “serious” jobs, often of a quite technical nature (engineering director of airport, etc.).

  82. Gerard1234 says

    Says the guy who makes the same silly arguments about Ukraine.

    hahahaha…….errr…..those are prefectly normal, accurate facts about Ukraine you dumb prick….hence why an imbecile like you is on here 24/7……as you are a POS liar with nothing else to do in life

    Ukraine is a failed state that has destroyed it’s economy, waged war on its own people, cant govern itself ( proven many times before the maidan, but still) , has numerous social and infrastructure problems…..African style health and economic problems….it is the cesspit of Europe you cretin

    It’s beyond moronic to many any sort of equivalence between Russian and Ukraine you prick. Russia is a successful, democratic, stable country…..Ukraine is a shockingly failed, artificial state that can’t hold itself together….forced to beg for a few billion in gas transit fees…..because without it their idiot economy collapses due to the hundreds of billions they have deliberately stopped earning from Russia.

    The average Muscovite earns 5 times more money than the average man in Lvov, on top of that they consume much, much more fuel and energy……and pay alot less for that fuel and energy, they pay only 13% income tax, compared to the 20% in the country with an African level wage system….on top of that the Russian authorities at federal and regional level makes a tonne more positive use of that 13% tax, than the Ukrop government makes with 55% more pay from the 20% tax rate you thick POS!
    Then there is the far superior public transport, much superior benefits for mothers and pay for pensioners, schools, hospitals, much less requirement to bribe….and the positive of not living life as a fucked in the head Ukrop.

    Add that together and it’s like earning 50 times more

  83. Daniel Chieh says

    For what it is worth, two of the three had jobs. People do say something and do another, with brilliant self-justifications.

  84. Ukraine is a failed state that has destroyed it’s economy, waged war on its own people, cant govern itself as numerous social and infrastructure problems…..African style health and economic problems

    Same argument based in similar methods are applied towards Russia and believed by clueless Western Russophobes. I suppose they can’t be blamed for believing that nonsense. But Russians, who have witnessed it about their own country, falling for the same nonsense about Ukraine – that is really something.

    The average Muscovite earns 5 times more money than the average man in Lvov,

    And cost of living in Moscow is about 3 times higher than in Lviv. So much of this difference is washed out.

    Here is a ride on a tram through the entire city of Lviv (not only the center), from 2015 when the economy was at its worst:

    Truly another Africa 🙂

  85. Well, they are lauding him as the “last legitimate Russian head of state.” You said you didn’t like a Yanukovych partly b/c he’s not an ethnic Ukrainian, but the non-Russian/Slavic Nick is ok?

  86. What do Russians think of Alexander II?

    The greatest Russian historian (and a contemporary of Alexander) S. M. Solovyov about Alexander II

    Extremes-are made easy; it was easy to suppress freedom under Nicholas, it was easy to take the opposite direction and hastily-frantically weaken the power under Alexander II; but to slow down the carriage with this hasty descent was extremely difficult. It would have been easy with government wisdom, but there was no wisdom. Transformations are carried out successfully Peter the Great; but fail if reforms are carried out by Louis XVI and Alexander II. A reformer such as Peter the Great with the steep descent keeps horses in a strong hand and the carriage is safe ; but the reformers of the second kind will be allowed horses at full speed from the mountain, but do not have the power to restrain horses , and because this carriage crushed“.

    As we post factum know, Solovyov was completely right

  87. AnonFromTN says

    Was Nick II martyred for the Christian faith? That’s something new. Even Russian Orthodox Church, well known for its lies, did not claim that. LOL.

  88. Monarchy preceded nationalism so Nicholas’ situation was okay.

  89. Was Nick II martyred for the Christian faith? That’s something new. Even Russian Orthodox Church, well known for its lies, did not claim that.

    You are full of ignorant nonsense. Remember when you made the funny claim that no US state had English as an official language?

    The Romanovs were canonized as passion-bearers but Orthodox sources also refer to them as martyrs:

    http://www.orthochristian.com/105165.html

  90. Bragadocious says

    As this smart video demonstrates, monarchy and communism are both forms of oligarchy. Rule by the few. (Noting that the “withering away of the state,” Marx’s final stage, has never been achieved in practice)

    To suggest they’re very different is kinda silly.

    https://youtu.be/JdS6fyUIklI

  91. Truly another Africa 🙂

    Ukraine will suffer the same fate as places such as France and Britain, only at an accelerated rate. Because it is now a puppet (a very loyal puppet) to the US and Brussels it will be forced to accept the third world masses, starting with a trickle and then becoming an unstoppable torrent. The low white birth rates and the endless Sub Saharan growth means that within 30 years Kiev will be majority non white, truly another Africa.

  92. AnonFromTN says

    Well, self-proclaimed democracy is also an effective oligarchy, as Princeton scientific study showed:
    https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
    http://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/is-america-an-oligarchy
    So, in that it is not very different from monarchy and communism.

  93. Mitleser says

    America is a federal republic, not a democracy.
    People who say otherwise are suspect.

  94. Patricus says

    Read about the revitalization of the Russian Ortodox religion. Since the early 1990s about 30 million Russians converted from atheists to Orthodox. More than 10,000 churches have been built. That should help with all the problems like divorce, abortion and substances abuse. Hope I live long enough to witness a Russian rebirth.

  95. AnonFromTN says

    How come then Russia is accused of “interfering with our democracy” is we have none?

  96. Daniel Chieh says

    Russophobia is reality-optional.

  97. anonymous coward says

    Have you seen their church attendance rates?

    Only post-Christian societies “attend church”.

    Christian countries partake of the Holy Sacrament instead.

    Russia is one of the few countries where the Sacraments are still taken very seriously. Coupled with a degenerate westernized society that means few people actually have the fortitude and credentials to partake.

  98. anonymous coward says

    Wow, you’ve convinced me. Ukraine stronk.

    You should go back.

  99. Toronto Russian says

    LOL at obsessive discussions of marriage and baby-making when our host is a 30-year-old bachelor who seems to have no intention to change his way of life (maybe I’m wrong, if so than I respect you AK for keeping your private life out of the spotlight). And at extolling the virtues of a film censorship code on a forum full of Game of Thrones watchers.

    Re: monarchy, I don’t believe in the divine right of kings and such, but it’s nice to have some well-dressed well-mannered people as public figures. Better see Princess Kate on celebrity mag covers than the Kardashians. Also, it’d be a waste if all this beautiful jewelry just lay in a museum without ever being worn.
    https://ru-royalty.livejournal.com/tag/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5%20%D1%8E%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5%20%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F

  100. silviosilver says

    A tram circulating around the better areas is not proof of much. You can make Luanda and Lagos look first world by restricting footage to certain parts of the city. Watch:

    The differences between Moscow and Lviv are hardly a wash. Moscow mightn’t be five times wealthier, but it’s a safe bet the average denizen of Moscow is at least twice as well off as the average denizen of Lviv.

  101. the 100th anniversary of the abolishment of the Ottoman Empire

    Arguably an even greater tragedy than the destruction of the Russian Empire.

  102. Thorfinnsson says

    Re: monarchy, I don’t believe in the divine right of kings and such, but it’s nice to have some well-dressed well-mannered people as public figures. Better see Princess Kate on celebrity mag covers than the Kardashians. Also, it’d be a waste if all this beautiful jewelry just lay in a museum without ever being worn.

    I certainly don’t approve of Kim K (mudsharking, orbital thottism, pornography, etc…), but if reports are to be believed that the royals decided to deliberately snub Trump then she’s much less childish than the British royals other than Queen Elizabeth II. Or closer to home, most of her fellow celebrities.

    She’s kind of modern royalty for a debased age.

  103. I’ll be vague and state that I am in the medical profession at the doctoral level. For this reason I would live in neither Russia (I had the opportunity to be hired in Moscow, for 1/18 of my salary in the USA before the ruble devaluation lol) or Ukraine, or anywhere in Eastern Europe.

    However if I was in IT, as is one of my cousins who returned to Lviv from the USA, I would certainly prefer a place like Lviv.

  104. Thorfinnsson says

    In fairness to Russia (let alone the Ukraine) American doctors are grossly overpaid by global standards, including when measured against other highly industrialized countries like Germany. The absurd American system of forcing doctors to first take undergraduate degrees no doubt contributes.

    Even pediatricians, who are just glorified daycare minders, earn salaries comparable to junior corporate executives.

    They’re also accorded completely undeserved social prestige and prominence instead of being treated like the contemptible white-robed terrorist quacks that they are.

    Plumbers do far more for public health than “medicine” (though they too are specialists at extortion).

  105. She’s kind of modern royalty for a debased age.

    She’s the kind of royalty our society deserves. And there certainly isn’t much to choose between the degenerate Kardashians and the degenerate Windsors.

    I’m very much a monarchist but we really need a much better class of royals than we have at present. It’s not just the Windsors, although they’re the worst of the lot. The European royals in general seem pretty worthless. That’s the problem with constitutional monarchies or with the depraved constitutional arrangements that the Brits have. They inevitably produce degenerate royals.

  106. Plumbers do far more for public health than “medicine”

    Agreed. Medicine has advanced a little since the days when doctors used leeches, but not much.

    The worst thing about the medical profession has been the empire-building, the constant drive to turn moral problems (like sexual perversions and drug abuse) into medical problems.

    Doctors are of little use. Psychiatrists are no use at all. Like academics in the “humanities” area they need to be moved into useful employment, like digging ditches and cleaning toilets.

  107. Thorfinnsson says

    Once you adjust for the decline in deaths due to infectious disease (thank you plumbers), there has been no improvement in life expectancy in the past century.

    Now doctors can’t be blamed for the increase in sedentary lifestyles or the decrease in sleep, but they can be blamed for:

    • Low-fat diet quackery (now fighting a desperate rearguard action with the “healthy fats” canard)
    • The lipid hypothesis crankery, in particular the absurd obsession with low serum cholesterol (rearguard action now focused on LDL)
    • Promotion of industrial seed oils over animal fat
    • Bomb calorimeter crankery
    • Endurance cardio rubbish
    • Formula over breastmilk (a possession since abandoned, probably just due to fear of women)
    • Hydration cuckoldry
    • Breakfast cuckoldry
    • Saltophobia
    • Angioplasty
    • Brain stents
    • Statins

    The profession now appears to be falling for the “plant-based” diet scam pushed by extremist religious fanatics (vegans).

    What did they get right? Tobacco.

  108. A tram circulating around the better areas is not proof of much.

    I deliberately picked that video because it shows a very large and representative cross-section of Lviv. It’s the entire route of a tram line. Indeed, it only briefly goes into the nicest areas in the center. So the video shows how the city is. Or was, in 2015, at the height of the post-Maidan slump. It has only gotten better since then.

    You can make Luanda and Lagos look first world by restricting footage to certain parts of the city.

    In Nigeria the top 10% have 18 times the income of the bottom 10%. In Ukraine the top 10% have only 6 times more income than the bottom 10%. So typical Nigeria is bound to be a lot more different than elite Nigeria, than typical Ukraine is different from elite Ukraine. So even if I had chosen to just present nicer parts of Lviv (I did not), it would have been more representative of Lviv as a whole than the nice parts of Lagos are of Lagos as a whole.

    The differences between Moscow and Lviv are hardly a wash. Moscow mightn’t be five times wealthier, but it’s a safe bet the average denizen of Moscow is at least twice as well off as the average denizen of Lviv.

    I didn’t say the differences were a wash. There are many more luxury cars and boutiques per capita in Moscow than in Lviv. But Lviv is probably nicer and offers a better quality of life than most Russian cities of its size.

    Which is more pleasant, Lviv:

    https://varlamov.ru/1085938.html

    Or Chelyabinsk:

    https://varlamov.ru/1487700.html

    Or Ufa:

    https://varlamov.ru/1318237.html

    Or Yaroslavl:

    https://varlamov.ru/1314742.html

    There is Vladivostock:

    https://varlamov.ru/1091455.html

    Very impressive bridge, and lavish waterfront. Might be better. Though regular neighborhoods don’t look much better.

    The Russian cities have more money on a macro level, reflected in large-scale building projects, but at the street or individual level they don’t show much of an advantage to Lviv.

  109. In fairness to Russia (let alone the Ukraine) American doctors are grossly overpaid by global standards, including when measured against other highly industrialized countries like Germany.

    It’s good, but you have to factor in malpractice insurance and student loans. But people in medical professions in Eastern Europe are underpaid to a much greater degree than they are overpaid in the USA.

    The absurd American system of forcing doctors to first take undergraduate degrees no doubt contributes.

    Correct. Rather than, essentially, two bachelors’ degrees, a single six year degree would make more sense.

    Even pediatricians, who are just glorified daycare minders, earn salaries comparable to junior corporate executives.

    Spoken like someone who never had an actually sick kid who needed real help.

  110. Agreed. Medicine has advanced a little since the days when doctors used leeches, but not much.

    There is places that are still like this. In Africa. If you suffer from a serious illness try your luck there, if you think the treatment will be no worse.

  111. Do you really think that if you came to a hospital in 1920 your odds of survival would the same as they are now, for the same condition?

  112. Thorfinnsson says

    It’s good, but you have to factor in malpractice insurance and student loans. But people in medical professions in Eastern Europe are underpaid to a much greater degree than they are overpaid in the USA.

    I can’t comment on Eastern Europe obviously, but it doesn’t seem these countries are lacking in trained doctors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_physicians

    Of course I’ve heard communist countries, for purposes of statistical inflation, classified people as physicians who in America are would be considered physicians’ assistants or even nurse practitioners.

    Facilities and medical capital equipment are of course a different matter, and no doubt they’re lacking there.

    Student loans and malpractice insurance seem to have successfully proletarianized the practice of medicine, whereas once most doctors were independent professionals–who presumably had more freedom to challenge the status quo.

    The byzantine complexity of medical billing no doubt plays a role as well. Who has time?

    Correct. Rather than, essentially, two bachelors’ degrees, a single six year degree would make more sense.

    This is the system in Sweden, and generally medical students have already received excellent scientific training in technical gymnasiums prior to entering medical school.

    Spoken like someone who never had an actually sick kid who needed real help.

    Prescribing amoxicillin to a kid with an ear infection or bronchitis is hardly impressive.

    Of course if we didn’t heard children into prisons for 250 days a year with other children of questionable hygiene there might be a lot fewer of these infections.

    And let’s not forget that Americans (and probably many other people) have a very bad habit (reinforced by doctors themselves) of running to the doctor at the first sign of trouble instead of waiting it out. Almost no medical treatment lacks adverse consequences, so this itself creates more problems.

    That said it’s hard to blame doctors for giving patients what they want. If you fight the patient on this you’ll just suffer a bad Yelp review or maybe even a lawsuit.

  113. Thorfinnsson says

    Do you really think I’d reduce myself to getting ill, let alone visiting a hospital? I never get sick, I only get stronger.

    Medical treatment has of course improved in many areas…most notably with respect to infectious diseases (thanks Alexander Fleming).

    This is balanced by drastic increases in the “diseases of civilization”. Cancer, coronary heart disease, type-two diabetes (formerly called adult onset diabetes…), etc.

    The medical profession has played a role in the increase of some of these diseases and thus deserves harsh criticism.

    Some things were also better treated before the war than they are today, surprisingly. First-line treatment for type two diabetes in those times was a ketogenic diet, which today most of the profession fights. Urinary tract infections were successfully fought without resort to antibiotics using the same treatment, as BHT is bactericidal. Modern medicine has in fact made this problem worse thanks to its hydration cucking (dilute urine reduces the bactericidal effect of urine).

  114. I generally agree with your comment.

    I can’t comment on Eastern Europe obviously, but it doesn’t seem these countries are lacking in trained doctors

    In eastern Europe it is often a family tradition and a matter of pride, to work as a doctor and not get paid much for it. In Soviet times -“I get paid less than a bus driver but it proves my commitment and passion to medicine.”

    Great, but no thanks.

    In practice a lot of people simply leave. I know people who graduated from medical institutes but run businesses having nothing to do with medicine, once they have families to support. One guy in Ukraine runs a construction company, one in Russia runs a business selling high-end home entertainment systems to very rich people (they fly him to their places in the Alps to set things up). The latter guy was really brilliant in his field, it’s a loss to Russia that he doesn’t practice his specialty.

    Of course I’ve heard communist countries, for purposes of statistical inflation, classified people as physicians who in America are would be considered physicians’ assistants or even nurse practitioners

    I once gave a lecture at one of the medical institutes in Moscow – the kids were very bright, no less so than any American students. It may be different in the provinces. The system of medical training has also become incredibly corrupt. While Russia has generally improved greatly in most areas, this is one area where it has gotten worse, not better, under Putin.

  115. Medical treatment has of course improved in many areas…most notably with respect to infectious diseases (thanks Alexander Fleming).

    This is balanced by drastic increases in the “diseases of civilization”. Cancer, coronary heart disease, type-two diabetes (formerly called adult onset diabetes…), etc.

    The latter reflect social problems (and increased life expectancy) not medical practice. You would still be better off being treated for these problems now than in 1950, or 1920, even though the incidence has increased since those times.

  116. Daniel Chieh says

    In eastern Europe it is often a family tradition and a matter of pride, to work as a doctor and not get paid much for it. In Soviet times -”I get paid less than a bus driver but it proves my commitment and passion to medicine.”

    A Hungarian radiologist I know did not seem to share that passion; he mostly talks semi-endlessly about his dreams to leave one day for Germany or Japan so that he will be able to be paid four times as much. And in a place that no one will leave trash in his office, apparently.

  117. Thorfinnsson says

    This is a half-truth. My comment #108 lists many of the things medicine is complicit in: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/there-is-a-russian-civil-society-but-you-might-not-like-it/#comment-2423749

    The best you can say is that medicine itself is corrupted by industry, and thus doctors are only partly to blame. Damning with faint praise.

    A major issue with medicine is it attracts people who want high status and high incomes, but they want that to be guaranteed by credentials and regulatory bodies.

    Such incentives are unlikely to attract creative people or rebels.

    Indeed challenging the status quo can cost you your license (sometimes rightly so, of course). Australian regulatory authorities have been trying to strip a physician of his license because he prescribes low-carb high-fat diets to diabetics.

  118. Guillaume Tell says

    I am following-up on your previous response to me, but in this new thread, because (1) I did not have time to answer earlier in the older thread, whose comments section is mostly likely dead by now, and (2) I would like to elaborate on these medical/health comments that you made here. But later.

    Nassim Taleb likes to state that his politics differ based on scale. He claims to be:
    Federal level–Libertarian
    State level–Republican
    Local level–Democrat
    Family level–Socialist
    I don’t entirely agree (Taleb has apparently not noticed massively corrupt urban Democratic machines in America) but it’s a good way of thinking about things.

    I did not know he had made this sort of classification, but for sure this is the kind of subsidiarity I have in mind (in my previous comment I was even saying Communist for family-level and I think it describes more the reality of what happens in a normal, healthy, well-functioning dad/mom/many kids family)

    The German concept of the “Social Market” is not bad. Capitalism, discipline, efficiency, and private enterprise. But also powerful labor unions as a check on capitalist greed and universal social insurance (with skin in the game) to insulate ordinary workers from the business cycle, illness, and old age.

    Yes, and it is not a coincidence if the main thinker behind Quadragesimo Anno (1931) was a German Jesuit, Fr Heinrich Pesch. I think the (western) Federal Republic of Germany was the closest thing to those principles. Maybe Switzerland too. And I also Franco’s Spain, but being a Franquist myself I am of course terribly biased here.

    The issues with Social Democracy are the punitive taxation rates, benefits for parasites, hordes of government bureaucrats, and of course thinking that benign intentions matter more than outcomes.

    Agreed. Modern Roman Catholicism has departed from the sound principles embodied in Quadragesimo Anno, and has turned into non-sensical socialist claptrap since Vatican II. Most latin bishops are complete leftists. The exceptions being the SSPX and the likes.

    The issue with Protestantism is that by stressing a personal relationship with God that people begin to question everything and start applying the Bible (and ultimately other things) in novel ways. It’s not surprising that later in life Luther himself endorsed burning heretics and allied with the Princes.

    Yes. This is exactly why I decided to go East (Eastern Orthodoxy) as opposed to West (Protestantism) when I departed Rome (Latin Catholicism).

    The problem was solved on the Continent by putting the state in charge of the church, but the problem continued to fester in England with its nonconformists. Then of course a ship full of post-millenarian religious fanatics departed England for the New World to land at Plymouth Rock. The rest, as they say, is history.
    Republicanism presents the exact same sort of problem.

    My own observations in the US have lead me to believe that SJW-ism is, essentially, puritanism without Jesus Christ.

    In fact it was the Anglos, with their commitment to empiricism, who invented scientific psychology. William James.
    In fairness to the Jews quite a number of them were involved in dismantling Freudianism, most notably Karl Popper.

    Good points. But it’s fun to blame the Jews.

    I’ve started using the term bioleninism over the unwieldy term “Cultural Marxism”. It was invented by the blogger Spandrell, an American who is learned Far East Hand. His blog can be found here: https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/
    Liberalism has degenerated into bioleninism, but it was frankly flawed from the very beginning.

    I will consider it. But please let me read a bit on that blog that you indicated, first 🙂

    The Declaration of Independence is a pack of lies and The Rights of Man is pagan nonsense not even fit for use as toilet paper.

    Strong statement, for an American! Especially a conservative American! Not that I disagree (but TBH I do not know much about either document.

    I don’t know much about Calvin, but Calvinist denominations which still practice Calvinist theology (i.e. the modern Presbyterian Church doesn’t count) seem to be very healthy demographically and psychologically. Certainly Calvinism sustained the Afrikaners well through centuries of struggle against nature, the hottentots, the Zulus, the British Empire, and finally the entire world. If not for Anglo voters the Conservative Party (KP) would’ve taken over the government and there would still be a volkstaat in Pretoria today.

    Yes but weren’t these Anglo voters themselves (by definition) end-products of the British Empire and, therefore, ultimately products of Calvinism? This goes back to the discussion of SJW-ism as latter-day puritanism.

    Spaniards and Portuguese are plainly inferior to Anglos, and widespread miscegenation did the rest. Not much of a mystery.

    Please! Henry the Navigator! Ferdinand & Isabella! Miguel de Cervantes! Francisco de Quevedo! Francisco Franco!

    The Puritans arrived as in tact families, and the ambitious planters who settled Virginia and the Carolinas imported wives from Barbados and England rather then reduce themselves to taking Indian wives (John Smith aside).

    Tocqueville made that point exactly; and the empirical evidence confirms that. This is proof that racism is good and healthy. Hernan Cortez was wrong on that one.

    Quebec is successful as well thanks to Louis XIV wisely sending French brides to the rough trappers, fur traders, explorers, and soldiers living there. The first white men to explore the part of the United States I live in were Frenchmen. We of course also have Americans of French descent in Louisiana–the cajuns, who are renowned for their cuisine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Prudhomme

    I went to New Orleans once (for work). I enjoyed the cuisine there. But there were too many blacks and the place seemed like a magnet for low-class American Whites who like to be able to get drunk in the street and not be arrested for it. And Quebec has become a leftist cesspool of course. At that point the US should just take over and eradicate all remnants of French culture there which is only an excuse to be a leftist by now. They don’t care about Catholicism any more (which was the raison d’être of Quebec in fact).

    In fairness to the Iberians, much of their portion of the New World was both densely settled and had very mountainous regions impenetrable to Europeans which allowed for demographic recovery of the Indians.

    And the high plateaus and dense tropical forests probably helped them survive the otherwise deadly (to them) Old World diseases.

    EVs have some advantages to be fair. Superior torque, lower operating costs (especially for those with no need to drive long distances), and of course zero emissions.
    Gasoline and diesel aren’t practical to store because the fuel additives break down and render the fuel useless. You can add STA-BIL, but even fuel with stable can’t be stored for more than two years. One can store kerosene however.

    I have some practical experience with this, which you may find interesting; I live part of the year in a rural area, relatively far from a gas station, and even farther from a reasonably-priced one. As a result I maintain permanent storage of diesel at the house with a couple of 200-liter diesel fuel tanks which I fill at the gas station every once in a while (I have a “fuel transportation permit” due to the fact that I own a tractor which I cannot drive to the gas station). Of course I do rotate the diesel fuel and use a funnel equipped with a filter when refilling either of the cars and tractor we have. But it has happened that I kept the diesel over the winter as a result of not being at the place for several months in a row. As a result some of the fuel had been in there for probably about a year. No problem was observed with any of the engines (although for sure that would not be something good to do regularly, especially with modern diesel cars).
    Also another point of data: I store unleaded gasoline (98) in 20-liter jerrycans in my cellar, with stabilizing additive, for my two-stroke engines (gardening/forestry equipment). They regularly “over-winter” as very often I have leftovers from one Fall to the following Spring. And yet I have never had any problem.
    So my argument here is that in comparison to an EV which depends on regular re-charging, this give a whole lot of safety margin in case things go bad (e.g. major power outages due to strikes or other civil disturbances.

    Tesla’s success wouldn’t be a bad thing for America. It’s the only brand in my lifetime which has been able to crack the previously invincible luxury brands of Germany, Inc.
    The Japanese have failed utterly, and despite Cadillac radically reinventing themselves no one seems to care.

    For America certainly; but from what I know, Musks seems to have a massive following amongst fags, hipsters, vegans, and other assorted leftist degenerates. For that reason it would be nice to see him fail, just to ruin these people’s day.

    If nothing else Musk certainly has brass balls for choosing to enter the world’s most brutally competitive and capital-intensive industry and radically reinventing it.

    Which makes it even stranger that so many liberal faggots would have a cult-like adoration for him.

    Will continue to answer as time permits.

  119. https://varlamov.ru…..

    Varlamov is an odious person working for money. It is such Pietro Aretino specializing оn cities. This is best not to rely on Varlamov

  120. Guillaume Tell says

    Doctors are of little use.

    When I was in my early 20s I had a serious mountaineering (backcountry skiing to be more precise) accident. Was rescued by a SAR team including an ER doctor who stabilized me on site. I would be dead by now if it had not been for her. Since then I have been able to reproduce my genetic material six times. How does that count for doctors’ use, from an evolutionary POV?

    Psychiatrists are no use at all.

    All statistics indicate that modern psychiatry has reduced institutionalization of the insane, by several orders of magnitude. I recently read an interesting story about Temple Grandin, an autistic-spectrum woman, who is hated by the vegan sh!ts, because she very intelligently supports meat-eating and the practice of slaughtering animals in this purpose (albeit in a humane way). In order to function she must take anti-depressant medication regularly. So what?

    By the way I have read also in this very blog that its own host, AK, had to take some anti-depressant medication at some point of his life due to a burnout of some sort. In the past he might have just committed suicide.

    It is not because many psychiatrists are Jews that we must discard the entire field. Now, Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis is totally useless–and in fact even a net negative on mental health.

  121. Daniel Chieh says

    In order to function she must take anti-depressant medication regularly. So what?

    Mind control has its downsides. For example, being mind control.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4779454/The-drug-cure-xenophobia.html

  122. Guillaume Tell says

    I agree. Mind control is bad.

    But clinical depression is very bad too. Oftentimes lethal and at the very least severely debilitating.

    One of my close relatives has suffered from depression for a very long time — in fact through her teenage and young adult years. Flunked college, could not hold he job, went to “rest clinics” a few times, and was generally miserable. Her life has completely changed since she has been under SSRIs. Most likely she will be for the rest of her life. She is know able to hold a job and even has two kids who seem to be doing fine.

    What I am saying is that we should use nuance when dealing with these matters. Yes it is true that psychiatry has been hijacked to some extent, and to serve evil purposes (like attempting to normalize faggotry). But also it is doing some good, and I know first-hand of some such cases. Again: it’s about nuance here.

    Also please note that the molecule mentioned in the article is oxytocin, which is not typically used by psys but by ob-gyns to induce labor in particular when the little fellow does not want to get out 🙂

  123. Hyperborean says

    Which makes it even stranger that so many liberal faggots would have a cult-like adoration for him.

    Perhaps not so strange:
    https://nordic.businessinsider.com/list-similarities-between-silicon-valley-soviet-union-goes-viral-twitter-2018-7

  124. Guillaume Tell says

    His parallels are good indeed. A satire which — as any good satire must have — contains many elements of truth. Thanks for the link (I don’t use Twitter and was not aware of this viral joke).

  125. Only post-Christian societies “attend church”.

    Thanks, that made my day

  126. All statistics indicate that modern psychiatry has reduced institutionalization of the insane, by several orders of magnitude.

    Unfortunately many of the lunatics who used to be institutionalised are now schoolteachers, social workers, journalists, academics, writers, film-makers and other assorted social parasite professions.

    If we still locked the loonies away we wouldn’t have to deal with feminism and LGBTQWERTY activism. It is quite possible that the single biggest factor behind the social and cultural collapse of the West is psychiatry.

    Having people walking the streets drugged to the eyeballs with truly evil drugs like SSRIs has not been a social benefit either.

  127. But clinical depression is very bad too.

    Clinical depression is basically self-pity.

  128. silviosilver says

    I deliberately picked that video because it shows a very large and representative cross-section of Lviv.

    It may well be representative (though I disagree), but my point was that it’s insufficient evidence for the point you were making, since even cities that are much poorer (not least for being so much more drastically unequal) can still be made to look impressive.

    I’ve probably done more touring of cities around the globe with Google Street View than most people, so I have a fair idea of how things look in the countries that interest me. For such a statistically poor country, I must admit, Ukraine, on average, looks much nicer than the vast majority of Latin America. I’d say only Chilean cities and some (but not all) Argentine cities look nicer. I’d rate Ukraine even ahead of the wealthy south of Brazil, on the grounds that vast chunks of those cities look utterly miserable to a degree far less frequently encountered in Ukraine.

    Comparing Ukraine to other former communist states, there is not a great deal of difference, and it’s certainly not the case that Ukraine comes off second best – particularly not when the comparison is the Balkans. You certainly wouldn’t guess that the economic disparity is great as it is by the way the cities look. Most cities in this part of the world follow a common pattern: an often impressive city center which is quickly surrounded by drab arrangements of commie blocks, with only one or two aesthetically pleasing suburbs to speak of; large parts of the outlying areas have a distinct third world look with their dilapidated houses and unsealed roads.

    (Btw, check out this doozy I stumbled upon touring Minsk on Yandex: https://yandex.com/maps/-/CBu7N8Hk8C The communists may have departed, but their architectural influence endures.)

  129. anonymous coward says

    Yeah, yeah.

    If I had $0.05 for every time I heard a Galician patriot’s excuse for why he prefers to love his country from a distance, I’d retired to a Mediterranean island tomorrow.

  130. Guillaume Tell says

    Clinical depression is basically self-pity.

    I am sorry but this is a completely erroneous statement. This is the kind of stupidity uttered in particular (but not only, unfortunately) by religious obscurantist nutcases, which has been thoroughly disproven by serious research.

    For instance, PET scan imagery reveals not only markedly different activity patterns (which would beg the question of cum hoc propter hoc fallacy), but also residual post-depression scars that also increase after each episode. Clinically depressed individuals are oftentimes very courageous and are doing their best to fight this devastating condition. In addition, committing suicide requires courage — and real despair. Not self-pity.

    I wish for you that you will never have to take care of a loved and close relative who suffers from it. Although that would most likely make you more aware of what clinical depression really means for those afflicted by it.
    But even in the absence of such a situation, you shall re-consider your assessment.

  131. I wish for you that you will never have to take care of a loved and close relative who suffers from it.

    I have done that. And I have, in my younger days, been diagnosed with clinical depression. I base my views on the subject on personal experience. It’s basically self-pity. Like so many psychiatric disorders, it doesn’t actually exist.

    We make the mistake of confusing moral problems with medical problems. Depression and drug addiction are moral problems. They are moral weaknesses.

    But even in the absence of such a situation, you shall re-consider your assessment.

    Shall I? No, I don’t think so.

  132. Guillaume Tell says

    We make the mistake of confusing moral problems with medical problems. Depression and drug addiction are moral problems. They are moral weaknesses.

    The problem with that kind of axiomatic argument is that it boils down to a tautology. Once you’ve decided that depression is self-pity (against strong empirical including brain activity PET scans) as a premise; then of course the answer follows: because it is axiomatically defines be self-pity, then obviously it is a moral problem. Which of course begs the question as to what a “moral problem” is. To which we can immediately respond “things like self-pity a.k.a. depression”. QED

    Look I don’t think this point is worth a flame war, which is not something I do anyway online. But I stand my point that you are oversimplifying the matter and that there is a major body of scientific evidence stacked against the point that you are trying to make about clinical depression not being a real illness.

    That said, I agree that things like the DSM, in particular since its 4th édition three decades ago, have done tremendous harm to the field of psychiatry. Many alledged conditions are also defined in entirely tautological fashion. And the DSM-5 is even worse. So I will gladly agree with you on the fact that there is a lot of rubbish in modern psychiatry.

    All of that being said, I am glad for you that you were diagnosed with depression and naturally recovered from it. Statistics indicate that this is the case of about 80% of the cases. Which to me means that it over-diagnosed. You might have been put into that bucket of clinical depression, because this is the easiest thing to do for a physician facing a myriad of vague symptoms.

    On the other hand when someone is so depressed that they essentially shut down to the point of not being able to eat — that’s a different situation. I have seen it in the relative I mentioned earlier. Who then made a massive recovery while on sertraline.

    But that’s totally fine with me if you want to believe that depression is self-inflicted moral weakness. I hope it won’t lead to one of your relatives shooting à bullet in their head as a result of being advised to not receive appropriate treatment.

  133. By the way I have read also in this very blog that its own host, AK, had to take some anti-depressant medication at some point of his life due to a burnout of some sort. In the past he might have just committed suicide.

    I had a period of panic attacks/anxiety in 2013, which was indeed cured after a couple of months of prescription drugs usage.

    It was not accompanied by depression, though the two do often go together.

  134. Toronto Russian says

    I’ve been reading Julian Fellowes books about English aristocrats, and yes in our time they still can be absolutely vicious to lowborn parvenus. Let alone to Trump who styled himself as champion of the common people. That’s their nature I suppose. If you don’t like the Brits, there are always others. The monarch of Swaziland for example, is a true keeper of Tradition!

    In an attempt to mitigate the HIV and AIDS pandemic in 2001, the king used his traditional powers to invoke a time-honoured chastity rite (umcwasho) under the patronage of a princess, which encouraged all Swazi maidens to abstain from sexual relations for five years – it was last done under Sobhuza II in 1971. This rite banned sexual relations for Swazis under 18 years of age from 9 September 2001 and 19 August 2005, but just two months after imposing the ban, he violated this decree when a liphovela (royal fiancée) was chosen to become his 13th wife. As per custom, he was fined a cow by members of her regiment, which he duly paid.

  135. Guillaume Tell says

    Yes, I remember having read it on a page where you introduce yourself. Anxiety (especially in its GAD form) is significantly correlated with higher intelligence. I am myself a fairly anxious person and if I was not taking preventative measures (sleeping enough, exercising, meditating, enjoying quality time with the family) it would have the potential to spiral out of control. Which it probably did when I was young, but at the time I did not know there was anything else than being anxious.

    It was not accompanied by depression, though the two do often go together.

    Apparently the current consensus is that anxiety and depression belong to the same spectrum of a similar condition, where women would on average score higher on the latter while men do it on the former.

    In my case (n=1) I know that contrarieties and preoccupation lead to being tense and angry — not sad. And my wife (n=2) is the opposite.

  136. Passer by says

    High labor force participation rate does not mean shit if those women do not have children. Native russian women tfr is 1,6 – below replacement rate of 2,1. UN projects a population decline in the coming years for Russia. Muslims are replacing russians, the fastest growing cities in Russia are muslim cities.

    Btw you can have relatively low female LFPR and a high standart of living, case in point Japan and South Korea. While your own link shows that the poorest countries having the highest female LFPR (low income countries total).

  137. Mr. Hack says

    I’m glad to read that your bout with anxiety ended satisfactorily. A close friend of mine also experienced anxiety attacks, and was medicated with lorazepam. This is a very powerful drug that is highly addictive. Several years of trips to the emergency room ended in his commiting suicide and the death of his live in companion. It’s nothing to fool around with.

  138. Guillaume Tell says

    A tragic story indeed.

    Lorazepam belongs to the benzodiazepines drug class, wholly different from SSRIs which are normally used to treat anxiety and depression. It is absolutely criminal to “treat” anxiety with benzos alone, which are indeed extremely addictive and do not treat the underlying condition (but rather numb the symptoms). It is akin to treating pneumonia with morphine.